Buried Evidence

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Not only did people shop on-line, they paid their bills, shifted information from one computer to another. In less than five minutes, John had a piece of paper with Bryant’s Social Security number, his driver’s license number, listings of his various bank account numbers, even his passport number. Just as he was about to leave the office, he realized the car dealership would require some type of photo ID. “Damn it,” he said, feeling as if he might as well toss this plan in the trash can. He went to the water cooler and snatched a paper cup out of the holder, filling it with water and guzzling it down.

  Through the front windows John saw the taxi waiting at the curb. He’d probably wasted his money having the cab driver sit there with the meter running. Most dealerships stayed open until eight or nine o’clock, yet even if he talked them into letting him take the car without showing them his driver’s license, they wouldn’t be able to process a lease this late in the day. He wanted the car tonight. The only solution was to take off, possibly hide out in Las Vegas, see how long he could survive before the police caught up to him. Why should he care if Lily forfeited the bail money when he failed to appear in court? And leaving town might even benefit Shana. In most instances the police considered it evidence of guilt when a person fled. Even if he never saw his daughter again, at least he could feel he’d done something worthwhile in her behalf.

  LILY AND Richard were seated on the enclosed patio to the rear of his bungalow at San Ysidro Ranch at seven-thirty Friday evening. He had tracked down his son, Greg, at his apartment in San Diego. Wanting the two young people to feel as if they could speak freely, he had insisted that Shana use the phone in the bedroom, closing the glass-paneled French doors.

  Lily said, “I can’t come back later, you know.”

  “I understand,” he said, swirling his brandy in the glass. “We were up late last night, anyway. You and Shana had a difficult day. We could all benefit from a good night’s sleep.”

  Richard had arranged for them to dine in the room, as he’d suggested the night before. She had called to cancel, but he had persisted, reminding her that she and Shana would have to eat somewhere and he was persuasive enough to get them to drive over. Since Lily lived alone and the kitchen in the guest house wasn’t that well equipped, she seldom cooked, outside of making herself a bowl of soup or heating up something in the microwave.

  Shana had been withdrawn, saying only a few words during the time they were eating. Richard had tried his best to salvage the evening. He’d told jokes, stories, then finally come up with the idea of attempting to get Greg on the phone. Regardless of his efforts, the evening had not been enjoyable. The three of them seemed to share the same ominous feeling—that they were in some type of holding pattern.

  Richard was concerned about Lily, but his concern for her daughter was even more pronounced, particularly since her mother had told him the details of their conversation that morning. How tragic, he thought, that a decent, bright girl such as Shana had to carry such a tremendous burden—the knowledge that both of her parents had caused another person to lose his life.

  “We made some progress this afternoon,” Lily told him, setting her coffee cup down on the table beside her. “Shana found several ads on the Internet. You know, girls looking for roommates near the campus in Los Angeles.”

  “Tell her to be careful,” he said, scowling. “Some of those girls might turn out to be dirty old men. Besides, didn’t you tell me you wanted her to transfer to the university here so you could spend more time with her?”

  “My primary goal at the moment is to get these problems off her back.” She paused, trying to recall the details of their afternoon. “At least one good thing happened today.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When we stopped by my office,” Lily told him, managing a weak smile, “Matt Kingsley, the young attorney serving as my co-counsel on the Middleton case, took Shana for a ride in his Ferrari while I was downloading files to my laptop. She thought he was better-looking than Brad Pitt.”

  “How old is this guy? Is he married?”

  “Twenty-eight and single,” Lily said, shifting her eyes to him. “I don’t know if he has a steady girlfriend or not. We’ve never talked about his personal life. To be honest, I prefer it that way. He seemed enthralled with Shana, though.”

  “I don’t know if I would encourage that situation,” Richard said, leaning forward over his knees. “Just because the guy works with you doesn’t mean you can trust him with your daughter. The way you’ve described him, he sounds like trouble.”

