“Yes,” she said softly.
“Do you remember the Christmas when you found all the presents in the hall closet and unwrapped them and played with them and then put them back without anyone knowing? I thought I’d die laughing when I found out. You were such a case.”
“Yes.”
“How about the time when we went skating together and we skated into the boys’ bathroom by mistake and scared all those boys to death?”
“I remember. What about when Grandma went into the men’s room at the movie theater and we were too embarrassed to get her and sent the usher in? Grandma couldn’t come out because her girdle got stuck and she was too nervous to get it up. That was funny.”
“Yeah,” Lily said. But neither of them could laugh; the laughter was out of reach. Even the memory of its sound was distorted, like a foreign tongue they had once spoken fluently but no longer comprehended. “Can you sleep now?”
“No.”
Lily left and returned a few minutes later with one of the sleeping pills they had given her at the hospital, handing it to Shana with a glass of water. “Do you want to sleep with me in our bed?”
After swallowing the pill, Shana pulled the puppy into the crook of her arm, rolled onto her side, and stared at the wall. “I’ll sleep here.”
“You don’t have to go to school. I thought it would be a good way to get your mind off everything, but not if you can’t handle it.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom.”
Kissing her before leaving, Lily whispered to the child, “Life goes on. That might not be the greatest thing I could say to you right now, but it’s a basic truth.”
Lily went to the bedroom and fell across the bedspread facedown, fully clothed. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. Her eyes shut and her body started falling into the blackness, but each time she fought it, springing back into consciousness, her eyes opening, seeking the familiar sights around her. She imagined she had a rope and she could tie it to the nightstand or the big green chair and then wrap it around her waist. Then she would not fall all the way down into the pit, then she would have a way to pull herself out again. He was dead, she was alive. Yet in the murky netherworld of dreams, he would never die. The door to Shana’s bedroom was open, and she heard John telling her good night, their voices muffled.
Eyes on the ceiling, Lily heard him enter and softly close the door behind him. “Open the door,” Lily said. “I want to hear if Shana needs anything.”
“I’ll open it in a minute. I just want to talk to you, and then I’ll sleep on the sofa.” He paused, leaning against the door, his hands behind him, his voice low. “What do we do now?”
Lily rolled over onto her side and looked at him. “We go on living, John. What else can we do?”
“I mean about the police, about Shana, about us.”
“The police will investigate, try to find him. Until they find him, nothing much will happen.”
“I don’t know what to say to her, what to do.”
“Do what you always do. Just be there for her and listen if she wants to talk.” Lily got up and went to the bathroom, thinking she must take off her clothes. John followed her.
“Are you going to stay here? What about the house you rented?”
He was standing close and Lily backed away. His breath, his clothes, even his hair, all reeked of cigarette smoke. “I can’t live in that house, John. Shana would never feel safe there again. I’ll have to give it up.” She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door in his face. Letting her clothes fall in a heap on the floor, she put on his robe hanging on a hook. When she opened the door, he was still standing there. “You could move out.”
His features became twisted with anger. “I’m not moving out,” he snarled. “This is all your fault, you know. You even left the back door unlocked. That’s how he got in.”
Her back stiffened and she felt the blood rush from her face. “Get out,” she snapped, trying to keep her voice down. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m not moving out. Don’t try to use this, Lily. I’m staying here with my daughter.”
“Then stay,” she said, disgusted. “But you can’t ask me to leave. Whether you realize it or not, she needs me. She needs both of us. And your needs don’t mean shit right now, John. Nothing else matters.”
He turned and started to leave the room. “Leave the door open,” Lily said.
She rolled over onto her face on the bed, grabbing handfuls of white sheet in her fists, pulling them until the fitted corners lifted and the mattress was exposed. Sitting up, she yanked the sheet off, looking for the old stains, wanting to see them. In the center of her side of the bed was the reddish-brown circle where she had miscarried when Shana was only a few months old. It was all that remained of what should have been a brother or sister for Shana. If she had not miscarried, she would never have gone to law school and Shana would have never been raped. It was a spot of death, only a spot.
She threw the sheet onto the floor and slept on the mattress, placing her face over the stain, the bedside lamp still on.
Soon she was walking in deep, dark water, up to her knees. It was splashing against her as she moved, her stride more like a march than a walk. As she walked, the water got deeper and deeper, but she couldn’t turn back. Far ahead, Shana stood, calling to her, her hair blowing straight out, her voice a crystal soprano.
Lily’s eyes suddenly sprang open, her body bathed in sweat. She turned and saw Shana standing in the doorway. “My God, what happened. Are you all right?”
“I can’t sleep, Mommy. I’m so scared.” Her voice was small and cracking, the voice of a very young child. “He’s coming back. I know he’s coming back.”
Lily patted a place next to her on the bed, and Shana walked over. “Sleep with me, sweetheart.” Once Shana was in bed, Lily turned off the lamp and they talked in the dark. “Shana, I want you to listen to me and try to believe me. I know it’s hard, I know you’re afraid, but he’s never coming back. Do you hear me? I promise you he’ll never hurt you again.”
