Sharon stuck her head out of the kitchen door and smiled. “Don’t do a thing,” she said. “Go straight to the dining room.”
He yanked his tie off and tossed it on the sofa. “Where are the kids?” he said.
She came out all decked out in a tight pair of jeans and a long sweater that concealed her large hips but plunged at the neckline, carrying a platter with a large roast and potatoes. “Surprise,” she said. “Thought we could use a nice dinner, just the two of us, so I sent the kids to my mother’s.”
He stared at her and belched, holding his stomach. “I feel like hell. I’ve had it with this fucking shit.”
“You’re sick, aren’t you? Look at you. I hope you’re not having a gall bladder attack or something. You know your dad had gallstones and that belching is a symptom. I’ll get some Maalox.”
“Would you stop it, just stop it for chrissake. I don’t have gallstones. I don’t have an ulcer. I’m fed up. Can’t you understand anything? Right to here, see?” He made a gesture with his hand under his neck.
She grimaced and set the platter down on the table, looking at it with disappointment. After all the trouble she’d gone to, he was in one of his black moods. “Want to talk about it?”
“Sharon…”
She stood there while he went to the sofa and collapsed. “I mean, maybe if you eat something,” she said, glancing at the table and the food.
“Sharon…”
“Want a beer? We’ve got a whole six-pack in the refrigerator. I’ll get you a beer, okay? You relax awhile and then I’ll warm everything up again and we’ll eat later.”
“Sharon, I don’t want a beer. I don’t want Maalox and I don’t have gallstones. I want to go home. For the last time, I want to go back to Omaha.”
She dropped into one of the dining room chairs and turned it to face him. “Bruce, we talked this all over the other night. Tommy’s been accepted to U.C.L.A. He’s worked years for this. It means the world to him. If we go back to Nebraska, hell have to pay out-of-state tuition, and we simply can’t afford it. What we’ve saved for his college education will never cut it. We’re surviving on a shoestring as it is now.”
His chin had dropped so low, it was almost resting on his chest. His legs were flung out in front of him, and he had slouched down low on the sofa, still holding a hand over his stomach. He peered up at her, his eyes black and penetrating. “What you’re saying is that I don’t make enough money on this miserable job to even send my son to college.”
“Bruce, please. You work hard. You do a job that needs to be done, a job you’ve always loved. Think of Tommy. You’ll destroy him if you take this away from him and make us move now.”
He stood and started pacing around the small room. “Do you really want your son to go to college here? Do you know what’s been happening in L.A.? This is a city in ruins, kid. This is a city beyond salvation, let me tell you.”
“The riots are over. You’re just finding excuses. Is it a case, Bruce? Usually when you’re like this, it’s a case. Is it over that Owen thing, that old lady?”
He ran his hands through his hair. “It’s a lady, all right, but not Ethel Owen. This lady…”
Sharon turned white. “Are you having an affair? Is this what this is all about?”
He ignored her, almost as if he was talking to himself, continuing to pace. “We can sell the house. Real estate is much lower in Omaha. I’ll get my old job back and they’ll probably promote me in six months. I could even make captain there or deputy chief with my experience. They don’t have the problems there that we have here: the drugs, the gangs, the crime, the blasted corruption, the smog.”
The phone rang in the kitchen and she left him there, pacing. She came back and said softly, “It’s for you. It’s the jail.”
“Cunningham,” he barked, seizing the phone in the kitchen.
“This is Deputy Clark at the Ventura County Jail. I really feel bad about disturbing you at home, but Benny Nieves has gone completely psycho on us, and he’s screaming that he has to talk to you and that you’ll have us all fired if we don’t call you. I’m probably going to get him transferred to the medical facility and let them shoot him up with something. Either that or put him in lockup.”
Sharon was standing right next to him in the kitchen, staring up into his face. He turned his back on her. “Don’t do anything,” he ordered the deputy. “Separate him from the other prisoners and keep him on ice until I get there, or I will have your fucking job. Got it?”
