Sullivan’s Justice

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “It’s your neck,” Hank told her. “Just say my name and the SWAT team will take dead aim.”

  Carolyn turned to Mary. “Do you have some paper and a pen?”

  “Sure,” she said, reaching into a compartment in her computer case and handing them over.

  “Hank,” Carolyn continued, “I need you to write something for me.”

  “I’d be happy to help,” Mary offered. “Hank’s handwriting is almost illegible.”

  “Thanks, but no,” Carolyn told her. “A woman’s handwriting is different than a man’s. Listen, Hank, I’m going to tell you what to write.”

  Hank did what she asked, then disappeared. A member of the SWAT team stashed Carolyn in a chair as they went about checking their communications devices, ammunition, and anything else they might need if the situation blew apart. She wadded the note up Hank had written, then straightened it out. Finally she folded it and tucked it inside the waistband of her skirt.

  Hank returned and led her to the prefabricated room. Unlike the rows of rowdy inmates she’d seen earlier, the floor was eerily silent. She looked up and saw at least six officers stretched out on their stomachs on a metal platform that had been installed directly above. Their assault rifles protruded through the openings in the metal; then the ends of the barrels disappeared inside the plasterboard ceiling.

  Hank pointed out how the ceiling had been designed so it looked as if the holes were part of the material. They needed additional openings so the officers could maintain visual contact.

  Other men stood in strategic places around the perimeter. Carolyn wondered how easy the guns were to spot from inside the room. “How can I keep Moreno from seeing the holes in the ceiling?”

  “People don’t look up that often,” Hank told her. “You only spotted our guys because you knew they were going to be here. My suggestion for you is to keep the conversation flowing. Don’t talk too loud and he’ll have to concentrate to hear what you’re saying. Even people who aren’t deaf resort to reading lips. They may not know it, but they do. It’s instinctive. If your daughter is talking to you and you can’t hear her, do you look at the ceiling or do you look at her face?”

  “Her face.”

  “Do what I say and you won’t have a problem.”

  Mary gestured for him and the detectives walked away. Carolyn’s stomach began gurgling with acid. She knew exactly what she had to do. No matter how the events of the past week had short-circuited her nervous system, she needed to be on top of her game. This was the big leagues and she was playing for more than her own life. At stake were the innocent lives of possible new victims.

  Her mother’s revelation about her father’s death, Neil’s suicide attempt, and the disgusting video of Paul seemed like nothing next to sitting in a box with Moreno. Distracting herself from the tension, her thoughts drifted to Melody. By suppressing the truth about her mother’s and brother’s deaths, she’d learned to reshape reality to suit her needs. Ironically, the sexual abuse inflicted on her by her uncle may have caused her more harm than the loss of her family.

  Children who were sexually abused on an ongoing basis learned to barter with their bodies. Given a choice between a beating and being molested, it wasn’t hard to figure out which decision a child would make. People found it hard to believe, but some of the children even found it pleasurable, even though they were being exploited. Pedophiles with regular access to their victims might not reach the level of penetration for months, even years. They courted the child slowly with hugs, kisses, teasing, and fondling. Being held and stroked wasn’t so awful, especially when the child was rewarded with special privileges or gifts. Over time, the victim learned to control the abuser by holding back sexual favors or threatening to expose him. In return, the rewards got larger. Carolyn knew of a case of incest, where the victim had a wallet full of credit cards and a new Thunderbird convertible, her youthful body already perfected by a plastic surgeon. From the age of ten, her father had made her bend over the toilet every morning before school so he could sodomize her. The abuse had stopped at the age of thirteen when the girl had threatened to report him to the police. After that, she was in control, extorting anything she wanted from him. The situation came to light after the father began embezzling from his company to pay his daughter’s credit card bills.

  Female victims became provocative and manipulative women, using their bodies to get what they wanted. Some turned into pathological liars, prostitutes, criminals, even killers. Death row had its share of sexual abuse victims, both male and female. When a sixteen-year-old girl who’d been sexually abused since the age of six walked into a courtroom, the jury expected to see a shy, modest, and severely traumatized teenager, her head hung low in shame.