“You don’t know that—you cant promise me that.”
Lily stared into the darkness. There was nothing more she could say. She’d taken a life, committed the ultimate sin, and still there was nothing she could do to stop the pain.
CHAPTER 15
Waking long before the alarm clock went off, Lily panicked seeing Shana gone from the bed. She rushed to her room and found the door open, the room empty, but she heard noises in the kitchen. As she stood inside the room, she thought Shana must have risen hours before, for her room was spotless, everything in its place, every piece of clothing hung neatly on hangers. A coldness settled over Lily: she felt she was standing before a set on a stage. The props all belonged to Shana, but were no longer infused with her presence. This was not her daughter’s room, this ordered perfection.
She found Shana dressed, sitting at the kitchen table with schoolwork in front of her, her little puppy in her lap. Lily went to her and stroked her hair, placing her hands on her shoulders, peering down at the papers in front of her. ”What time did you get up?”
“About four. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Are you sure you want to go to school today?”
“I sure don’t want to stay here all day. But I don’t really want to leave Di either.” She paused. “I’ll go.”
Later, as Lily drove her to school, she told Shana that she would have her new bedroom set with the canopy bed moved to her room in a day or so from the rental house. The bed where the rape occurred, Lily’s bed, she planned to have hauled off to the dump and burned.
Shana looked at Lily with soft, dreamy eyes. “That would be nice, Mom. I really liked it.”
John had left before Lily that morning and she had been forced to drive the Honda. As she approached the government center complex, her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Perhaps they were waiting in the office with an arrest warrant and would cuff her and march her out in front of
the entire staff. “Take me,” she said in defiance to the windshield. If not for Shana, she’d welcome an end to the waiting, would accept the consequences of her actions. Then she would not have to perform, continue to function as if nothing had happened, constantly fear arrest. Then the tangled, twisted knot of horror and guilt might leave her.
She rode the elevator up in silence, burst through the security doors, and hurried to her office, keeping her eyes on the floor, shutting out the chatter and ringing phones and printers spilling copy. Someone said her name, but she ignored him and walked even faster, her heart racing, beating erratically as she listened, deep inside her own body. Her office was dark and the halls around it empty. She flicked on the light and tried to reassure herself with the sameness, checking her desk to see if anyone had been going through her papers and finding it all as she had left it. Letting her body sink in the upholstered desk chair, she felt momentarily safe. This was the place she loved, the work she lived for, her refuge. Here she was a respected professional. Here she was a righteous person.
“Good morning,” Clinton said, strolling in energetically and taking a seat in front of her desk. “How’re you feeling? Touch of the flu, huh?”
He didn’t know. Thank God, she thought. Clinton was one who could never keep knowledge under wraps. “I’m fine today. I’m just a little weak.” Say something else, her mind screamed. For a bizarre moment she saw herself standing there completely naked, her victim’s blood dripping from her fingernails. “So, you’re getting quite an opportunity here. Even though you may only be acting supervisor of the Muni Division, it could lead to a permanent promotion later. Are you pleased?”
“Sure, but back to the same stupid cases, when I was finally getting something to sink my teeth into here.” He grimaced and then suddenly his face came alive; he sat forward excitedly in his chair. “I almost forgot because it happened yesterday when you were off, but Hernandez got bumped off. Can you believe it?”
Clinton could be baiting her, she thought. He could even be a plant, wearing a wire. “Hernandez? Which case is that?”
“The prostitute case. The one I dismissed the other day. Oxnard P.D. called me yesterday asking all about the case. They think it was a gang thing, a drive-by. Anyway, someone saved the taxpayers a hell of a lot of money.”
Lily gripped the arms of her chair and tried to remain calm. They were asking questions about the Hernandez case, she thought, panicked. Clinton could have already told them that she’d taken the file home with her and had it in her hands at the time Hernandez was murdered. What should she say now? She felt her mind drifting off track and imagined them throwing a big party to celebrate all the salvaged taxpayers’ dollars, throwing confetti in the air while the Hernandez body rested on a slab in the center of the room. Seeing her glasses under a file folder where she had left them, she put them on and started to shuffle papers on her desk, moving them to one side and then back to the other.
“The detectives are asking about the victim on that case. They tried to interview her and it’s pretty strange. She’s still missing.”
As Clinton continued, Lily started tapping her pen on her desk frantically. She saw the expression on his face and stopped. “What’s strange? She’s a hooker and she moved on. That’s not too unusual.” She knew her voice sounded annoyed, grating, taut.
“Hey, I know you have a million things to do,” he said, standing to leave.
“No, I’m interested. Go on…finish what you were saying.” She placed her hands in her lap to keep them out of sight.
“Well, seems like she left a couple of kids behind, little ones at that, and according to the detective, her sister said she was a pretty good mother. She didn’t have any skills, and she started working the streets for the money, basically for the kids. So, they haven’t heard word one from her. And get this, Hernandez was picked up on an arrest warrant four days after she filed charges. No one’s actually seen her since he was arrested.”
