Once he had gone, Lily took a deep breath and pushed the flashing button. The detective started talking before Lily even answered.
“Silverstein called me at home and started barking orders at me. Who is this guy and what makes you people think you have the right to tell me how to run an investigation?”
“I’m sorry, Bruce. Accept my apology. Obviously, I know you’re on top of this…but…” She tried desperately to separate herself, not fall over her words, play the part. Like an animal, he would sense her fear. “This Lopez-McDonald case has everyone crazy over here. It’s one of those cases that grabs you.”
“Yeah,” he said, the anger diffused. “Well, I’ll let you know the minute I have anything. The whole thing may be nothing.”
She could tell he was getting ready to hang up. The words were in her throat, trapped there. Finally she spoke. “What do you actually have on Hernandez?”
“I thought I had something good, but it didn’t work out. Neighbor got a plate. Swore she copied it down exactly right, but it came back to the wrong vehicle and a sixty-nine-year-old registered owner in Leisure World.” Cunningham must have been eating something, for smacking noises came out over the line and pans rattled in the background. “We’ve got a composite drawing of the suspect: white male, five-ten, thin, fair-skinned. Could be a professional hit. Never know. Looks like someone just did us a favor on that one.”
“Thanks, Bruce,” Lily said. “Call us if anything new develops.” She hung up the phone in a daze. Some favor, she thought, wondering if people realized the meaning of their offhand comments. She visualized herself sitting on the floor in a circle with the big detective standing in the center like a schoolteacher. He would look over the heads of the children, saying: “Now, which one of you did us the favor of murdering the bad Mr. Hernandez?” Lily would raise her hand proudly.
She felt like she was losing her mind.
Without the Magic Marker she would already be marching to a jail cell. They were looking for a man, a professional assassin. That’s what he had said. But Cunningham was smart, cunning, and she knew very well that he could be setting her up, having her followed, waiting for confirmation from the lab. She put her head in her hands, laced her fingers through her hair, and pulled as hard as she could. She was looking for the pain of reality, but she felt the nothingness of abstraction. When she removed her hands, sizable tufts of red hair were locked in her fingers.
CHAPTER 16
As they sat in the psychologist’s outer office, Lily reviewed a case she had brought along, while Shana thumbed through a magazine. A woman about Lily’s age walked out, and both Shana’s and Lily’s eyes glanced up at her, certain she was the doctor. Then a much younger woman appeared in the door and motioned for them to enter. She had soft brown eyes in a small, round face, and camel-colored hair to her shoulders. She was dressed in a calf-length floral skirt and green sweater, wearing loafers and socks. “I’m Marsha Lindstrom, Mrs. Forrester, and this must be Shana.”
Lily stood and quickly shoved the case file into her open briefcase. “I thought you would be older,” she said without thinking.
“Well, that’s a nice compliment.” She smiled at Shana. “Why don’t I talk to your mother first and you wait out here? We won’t be long.”
Shana was standing and spoke up. “Why don’t you talk to both of us? It happened to both of us. We were both there.”
“That might be true, but sometimes people express themselves better when they are alone. Just give us a few minutes, okay?”
Instead of an office, the woman led Lily to a room with a sofa, coffee table, and two large, overstuffed chairs. Lily had already had Ventura P.D. fax the woman a copy of the police report. With a clipboard in her hands, she started quizzing Lily on her childhood, her parents, her marriage.
“I don’t think any of this is relevant,” Lily stated, annoyed and restless. “I want you to counsel my daughter, not me.”
“So you don’t believe you have suffered any personal trauma over this incident? Is that correct?”
“I didn’t say that. Sure, I’ve suffered trauma, but I’m used to it.” Lily paused, feeling trapped and stupid. Everything she said, everything she did came out wrong. Her control was slipping away. “What I mean is that—”
“Have you ever been raped before, Mrs. Forrester? Lily…can I call you Lily?”
The woman held her soft brown eyes on Lily’s face. Lily looked down at her loafers and white socks. She looked like a graduate student. She was too young.
“What real difference does that make?” The lights were low and soft guitar music played from hidden speakers. “I’m an incest survivor. Does that qualify as being raped? I think it does. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Can you tell me how you feel about that…the incest?”
Lily had finally said the words to someone other than John, and the floodgates cranked open, releasing a torrent of emotions. It was another category, another title, she thought. District attorney, incest survivor, murderer. What else could she become: inmate, prisoner, jailbird? She saw herself with a number across her chest, staring into the camera, heard the click of the shutter. “How do you think I feel?” Lily stood and glared at the young woman. “Let me tell you how I feel. If someone ever tries to tell you that lightning doesn’t strike twice, tell them to fuck off. Now, call my daughter in here and see if you can help her. It’s too late for me.”
Lily walked out the door and didn’t look back.
She took a seat and waited. She’d acted like a complete ass when the poor woman was only trying to help. She just couldn’t deal with the incest now. It set her off, made her crazy. When Shana came out an hour later, Lily jumped up and knocked all the paperwork she had in her lap on the floor. “May I speak to you again?”
