“Now, now,” Mary said, deciding to toy with him. “That’s called sexual harassment, boss. I’m a big girl now.”
“Oh, yeah,” Adams barked. “Then shut your mouth and find us a table.”
As the hours passed with no word from her husband, Lily walked the empty house. She had tricked herself into believing she enjoyed Bryce being gone. She hated to be alone, particularly at night. She picked Gabby up out of her bed and cradled the little dog in her arms.
Holding the Italian greyhound made her feel better. She decided to let Gabby sleep in the bed tonight. She missed having her warm body snuggled around her feet. Bryce didn’t like to cuddle, so there was really no reason to deprive her of her pet. They’d been together four years now, and she doubted if Gabby would bite him.
“Hey, girl,” she said, walking over to get her a biscuit. The dog became so excited, she almost leaped out of Lily’s arms. “Are you going to keep Mommy company tonight?”
Lily opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the patio, setting Gabby on the grass. She remembered that Bryce might call and raced inside to get the two phones. It was hard enough to incorporate a cell phone into your life. Now people had to walk around with both their cell and their regular phone. Instead of calling Lily’s home number, most people called her cell. She suspected some of them did because it made them feel important to have immediate access to a judge. Basically, though, the world had simply become mobile.
Lily’s cell would frequently ring in the other room, then by the time she found her purse and retrieved it, the caller had hung up and called the house. Bryce had a habit of leaving their portable phones all over the place. Nothing frustrated her more than racing to a room to answer a call and finding the cradle empty.
She started to leave Gabby in the yard so the dog could do her business when she found herself staring at the sliding glass door. The rapist had come in through a sliding glass door. She was suddenly gripped by fear, searching the shifting shadows in the yard. Someone could be lurking out there. He could have followed her home from the courthouse. Maybe he’d been watching her and knew she was alone. She’d never had such a big yard before. There was an overabundance of mature trees and bushes, all of them perfect hiding places.
Lily looked for Gabby and didn’t see her. Italian greyhounds were prissy little dogs, and would occasionally refuse to go if someone was watching them. She squinted, trying to spot the dog’s white coat among the juniper trees. She started to call her, then stopped. If she went inside and came back with the phones, she might forget to lock the sliding glass doors the way she had the night she and Shana were raped. She clapped her hands, then called out, “Gabby, girl. Come to Momma.”
When the dog didn’t immediately appear, Lily’s heart began racing. She was being irrational, paranoid. Bryce was fine, and no one was hiding in her yard. “Gabby,” she hollered, this time more forcefully. The dog ran toward her and leaped into her arms. Lily darted inside the house, closed the door, and locked it.
She checked the rest of the doors. As she was about to set the alarm, she noticed the door leading to the garage wasn’t locked. She walked over and turned the bolt. Jostling the seven-pound dog in one arm, she returned to the alarm panel and held down the button until it peeped and turned red.
A security system meant nothing. Lily never felt safe, even when she was at the courthouse. Evil was everywhere, floating around humans like sewage. Maybe she drew it to her somehow? Or maybe she panicked like this because she still carried a grudge against God. Where had He been when her precious daughter was brutally violated? She certainly hadn’t felt God’s presence when she’d blown Bobby Hernandez away.
The clock in the kitchen read a few minutes past twelve. She still hadn’t heard from Bryce, and her jitters had intensified. She dialed the number to the hotel and was transferred to his room. All the operators sounded the same, she thought, wondering if the hotels trained them that way. This time she let the phone ring until she was automatically transferred to the voice mail system. “Bryce, this is Lily. If you don’t call me by tomorrow morning, I’m going to notify the authorities. Damn you, I’m worried sick. All I can think about is you passed out in some filthy alley. I wouldn’t have to go through this all the time if you would stop drinking. Call me!”
Lily left all the lights on except the one in the bedroom. She turned down the bed and climbed in with Gabby still nestled in her arms. “My sweet baby,” she said, stroking her soft coat and kissing her on the head. The little dog disappeared under the covers.
After thrashing around for an hour, Lily decided to get up and turn the lights off in the rest of the house. If a burglar saw a house fully lit when most of the neighboring houses were dark, he might think the occupants were gone or the house was up for sale. Her fear was sparking all around her. She also wanted to make certain the sliding glass door had fully engaged.