  “Matt’s a good guy,” she said, laughing at his fatherly demeanor. “Anyway, I wasn’t suggesting that she should date him. Seeing her smile was nice, that’s all.”

  “Hey,” Richard said, shrugging, “you’re her mother.”

  He looked up at the night sky. The moon was out, the temperature brisk; the smell of burning firewood filled the air. The evening took him back to the Christmas he had spent with his family only a few weeks after his father had passed away. Everything had been perfect—the food, the tree, the brightly wrapped presents. Under the shadow of his father’s death, however, it had been impossible to feel festive. “Speaking of Middleton, how much time have you spent with Betsy?”

  “I dropped by the hospital this afternoon,” Richard said, taking a sip of his brandy. “It’s a tragic situation. I understand what you meant the other day. Keeping her alive at this stage seems almost cruel.”

  “But you still believe Henry is innocent?”

  “Yes, I do,” Richard said. “You should know me well enough to know I would never agree to represent a man I believed had poisoned his own child.”

  “If Henry didn’t poison her,” Lily asked, “who did?”

  “I wish I knew,” Richard answered pensively. “It was either a maniac, her mother, or another family member. How can we be certain someone didn’t put strychnine in that candy at the plant?”

  “Don’t you think we pursued that angle? We almost demanded a recall, but after testing hundreds of batches of the stuff, we couldn’t get the government to support us.”

  “There’re too many possibilities,” Richard said. “We may never find out who committed this crime. Just because Henry isn’t the most ethical businessman doesn’t mean he was ruthless enough to poison his child to save his business.”

  “We have a witness who saw him buying the candy.”

  “She must have mistaken him for someone else.”

  “She identified Middleton,” Lily shot out. “Not only that, she remembered the car—a red Ford Explorer. She even stated that a woman resembling Carolyn Middleton and several other children remained outside in the car while Henry went inside to purchase the candy.”

  “Greg bought a car recently.”

  Lily did a double take, thinking Richard was purposely changing the subject because he didn’t want to admit that Middleton was guilty. She then reminded herself that this was not a man who wasted his energy on small talk. “Now you’re going to tell me he bought a Ford Explorer, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, smirking. “It’s not red, though, and it’s an older model than the one the Middletons and God knows how many other families own.” Before she could respond, he held up a finger. “The key word in that sentence was families, Lily. Your witness identified a popular family car and a common everyday occurrence with people with children. How many times a day, in some part of the county, do a man, woman, and a couple of children drive up to a convenience store in a red Ford Explorer? And in many instances either the husband or the wife enters the market, leaving the rest of the family outside in the car.”

  “I can buy that,” Lily said, thinking they were holding their pretrial conference under fairly strange conditions. Since they were both occupied with other things, talking about the case seemed practical, as long as neither one of them crossed the line. “There are other factors, Richard. Our entire case doesn’t rest on this one witness. Don’t come to court with that in mind, or
you’re going to lose.”

  “Just hear me out,” Richard said, his commanding courtroom demeanor taking hold. “The woman didn’t write down the license plate. Unless she left the register, there’s no way she could have gotten a good enough look at the people inside the car to make a positive ID of either Carolyn Middleton or the children. Regarding Henry, how many cases of mistaken identity do you think have occurred in the criminal justice system over the past twenty years? A hundred, a thousand, maybe ten thousand. We don’t really know, do we? Why? Because a large number of people are serving time in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. As sad as it is for people in our profession, innocent people are also put to death. You, of all people, should understand the point I’m attempting to make.”

  “I don’t think I need you to remind me,” Lily snapped, thinking he was hitting below the belt. “Here I have to carry all this guilt because I shot the wrong man, and the man I should have killed is still terrorizing us.”

  “The police are looking for Curazon,” Richard told her, thinking he had picked the wrong time to argue his viewpoints on the Middleton case. “If it will give you some peace of mind, I can sleep on the sofa at your place tonight.”

