Buried Evidence (13 page)

Lily could hear the rapist’s sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor, feel his fingers digging into her flesh as he dragged her down the hallway, her robe tossed over her head like a death shroud. She’d been certain she was going to suffocate. Not only was she thrashing about wildly, the terry-cloth robe was thick and her attacker had pulled it tightly over her nose and mouth. When Shana had heard the sound of a struggle and called out to her mother, all thoughts of her own danger had vanished.

“Is something wrong?” Susan Montgomery, Lily’s assistant, had been standing quietly in the doorway. A quirky brunette, she wore her hair cropped short and she dressed like a college student, even though she was the mother of three small children. Today she was wearing a plaid miniskirt, a red sweater, and matching red leggings. As she tiptoed into the room, her concern for her supervisor intensified. Lily’s forehead was damp with perspiration and her skin was ashen. “Are you sick?”

“I-I’m—” Lily tilted her head toward the woman’s voice, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth.

“Your ex-husband is on the phone. He says it’s urgent… that he got disconnected during an important conversation. What do you want me to tell him? If you don’t want to speak to him, I can—”

“No,” Lily said, frantically retrieving the receiver off her desk. Hearing only a dial tone, she gave her assistant another blank stare.

“Mr. Forrester is on the other line.”

“Thanks, Susan,” she said, waving her out of the office.

Hernandez had been a dead ringer for the rapist. After the assault Lily had sent Shana home with John, then retrieved the Hernandez file from her briefcase. She remembered crawling
across the floor on her hands and knees, her bathrobe reeking from her daughter’s vomit. She not only had their attacker’s mug shot, she had his address. She was certain he had followed her home from the government center in Ventura. From the day the county had erected the new complex, housing both the courts and the jail, Lily had been fearful something awful was going to happen. The windows of the jail overlooked the parking lot. Prisoners could watch victims, witnesses, even prosecutors as they got in and out of their cars each day.

In her frenzied state, all Lily recalled was the rapist’s dark skin, his red sweatshirt, the gold crucifix dangling around his neck. Bobby Hernandez’s facial features and body conformation not only looked exactly like the rapist’s, he had been wearing a red sweatshirt and a crucifix in his mug shots. For years she had worked with victims, warning them not to make identifications based on such superficial details.

Susan Montgomery was standing beside her desk again, pointing at the blinking light on the telephone console. Deciding her supervisor must have had an argument with her former spouse, she handed her a cup of ice water. “Drink this,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”

Lily thanked the woman with her eyes. “Can you shut the door for me, Susan?”

“Sure,” she said. “And if it will make you feel any better, whenever I get a call from my ex-husband, I start hyperventilating.”

John was accusing, desperate. “You hung up on me. They don’t allow you fifteen phone calls, you know. This is a damn jail, Lily! I called you for help.”

“I didn’t hang up on you,” she said, knowing she had to defuse the situation immediately. “A judge called me regarding a case I’m handling. All I did was place you on hold until I answered his question.”

“Don’t shovel that shit at me,” he said. “You’re just stalling, trying to show me what a big shot you are, that even judges come running to you. I don’t care who the hell calls you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your ass down here.”

Lily’s right leg began jumping up and down. She had to place her hand on it to hold it in place. Was Bobby Hernandez stalking her from the grave? Until a person took a life, they could never understand the gravity of their actions. She was forever tied to a dead man. On the nights when sleep eluded her, she would spend all night pacing like a caged animal, feeling as if she were handcuffed to the rotting corpse of Bobby Hernandez. People in prison might envy her. She could come and go when she pleased, walk on the beach, get in her car and drive to work each day. But she was not free. Imprisoned by her own deeds, she lived in constant fear of exposure, locked in a macabre marriage to the man she had killed. After gulping down the whole glass of water, she asked, “Where are you calling me from?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” John yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m in the Los Angeles County Jail.”

“I understand you’re in jail,” she said, hissing the words at him. “Exactly
where
are you in the jail? Are you in booking? Are you in an interview room? I’m trying to determine if anyone can hear what you’re saying.”

