Buried Evidence (41 page)

“He said he distinctly recalled that Lily owned a shotgun,” Fred Jameson told him. “And he said it was the same make and caliber as the one used to kill Hernandez. He also said Lily didn’t come home until around seven or eight the morning of the murder,
when she had told him she was coming straight to his house after the rape.”

“From what I can see here,” Cunningham said, scratching the side of his face, “you guys have sort of gotten ahead of yourself on this thing. John Forrester is dead now, as well as Manny Hernandez. Those tape-recorded statements might have value, but to get a conviction, you need a flesh-and-blood witness.” He paused before continuing. “You’ll never track down the neighbor you mentioned. Even if you managed to flush out new witnesses, they probably wouldn’t agree to testify. That was one of the problems I ran into when I was trying to put this case together years ago. People are scared. The three guys who were partners with the Hernandez brothers in the McDonald-Lopez killings might be in prison right now, but they’ll be released eventually. One of them turned state’s evidence. He could be back on the street already.”

“I think Lily killed her husband,” O’Malley told them. “She killed him to keep him from testifying.”

“That’s not our case, knucklehead,” Jameson snapped. “We’re trying to put the Hernandez case together.”

“Some information came in on the Forrester killing while you guys were gone,” Cunningham told them, thinking any man who didn’t care about apprehending a murderer, regardless of jurisdiction, just wasn’t a cop. Of course, these types of
game cops
, as he called them, were one of the reasons he’d retired from law enforcement. “Seems the lab in L.A. matched the fingerprints of a man named Marco Curazon from those lifted from the crime scene in John Forrester’s garage.” He gave both men a scalding glance. “You do know who Curazon is, don’t you?”

Jameson was pacing back and forth. “Curazon is the rapist, right? The one who raped Lily Forrester and her daughter. That attorney, Richard Fowler, mentioned that he’d recently been paroled from prison. He wanted us to track him down…thought he might be stalking the girl.”

“There you go,” Cunningham said, standing and stretching his aching back. “My guess is, Curazon could have been waiting inside John Forrester’s garage. John went out there for some reason, and the guy went nuts and stabbed him. This Osborne fellow
in Los Angeles said they found a Swiss Army knife on the floor of the garage. The wounds on the body could never have been made by a knife that small. That means Forrester may have tried to defend himself, which could have explained why Curazon got mad and stuck him five times.” He yawned, tired from the airplane ride. “What do I know, though? I just came down here to give you guys a hand.”

“Damn,” Fred Jameson said. “This doesn’t mean we can’t move forward, though. The Hernandez killing has nothing to do with the death of John Forrester.”

“You got a hard-on for Lily Forrester, Jameson?” Cunningham asked. “When you called me, I told you this Hernandez guy was scum.”

“Captain Nelson insisted that we pursue it,” Jameson explained, defensive. “Forrester called the mayor’s office and raised a stink, saying we were letting a murderer go free. When we dived back into this, Bruce, we were counting on John Forrester’s testimony.”

“That about does it for me,” Cunningham said, removing his jacket from the back of the chair.

“You’re not going to stick around?” Jameson asked. “Are you leaving town?”

“Not necessarily,” Bruce Cunningham said, his footsteps heavy as he strode toward the conference room door. “Since you guys are so busy trying to play pin the tail on the donkey, I thought I’d hang around a few more days and see if I can’t round up that Curazon fellow.” Just before he stepped through the doorway, he stopped and turned around. “Bad guys versus good guys, remember? The first thing a man’s got to do is figure out what team he’s playing on, and then he needs to decide what kind of prize he wants to find at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. If a cop wants to become famous, all he has to do is get himself killed. Then they’ll put your name on a plaque out there in the lobby. Big deal, huh? The problem with police work is there aren’t any prizes at the bottom of the box.”

“No one said we wanted to be famous,” Jameson said, tossing a rolled-up ball of paper into the trash can. “You know what? I
think half of those stories people tell about you aren’t true, Cunningham. How are you going to track down Curazon in only a few days?”

“He’s gone,” O’Malley said, his eyes glued on the spot where Cunningham had been standing only seconds before.