The night of the rape was coming back in full force, and sweat broke out on Lily’s upper lip as she recalled the knife and his words: “Taste a fucking whore’s blood.” She pressed her hand to her cheekbone and held it there like a compress. “Does Oxnard think he might have murdered her to keep her from testifying? Did they search his house for any evidence?” The image of his house was in front of her, the sidewalk stained red with his blood. Had dogs licked her vomit from the asphalt, or had the crime-scene officers scraped it up and sent it to the lab? Maybe the prostitute’s body had been cut up into pieces and they were locked inside that old refrigerator on the porch with the big padlock.
“They work pretty slow over there, you know, with an average of three or four homicides a month, but I’m sure they’re on top of it. They’ve impounded his van and are going in all the right directions. Bruce Cunningham is handling the case. You’ve heard of him. Pretty sharp man.”
Lily’s phone started ringing. She heard it but thought it was down the hall. She looked up to find Clinton staring at her. With a jerky movement of her hand, she hit the intercom. “Hold all my calls, Jan.”
“You might have been right on this one from the start, Lily. I’ve got to hand it to you.”
“Keep me posted, Clinton. Get everything you have on this from Cunningham and let me see it.” Of all the detectives that could have received this case, it had to be this one, Lily thought, feeling her fear and panic escalate. He was the best detective in Oxnard, possibly in the entire county. She knew him—knew what made him tick. They had worked together several times in the past, and the man’s record was flawless. Taking a case that Cunningham had investigated to trial was an almost certain conviction. The man never erred, never rushed, never compromised his standards of excellence. He was a prosecutor’s dream, a criminal’s worst nightmare. And now he was her adversary.
“This whole thing could be even bigger. I mean, I don’t want to get you all excited for nothing, but…”
Lilys hands were locked on the edge of the desk, her body straining forward. “Spit it out, Clinton,” she said, unable to play out this scene any longer.
“Well, Cunningham is tight-lipped right now—merely putting out feelers. Seems Hernandez and his brother were F.I.‘d a few months ago in the company of guess who? Carmen Lopez, and get this, Navarro and Valdez.”
Lily practically leaped out of her chair. It might mean the first real break in the McDonald-Lopez massacre, but it carried even more weight. It could be the taste of salvation. If Hernandez had killed the prostitute and orchestrated the slaughter of two others as well, he could be a multiple killer, a deadly psychopath.
“I want Cunningham to report to me immediately on any morsel he gets on this, no matter how insignificant. I want our own investigators apprised of this at once. Call and inform Butler and of course Fowler. Don’t let a word leak to the press. Got it?”
“Right, boss,” Clinton replied, feeling the same rush. At the door he turned, looking back at Lily. “You know, I didn’t want to work for you. I thought you were going to be too tough, like, unreasonable. I was a damn fool. I’d like to come back when manpower allows it.”
She peered at him over the rim of her glasses. “Too tough, huh? Not because I was a woman, because I was too tough. That’s a new one. You can come back, Clinton. Just keep using that conditioner on your hair.”
He started laughing and Lily longed to catch the golden sound, steal it, and swallow it inside her. Only the corners of her lips rose and then fell.
“It’s expensive. You going to pay?”
“Not hardly,” she replied, trying to crack her face with a bigger smile. Once he had left, she stood and walked around her desk in a circle, unable to sit still. She felt claustrophobic in the small office, but if she left, she would have to talk to more people, make polite conversation, listen to drivel. All she could think about was Cunningham, Cunningham, Cunningham. She kept repeating his name again and again. He was really quite well known, almost famous in a way in the legal
community. The Owen case had made all the papers. How the man had managed to put together enough evidence to get a conviction without an actual body Lily couldn’t fathom. The woman could just walk in one day, alive. She was filled with abject fear. If he could put together a case like that, he was going to figure out that she killed Bobby Hernandez.
Hernandez’s own brother had seen her. How could she have possibly thought she could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it? She was living on borrowed time. Her actions had been sheer insanity. Suddenly, Richard was standing in her doorway, his brows knitted with concern, watching her pace.
“I’ve been calling you all morning, but Jan said you weren’t taking any calls and then Clinton called and told me of the developments in McDonald-Lopez. Are you okay, Lily?”
She backed up, moving behind her desk, wanting something between them. “No,” she said. “I guess I’m not, but I’m working on it.” He was a stranger from another time, another place, a part of someone else’s life.
“Will you have a drink with me after work? We can go somewhere quiet.”
“I can’t. I have to take my daughter to the psychologist.”
He stood and crossed the room, taking one of Lily’s hands in his own. She let it lay there lifeless, cold. “When can I see you again? I want to hold you, touch you.”
Lily pulled her hand away. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
“You mean you don’t know when you can see me or you don’t know if you want to?”
“I’m living at home right now.” She looked him in the eye. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Right now I don’t know anything.” The phone rang and Lily grabbed it. Jan said she had Bruce Cunningham on the phone and asked Lily if she wanted to take the call. “I have to go, Richard. I’ll get back to you.”
Mitigating Circumstances Page 15
