Mitigating Circumstances

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Her grandmother was standing in the kitchen in her town clothes, her eyes an ashen gray. Behind her stood her grandfather, a smile on his face. With his hand he moved her grandmother aside and picked Lily up, holding her like a rag doll or a sack of flour against the side of his body. “No use to cry to Granny now. You know you’re not allowed out after dark. But since you’re so brave, so fast, so disrespectful…” He walked to the door and turned to her grandmother. “Start dinner. I’ll be back with this little roughneck in a few minutes.”

  The ranch was located about three miles from the Colorado State Reformatory for Boys. Lily was in the front seat of his Lincoln Continental, her hand held tightly by her grandfather’s. She saw the tall brown brick buildings getting closer and closer, and her eyes filled with terror. She tried to extract her hand. She pushed her body forward in the seat and bowed it, her head back, her pelvis thrust upward, her feet kicking furiously. “No, Granddaddy. No, Granddaddy.” With her free hand she pulled down her pants and exposed her genitals. “Don’t leave me there. I’ll be good. I’ll be good.” She tried to pull his hand holding hers to her nakedness, to the place he liked between her legs, but he yanked it away. She could see the bars on the windows and the shadows of the men inside. They were approaching the front gate.

  “It’s too late now, isn’t it? Too late. They’re waiting for you now. They love little girls.” Then he turned and snarled at her. “They love to eat them. Remember, Lily, my little dolly, my bad little dolly. They don’t feed them. They’re hungry. It’s dinnertime.” He drove through the gate, simply waving at the guards, his body blocking Lily’s. It was a minimum-security institution and he was a frequent caller, a friend of the warden.

  Right under the looming buildings, he stopped and reached over her to open the door. Then he shoved her out, and she tumbled head over heels onto the asphalt, her feet tangled in her corduroy pants, one shoe off, one toe protruding from a hole in her socks. Rocks flew in her face as he drove off, the exhaust fumes choking her and causing her to cough amid her tears. She grabbed her knees and held them tightly, shut her eyes and refused to open them. She listened for the sounds of them coming, coming to eat her like a big chicken. They would sink their rotten teeth into her and tear her limbs off and pass them around. “Good,” she said. “Good. Eat me all up. Until I’m gone, gone, gone.” She waited.

  The gravel crunched and the ground began moving, roaring. Then it stopped. “You ready to come home with Grandpa now? You ready to be a sweet little girl? Or do you want me to just leave you here?” The car door opened and Lily silently stood, pulled up her pants, and climbed in. “Now dry your eyes and when you get home, you go straight to the bathroom and wash the dirt off your face. Then I want you to put on that beautiful white dress I bought you and come in for dinner.”

  “Yes, Granddaddy,” she said.

  “That’s my little darlin’. Give me a kiss. Just a little kiss on my cheek.”

  Lily leaned over and let her lips touch his coarse skin and then fell back onto her seat, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her eyes trained straight ahead. The last time when Granny had been out of town, he’d left her there to walk the three miles back to the ranch alone in the dark.

  CHAPTER 43

  Cunningham sprang from his desk and reached for his jacket, shifting his shoulder holster to the right position. The new detective in the homicide bureau was busy putting his personal items in his new desk. He was one of the men Cunningham had investigated for shooting a drug dealer and pocketing the cash, and he’d just been reassigned to homicide from narcotics. No one had told Cunningham he would be working only a few feet away, sharing the same space, breathing the same air.

  “Got something hot?” the man said, looking up.

  “Fuck yourself,” Cunningham growled, moving rapidly to the door. “Or better yet, stick one of those extra shooters you have in your ear and pull the trigger.”

  The man stood and started to come around the desk. Cunningham opened his jacket and put his hand on his weapon. “Two more steps and I’ll do it for you.”

  “You’re gonna hear about this, shithead. I’ll go straight to the chief, and you’ll end up out on the fucking street, begging someone to hire you.”

  Ignoring the man’s last comment, Cunningham burst through the double doors leading from the detective bureau and was in the driver’s seat of his unit roaring toward Ventura in what seemed like seconds. The traffic on the police radio was heavy. He started to pick up the mike and advise the dispatcher that he was leaving the city perimeters, a department policy, but instead replaced the mike in its holder.

