garage.
She took a moment to collect herself, then another before picking up Watson’s cell phone for a look at her recent call list.
Her last call out had been to Lena at 6:25 p.m. last night. Bennett had called her a half hour before that and the two had spoken for a couple of minutes. The next calls made to Watson’s cell phone began at 10:00 a.m. this morning from her office, and continued every hour until just a few minutes ago.
She set the phone down and thought it through.
The disposal of Debi Watson was still a work in progress. She was certain of this. The killer had wrapped her up and placed her in the trunk because he intended to dump her corpse somewhere else. But even more telling, the killer hadn’t finished cleaning up. The bucket of water, the fresh rags beside the bottle of Mr. Clean, the mop leaning against the wall-it seemed clear enough that he had every intention of returning. Because there were no signs of forced entry, it was a better than good guess that Watson knew her killer. That they shared dinner together last night with a bottle of wine. That the killer could come and go as he pleased because he had a set of keys. And that he would be back sometime tonight to finish up.
Could there really be any doubt?
She hit the stairs for a look at the master bedroom. On the chest of drawers was a photograph of Watson with Bennett. It looked like they had taken a day off and traveled south to the racetrack in Del Mar. They were sitting at a table with cocktails. Although Watson’s smile looked genuine enough, Lena couldn’t help thinking that even in this setting, Bennett appeared mean and vicious.
She set the picture frame down and stepped into the bathroom. There were two sinks. She saw the hair dryer and makeup, then spotted a shaving kit on the counter and moved down to the far sink. Nothing stood out as she sifted through the items except that the kit seemed so needlessly full. Checking the cabinet underneath, she found a number of empty baskets. From the stains in the webbing, she could tell that the baskets once held toiletries and that Bennett was making his move and packing up.
She could feel the tension building in her shoulders, a fresh load of adrenaline making a jagged run through her body.
She glanced at the large bed, noted the silk sheets, then yanked open the closet doors. The racks were filled entirely with Watson’s clothing. There was no room for sharing here. When she checked the drawers, she didn’t find anything that might belong to Bennett.
She hurried down the hall, found the guest room, and switched on the lights. As she entered, she saw two boxes of cleaned shirts on the bed and several pairs of men’s dress shoes by the chair. An open suitcase was set on the trunk by the window. She pulled the closet doors open and counted five business suits on the rack, along with one that was wrapped up and had probably come from the dry cleaners with the two boxes of shirts on the bed.
She was overdosing on the moment now. Choking on it.
She started to pull the plastic away from the suit. Slowly at first, then ripping at it with her fingers when she saw the pinstripes. Her face flushed with heat, her eyes reeling back and forth across the fabric until they zeroed in on the left lapel and found the mark.
51
Cobb’s mind was beginning to skip through time again.
He’d spent the last hour gazing at the sunset and daydreaming about a ribeye steak, a glass of Cutty Sark, and a night under the sheets with Betty Kim. After wasting the day watching Bennett fool around in his garage, Cobb thought he deserved a reward of significant proportions. If it came down to a single choice, he would have saved the food and whisky for later, and picked door number three. Betty Kim. But it was a Friday night; he knew his life was on the line, and he saw no reason why he didn’t deserve all three.
He dug the bottle of Tylenol out of his pocket and gave it a shake, but only one caplet fell out. Grimacing at the empty bottle, he popped the pill and knocked it back with what was left of his bottled water. His back hurt. He’d spent most of the day hiding in the brush overlooking Bennett’s McMansion with his elbows pinned to the ground.
He raised the field glasses up to his eyes, found Bennett in his four-car garage, and adjusted the focus.
The man was still washing his fucking car-a gray BMW with tinted glass. He’d been at it for hours. It didn’t make sense to Cobb-taking a day off from work and devoting it to a car. Especially on a day when his wife took off with the kids. A day when everything inside the man should have been ripped and scratched.
His cell phone started vibrating.
Cobb looked at it on the ground, saw Gamble’s name on the touch screen and smiled at the thought of her. He liked the idea of knowing her and working with her. He liked the idea that his first impression of her had been the wrong one. He liked the fact that the movie inside his head had stopped playing ever since he realized who she really was. That he wasn’t alone anymore. That the dead bodies he could see piling up when he closed his eyes had stopped staring at him and stopped taunting him.
“Where are you?” she said.
“Bennett’s,” he whispered.
“Is he still agitated?”
Cobb sensed something different in her voice and took another look through his field glasses. Bennett had popped open the trunk and was removing the carpet.
“You could call it that,” he said. “His wife took off with the kids. They had suitcases.”
“And what’s he doing about it?”
“Washing his fucking car.”
She didn’t say anything after that. Just a long stretch of silence.
“You need to get out of there,” she said finally. “You need to make sure he doesn’t see you.”
Cobb raised the field glasses again, but couldn’t locate Bennett. The door between the house and garage was open now.
“What is it?” he said.
“It’s Bennett, Cobb. He’s the killer. He’s the one.”
“What happened?”
“You need to get out of there. I’m with detectives from the Sheriff’s Department. Bennett murdered Debi Watson last night.”
She gave him Watson’s address in West Hollywood and told him that Vaughan was on his way as well. He could hear the worry in her voice.
“You need to hurry, Cobb. It’s not safe. You’ll see what I mean when you get here.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket, his mind skipping through those beats again. He tried to shake himself clear, but it didn’t work. He could see Debi Watson’s face the way he had seen it when they prepped for the trial. But as he tried to focus on the image, it began to shift and change until he found himself staring at Lily Hight laid out on the floor of her bedroom.
The place where his nightmare began.
He could remember how his chest locked up when he first walked into the room and saw her there. He could remember the feelings he felt. The sounds of her mother and father weeping that carried through the house from downstairs. He remembered sitting with Lily while he waited for the coroner to arrive. He remembered that he didn’t want her to be alone. That he had stroked her soft blond hair.
Cobb raised the field glasses for one last look. The door between the house and garage remained open. Bennett was still inside. Pushing himself off the ground, he grabbed hold of the tree and climbed to his feet.
And then he heard the shots. There were three of them. They seemed loud.
He looked at Bennett’s house, reaching around to scratch the itch below his shoulder blades. Bennett hadn’t been drawn outside by the sound, and Cobb wasn’t sure what was happening. He could feel his knees giving out, his body collapsing onto the ground. After a moment, he began to notice the blood leaking out of his chest and flowing into the dusty earth. He lifted his head out of the dirt, struggling to get his bearings. The sky was spinning, the stars
