Robert Ellis - Murder Season

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “I know that you don’t want to hear it from me, but I mean it.”

William Gant didn’t say anything. His eyes drifted away from her to something he was holding in his hand. A small photograph. When he set it down on the table, Lena was close enough to get a decent look. It was a family snapshot of William Gant with his two sons. They were aboard a ship and dressed for cold weather. A whale was swimming just off the bow. All three were caught up in the moment and flashing wide smiles.

Gant saw her looking at the photograph and covered it with his hand. “I think we’re done here,” he said. “I think that you should get back in your car and drive away.”

“We need to arrange a time when you can come down to the coroner’s office and identify your son.”

“It’s already been arranged,” he said.

“By whom?”

“My son’s attorney, Buddy Paladino.”

It hung there. Paladino had told Gant that his son was dead an hour and a half ago. Rhodes had been right. The leak had become a flood before she even got the case.

“What about the circumstances of your son’s death?” she asked.

Gant shook his head, chewing through the words as if they were toxic. “The circumstances of my son’s death,” he said. “That’s a good one.”

“Do you know why he was at Club 3 AM?”

Neither one of them responded. Lena looked at them staring back at her just the way Escabar had-despair spiked with poison. She checked the slider and saw Hight’s silhouette in the window, that bead of light from his cigarette still piercing the darkness.

“What about Johnny Bosco?” she said. “Why was Jacob with him?”

The father pushed his coffee aside. “I have no idea.”

She sensed something in Harry’s face and turned to him. “Did you know Johnny Bosco?” she asked. “Do you know why your brother was with him, Harry? Did he use cocaine?”

The kid remained quiet and appeared nervous at being singled out. When she repeated the question, his face hardened.

“My brother didn’t do drugs,” he said finally. “And you’re just another stupid cop. Why don’t you leave us the fuck alone?”

He pushed past his father and rushed out of the room. After a few moments, a door slammed on the second floor. Then Gant pocketed the snapshot and got up from the table. Curiously, he turned his back on her and looked out through the slider. The man seemed to know that Hight had been watching them all along.

“You need to leave,” he said, still gazing across the driveway. “You’ve fulfilled our every expectation, Detective, and I don’t want my asshole neighbor to see me get angry. That’s what he wants. That’s why he’s watching. Why don’t you knock on his door tonight and ask him if he feels any better now. I can already see the stories on the news. The man who murdered my boy will get a parade. A street named after his sorry soul. I’ll bet you cops are actually happy about the way things worked out. Not short-term happy because you look like the stupid jerks that you truly are. But long-term happy because you’re finally off the hook.”

“No one’s off the hook, Mr. Gant.”

He turned from the window and stared at her for a long time. His weary body was trembling slightly and it looked as if he’d aged ten years in the past few minutes. Like something deep inside him had given way. As he pushed the chair into the table, he seemed a lot like his neighbor. He seemed like a man being forced to carry a monkey on his back for the rest of time-a bag overflowing with memories and nightmares he couldn’t shake out or get rid of.

He stepped around the table and pointed at the door, his voice hoarse and barely audible. “This is over,” he said. “Get out.”

The ride back to Parker Center was quiet-the eastern sky just beginning to catch some light from the sun still waking up below the horizon. With “rush hour” underway-an event that ran continuously from 5:30 a.m. until 2:00 a.m. every day of the week in Los Angeles-Lena assumed that she would be late for the strategy meeting at seven and had called ahead to let Barrera know.

It couldn’t be helped. Tim Hight and William Gant were way too wound up to be left alone. The air was too hot, the tinder too dry, and too many nerves were exposed.

Murder season was in full bloom, and Lena couldn’t walk away.

Her first thought was to request a surveillance team from the Special Investigation Section. SIS was their primary surveillance unit and could easily handle the job. But this was a unique situation. After talking it over with Rhodes, they decided that everyone would be better off if the surveillance units were out in the open for all to see. Two or three black and white cruisers parked right at the curb to underline their presence, and with any luck, cool things down.

Lena swung around the block and pulled up to the building. As she climbed out and Rhodes moved in behind the wheel, she could see what three nights without sleep had done to him. She watched him wave and pull away from the curb, trying not to worry about his drive home. Losing sight of her friend in traffic, she headed for the lobby on her own.

The meeting was being held in Captain Dillworth’s office on the third floor directly behind the Homicide Special Section. Her captain was in New Orleans, so the room was available and always left unlocked. Her desk stood just on the other side of the wall at one of four homicide tables. Her early morning arrival, more than routine. But Lena could sense something was different about today from the moment she passed through the lobby doors. The lunch stand across from the front desk. The guys working the turnstiles and X-ray machine. The three or four groups of people she passed in the hall.

The usual morning banter had been replaced with muffled voices and dull eyes pinned to the ground. The read she picked up was disappointment. But she thought that she could see fear and uncertainty, too.

The mood followed her into the captain’s office, only it was more pervasive here. As she slipped into an open seat and listened, Deputy Chief Ramsey was standing at the head of the table, laying it out for anyone who might have missed it. His audience was a select group that included the two prosecutors from the district attorney’s office who had failed, Steven Bennett and Debi Watson, another deputy DA Lena recognized but had never worked with, Greg Vaughan, along with their boss, District Attorney Jimmy J. Higgins. Aside from Ramsey, the only other LAPD official was her supervisor, Lieutenant Frank Barrera. That could only mean that Lena really was on her own.

She pushed the thought away and tried to concentrate on what the deputy chief was saying. Most of it was a repeat of her conversations with Rhodes and Escabar. But Ramsey had found his voice-gravel rinsed in an ashtray-and spiced things up with new details.

“We’re making news again,” he said. “Department of Justice attorneys will be meeting with the judge in two hours. Every reform we’ve made under Chief Logan-the progress we’ve achieved, the performance records we’ve broken-everything we’ve stood for over the past few years burned up with this case. This trial. And now, two men murdered in Hollywood. Termination of the consent decree has been tossed to the side of the road. Another monitor will be selected to look over our shoulders and report to the judge. The department is under the microscope again. You are, too, Higgins. We’re in this mess together. And right now, we’re roadkill. We’re fucked.”

The deputy chief’s words settled into the room sharp as broken glass. When Higgins didn’t react, Lena looked around the table and wondered what she’d missed over the past forty-five minutes. Bennett and Watson were sitting with the district attorney directly across from her. Barrera was on her left, but seemed to be focused on Greg Vaughan who was in a chair by himself at the far end of the table.