  “Station one, 2-Boy,” the voice of the dispatcher rang out. “Robbery just occurred at White’s Market, Alameda and 4th Street. Suspects are two males armed with nine-millimeters, last seen EB on 3rd in a brown Nova, unknown license. Clerk has been shot, and ambulance and rescue en route. Code three.”

  Cunningham was only a few blocks from the scene the patrol unit had been dispatched to, and his eyes scanned the vehicles as he flew past them, but all he could see was the face of Lily Forrester. He reached over and turned the radio off. Why had she called him and told him she had shot Bobby Hernandez? Why hadn’t she left well enough alone? He had no evidence now that Manny was dead; she was almost in the clear. It was such a stupid thing to do, he thought. It was exactly the type of thing a woman would do: confess after they had practically gotten off without a hitch. She had committed the perfect crime, executed it brilliantly, and then she had dissolved into a sniveling fucking female answering some inner need to do the moral, ethical thing. Anger rose inside him; acid bubbled like a witch’s caldron inside his stomach.

  “There are no ethics anymore,” he said. “Presidents commit crimes and lie, preachers steal and fornicate, fathers murder their own children—children murder their parents.” That very morning he’d read an article in the newspaper about a fire captain charged with twelve counts of arson. On the next page was a piece on an L.A.P.D. detective who had conspired to commit a murder for hire. Sitting at a desk right next to him, carrying a gun, wearing a badge, was a man he was certain was a cold-blooded murderer. Where would it all stop? How much lower could society sink? His eyes searched the streets in front of him, took in the houses and faceless individuals milling about. “Get back in your houses, assholes,” he yelled at them, “or someone will come along and shoot you just for the thrill of it. Bolt the doors. Hide under your beds. Can’t you see this is a war zone? Don’t you know half the people walking around have more firepower in their pockets than the cops?”

  He passed under the freeway and sped down Victoria Boulevard, where the government center was housed. “Cops. Police officers. Lawmen,” he uttered with complete disgust, slowing down and searching the street signs and then making a quick right, the car fishtailing as he turned. In one of the driveways, a teenage girl was getting inside a car. “Call a cop and he just might rape you, little girl. Or maybe he’ll club your boyfriend to death because he’s had a rotten day. See, no one sane wants to be a cop anymore, and there’s no such animal as a lawman.’

  Now he was climbing into the foothills, searching for the address Lily had given him. It was dark as pitch. He couldn’t read the numbers. Suddenly he saw a red Honda parked at the curb and slammed on the brakes. The house was dark. Cutting the ignition, he sat perfectly still and listened. It was too dark, too quiet. His nose twitched and he thought he could smell death. “No,” he yelled, slapping both hands on the steering wheel, imagining what he was going to find inside that house: strands of red hair stuck to the walls and ceilings, sweet little freckles scattered like dust in the air, her mouth sucking on the same shotgun she’d used to blow Hernandez away. Then he would have to make the notifications, tell her precious little girl, already ravaged and violated.

  He held his breath as he approached the front door. It was standing open. All he could hear was his own heart tapping out a staccato beat. Then he saw her in the shadows. She was on the f
loor, against the wall, motionless. He thought the worst. His breath stopped, his eyes searching for blood, a shotgun. But when he reached out with an icy finger to touch the pulse point on her neck, his finger rose and fell with life. She was alive.

  “Lily,” he said, shaking her gently, falling to his knees. For reasons he could not explain, he engulfed her in his arms and crushed her to his chest.

  “Daddy,” she whispered, her words muffled, her voice that of a child’s.

  “It’s going to be okay. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.” He held her and rocked her, repeating the words again and again. She had lost contact with reality, was in the midst of a psychotic break. She had fallen through the crack, but he had been there to catch her. He recalled his childhood love—the circus—the trapeze artist, how he had looked up in awe as a beautiful young woman in a shiny costume had fallen into the air and an upside-down man with muscular arms caught her and held her until they both reached the perch and dismounted, their arms in the air in triumph. He grabbed Lily’s shoulders and pushed her from his body, shaking her more forcefully now.

