Buried Evidence (7 page)

A faint voice pleaded, “Help…me.”

John stood frozen. He couldn’t breathe, think, move. He
watched in horror as the man’s eyes closed and his head flopped to one side. “No,” he shouted, falling to his knees. “Please, God, don’t let him be dead.”

There was no blood, at least none he could see. Positioning his face over the man’s mouth, he felt a whisper of breath on his cheek. He reached toward his legs, certain they were broken, then yanked his hands back as if he were reaching into a flame. What if he regained consciousness? He couldn’t let the man see his face. “Are you satisfied now?” he said, blaming Lily. “This would never have happened if you hadn’t upset me.”

He had to remain calm, figure out a game plan.

John decided the man must be a pedestrian, as there were no other cars in the parking lot. Dressed in beige khaki pants and a white T-shirt, the victim appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties. His dark hair was long and unkempt, but there was an incredible softness to his features, causing John to question if he might be a female. No, he told himself, the voice he had heard had sounded too masculine. To make certain, he bent down again. When he failed to detect breasts beneath the person’s T-shirt, he decided his first assumption was correct and the person was male. Regardless, the young man was astonishingly beautiful. A light seemed to be emanating from his face.

John rocked back and forth on his knees, overwrought with emotion. He’d been driving too fast. He hadn’t been paying attention. His daughter had been right when she had accused him of drinking. After losing the only real estate contract he’d written in three months, he had consoled himself with alcohol. “What have I done?”

He felt a powerful urge to pick the young man up in his arms, place him in his car, then rush him to the nearest hospital. His pants seemed several sizes too large, and his arms were like skinny twigs. Was he one of those street kids? John asked himself. Hollywood was full of them. Many of them were runaways who turned to prostitution to survive. Could that be why his features appeared so soft and feminine? Did he hustle men for sex?

John’s eyes darted to the ice cream parlor, then quickly scanned the parking lot. He didn’t see any customers inside the
store, and the salesclerk looked as if he was tallying up the day’s receipts. He wasn’t wearing his wristwatch, and for all he knew, the clock in the car might be slow and the store had already been closed by the time he reached the parking lot. He took note of the other businesses in the strip shopping center. The anchor, as they called it in real estate terms, was obviously Baskin-Robbins, but there was also a dry cleaners, a sandwich shop, as well as a small boutique. Outside of the ice cream parlor, the other establishments would have closed hours before. He was certain no one had witnessed the accident. He’d been convicted of driving under the influence only the previous month. The consequences would be disastrous if he called the police.

Leaping back into the Mustang, he roared out the opposite entrance to the parking lot. At the first intersection he made a right turn into a residential neighborhood. His chances would be better if he stayed off the main thoroughfares. Picking up his cell phone, he started to dial 911, then quickly disconnected. A police officer might respond in a matter of minutes. Sometimes they were only a block or two away when the dispatcher advised them of an emergency call. He had to be safely out of the area before he did anything. The last thing he wanted was to drive right past the police car. Had the boy seen his face before he’d lost consciousness? Could he have possibly memorized his license plate? Even though he hadn’t seen any blood, he could have suffered internal injuries.

Young people who sold their bodies were asking for trouble, John decided, practically flirting with death. One of his tricks could have killed him, or the kid could have contracted a sexually transmitted disease. If he did decide to own up to what he had done, the police might think he had paid the boy to have sex with him, maybe even intentionally harmed him. With all his other problems, the last thing he needed was to become caught up in an ugly scandal.

The fact that the kid was probably a runaway might work in his favor. That meant there would be no relatives looking for him, at least, not right away. For all he knew, the authorities might
not even be able to make an identification. The guy had been walking, so maybe he didn’t have a driver’s license.

John decided he would place an anonymous call to the authorities as soon as he got home. No, he corrected himself, his mind racing in a dozen different directions. Shana would hear and ask questions. Besides, the police had equipment that could trace every call. He had almost made a mistake and used his cell phone.

The only solution was to find a pay phone.

