After Lily hung up, she had a compelling urge to brush her teeth. Instead she headed for the vending machines and bought a pack of gum. Comparing what she knew about Bobby Hernandez to what she now knew about the rapist, she decided that she might have shot the wrong man, but in the long run, she had shot the one who deserved to die.
“You were talking about when we could get together,” Lily said to Richard on the phone. “How does tonight sound?”
“Now, that’s about the best thing I’ve heard from you all day. You got it.”
Only a few minutes before, Shana had called her mother and informed her that she was going to continue playing softball. Her father would drive her to the psychologist afterward.
“Why don’t we pick up some Chinese food and go by my new house?” Lily suggested, waiting for Richard’s reaction.
“New house. What new house? Are you telling me that you’ve finally decided to move out?”
“I rented a house yesterday only a few blocks from yours. I have the key.”
“Hot damn,” he said. “I can’t believe it. When are you moving?”
“I have to get the utilities turned on and everything packed, but we’re shooting for this weekend. Shana’s moving in with me.” She picked the photo of Shana off her desk and held it in her hands as she talked.
“Not only do you finally get around to asking me out for a change, you actually made a plan. This is sounding better all the time. This is sounding like a genuine relationship between two people about to be single adults. I’ll meet you in the parking lot in ten minutes.”
When they reached the front door of the house, Richard placed the sacks of Chinese food on the doorstep and waited for Lily to turn the key in the lock. Then he swept her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold. Setting her down, he put his arms around her. “This is the first house for us. My house will always have Claires presence lurking in all the corners. But in this house there are no ghosts of Christmases past.” He pressed his lips against hers in a tender kiss. “Now, let’s eat.”
They sat on the floor in the little kitchen, eating with plastic forks out of cardboard containers. “It’s a nice house,” Richard said, looking around while they ate, “but it’s really small.”
Lily dropped a sweet and sour shrimp in her lap and jumped up to wash off the stain. “Look, there’s water,” she said. “And it’s even hot.” She went to the switch and turned on the overhead light even though it wasn’t dark outside. “I guess they still have the utilities on.” Her eyes lit up and she said, “The hot tub. Can you figure out how to turn it on and heat it up?”
“I’m very handy, you know. Everywhere except the kitchen.” He wiped his hands and went outside, returning a few minutes later. “Your wish is my command,” he said, throwing his hands out to his sides and taking a deep bow. “Your hot tub will be ready in about forty-five minutes.”
“But we don’t have any towels,” Lily stated.
“I think I have a few beach towels in the trunk of my car,” he said. “I’ll go get them in a few minutes.”
He walked up and took her in his arms, burying his head in her neck, pressing her body to his. “I love you,” he said.
She responded, “I love you too.” With one hand he started to pull her blouse out of the waistband of her skirt, but she pushed his hand away. “We have to talk. It’s important,” she said. Whereas things had been standing still in the days before, they were now moving at lightning speed. She had to tell Richard. She had already decided in the car on the way to the house. Either she told him or she ended it. If she didn’t tell him, she was going to tell someone else.
The heavy-lidded look of lust in his eyes was replaced with concern. He removed his tie and tossed it with his jacket in the corner. Lily went and sat down on the floor in the living room with her legs crossed in front of her. He spread out on his side and waited for her to speak, staring intently at her face.
“What I’m going to say is going to shock you. I only hope you understand why I didn’t tell you before and why I have to tell you now.” She paused and bit the corner of her lip. “I’m actually putting you in a very bad position just by telling you.”
Concern was deepening in his face and he sat up, facing her now, his long legs stretched awkwardly beside her body, trying to brace himself with his hands. He was uncomfortable now, fearful of what she was about to say. She was stalling, trying to find the words and the courage. The silence hung ominously in the room; the sounds of dogs barking and television sets playing and cars traversing the street seemed far away.
“I killed Bobby Hernandez,” she said. “I thought he was the man who broke into our house and raped us, and I drove to Oxnard and shot him with my father’s shotgun.”
For a moment Richard’s eyes were blank, the words not registering. Then he pulled himself upright, his eyes wide and incredulous. “Repeat what you just said.”
“I killed Bobby Hernandez,” she repeated slowly, her bottom lip trembling. “I had his file in my briefcase that night—Clinton had told me he had dismissed the charges—and he looked exactly like the rapist. The rapist even had on a red sweatshirt. I thought he followed me home from the jail, that they gave him back his same clothes when released. I had his address.” She stopped, sucking in air, knowing there were no words to describe the way she had felt that night and the insanity that had driven her.
He tried to measure his words. “But why didn’t you just have him arrested if you knew who he was? My God…”
The expression of disapproval on his face and the tone of his voice caused tears to well up in her eyes. “I wanted him to die, okay? I watched him rape my daughter; he put a knife in my mouth and told me it had another woman’s blood on it. I thought he would get out and come back and kill us both.” Unable to control herself, she started sobbing, and Richard moved to take her in his arms. He placed her head on his shoulder and patted her on the back.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “I can’t bear to see you cry” Once she had stopped sobbing, he gently pushed her shoulders back and asked her, “Then who is the man in jail right now for the rape?”
