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 leaving trails as they flew through the heavens. He sensed movement behind him and to his right. As he turned his head, a shoe came out of nowhere and crushed his face.
And then it was over. No more movies playing in his head. No more channels. No more money worries. No more bills.
He’d made it. He could see Betty Kim reaching out for him and pulling him into her arms. He was living the life he’d always dreamed about, the one that always seemed so far away. He was living on Easy Street now.