My Lost Daughter (15 page)

“Then he must have committed suicide,” Brooks said, peering over her shoulder at the document. “How many people make out a new will a week before they get themselves murdered?”

“Some people have premonitions regarding their death. Either that or he was involved in some sort of dangerous activity such as drug dealing. They should check out the area to see if there are any marijuana plants, even though I don't see how he could have attended to them without help.”

“Could the gunshot wound be self-inflicted?”

“Possibly,” Mary said, “but highly unlikely. Not many people have arms long enough to shoot themselves in the back of the head. No, someone shot him but I believe he may have hired him to do it. We need to check his finances, see if he recently withdrew a large sum of money. If he's in financial trouble, we'll have another motive in addition to his not wanting to continue his life as a paraplegic. The person I want to talk to is the man he hired to kill him. Let's go home so I can make notes of everything I saw out here tonight.”

“Aren't you going to return the will?”

Mary already had her camera out and was snapping photos of the handwritten document. “The victim obviously wanted someone to find this or he wouldn't have sewn it inside the lining of his jacket.”

“Maybe he didn't want the police to find it,” Brooks told her. “That is, unless he was murdered and simply carried the thing around in his jacket. Let's say he did hire someone to kill him. He must have assumed that once the authorities concluded their investigation, they would turn his belongings over to his next of kin. Admittedly, that's a risky way to handle it. The jacket has to have blood on it. His wife might toss it or donate it to some kind of charity.”

“I don't think it happened that way.”

Brooks scratched his chin, thinking. “If the deceased had wanted the crime to be classified as a homicide so his family could collect on his life insurance, why would he leave a will behind, particularly one that was sewn inside his clothing? The sheriff's office might not have found it, and the original will would remain in place.”

Mary's eyes widened. “The wife knew about it, don't you see? Washburn told her exactly where to find it. Because of the insurance money, the last thing he wanted was his death to look like a suicide. What I don't understand is why he needed a new will.”

“And if he wanted his wife to have it, why didn't he just give it to her? Maybe he remarried after he made out the first will and it didn't work out. His first wife may have refused to see him.”

“Why would he even have the thing in his possession if he knew he was coming up here to die?” Mary turned off the overhead lights and they sat there in silence, both of them deep in thought. “Now that I think of it, the coroner's office generally goes through the clothes and sends them back to the family when they're finished with the autopsy.”

Brooks turned to her. “You need to take the will back where you found it before someone accuses you of tampering with evidence.”

“I'm not sure I trust the sheriff's office. Mathis strikes me as an idiot, and I wasn't impressed with the medical examiner.” She waved the flimsy piece of paper around without thinking. Brooks reached out and stopped her before it fell apart. “I think I'm going to keep it. This could be our most valuable piece of evidence. Maybe the wife is working with the UNSUB and she hired him to kill her husband. The will could even be phony. Let's face it, there's a lot of work involved in taking care of a paraplegic. Or, perhaps Washburn was living with a girlfriend and she dumped him. He could have left everything to this woman and then changed his mind, deciding he wanted his wife and children to have it. For all we know, his caretaker may have abused him.”

Except for the moonlight reflecting off the ocean, it was dark inside their rental car. Brooks reached over and pulled Mary to him, kissing her on the mouth. “Take back the evidence and I'll give you a ride you'll never forget.”

“Now you're bribing me with sex?” Mary tossed back, not amused. “That's sexual harassment, Brooks. You're my SAC, remember? I could report you.”

He gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “I'm also your husband. I order you to take back the will. I can't allow you to steal evidence. Something like this could ruin both of our careers.”

“Four people are already dead,” Mary shot out, turning sideways in the seat. “And there's good reason to believe Washburn is the fifth victim. Don't forget, the last two were killed in the San Francisco area, which isn't that far from here.”

“You have the photographs,” Brooks argued. “We can send them to the lab and have them enhanced.”

Mary pouted, holding the paper behind her back so he couldn't take it away from her. “I want to know what it says in the spot where it was folded. We may need the actual document to discern it. There may also be fingerprints, even DNA. We can't lift prints or test for DNA off a snapshot.”

“I refuse to allow you to tamper with evidence!” Brooks shouted, the game over. “Now hike your pretty little legs back up there and put the document back where you found it. Once we establish a firm connection to these other homicides, we'll gain access to all the evidence.”

