My Lost Daughter (17 page)

In the garage, behind a stack of boxes, was her father's shotgun, a twelve-gauge Browning semiautomatic, the one he had used to hunt deer. In the stillness of the garage, as her hands touched the barrel of the gun, Lily felt his presence beside her and heard his voice. “Good shot, Lily girl,” he would say on the Saturday afternoons when he had taken her to shoot tin cans lined up on a tree stump.

Spotting the small box containing the green slugs, she again heard his voice, right there next to her, clear and distinct. “These are called rifle slugs, Lily girl.” She loaded them into the chamber and crammed several more into the tight pocket of her jeans. “These will make a hole big enough to throw a cat through.”

As she left the garage, shotgun muzzle down in her arms, her footsteps echoed even when she had left the concrete flooring and was walking on carpet. She felt heavy, rooted to the ground with resolve, walking in another dimension, no longer alone in her body. The phone rang like a shrill bell, invasive, unwelcome, but a signal to begin. It was John.

“Shana's asleep. I'm worried about you. Are you coming over?”

“I'll be there in a few hours. Don't worry. I can't sleep now anyway. I want to calm down and take a bath. He's not coming back here tonight. Just worry about Shana.” Do what you do best, she thought without contempt, accepting her role, and I'll do what has to be done.

She started to lock the front door and leave and then she thought of something and returned to the kitchen. Rummaging through the drawers, her fingers seized a black Magic Marker, the one she had used to label the moving boxes. She shoved it in her pocket and left.

The moon was out, the night clear. A streetlight reflected half moons of light on the manicured yards. She crouched at the rear of her car and began marking the license plate. The plate read
FPO322
. With the marker she altered it to
EBO822
. It was a small change, but it was the best she could do. She threw the shotgun in the backseat, thought of covering it, and then decided it didn't matter. The rage was an unseen inferno, burning all around her. She kept seeing him over Shana, the knife at her navel, his body heaving on top of her precious child.

She drove toward Oxnard. The streets were quiet. She rolled the window down and let the night air blow in her face. As she passed the farming area of Oxnard, the smell of fertilizer reminded her of his rancid odor. She tasted his vile penis in her mouth and spat out the window. The edges of her lips stung from the razor-sharp nicks of the knife.
The thought of where that knife had been and the dried matter she had tasted made her force the thought from her mind to keep from vomiting.

Slowly she drove down the dark streets, passing from one streetlight to another, one stop sign and another traffic signal, changing from green to yellow and back again. In her mind they were like runway lights illuminating her descent into Hell. Cars sped past her now and then. Inside were couples coming home from parties, dates, bars; lovers crawling out of beds and returning to other beds.

She was trying to formulate a plan. It didn't take her long to find the house. The street was a major thoroughfare in Oxnard and she simply followed the numbers. The area was called Colonia. She knew it well, for it was infested with drug dealing and crime. His house was one in a row of tiny stucco dwellings. Across the street was a vacant lot. The yard was overgrown with weeds, dry and crackling from lack of water. In the driveway there was a dusty black older-model Plymouth and a Ford pickup. The vehicle used in the rape and kidnap had been a van and there was no van.

Like a burglar she cased the area, noting that the nearest streetlight was a block away on the corner. She had driven here with intent, her loaded shotgun in the backseat, but with no definitive plan. She knew she couldn't enter his house and shoot him. That would be suicide. And she had no way of knowing for certain that he was actually inside. There was only one way: wait for him to come out. It could be broad daylight with dozens of people milling about. Some of these homes had five or six families living together.

Turning back toward the field she had passed earlier, she steered the car onto a dirt road, pressing down on the accelerator and flooring it. The car had been washed only a few days before. It was now absorbing the dust she was churning up with her tires. She parked by the road, with crops planted as far as she could see on either side. Taking the shotgun from the backseat, she pointed into the fields and fired it. The blast shattered the stillness of the night and the butt of the gun smashed into her shoulder. Her father had been dead for ten years. She wanted to be certain her weapon of death would perform. Quickly throwing it into the backseat, she spun out and headed back onto the main road.