The first thing she did was retrace her steps, turning off the light she had turned on earlier for fear someone was watching her through the windows. The existing drapes in the house had been so old and dusty, she’d removed most of them and the new ones weren’t back yet from the drapery company. Since they didn’t cook all that often, she and Bryce spent most of their time on the second floor, where the windows were obscured by two massive trees.
As she stood in the dark, Lily’s hairs pricked on the back of her neck. She was once again in the house she had rented after she and Shana’s father had separated. Since her daughter had opted to live with her father because he spoiled her, the night of the rape was Shana’s first night in her mother’s new home. It was also the night their lives changed forever. Lily was suddenly in the midst of it.
She glanced at the bedside clock. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. 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 crawled under the covers, thinking that tonight sleep might come. Almost euphoric knowing her daughter was sleeping 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 in the little house, a chore John had always handled when they lived together.
With her terrycloth robe wrapped loosely around her, she padded barefoot in the dark, deciding to check the kitchen door first. It was a quiet neighborhood: no cars, no barking dogs, just blissful silence.
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 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 a basketball player’s sneakers make 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 and head with lightning speed. As she struggled to scream and free herself, her feet slid out from under her, but she did not fall. She was being carried in a suffocating embrace. What felt like an arm was placed directly over her mouth. Trying to sink her teeth into him, she bit a mouthful of terrycloth instead. She was nude from the waist down, the cold night air against her lower body. Her bladder emptied, and she heard the splashing against the tile floor.
She tried to move her arms, but they were trapped across her chest inside the robe. She kicked 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 feet were burning. 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. Not Shana, not her child. She had to protect her child.
“Mom.” She heard Shana’s 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. He had them both.
In another moment, they were on the bed in Lily’s room. When he removed his arm, the robe fell away from her face 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 inches from Shana’s neck. Lily grabbed his arm, and with the abnormal strength of stark terror, she almost succeeded in twisting it 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 Lily’s open mouth, the sharp edges nicking the tender sides 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. Lick it. Lick a whore’s blood, a fucking whore’s blood.”
Removing the knife from Lily’s mouth and placing it back at her throat, he moved his hand from Shana’s neck and shoved her T-shirt up, exposing her budding breasts. Shana desperately tried to push the T-shirt down to cover herself, turning pleading eyes to Lily.
“No,” she cried. “Stop him, Mommy. Please make him stop.”
He thrust his fingers around her neck. She choked and gurgling sounds came from her throat; a trickle of saliva ran down the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were glazed.
“Be calm, Shana. Don’t fight. Do what he says. Everything is going to be okay. Please, baby, listen to me.” Lily’s voice was forced control. “Let her go. I’ll do anything you ask of me.”
“That’s it, Momma. You tell her. Tell her how fucking good it is. Tell her you want it.” His guttural words were uttered through clenched teeth. He had one knee between Shana’s legs, prying them open, and the other knee between Lily’s, touching her genitals. “Unzip me,” he ordered Shana.
The girl’s terrified eyes again made contact with her mother’s. “Do it, Shana,” she said, watching while her child’s thin, trembling hand reached for his crotch, unable to grab the small end of the zipper. He raised his body up somewhat, but the crusty knife remained near Lily’s throat.
“Do it for her, Momma,” he said, shifting the knife to his other hand and positioning it near Shana’s navel. “Teach her how to take care of a man.”
Lily had to distract him, somehow get him away from Shana. She had to find a way to get the knife. When he finished with them, he would kill them, kill them both. Quickly unzipping him and removing his penis, she placed it in her mouth, the ragged edges of the zipper scraping her face. She smelled urine and putrid body odor, but he was becoming erect and moaning, throwing his head back, moving the knife away from Shana’s body. He grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her head back. He fell on top of Lily, looking straight into her eyes and relishing the fear reflected there. Something struck her chest, then her chin. It was a gold cross with a crucified Christ dangling from around his neck.
Suddenly he thrust himself up. “No, I want her, Momma. I don’t want a whore, a fucking old redheaded whore.” He expertly tossed the knife from one hand to the other and once again placed it at Lily’s throat. “Watch, Momma, watch or I’ll gut her.”
With one vicious yank, Shana’s underpants were torn off and tossed aside. Her body bounced up on the bed and then fell under the weight of him. He forced himself inside her and Shana screamed in pain. Lily had never felt so powerless in her life. There was no God. She knew it now. No reason to pray. She wished he would just cut her throat and end it all.
“Oh, Momma. Oh, Momma,” Shana gasped.
