The cause of death was obvious: a huge hole in the center of his chest where his heart used to be. A glimmer of stainless steel from the table made him think for a moment that something was inside there. He moved closer and bent down to look. The skinny attendant turned and chirped, “We have the missing parts in a jar if you want to see them.” Cunningham just sneered. He always wondered what kind of sickness caused people to want to seek employment among the dead, particularly on county wages. The strangest part was they were always so cheerful, making him think they were going to start whistling or break out in song.
He had removed only a portion of the sheet before it snagged on the upper right portion of the body. He pulled harder, yanking it down all the way. The reason was suddenly apparent: one arm was connected only by threads of rubbery, exposed ligaments. The word overkill came to mind.
“You got body fluids back yet?” he asked the attendant.
“Let’s see.” The man flipped open the chart and glanced at it. “Not complete, but looks like blood alcohol was .07 and no drugs. Give us a break here, this guy only checked in this morning, and a lot more guests were registering than checking out.”
“Cute,” Cunningham replied without a chuckle. “Hell, the guy wasn’t even legally drunk.” After he said it, he remembered that the crime had occurred early that morning. He removed his tape recorder from his jacket and started speaking into it, describing the man’s injuries. Finished, he hit the stop button and pulled the sheet back over the body. He’d seen all he needed to see. On his way out, he puckered his lips and made smacking noises at the attendant. “Stay away from the merchandise, sweetie,” he said.
In his unmarked unit he radioed the station: “Six-five-four, Station One,” he called.
“Station one, go ahead, 654.”
They usually didn’t answer right away and he was still turning pages. “Stand by.” There it was: the only eyewitness, the victim’s brother. “Station, call 495-3618 and have a Manny Hernandez meet me in front of his house in thirty minutes.” Cunningham didn’t just walk up to doors and ring doorbells like the rookies did. He wanted to live a few more years.
Pulling up at a Stop n’ Go, he bought a few packs of cigarettes and a bag of Doritos. He placed the open bag next to him and tossed chips into his mouth as he drove. A few drops of moisture struck the windshield and then quit. Typical California rainstorm—lasted all of five minutes.
Moving the bag of Doritos, he confirmed the address. A Hispanic male resembling the deceased stood at the curb with his hands in the pockets of his baggy denims. Pretty good-looking guy, Cunningham thought. Brother hadn’t been bad-looking either back when he was still in one piece. The boy was wearing a red shirt, L.A. Raiders baseball cap, and black sunglasses. The detective motioned to him from the open window.
“Get in,” he said.
Hernandez shuffled over and climbed in. A woman was standing in the yard, a baby slung over her hip, chattering away in Spanish to an older woman. Probably still talking about the murder. Neighborhood entertainment, he thought, Colonia style. Driving down the street past a few houses, Cunningham pulled to the curb and parked under a large oak tree.
“Want a Dorito?” He extended the open sack to Manny.
“No, man, I don’t want no rucking Dorito. They rucking blew my brother away.” He was fidgeting in his seat, tapping his feet and rubbing his hands back and forth on his pants.
“You wired, Hernandez? What’re you on?”
“Nothing, man. I ain’t on nothing.”
Cunningham threw three or four Doritos into his mouth and crunched them loudly with his teeth. A speck of Dorito hung in the thick hairs of his mustache. Tapping the back of an open pack of Marlboros, he slid one halfway out and extended it to Manny. “Want a cigarette?” A thin hand reached forward to accept. Inside the knuckles were tattooed letters. “You in a gang, Manny?”
“No, I ain’t in no gang,” he said but sucked so hard on the cigarette that his cheeks caved in. He looked defiantly at the detective as he spoke and blinked his dark eyes every few seconds, like lights on a Christmas tree.
Cunningham had a theory that people blinked when they lied or when they were high on drugs. Might be a little of both going on here, he thought. He brushed his hand through his mustache; the Dorito fragment disappeared. “Tell me what you saw here this morning.”
“I told all I knew already. I don’t know nothing else.”
