Buried Evidence (42 page)

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Shana said, slapping the paper down on his desk. “This is the drawing of the person they said killed Bobby Hernandez. Look at it. Tell me what you see.”

Two uniformed officers burst through the door. Julia Bender stood in the outer office, her arms locked around her chest. A blond-haired officer grabbed Shana’s right arm, yanked it behind her back, then reached for her left arm. A taller African American officer handed him a pair of handcuffs.

“You can’t do this to me,” Shana yelled, struggling until she felt the handcuffs cutting into her wrists. “I don’t have a gun. I wasn’t going to shoot him or attack him.”

“Your actions were threatening,” Butler told her, trying to catch his breath. Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, he mopped the perspiration off his brow, wondering if he was going to survive the next three months until his retirement party.

“Aren’t you even going to look at the drawing?”

“Get her computer out of my office,” Butler instructed the officers. “Have someone check and make certain there isn’t a bomb in there…some type of explosives.”

“No problem,” the dark-skinned officer said, picking up Shana’s case and leaving the room.

Now that the situation appeared to be under control, Butler finally picked up the composite drawing Shana had placed on his desk, bringing it close to his face. It didn’t take him long to detect the resemblance—the long neck, the nose, the almond shape of the eyes, the pronounced cheekbones.

The officer holding Shana asked, “What do you want us to do with her, sir?”

“Give me a minute,” Butler barked, using his index finger to adjust his glasses. He continued to study the image, shifting his eyes back and forth from the paper to the girl. “Are you trying to claim this is you?”

“Yes,” Shana said, her wrists smarting from the handcuffs. “Why do you think I came here? My mother didn’t kill that man. I killed him.”

“Calm down,” the district attorney told her. “You don’t have to try to get my attention. Trust me, you have everyone’s attention in this room.”

“Can’t you take these things off my wrists?” Shana asked, her teeth clenched. “They’re too tight.”

The officer waited until Butler nodded, then removed a key from his belt and unlocked the handcuffs. Julia Bender tiptoed in and stood in the back of the room. Attorneys and other office personnel had heard the ruckus and gathered in the outer office, watching the drama unfold through the open doorway.

“My mother had Hernandez’s picture,” Shana said, rubbing her wrists. “She’d just signed his release from jail the night we were raped. My father lied when he said my mother didn’t come home until the next morning. I took her car and drove over to the address on the man’s booking sheet. He looked exactly like the man who raped us. I found my granddaddy’s shotgun in the garage. I waited until he came out of his house the next morning, then I shot him.”

“Where’s the shotgun?”

“In the ocean,” Shana lied, fixing her eyes on a spot over the
district attorney’s head. “I was thirteen. He held a knife to my throat while he made my mother suck him.”

Butler sat at rapt attention. The threatening demeanor Shana had displayed earlier had disappeared, replaced by a childlike vulnerability. The transformation was mesmerizing. Although Shana’s back was turned to the people huddled around the open doorway, a cloak of silence fell over the room.

Her voice became low and small, yet she spoke slowly and distinctly, making her recitation even more chilling. The sound of phones ringing in the background was the only distraction, and after a few moments it became obvious that no one was going to answer them. Julia darted out of the room, called the switchboard, then returned.

“Mom tried to protect me,” Shana said. “She said she’d do anything if he wouldn’t hurt me. He said he didn’t want her because she was old. He smelled putrid…his breath, his underarms, his clothes. I was praying, certain he was going to kill us.” She paused, the bitter young woman reappearing. “He’s not even locked up anymore,” she shouted. “For all I know, he’s the person who stabbed my father. I don’t care if you send me to jail. At least I’d be safer than I would be out there.” She gestured toward the window, to the parking lot where she knew Curazon had first began concocting his vile fantasies, watching her mother from the windows of the jail.

In all his years as a district attorney, Paul Butler had never found himself in such an emotionally charged situation. Even though he had sat in scores of courtrooms and listened to hundreds of victims, Shana Forrester had managed to draw him inside her soul. Butler’s hands trembled on the composite drawing as Shana slowly removed the knit cap from her head, her red hair spilling out onto her shoulders.