His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel. Perspiration spread across his forehead. His shirt was so wet it felt as if he had just removed it from the washing machine. He tried to focus on the road, but his vision was distorted. Several times he passed over the line into the opposite lane, almost colliding with an oncoming vehicle.

He wasn’t drunk, he told himself. His vision was blurred because Lily had made him crazy. He had been sober when he’d left the house. “You’re lying,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Alcohol was a demon drug, no different than cocaine, speed, even heroin. Once again it had seduced him, lured him into a false state of confidence. How many glasses of Jack Daniel’s had he consumed? All he recalled was tossing an empty bottle into the trash can while he was cleaning up the kitchen.

The lights to the shopping center where Ralph’s was located loomed in the near distance. Outside the grocery store was a phone booth. Squealing to a stop at the curb, he left the engine running in the Mustang as he raced toward the phone. After digging in his pocket for his wallet, he came up with only a few dimes and a five-dollar bill. In his rush to get to Baskin-Robbins, he must have left his wallet on the coffee table at the duplex.

A middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair was exiting the market, her arms laden with groceries. He opened his mouth to ask her for change, then stopped himself. The police could easily dispatch a unit to the phone booth after he reported the accident. The woman must live in the neighborhood because she was walking in the direction of the sidewalk instead of the parking
lot. Their eyes met and he quickly looked away. How could he call from here? The woman would remember him.

John peered inside the store. If he went inside to get change from one of the checkers, he would encounter the same problem. He had to make certain no one would be able to connect him to the crime. He wanted desperately to do the right thing, admit what he had done, get medical help for the boy. He knew he couldn’t, however. It was a matter of survival. A person couldn’t sell real estate without a driver’s license. But that was the least of his concerns. Because of his DWI, they’d send him to jail this time. Since the boy had been injured and he’d fled the scene of the accident, he could easily be facing prison in lieu of a jail sentence. How could he suffer through the humiliation of a prison sentence? Lily would never let him live it down. Shana would be devastated. In addition, he wasn’t a young man. He would never come out alive if they sent him to prison. The inmates would have a field day with him. He had never been a strong man, and the type of people who ended up in prison could smell weakness like a wolf could pick up the scent of an injured deer. Using the edge of his shirt, he wiped his fingerprints off the glass window.

Finally he formulated a plan. He’d get the change, then drive to another pay phone to notify the authorities. Stepping on the electronic mat for the door opener, he tried to appear calm as he entered the store and approached a heavy-set blonde woman working the express counter. “I’m closed,” she said, pointing at another cashier a few rows over.

Standing behind a young couple, he felt a sharp pain in the center of his chest. Was he going to drop dead of a heart attack and never see his daughter again? The man and woman in front of him had a cart full of food; the husband was unloading items onto the counter. Thinking of Shana made him realize he couldn’t go home empty-handed. “Where’s the ice cream?”

The sleepy-eyed checker didn’t answer him.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he yelled, bumping into the woman. “Where’s the damn ice cream?”

“Aisle seven,” the male checker told him.

A few moments later, John was back in line with a pint of
Ben & Jerry’s chocolate chip ice cream. He’d grabbed the first carton he’d seen in the freezer.

“You must be a real ice cream freak,” the husband said, glowering at him. He was a tall, muscular man, his hair cut short on the sides, then gelled to stand up on top. On his right forearm was a tattoo of an eagle. “You almost knocked my wife down. You could have said you were sorry. Can’t you see that she’s pregnant?”

“I’m sorry,” John said, staring into the woman’s eyes. Her face suddenly took on the features of the beautiful young man. He wished he could tell him that he was sorry, that if things had been different, he would have helped him and not run off like a coward. Tossing the five-dollar bill on the counter once the couple had left, he paid for the ice cream and hurried out of the store.

Intending to drive to another phone booth, he found himself back on Melrose Avenue. Only the outside lights were burning at Baskin-Robbins, so he assumed the clerk he had seen earlier had gone home. Where had his car been parked? When he had been there before, the parking lot had been empty. The clerk must be a teenager. That meant he could have ridden a bicycle to work, or one of his friends might have picked him up. Surely someone had discovered the injured boy by now and contacted the authorities.

