A Good Mother

by Lara Bazelon

  “No. It was cut off. There was a smashing sound—and then nothing. Not even a dial tone.”

  “Did you try calling back?”

  “Yes, several times, but there was nothing. I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants and a tee shirt. A sweatshirt, too. It was fall at that point, turning cold. I grabbed my car keys off the table and my wife, she’s been up long enough to hear some of my side of the conversation and she asks, ‘Where are you going?’ and I say, ‘To Sergeant Hollis’s house to see about a possible domestic situation.’ Then I got in my vehicle and I drove over there.”

  “How long did it take you to get in your car and drive from your house to the Hollises’?”

  “I was in my vehicle approximately ninety seconds after the call was over. From there, it was about a six-minute drive.”

  “So that would get you there at approximately 2:53– 2:54 a.m.?”

  “Approximately.”

  “Okay, tell us what you saw and heard when you pulled up to the house.”

  “The lights were on in the foyer area. I could hear a baby crying inside and a woman screaming. There were a lot of sounds. I pulled out my phone and called to dispatch law enforcement patrols. I advised my commanding officer and all police patrols that we had a domestic incident in progress, possible injuries, dispatch immediately. And as I—as I am doing that, I’m running up to the house. The door was slightly open but there was a weight against it when I pushed on it and I just barely got inside.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Mrs. Rivera Hollis. She was sitting down, her back was up against the door and she was holding Sergeant Hollis’s head in her lap and she was screaming.”

  “What was she screaming?”

  “I don’t think it was words.”

  “Was she attempting to render first aid or help the victim in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “I felt this squishing where my feet were. I looked down and I was standing in a pool of blood.”

  “How big was it?”

  “Maybe twelve inches across and twice that length and about half an inch deep.” Aronson gestures with his hands. “The blood was coming out of Sergeant Hollis’s chest—pumping out onto the floor and spreading out. It was very dark blood and it was starting to get thick, kind of like a gel.”

  “Did you see any weapons?”

  “Next to the body, in the pool of blood, there was a steak knife.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I kicked it away with my foot.”

  “Away from whom?”

  “Mrs. Rivera Hollis.”

  “With the court’s permission, at this time the government would ask that Exhibit 1 be marked and placed before the witness.” Dars inclines his head and Shauna withdraws a black-handled kitchen knife, wrapped several times in plastic and tagged. She walks solemnly to the witness box and hands the knife to Aronson, blade down.

  “Captain Aronson, can you describe the object you are holding.”

  “It’s a steak knife, with a five-inch blade.”

  “What is on the knife?”

  “Blood. All over the blade and on part of the black handle.”

  “Is this the knife you found in a pool of the victim’s blood that you kicked with your foot so that Mrs. Rivera Hollis could not grab it?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  Aronson puts down the knife. “Yes.”

  “Okay. After you removed the weapon from the defendant’s reach, what did you do?”

  “I turned so I was facing her, facing him. It was obvious just by looking that Sergeant Hollis was severely injured, possibly dying, but there was also Mrs. Rivera Hollis and the baby I had to think about. The baby was still crying but I didn’t know where the baby was. There was so much blood, Mrs. Rivera Hollis’s shirt and lap were soaked in it, and I asked her, ‘Are you hurt, is the baby hurt?’ She shook her head to indicate no. She was still screaming, though, not moving, so I half picked her up and kind of pushed her over to one side so I could get to Hollis. I pulled out my cell phone to call 911 and she shook her head again, like for me to put it away, and then I could actually hear the ambulance, right then, so I knew they were coming—that she must have called them already. And a few seconds after that, I could hear the police sirens and I knew my officers were almost there, as well. I figured I had maybe one minute, two minutes to do what I could.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I turned Sergeant Hollis over on his side so he didn’t choke on his own blood. I felt for his pulse. There was one, but it was faint. I kept my fingers on his wrist and I checked his airway. It was hard for me to hear over the screaming and I told Mrs. Rivera Hollis that she had to—I said something to the effect of ‘You have to stop screaming.’ When she didn’t, I yelled, ‘Luz,’ real loud, and she looked at me and went quiet. She tried to get up, and I said, ‘Stay there,’ also in a very loud voice.”

  Abby feels something brush against her sleeve. A note from Will. She scans it. How did he know her first name?

  Abby looks up quickly as Aronson continues his answer. “To my mind, this was a crime scene and she, quite possibly, had committed a crime. I didn’t want her doing anything that might compromise the crime scene. I didn’t want her to destroy evidence. I was pretty sure by that point the baby was okay, just crying, and anyway I didn’t want her picking up the baby covered in blood.”

  Abby reads the note a second time.

  Shauna is nodding approvingly at Aronson, her arms crossed over her chest. “You were saying that you turned your attention to the victim?”

  “Yes, but you have to understand, this is all happening in seconds. Every action is very, very fast. At this point I had been in the house maybe under a minute. I bent my ear to Sergeant Hollis’s mouth and I could hear him breathing but it was very slow, labored. And as I am listening, the breathing changes into a—almost like a snoring sound. I say to Mrs. Rivera Hollis, ‘How many times was he stabbed?’ and she just kind of stares at me, so I yell her name again, ‘Luz,’ real loud, and I repeat my question.”