  “It’s Bruce. Bruce Cunningham. Lily, do you hear me? It’s Bruce. Say my name. Say it. Say Bruce.”

  “Bruce,” she said, repeating the sound like a parrot.

  He let go of her and she fell back against the wall, her eyes still closed, her body rigid. Running his hand along the wall, he found the light switch and flooded the room with light. Then he bent down again and slapped her across the face. Her eyes sprang open. “Fight,” he ordered her, “fight for your life. It’s Bruce Cunningham. Detective Bruce Cunningham. Look at me.”

  There it was. He saw it: recognition, realization, reality. She was back. He had caught her in his strong hands, and he was swinging her through the air to the perch.

  “I killed Bobby Hernandez,” she said. “I thought he raped my daughter. I was certain he raped my daughter. I shot him in cold blood.”

  “Where are you, Lily?”

  “I’m in Ventura. At my new house.”

  “Who’s the president of the United States?”

  “George Bush,” she said flatly, her eyes focused. “Why are you asking me this stuff?”

  She didn’t even remember where she’d been or where she’d been heading: to the ground without a net. He picked a towel off the floor and went to the kitchen and soaked it with water from the tap. Then he stood over her and dropped it into her lap. “Wash your face. You’ll feel better,” he said tenderly, a father to a child. She buried her face in the towel and after a few moments looked up at him with those big blue eyes, the freckles intact, still dotting her nose and pale cheeks.

  “You slapped me.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Are you going to cuff me?”

  Pushing herself up with her hands, she faced him, and a wave of emotion washed over him, causing his body to shake. One arm moved underneath her knees as he collected her in his arms. Still holding her, he carried her to the car and placed her in the front seat. He touched his lips to her forehead and tried to speak, but words had left him. Her head fell back against the seat.

  Leaving the car door open, he ran down the steps and into the house. He grabbed her jacket, her purse, turned the lights off, closed the door, and ran back up the steps. He noted no shortness of breath. His body moved like that of a conditioned athlete.

  Entering the car on the driver’s side, he reached over her, brushing her chest, and pulled the door closed. “Put on your jacket,” he told her. Once she had done what he said, he reached over again and fastened her seat belt. “Hold on.”

  In seconds they were on the flats and the speedometer was inching its way to seventy, then eighty, then ninety. The windows were down and the cold night air beat against their faces; the roar of the big engine was deafening. He reached for the mike, flicked the radio on and yelled into it. “Station One, Unit 654.”

  “Six-five-four, go ahead.”

  “Where’s the victim of the 211? The robbery at White’s Market?”

  “Community Presbyterian, but it looks like a D.O.A.”

  “I’m en route.” He glanced at Lily and then back at the road. The steering wheel was vibrating in his hands. He dropped the mike on the seat between them.

  They didn’t speak for the remainder of the drive. Lily’s eyes were wide and her hands were braced against the dash. The car skidded to a stop in the parking lot of the hospital, and even though she had her seat belt on, Cunningham put his arm across her to keep her from falling forward.

  “Come with me,” he said, throwing the car door open and then leaning in toward her. “Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Just stay beside me.”

  He crossed the parking lot in great, long strides. Lily was almost running in her high heels to keep up with him. The automatic doors to the E.R. opened, and bright, glaring lights struck their eyes. Cunningham flashed his badge and kept walking, the nurse pointing to one of the examining rooms. Lily’s heels tapped on the linoleum behind him, her eyes on the floor.

  On the table was the body of a young dark man, an Indian from the looks of him, uncovered, still. His shirt was ripped open but his chest was unmarked except for red circular spots where they had possibly placed the paddles used to shock his heart in what had been a futile effort to save him. One side of his head and face were completely gone, unrecognizable as anything but bloody tissue, hamburger meat. The room was empty except for the three of them. Lily reached for his cold hand, with tapering fingers, so dark around the white nails, and touched the thin gold band around his finger. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she looked with an unspoken plea at Cunningham. He jerked his head toward the door, and she followed him out and down the hall. He kept walking through corridors, turning down one hall to another, and then he stopped and faced her. They were alone, apparently in a section of the hospital under construction or renovation.