Driving slowly, John steered to the south side of the parking lot, where the accident had occurred. When he didn’t see anything, he let out a long sigh of relief. The man must have had the wind knocked out of him, then got up and went on his way. Placing his foot on the brakes, he rested his head against the back of the seat. His prayers had been answered. He swore he would never drink again. Now all he had to do was clear his mind. He shut his eyes, willing his body to stop trembling.

Just then his cell phone rang.

“Where are you?” Shana demanded, her voice shrill and grating.

“I’m on my way home, honey.”

“I’m so tired I’m about to pass out. All I wanted was something sweet—”

John cut her off. “I didn’t go to Baskin and Robbins.”

“Why not?”

“It was too late by the time I left,” he lied. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, so I drove all the way over to Lucky’s. They didn’t have peanut butter and chocolate.”

“Great,” Shana said facetiously. “You got ice cream, though,

right?”

“I got—” John was looking in his rearview mirror to see if it was safe to make a U-turn when he spotted the outline of the boy’s body on the ground. When the rear section of the Mustang had struck him, the boy must have fallen behind a large shrub. He’d been in such a panic before that he’d failed to notice. “I’ll talk to you when I get home,” he said, tossing the phone on the passenger seat.

He circled the block, then slowed to a stop on the opposite side of the street. Pitiful cries filtered in through the open window. Not only had he verified that the incident had not been an alcohol-induced delusion, the victim had regained consciousness and appeared to be in terrible pain. Clutching his cell phone, he tried to force himself to call the police. He knew the boy’s tortured cries would haunt him the rest of his life.

John ran his tongue over his lips. His mouth was parched, his head throbbing. Another stab of pain entered his chest. His legs began to ache. He felt paralyzed, almost as if he had been hit by a car instead of the boy. Scenes from his life played out in his mind. He saw his high school graduation, the day he’d married Lily. He saw himself holding his baby daughter only moments after her birth. The pleasant images abruptly disappeared, replaced with a menacing cloud of darkness.

John’s shoulders shook. He wasn’t a callous individual. He knew right from wrong. All he asked was to be able to walk way from this one mistake. He would not only swear off booze, he’d work harder, sell more houses, never again interfere with Shana’s relationship with her mother. Outside of his arrest for drunk driving, he had never committed a criminal act, never purposely harmed another human being.

His nose began running. Unable to find a tissue, he retrieved
a napkin from the backseat and blew it. In three months his daughter would turn nineteen. For someone so young, she’d suffered more than her share of heartache. He stared at the clock on the dashboard. For over an hour he’d wrestled with his conscience. He tossed the napkin out the window. The battle was over. By not reporting the accident, he might be saving himself from a prison sentence, but he was also protecting his daughter. Seeing another car’s headlights approaching behind him, he stepped on the gas and headed home.

R
ichard Fowler parked his Lexus in the Ventura High School parking lot, opening the trunk and removing a fresh shirt encased in plastic from the cleaners. After he changed, he dug inside his gym bag and pulled out a bottle of Bay Lime aftershave, pouring some on his hands and then splashing it on his face. Back in his car, he checked his image in the rearview mirror, making certain Lily had left no incriminating smudges of lipstick.

Located high in the foothills, his home offered a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. At night the glittering lights of the city replaced the beauty of the shoreline. As he navigated the narrow, winding roads, he reminded himself of the one major drawback—mud slides. After living in California for over twenty years, however, a mud slide seemed insignificant next to the threat of another massive earthquake. He had long ago decided he’d rather ride his house to the bottom of the hill than find himself submerged beneath the swirling waters of a monster tidal wave.

Entering the kitchen through the garage, he opened the stainless steel refrigerator, gazing inside at the contents. Yogurt, tofu, bean sprouts. Couldn’t the woman at least buy real food? Grabbing an apple and a fancy bottle of herbal tea, he slammed the door shut in disgust. He couldn’t even have a beer anymore, maybe a sack of unsalted pretzels. He’d had to fight for the right to have an occasional soda.
Nothing but flavored chemicals
, she’d told him, chastising him like a child.