Cobb didn’t say anything for so long that Lena thought her phone had died. She checked the battery, then the signal-then he came back on.
“The 9-mm Smith goes back to what happened eight years ago, Cobb. Bennett had your eyewitness killed. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I’m not sure what it means,” he said.
He was trying to keep his voice down. Lena didn’t like it.
“Where are you?” she said.
“I’m outside Bennett’s house keeping an eye on things. He took the day off and seems agitated.”
“If you’re not sure what it means, why are you following Bennett?”
“I wasn’t,” he said. “I was on Higgins. He and that friend of his stopped by here about an hour ago. When they left, I got curious and decided to stay.”
“Can you see Bennett?”
“He’s standing in his driveway arguing with his wife. They’ve been at it for half an hour. They’re every neighborhood’s favorite couple, Gamble. They’re screamers.”
“What are they arguing about?”
“She knows he’s cheating on her. Apparently she’s not happy about it.”
“Are you in your car?”
“No,” he said. “There’s a hill across the street. Lots of trees with an elevated view of the whole property. Bennett has bucks. He lives on North Rockingham off Sunset. How’s a deputy DA make that kind of cash?”
Lena had reached Venice Boulevard and could see San Vicente just ahead. She began weaving through traffic and using the shoulder when she got stuck. With any luck, she was ten minutes out.
“You need to listen to me, Cobb.”
“Listen to what?”
“I’m gonna tell you what the gun means.”
He went quiet again. She couldn’t tell if he was avoiding the issue or needed to shut down because of what he was doing.
“I’m back,” he whispered. “Tell me what you think it means.”
“You’re being set up, Cobb. You’re the way the killer gets away with this. Somehow he found out that you’re the one who tipped off Paladino and wrecked the case. When Bosco and Gant got too close, he used that gun. When Escabar found the video of Lily at the club, ballistics is gonna tell us that he used it again. You’ve got a target on your back. You’re not safe.”
It hung there for a while, the target on Cobb’s back.
“You might be right,” he whispered finally. “But is it Bennett or is it Higgins? I always thought Reggie got it wrong. No question that Bennett was abusing his brother on the phone, but Higgins was the politician, Gamble. Higgins needed to win that trial, not Bennett. How do we know Bennett isn’t just some mean little prick doing whatever Higgins tells him to do? How do we know it wasn’t Higgins who sent that cop over and got the kid killed?”
She thought about Jerry Spadell again. “We don’t,” she said finally.
“And what about the target on your back? What about the target on Vaughan?”
She didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t be certain. She needed to get Debi Watson to talk.
She blew through a red light and turned onto Melrose, then made another right on Norwich and started picking out street numbers. Watson’s house was halfway up the block on the left side-a two-story Mediterranean covered in ivy with palm trees nested beside the gardens and a eucalyptus shading the front yard. She pulled into the drive and parked before the garage. On any other day she would have looked at Watson’s house as something of an oasis. But today, all she picked up on was the darkness. The bad vibes.
“Any chance you’ve seen Debi Watson today, Cobb?”
“Bennett’s with his wife,” he said. “What’s wrong with your voice?”
Her eyes made a second pass over the house-slower than the first. It seemed so still. So quiet.
50
Up the street Lena could see two men cutting a lawn. A young woman was pushing a baby carriage down the sidewalk toward the shops on Melrose.
She turned back to Watson’s house, rang the bell, and checked the front door. No answer. Moving quickly across the front yard, she stepped into the garden and peered through the living room window. When she didn’t see anything amiss, she continued around the house until she had examined every window and door.
Privacy was no longer an issue. If someone saw what she was doing and called 911, Lena would have welcomed the company. Still, the quickest way in was the deadbolt on the back door.
She fished out her tension wrench and short hook and took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves. The lock was so old that she could hear the pins clicking over the din of the neighborhood. Within forty-five seconds, she felt the wrench begin turning and gave the door a push.
She was standing in a small mudroom. The alarm hadn’t been armed, and she could hear the sound of a television cutting through the stillness. Stepping into the foyer, she noted the ceiling fan rotating slowly above the living room and a dining area that hadn’t been cleaned up from last night. There were two place settings on the table, along with two glasses of red wine that had only been partially consumed. She lifted the bottle up to the window light and saw that it was empty. When she set it down, she spotted the TV in the corner tuned to CNN and became aware of an odor. Some sort of cleaning product with a strong artificial scent.
Grapefruit, maybe. It seemed so odd and out of place.
She stepped back into the foyer, turned the corner, and entered the kitchen. There was a bucket filled with water on the floor. A mop leaned against the wall, and she saw a pile of rags and a bottle of Mr. Clean by the sink. When a phone started ringing, she flinched but caught herself. She spotted the cell phone on the breakfast table by Watson’s handbag but didn’t touch it. Leaning closer, she read the caller ID and realized that it was Watson’s office number. Her assistant was still worried, still trying to reach her boss.
Lena noticed the sun beginning to set outside and took two more deep breaths as she switched on the overhead light. It wasn’t working anymore. The churning in her stomach wouldn’t go away, the bad vibes following her from room to room.
She turned and looked on the other side of the refrigerator. There was a large cutting board on the counter and a set of hand forged chef’s knives from Japan. A photograph of Watson with a little girl riding a swing was leaning against the backsplash. On the wall beside the door, Lena found another alarm panel and realized that the door opened to the garage.
And on the floor-when her eyes finally drifted down to the tiled floor-she saw the blood that hadn’t been entirely cleaned up. The drag marks leading into the garage.
She took the jolt but steadied herself. Stepping around the blood, she opened the door and looked at the white Audi in the darkness. She took a whiff of the air and knew with certainty that her conversation with Debi Watson wouldn’t involve many words.
She hit the light switch, scanning the room for a corpse. The floor was clear and she gave the car a long look. Returning to the kitchen, she opened Watson’s handbag and fished out her keys. Then she stepped over the drag marks, hit the clicker, and tried to keep cool.
The car beeped and the trunk popped open.
The air in the garage changed quickly, becoming sour and harsh. Lena covered her mouth and nose and hurried around the car for a look.
And then she stopped.
She could see Watson’s body in the small trunk. Her face. Her curly blond hair. The dried blood that had trickled out of her mouth. The two bullet wounds piercing her abdomen and chest. She was wrapped in clear plastic. Her eyes were open, her palm pressing against the plastic as if she’d still been alive when she was packed up and left in the darkness. Nothing about her death looked easy.
Lena staggered back into the kitchen, the gruesome image still with her as she closed the door to the