“Tell me again,” Cunningham said gruffly. “I’m stupid. I can’t read.”
“I was dozing…heard a shot…then right away another…boom. I ran to the front door and saw my brother down…bleeding from a motherfucking hole in his chest.” Manny’s own chest started to rise and fall. He started talking faster. “Man, there was blood all over the sidewalk and his arm was blown off. But—but this guy…this guy was a fucking ghost.” His eyes were wide in terror. “He was a spook…tall white guy…skinny. Face looked like those guys with AIDS. Bald. I dunno.”
Cunningham’s eyebrows arched in question. “Bald? You told the officers this morning that he was wearing a blue knit cap. You never said the man was bald.”
“He was wearing a cap, man…but for some reason…I think he was bald under that cap. No fucking hair at all. I gotta go, man.” He reached for the door handle, but Cunningham grabbed his shirttail. He slapped him back against the seat.
“What about the car? Did you get the make and license?”
“Spook was standing behind the car…red…box car of some kind…Nissan, Toyota…Volkswagen…dunno. I didn’t get the plate. I dove, man…dove when I saw the barrel of that gun.” He flicked the cigarette out the open window. “Gotta go.” This time he flung open the car door and made it clear. Cunningham reached for him, but he was too fast. He slid across the seat, knocking the package of Doritos and the file to the floorboard and was almost out the passenger door when he saw Manny reach inside his pants and shoot a stream of gold urine at a tree. He then returned to the vehicle. “Told you I hadda fucking go.”
Cunningham turned to him and barked, “Don’t move a muscle even if you have to take a shit or I’ll cuff you. Comprende?”
“Station one, 654,” he said into the mike, his eyes glued to Manny. “Get the sketch artist to stand by. I’m coming in with a witness for a composite drawing.” There was no answer, only other radio traffic. Then: “10-98, 654, just made it. He was leaving for the day. He’s standing by.”
Manny looked up and down the street and hunkered down as they drove away. Cunningham continued the questioning. He was beginning to like this case.
“So you’re certain you don’t know the shooter?”
“How many times I gotta tell ya…not a homeboy…not anyone…weird fucking spook.”
“Your brother just got out of jail. Did he get in trouble inside? Was he into drugs, dealing, robbing?”
“He called from the jail. Told me to bring the car. We waited and then split. I left the keys with the desk. Hadda do some things. I didn’t know he was out till I saw him laying there dead. He ain’t into anything.”
Depositing Manny with the police artist, Cunningham went to records and filled out slips on both the victim and Manny. “I want everything you have,” he told the chubby records clerk, “F.I.‘s, bookings, any units responding to that address in the past, any intelligence info.”
F.I.‘s were small printed cards, Field Intelligence, that officers filled out when they had contact with someone in the field that looked suspicious but did not warrant arrest. There were places for several names so that the officer could identify subjects who were with other subjects at the time and place they were contacted. It was an excellent source of information and had solved many a crime.
The rows of desks in the Investigation Bureau were empty. Cunningham carried a cup of mucky coffee pilfered from the radio room and a Snickers bar from the vending machine. Tossing the Snickers into the drawer for later, he lit a cigarette and started going through his other cases. He lo
ved working this shift, with no brass around and no phones ringing off the hook. In the quiet he could think. The brunette from records stomped into the room, always pissed over during her job, and slammed the requested information on his desk. “Did you hear the news?” she said. “The jury found not guilty on those officers in L.A.—the Rodney King case. They’re rioting in South Central L.A. now, burning down buildings. Buildings! Can you believe it? They’re going to burn the whole city down.”
He hadn’t heard the news, but it didn’t surprise him. How any jury could completely ignore what the tape had clearly shown was beyond him. He’d seen the tape. Half the world had seen the tape. The guy could have been cuffed about five blows back, yet the officers kept on beating him until they almost killed him. Cunningham was just glad he wore plain clothes and not a uniform and worked in Oxnard right now instead of LA.