S
HANA STOPPED
at a Subway shop and bought a sandwich and a Coke, carrying it back to eat in Richard’s Corvette. She wolfed down the sandwich, knowing she needed strength to follow through on her plan. Glancing at her watch, she panicked when she saw it was already four-fifteen. Sucking the soda from a straw, she tried to wash down a piece of bread that had become lodged in her throat. Opening the car door, she coughed several times, and the piece of bread popped out onto the ground.

Now that she had eaten, Shana gunned the engine on the car, heading to the Target store a few blocks down from the government center. Before she went inside, she checked her wallet, afraid she didn’t have enough money. Then she saw the hundred-dollar bills her mother had given her. Locking the car, she got out and headed across the parking lot.

A young man in his late teens walked up to her. “Flowers? I got a dozen roses for twenty bucks.”

Shana dropped her head and continued walking.

“Come on,” he said, holding a paper-wrapped bouquet of white roses close to her face. “You can give them to your mother. Fifteen, okay? I’ll sell them to you for fifteen.”

“Get away from me,” Shana snarled, the scent of the roses making her feel as if she were going to vomit again. Suddenly she stopped walking, locked inside a horrific vision. Curazon was shoving her legs apart. She heard the guttural sounds he had made as he plunged inside her body, heard her own high-pitched scream. She placed her hands over her eyes, wanting to block out the images.

There was no way to stop them.

Curazon was hovering over her, his teeth bared as he spat obscenities at her, his eyes wild with rage and power. Since the
rape, she couldn’t go to the dentist unless he gave her a sedative. The moment the hygienist pushed the chair back and the dentist leaned down close to her face, Curazon’s hideous face would appear.

But it was primarily the smell of the roses that brought back the full force of the terror. During the many years she’d spent in therapy, she had gone over that night again and again, finally arriving at a specific sequence of events. She must have first awakened when she heard noises on the other side of the house, then momentarily fallen back to sleep, the scent of roses floating in through the open window above her bed. The next time she awakened, she heard a loud banging sound and her mother’s muffled cries for help as Curazon dragged her down the hallway. Shana forced herself to continue walking, finally reaching the entrance to the store.

“Ten bucks, okay?”

Shana reached over and snatched the flowers out of the panhandler’s hand, then hurled them into the parking lot. “I don’t want any damn roses,” she said, the automatic door almost striking her in the face. “When a person says no, next time maybe you’ll listen.”

P
aul Butler, the chief deputy district attorney of Ventura County, was seated behind his desk in his large corner office on the third floor of the government center complex in Ventura, his eyes bloodshot from staring at columns of figures. Julia Benson, his assistant, called him over the intercom, advising him that he had a visitor waiting in the reception area. “I’m working on the budget, Julia,” he said. “I asked you not to interrupt me.”

“It’s Lily Forrester’s daughter.”

At sixty-one, Butler was a small, balding man. Scheduled to retire in three months, he was counting the days. His plan had been to talk his wife into selling the house they’d lived in during their twenty-seven years of marriage in exchange for a condominium in a community with a golf course. The previous year he’d undergone hip-replacement surgery. This year he had developed a problem with his right knee, making it painful for him to walk an eighteen-hole course. What he wanted was to be able to scoot around in his own golf cart, jump on the greens anytime he wanted, and make a last-ditch attempt to improve his golf game. He didn’t feel he was asking too much. During his marriage his wife had never worked, and he’d always been an excellent provider. At the moment he wasn’t a happy camper. His oldest daughter had thrown a wrench in his retirement plans.

“Paul,” Julia said again, “didn’t you hear me?”

“I heard you,” Butler snapped, turning the volume up on the intercom. “Why would Lily Forrester’s daughter want to see me?”

“She won’t say.”

“Let someone else handle it.” Butler spun his chair around, gazing out the window as the sun began to set over the Ventura foothills. He had heard that Lily’s husband had been murdered,
but only after he’d given prosecutor Frank Pearlman permission to file charges against her on the Hernandez matter. He’d only made such a decision due to pressure from the mayor’s office. In his opinion, trying a case that old wasn’t worth the effort. He didn’t really give a hoot. Since the problem would fall into the hands of his successor, why should he become embroiled in a confrontation with the woman’s daughter?

