The visual image of him standing in the light from the bathroom appeared in Lily’s mind: the red sweatshirt, the profile—she even recalled the top of his head as he bent down to snap his pants. She glanced back down at the photo, but also noticed the other men on the page. Out of six, two were wearing a red T-shirt or sweatshirt. Red was a gang color. She knew that—every other Hispanic in Oxnard wore red and those silly baseball caps. She then started thumbing back through the pages and saw more red shirts. One man was wearing a gold chain with a crucifix. She turned the page and saw another one, only smaller. If she let her imagination go now, she might end up in a mental institution. The man she had shot was the man. It must end there and end now.
“Mom, you didn’t even have your glasses on that night, and you don’t have them on now,” Shana snapped. “He raped me, remember, and I can see perfectly.” She turned to Margie and said sarcastically, “She’s supposed to wear them when she drives too, but she never does.”
“I only really need them to read—just a little far-sighted,” Lily informed the detective. “Anyway, arguing over it right now is counterproductive. Can you pull him in for a lineup?”
“Ill get right on it and call you as soon as it can be arranged. Why don’t you two go home now and get some rest and try to put this out of your mind?” As Shana walked past her mother, heading for the door, Margie gave Lily a look with those Liz Taylor eyes and shrugged her shoulders. “Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?” she said.
“You got that right,” Lily replied and started walking out, trying to catch Shana.
Margie’s voice projected and echoed in the large room. “Oh, I’m sure I don’t have to mention this, but it might not be a bad idea for you to wear those glasses when I can get this guy in here for the real thing.” She returned to her desk, sat down, shifting from side to side until her flesh-and-blood bustle was comfortable, and then turned her back on Lily.
By the time Lily made it out of the building, Shana was waiting by the passenger door of the Honda. As she started the car, Lily told her, “They’ll get the lineup together and we’ll go from there, okay?”
The girl was staring straight ahead. They rode in silence for quite some time. “Why don’t you turn on the radio?” Lily suggested.
“He’s still out there. I know it now. I thought he’d run away. He didn’t. He’s still out there. You told me he’d go far away and never come back so he wouldn’t get caught.”
Lily hesitated, torn now, not knowing exactly what to say and thinking she must call the psychologist and get Shana in to see her tomorrow. She felt that assuaging her rising fear was the right thing to do, even if she became angry. “I really feel he’s long gone, honey, and like I said back there, I don’t think it’s him. I can see things far away better than I can close up: that’s what farsightedness means. When he was close, it was very dark, but when he was leaving, he was farther away and in the light.” She reached for her hand, holding it tightly. “I don’t think the man you saw was him. He’s gone. You’re a smart girl. You know a lot of people look alike. Even you and I look alike, but of course, I’m a lot older. If we were the same age, people could mistake us even. See?”
Shana reached out and turned on the radio, a rock station. She then said over the noise, “It was him, Mom. When you see him with your glasses, then you’ll know.”
CHAPTER 23
En route to Moorpark, Cunningham pushed the speedometer up to eighty on the two-year-old Chrysler sedan and felt the chassis shake beneath him, but the large engine had the capacity to break a hundred with no problem. He sometimes missed the days behind the wheel of a screaming black-and-white, the radio turned full tilt to hear the dispatcher over the siren, the streets coming up in seconds, knowing each time he raced through an intersection he could collide in a mammoth marriage of metal, his life over, or arrive at the scene of whatever hot call he was rolling to and meet some nut with a shotgun ready to blow him to kingdom come. Those were the brawn and balls days, far behind him. These were the days when he went home with a headache instead of a black eye or a bruised kidney. These days he had to use what was between his ears.