By her actions she had caused this to happen to her daughter. It had started with the night she had slept with Richard, a married woman out fucking around while her child and husband were home. But no, John had not been home. He had been lurking
in the shadows, spying on her, waiting to catch her at something he had repeatedly accused her of dozens of times through the years.

The darkness was slowly changing into the overcast gray of a southern California morning. She could hear birds in the nearby trees as she passed the parkway leading to Oxnard. Here and there, the world was awakening.

Slowly guiding the Honda onto his street, she saw a dark green van parked at the curb, its rear doors open. Her eyes turned at once to the shotgun in the backseat while her pulse raced and her stomach churned. Eyes back to the street, she saw no movement. A television placed on an open window, the words in Spanish. Pulling to the curb, hands locked and sweating on the cool steering wheel, she let go long enough to wipe them on her denim-clad thighs before she reached for the shotgun and transferred it to the front seat, the muzzle pointed at the floorboard.

When a dog barked somewhere, she jumped and took her foot off the brake. The car was still in drive, engine running, and it jerked forward.

After staring so hard at the front of his house that her vision had blurred, she saw a distinct flash of red. She floored the Honda and covered the distance between the houses in seconds. Slamming both feet on the brake, she threw the gearshift into park without thinking and grabbed the shotgun. The sound of the barrel as it struck the hood of her car was earsplitting in the morning silence. He was exiting the house, halfway down the curb, headed toward his van. He saw her and stopped abruptly, planting both his feet firmly on the ground. On his face was a look of shock and confusion.

Inside that moment, reason flickered behind the eyes she lowered to the sight, coursed inside the finger on the trigger, a pinpoint of light before blindness. Her body moved back inches, but the light was gone, the sight a framed portrait of red fabric pulsating with the beat of his heart.

She fired.

The impact knocked him off his feet. His hands and legs flew in the air. The explosion reverberated inside her head. A gaping hole appeared in the center of the red sweatshirt, spewing forth blood. She was drowning in a frothy sea of red blood: Shana's blood, virginal blood, sacrificial blood. Her throat constricted, mucus dripped from her nose, and once again the alien, detached finger squeezed the trigger. The shot hit near his shoulder, severing his arm.

Her knees buckled beneath her. The shotgun fell butt first to the ground. The muzzle came to rest under the soft flesh of her chin, stopping her. Moving her head, she vomited chunks of chicken onto the black asphalt, seeing pieces of flesh boiling.
She pulled herself into the open door of the car, her arms locked around the shotgun. Everything was moving, shaking, bleeding. She saw objects flying through the air, trapping her inside the core of horror.

Move, she ordered her body, still frozen. Move. She grabbed the steering wheel, releasing the shotgun. Don't look. Drive. Her foot responded and the car surged forward. The intersection was there in a second. Turn. Breathe. Turn. Drive. She had not killed a human being. Turn. Drive. Turn. The sun was up, but she saw only a dark tunnel in front of her. She knew she was in Hell and there was no way out. “Please God,” she prayed. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, show me the way out.”

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Lily awakened from the past with a start, her clothes soaked with perspiration as the horror of that morning slowly receded. She glanced at her watch and saw that she'd been in the car for almost two hours. Why hadn't they come to get her? She jumped out and rushed toward the front of the hospital. Once she was inside, she headed to the counter where the phone was located and picked up the receiver. Michelle Newman answered. “I was waiting in my car. I must have fallen asleep. What's going on with my daughter?”

“Shana has serious problems, Ms. Forrester. Have a seat and I'll come out and speak to you.”

Lily didn't feel like having a seat. She walked around in circles until the woman appeared through the side door carrying a clipboard. “What kind of serious problems?”

