Lena mentioned Lily’s right boot. He had seen Cobb’s performance on the witness stand with his own eyes, and now the reasons behind it were clear.
The drive took less than fifteen minutes. As Hight’s house came into view, Cobb pulled over to the curb and switched off his headlights. The moment reminded Lena of the first time she and Rhodes had set eyes on the two houses. Every window in the Gants’ house radiated a warm incandescent light. But for the glow of a police scanner in the sunroom, every window in Hight’s house was dark.
“You see the head of his cigarette,” Cobb whispered.
Lena nodded. “I see it.”
“He just sits there,” Vaughan said. “Listening to his scanner and staring at Gant’s house. Why do you think he does it?”
“Because he knows,” Cobb said.
“Knows what?”
“The killer’s still out there, Vaughan. The one who took his daughter away. He loved her.”
Lena glanced at Cobb. “We can put him in the murder room at the club. He saw what happened to Gant. He’s known all week.”
“Why hasn’t he said anything?” Vaughan asked.
“Same reason I didn’t,” Cobb said. “He’s probably scared. I am.”
Vaughan moved closer to the window. “So where did you find the blood?”
“In the driveway by the back door,” Cobb said.
They were talking about something Orth mentioned before Lena and Cobb left the crime lab. The possibility that SID hadn’t mishandled the evidence, and that the blood found its way to the driveway as the killer moved Lily’s body into the house.
But Lena wasn’t really listening to them. She was thinking about the gun the killer was using. The gun she’d originally thought Cobb had pulled out of Property. The 9-mm Smith that had been traced back to the drive-by shootings of Elvira Wheaten and her grandson eight years ago. Before tonight she had attributed the use of this weapon to what she considered Cobb’s poor judgment and lack of self-control.
Before tonight when she found out who Cobb really was.
Now she realized that the killer had to be using this particular gun for a reason. The question was why? Why would anyone use a weapon that he knew could be identified so easily? And who walked into Property calling themselves Dan Cobb and filled out that request card? Who walked out with the gun?
Higgins couldn’t have pulled it off. Bennett seemed just as unlikely. And Lena had seen Debi Watson’s swollen boobs. No one would have mistaken her for Dan Cobb.
But Jerry Spadell was different. Way different.
Spadell had been out of the loop for years, yet still would have known how everything worked. The Property Room was open 24/7, the clerks were civilians. He would have had access to Cobb’s badge number through the DA’s office and known how to make a counterfeit ID. He would have timed his visit for late at night. But even more, Spadell knew how to use a gun. Lena imagined that he had more than enough experience to handle whatever was asked of him as long as the money was good. And Spadell had that grizzled look of a guy who knew how to pull the trigger and not look back.
She wondered if that’s what they were really dealing with now.
A man who raped and murdered Lily Hight, then hired Spadell to kill four more people in order to clean things up. The man Lena had caught with Spadell breaking into Bosco’s house in Malibu. The man who was searching through security videos from Club 3 AM, and ran away when Lena knocked on the door.
The district attorney of Los Angeles County.
Jimmy J. Higgins in a pinstripe suit.
The flow stopped-the inner dialogue. She didn’t like it. Something about it didn’t feel right. Not yet anyway. Not without an answer.
Why that gun?
Her mind surfaced. Vaughan was saying something about Bennett, Watson, and Higgins leaving an electronic trail on their computer network. E-mails that had to be there but were buried in the system. When they quieted down, Lena turned to Cobb.
“Why that gun?” she said. “Why is the killer using a gun he knew would be traced?”
She could see him tossing it over, but he didn’t say anything.
“Why?” she said.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing, Gamble. And there’s only one answer.”
“What’s that?”
Cobb gave her a look. “He wanted it to be traced.”
“But that’s not an answer.”
“I know,” he said.
A sudden burst of bright light flooded the interior of the car. Lena checked the rear window and saw a white van rolling through the curve slowly. As the van idled by, she turned and watched the driver park in an open space five cars up the block. After several minutes, the door opened and Dick Harvey hopped out carrying a small video camera.
He looked up and down the street, but didn’t see them. Cobb’s Lincoln never would have registered. And he seemed too preoccupied by Tim Hight’s house. He was staring at the sunroom-Hight’s silhouette and the bead of light from his cigarette still visible in the dim light cast from his police scanner.
Lena traded looks with Cobb and Vaughan, but no one said anything.
Harvey was taking a second look around the neighborhood. Satisfied that no one was around, he slipped through the gate and into Hight’s yard. Lena watched as he zigzagged his way through the shadows and finally reached the window. After adjusting the lens, he brought the camera up to his eye.
Hight was suffering. And Harvey wanted the shot for another episode of
48
Debi Watson hadn’t returned her call, and Lena worried that the more time the deputy DA took to think it over, the less likely she was to open up and talk. In spite of the hour, Lena had left a second message on Watson’s service when she returned last night and a third this morning as soon as she got up. If she didn’t hear back by noon, she decided to show up at her office and force the issue.
Lena hadn’t slept well last night. She couldn’t stop thinking about that 9-mm Smith. She agreed with Cobb. The killer was using the gun because he wanted it to be traced.
But the question was why? And it was feeding on her.
It seemed more than obvious that it had something to do with what happened eight years ago.
Lena had spent the morning reading about the drive-by shootings of Elvira Wheaten and her grandson. She hadn’t remembered the case when Vaughan first mentioned it to her. But she remembered the eyewitness, Wes Brown, who had been murdered three months after Bennett and Higgins won the trial and Higgins took office. At some point it dawned on her that her memory had been jogged for a reason. Wes Brown had a brother who owned a small record label. She didn’t know Reggie Brown, but she knew people who did and managed to get his phone number.
Although Brown agreed to talk to her and even lived near Lena in the hills above Sunset, he refused to meet in any place other than the exact spot where his brother had been gunned down. That spot happened to be in a small park across the street from the empty lot where Wheaten and her grandson had been killed. Apparently, there were two picnic tables underneath the trees. Reggie Brown’s little brother had been playing chess at the table closest to the street on both days. And that’s where she could find Reggie in forty-five minutes.
Her cell phone chirped. Vaughan had sent her a text message. He was at Parker Center working with Keith Upshaw from the Computer Crime Section. They were just getting started. Upshaw had played a key role in the
