Buried Evidence Read online

  “It was nothing but a plastic Coke bottle,” Nash explained. “That’s why I thought the whole thing was screwy. Why would Mr. Middleton get so bent out of shape? All I did was pick up his soda after it fell out of his jacket. Thing is, I didn’t think the liquid inside looked dark enough to be Coca-Cola. The boss also wore pretty expensive clothes to be stretching them out by carrying around his soft drinks inside his jacket pocket, know what I mean?”

  “Did this bottle have a top that could be taken off, then replaced?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Don’t you know what kind of bottle I’m talking about? It was a Coke bottle, man. There’s a zillion of them things out there. Surely you’ve seen one. That is, unless you live on Mars or something.”

  “I’ve seen a Coke bottle, Mr. Nash,” Kingsley told him, giving Lily a look that said this was a strong witness, a man who wouldn’t crack under cross-examination. “I’d like to ask you a few more questions. Is that okay?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Can you tell me how I might get in touch with Danny Metz or Bob Sanders? I understand neither one of them are still employed at SOS.”

  “I can’t help you there, pal,” Nash told him. “Both Metz and Sanders were ex-cons. We used to hire those kind of guys at the furniture place now and then. Once they earn a few dollars, they tend to split. Killing bugs isn’t much fun, not that I don’t respect any man who puts in an honest day’s work. I turned sixty this year, see, so I know how tough it can be to find a decent job. Some places would rather hire a jailbird than an old fart like me.”

  “Have you ever served time in prison?”

  “Never,” Nash barked, his deep voice booming out over the speaker phone. “And I’ve never been convicted of anything outside of a few parking tickets. You’re talking to a stand-up guy. Didn’t I already tell you that?”

  “You certainly did,” Kingsley answered, tossing another piece of paper on Lily’s desk.

  “Perfect,” she whispered, using her finger to press her glasses back in place on her nose. Kingsley had checked Jack Winston Nash, a.k.a. Jake Nash, through every criminal record system in existence, even Interpol. Not even the parking tickets showed up. The man was so clean, he could have run for president.

  “One more question,” Kingsley said, pacing back and forth in front of Lily’s desk. “After you heard that Mr. Middleton’s daughter had been poisoned, why didn’t you call the police and tell them what you just told me?”

  “Several reasons,” he explained. “First, I would have never dreamed a rich guy like Middleton could do something so terrible to his own kid. I also didn’t realize that he canned me only three days before his little girl was poisoned. When you called and started asking questions, I looked back over my paperwork and decided it might be worth mentioning. That’s when everything began to click in my head. I usually make it a rule to mind my own business, but when someone hurts an innocent kid, then I guess you could say it’s everyone’s business.”

  “You’re a good man,” Kingsley told him. “We’ll be in touch. If you can think of anything else that occurred that day, please jot it down and call us immediately.”

  Lily circled around to the front of her desk. “This is great news, Matt,” she said, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Our entire case might turn on the testimony of this one witness, a man you flushed out on your own.”

  “Thanks,” he said, his chest swelling with pride. “Does this mean you want me to remain on the case?”

  “Without a doubt,” she told him, glancing down at his feet. “How’s your toe?”

  “I’ll live,” he said, shrugging. “My dad used to beat the living daylights out of me. I’m here, so I guess I survived.” He took a few steps toward the door, then paused and glanced back at her. “I’m sorry I acted like such a creep earlier. People prejudge me. Just because my family has money doesn’t mean I’m a fool. I want to make my own way in life.”

  “Well,” Lily said, already typing the details of their phone conversation with Jake Nash into her computer, “it looks as if you’re going to get that chance.”

  9

  I’m in jail.” Lily picked up the phone in her office, expecting to hear her daughter’s voice. She had left several messages on Shana’s voice mail that morning, but she had as yet to return her call. “John?” she asked. Her ex-husband’s voice was so strained it took her a few moments to recognize him.

  “You have to help me,” he pleaded. “They just arraigned me.” Lily’s heart began pounding. “Where’s Shana?”

  “I guess she’s in school.”

  “Good Lord,” she said, concerned she might be responsible, “why didn’t you speak to her? She called me last night in a panic. She was certain Marco Curazon was stalking her. That’s why I called the police.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said, knowing she thought the police had mistaken him for Shana’s prowler. “I went out to get ice cream. When I got back to the duplex around ten o’clock, the police were already leaving. The man Shana saw must have been a neighbor. Please, Lily, she’s okay. I was arrested later…I don’t know… shortly before midnight.”

  “But Shana doesn’t know you’re in jail?”

  “She was asleep,” John continued. “I decided it would be better if I didn’t upset her. She’s been under enough stress lately. I thought the police would release me last night after they booked me. I had no idea they were going to lock me up and haul me into court this morning.”

  Lily was appalled that the man she had once been married to was confined in a correctional facility like a common criminal. When she’d learned he was drinking again, though, she had feared another drunk-driving arrest. A DWI conviction wasn’t such a lightweight offense these days, and John already had a prior conviction. “How high was your blood alcohol?”

  “They didn’t arrest me for drunk driving.”