Lily found her hand and squeezed it tightly. It was cold and clammy. “Hold on, baby. Close your eyes and make believe you are far away. Hold on.”
A loud siren wailed in the street somewhere. He jumped and sprang from the bed. “The neighbors heard and called the police,” Lily said, hearing the sound growing nearer. “They’re going to shoot you, kill you.” He was backlit by the light emanating from the bathroom, his red shirt and face visible as he frantically tried to snap his jeans. Lily bolted upright in the bed and screamed in raw panic and fury. “If they don’t shoot you, I’ll kill you myself.”
SEVENTEEN
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA
Lily felt someone touch her shoulder and shrieked, her body shaking as if she were having a seizure. She saw a shadowy image beside her and started lashing out with her arms.
A familiar voice said, “Shit, you hit me in the eye. It’s me, Lily, Tessa. I’ve been calling you for hours. What are you doing on the floor? And why are you shaking? Did someone hurt you? Should I call the police?”
Lily pushed herself to a standing position. She’d been on the floor next to their new white sofa, the one Bryce refused to allow Gabby to sit on, and where the little dog was now snuggled comfortably among the plush pillows. A dim but richly hued light was filtering in through the sliding glass door. It took a few moments before Lily realized it was morning. “I must have gone to sleep here last night,” she said, not remembering anything after she’d gone downstairs. “I guess I was having a nightmare. Why are you here? Oh, my God, something’s happened to Bryce. Is he hurt? Is he in jail?”
“Calm down, Lily,” Tessa told her. “Nothing’s wrong, okay? You never called me back last night. I was worried when you didn’t show up at the club, so I called both numbers and got your voice mail.”
Lily’s back and neck were killing her, and words seemed to be coming at her like bullets. “Did you ever give thought to the fact that I might have been asleep?”
Tessa placed her hand on Lily’s arm. “I even tried Bryce’s cell. I don’t know why, but I got this strange feeling something was wrong. There were these terrible murders in L.A. last night. The news said someone had broken in and killed a couple and their ten-year-old son.”
The crimes had been on the evening news. They had occurred in Inglewood, an area plagued by gangs and violence. “This isn’t L.A., Tessa. Ventura County is one of the safest and most affluent places in the United States.”
“Well, things happen here, too. Aren’t you trying a big homicide case right now?”
Lily didn’t want to argue, but most of their violent crimes were caused by domestic abuse. Even the Stucky case fell into that category, as did the Burkell homicides.
“What’s the deal with Bryce? Where is he, by the way?”
How could Tessa just walk in on her like this? Lily heard the lawn sprinklers go off. They were programmed to come on at six. Even though she felt deeply for Tessa, she didn’t want the burden of her problems right now. She was a good person and a loyal friend, but she drained her. Unhappy people didn’t seem satisfied until they made everyone around them miserable. But bulimia and anorexia were life-threatening problems. If Tessa had an eating disorder, Lily would have to get her to fess up and figure out a way to help her.
“You were saying?” Tessa said, her hands on her hips. “You know, why you’re worried about Bryce.”
“It’s nothing. He’s away on a business trip. You just scared me, Tessa. I thought you were a burglar.” Lily’s curly hair looked as if it had been in a mixer. “You really shouldn’t come in without my consent. Granted, I should have called you back last night, but—”
Her friend cut her off, one of her annoying habits. “Do you want your key back? Is that what you’re trying to tell
me? Fine. Whatever.” She tossed her hands in the air, then let them slap back against her thighs. “I knew this would happen once you became a judge. You’re just too important to hang out with a schoolteacher.” Tears streamed down her face as she reached into her purse and tried to pry the key to Lily’s house off her key chain.
Lily took her hand and closed it. “I love you, Tessa. Give me a minute to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. If you want, you can put on a pot of coffee for us.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s not even six yet, so we have plenty of time to talk. You know where everything is, right?”
“Yeah,” she answered, her face brightening.
Lily went upstairs, finding her cell and house phone on the end table by the bed. When she checked to see if her husband had called, she discovered the battery on her cell was dead. The same thing had probably happened to Bryce the night before. He’d been so disorganized the other morning, he may have forgotten his charger. She went to the bathroom and plugged her cell into the charger, then checked her messages again on both phones. There were five calls from Tessa, but nothing from her husband. Now that Tessa was here and the house was filled with sunlight, Lily’s concerns were fading.
The Cheater Page 18