  Shauna nods, turns a page in her binder.

  Abby looks at Aronson. A commander in charge of hundreds of MPs and their families. How did he know her first name? She turns the note over, scribbles a few sentences and hands the paper to Luz, who reads it, then slowly begins to write out her response.

  “What happened after you repeated your question to Mrs. Rivera Hollis asking how many times she had stabbed her husband?” Shauna asks.

  “She tells me, ‘In the chest, one time,’ and so I find the wound and I start applying pressure to stop the bleeding.”

  “Were you able to stop the bleeding?”

  “No. And while that’s happening, I lose his pulse. I can’t feel it anymore. I keep pressing down thinking maybe I’m wrong, but still nothing. And then, he makes a rattling sound. At that point, I grabbed hold of his hand and I held it.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted Sergeant Hollis to know, to the extent that he could know anything, that he wasn’t alone. And I knew—from my experience, I knew it was very important that I be able to say to his mother that someone was holding his hand when he took his last breath.”

  There is a sudden silence in the courtroom, like they have all momentarily stopped breathing. Luz has dropped the pen. Her face is white, her small shoulders turned inward, her dark eyes wide and unfocused. Abby looks at the jury. Several of them—men included—are moist-eyed. Even Abby, who has grown to despise Travis Hollis the more she learns about him, feels a pang. She hears sobbing behind her, turns and sees Travis’s mother and sisters, holding each others’ hands. What if it were Cal? She would murder Luz herself, with her bare hands, make what Luz did to Travis look surgical by comparison.

&n
bsp; Shauna turns another page in her binder with a smart snap, and the moment evaporates, the regular back-and-forth of question-and-answer reestablished, and Abby can almost hear her own thoughts click immediately back into place as she returns to the notes she has jotted down on her legal pad. “You said that the police and the emergency medical technicians were en route?” Shauna asks.

  “Yes. Basically, right after Sergeant Hollis stopped breathing, two EMTs came in followed by about ten military police. It was chaos, all these people packed into a narrow hallway, so I needed to take control of the situation.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I briefed the EMTs on the victim’s condition and sent the female one to the baby’s room. She came out very fast, handed off the baby to one of the MPs. The EMTs had a gurney with them and I directed two of my men to help lift Sergeant Hollis onto the gurney. They had him out of the house in less than a minute with the sirens going.

  “While that was happening, I told two of my guys to check Mrs. Rivera Hollis for injuries, then take her to the hospital for a full exam. I did see that a lamp had been broken and there was glass on the floor and I didn’t know if she had gotten cut or maybe hurt some other way.”

  “Did the defendant comply with your officers?”

  “It wasn’t that she was resisting, it was just that she was so hysterical it was hard to get her to listen to anyone.” Now, Abby thinks, would be the time for Aronson to look at Luz, to make it clear to the jury that the bowed, silent wraith seated at the defense table is the same blood-drenched banshee he just described, but he doesn’t. He has not once looked at Luz during his testimony.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went over to her—she was standing up at that point, but in more or less the same place that I’d moved her to—and I used her name again, real loud. Once she was focused on me and quieter, I explained what was going to happen. That she was going to the hospital to be checked. She didn’t want to go, she wanted to stay with the baby. So I explained, you know, that she couldn’t do that right now.”

  Shauna says, “You couldn’t let her clean up, because her clothing and anything on her skin was evidence?”

  “That’s correct. So I asked her, ‘Is there anyone, a female friend, another army wife on the base that I can call to take care of the baby while you are gone?’ And she said, ‘No, there’s no one.’”

  “The defendant did not have one friend on the base that you could call?”

  Luz hands the note back to Abby. Line after line of girlish cursive. Abby starts reading, half listening as Aronson answers, “That’s what she told me. I told her, ‘Okay, Sergeant Ruiz will take care of your baby.’ That was the female MP that was holding her. And I asked was there formula or something in the house that we could use and she said there was formula in the kitchen cabinet to the left of the sink. She explained the measurements, and I sent Ruiz in there to mix up a bottle.” He shakes his head. “I—Never mind.”

  Shauna nods encouragingly. “Go ahead.”

  “It’s just, I remember thinking how strange it was that all of a sudden, Luz was so calm and precise, down to the teaspoon, it had to be exactly right.” Aronson is still shaking his head as if this discordant fact is only now seeping into his consciousness.

  “What did you do next?”

  “I checked Mrs. Rivera Hollis for injuries. I didn’t find any.”

  Shauna raised an eyebrow. “Any injuries at all? Bruising? Swelling? Lacerations?”

  “Not that I could see. I relayed the information about her condition to the officers and directed two of them to take her to the hospital. After they left, I called OSI.”

  “What is OSI?”

  “It’s the Office of Special Investigations, kind of like the FBI for the military. I was put through to an agent and she advised me to secure the crime scene, that she would be there immediately.”

  “Was that the end of your dealings with Mrs. Rivera Hollis?”

