More than sixteen black-and-whites converged on the scene, but Brown had been alert enough to warn them of the importance of protecting any prints that might be on the weapon. It was bagged immediately and the area sealed off for the crime-scene units.
CHAPTER 34
Cunningham was in a deep, beer-induced sleep when the call came through. His wife answered the phone, punching him and handing it to him.
“The officer,” he asked, “you certain he’s going to pull through?”
“No doubt at all. I hear he’s awake and they’re removing the slugs. He’s lucky it was only a .22. Plus, the second shot was from a good distance, so that wound is pretty minor,” the patrol sergeant advised. “But your guy was pronounced dead in the E.R.”
“The weapon…sounds like what we’ve been looking for…hot damn,” Cunningham said. “We may have just put together that Ventura homicide.” He then added, “Impound the Plymouth. No telling what else we’ll find.”
As he hung up the phone, Sharon rolled over and rested her head in the crook of his arm. “You smell like a brewery. Are you going in?”
“Nah,” he said, “nothing on my end till tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”
“Have you ever thought of getting another job, Bruce?” She was drifting off as she spoke. He didn’t reply; she knew the answer.
He went to work at ten the following morning. The weapon was still in the lab and the fingerprint analysis was not complete, but the department was buzzing with rumors about the connection to the double homicides, and everyone came up to Cunningham, asking questions. The officer, Chris Brown, was in excellent condition and was due to be released the following day. Cunningham went to the hospital to see him.
“You did good, buddy,” he said, taking a seat in the small chair next to the bed and pulling it closer. “How’re you feeling?”
The young officer looked pale. He’d lost a lot of blood. “I’m going home tomorrow. Maybe if I’d called for backup right when it started going down, no one would’ve got shot.”
“You did what you were instructed to do. He might have been taking a stroll on the beach and you would have blown it. You kept him from disposing of the weapon. That was the game.” Cunningham brushed his fingers through his mustache and looked at the white tile floor. He pulled out his pack of Marlboros and then realized he couldn’t smoke in the hospital. “This guy had a big red target on his back. Someone else would’ve taken him out if it hadn’t been you. There’s no telling what all he and his brother were into, but you can bet it was all bad, real bad. In a few hours we’ll know if the weapon was the one used in the double homicide in Ventura.” The detective watched as the young officer gazed at the ceiling. He knew the look. “Never shot anyone before, huh?”
The officer tried to pull himself up on the pillows. He was too weak and fell back. “No one has ever shot me, or shot at me. I’ve never even fired my gun outside of the pistol range. I always knew it might happen, but then it really happens and it’s not at all what you thought it would be.” He looked over at the detective. “Seconds, that’s what it is. It’s all over and you’re still trying to figure out what went down in those seconds. Everything they teach you doesn’t mean shit.”
“Yeah,” Cunningham said, standing to leave. “You’ve got that right, my man. You rest now. I’ll see you later.”
Heading back to the station, Cunningham pulled through Taco Bell and ordered two burritos and a diet soda. He didn’t feel like stopping at Stop n’ Go to save the few cents on the drink. His head was throbbing from the beer he’d consumed the night before. He hadn’t stopped with the six-pack on the beach. He’d come home and downed three or four more. This was a sure sign of age, this hangover, he told himself, recalling the nights he had drunk three times as much and leaped out of bed the next morning ready to tackle the world. But the other thing was troubling him, the reason he had downed the beer to begin with, the fact that he still had an open homicide and the suspect was a district attorney. He belched loudly. Now his stomach was churning and bubbling. Getting close to a Maalox moment, he thought. Getting close to a damn ulcer, that’s what.
Back at the station, he found Forrester’s home phone number and sat in his chair, hesitant to speak with her. Conclusive reports on the fingerprints removed from the weapon wouldn’t be available until Monday. Did he really have a reason to call her at home again on a weekend? Then again, she would hear of Manny’s death, he told himself, and she would want to know if a weapon had been recovered. He picked up the phone and then gently replaced it on the cradle.