“Certainly,” Dr. Lindstrom stated calmly, “but my next appointment will be here soon.”
When they were once again in the small room, Lily apologized for her earlier behavior. “I’m sorry I was rude. I realize you’re only trying to help me, to do your job. The incest, well, it’s just too painful. I can’t break myself open and bleed all over your carpet now. Do you understand? Sometimes things go too far. Years ago, maybe. But now? Now I have to focus my concern and strength on my daughter and not bring up things that will disturb me.”
The woman didn’t reply. Silence hung heavily in the room, and Lily heard her own breath seeping in and out of her mouth. Perhaps this woman would one day be called into court to testify on her behalf, telling the jury that she had killed a man because of the incest. Maybe she would state that she was cold and heartless, recite how she had refused professional help, stomped out of her office. “How do you think my daughter is handling this?”
“Remarkably well, at least on the surface. Her greatest concern appears to be the fear that people know about the rape. Your daughter is a very strong young woman, very determined, very controlled.”
“Just that,” Lily said, leaning forward in her seat, “what you said about her being controlled. That’s not like Shana. She’s never been controlled. She’s always been spontaneous, almost a little erratic sometimes. And now she’s suddenly neater, quieter, more respectful. I’m afraid she’s going to suppress all this and let it build inside her for years, maybe all of it surfacing when she’s a woman.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“I guess it did,” Lily said in a child’s voice. “One of my greatest concerns is my daughter’s sexuality and how this will affect her. She’s a beautiful young woman and I want her to have a complete life.”
“Perhaps you should share your experiences with her. Tell her just what you told me. Give her a reason to work at therapy.”
“I can’t,” Lily said, looking at the floor, then raising her eyes tentatively. “And I believe it’s the wrong thing to do. The world used to be a safe place for her and that’s gone. If I tell her what happened to me, then she’ll see even more danger, evil, menace. She�
��ll see it all around her. She needs to feel this was an isolated incident that seldom occurs and will never happen again. I don’t want her thinking it can happen twice in a person’s lifetime.”
“But it can and it did in your case. Correct?”
“Correct.” Lily stared at her. “I’m not telling her.”
“That’s your decision.”
“Lately, everything’s my decision.”
“That appears to be the way you want it. Life is sometimes full of choices, decisions. You know, sometimes we end up with an unwelcome role in life, but it’s a role we’ve selected. You don’t have to deal with everything alone. Even if you don’t feel you can talk to me, there are groups for incest survivors. But here again, it’s a choice you have to make.”
As Lily walked out the door, she had a flash of herself standing over the car with the shotgun pointed at Hernandez. Was this really a choice she had made, to become an executioner? Had she waited all these years for that moment, waited for someone to step over the line and release the pent-up rage? Or was this a role created for her alone at birth, her entire life leading to that one moment? Did the universe prepare her by the earlier abuse to be a predator, to thin out the population of evil? No, she thought, she had stepped off the edge of the world and fallen into the abyss, into the dark, tormented waters of the insane.
“Mom,” Shana said, standing as her mother appeared, “what’s wrong?”
Lily was shivering, her arms wrapped around herself. “Nothing,” she said, “nothing at all.”
CHAPTER 17
The remainder of the week passed in slow motion. Days disappeared into sleepless nights, sleepless nights turned into blurry daylight, and Lily felt she was swimming the icy waters of the English Channel, pushing her body to perform, fighting the exhaustion, desperately trying to reach shore.
She had to get her hands on the police report filed by Oxnard P.D. on the murder of Bobby Hernandez. It was the only way to know exactly what evidence they had, to know where she really stood, and she had to see the composite drawing. She had instructed Clinton to order the reports, but they had never arrived. Clinton had taken over Richard’s unit, and Richard had moved into Carol Abrams’s old office. Everyone was buried in work, and the Hernandez murder was insignificant in itself and only of importance if he could be linked to the McDonald-Lopez case. Nothing further had developed on the missing prostitute. Everything was in limbo. Lily wanted to scream at Clinton to get the report, call and demand it from Cunningham, but she knew she would be a fool if she did so. That could be exactly what the detective was waiting for.
Every day when she backed out of her garage, she searched the streets for unmarked surveillance vehicles, looked in her rearview mirror as she drove to work, and every night she sat in her house thinking they were out there somewhere, watching her house.
“I’m going out tonight,” John said at about four-thirty Saturday afternoon. “I thought I would tell you so you could make your own plans.”
He had just come back from dropping off Shana at a friend’s house for a slumber party. Lily had case files spread out all over the oak dining room table. She had her hair in a ponytail, tied back with one of Shana’s “scrunchies,” as she called them, and was dressed in running shorts and a sweatshirt.
“What does that mean—you’re going out?” she said, removing her glasses and pushing the high-backed dining room chair away from the table. With no room in the house for a study, Lily had made a habit of working there: it afforded her more space than a desk. She had a classical tape in the stereo: Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. “Does that mean you have a date or something?”