  “Yes. I turned my attention to the hallway, to supervise the collection of the evidence by the men under my command.”

  “What was collected?”

  “May I consult my evidence report?”

  Dars nods to allow Shauna to approach with it, and Aronson flips through a few pages. “The knife, first of all. The glass shards of a vase that had been broken. There were cardboard moving boxes full of clothes at one end of the hallway. Three of them. A search of the house was conducted, and other items were removed from the baby’s room, including a phone that had been smashed.” Shauna stops after each object is named to hold it up for Aronson to identify, then moves it into evidence. Even the ordinary items have a sinister cast: some of the jagged pieces of the broken vase are gummed together by what looks like red gelatin, and the knife, now unpackaged and on full display, is like something out of a horror movie, caked to the handle in rust-colored blood.

  “What about your clothes, Captain Aronson?”

  “They were burned.”

  Tuesday, March 20, 2007

  11:15 a.m.

  United States District Court

  for the Central District of California

  Twenty minutes. It is all Abby is allowed. And it’s a gift from Dars, who had called a recess to take what he made clear was an important judicial phone call.

  Twenty minutes to try to get to the bottom of something she should have known months ago. Abby could have killed Luz, but now the person she wants to kill is Will. As soon as he shuts the door to the witness room, before either Abby or Luz has a chance to sit down, the words are out of his mouth.

  “Did you sleep with him? Did you?” He is staring at Luz, his face drained of color. Luz, who is putting her phone back in her purse after texting Maria Elena to bring over Cristina, looks up, startled.

  As if that were the most important fact—or even a helpful one. Thank God the room—windowless and big enough only for a table and a few chairs—is soundproof. Abby wants to slap Will across the face. “You need to leave,” she says, as calmly as she can manage. “Right now.”

  He starts to say something, and she holds up her breast pump. “I have to do this.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Abby ignores him and focuses on getting set up. She places the machine on the table, plugs the electrical cord into an outlet, and connects the tubes to the suction cups. She turns to face him as she removes her jacket. “I am going to take off my shirt and bra,” she says. Some men in Abby’s office would have told her to turn around and face the wall—no fucking way were they going anywhere. But not Will. Whatever it is he has done, he remains Will: too modest, prudish even, to fathom staying in a room where his cocounsel’s breasts would be exposed. He turns and walks out without a word, leaving Abby and Luz alone.

  Abby undresses from the waist up and hooks up the breast pump. Almost immediately, there’s a knock on the door behind her and Abby motions to Luz to get it. Behind her, she hears a few muffled words in Spanish, inhales the baby shampoo smell of Cristina. It makes her long for Cal. If only she’d known about this break, she could have asked Nic to bring him. She wishes she was holding him right now. Because she loves that time with him and because she has come to believe that Cal is like her secret weapon. The power that comes with the knowledge that she could create and sustain his life pulses through her when she is with him. It makes her feel invincible. Which is not at all the way she feels now.

  Instead, Abby is in a baby-feeding face-off with her client—the Good Mom/Bad Mom tableau so bizarre and grotesque she wants to laugh hysterically, but it’s not funny. Instead, Abby forces herself to wait until Cristina latches on, then says to Luz, “I thought I told you never to lie to me again.”

  Luz has her eyes on Cristina. “You never asked me anything about him.”

  Abby takes a deep breath, but ends up yelling anyway as she slams her hand down on the
table. “Do you think this is a fucking game of twenty questions? How the fuck were we supposed to know to ask you if you had an intimate—” Cristina begins crying and Abby breaks off abruptly, trying to gain some control over her language and lower her voice. “How were we supposed to know to ask you if you were—were—close to Captain Aronson?”

  Luz resettles Cristina, then looks up, meeting her gaze. “What is it that you want? For me to answer his question?” She lifts her chin slightly in the direction of the door Will had exited.

  Abby stops, caught up short. Stalling, she says, “What I need to know is exactly how many times you talked to Captain Aronson about what was going on between you and Travis. As specific as you can remember.”

  “I wrote that down,” Luz says, “on the paper.”

  “Everything?”

  “Do you want me to answer his question?” Luz repeats. “Because you didn’t ask me that.”

  Rapidly, Abby tries to calculate. It had to be true, because there is no other reason why Aronson would have hidden these communications from the government. Extramarital affairs are a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice; Aronson wouldn’t just be out on his ass, he might be charged—never mind the effect on his wife and three kids.

  What’s true, though, isn’t necessarily helpful. From the beginning, Abby and Will have made it their mission to portray Luz as a victim. Victims are pure. Victims are innocent. Women who entice married men to cheat, women who cheat themselves, those women are whores, and whores are guilty. And Luz is at a double disadvantage. The hotheaded Latina stereotype Antoine brought up is alive in the courtroom. There is no margin for error; and although the law says that Luz is entitled to the benefit of the doubt, she is unlikely to get it. Not a brown girl accused of killing a white man. Not with a knife through the heart and not a scratch on her.

  “No,” Abby says finally.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think it would be helpful.”

  Luz nods. “Mr. Estrada told me you would say that.”