  “What you saw back there was a product of a Bobby Hernandez. Do you understand me?”

  There was a black intensity in his eyes, and she had to look away. Another person spoke with her voice, mouthed the words from her lips. “Yes,” she answered finally. “I understand you.”

  “The world doesn’t need him, the Bobby Hernandezes. You stepped on a cockroach. There are thousands more. They’re in all the cabinets, under all the sinks, crawling under every stinking toilet.”

  He stopped and his body fell, his years reappeared, the lines sank in his face, his stomach bulged over his pants. His face was flushed; perspiration dampened his forehead. His large chest expanded and contracted.

  “What happened between us back there didn’t happen. What you said to me on the phone you didn’t say.” He stuffed his hand in his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. Prying her fingers open, he pressed it there, then closed them with his fleshy hand. “You’re going to get in a cab and go back to your life. You’re going to forget this night ever happened. If you see me tomorrow or the next day, all you’re going to say is ‘Hi, Bruce. How you doing, Bruce,’ and you’re going to fight the fight and build a new life for you and your daughter.”

  “But you can’t do this,” Lily exclaimed, her voice high and shrill, her body shaking. “You can’t just listen to me confess to a homicide and then walk away. What about the law?” She started waving her hands around excitedly, her eyes wild again with hysteria. He jerked his head behind him. There was no one around. They were still alone.

  Cunningham moved to her and grabbed both of her hands with his own and pinned them against the wall. His face inches from hers, his breath was as hot and heavy as a blast furnace. “I am the law. Do you hear me? I’m the one who lives and breathes it. Not the judges on their high benches too far from it to even smell it. I’m the one who gets shot at. The one who has to inhale the rotting flesh of the society we live in. I’m the one who comes when people call, when they’re robbed or beaten or raped. I have every right to make this decision. Every right.”

  Beads
of sweat fell from his forehead like salty rain onto Lily’s upturned face. “Justice,” he said, spitting out the words. “How can the interest of justice be served by trying you for avenging your child, by locking you up, by leaving your daughter so badly damaged that she’ll never recover?” He suddenly dropped his hold on Lily and stepped back. Her arms fell to her side, her mouth trembling. “There is a God, lady, and He lives down here in the gutter with the likes of me.”

  With that, the big man turned his back and started walking down the hall, his scuffed and worn black shoes clanking across the linoleum, the cheap fabric of his suit jacket pulling tightly across his back and broad shoulders. Lily’s eyes followed him until he turned the corner and disappeared.

  EPILOGUE

  Lily walked out of the government center office in Los Angeles that housed the United States District Court of Appeals and headed to her car in the parking lot across the street. It was late, after six. She made it a routine to stay late every night, waiting for the traffic to pass before making the long, grueling drive to Ventura, almost two hours away. Even though she hated to miss precious hours with Shana, the child had surrounded herself with enough activities that she seldom arrived home before her mother. She was a cheerleader now at Ventura High School, had joined the debate team, and was presently campaigning for president of her class. Thinking of her as she started her car and pulled out into the traffic, Lily knew that Shana’s love and support, her constant optimism, and her enthusiasm for life had been her lifeline.

  It had been eight months since her encounter with Cunningham in the corridors of Presbyterian Community Hospital. She thought of the big detective and smiled. He was gone now. Shortly after that night, he’d given notice on his job and moved his family back to Nebraska. She thought of him often, sometimes wanting to pick up the phone and call him, but what they had shared was not pretty, and she knew it must remain forever where they had left it. He had gone on with his life, and she had done just what he’d told her to do—returned to the battle, fighting the only fight she knew how to fight. Her conscience and Richard Fowler had led her to resign her position as a district attorney. She couldn’t jeopardize his career or his life. She had resigned the next day. But she had located a new job a short time later, reviewing and analyzing cases up on appeal. There were no courtroom dramas, no cases to win or lose, but she made a difference in her own way, tirelessly poring over law books and transcripts in the small corner office she had on the thirty-fourth floor. She would never be a judge. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.