“Lets just say I’m going out with a friend from the office. We both know you have friends from the office, don’t we?” he said sarcastically. “As soon as you’re certain Shana is stable, you’re going to move out again. You know it and I know it. There isn’t a life anymore for the two of us.” He walked over and turned the stereo down, as if the soft strains of classical music annoyed him. “You can stay here as long as you want, but I’m going on with my life. I have a right to have a life too.”
Looking deep into his soft brown eyes, she knew that he didn’t love her anymore. The love had ended long ago. He needed someone who made him feel important, who was eager to listen to his stories, and who saw him as an attractive and desirable man.
“Anyway,” he said, “you’ll have to get your own dinner.” His look was triumphant as he marched down the hall.
Lily remained in the dining room and attempted to regain her concentration as he showered and dressed for his “date.” The situation was becoming bizarre. Half an hour later, he came into the living room all decked out in one of his better suits, drenched in Drakkar cologne, making a point that she see him, and left, a lively bounce in his step. She hadn’t seen him walk that way in years.
Early date, she thought, wondering where he was going and with whom, trying to imagine what the woman looked like and asking herself if they would kiss, even have sex. All these years he had shunned her and made her feel dirty about her sexuality. Who was this woman? Some broken little girl he could comfort and protect? Why did he have a right to go on with his life when her life was destroyed? She should have stopped him, told him what she had done, sucked him into the nightmare. He should have been the one who avenged his daughter’s rape.
She stood and shoved the papers onto the floor, consumed with anger and self-pity. She walked through the silent house, from room to room, peering through the blinds, through the cracks in the drapes, looking. Since she had forgotten all about lunch, her stomach was empty and turning, acid bubbling into her throat. She opened the refrigerator and found a piece of cheese, two slices of sandwich meat, and a foil-wrapped, dried-up piece of leftover chicken. Slamming the door and grabbing her purse off the kitchen counter, she discovered that she had only three dollars in change. She hadn’t gone to the bank since the rape. Thinking she might find a few bills hidden inside the corner compartment of her checkbook, she pulled out the piece of paper with Richard’s phone number on it. On impulse she dialed the number. After two rings the machine picked up and a woman’s voice spoke on the recording. She immediately hung up, even though she was certain he had merely failed to change the recording after his wife had left.
Lily flipped on the television and stared at the screen. The inner city of Los Angeles had almost burned to the ground during the riots. Thousands of buildings and homes had been destroyed, and hundreds of people were injured or dead. It looked like a war zone. After fifteen minutes, she called Richard again, listened to his wife’s voice, and was about to hang up when he picked up, speaking over the recording, his own voice blending with the recorded voice of his wife.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’ve got to turn the machine off”
“It’s me,” Lily said, “your office partner. What’re you doing?”
“Well, you got me at a really bad time. You see, I have these twin nineteen-year-old blondes over here, and we’re about to get in the Jacuzzi.”
“Sorry. I’ll see you at work Monday. Have a good time.” Lily believed him and felt humiliated.
“Wait. That’s a joke. Actually, I’m sitting here all alone perusing the take-out menus, about to make the big decision. And what are you doing?”
“My husband has a date,” she said flatly, knowing how silly it sounded, yet needing to talk with someone.
“Well, isn’t that just special? I think that’s about the best thing he could do, if you ask me. Now, why don’t you get in your little red car and head my way? Can you find the house if I give you the address again?”
“I think I can,” she said, wanting to run out the door and leave the empty house behind.
“All you have to do is get here. I’ll take care of the rest. How long will it take?” He was anxious and it showed.
“Let’s say an hour.”
“See how easy this New Age living is. Now you have a date too. The Ozzie and Harriet d
ays weren’t really any fun, anyway, were they?”
He was so light, so breezy. “Maybe I shouldn’t come, Richard. I may ruin your evening.”
The lightness disappeared and his voice lowered. He uttered only one word: “Come.”
The sun was going down, and dark shadows were lurking in the corners of the empty room, marching toward her. “I’m coming. Right now.”
“I’m waiting.”
Lily hung up and, grabbing her parka draped over a kitchen chair, rushed from the house. She had not showered, her hair was unwashed and her face bare of makeup. As she drove, she watched the cars around her, behind her, weaving through side streets so that no one could follow her. When she arrived, after getting lost in the narrow, steep hills leading to his house and after huffing and puffing up the eighteen steps leading to his door, she started to turn and leave. You were an idiot to come here, she told herself. Standing on the doorstep, she looked back down at the steps and then back at the door. She released her hair from the ponytail and shook it free. She grabbed her compact from her purse and glanced at her face. Finally she rang the doorbell, standing there like a waif, her bare legs freezing.
As he flung open the door, his eyes registered shock at her appearance. Then he reached for her and held her in his arms. “My God, what’re you wearing shorts for this late in the evening? You’ll catch pneumonia. Come in. Come in.” He moved his arm, directing her into the living room and made a little bow like a headwaiter.
The house was now fully furnished, with lots of black marble and shiny, uncluttered surfaces. The lights were low and the stereo playing “Unforgettable” by Nat King and Natalie Cole. Lights were twinkling in the picture window overlooking the city. The dining table was set. Two candles in silver holders were the only lights in the room.
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