Newman gestured toward the seating area and Lily followed, taking a seat in one of the chairs while the hospital administrator sat across from her on the sofa. “Shana is heavily addicted to narcotics, Ms. Forrester. She admitted using methamphetamine on a daily basis, as well as marijuana and cocaine.”

Lily's hand flew to her chest. “No, I don't believe you. She's
never used drugs in her life. She hates drugs. She even told me tonight that she wasn't using anything.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sure this must be a shock to you, but we have to do what's best for your daughter now. If Shana continues to use, she'll die. We're talking months, maybe even weeks.”

“This is ridiculous,” Lily shot out. “You're sensationalizing everything, trying to scare me. Shana isn't going to die in a matter of months or weeks. She's a healthy young woman. She's been under stress, that's all. She broke up with her boyfriend, and she's had trouble sleeping. I told you that when I brought her in here.”

Newman fixed her with an icy gaze. “Shana has open sores on her arms and torso. Her system is so polluted with drugs, they're seeping out of her pores. This particular drug is poison, Ms. Forrester. Your daughter is dying.”

“That's it,” she said, standing. “Go get Shana. I'm taking her home. She doesn't have sores on her body. Don't you think I'd know if my daughter was addicted to hard-core narcotics? She's in her last year of law school at Stanford. Her grades have always been excellent.”

“Was she wearing long sleeves when you saw her?” Newman reached into her pocket and pulled out a small photograph and then handed it to Lily so she could see.

Lily began to sob hysterically as she stared at the image. Shana was dressed in her bra and panties and her body was covered in open sores. Some were obviously infected as they were oozing puss. She was skin and bones; she couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds.

“God, no!” she wailed, the sound magnified by the tiled floors. “This is my fault for not coming to see her more often. And the money . . . she must have been using it to buy drugs. My baby, my poor baby . . . she was dealing with this all alone.”

The woman handed Lily some tissues and waited for her to calm down. “Our assessment team suggests your daughter be placed in our inpatient drug rehabilitation program. The minimum stay is six weeks, but we strongly recommend that she stay for a period of
three to six months.” Newman paused to let her words sink in. “I know that sounds like an extraordinarily long period of time, but like I said, the drug your daughter is addicted to is extremely dangerous, much more so than marijuana, heroin, cocaine, or even crack.”

“I know that.”

Michelle continued, “Health conditions associated with meth abuse include memory loss, aggression, violence, psychotic behavior, heart damage, neurological damage, weight loss, rapid tooth decay, meningitis, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, severe headaches, skin sensations, compulsive picking, skin infections, muscle tissue breakdown, kidney failure, and increased occurrence of communicable diseases such as HIV, AIDS, and hepatitis.”

Lily compressed in the chair, feeling as if someone had dropped a safe on her head.

“If Shana is released too soon, there's a ninety percent chance that she'll begin using again. Once she goes through detox, we'll work on restoring her health. The next step is for one of our staff psychiatrists to find out what led to her addiction. Now, do you have any questions?”

Lily had recovered her composure, but was still reeling in disbelief. If what Michelle Newman was telling her was true, Shana could kiss law school good-bye, and Lily might as well have tossed all the money she had spent on her education in the trash. Why would Shana confide in
this
woman, a complete stranger? “Are you telling me that my daughter walked into your office and simply told you she was a drug addict? I find that hard to believe.”

“I'm sure you do,” Newman told her. “You don't understand why Shana didn't tell you? Am I right?”

“Not exactly,” Lily told her. “I'm not an idiot, Ms. Newman. I—”

“Call me Michelle.”

“Fine, Michelle, but I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt me in the future.” Lily brushed a strand of hair off her face. “Now I've forgotten what I was saying.”

Michelle folded her hands in her lap.

“I acknowledge that telling me would be difficult. That is, if what you say is true. But now that the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, I'd like to speak to my daughter directly. It might make it easier for me to accept this coming from her mouth instead of yours.”