It was hard for him to imagine any other job, no matter how much he tried and how much he complained. He quite simply loved it. With a dozen stories with open endings going on at the same time, he always had something to occupy his mind. Trying to put together the missing pieces in a homicide was to Cunningham like completing the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink: always having the little puzzle in his back pocket to play with, yet aware that he had to find just the right word and make sure it fit perfectly before he filled in the blank spaces with his pen. He was not a man who made mistakes. Mistakes lead to guilty men walking free on the streets, thumbing their noses at law officers who were hasty and sloppy.
Thinking of the case at hand, and the issue of jurisdiction if the body was in fact Patricia Barnes, he was certain the sheriff’s department would be more than pleased to kick the case to his side of the fence. The victim had been seen last in Oxnard, reported missing in that city, and the primary suspect was now the victim of an Oxnard homicide investigation. There were far too many Oxnards in this little puzzle and not enough Moorparks. Knowing this information already, even though a positive identification hadn’t been made, the sheriff’s department was probably handling it like anything else that was on the burner: to be handed off like a hot potato. And that meant mistakes.
He took his foot off the gas once he left the main road. It didn’t take him long to determine that he was in the right place. Three county black-and-whites were parked along an unpaved but graded dirt road where a new housing tract was going in: a white van belonging to the medical examiner, an unmarked police unit, and a black-and-white crime-scene unit. Other than two bulldozers and a few other pieces of construction equipment, no other civilians appeared to be present and, thank God, he thought, no reporters or television remote vans as yet. The professionals themselves frequently trampled and destroyed valuable evidence. Reporters and onlookers were a homicide investigator’s worst nightmare.
He flung the door to his unit open and removed his shield from his back pocket, flipped it, and hung it on his belt a few inches from the buckle. “Shit,” he said, stepping out into the soft dirt and sinking. The day before, he had finally taken a few minutes to have his worn-out black shoes polished and shined while he had a haircut. Now they were filthy again and would look even worse than they had before. Waste of money, he thought as he started marching in the direction of the uniforms, knowing it wasn’t really messing up his shoes that annoyed him. What he never got used to was finding the rotting remains of people, thrown away like useless garbage.
Charlie Daniels, the medical examiner, was leaning over the edge of the shallow grave, holding up a dirt-covered arm with a plastic gloved hand. He dropped it when he saw Cunningham. “Your case, my man?” he asked. “Go on. Take a look. Couple more pictures and we’re gonna take her out.”
“Who’s crime scene here?” Cunningham yelled at the group, and a man dressed in a white sheriff’s office shirt and black pants stepped forward.
The two men backed away from the others and, looking at the ground as they spoke, the crime-scene officer filled Cunningham in on what had transpired prior to his arrival. “My partner is reloading the camera in the unit,” he said. “As soon as we got here, we made a pretty extensive search of the area before we allowed anyone else to disturb it. Even the construction worker was pretty cool. Once he saw what he thought was the body, he went and called and didn’t go back. We picked up a lot of junk, and it’s bagged and in the van.” The name on the man’s shirt read tom Stafford.
“Okay, Stafford,” Cunningham said. A bulldozer had run right over the whole thing, eliminating such vital evidence as tire marks or indications of how far and from where the body had been dragged to its grave. They would expand the search for evidence in a wider circle as the investigation progressed, and although they might have picked up var
ious items, there was no way to know if they were related to the homicide until forensics got to them. “I guess you would have told me if you found a weapon or something, right?”
“No such luck. Not unless you think she was killed with a couple of beer cans, a candy wrapper, or the carcass of what looks like a cat.”
Stepping to the edge of the grave now that he was satisfied that the crime scene had been secured and as much evidence collected as possible, Cunningham looked down at the corpse. He had little doubt it was Patricia Barnes. It sure wasn’t Ethel Owen. Ethel was a tiny woman, and this woman was far from small.
“We dusted her off enough for you to see her face,” the medical examiner offered. “She’s a big one, huh?”