“The girl’s insistent,” Julia told him. “She claims it’s a life-or-death situation.”

“Jesus,” Butler exclaimed, “did someone make certain she didn’t slip through with a gun or some other kind of weapon?” While he was up to his eyeballs in work, trying to tie up loose ends for his impending retirement, his oldest daughter had suddenly shown up on his doorstep with her three kids. He loved his grandchildren, but his daughter had spoiled them rotten. She thought she could buy her way out of the fact that she’d walked out on their father. The last thing Butler wanted this late in the day was to have to deal with another hysterical female.

“Everyone goes through the metal detector downstairs,” Julia said in her clipped New England accent. “The girl is carrying a Target sack, and one of those bags designed for portable computers. Security looked through them both. I don’t think there’s any reason for anyone to do a body search.” Her next statement held a ring of sarcasm. “You may be important, Paul, but you’re not the president.”

Butler had nothing against women, but lately they seemed to think they could walk all over him. “I’m tired,” he said, placing the palm of his hand on his forehead. “Don’t I still have a right to make my own decisions?”

“I spoke to her in the lobby,” Julia Bender told him. “Lily and I were friends, Paul. This young woman was raped, and now some maniac has murdered her father. It’s over my head, so I don’t even want to mention these so-called murder charges. Just give the girl a few minutes of your time, and I promise I’ll keep everyone out of your hair until you finish the budget.”

“Fine,” Butler said grudgingly. “Send her in.”

At five-fifteen, Shana was buzzed through the security doors.
At forty-three, Julia had short brown hair and pale green eyes. She was dressed in a white silk blouse and a black skirt. “I’m sorry about your father,” she said, escorting the girl down the carpeted corridor. “This must be a terrible time for you. Please express my sympathies to your mother. Tell her I said to call me if there’s anything I can do.”

“Thanks,” Shana told her, accepting the card she pressed into her hand.

Julia opened the door to the deputy district attorney’s office, then quietly retreated.

“So you’re the big boss around here,” Shana said, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. Her face was void of makeup, and she was wearing a pair of Levi’s and a sweatshirt. She crossed her legs, swinging one foot back and forth, purposely wanting to draw Butler’s attention to the bulky hiking boots she’d purchased during her shopping trip to Target, the type of boots she recalled seeing her mother wearing the morning after the rape.

“What can I do for you?” Butler asked, placing his hands behind his neck as he leaned back in his chair. “Shana, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you know my mother?”

“Yes, I do,” Butler answered. “I know your mother quite well.”

“Not that well,” Shana told him, reaching into her computer case and pulling out a copy of the composite drawing she’d found in the newspaper archives. “Not if you’re going to put her in prison for something she didn’t do.”

Butler straightened up in his chair. His glasses slid down on his nose as he peered up at her. “We’re only doing our job,” he said. “I realize this—”

Shana threw up her hands. “If you say what I think you’re going to say, I’m going to scream. Everyone keeps saying they know what a terrible time this is for me. That’s a crock of shit, okay? My father was murdered. The man who raped me has already been released from prison. He’s probably trying to find me right now so he can kill me or rape me again.”

Butler reached for the button on the speaker phone, deciding he would have to call security and have the girl removed. She
looked fairly young, but she was at least five-ten, if not taller, and she appeared to be in excellent physical condition. He was older and smaller; therefore, there was a chance she could overpower him. He cursed Julia for talking him into seeing her. Although he didn’t feel the situation called for such a drastic measure as hitting the panic button under his desk, the atmosphere inside the room had become heavy and oppressive. Lily’s daughter seemed to be emitting some type of tremendous energy, and the look in her eyes was menacing.

Just then Shana leaped to her feet, reaching into the sack and pulling out a blue knit cap. While Butler watched, having no idea what she was going to do next, she stuffed her long red hair inside the cap, then rushed toward his desk.

“Call security!” Butler hit the intercom with one hand and the panic button with the other, then shoved his chair back from the desk in order to put as much space as possible between himself and the girl.