Why had he called her last night? He really didn’t know. If the weapon did prove to be the one used in the McDonald-Lopez slayings, this would amount to the finest police work of his career. He had followed the lead on the missing prostitute and hit pay dirt. It was his eagle eye that had spotted the F.I. card noting Carmen Lopez’s association with the Hernandez brothers, tying them to the mutilation murder. He had pushed for the surveillance on Manny even if Lily had been the one who suggested the weapon might be hidden in Manny’s Plymouth. That one he had to give to her. No doubt about it. That one he’d missed. But the rest was old yours truly, he thought with pride. He’d put the whole thing together from day one.
He could see the front-page headlines. Oh, not just the ones that would go out today, but the ones that would come when the case was completely broken open like a ripe watermelon. And it would be. That, he could feel in his gut. He’d already taken his imaginary pen and filled in the blanks of his puzzle.
Why had he called her? He still didn’t know. The case was sensational as it stood, but if Lillian Forrester, District Attorney, had murdered Bobby Hernandez…? “Now, we’re talking national coverage,” he said. “Now we’re talking big.” As his excitement rose, his stomach turned.
That’s why he’d called her. Was it time to go formal with this: the investigation of Forrester for the death of Bobby Hernandez? On this case the bomb was ticking and the detonator was in his sticky palm. He dialed her number.
She answered the phone. “Heard the news?” he said. “Oh, this is Bruce Cunningham.”
Lily had just scrubbed out the master bath and was getting ready to vacuum the carpet. “No, I didn’t hear anything. What’s going on?”
“We shot Manny Hernandez last night. He’s dead. He fired first at our surveillance officer, but the guy’s okay. We have the gun: a .22 caliber.”
“My God,” Lily exclaimed, sitting on the edge of the bed, a sponge still in her hand. “The prints?”
“Won’t know anything until around noon Monday. It’s looking good, though, isn’t it? Looking real good. You may get that break you’ve been waiting for real soon.”
“You’ve done a great job on this, Bruce,” she said and then paused, thinking. “Can’t you come up with something on the other two suspects we have in jail? If this is the weapon and Bobby and Manny were involved, it makes their stories seem feasible.”
“Why don’t I come to your office Monday, and we’ll sit down and put everything together? My suggestion is to go for Nieves. If his prints aren’t on it, he could be the lightweight in the whole picture.”
“You mean offer him a deal?”
“You can think on it. I know you guys don’t want anyone to walk, but if he pled on the rape and possibly a”n accessory to murder charge and he spilled his guts, you’d have the case in hand. But what do I know…?”
“I’ll discuss it with Richard Fowler and, of course, Butler. Come in around eleven. You might be able to interview Nieves and get him to talk without a deal.”
“Not without a pair of brass knuckles,” he said, laughing, “but I’m not proud. I’ll give it a shot. Clear it with his attorney.”
“It wont be a problem; it’s Kensington, the public defender. He tends to lean in our direction.”
After Cunningham hung up, he took out the composite drawing of the so-called man Manny Hernandez had seen. On impulse he folded over the paper that he’d dra
wn the red lips on and began tearing it into tiny pieces. Lily’s soft voice, with the barely distinguishable Texas accent, played over and over inside his head. There was something about her that reached him in a place he couldn’t describe. When they talked, some unknown presence hung heavy in the air, so thick that he felt he could reach out and touch it. It was fear, and it wasn’t just her fear, it was his. He looked down at the shredded papers in his hand. He was holding her life there, her future, her child’s and husband’s future. Moving his hand over the trash can, he let the papers fall like confetti.
He then replaced the drawing with a duplicate minus his artistic enhancements. The only eyewitness in Lily’s case was Manny and he was dead. The woman who’d come forth with the license plate hadn’t seen the driver’s face. Once again he looked at the composite and tried to see what Manny had seen. It all seemed so wild. They may have shot a suspect in one case, but they’d shot a witness in the other. Speculation was a funny thing, he thought. Maybe there was some pale, effeminate killer out there, running around shooting people while Cunningham was sitting here trying to pin it on one of his own kind.