  What they saw was a Melody Asher, a precocious manipulator who had learned to use sex as a bargaining chip.

  Now that she thought about it, Carolyn doubted if Melody had made the video so she could distribute it to Paul’s future lovers. She probably had set up the monitoring equipment to blackmail Paul if he decided to stop seeing her. Carolyn was surprised Paul was still allowed to teach at Caltech. Of course, for all she knew, Melody might have followed through on her threats, and this could be the real reason why he had left Pasadena and relocated to Ventura.

  Good God, she thought, the tape!

  Hank was speaking to Mary Stevens. Carolyn rushed over and seized him by the arm. “Melody e-mailed me a video. As soon as I talk to Moreno, I’ll go home and get it. The lab can tell if the same digital camera was used in the video you received today of the Goodwin murder.”

  “Melody sent you a video!” he yelled. “Shit, woman, why didn’t you tell me? What video? When did this happen?”

  “Christmas Day,” Carolyn told him. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it had any bearing on the murders.” They could have two trains running on the same track. Sabatino might be the killer, but Melody could have hired him. Knowing the next question was inevitable, she looked around to make certain no one was listening, then told Hank and Mary what was on the tape.

  “This is wild,” Mary said, wrapping her arms around her chest. “If the videos were made with the same camera, then Melody had to be the one who set up the Siemens router inside Neil’s house. That means she watched the murder and then sat on the evidence, even when she knew Neil might be charged with Laurel’s murder.”

  “How tall was the man in the motorcycle outfit?” Carolyn asked. “Also, was he slender, medium, heavy?”

  “Around six feet,” Mary answered. “Hard to tell his weight because of the leather suit. He looked about the size of your brother. You know, tall and thin.”

  “Sabatino isn’t six feet tall.”

  “The helmet added height,” Hank told her. “The lab hasn’t had time to analyze the video. We just got it today. Where are you going with this, Carolyn? You’re all over the place when you should be concentrating on Moreno.”

  “Melody is almost six feet and she’s thinner than Sabatino or Neil.” Carolyn stopped and cleared her throat. “She has a motive, remember? If she installed the surveillance equipment, she saw Neil with Laurel. She must have known they were seeing each other all along.”

  “See if you can find me some Tums or something,” Hank said to a young deputy, his hand pressed over his chest. “Christ, if we don’t put this case together soon, I’m going to have a heart attack.”

  “We can’t do anything until we find out whether or not the tapes match,” Mary said. “Give me the key to your house, Carolyn. You could be tied up here for hours.”

  “My kids should be home,” Carolyn said, scratching her arm and seeing a patch of reddish blisters. Melody was with Neil. Should she tell Hank and Mary or wait to see what the lab found out? As Hank had told her, she needed to remain focused on Moreno. “I don’t want my children anywhere near the video of Paul and Melody, understand? I was going to delete it, but I never got around to it.” She told Mary where her laptop was located and gave her
the code to access her files. “There’s a blank DVD in the top drawer. The file is too large to fit on a disk. You’ll have to burn it on a DVD. I’ll call the kids and let them know you’re coming.”

  In addition to hives, when Carolyn got nervous, she had a tendency to lose her voice. She’d been swallowing down water from a plastic Evian bottle, praying it didn’t happen. They were expecting too much from her. The way things had gone down last time, there was a good chance Moreno might refuse to talk to her. The others weren’t risking their lives. The cops dressed in riot gear, with their high-powered assault weapons, had nothing to fear. It was hard to be a sitting duck and a miracle worker at the same time.

  “Ten minutes and it’s a go,” Bobby Kirsh said. “Check in with Sergeant Griffin over there. We want you to wear a wire.”

  All she needed was something taped to her chest, Carolyn thought, scratching her shoulder. She stepped up to a desk on the left side of the interview room. A stone-faced sergeant confiscated her briefcase. “I need something in there,” she told him, pulling out a manila envelope. Once the sergeant had looked inside, he handed it back to her.