  “Oh,” she said, dismayed. “Then what—”

  “Vehicular manslaughter.”

  Lily almost choked on her own saliva. “You killed someone?”

  “Maybe I didn’t do anything,” he shot back. “Maybe I was just standing outside having a nightcap. You should talk. What happened to that guy? You know…what was his name? Hernandez, right?”

  The receiver tumbled out of Lily’s hands. The past six years disappeared and she was back in Ventura. Bobby Hernandez had first entered her life as a suspect in the rape and kidnaping of a prostitute. Lily was the supervisor over the sex crimes division at the time, and had assigned the case to Clinton Silverstein to prosecute. When the victim, Patricia Barnes, had failed to show up on three separate occasions, Silverstein asked Lily for permission to withdraw charges. Silverstein felt the case was what they called a “failure to pay,” meaning due to her occupation, she agreed to have sex with Hernandez and cried rape only when he fled without paying her. Instances such as this were not unusual. Generally, the prostitute’s pimp was behind the false accusation; the intent was to send a message to other tricks that they couldn’t get away without paying. Therefore, it was Lily’s signature on the release forms that became Bobby Hernandez’s ticket to freedom.

  She remembered having placed Hernandez’s file in her briefcase, telling Silverstein she would make the proper notations regarding the dismissal at her home later that evening. John and Lily had separated the previous month, and twelve-year-old Shana had elected to live with her father, a decision that hurt her mother enormously.

  Lily remembered leaving the office, eager to see Shana and show her the house she had rented and all the pretty things she had purchased for her new room. The evening had gone beautifully. Shana had loved her room. Lily had cooked her favorite meal—fried chicken and mashed potatoes. After dinner they had lounged on the sofa like sisters, thumbing through family albums and reminiscing. Not used to living alone, Lily had forgotten to lock the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Although she knew enough about criminals to realize the rapist would have still managed to find a way to break into
the house, John had insisted the crime would have never occurred if not for her carelessness.

  Lily could hear the rapist’s sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor, feel his fingers digging into her flesh as he dragged her down the hallway, her robe tossed over her head like a death shroud. She’d been certain she was going to suffocate. Not only was she thrashing about wildly, the terry-cloth robe was thick and her attacker had pulled it tightly over her nose and mouth. When Shana had heard the sound of a struggle and called out to her mother, all thoughts of her own danger had vanished.

  “Is something wrong?” Susan Montgomery, Lily’s assistant, had been standing quietly in the doorway. A quirky brunette, she wore her hair cropped short and she dressed like a college student, even though she was the mother of three small children. Today she was wearing a plaid miniskirt, a red sweater, and matching red leggings. As she tiptoed into the room, her concern for her supervisor intensified. Lily’s forehead was damp with perspiration and her skin was ashen. “Are you sick?”

  “I-I’m—” Lily tilted her head toward the woman’s voice, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth.

  “Your ex-husband is on the phone. He says it’s urgent… that he got disconnected during an important conversation. What do you want me to tell him? If you don’t want to speak to him, I can—”

  “No,” Lily said, frantically retrieving the receiver off her desk. Hearing only a dial tone, she gave her assistant another blank stare.

  “Mr. Forrester is on the other line.”

  “Thanks, Susan,” she said, waving her out of the office.

  Hernandez had been a dead ringer for the rapist. After the assault Lily had sent Shana home with John, then retrieved the Hernandez file from her briefcase. She remembered crawling across the floor on her hands and knees, her bathrobe reeking from her daughter’s vomit. She not only had their attacker’s mug shot, she had his address. She was certain he had followed her home from the government center in Ventura. From the day the county had erected the new complex, housing both the courts and the jail, Lily had been fearful something awful was going to happen. The windows of the jail overlooked the parking lot. Prisoners could watch victims, witnesses, even prosecutors as they got in and out of their cars each day.

  In her frenzied state, all Lily recalled was the rapist’s dark skin, his red sweatshirt, the gold crucifix dangling around his neck. Bobby Hernandez’s facial features and body conformation not only looked exactly like the rapist’s, he had been wearing a red sweatshirt and a crucifix in his mug shots. For years she had worked with victims, warning them not to make identifications based on such superficial details.

  Susan Montgomery was standing beside her desk again, pointing at the blinking light on the telephone console. Deciding her supervisor must have had an argument with her former spouse, she handed her a cup of ice water. “Drink this,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”

  Lily thanked the woman with her eyes. “Can you shut the door for me, Susan?”

  “Sure,” she said. “And if it will make you feel any better, whenever I get a call from my ex-husband, I start hyperventilating.”

  John was accusing, desperate. “You hung up on me. They don’t allow you fifteen phone calls, you know. This is a damn jail, Lily! I called you for help.”

  “I didn’t hang up on you,” she said, knowing she had to defuse the situation immediately. “A judge called me regarding a case I’m handling. All I did was place you on hold until I answered his question.”

  “Don’t shovel that shit at me,” he said. “You’re just stalling, trying to show me what a big shot you are, that even judges come running to you. I don’t care who the hell calls you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your ass down here.”