  “No,” Lily said, shaking her head. “I called the Santa Barbara P.D. and asked them to have a unit watch my place. Besides, I don’t want Shana—” She stopped and sucked in a breath. “You should have told me as soon as you heard that Curazon was carrying around a picture of Shana.”

  “I didn’t want to alarm you,” he explained. “This thing with the picture may only be a coincidence. For all we know, Curazon could have shown the guy an actual photograph of some woman he’s been dating. You know the psychological profile of men who commit these types of crimes. It isn’t uncommon for them to seek out relationships with women who resemble their former victims.”

  “None of this stuff with Curazon is a coincidence,” Lily said, adamant. “It all fits, don’t you see? He had to have been inside the guest house. The key to the duplex disappeared, along with the envelope with Shana’s address on it. That’s why I don’t want her to go back there.”

  Richard ran his hands through his hair. “I thought you said there were no signs of forced entry. I’ve searched for months for things I’ve misplaced. Then one day they just turn up. The more emphasis you place on the Curazon situation, the less strength you’re going to have to help Shana during this ordeal she’s facing with her father and the accident.”

  Lily scooted her chair even closer to him. “I got into a screaming match with John yesterday,” she said, nervously scratching her shoulder. “He believes I’m the one who told Shana not to talk to him. Then when I told him I expected him to be out of the duplex by Monday, he started threatening to turn me in to the police again.”

  “You’ve already told me,” Richard said. “You didn’t answer my question, Lily. How do you think Curazon managed to get inside your place? Did you change the locks when you moved in?”

  “No,” she told him. “I could have accidentally left the door unlocked one day. He could have found my spare key, for that matter.” She saw him grimace, and impulsively shouted, “Okay, I was an idiot to keep a key hidden on the property.”

  He pointed toward the window, reminding her that if she didn’t want her daughter to overhear their conversation, she would have to lower her voice.

  “I realize most criminals know people hide spare keys,” Lily whispered, rubbing her forehead. Why did she do such foolish things? Hadn’t she learned the worst lesson any woman could learn when it came to personal safety? She did stupid things because she was habitually preoccupied. When they had worked together, she’d seen Richard in the same state—times when he’d fallen into such a deep state of concentration that she’d practically had to kick him to get his attention. “Curazon may have crawled through an open window,” she continued. “I felt safe there, don’t you see? I let my guard down. Now I’ll have to get a security system installed right away. The only problem is, I can’t do it without getting permission from the owners.”

  “Why would they care?” he rationalized. “All you’re doing is improving their property. You’ll be paying the monthly expense.”

  “My landlords are away in Europe until next month,” Lily said, a sudden breeze lifting her hair off the nape of her neck. “What makes it so terrifying is the man Shana saw prowling around outside the duplex the night of the hit-and-run. It had to have been Curazon, Richard. Thank God I called the police that night. They must have pulled up just in time to scare him off.”

  “Well,” he said, “at least she’s with you now.”

  Lily rolled her neck around to relieve the tension. “Maybe this is what he’s been waiting for.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, swallowing the few drops of brandy left in his glass.

  “How could you forget?” Lily’s eyes glazed over with fright, memories from the past surrounding her. “We were together when he raped us.”

  She glanced at the bedside clock. It was almost eleven o’clock. Lily started to retrieve her briefcase from the living room to go over a few cases, but she couldn’t muster up the energy and instead removed her clothing and climbed under the covers, thinking that tonight sleep might come. Almost euphoric knowing her daughter was asleep in the new four-poster bed across the hall and the evening had gone so well, she turned off the light. It then dawned on her that she had not checked the doors, a chore John had always handled before their separation.

  With her terry-cloth robe wrapped loosely around her, she padded barefoot into the kitchen, deciding to check the kitchen door first. It was a quiet neighborhood: no cars, no barking dogs, just blissful stillness.