The line fell silent. A short time later, a garbled male voice rang out in the background. “The only person who can hear me,” John told her, “is this weirdo standing behind me. I tried to tell him to get lost. I think he’s from Iran or somewhere.”

“You’re using a pay phone, then?” She wondered if Susan had accepted a collect call. How else would he have been able to call her long-distance from the jail?

“First the cops interrogate me,” he said, “now you’re giving me the third-degree. Trust me, this guy doesn’t speak English. Even if he did, he wouldn’t know what we’re talking about.”

Lily lowered her voice. “Why would you bring up Bobby Hernandez?”

“Because I know the truth,” he said. “Shana and I both know you killed that man. You killed him because you mistook him for the rapist. You tracked him down and assassinated him. That’s premeditated murder.”

Lily’s eyes glazed over. Instead of the nervous tremors she’d experienced earlier, her muscles locked into place. “Bobby Hernandez
was a murderer,” she said, the words erupting from deep inside her subconscious. “He was on his way to becoming a serial killer. Remember Peter McDonald and Carmen Lopez? Hernandez and four of his fellow gang members murdered them. They bashed the boy’s head in, raped the girl repeatedly, then shoved a tree limb up her vagina, rupturing her abdominal wall.”

“That’s not the point.”

“That’s precisely the point,” Lily said, slamming her fist down on the desk. “Hernandez developed a taste for killing. He decided it was more exciting than taking drugs and robbing people. On his own, he kidnapped, raped, and murdered another woman.”

John vaguely recalled the atrocities of the case she had mentioned, but at the time he’d been more concerned over what had happened to his daughter than the fate of strangers. “I didn’t say the man deserved to live,” he said. “Have I ever accused you or threatened to turn you in?”

Lily had no choice but to lie. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Hey,” he said, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Isn’t that the way the world works these days?”

She bit down on the inside of her mouth. Why had he waited six years to confront her? Knowing her ex-husband as well as she did, she had to consider that he might be bluffing. But John and Shana did know things that only Detective Cunningham had uncovered during his investigation. He knew she had stayed out until dawn the night following the rape. And Shana had walked into the garage, catching her mother squatting near the rear of her Honda as she wiped off the black magic marker she’d used to alter her license plate. In one particular instance, Lily had even blurted out the truth. John had been ranting and raving, saying he wanted to kill the man who had viciously raped his daughter. His wife told him that it wasn’t necessary, that she had already killed him. When John had failed to take her seriously, she had recanted and told him her statement was only wishful thinking.

“What do you want from me, John?”

“You’re an attorney,” he said. “Do you want Shana to find out her father’s in jail? She hasn’t recovered from what that Curazon
monster did to her. He raped my baby. She was just an innocent little girl.”

“Calm down,” Lily said, hearing him whimpering. “Did the judge set bail?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A hundred thousand.”

“A hundred thousand!” Lily exclaimed, expecting a lower amount. The offense of vehicular manslaughter carried the same weight as second-degree murder. Under those circumstances, bail in this range might be justified. Her original assumption, however, was that the district attorney in Los Angeles had arraigned John on a number of charges. Most defendants were either too frightened to hear half of what was said during their arraignment, or they had difficulty deciphering the legal jargon. And prosecutors frequently added more serious counts to the original pleading, hoping these charges could be used as leverage to get the defendant to enter into a plea agreement and avoid taking the case to trial. In order to charge John with vehicular manslaughter, though, he would have had to have killed someone with his car during the commission of a felony. “What exactly did you do?”

“You mean, what they said I did?”

Now they were going to play
this
game, Lily thought, having heard the same evasive tactics spewing out of the mouths of hundreds of criminals during the course of her career. She was tempted to bail him out of jail just so she could drive him to a dark alley and smash both his kneecaps with a baseball bat. He didn’t mind accusing her of murder on a jailhouse phone, but he wasn’t about to admit his own guilt. “Fine,” she snapped. “Tell me what crimes the police are alleging that you’ve committed.”

