She wanted to hit something. Kick something. Kill it.
When she reached Sunset, she made a right, rolled through the horseshoe curve and up the hill, then made the left onto Rockingham. The patrol units were gone, a woman in a Land Rover packed with kids drove by-the events of last night seemingly forgotten, or even more likely, entirely missed by all. Although it didn’t look like Vaughan or Hu had arrived yet, she saw a van parked in front of Bennett’s house and imagined that the workers were busy replacing the living room windows. But as she cleared the van, she glanced back at the house and skidded to a stop.
Bennett was home-his BMW backed into the garage with the trunk open. The door between the house and garage was open as well.
Lena pulled into the driveway, blocking the BMW and jacking back the slide on her.45. She stepped out of her car, took a last hit on her smoke, and ground the butt into the driveway with her toe. And then she started moving forward. One round in the chamber-the rest, ready to go.
Entering the garage, it crossed her mind that it would have been more poetic to use Cobb’s Sig Sauer. That if she had ammunition for the gun it would have had more meaning somehow. But Cobb carried a 9 mm, and Lena preferred a.45-particularly when coming face to face with a monster. An alien.
She had killed people before.
She had shot them dead in the line of duty. But no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the victim may have deserved, taking a human life carried with it a certain toll that she thought about every day. A price that haunted her and would follow her for the rest of her days.
But she wondered about Bennett. She didn’t think it would be the same.
She took a quick peek inside the trunk and spotted his suitcase. Reaching the door between the garage and house, she looked down a long hallway to a set of French doors that opened into the backyard. The house was dead quiet … so quiet that she began to sense something might be wrong. She turned and gazed at the van parked in the street. It took a moment to register, but she realized that it was the same make, model, and color as the van Dick Harvey drove.
Something was going on.
Stepping into the house, she moved down the hall without making any sound. She passed a laundry room, a large pantry filled with cooking supplies, a powder room, and finally the entrance to a kitchen. The room was enormous and looked as if it had been remodeled over the past year. She thought about what Cobb had said. No one could afford to live here on Bennett’s salary. Either he married rich or his crimes involved more than-
She froze.
There was a man sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee. His face was turned as he looked out the bay window at the pool. She took a deep breath and did a gut check. Her hands were steady. Then she raised the.45 and entered the room.
The man didn’t seem to notice her and didn’t move. Lena inched closer for a look at his face. As she cleared the counter, she caught the blood splattered against the wall behind his head. Even more blood was pooling on the floor.
It was Dick Harvey from Blanket Hollywood, and his days ruining other people’s lives for fun and profit seemed to be over. His eyes were crossed, his mouth was open, and he had a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Remarkably, he still appeared to be sweating through his wrinkled suit.
Lena steadied herself against the table, her eyes skipping about the room until they landed on the window and spotted Bennett in the backyard. He had a shovel in his hands and was digging a hole in the lawn by the rear fence.
She hustled out the door and across the yard. As she ran toward him, he looked up and yelped in panic-then started shrieking.
“Oh my God,” he kept repeating. “Oh my God. I didn’t do it, Gamble. I didn’t do it.”
Lena’s eyes zeroed in on the gun laying in the grass. The one he was trying to bury. The 9-mm Smith.
“Jesus Christ-you’ve gotta believe me. This isn’t what it looks like.”
He threw the shovel down, lunged for the Smith, and dug it out of the grass just as Lena reached him.
“Drop the gun, Bennett. Then we’ll talk about what it looks like.”
He pointed the muzzle at her, his hands jittery. “Screw it,” he said. “You’d never fuckin’ believe me.”
“I’m a better shot than you are. You’ll miss and I won’t. Now, drop the gun and we’ll talk.”
He was chewing it over. She could see the wild look in his eyes. Every muscle in his face twitching back and forth and out of control. Beads of sweat were percolating all over his forehead. After a long moment, he turned the muzzle away from her and made a slow arc up and around until he found the side of his own head. Lena grimaced. If the prick blew his own brains out, she was okay with that.
“This isn’t what it fucking looks like,” he said.
“Tell me what it looks like, Bennett.”
“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.