  Entering the kitchen, she saw the drapes billowing in the slight breeze, being sucked through the open sliding-glass door. She chastised herself for not locking it but felt the area was so safe, it probably wasn’t even necessary. As she pushed the drapes aside and started pulling the door in the track, a funny feeling came over her, a sense of something amiss. Holding her breath in order to hear better, she heard a squeak, like the sound of a basketball player’s sneakers on the court.

  It all happened at once: the noise behind her, her heart beating so fast it hurt, her robe pushed up from the floor over her face with lightning speed. As she struggled to scream and free herself, her feet slid out from under her, but she did not fall. What must be an arm was placed directly over her mouth. Trying to sink her teeth into the arm, she bit a mouthful of terry-cloth instead. She was nude from the waist down and felt the cold night air against her lower body. Her bladder emptied, splashing against the tile floor.

  She tried to move her arms, but they were trapped across her chest inside the robe. Kicking out furiously, her foot connected with what must be a kitchen chair, and it screeched across the floor, landing with a loud thud against the wall.

  The backs of her calves and her feet were burning, and she knew she was being dragged down the hall—toward where her daughter slept. Shana, she thought. Oh God, no, Shana! The only sound she emitted was a muffled, inhuman groan of sheer agony coming from her stomach through her vocal cords to her nasal passages. Her mouth would not move. Her feet struck something. The wall? No longer kicking—no longer struggling, she was praying: “…as I walk through the Valley of Death…” She couldn’t remember the words. Flashes of the past were meshed with the present. Not Shana, not her child—she had to protect her child.

  “Mom.” She heard her voice, first questioning and childlike, and then the terror of her sickening high-pitched scream reverberated in Lily’s head. She heard something heavy crash into the wall, body against body, the sound heard on a football field when the players collided. He had her. He had her daughter.

  In another moment they were on the bed in Lily’s bedroom. When he removed his arm, the robe fell away and she could see him in the light from the bathroom. Shana was next to her and he was over them both. Light reflected off the steel of the knife he held only inch
es away from Lily’s throat. His other hand was on Shana’s neck. Lily grabbed his arm, and with the abnormal strength of terror she almost succeeded in twisting his arm backward, turning the knife toward him, seeing in her mind the blade entering his body where his heart beat. But he was too strong and with eyes wild with excitement, darting back and forth, his tongue protruding from his mouth, he forced the blade sideways into her open mouth, the sharp edges nicking the tender edges of her lips. She bit down on the blade with her teeth, her tongue touching something crusty and vile. His face was only inches away, his breath rancid with beer. “Taste it,” he said, a look of pleasure on his face. “It’s her blood.”

  “Lily!” Richard shouted, leaping out of his chair. She had been sitting there silently, staring off into space when she suddenly struck out at him, shattering the wineglass in his hand.

  “My God,” she exclaimed, “you’re bleeding. What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, wrapping his hand in a white napkin, the crimson blood soaking through almost instantly. “You were just sitting there when you began flinging your arms around.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lily said, forcing back the memories. “Is it bad?”

  Richard let her take his hand and look at the wound. A sliver of broken glass was embedded in his palm. “I feel terrible,” she said. “Do you have a pair of tweezers?”

  With his left hand Richard quickly plucked out the piece of glass, then held the napkin pressed tightly against the wound to stop the flow of blood. “It’s nothing, Lily,” he told her. “In a few minutes it will probably stop bleeding.”

  “Let me see it again,” Lily protested, still fighting off the terrifying images from the night of the rape.

  “No,” he said, taking another look at it. “It’s not that deep. I’ll be fine. You and Shana need to go home, try to get some rest.”

  Lily glanced in through the window and saw that Shana was still talking to Greg. They were both pleased when they observed the animated expression on her face and heard her laughing. Entering the bungalow, Lily tiptoed over and closed the French doors; her daughter was so preoccupied, she didn’t notice.