  Lily’s right leg began jumping up and down. She had to place her hand on it to hold it in place. Was Bobby Hernandez stalking her from the grave? Until a person took a life, they could never understand the gravity of their actions. She was forever tied to a dead man. On the nights when sleep eluded her, she would spend all night pacing like a caged animal, feeling as if she were handcuffed to the rotting corpse of Bobby Hernandez. People in prison might envy her. She could come and go when she pleased, walk on the beach, get in her car and drive to work each day. But she was not free. Imprisoned by her own deeds, she lived in constant fear of exposure, locked in a macabre marriage to the man she had killed. After gulping down the whole glass of water, she asked, “Where are you calling me from?”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” John yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m in the Los Angeles County Jail.”

  “I understand you’re in jail,” she said, hissing the words at him. “Exactly where are you in the jail? Are you in booking? Are you in an interview room? I’m trying to determine if anyone can hear what you’re saying.”

  The line fell silent. A short time later, a garbled male voice rang out in the background. “The only person who can hear me,” John told her, “is this weirdo standing behind me. I tried to tell him to get lost. I think he’s from Iran or somewhere.”

  “You’re using a pay phone, then?” She wondered if Susan had accepted a collect call. How else would he have been able to call her long-distance from the jail?

  “First the cops interrogate me,” he said, “now you’re giving me the third-degree. Trust me, this guy doesn’t speak English. Even if he did, he wouldn’t know what we’re talking about.”

  Lily lowered her voice. “Why would you bring up Bobby Hernandez?”

  “Because I know the truth,” he said. “Shana and I both know you killed that man. You killed him because you mistook him for the rapist. You tracked him down and assassinated him. That’s premeditated murder.”

  Lily’s eyes glazed over. Instead of the nervous tremors she’d experienced earlier, her muscles locked into place. “Bobby Hernandez was a murderer,” she said, the words erupting from deep inside her subconscious. “He was on his way to becoming a serial killer. Remember Peter McDonald and Carmen Lopez? Hernandez and four of his fellow gang members murdered them. They bashed the boy’s head in, raped the girl repeatedly, then shoved a tree limb up her vagina, rupturing her abdominal wall.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “That’s precisely the point,” Lily said, slamming her fist down on the desk. “Hernandez developed a taste for killing. He decided it was more exciting than taking drugs and robbing people. On his own, he kidnapped, raped, and murdered another woman.”

  John vaguely recalled the atrocities of the case she had mentioned, but at the time he’d been more concerned over what had happened to his daughter than the fate of strangers. “I didn’t say the man deserved to live,” he said. “Have I ever accused you or threatened to turn you in?”

  Lily had no choice but to lie. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Hey,” he said, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Isn’t that the way the world works these days?”

  She bit down on the inside of her mouth. Why had he waited six years to confront her? Knowing her ex-husband as well as she did, she had to consider that he might be bluffing. But John and Shana did know things that only Detective Cunningham had uncovered during his investigation. He knew she had stayed out until dawn the night following the rape. And Shana had walked into the garage, catching her mother squatting near the rear of her Honda as she wiped off the black magic marker she’d used to alter her license plate. In one particular instance, Lily had even blurted out the truth. John had been ranting and raving, saying he wanted to kill the man who had viciously raped his daughter. His wife told him that it wasn’t necessary, that she had already killed him. When John had failed to take her seriously, she had recanted and told him her statement was only wishful thinking.

  “What do you want from me, John?”

  “You’re an attorney,” he said. “Do you want Shana to find out her father’s in jail? She hasn’t recovered from what that Curazon monster did to her. He raped my
baby. She was just an innocent little girl.”

  “Calm down,” Lily said, hearing him whimpering. “Did the judge set bail?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “A hundred thousand.”

  “A hundred thousand!” Lily exclaimed, expecting a lower amount. The offense of vehicular manslaughter carried the same weight as second-degree murder. Under those circumstances, bail in this range might be justified. Her original assumption, however, was that the district attorney in Los Angeles had arraigned John on a number of charges. Most defendants were either too frightened to hear half of what was said during their arraignment, or they had difficulty deciphering the legal jargon. And prosecutors frequently added more serious counts to the original pleading, hoping these charges could be used as leverage to get the defendant to enter into a plea agreement and avoid taking the case to trial. In order to charge John with vehicular manslaughter, though, he would have had to have killed someone with his car during the commission of a felony. “What exactly did you do?”

  “You mean, what they said I did?”

  Now they were going to play this game, Lily thought, having heard the same evasive tactics spewing out of the mouths of hundreds of criminals during the course of her career. She was tempted to bail him out of jail just so she could drive him to a dark alley and smash both his kneecaps with a baseball bat. He didn’t mind accusing her of murder on a jailhouse phone, but he wasn’t about to admit his own guilt. “Fine,” she snapped. “Tell me what crimes the police are alleging that you’ve committed.”

  “There was an accident,” he said. “The cops claim I left the scene. You know, a hit-and-run. When they arrested me, I was sitting on the front porch sipping on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

  “You’re on probation, John,” Lily said. “You swore you weren’t going to drink.”

  “I know,” he said, “but it breaks my heart to see Shana scared. She thought she saw Curazon last night.”