No, what he saw, no matter what he tried to tell himself, was the face of Lily Forrester, her hair shoved under that blue knit ski cap, blasting away at the man who had raped her daughter.
It was going to take something a lot stronger than a six-pack of beer to make him forget. It might take something stronger than his stomach and his conscience could handle.
CHAPTER 35
He called Friday morning before she left for school. “This is Greg,” he said. “You know, I met you the other night with my dad.”
“Hi,” she said, stretching the phone cord as she walked over and closed her bedroom door, her puppy right on her heels. “I was just leaving to go to school.”
“Wanna go surfing with me tomorrow?”
“I want to go, but I can’t surf.”
“Wanna learn?”
“Sure,” she said. As she recalled her mother’s admonitions about him, a plan of getting around any objections was already formulating in her mind. “Tell me what time you want to pick me up. I’ll be at a friend’s house.”
In the background Shana heard the garage door open and knew her father was parked in the driveway, waiting to drive her to school. Greg had his driver’s license. What a trip. Gorgeous and he could drive.
“‘Bout five-thirty. Give me the directions. Wait, gotta get a pen…Go,” he said.
Spending the night with Charlotte would be no problem, but sneaking out at five-thirty, when her father got home from work, that might be a real problem. “I don’t know,” she said. “Can’t we do it another time?”
She heard one quick tap of the horn outside; her father never honked. It must mean she was going to be late for school.
“Don’t want to get up that early, huh? That’s the best time.”
“You mean five-thirty Saturday morning?” Once she had said it, she realized it made her sound dumb. Everyone knew people surfed early. “Sure…that’s fine.”
That night at Charlotte’s, where she was staying overnight, Shana spent most the evening going through the girl’s closet and drawers, pulling out things and trying them on and then tossing them on the floor. “Don’t you have anything at all new?” she asked. “I’m going on a date with a senior.” She smiled, raising her shoulders and hugging herself with apprehension. Both girls giggled.
“He’s not a senior till next year. That’s what you said.” Charlotte was spread out on her stomach on the bed, her face supported by her hands. “You’re only going surfing. What do you think you’re supposed to wear anyway? Here,” she said, leaping off the bed. “Wear these and this.”
The girl held up a pair of cutoff jeans and a U.C.L.A. sweatshirt. Shana grabbed them and pulled them on, letting them drift down on her hips. Charlotte’s clothes used to fit her perfectly, but now they were too big. As she looked at herself in the mirror, pulling her nightshirt up and exposing her navel, she liked the look of the oversize shorts. With her bikini top, she would look like the girls she saw at the mall with guys who looked like Greg.
Instructing him merely to pull in front of the house and park, Shana was awake at five o’clock and perched by the window in Charlotte’s bedroom, overlooking the street. After what seemed like hours, a green Volkswagen van with a surf rack on top pulled to the curb and parked. She nudged Charlotte, but put her finger to her lips so she wouldn’t wake the rest of the household. Charlotte had agreed to tell her parents that Shana’s mother picked her up early to go see her grandmother. “He’s here,” she said, “but don’t let him see you looking out the window.”
As they were driving off, Charlotte’s face was as noticeable in the window as a pumpkin on Halloween. Greg saw her and waved like a celebrity. Shana slid down in the seat in embarrassment.
From Camarillo they headed toward Los Angeles and then dropped into Topanga Canyon to Malibu. The van rattled and shook as they drove the winding canyon roads in the dark. The back was full of McDonald’s and Burger King sacks, towels that reeked of mildew, and wet suits. She had pictured him picking her up in his father’s white BMW.
“Like my van?” he asked. “Got it at an auction for seven hundred. I love it.”
“It’s great,” she lied.
Soon he pulled alongside Pacific Coast Highway, on a cliff above the beach, and parked. “Hurry,” he said, tossing her a wet suit from the backseat. “Put this on and I’ll get my board. I won’t look. Don’t worry.”