Almost every orifice of her body was filled with dirt, and her mouth was a large, open circle, probably the last scream of terror before death. Her eyes were also open, but small animals had feasted on a good portion of them and little was left. As Cunningham reached into his pocket and pulled out three photos of the woman given him by her sister, Daniels leaned over again and scraped more dirt off her open mouth. Scooping it out with a gloved finger, he exposed a dried-up, purplish tongue extending onto her bottom lip. Around her neck were distinct discolorations, but there appeared to be no other wounds.
“Strangulation?” Cunningham asked, expressing his opinion on the cause of death. The protruding tongue and marks on her throat were classic.
“Well now, we haven’t turned her over. Just might have a knife sticking out of her back, but from this viewpoint I would agree.” With that the medical examiner stood and stretched his back—he then took a white handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “You give the word, and we take her out and have a look.”
Before Cunningham answered, the M.E.‘s assistant and one of the crime-scene men started toward the body. “Go,” he said.
It was his girl. The black short skirt and bright pink sweater she had been reported wearing when missing locked it up. He watched as they removed her: three good-sized men, still straining under the dead weight. Although she was fat and out of shape, in the pictures he had seen a pretty face and a pleasant smile. Some men liked big women, he speculated, wondering just how much she got for turning a trick but certain it wasn’t much. She sure wasn’t pretty now.
They placed her on a plastic sheet and rolled her onto her stomach, the M.E. brushing off dirt with his hand and then lifting her sweater and checking her back. “Nada, my man. No reason to remove her skirt here. Nothing there that I can see. We’ll cut it off later and bag it.” She was still wearing what looked like panty hose. The M.E. stuck his hand up the back of her skirt, like a ventriloquist, and after feeling around, he withdrew it. “No signs of sexual assault right now, as the crotch is still in place—unless he raped her somewhere else and then had her dress, come here, and then strangled her,” he said, standing. “Believe me, no one but this lady herself could get that panty hose over that ass in one piece. They feel like they’re steel-belted anyway.” He laughed and the laughter spread through the crowd of men. They welcomed it. Even in the open air, the smell of decomposing flesh was overpowering, and many turned away. The M.E. was waving his hands over his head, swatting at a fly.
Cunningham looked down at the large lump of flesh that had once been a living, breathing human being: a mother, a daughter, a sister to others who cared. The only thought that came to mind was that the poor creature would never suffer ridicule again over her weight, never have to suck some guy’s dick to feed her two kids, and would never have to worry about retirement. Her troubles were over. Maybe this sad life had earned her another as a rich, skinny Beverly Hills beauty. Sure, he thought, like reincarnation. As far as he was concerned, that was the one good thing about death: no one really knew who the winners and losers were on the other side. It was a hell of a lot better not knowing.
While more photographs were taken of both the body and the empty grave, and Officer Stafford started looking for evidence in the grave itself, the investigator from the district attorney’s office arrived, eyes squinting from the sunlight without shades, complaining that he’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of nowhere. Cunningham filled him in, but related that he would call Lily Forrester himself as soon as he could spring free.
The press arrived, complete with a film crew, just as they were placing Patricia Barnes in a body bag. The place was rapidly becoming a zoo. Cunningham removed his shield and placed it in his pocket, finding the first uniform that responded.
“Once the body is removed, you clear and write up your report and fax it to my office, with my name on it.”
“It’s not much,” the young officer stated, “just the statement from the construction worker and who I notified, you know. My sergeant said he spoke with you, and it’s your case if you claim it. With the riots and all, a lot of our men have been working in L.A., and we’re hardly able to handle what we have already.”
Before he could make a formal statement along these lines, he would have to get her sister to meet him at the morgue for a positive ID and clear it with the captain. “As far as the press are concerned—and anyone else, for that matter—she’s an unidentified homicide victim as of this moment. Got it?” he instructed the officer. “You better write it like it’s yours right now and tell your sergeant I said so. I’ll call him later this evening.”
He tapped Daniels on the shoulder as he walked to his unit, while they loaded the body. “I’ll get the victim’s sister in tonight, if I can find her. You gonna be around, Charlie?”
