Buried Evidence

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  The detective walked toward the opposite side of the room, then spun back around and faced her. “You were already planning your crime, weren’t you? Isn’t that why you talked the girl’s father into not reporting the rape? Why would a district attorney not report a crime, especially one committed against her child? You’d already made up your mind that you were going to execute Bobby Hernandez. You only sent your daughter home with her father so you could get in your car, drive to Oxnard, and pump the man full of lead.”

  Lily remained silent, her hands locked on the arms of the chair.

  O’Malley circled her like a shark, pointing and gesturing, his voice loud and accusing. “This wasn’t an act of self-defense. You and your daughter were raped sometime before midnight. Hernandez wasn’t killed until the following morning. Sure, you were traumatized. If someone had raped my daughter or another member of my family, I might want to blow their brains out, too.” He stopped, grabbed his chair and turned it around backward, then straddled it only inches away from Lily. “The difference between you and me, Lily, is no matter how outraged I became, I wouldn’t act on those impulses. And you did, didn’t you?”

  Lily spontaneously placed her hand over one ear. She was locked inside the horror of that morning in Oxnard. O’Malley’s voice reverberated inside her head like the blast from her father’s shotgun. She saw the gaping hole in the center of Hernandez’s chest, the blood pumping out. Bile rose in her throat. She coughed, then managed to swallow it. She remembered vomiting on the ground before leaping back in the Honda and fleeing.

  “You know what constitutes first-degree murder, right?” O’Malley was back on his feet, relentless now that he sensed Lily’s fear, certain there if he pushed just a little harder, she would crack and confess. “I’m certain you know what the term ‘lying in wait’ means, Lily. Both premeditation and lying in wait are elements used to prove that special circumstances existed during the commission of a crime. That means you committed an act that could merit the death penalty.”

  “You made certain Hernandez got the death penalty,” Jameson said. “The only problem, Lily, is the man never went before a jury.”

  Lily’s eyes narrowed, her inherent sense of self-preservation returning. “You don’t have an arrest warrant, do you?” The room fell silent.

  “Not at the moment,” O’Malley finally answered, his face flushing. Lily had picked herself off the floor and, for all practical purposes, kicked him in the balls. It was one thing to speculate and intimidate a suspect, but to get a court to issue an arrest warrant on a case of this severity, they needed documented proof.

  “We can arrange a meeting with the district attorney,” Jameson said, “see if they might consider accepting a guilty plea on a less serious offense. The first step toward that direction is to come clean. You’ve been sitting on this for six years, Lily. That’s not going to sit well with a judge. Know what I mean?”

  “I know everything,” Lily said, standing and glaring at the detectives. “Next time, don’t call me until you have an arrest warrant, or I’ll have my attorney sue you for harassment.”

  SHANA WAS sitting Indian-style on the bed in Jennifer Abernathy’s room, the portable telephone in her lap and the stereo blasting. “Can you turn the music down?” she asked. “I want to call my dad again.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” said Jennifer, a small, slender girl with brown hair and hazel eyes. Seated at her desk, she was engrossed in a fashion magazine, flipping through the pages and staring at the images. “Should I bleach my hair this color?” she said, holding the magazine up so Shana could see the picture. “What do you think?” She glanced in the mirror across the room. “Blonde hair would make my face look too fat, wouldn’t it?”

  Although not clinically anorexic, Jennifer was convinced she had to starve herself to be attractive. At five-six, she weighed one hundred and twenty and considered herself fat. Shana walked over and turned the stereo down herself, then tried to reach her father at the duplex. When the answering service picked up, she decided not to leave another message. She’d called five times since she had arrived at Jennifer’s house, and on each occasion she had left her friend’s number. Her mother’s statement before she had left Santa Barbara had disturbed her, made her feel bad that she’d refused to speak to her father. “I want to get some of my things,” Shana told her. “You don’t have to go with me.”

  “I said I’d help you,” the girl said. “Weren’t we going to wait until tomorrow when my brother gets off work? That way we can use his pickup.”

  Because the two girls had been friends since junior high, Shana had found it impossible not to tell her about her father and the accident. “I’m only going to get a few clothes for now. I’m worried about my dad, Jen.”

  “Why?” the girl asked. “You said you didn’t want to see him the last time I talked to you.”

  “I changed my mind,” Shana answered, finding a box of tissues on the end table and blowing her nose. She changed the subject, not wanting to express her concern that her father might have killed himself. “I thought I was over this stupid cold. Now it’s coming back again.”

  “It’s probably an allergy,” Jennifer said, touching up the polish on her toes. “That’s why it’s so hot today. When the Santa Ana winds start blowing, all I want to do is guzzle water. I bet it’s nice and cool in Santa Barbara, being near the ocean and all.”

  “Are you coming?” Shana said, in the wrong frame of mind to discuss weather. “I’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past two days.”

  “Sure,” Jennifer said. “We’ll take my mom’s van. It’s probably better than the truck anyway. At least if it rains, your stuff won’t get wet.”