  “No pencils, pens, tape recorders, or any kind of sharp objects?”

  “Nothing,” she said, thinking if the officer smiled, his face would crack. He handed her a roll of tape and the kit containing the electronic monitoring device, reminding her to remove the underwires in her bra while she was in the ladies’ room to prevent the suspect from using them as a weapon.

  After Carolyn used the bathroom, she changed her clothes and made some adjustments to her appearance. Deciding not to go for the seductive look this time, she had tied her hair back in a ponytail and had washed off her makeup. She was wearing a white cotton shirt, the fabric thick enough to conceal the bulletproof vest, and a knee-length blue skirt, her version of a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform. Her goal today was to remind Moreno of his sister, Maria.

  “What makes you think Moreno won’t know this is a setup?” she asked Hank when she came out. “A freestanding structure with men in SWAT gear positioned on the roof is a dead giveaway, don’t you think?”

  Hank stared at her, then broke out laughing. “Why are you dressed like that? You look like a kid. What are you trying to do? Get Moreno to ask you to the prom?”

  Carolyn sneered. “While you guys have been chasing your tail, I’ve been doing my homework. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

  “We blindfolded him,” the detective told her, unwrapping a toothpick and shoving it into his mouth. “Bobby told Moreno it was for security reasons. Since he’s an escape risk, taking his eyesight away makes anything along those lines more difficult. The main reason is so we can trick him into believing it’s just the two of you again. He’ll be more inclined to talk that way. Of course, once you’re in the room, we’ll remove the blindfold.”

  Hank became somber again. She saw his hands trembling as he placed the small container of toothpicks back in his pocket. What they were about to do was riding his nerves for a number of reasons. The most maddening part was that there was nothing he could do but wait. “You ready, hotshot?” he asked. “If there was ever a time to strut your stuff, this is it.”

  Carolyn thrust her shoulders back. Mary hugged her, whispering in her ear, “Don’t take any chances.”

  The temperature couldn’t be over sixty degrees, she thought, rubbing her hands together to warm them. The air-conditioning was probably set to work with the combined body heat of the prisoners. Either that, or they wanted to make certain everyone stayed alert. She reached out and turned the door handle, stepping inside the room.

  Moreno was sitting in a plastic chair. There was no table, as it would prevent the SWAT team from seeing his hands and feet. The jail had added a metal neck restraint and attached it to a thick belt around his waist. The chains on the other restraints were linked to the one on his neck and also secured through a metal fastener on his belt. If the prisoner tried to kick out with his legs, his neck would be snapped backward. If he attempted to raise his arms, the same thing would happen. Carolyn relaxed, fairly confident that he couldn’t hurt her. If he made a move, she would signal the SWAT team to start shooting.

  Bobby had told them he wasn’t eating. It wasn’t unusual for inmates to go on hunger strikes. Some would do it to protest jail or prison conditions. Others would starve themselves to gain attention for a cause, such as abolishing capital punishment. But some deliberately lost weight to facilitate an escape. Ted Bundy stopped eating, lost weight, and shimmied out of the jail in Aspen through its ventilation system.

  Carolyn saw hatred shooting from Moreno’s eyes. He knew she’d set him up after the first interview, locking him in the room for hours in scorching heat, without water, food, or the use of a toilet.

  She doubted if Moreno weighed more than 115 pounds. The bulging biceps she’d seen before were even more sinewy. She started to look up at the ceiling for reassurance, then stopped herself. The clock was ticking.

  Steeling herself, Carolyn began speaking. “I’m here today because one of the jailers came across this letter.” She reached into the waistband of her skirt and removed the note she’d dictated to Hank. After she handed it to Moreno, she watched as he read. “As you can see, the people you’re involved with have planted men inside the jail with explicit instructions to kill you.”

  “Old news,” Moreno said. “I took care of those guys, remember? They carried them outta here on stretchers, bleeding and crying like a bunch of pussies.”