“Not tonight, my man. Day’s over for me. Call or come by around three tomorrow afternoon,” he yelled over the roar of a passing plane.
Two hours later, Cunningham exited the morgue with Anita Ramirez, the identification made. The woman was crying and blubbering, rattling on about the kids, telling Cunningham that she had three of her own and didn’t know how she could raise another two. Thank God she had arrived with several other family members and collapsed in their arms, freeing him to leave. He went to a pay phone and called his captain.
After he got the okay to handle the case, he started to hang up and call Forrester when the captain stopped him. “Bruce, I have some bad news about the Owen homicide.”
He froze. The case was down. The defendant sentenced to prison. He waited, holding his breath, thinking Ethel Owen had suddenly walked into the police station after an extended vacation in Europe and made them all look like a bunch of idiots.
“They called while you were out today. Franco Andrade was released on bail today pending appeal of the conviction.”
“What the fuck…?”
“Look, Bruce, the evidence was completely circumstantial. It was a minor miracle the jury even delivered a guilty verdict to begin with. You knew he appealed. Well, the judge felt the case was weak enough to merit his release on bail. What can I tell you, guy? Win some, lose some.”
He hung up and kicked the brick wall by the phone, almost breaking his toe and putting a jagged hole in the end of his shoe. Another killer released on the street. All that work for nothing. The appeal could take years, and that slimy bastard would just find another old woman to prey on or fucking kill. He was livid. All they were doing was chasing their own tails around and around in little circles like a bunch of mongrel dogs.
“Win some, lose some,” he said between clenched teeth, repeating his captain’s words as he picked up the phone to call Lily Forrester. “Fucking lose some and then some is what I’d call it. Fucking disgrace is what. Judge’s own mother should meet up with Franco and see how he likes it.” Before he tossed in the coin, he looked up at the sky. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. The air was still thick with ashes from the fires in L. A., and his white shirt was sprinkled with it. “We tried, Ethel,” he said. “That’s about all we can do. We can try.”
CHAPTER 24
Lily was sitting in the bedroom by the phone when Cunningham called. She had been waiting. Hi
s deep, strong voice had somehow become her link to sanity. The knowledge that he was her adversary disappeared whenever she heard his voice. Even the recollection of his face vanished, and all that remained was the disembodied sound that traveled through the telephone lines.
“No stab wounds or mutilations whatsoever?” Lily quizzed him, thinking of the crusty knife and also the McDonald-Lopez case, which had involved a small-caliber handgun. “What do we really have to link this to Bobby Hernandez other than the fact that she disappeared just prior to his arrest?” She was certain he was the rapist, certain he had murdered the prostitute, but everything was still a hazy gray and what she needed was black and white.
“Not a thing. For all we know, anyone could have strangled her in her line of work. We’ll go back over the van again, but even if he did her and transported her in that van, there wouldn’t be much evidence, not with strangulation.”
He was silent. Only the soft sounds of their breathing came over the phone line. It was as if they were both in the same room, only a few feet away, both deep in thought.
“The case is certainly not closed,” he said, putting an end to the strange silence.
“What about Hernandez? Any leads whatsoever?” Lily asked matter-of-factly. She then added, “You know my primary concern is Manny, his brother, and whether we can put them into the McDonald-Lopez homicides.”
“No leads on Bobby and as yet nothing to write home about on that one either, other than the known associations. We could put a surveillance team on Manny if you put the pressure on. I think we can substantiate it.”
“You got it,” she said. “I’ll make the calls first thing in the morning.” Before hanging up, she added, “Bruce, we need a break on McDonald-Lopez and we need it bad. We may have a couple of innocent young men on trial for murder one.”
“I hear you, babe,” he said. “You know what, you’re my kind of woman. I bet there’s not a DA. down at your place who gives a shit who they try as long as they get a conviction.” The line went dead. Cunningham had hung up.
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