Shana scrambled into the backseat and peeled down to her bathing suit, thankful for the wet suit, not ready to be seen yet with so little clothing.
They paddled out together on his board. He practically was on top of her as she lay on her stomach. He didn’t go all the way out, where a dozen or more surfers were congregated, just sitting there on their boards waiting for a wave. He stopped close to the beach, where the water was shallow.
“This is what we’re gonna do,” he said. “When I say so, I want you to stand on the board. I’ll help you. Then bend your knees and pretend they’re rubber. Don’t worry. We’ll catch a real small one.”
Each time a wave came, he grabbed Shana around the waist and pulled her up, but her feet slid out from under her and she fell under. Soon her eyes burned from the salt water; her hands and feet were like ice. On about the sixth try, she willed herself to stand and rode the wave, his arm around her waist. She wasn’t sure if she loved the thrill of riding on the water or the thrill of his arm around her waist. Finally, he turned and looked far out at the other surfers.
Reaching into the little zipper pocket on his wet suit, he handed her the keys to the van. “‘Nufffor today. Why don’t you go to the van and sleep or whatever? I’m gonna go out.” He tossed his wet hair in the direction of the other surfers. “There’s a blanket in there if you want to sleep on the beach.”
Feeling abandoned, she waded to shore and climbed the steep hill to the van, shivering, wrapping her arms around herself to stay warm. She crouched down again in the back of the van, looking first to see if anyone was around, and took off the wet suit, pulling Charlotte’s sweatshirt over her head. Then she carried the smelly blanket down to the sand and tried to spot him. All she could see were a bunch of bobbing heads far out in the ocean.
She allowed her eyes to close, and soon sleep overtook her.
A short time later, she woke with a scream trapped in her throat, her body drenched with sweat, her legs locked together like steel, her arms folded over her breasts, just as she did almost every night. She removed the heavy sweatshirt, now drenched, and pulled the blanket over her head, rolling onto her side. She tasted the fear and swallowed it. “No,” she said inside the smelly tent of the blanket.
Just then he tapped her on the shoulder. The sun was beating down and real people, not surfers, were spreading beach towels out and sticking umbrellas in the sand and smearing their bodies with suntan lotion.
“Hey,” he said
, “want to share that blanket with me?”
She was rolled up like a mummy. Spreading out the blanket, he flopped down on it on his back. He was wearing a bathing suit and his body was muscular but slender, his skin golden and dusted with sand. “My father told me I couldn’t go out with you…said you were only thirteen. That’s not true, is it?”
Shana tried to swallow before she answered, to clear her throat, to stall for time. “I’ll be fifteen in two months,” she lied.
“Awesome,” he said. “You look older. I thought we were the same age. Doesn’t matter.” He then looked at her curiously. “Do you think your mom and my dad are getting it on?”
“What makes you think that?” she asked.
“I know my old man has something going on because some nights he calls me at my mother’s and talks real stupid. Asks me what I’m doing and then tells me he’s going to bed early and not to come by and wake him. The next day, I sneak in his room and there are always two glasses in there—one on each nightstand by the bed. One always has lipstick on it. Parents are so stupid. They always lie about dumb things.”
His hair was beginning to dry in the sun; it was almost colorless in some places, completely bleached out, and in others it was golden blond. He was leaning back with his arms bracing his body and his hair grazed the blanket. “So what do you think?” he said.
“Maybe. I even asked Mom the same thing. She said they were just friends.”
“Yeah, well, don’t believe anything. My mom…” His eyes clouded over, but he looked at Shana and smiled. Then he looked out at the ocean. “I love it here. I love the ocean. What I’d really like to do is study oceanography at the institute in San Diego, but…”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked, uncertain exactly what oceanography was, or what he would actually do.
“My dad has never once asked me what I really want. All he does is tell me what a loser I am and how I won’t be able to get into any college but a stupid junior college. It’s like he thinks if I can’t be a lawyer, then I’ll be a garbage man or something.”
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