Robert Ellis - Murder Season

“I didn’t shoot anybody. I didn’t kill anybody. I’m innocent.”

“But that’s what everybody says.”

He took it in, his body shivering in terror. His gaze shifted to the house. Lena could hear footsteps on the lawn behind her and took a quick peek. Hu was rushing toward them with his gun drawn. Vaughan was behind him with a handful of cops carrying shotguns.

Lena turned back to Bennett. “It’s over,” she said. “And we already have everything we need. The suit you wore when you met Lily Hight at Club 3 AM. Security video that shows you walking out with her.”

Bennett’s eyes flicked from face to face. When they slid back to Lena, he pressed the muzzle into his head even harder and began weeping.

“But I’m innocent.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Innocent. I had my share of hunches, Bennett. But I never really understood why you prosecuted Jacob Gant when you knew that he’d passed a polygraph. Now everything makes sense. You needed someone to take the fall for what you did to the girl. That’s what this is about, right? That’s what this has always been about. When you lost the trial, when you saw your career tanking, you needed a new way out. You needed to keep your eye on things. When Gant got too close and took what he knew to Bosco, you shot them and tried to frame Lily’s father. It made sense, right? Everybody in the city thought it made sense. Tim Hight out for revenge.”

“I know how it looks, but-”

“But what?” she said. “On a scale of one to ten, how low can a guy go? You’re off the charts, Bennett. And what about Escabar and the guard? What about Debi Watson? What about your woman, Bennett? Look what you did to her on the very same day she tried to come forward and talk.”

He shook his head back and forth like he could see Watson’s dead body in the trunk. When he spoke, he spewed the words out with spit.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t kill her.”

“And what about the gun you used? The gun you’re holding to your head? The gun from the drive-by case you worked with Cobb? The gun you knew we’d trace because you needed insurance? You’re a genius, Bennett. A real genius. If all the fall guys you came up with hit the skids and fell down, you had the ultimate backup. You had your old mentor. You had Cobb. By the way, he died this morning. You’re everything you ever were, Bennett. And today you’re even more. You’re a cop killer now.”

“Stop,” he said. “Stop it.”

She took a step forward. “Drop the gun, and let’s go.”

“Don’t come any closer. I’m gonna blow my fucking head off.”

“You don’t have what it takes, Bennett. You’re a coward.”

“Fuck you, you stupid bitch.”

He jerked the gun around and fired a shot into the lawn by Lena’s feet, then bolted into the gardens. There was a gate that opened to a narrow lane and a pair of trash Dumpsters. Lena didn’t see him running down the lane. When she turned back, she caught a glimpse of him hiding against the wall behind the far Dumpster. She traded looks with Vaughan, then Hu, who motioned his men closer. Bennett was surrounded.

Lena inched forward until she had a clean view. He was sitting on the ground holding the 9-mm Smith on his lap. He was weeping. Mumbling. Out of his fucking mind.

“Come on, Bennett. Let’s get this over with. Let’s go in before anyone else gets hurt.”

“I don’t want to.”

Lena traded looks with Vaughan, then turned back to Bennett. “Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.”

“Not me, Gamble. I only do what I wanna do.”

“But there’s no place to run,” she said. “No place to hide. You own this.”

She could see his wheels turning. She could see the machine crashing-his soul tapped out at zero with no fuel and no backup. His eyes inched along the ground, then rose slowly until they found her kneeling before him just ten feet away. He met her gaze and held it. When he noticed her gun pointed at the center of his chest, he smiled at her.

“Fuck it,” he said.

Bennett raised the gun, wrapped his mouth around the muzzle, and pulled the trigger. Lena watched as his head snapped back against the wall and the blood gushed out. But the gun didn’t stop firing.

Hu and Vaughan rushed over. The guys with the shotguns moved in as well.

It looked like Bennett’s finger had become stuck in the trigger guard. As his body greeted death and began twitching, the 9-mm Smith fired one round after the next, blasting his head away in chunks. The gun didn’t stop firing until the mag finally emptied out.

And then the sound dissipated. The smoke cleared. And Lena watched with Vaughan as one of the guys walked over to Bennett’s corpse, pulled the pistol away, and tossed it on the ground. When he gave the body a stiff kick with his boot, no one said anything. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Cobb needed a fresh set of clothes to be buried in.

Lena remembered that gray suit she’d seen him wearing on video during Jacob Gant’s trial. The one that had looked new and perfectly tailored. Vaughan said he’d ride over with her to pick it up.

Over the last three days, they had spent a lot of time together. A lot of time not being alone with themselves or their thoughts. A lot of time in bed.

Lena pulled out of the garage at Parker Center, saw the cameras turning their way from the media camped out around the building, and drove through the red light. Instead of dealing with midday traffic on the 110 Freeway, she decided to take surface streets around Dodger Stadium and pick up the Golden State Freeway on the other side of the hill.

The press was swarming again. The story of Lily Hight’s murder bigger than ever with a fresh set of storylines and a cast of seven new victims capped off by the killer of all killers-Bad Boy Bennett-a deputy DA who committed suicide rather than face his arrest and prosecution and the humiliation and shame that would have come with it.

On Saturday night they had confronted the district attorney for his own odd behavior-a no-nonsense meeting ordered by Deputy Chief Ramsey. Ramsey wanted to know what Higgins and Spadell had been looking for that could have been picked up by Club 3 AM security cameras. Ramsey wanted to know what was so important to Higgins that it required breaking into Johnny Bosco’s house and running away when Lena identified herself as a police officer. Spadell never showed up for the meeting and was believed to have fled the city. Higgins refused to talk until he’d had a chance to confer with his political consultants. Ramsey pointed out to the district attorney that burglary was still considered a crime in Los Angeles County and suggested that he confer with his attorney instead of his asshole consultants.

But if Jimmy J. Higgins had been searching out video that showed him using cocaine, it hardly made any difference now.

Bennett had been his protege and everybody knew it. Higgins had overseen Bennett and Watson’s work on Jacob Gant’s trial, hoping to grab as many headlines as he could. He had received a copy of Gant’s polygraph from Buddy Paladino, just as Bennett and Watson had. Yet Jimmy J. Higgins had remained quiet about it, essentially paving the way for the actual killer-an officer of the court-to try an innocent man for a murder he himself had committed. The mayor, a majority of the city council and county supervisors-but not all-were calling for Higgins’s resignation. But even more, the sense of outrage was so pervasive that people were taking it to the streets. The story was just three days old. Higgins had already been attacked twice in restaurants by the kind of people who aren’t prone to acts of violence. He had been chased down the street by a group of college students who saw him exiting a parking garage.