He bent his head to the task in front of him. He had to admit that the Hernandez brothers were pretty clean. In addition to the recent attempted rape and kidnapping that had been dismissed, Bobby had a five-year-old arrest and conviction for burglary. Manny had several busts for being under the influence of cocaine, also a number of years back. Crack was of course the inexpensive drug of choice today, but there was nothing to indicate the brothers indulged. Thinking the whole mess amounted to nothing, he started to pull out the Snickers. He wouldn’t go home to dinner until nine o’clock, and it was only eight now.
He began working his way through a stack of F.I.‘s. After five or six, he was getting bored—nothing but a bunch of names and places. Then he picked up the sixth one and read the names off again. They had been stopped for an open-container violation about two months before, but the officer had passed on citing them. Bobby Hernandez had been driving his van, Manny was a passenger, and the other passengers were listed as Carmen Lopez, Jesus Valdez, and Richard Navarro. Cunningham sat up and felt his body surge with excitement. Carmen Lopez had been brutally murdered with her Anglo boyfriend, Peter McDonald, the previous month in Ventura. Two of the suspects in custody pending trial along with three others were Valdez and Navarro. Bingo. This had been his lucky night; he’d have to go to the Catholic church on Wednesday now and really try his luck. The first bingo tonight had been small—the tattoos that were a sign of Manny’s involvement at one time in a gang. The second was a much larger prize.
He went to retrieve Manny and found that the sketch had been completed. If this was the man Manny had seen, he was right in calling him weird. His mouth was small and perfectly shaped, his jaw softly rounded, and the whole picture had a strange quality about it. According to the drawing—actually, a computerized composite—the cap had been pulled low on his forehead, riding high on the back of his head. There was no hair around his ears or his long neck at all, probably why Manny got the feeling the man was bald.
“Make copies and fax this out to every agency in California. Make sure every member of this department gets a copy,” he barked at the artist. “Remember to note that he is armed and dangerous and wanted for murder.”
The composite artist was tall and dark, a neatly groomed young man, a relative newcomer to the department. “Hey, I’m off duty now. I have plans with my wife tonight. Get records to do it. It’s their job anyway. I just make pictures on my computer here, remember?”
“Fuck records. They’ll just put it aside for the day shift. You make the copies and stand there while they fax it. Do it or I’ll have your asshole for dinner instead of chicken.”
Shoving Manny in front of him, he said, “Walk. You and I are going to have a real heart-to-heart. We’re gonna get real friendly before this night is over.”
CHAPTER 13
After two hours of tormented sleep, twisting and thrashing amid dreams of red-robed men with knives and jagged holes in their chests, Lily drove to the rented house. She left Shana out cold from the medication with her father. Opening the front door, she was assaulted by the sickening odor of vomit, and she ran to the kitchen for Pine Sol, fighting back her own nausea. Once the bathroom was clean, she took a plain dust rag and wiped every surface the rapist might have touched. The slip of paper with his address, torn the night before from the office file, was carefully taped back together from the back. After the police had left, she would stop at the copy store and Xerox it, placing the photocopy in the file. She called for the crime-scene unit and collapsed in a heap on the kitchen floor. The screen door was open and it had clouded over. Even a few drops of rain had fallen and were glistening on the rose bushes. The gloom seemed right for this day. She recalled how as a child it had always rained on Good Friday, the day they had crucified Christ. Her mother told her that the sky would get dark around three, the time He might have died, and as Lily recalled, it frequently did. Those were the days when she dreamed of becoming a nun and used to dress up in white sheets and roam around the house when everyone was outside. Those were the days before her grandfather and that first summer. Lily had prayed then and no one had heard her prayers. She soon stopped praying and dreamed of becoming a person who could punish other people.
The first night it had happened, even now she could not really blame him. It was she who had crawled into his bed, after he’d been into the brandy that Granny no longer allowed him to drink due to his diabetes. Granny was small, like a child, barely five feet tall, and he had mistaken her in his drunken stupor, aroused by memories of the past. Afterward, he had kneeled by the bed and prayed and washed her and begged her to keep the “secret.” He’d told her that his elbow had slipped and hurt her so bad, and at only eight years old, she didn’t know any better. The next day, on her birthday, he had a beautiful chestnut pony delivered to the ranch.