  30

  The green Ford van pulled into the driveway of the duplex on Maplewood Drive at seven-fifteen Saturday evening. When the two girls opened the door and went inside, Shana was appalled at the filth and clutter. “My father’s not only a drunk,” she said, angrily kicking an empty beer can across the floor, “he’s a pig. He probably doesn’t care about leaving the place clean, since my mother put up the damn deposit.”

  “It’s okay,” Jennifer said, patting her friend on the shoulder. She glanced down at the coffee table and saw the picture of Shana that was singed around the edges. “Look,” she said, holding up what was left of the snapshot, “someone ripped your mother out of the picture I took at our graduation. Do you think your dad got mad and set fire to it?”

  Shana had already started down the hall to her bedroom. When she came to her father’s room, the hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Drawers were pulled out, clothes were tossed everywhere, a lamp was toppled. She quickly checked her own room, finding it in the same state of disorder. “Jen,” she called out. “Hurry, come here.”

  “Gee,” Jennifer said, stepping up beside her, “maybe we should call the police.”

  “That’s the last thing I need,” Shana said. “The last time my mother called the cops, I was certain they were going to arrest me.” She bent down and picked up some of her underwear off the floor, more despondent than ever. “Dad was probably drinking. And Mom pressured him. She told him he had to be moved out by Monday, or the landlord would throw everything out in the street.”

  “Your mom was going to let them throw your stuff out?”

  “Of course not,” Shana told her. “You don’t understand how booze fries a person’s brain. My father’s desperate for money. He could have taken the clothes from the drawers because he was going to try and sell the furniture. I’m so embarrassed.” She placed her hand over her mouth. “Please, promise me you won’t tell anyone. Not just about this, but all the things I told you about my dad and the accident.”

  “You know I’d never do that,” Jennifer told her. “Look, this place gives me the creeps. Since we’re not going to call the cops, let’s get your stuff together and split.”

  Shana found a cloth laundry bag in a corner, then began filling it with jeans, T-shirts, blouses, underwear, se
veral pairs of shoes. After dragging the bag into the living room, she told Jennifer that there might be some empty boxes in the garage. “I want to take as much as I can,” she said. “I don’t want to come back here tomorrow.”

  Before they went to get the boxes, Shana picked up the phone and dialed the number for her father’s voice mail, wanting to see if he had received her messages. She listened to two calls from people inquiring about various real estate properties, then heard a male voice identifying himself as Detective Mark Osborne, asking that her father contact him as soon as he received the message. According to the recording, the call had come in Friday night.

  Quickly checking her own voice mail, Shana discovered that Hope Carruthers had left a message in her box that morning as well. She rushed into the other room, finding Jennifer stacking some of her school books by the front door. “Th-that guy…” she stammered, “the one my father hit with the car… Antonio Vasquez…he was in one of our classes.”

  Because of their friendship, the two girls were enrolled in several of the same courses. “Which class?”

  “Philosophy 265.”

  “I don’t remember him,” Jennifer said. “But it’s a gigantic class.”

  Shana wasn’t aware that she was holding a tennis shoe in her hand. “The police asked me if he was in any of my classes. They thought I’d been dating him, that we got into a fight and it was me instead of my father who was driving that night.”

  “From the way it looks,” Jennifer said, walking over and hugging her, “the police have already picked up your father. You have to stop freaking out. The world isn’t coming to an end. You’ve always been tough. I’m the whiner, remember?” She pried the tennis shoe out of her hand, setting it down on the table beside the phone.

  “No,” Shana said, crying now, “don’t you understand? My dad was going to leave me here to take the blame. He’s probably left town. I started to feel sorry for him. I tried to call him, see him, tell him I would always love him. He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t even care if they arrest me. The only person he cares about is himself.”

  HOPE CARRUTHERS suspected it might turn out to be a slow watch, even though the night was just beginning. Since Osborne held rank over the majority of the officers in their division, his shift ended at eight o’clock every Saturday, giving him a chance to take his wife out to dinner and an occasional movie.

  Neither Shana nor John Forrester had responded to their phone messages. Fearing Forrester was the type to skip town, Hope decided to swing by his residence and see if anyone was home. Spotting a young woman carrying what appeared to be a box outside to a green van, she caught Osborne on his cell phone as he was heading home from the office.

  “I think you should get your butt over here to the Forrester place.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Hope was in an unmarked car, parked several houses down from the duplex. She had made a preliminary drive-by, then circled the block and returned. Picking up a pair of binoculars, she peered through them as she spoke. “There’s a short dark-haired girl putting some boxes in what appears to be a Ford van.” She paused, adjusting the binoculars to a higher magnification. “I see Shana now. She’s carrying a green sack … looks like it might be a duffel bag or something. The garage door is open.”

  “I’m five minutes away,” Osborne said. “Keep your eyes on the house, and I’ll have dispatch get a backup unit rolling your way. Do you see the father?”

  “No,” Hope said. “But he could be inside the house.”

  “Wait for the patrol unit.”

  “I’m going in,” she told him. “It’s possible that Forrester and his daughter are attempting to flee. All I see are the girls right now. Even if Forrester’s inside the house, he doesn’t seem like the type of man who would pull a gun on me.”

