My Lost Daughter (13 page)

“How long ago was this?”

“Sixteen years ago.”

“Forget it, Lily. I don't want to hear it. Whatever you did, you did. I know you well enough to know you must have had a good reason. Nothing is going to stop me from loving you. I told you that from the beginning.”

Lily was too worried about Shana to continue. When she got back, she would write him a letter. But a letter could fall into the wrong hands, and she wasn't prepared to go to prison right now. She had tried to confess from the beginning, but ironically, no one had wanted to listen. This horrible thing was trapped inside her and she knew she would never be free of it. Maybe if the truth finally came out, she could put it behind her.

But not now, not when Shana needed her. Her daughter's well-being was the reason Detective Cunningham had refused to arrest her, but shortly after, he'd quit the Ventura PD and moved to Omaha, where he had grown up. Lily wasn't the only one who had to live with this secret. Shana had suffered as well, and for all she knew, keeping something like this inside for so many years could be one of the reasons she had skidded off track.

“Try to get some sleep tonight,” Chris said. “Call me first thing in the morning. I already miss you and you've only been gone for one day.”

“I miss you, too.”

Lily understood what was happening to Shana because it had happened to her. She couldn't remember how it had begun, but she knew exactly how it had ended, just as she knew the remarkable
man who had saved her. The only thing she'd never understand was why.

1993
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

“Station One, Two-Boy,” the dispatcher said over the police radio. “Robbery just occurred at White's Market, Alameda and Fourth. Suspects are two males armed with nine-millimeters, last seen EB on Third in a brown Nova, unknown license. Clerk has been shot. Ambulance and rescue en route. Code three.”

Cunningham was only a few blocks from the scene. A patrol unit had been dispatched, but his eyes scanned the vehicles as he flew past them. 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, exactly the type of thing a woman would do: confess when they'd almost walked away without a hitch. She had committed the perfect crime, and then she had dissolved into a sniveling female answering some inner need to do the moral, ethical thing. Anger rose inside him, acid bubbled like a witch's cauldron inside his stomach.

“There are no ethics anymore,” he said. “Presidents commit crimes and lie, preachers steal and fornicate, parents murder their children, and children murder their parents.” That morning he'd read an article about a fire captain charged with twelve counts of arson. On the next page was a piece on an LAPD detective who had conspired to commit murder for hire. Sitting at a desk right next to him, carrying a gun and 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 homes, assholes!” he yelled at them. “If you don't, someone will 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 in disgust. He slowed down and searched the street signs, then made a quick right, the big car fishtailing. 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 and slammed on the brakes. The house was dark. Cutting the engine, he sat perfectly still and listened. It was too dark and too quiet. His nose twitched and he thought he could smell death.

“No!” he cried, 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, Lily's mouth sucking on the same shotgun she had 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, which was standing open. All he could hear was his own heart tapping out a staccato beat. Then he saw her in the shadows. Lily was on the floor, leaning against the wall, motionless. He thought the worst. His eyes searched for blood, a shotgun, or a handgun. But when he reached out with an icy finger to touch the pulse point on her neck, his finger rose and fell with life.

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

“Daddy,” she whispered, the word muffled, her voice that of a child.

“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 and the trapeze artists. He remembered how he had looked up in awe as a beautiful young woman in a shiny costume had flown through the air. Just when he thought she would fall, 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 arms and shook her more forcefully. “It's Bruce, Bruce Cunningham. Lily, do you hear me? 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 and her body rigid. Running his hand along the wall, he found the light switch and flooded the room with light. Then he bent down 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 had raped my daughter. I shot him in cold blood.”

“Where are you, Lily?”

“I'm in Ventura, at my new house.”

“What's the president's name?”

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

She didn't even remember where she had 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 in 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 minutes had passed, 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 to her feet, she faced him, and a wave of emotion washed over him. 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, not a middle-aged, overweight detective.

Entering the car on the driver's side, he reached over and fastened her seat belt, then pulled the door closed. “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 assaulted their ears. He reached for the mike, flicked the radio on, and yelled, “Station One, Unit Six-five-four!”

“Six-five-four, go ahead.”

“Where's the victim of the two-eleven, the robbery at White's Market?”

“Community Presbyterian, but it looks like a DOA.”

“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 microphone 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.

“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 running in her high heels to keep up with him. The automatic doors to the ER opened, and glaring lights struck their eyes. Cunningham flashed his badge and kept walking, the nurse pointing to one of the examining rooms. On the table was a young man who appeared to be from India or Pakistan, uncovered and still. His shirt was ripped open but his chest was unmarked except for red circular spots where they had probably placed the paddles to shock his heart. 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 the man's cold hand, gently touching 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. She followed him out and down the hall. He kept walking through corridors, turning down one hall and then another, until he finally stopped and faced her. They were alone in what appeared to be a section of the hospital under construction or restoration.

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

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

“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 shoulders 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 shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. Prying her fingers open, he pressed it there, and 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 trembling. “You can't 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 grabbed both of her hands with his own and pinned them against the wall, his face inches from hers, his breath as hot and heavy as a blowtorch. “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 away 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 word. “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 released his hold on Lily and stepped back. Her arms fell to her sides. “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 pulling tightly against his back and broad shoulders. Lily's eyes watched him until he turned the corner and disappeared.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

Their dark-skinned bodies glistened in the flickering candlelight. Mary had one of her long legs tossed over her husband's. “So what do you think?”