“You’re going in, aren’t you? You’re not even going to stay to eat the wonderful dinner I fixed for us.” Her eyes were moist and she sniffed. “I worked on it all day. I thought just this once we could have a romantic dinner.”
“Look, I have just a few loose ends, Sharon, and then we’re leaving. There’s a few cases I have to put to bed, and then I’m putting in my notice.”
The sniffing stopped and she stared at him. “You never answered me before. Are you having an affair? Is this over some woman? Tell me. I have to know.”
He headed to the door, Sharon following him, insistent. He turned and faced her. “I am not having an affair, okay? And yes, this is over some woman, but you don’t even want to know about it. Trust me.” He opened the door and let the screen bang on the way out. Then he kicked the skateboard again, sending it flying into the neighbors’ yard.
By the time Cunningham got to the jail, it was six o’clock. He had stopped and picked up a cup of black coffee at Stop n’ Go on the way and a couple of backup batteries for his tape recorder. He hoped like hell he was going to need it.
They were back in the same interview room, in the little chairs, staring each other down from across the table. Benny’s eyes were wild and his olive face ashen. Cunningham sipped his coffee and waited.
“I had this dream, man. There was fire round me and people standing over me with faces like monsters. I was in Hell, man. I was burning in Hell. My skin”—he grimaced with fear—‘my fucking skin was burning right off my body.”
“Benny, I told you God sent me to help you. Are you ready to talk now?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
His eyes were glued on Cunningham as he removed the small tape recorder from his briefcase and pushed the play button, setting the machine on the table between them. “This is Detective Bruce Cunningham, and I’m speaking with Benny Nieves.” He then proceeded to advise him of his rights and asked him each time if he understood. He nodded, but the detective insisted that he speak out loud for the tape recorder. After he’d read every item from the little card he carried, he asked Benny: “Are you making these statements of your own free will without any promises or harassment?” Benny stated that he was and the interview began.
“Start at the very beginning,” he instructed Nieves. “Before the crime and everything leading up to the crime.”
Benny coughed, looked around the small room nervously, and then began. “Manny was seeing Carmen last year, but his brother wanted her bad, so he just hands her off to him, you know?”
“Benny, you have to say everyone’s name clearly.
You’re talking about Bobby Hernandez? Is that correct?”
“Yeah, man, who else? So Carmen sees him a few times, but she don’t like him much and she’s all mad cause Manny hands her off, see? Manny did whatever Bobby wanted. They was like that. Bobby wants her—has a fucking hard-on for her and he’s smoking crack and talking bout her all the time. She moves to Ventura and shuts him out. Bobby. Won’t even talk to him. We go out cruising and he cruises to Ventura all the time, driving by her house, saying he’s gonna fucking kill her. See, Bobby’s always got the women, you know? They always go for him. He was always bragging bout killing people too. Wanted us to think he was bad.”
Should have believed him, Cunningham thought, but kept his mouth shut. He sure wasn’t bad like Michael Jackson, more like good ol’ Charlie Manson. “Did he ever tell you that he’d killed someone?” he asked.
; “No way, man. Just talk. So, word comes out on the street that Carmen takes this fancy test and does good and that’s she’s going steady with this white boy and bragging that she’s gonna go to college and all. Bobby stops talking bout her and no one thinks shit, man, until that night.”
“And what happened that night?” Cunningham asked, quickly checking the tape recorder heads to make certain they were revolving.
“My throat’s dry,” Benny said. “When they gonna know I talked?”
“No one’s going to know anything until the preliminary hearing next week, and you’ll be in protective custody by then.” Cunningham shoved what coffee was remaining in his cup across the table.
Benny took a sip and complained: “Cold, man.” He looked at the recorder and the red light on top, and then he looked at Cunningham. He put his head down on the little table for a few minutes, and then continued. “That night, man…that night I wish I’d been in church. That was one terrible night. Okay, Manny calls me up and says he’s got some good stuff—crack, regular coke, smoke. Talking like he’s got a fucking drugstore. Says for me to get Navarro and Valdez and meet them at this street in Ventura to cruise. Guess they were already there. Dunno.
