“He wouldn’t talk about it over the phone. All he said was that they were shooting at a house in Venice. He gave me the address and he’s expecting us to show up tomorrow morning by eight.”
Vaughan hit his clicker, unlocking the car and opening the door. As he turned back to her, their eyes met and he took a step closer.
“I can’t believe what you did tonight,” he said in a quiet voice. “Taking Higgins on like that. You know if it ever got out that you caught Higgins with his pants down, your picture would be on every deputy DA’s desk in the building.”
She smiled, and Vaughan laughed and gave her a hug. Then he climbed into his car and lowered the window.
“You’re okay, right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Where do you want to meet up in the morning?”
“I live in Rustic Canyon. It’s a five-minute drive to Venice. If you come by early enough, you can meet the kids.”
“Sounds good,” she said. “See you at seven-thirty.”
“I’ll text you the address.”
Then he laughed again and drove off.
She couldn’t put her finger on it. His eyes, his face, his body, or his person. All she knew was that something had happened. When he hugged her, something changed and she became very aware of his physical presence.
She was driving on the Hollywood Freeway, heading home. The wind was up-a bone-dry wind spewing clouds of dust from the desert into the city. The clouds were so thick and dirty that Lena could hear the particles beating against the side of her car.
She lit a cigarette. She was trying to concentrate on the road, but she kept thinking about Vaughan. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought that she might have rubbed her breasts against his chest. If she did, it wasn’t something deliberate and it didn’t last very long. If she did, it just happened and he might not have even noticed.
She took another drag on the cigarette and tried to put the thought out of her mind. At the moment, her life had enough drama. And the idea of becoming the next Bennett and Watson, in any way or any version or any variation thereof, was something she would never let happen.
So why did the churning in her stomach suddenly feel so good?
The Beachwood Drive exit was a hundred yards up. Moving into the right lane, she glided onto the ramp and continued until she reached Gower Street. Then she made a right turn, hit a green light, and started the climb into the hills. To her amazement, the dust cloud had a ceiling, and she pierced it as she reached the crest. Passing through a series of turns, she spotted her driveway on the right, but kept moving when she caught a glimpse of a car that had pulled off the road behind the bluff.
It was a white car. A white Lincoln.
As the image of the car hidden in the darkness rendered in her mind, she realized that she had used up all her fear and anxiety over the past six hours. The only thing left was irritation and curiosity.
She continued up the road to the next house and pulled into the drive. The house was empty due to a bank foreclosure, and like the next house up, had been that way for more than a year. Lena cut through the yard on foot, following the coyote paths through the trees and around the bluff at the edge of the hill. When she stepped out of the brush, she found herself by the pool facing the back of her house and ducked behind a bush.
Cobb was just making his exit.
She could see him trying to squeeze through a window onto the roof above the porch. His movements appeared awkward and she could hear him straining. When he finally made it out, he slipped on the shingles and slid down the roof before catching himself just above the edge.
He took a moment, pulling himself together and looking back at that open window. Lena could tell what was going through his mind and watched as he crawled back up the roof and managed to get the window closed. The process took time and seemed like a painful ordeal. And when he had finally completed the task, he lost his footing again and slid back down to the edge. He took a few minutes to rest, this time staring at the concrete and flagstone below. Once he was ready, he dangled his legs over the edge, searched for the rail with his feet, and climbed down. Then he stepped off the porch and headed up the driveway, huffing and puffing, and wiping his sweaty brow with what looked more like a rag than a handkerchief.
Lena moved into the yard, watching Cobb vanish in the darkness and waiting to hear him drive away. Once she saw the headlights pass, she jogged back through the brush and returned with her car.
In spite of the hour, she was wide awake when she unlocked the front door and switched on the ceiling lights. Her eyes moved through the living room, searching for changes. She didn’t think that Cobb had wired the place up because he wasn’t carrying any tools. But as she reached the table by the slider, she saw the file beside Gant’s journal and noticed that the papers inside were askew. She pulled the chair out, feeling the seat with her fingers and noting its warmth. Then she reached underneath the lamp shade and touched the lightbulb. It was still hot.
Cobb had been sitting at the table. And he’d spent time here.
She didn’t know what to make of it. His behavior seemed so outrageous. So risky and bold.
She sat down in the chair and tried to see the table from Cobb’s point of view. Gant’s graphic novel appeared to have been pushed away, while the file and journal were front and center. Inside the file, Lena found her notes and a copy of the chronological record she had started the night after Bosco and Gant were murdered. Both her notes and the journal would have been new to Cobb. Information he could take back to Bennett.
Her cell phone started vibrating. Checking the touch screen, she saw Sid Kosinski’s name and recognized the number from the coroner’s office.
“Sorry for calling so late, Lena, but I just walked out of the operating room.”
The signal was bad. Opening the slider, she stepped outside onto the porch.
“What is it, Sid?”
“Maybe it’s nothing, but the detective who worked the Lily Hight murder was down here about three hours ago.”
“Cobb?”
“That’s him. He wanted to look at my notes from the autopsies we did on Bosco and Gant. He seemed nervous. And he was asking a lot of questions. What made it feel so odd was that most of his questions were about you.”
Lena sat down on the wall. “Did you show him anything from the case?”
“Of course not. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t see what he wanted to see.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s got friends around here.”
“What kind of friends?”
“From the old days,” Kosinski said. “When he used to work out of Robbery-Homicide.”
She decided that she didn’t really want to meet any of Cobb’s friends. She felt numb and looked out over the hill. The cloud of dirty air had filled in the basin up to the rim, concealing everything in the city except for the upper floors of the Library Tower downtown. The moon was up, lighting the cloud’s surface and making it appear solid enough to walk on.
“You still there, Lena?”
“I’m here, Sid. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“It’s probably nothing, right? Cobb coming down here? It’s probably nothing.”
She looked back at the dust cloud and shivered in the heat.
“Right,” she said. “It’s probably nothing.”
37
Vaughan lived on Hillside Lane, a short drive up through the canyon from the beach. Lena could see the house