But the perversity would continue for five more summers. He wanted to stroke her, feel her, put his fingers inside her. Each time she allowed him to do so, he rewarded her with an extravagant gift. The pawing wasn’t really so bad. Sometimes it even felt good. She would close her eyes real tight and think of what she wanted him to buy her: a new doll maybe, or a new saddle for her pony, Bay Boy, or a beautiful new dress. As the years went by, she became aware that their “secret” afforded her something most children never have: power. If she wanted to, she could make him cry, saying she was going to tell. It was like a cruel game she played with him, and she played it often. To everyone else he was a hero: rich and generous, lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, past president of the Rotary, board member of various charities. When her mother spoke of him, her eyes became alive, and her father admired him. He and her grandmother would roll into town in their big Lincoln Continental, loaded down with gifts for the family, each visit like Christmas. As Lily digressed, she pulled her knees to her chest and began rocking back and forth on the kitchen floor.
On one sweltering Dallas day, Lily had been riding her bike up and down the block all morning, playing jacks on the porch, and spraying herself with the garden hose in the backyard. School had just let out the day before for the summer vacation. The year had been one of nightmares and bed-wetting, but she had kept the terrible “secret” locked inside. She came in to change her wet clothes and found her mother in her room, the suitcase open on the bed.
“I’m not packing a lot this summer,” her mother said. “You always come back with so many new things.” She suddenly realized Lily was sopping wet, dripping water. “Get those wet clothes off before you get sick. Look what you’re doing to the carpet.” Her voice got higher. Lily didn’t move. She couldn’t.
“What’s wrong with you? Go change…now. Do you hear me, young lady?”
“I’m not going,” Lily screamed. “I’m not going…not going.” She placed her hands on her hips in defiance, shaking her head from side to side, water from her wet hair spraying the walls. She marched to the bed and pushed the suitcase with both hands; it toppled to the floor. Folded underwear and socks spilled out.
“Look what you’ve done. You change your clothes this minute and put everything back exactly as it was. I’m going to get the belt and spank yo
u if you don’t stop.
What brought this on?” She glared at the child, her chest heaving.
“I don’t want to go. I don’t like Granddaddy. He’s creepy. He’s not like Daddy. I wanna stay here.”
Her mother sat on the edge of the bed, sighing deeply, pushing a long lock of auburn hair off her face. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Lillian. After all your grandfather has done for you…for us. He adores you. He would be heartbroken if he heard you saying these things. Haven’t I always told you that you have to respect older people? When people get older, they act different, but they’re not creepy, just old.”
“He hurt me.” There, she had said it. She couldn’t keep his old “secret” no matter what he bought her. It made her feel funny inside, bad funny, like when she was sick with the flu and about to throw up.
Her mother’s soft face tensed with annoyance, but she tried to speak calmly. “And just how did he hurt you? Did he spank you? He’s supposed to spank you if you’re bad. He’s like your dad in the summer, and your dad spanks you. You bring that on yourself, Lily, with your temper tantrums.”
Lily started shivering, the wet clothes pulling warmth from her body; chill bumps rose on her skin. “His elbow slipped and he hurt me bad.”
Her mother stood and picked up the suitcase, placing it back on the bed, open again. “Oh, is that all? You’re such a little actress. Everything is such a big production.” She turned and started removing clothing from the chest of drawers and faced Lily with her arms full. “Did he say he was sorry?”
“Yes,” she answered, hugging herself, thinking she was bad, seeing that reflection of herself in her mother’s eyes. She wet the bed, threw temper tantrums, made her mother nervous and upset. That’s why they sent her away, so her mother could rest because Lily was so bad. They said it was because it was hot and miserable in Dallas in the summer and nice and cool at the cabin, but she knew it wasn’t true. This year she had tried so hard to be good, but she wasn’t good. “When he touches me with his old creepy hands, I hate it.”
Mitigating Circumstances Page 13