“Leave us alone,” the district attorney said. “Close the door, Julia. Tell the people out there to go back to work.”

As soon as the room had cleared and they were alone, Butler asked her to sit down. Shana did what he said, folding her hands in her lap. “You’re going to put me in jail, aren’t you?”

Butler’s life’s work had been devoted to making certain the
criminals who victimized innocent people were safely locked behind bars. Experiencing the pain of this young woman made him question what he had really accomplished. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Your mother was an extraordinary prosecutor,” he told her, “as well as an exceptional supervisor.” Around the time Lily and her daughter were raped, the governor had offered her a superior court judgeship. Lily had decided to relocate to Los Angeles, and Butler had given her a recommendation for the job she had later accepted with the appellate court. The McDonald-Lopez case came to mind. The gruesome images of the two slain teenagers would always haunt him. Bobby Hernandez had been the ringleader, if his memory served him correct; then the man had gone on to kill another woman.

“Do you work?” he asked. “Go to college?”

“Before my father was killed, I was in my sophomore year at UCLA. I planned on going to law school like my mother.” Shana felt her dream drifting away, but she had gone too far to turn back. “I guess girls my age have silly dreams. I wanted to be like Sandra Day O’Connor, maybe work my way up to the Supreme Court.”

“There’s nothing silly about wanting to reach high in life,” Butler said, remembering how he had aspired to the same goal. “I’m not certain the Supreme Court is all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve spoken to a few of the justices, and they say it’s pretty tedious work, similar to what your mother did with the appellate court, even though she wasn’t a judge. You know, lots of paperwork and no action.”

From the explosiveness of only a short time ago, a long silence ensued, neither of them feeling the need to speak.

“What are we going to do?” Shana asked, shattering the silence. “I won’t make a scene if you have to call the police officers again. I know what I did was wrong.”

“I’m sure you do,” Butler said, pondering the moral and ethical complexity she had brought to his doorstep. “The problem is, Shana, I’m not convinced you killed this man. I’m sure your
mother told you some of the things you said today, or you read about them in the paper.”

“So you think I’m lying?”

“I don’t really know,” Butler said honestly. “You may have imagined that you killed this man, and no doubt you wanted him to suffer for what you went through. Those type of feelings are normal. What we’re dealing with is a lack of credibility.”

“Why?” Shana asked, compressing in her seat.

“Because you were only thirteen,” Butler said, glancing at the composite drawing again. “You do resemble the person in this drawing. Today, though, not six years ago. Even with the knit cap, this is simply not the face of a thirteen-year-old girl.” He read some of the text attached to the newspaper article. “This individual was described as a male, and his height was listed as approximately six feet.”

“I was five-eight when I was thirteen,” she cried. “I can show you pictures. I can’t let my mom go to prison.” Most of what she had told him had been true. Lily had pulled the trigger, yet in her mind Shana had been standing right behind her. She started to beg, then stopped herself. She had pleaded with Marco Curazon. She wanted to be strong, fight reason with reason. “You may not believe me. That still doesn’t mean you’re not going to have a problem. I know how things work. I’ve watched all those trials on TV, listened to my mom talk about her cases. I’m going to confess, then my mother will confess to protect me. The jury will be so confused, they won’t know what to think.” She paused, then another thought came to mind. “The jurors will sympathize with my mother and me. They won’t care what happens to Hernandez. He killed three people.”

“You might be wrong, Shana,” Butler told her, sorry he had to be the bearer of bad news. “Mr. Hernandez, no matter how evil he might have been, will not be on trial. What he did doesn’t matter. The only way it would be pertinent to your case is if he had been the man who raped you and your mother. You just admitted to me that he wasn’t the rapist, that he only looked like this Marco Curazon. Isn’t that correct?”

Shana felt as if her head were about to explode. Her chest
expanded and contracted. She felt dizzy and light-headed, afraid she was going to faint again as she had in the back of the police car. She chewed on a fingernail, thinking of her father, the hateful things she’d said prior to his death. Her mother had made an irreversible mistake when she had shot Hernandez; then her father had driven while intoxicated, causing a young man to lose his life. Was it possible that she had made a serious mistake herself, revealed information that would later be used to put her mother in prison?