“The rapist,” she said, fixing him with red-rimmed eyes, her makeup streaked with tears. “He’s a dead ringer for Hernandez, but he’s the one. It wasn’t Hernandez. They even found the knife he used with my prints on it. I shot the wrong man.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Lily,” he said, springing to his feet and throwing his hands in the air. Leaning over, he screamed in her face, “You even shot the wrong man. You killed someone. You blew someone away and you never found the time to so much as tell me about it. Great relationship we’ve got here,” he said, turning and stomping into the kitchen. Grabbing the bottle of wine, he sloshed it into a plastic cup and drank the whole glass in almost one swallow. Then he leaned against the counter in the kitchen and glared at her, the muscles in his face twitching as she watched from the floor in the living room. Finally he seized the whole bottle and started back in, handing his glass to Lily and filling it up to the brim. Then he turned the bottle upside down and drank from it as he paced in front of her.
“Who knows about this?”
“No one knows,” she said. “I haven’t even told John. I didn’t tell anyone.”
He’d read the report on the Hernandez homicide, but couldn’t remember the details now; his mind was going in a million different directions, his eyes darting wildly around the room. “Do they have anything on you? Any evidence? Any witnesses?”
“Manny was the only eyewitness and he thought it was a man.” She stopped and took a sip of the wine. “A neighbor copied down my license plate, but I had altered it with Magic Marker, so it came back to another vehicle.”
His eyes turned to her in shock and disbelief. “Magic Marker? You changed the plate? My God, that’s premeditation. What possessed you to do such a thing?…To kill someone. God.” He looked like he was about to grab her and shake her. She didn’t answer. He continued to pace, sh
aking his free hand, stopping to take another slug of wine. “Okay, okay…let’s think this through. Let’s not panic.”
Lily wanted to stop him, tell him the time for panic and planning was over, but she merely looked at the floor.
He flopped down next to her, his body a dead weight.
“So you’re clear? If Manny is dead and they have nothing more than a bad plate, they really have nothing.”
“Cunningham is handling it. Don’t you think we would know if he had anything on me? Christ, I met with him today. I talk to him all the time. Even if he suspected me, he apparently has no proof and no witnesses.”
Richard reached for her again, knocking over her cup of wine. A pink stain appeared on the carpet. “You’ve been keeping this inside all this time. You should have told me before.”
She didn’t answer; he stroked her hair like a child.
His mind was spinning. The woman in his arms was not the person he had fallen in love with—he’d never known her, he thought now. She had committed an act of premeditated murder. Sure, she and her poor child had been raped and it was horrible and disgusting, but to kill someone in cold blood—it was beyond comprehension, beyond acceptance. Even if someone stabbed Greg right in front of him, he didn’t know if he could kill them, take another life. It went against everything he believed in, the very nature of his job as a prosecutor. But it was done. There was no way to take it back. And now he was a part of it. He would have to swallow it like a bitter pill. It was stuck in his throat, and he had to find a way to force it down.
“Hernandez was an animal, okay. A killer. There’s no doubt he would have gone down for the death penalty. I guess you saved the state a fortune in warehousing him on Death Row. Look at it that way.”
“Believe me, Richard, I’ve looked at it every possible way. I still killed someone. I committed a murder.” Lily put her face in her hands, unable to meet his eyes. “I just couldn’t take it. Don’t you see? He raped my little girl right in front of me. All the violence…everyday…all around us.”
“Listen to me,” Richard said, trying to keep his voice under control. “If you hadn’t killed Hernandez, we would have never known about his involvement in the Lopez-McDonald murders. Not only that, while we were sitting there preparing to prosecute what’s probably two innocent boys, Hernandez might have killed again. The first homicide whetted his appetite. Isn’t that what we’ve been saying? Then he picked up Patricia Barnes with every intention of killing her for no reason other than the sheer thrill of it. When he failed, he went back and finished the job later. What we’re talking about here is the birth stage of a serial killer.”
“Can you live with what I’ve done?” she asked. He didn’t reply and their eyes locked. For all his words, she saw in his eyes uncertainty and doubt. He was looking at her as if she were someone he didn’t know, a stranger, a curiosity, a freak. “I shouldn’t have told you. It was a mistake.”
“I love you,” he said softly. “I just can’t say any more than that. No matter what happens between us, I have loved you. Please believe that.”
She sipped more of her wine and Richard refilled her glass, finishing what wine was left in the bottle. Then he rose and went to the car. Lily stood at the window, peering through the mini blinds, certain that he was going to get in and drive off. She watched as he unlocked the trunk and removed two beach towels.
As Lily continued to stare out the window, her hands on the mini blinds caused them to bend and crack until there was a large hole she could look through. Richard slammed the trunk of the BMW, the beach towels in his arms, and glanced at the house. His shoulders had fallen forward as if under the weight of an enormous burden. His face was tight and drawn, and he walked with an old man’s gait down the steps to the front of the house. Halfway down, he turned his head from side to side to see if anyone was watching him and then continued his descent with his head dropped, his arms limp at his side, the beach towels unfurling and dragging on the ground without him noticing.