“We get there and all get in Bobby’s van, and he gives us what we want. They got a pipe and Manny, Bobby, Navarro, and Valdez pass it around and get high, man, like crazy high.”
“And you, Benny?” Cunningham said. “What did you take from the goody bag?”
“Smoke. Fucking smoke is all. I do some white, but they ain’t got white. They lie bout the white. They have only the crack pipe and I don’t smoke that shit. It’s addictive, man.” He leaned over and placed his hands on the table, like he was about to tell Cunningham a big secret. “Seen guys who’d kill their own mother just for that shit.”
Cunningham rubbed his eyes and glanced at his watch. He still had to go back to the station after this, and it had been a long, mean day. He banged on the door and when the jailer came, he asked for two cups of coffee. “What do you think this is, a twenty-four-hour diner?” the man said, pissed. While they were waiting, Cunningham changed the batteries on the tape recorder, just to play it safe.
When both of them had fresh cups of coffee, Benny continued:
“We drive by this high school, and Manny and Bobby stop and tell us to get out. I see Manny shoving a pocket shooter in his jacket, but it don’ mean nothing cause he carries all the time. But they know what they up to, see, cause they lead us right to the spot where they’re fucking.”
“Who’s fucking?” Cunningham asked.
“You know, man. Carmen and her white boy. They musta followed them and seen them go behind the bleachers. Bobby and Manny grab the white guy and punch him out cold. Then Bobby tells Navarro to fuck her and he watches. She not screaming or nuthin’. Too scared. She just lays there and spreads them. Even take her own pants down when Bobby says. Navarro does her and then Bobby tells me to do her. He says she loves it, calls her a fucking cunt. He’s got his dick out and playing with it—watching, man. So I do her. It’s like she kinda likes it cause she doesn’t fight.”
Benny stopped and sipped the coffee, relief spreading across his face. He slid down in the chair and stretched his short legs out under the table. Cunningham urged him to go on with the story.
“After I did her, I go back under the bleachers to take a piss. Only gone a minute, but I hear them even when I’m pissing. I see the boy and his head is bashed in, and Bobby is bloody and he’s got a big rock and he’s beating his head. Carmen’s screaming and everyone’s crazy wild. Bobby says she’s the one who caused it all and takes this tree limb that’s there under the fucking bleachers and he shoves…God…”
Benny stopped, his eyes focused above Cunningham’s head, as though he were watching the entire thing playing on a big-screen television, too mesmerized and horrified to continue.
“Benny, tell me what happened next,” the detective urged, trying to keep his voice low, fearing Benny was slipping under.
“Blood gushes out of her and her eyes go wild—open but not seeing. I think she’s dead now. Not moving, eyes open, blood fucking everywhere. Manny starts shooting at her like she’s scary-looking and he’s jumping and shooting. Then Bobby grabs the gun and shoots and laughs and says her tits, shoot her tits, and grabs Navarro and shoves him up to her and makes him shoot her tits and then Valdez. I start running. They running behind me ‘cause they know the gun’s gonna bring cops.”
This must be when you passed the schoolteacher in the parking lot,” Cunningham said.
“Yeah. I pass someone—dunno who—running fast, you know, but they hardly turned to look till the others came. They run to the car and get in, and then we go to our car and they leave in their car.”
“Why did Navarro stop and pick up the other boys?”
“‘Cause they nobody, man. Just little pussy boys and he says they’ll say we was with them if the cops ask and they’re like an alibi and no one will know. Would have never been stopped if Navarro had registered his fucking car, man.”
“Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Cunningham said after he had pushed the off button on the tape recorder. He stood and stretched. “You did it, Benny. You’re on your way to redemption, my man.”
“What’ll they give me?”
“I told you before that there are no promises. The judge and jury will be impressed that you came forward, and that will count a great deal. But the best part, Benny, is that you don’t have to dream of Hell anymore. I’m not God, but I truly think you’ve earned a ticket out. Maybe not from the joint, but from Hell, which is everlasting.”