“There was an accident,” he said. “The cops claim I left the scene. You know, a hit-and-run. When they arrested me, I was sitting on the front porch sipping on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

“You’re on probation, John,” Lily said. “You swore you weren’t going to drink.”

“I know,” he said, “but it breaks my heart to see Shana scared. She thought she saw Curazon last night.”

“I know,” Lily said. “I called the police, remember? You certainly didn’t do Shana any favors by getting yourself arrested.”

John continued, “I wasn’t behind the wheel when they arrested me. Having a drink isn’t a crime.”

Heaven help me, Lily thought, her thoughts racing. As soon as they concluded their conversation, she’d have to call and see if the court would allow him to post bail with a ten percent deposit. This was the general rule of thumb unless the judge specified that the defendant fork over the entire amount. Even then she didn’t have ten thousand dollars in cash. She’d have to get a loan from the credit union. Loans took time. She had to shut John up, though, and the only way was to meet his demands. “Were there any witnesses to this
alleged
hit-and-run accident?”

“None that I know of,” he answered. “I mean, you’re the hotshot attorney. You know the cops never tell you these kind of things.”

Lily massaged her forehead, attempting to analyze the situation objectively. When the evidence was weak, most prosecutors allowed the suspect to remain at large in the community until they had a chance to build an airtight case. Once they made an arrest, the clock began ticking, and if the case resulted in an acquittal, the suspect could never be tried for that particular crime again. Since Henry Middleton had been free for almost a year, Lily was baffled as to why they had locked up her ex-husband. “Why did they arrest you if they didn’t have a witness, or some type of concrete proof? I don’t even know how they identified you since the accident was a hit-and-run. Was there damage to your car?”

“They found my wallet,” John said reluctantly. “I didn’t even realize it was gone. The police said they found it in the grass a few feet from the guy’s body. The public defender and I decided that whoever hit this person must have stolen my wallet, then dropped it at the scene of the accident.”

Lily had a nasty taste in her mouth, as if she had just consumed a dozen rotten eggs. She knew John was guilty. He would have never called and threatened her if he was innocent. Now they were both murderers. “Let me go,” she said. “I’ll have to try to raise the money.”

“I need money for an attorney as well.”

“Didn’t you just tell me you’re being represented by the public defender?”

“I had no choice at the arraignment,” John told her. “But even he told me I should hire someone else. He says he’s got more cases than he can handle. You know, I need one of those fancy attorneys who specializes in this kind of thing.”

Lily started to ask about the victim, then stopped herself. She didn’t want to hear the details yet, not when she was being extorted to bail out the person who had killed him. “How can you do this to me?”

“What?” he asked. “Ask you to help me? I’m the father of your child.”

“You didn’t ask me, John,” she said, scribbling notes to herself on a yellow pad. “You threatened me. Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?”

“If you’d killed the right guy,” he said. “I’d have given you a medal and never mentioned it again. The bastard who raped my daughter is back on the street, Lily. Why don’t you shoot him?”

“You’re out of your mind,” she said. “Keep talking this way, and I won’t lift a finger to help you. And let’s get something straight right now. No matter what kind of ridiculous accusations you hurl at me, I have no intention of paying for your attorney. The district attorney in Los Angeles may not be able to charge you with driving under the influence, but you and I both know that this person would be alive if you’d remained sober.”

John’s voice took on a sharper edge. “Oh, you’ll help me. You can’t afford not to help me. I know how much that job means to you, how scared you are of ending up in my situation. You know how dirty and cramped it is in prison. Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you’ll have a smooth ride. You’ve put your share of women behind bars.” He paused, then added, “Maybe a few of them would like to have a little talk with you, know what I mean?”

Lily knew when she was defeated. She picked up a file and hurled it across the room, watching as the papers struck the wall, then scattered all over her office floor. She felt like leaping through the phone and strangling him. Only in the past year had
she started to put her life back together. And there was Shana to consider.