Lily was possessed with a wrenching, twisting agony and she screamed: “What have I done? What have I done?”
She had told Richard not because he had to know, but to relieve herself of her unbearable burden, to enlist his support. “I’m despicable,” she thought, “a blight on the face of the earth.” Her self-loathing became so intolerable that she ran to the front door and quickly locked it just as the handle started to turn, pressing her face and then her entire body against it like a barricade. “Go away, Richard,” she said through the door. “Go home.”
“Open the door,” he said, his voice still low, still in control. “Please, Lily, don’t be silly. Open the door.”
They were really only inches away, and she placed her palms on the wood just as he started to beat on the door with his fists, first like a knock and then stronger. “I’ve completely compromised his ethics, his entire life,” she told herself. He was now withholding evidence, an accessory after the fact, a criminal. While Richard’s pounding became more forceful, she ran to the kitchen and retrieved her purse. Pulling out the cellular phone, she dialed.
“Oxnard Police Department,” the voice answered. “Is your call an emergency?”
“Yes,” Lily yelled, looking through the front window and seeing a flash of white, Richard’s shirt. He was walking toward the back of the house. “Detective Cunningham. Get me Detective Cunningham.”
Richard was in the backyard approaching the glass windows.
“Detective Bureau, Cunningham,” he answered.
“This is Lily Forrester. I killed Bobby Hernandez.” As Lily spoke, her eyes were glued on Richard, now beating on the back door. He leaned against the glass and peered through his hands, trying to see inside.
“Lily!” he yelled. “Lily!”
The line was silent except for her labored breathing. Her nose started running and she wiped it with the sleeve of her blouse. Richard started trying the door, then went to the kitchen window.
Cunningham’s deep voice seized her through the phone, and she looked away, turning her back to the windows. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m in Ventura.”
“Where, Lily? The address. Give me the address.”
“On Seaview…” Suddenly her mind was blank, and she carried the phone as she went back to her purse and dumped everything on the counter. Finally she saw the rental receipt and read the number. “It’s 11782 Sea-view.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Stay right where you are. Don’t leave. Don’t move. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Lily didn’t respond. Richard was no longer in the backyard. She heard noises in the rear of the house, where the bedrooms were located.
“Did you hear me?” Cunningham said. “I’m leaving now.”
The phone went dead. Lily let it fall from her hands. Richard appeared in the hallway.
“What in God’s name…? I had to crawl through the bedroom window. You scared me to death.” He started moving toward her, but she backed away. The relief on his face turned to anger. “Stop this right now. Why in the hell did you lock me out like that? I thought you’d hurt yourself.”
“You have to leave this minute. Cunningham is on the way now. I confessed. I told him. It’s over.”
Richard’s eyes expanded with shock. “This is insanity. I can’t believe this. My God, this is a nightmare.” He started turning from side to side, moving toward the door and then back toward Lily.
With one last furtive glance at Lily, he turned and left, leaving the door wide open as he ran up the steps to the car, got in, and drove off.
“Good,” Lily said. She fell back against the wall and slid to the floor. “Good.” Her body felt weightless, boneless, empty of all interior parts. She looked at her feet stretched in front of her. Her big toe had popped through her nylons, and she reached over and touched it. Her blouse was outside the waistband of her skirt, and a few drops of wine had stained it. She let her h
ead drop to her chest and closed her eyes. The house was dark. Lily was traveling backward in time, unable to stop herself, lost in the dark regions of her mind, reliving the memories.
She was ten years old and walking up the path from the fish ponds at the ranch in Colorado. When she got to the top of the hill, her grandfather was waiting. His stomach seemed enormous and only his head appeared over the bulging flesh. In his mouth was a cigar, which he moved from side to side between his clenched teeth.
“There you are,” he said. “There’s my little dolly. Come to me.”
“Where’s Granny?” she asked.
“She went to town, darlin’. I sent her to get some of that peanut brittle you love so much. Wasn’t that sweet of me to think of you? Don’t I always think of my doll? Is there anything in the world I wouldn’t buy for my dolly?”
Lily turned and started climbing down the hill. She fell, landing on her seat, and with her hands she pushed herself in the dirt. “You promised,” she said, great sobs shaking her body. “Not now. Not in the daytime. You promised.”
“You get up here now or you’ll be sorry. You’re being disobedient. You can’t talk like this to your grandfather. What would your mother say? What would your father say?”
Finally on level ground, Lily pushed herself to her feet and started running. She ran around the mushy perimeters of the pond, ran through the bushes and into the trees. She stumbled, fell, picked herself up, and kept running. Branches scraped her and she swung her arms wildly over her head. When she was so deep in the woods that she no longer recognized her surroundings, she stopped and fell face first onto the ground. Then she climbed to the top of the embankment, to the clearing, and sat there waiting until she saw her grandmother’s Cadillac turn onto the gravel road leading to the house. It was dark. She was not allowed out after dark. She dusted herself off and headed to the house.
Mitigating Circumstances Page 33