She remembered her uncle’s funeral several years before, the only funeral she had ever attended. An elderly lady from the church had told her that dying was nothing to be afraid of, that a grave was similar to trading your old house in for a new one. The woman had quoted a statement from the Bible: “In my father’s house, there are many mansions.”

“I want the police to let me bury my dad,” Shana blurted out. “With everything that’s going on, I need to plan my father’s funeral.”

“Julia,” Paul Butler said over the intercom, “see if you can get Chief Easterly with the LAPD on the line. I need an update on the Forrester homicide ASAP. Start at the top and work your way down.” Once he stopped speaking, he told Shana, “We’re going to try to solve at least one of your problems. You and your mother can begin making the necessary arrangements for your father’s burial right away. I’ll do whatever I can to expedite the release of his body. Will that make you feel better?”

“Yes,” she said, “but—”

“You did a lot of talking earlier,” Butler interrupted, arching an eyebrow. “I think it’s time you listen to what I have to say. I’m certain the police in L.A. are doing everything they can to find the person who killed your father. I’ll also make sure our local police department does everything possible to track down the man who raped you. Regarding the Hernandez homicide, from this point on, I would suggest that you only discuss this situation with an attorney.”

L
ily and Richard were frantic. They’d been driving around since Shana had left the house, believing she was somewhere in the Ventura area. Richard steered the Lexus into the parking lot of his law office, wanting to pick up the 9mm Luger he kept locked in the bottom drawer of his office. He also needed the home phone number for Curazon’s parole officer. When Richard had first heard the rapist was carrying around what appeared to be a photo of Shana Forrester, the parole officer had informed him that they had already checked the man’s known associates, relatives, and any establishments he was known to frequent. Now that John had been murdered, the time had come to do more than merely knock on doors and ask questions.

Returning to the car, Richard slid the Luger under his seat.

“What are you doing?” Lily asked, having seen the outline of a gun in his hand.

“Trying to keep us alive,” he told her. “Curazon uses knives because one of his buddies probably taught him that his chances of getting caught with a concealed weapon were less likely than if he packed a firearm. Either that, or he gets a kick out of cutting people.”

“Thanks,” Lily said facetiously. “We have no idea where Shana is, and you feel the need to remind me that Curazon likes knives. Don’t you think I know that by now? Shit, Richard, he used a knife when he raped us.”

Richard reached over and pulled her into his arms. “I love you,” he said impulsively. “When this is over, I’m going to marry you.”

“Do you realize what you just said?” Lily asked, jerking her head back. “And I don’t mean the comment about Curazon.”

Richard returned to his side of the car, placing his hands on
the steering wheel. “I don’t know why I said that,” he told her, feeling foolish. “I haven’t given much thought to getting married again. Not that I don’t love you—”

“It’s okay,” Lily said, lowering her eyes. “People say things they don’t mean when they’re under stress. You were just trying to make me feel better.”

“No,” Richard said. “I meant it, Lily. We’re going to get through this somehow. Then we’re going to do what we should have done six years ago. Shana needs a father. Greg adores her. Yeah,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself, “I can see it. You know, the marriage and all. I already have the practice. You could become my partner. Then when Shana gets her law degree, she could—”

“Please, stop,” Lily said, choking back tears, “you’re making things even more difficult for me. I refuse to back down on what I said, no matter how much you and Shana pressure me. If you won’t agree to approach the D.A. tomorrow and negotiate a settlement in my behalf, I’ll talk to them myself.”

“Damn it,” he said. “I won’t allow you to plead guilty. All that stuff you told Shana was bullshit. The court isn’t going to place you in a work-release program. They’re going to charge you with murder, Lily. Since when do murderers get work release? You didn’t steal the guy’s car or hit him over the head. You killed him.”

“That’s why I can’t let this go on,” Lily said, shivering at the road ahead of her. “I have to get this off my chest. It’s been buried inside me for so long. Even if we did get married, I’d make your life miserable. Why do you think I didn’t call you all these years? I even felt guilty that we had that one night together now. I don’t deserve to be happy.”