  “Am I mistaken?” Osborne said caustically. “Didn’t you get shot not too long ago? Seems like that would make a normal person exercise a little more caution. Of course, you’re a woman and women just aren’t that smart.”

  “At least I don’t talk out the head of my dick.” Hope turned off the phone as she cranked the engine and then slammed on the brakes in front of the duplex. Just to be safe, she reached across her chest and removed her service revolver from her shoulder holster, flicking off the safety and holding the gun with the muzzle pointed toward the ground.

  I CAN’T believe you don’t have a garage opener,” Jennifer Abernathy said, puffing as she tried to lift the heavy door.

  “This is an old house,” Shana told her, walking over to help her. They had found one box on the back porch. It hadn’t been that large, however, and Shana was determined to pack as much of her stuff as she possibly could.

  Jennifer said, “Something stinks. Can’t you smell it?”

  Shana caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “It’s probably fertilizer,” she said, glancing at the adjacent yard. “The lady that lives next door is out here every day, planting and snipping.”

  Both girls jumped when Hope walked up behind them. By the time the detective had determined that John Forrester wasn’t inside the residence, Osborne and the patrol unit had arrived. Her fellow officers at the precinct had dubbed Hope as the resident “nose,” not that she possessed the kind of second sense that many in her line of work did, meaning they could tell in advance when something was about to go down. In Hope’s case, the meaning was literal. A Frenchwoman had once told her that her highly refined sense of smell could earn her a great deal of money in the perfume industry in her country. But what Hope smelled inside the garage was far from pleasant. It was the unmistakable odor of death.

  “Let’s talk over here,” she said, anxiously leading Shana and her friend to the street.

  “Are you girls going somewhere?” Osborne asked, the two uniformed officers taking up positions on either side of the two young women.

  “I’m just moving some of my clothes out,” Shana told them. “I didn’t get the message that you wanted to talk to me until I came home about an hour ago. I’ve been staying with my mother in Santa Barbara. I have no idea where my father went.”

  Advising the patrol officers to detain the girls on the opposite side of the house, the detectives returned to the garage. Osborne yanked his service revolver from its holster on the chance that someone might be hiding inside. Hope flicked on her flashlight, seeing several pools of blood near the front entrance. “Get the crime-scene unit and more officers out here right away,” she said, panning the walls and spotting what appeared to be bloody handprints on the wall near the light switch. “There’s a dead body in here somewhere.”

  Osborne asked, “What about the girls?”

  She knew better than to touch the light switch. Hope used her eyes like a camera, rapidly sending images and data back to her brain, wanting to make certain these images were firmly set in her memory. The first impression of a crime scene was crucial. The technicians would photograph and collect the various evidence, but things might be inadvertently moved or damaged. Preparing herself for the day she would be called to testify, she wanted to make certain she remembered the scene as she had found it. “I didn’t see any blood on the girl’s clothing,” she said, continuing to pan the flashlight across the garage. “Check them again. If they look clean, get them out of here. We have to find the body.”

  Osborne stood with the revolver pointed upward until he felt certain that whatever was inside the garage was no longer alive. “I’ll have one of the patrol units take the Forrester girl to the station and stash her somewhere. Should we take her friend into custody as well?”

  “It’s your call,” Hope told him. “I think she was just helping Shana move her things.”

  A short time later, Officer Joe Sisely had jotted down Jennifer Abernathy’s name, address, and driver’s license number and sent her on her way. He waited until the girl drove off to tell Shana that Detective Osborne had instructed him to take her to the station. Shana was terrified. She struggled when the office
r tried to get her into the backseat.

  “I’m going to have to handcuff you if you keep fighting me,” Sisely told her, placing his hand on top of her head as he helped her into the backseat of the patrol car.

  Shana stared at the screen separating her from the police officer. She felt like a stray dog en route to the pound, caged and panicked. Peering out the rear window, she saw several more police units and a white van pulling up in front of the duplex. She began gasping for air, certain now that the awful odor her friend had smelled had not been fertilizer. Unable to accept what her reason was telling her, Shana fainted, her head striking the back of the seat of the police car with a thud.

  31

  Mark Osborne and Hope Carruthers discovered John Forrester’s mutilated body underneath a piece of plastic in the rear section of the garage. Because of the proximity to the window and the fact that it had been exceptionally warm that day, the glass pane had magnified the heat. In a cooler climate, it would have taken a longer period of time before a body began emitting an odor.

  John’s stomach was swollen with gastric fluids. What Jennifer Abernathy had smelled near the entrance had not been decayed flesh but human excrement. At the moment of death the bowels and bladder had spontaneously emptied.

  The blood near the front of the garage had spread, some being partially absorbed into the concrete, leaving a few rather sizable pools which had already started to coagulate.

  While Osborne checked out the crime scene, careful not to contaminate the evidence any more than it had already been contaminated by the two girls, Hope rushed to her car to make the necessary notifications. They didn’t want the medical examiner to respond until they had secured the crime scene and the department’s forensic technicians had started the tedious process of collecting and identifying evidence.