  “These aren’t the same men,” Carolyn insisted. “They’re waiting for you to be released into the general population or they’ll make their move inside the tunnel. Your prelim on the assault charges begins next week. That means you’ll be in the tunnel twice a day.”

  “Lying bitch,” Moreno snarled, pulling against the restraints and causing them to rattle. “If they didn’t have me chained like a damn pit bull, I’d break your skinny neck. Why would I buy this shit? You played me before. It ain’t gonna work this time.”

  Carolyn stood, slapping her hands against her thighs. “I’m not conning you,” she told him. “But if you don’t want to talk, there’s nothing I can do. You think the jailers care if the inmates kill you? Most of them think you deserve to die. All these men have to do is slip a few guards some hundred-dollar bills and you’re a goner. No one will even know who killed you.” She walked toward the door, then turned back around as if she’d forgotten something. “Oh, do you have any friends or relatives who might be willing to bury you? The allotment for indigent deaths barely covers a cremation. It’s better if we take care of this type of thing in advance.”

  Moreno’s mouth fell open in shock. Carolyn reached for the buzzer to be released. “Wait—come back,” he called out.

  His eyes glistened with tears. Lack of food wreaked havoc on a person’s emotions. If Carolyn played her cards right, she just might get what she came for.

  “Why do you care what happens to me?” he said. “The cops said I killed my mother and my sweet sister.”

  Carolyn had to contain her excitement. One word said it all. She doubted if he would describe his sister as sweet if he’d killed her. Things were working better than she had expected. She bent sideways and retrieved the envelope off the floor, holding it in her lap as she pulled out two eight-by-ten photos. Picking up her chair, she repositioned it beside him, placing the first photo in front of his face. “Is this what you did to your mother?”

  Mrs. Moreno was lying on her back on the floor, only a few feet from her wheelchair. Her neck had been slit with what the lab had identified as a scalpel, the cut so deep it had severed her head from her body. Her eyes were open and her face was sprayed with blood.

  Moreno tried to knock the photo aside. The chains pulled against the metal restraint on his neck. “Get that fucking thing away from me. I ain’t talking about my mother.”

  Carolyn pulled the photo back, replacing it with a second one. A twelve-year-old girl wearing a
Catholic-school uniform, similar to the clothing Carolyn was wearing, was gagged and bound in a high-backed wooden chair. Blood streamed down her face and soaked her clothes. Forensics had identified the murder weapon as a household hammer.

  Moreno became enraged. “Ain’t you got ears?” he shouted. “I don’t want to see no pictures. Maybe I should kill you, then the state would give me the death penalty. Tell them to put me in the main jail section now. Go ahead. Let them assholes try to kill me. They’ll find them like they did those other idiots. The only difference is this time they won’t be breathin’.”

  Carolyn moved her chair back to where it had been previously. For a while, she sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. When she began speaking again, her voice was soft and nonthreatening. “I saw in the file that Maria went to Saint Agnes’s. I’m a Catholic like you.” She reached inside her white cotton blouse and showed him her mother’s silver cross. Because it was large, she had stopped wearing it outside her clothing. Some of the guys at work had teased her, telling her she looked like a nun. Catholics had a bond, though, even strangers. “I checked with the school and they told me you paid Maria’s tuition every month in cash. Since your mother was confined to a wheelchair and couldn’t work, how did you come up with the money? It doesn’t make sense for you to kill someone you loved that much. I bet you loved your mother as well.”

  Moreno transformed. The look in his eyes was no longer threatening. What she saw was a quiet, emotional young man. He was more than likely an introvert. How else could he have gone so long without speaking? She could see why the DA had decided not to risk putting him in front of a jury. He could pretend to be anything he wanted. All she had to do was figure out what was real.

  “You didn’t kill them, did you?” she stated. “You never told anyone you were innocent because you were afraid the men who killed your family would kill you, too. Am I right, Raphael?”

  His shoulders began shaking. He tried to suppress the tears, but the floodgates had opened. For at least ten minutes, he sobbed uncontrollably.