Cunningham returned to the station, the tapes secure inside his briefcase. The watermelon had burst. The McDonald—Lopez case was down. Now there was the other matter to contend with, he thought, his stomach on fire, his nerves still frazzled. There was Lily Forrester. He reached into his jacket for the Rolaids and popped one into his mouth. “One will never do,” he said, picking up the file on the homicide of Bobby Hernandez and slapping it down on top of his desk. Breaking open the package, he dumped all the Rolaids out on his desk. Then he tossed them one by one into his mouth like peanuts while he stared at the composite drawing before him.
CHAPTER 42
Lily was sitting alone in Richard’s office, her chair facing the bulletin board. She was staring at the crime-scene photos, specifically the mutilated body of Carmen Lopez. Richard was in conference with Butler on another matter.
This was the man she had killed, she told herself repeatedly. This carnage was his handiwork—the man who had tortured and ravaged this poor girl, the same man she had executed. He wasn’t innocent, or merely a disturbed sex offender. What she was looking at was evil incarnate. Over and over she sequentially eyed each photo, faster and faster until the scene came alive in her mind like animation. She could hear the screams, see the blood, taste the horror. Her fingers tightened on the arms of the chair.
She stood. She was free. There was no remorse. There was no guilt. When she brought forth the image of Hernandez on the sidewalk in front of his house, his lifeblood pouring out, she felt nothing but satisfaction. Carmen Lopez and Peter McDonald had been avenged. Patricia Barnes had been avenged. Case closed, she said. An eye for an eye. All she had done was don the executioner’s mask. The judgment had been rendered by a greater power, and she had been no more than a pawn, a drafted soldier, a means to an end.
She walked out of the office and closed the door. The meeting with Cunningham had unnerved her. She’d gone in this morning prepared for the worst, expecting him to arrest her, contemplating confessing and putting an end to the waiting and fear. But now she was calm. She wasn’t hiding from him. He knew where to find her. In a twisted way, she wanted to tell him straight to his face that she was in fact the person who had killed this animal. Then she would march him to Richard’s office and make him stare at the crime-scene photos while she challenged him to arrest her, punish her, expose her. This morning she had
trembled before him, felt his eyes bore into her soul. Now she felt her body fill with strength. If she was apprehended, she would fight conviction, claim insanity, put her entire life on the table and let it stand against the life she had taken. And she would win. She had already defeated her worst adversary—her conscience.
On her way back to her office, she picked up her messages. Cunningham had called and left word a few hours before that he had spoken to Nieves without result. She had already informed Butler about the morning’s developments, and he had reiterated his position: no deals at this time.
She sat at her desk and methodically examined each case, her mind clear and focused. It was time to clean house, settle up, get on with the process of living.
Several hours later, Margie Thomas phoned. “Thought you’d like to know that we searched Marco Curazon’s vehicle and found a big, old hunting knife under the seat, just like the one you described.”
“Have you sent it to the lab yet?” Lily asked. “Was there blood on it like I thought?”
“No blood, just a lot of dirt. He kept it under the front seat of the old Chevy he drove. But your prints are on it, so I think Mr. Curazon and his public defender will soon be receptive to just about anything you want to offer them.”
If they plea-bargained the rape, possibly dismissing the oral copulation in the deal, there would be no trial and Shana would never have to testify. But she couldn’t proceed with a plea or any reduction in sentence with the belief that he had used that knife on another woman. “I just cant believe there was no blood on that knife. You’re certain they did a thorough test on it? He told me it was blood.”
“Jesus Christ, he was a rapist, woman. Did you really expect everything the man said to be the truth?”
Margie’s deep, throaty laugh rang in her ear. “But it tasted so vile, so repulsive. I’ll never believe that was dirt on that knife. Never.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but since you’re so determined to know and it’s in the report anyway, we found old dried semen on that knife. That’s what you tasted. He’s a sicko from the word go. Guess he liked to jerk off on his knife. It’s a new one on me, and trust me, I’ve heard it all.”
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