Mary was annoyed but she kept her mouth closed and got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. She'd never realized that Brooks was such a stickler for Bureau rules. Then again, this was the first time they had ever worked together. Unlike her husband, she did whatever she felt might lead to the capture of a dangerous criminal. If the FBI sacked her, so be it. She'd never wanted to be a cop in the first place.

In a way, what she had said to Brooks about her being the SAC instead of him was true. She knew the area, and outside of Mathis, who must have recently been elected, she was familiar with the top law enforcement personnel, as well as the DAs and judges. Brooks was a fish out of water, a fish who was too frightened to even learn how to swim.

Mary had learned two things tonight. James Washburn had been shot in the same exact place as the four other victims, and working with her husband could make or break their marriage. Genna Weir had been wrong. Taking over the Ventura office would most assuredly not be boring.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Lily was still waiting in her car. It seemed like hours had passed but it had only been thirty minutes. She started to go back and wait inside the hospital lobby and then changed her mind. She never had time to herself, particularly since Chris had moved in.

She felt as if her life was going in circles. Everything seemed to lead back to that one awful night. John had been right when he'd blamed her for the rapes. Part of the problem stemmed from the new government center complex. The jail and the courthouse were connected via an underground tunnel, and inmates could look out the windows and watch the same people who'd put them behind bars get in and out of their cars every day. No one had thought of the danger involved until it was too late.

1993
VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

Lily had spent a fortune decorating Shana's room and buying her new clothes to fill up her closet, hopeful that she would change her mind about living with her father. She had stayed late at the office to deal with one of Clinton Silverstein's cases. A man named Bobby Hernandez had allegedly raped a woman the police believed was a prostitute,
beating her to within an inch of her life and then tossing her out of his van in the middle of nowhere. The men in the DA's office had made fun of the victim because she weighed over two hundred pounds and her face was so swollen from the assault she resembled a sumo wrestler. Lily had been livid, but since the victim's injuries had been photographed, her partially clothed pictures had been passed around the office.

When a prostitute cried rape, many times it was what law enforcement officers referred to as “failure to pay,” meaning the john had engaged in sex with the woman and then refused to pay her. The prostitute then went to the police and claimed she was raped, the john paid rather than spend time in the slammer, and the alleged victim changed her mind about pressing charges. Silverstein was convinced this is what had occurred and tried to weasel out of prosecuting the case. That afternoon, the victim had failed to appear in court for the preliminary hearing. Silverstein had marched into Lily's office, angry that he'd wasted his time and demanding that she sign a release for Bobby Hernandez, the man who had allegedly raped and beaten the prostitute.

Lily was outraged when she saw the extent of the woman's injuries. She not only believed it was a legitimate crime but that the defendant's real intention had been to kill her. But without the victim's testimony, the State had no case. As strong as she felt about the danger Bobby Hernandez posed to the community, she knew they had no choice but to go forth with Silverstein's request to close the case and release Hernandez. When they were slammed, the jail sometimes took days to process the paperwork. She decided to put through the release orders but to take the case file home with her, hoping she could find a way to hold Hernandez until the victim surfaced.

 

Shana had already gone to bed when Lily glanced at the bedroom clock and saw it was almost eleven. She started to retrieve her briefcase from the living room to review the Hernandez case, but she couldn't muster up the energy. Instead, she removed her clothes and climbed under the covers. She then realized that she hadn't checked to see if the doors were locked, a chore John used to handle. With her terry cloth bathrobe wrapped loosely around her, she padded barefoot in the dark, deciding to check the kitchen door first.

Lily had rented the house from a judge and it was located in a wonderful neighborhood, only a few blocks away from Ventura College and a ten-minute drive to the courthouse. She loved the fact that the neighborhood was so quiet—no racing 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 earlier. As she pushed the drapes aside and began 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 made 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 didn't fall. She was being carried in a suffocating embrace. What must be an arm was placed directly over her mouth. Trying to sink her teeth into it, she bit a mouth of terry cloth instead. She was nude from the waist down and felt the cold night air against her lower body. Her bladder emptied, splashing against the tile floor.

She tried to move her arms, but they were trapped across her chest inside the robe. Kicking 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 her feet were burning; she realized she was being dragged down the hall—toward where her daughter slept. “Shana!” she tried to scream. “Please God, not Shana.” The only sound she emitted was a muffled, inhuman groan of 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 her 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 bedroom. When he removed his arm, the robe fell away 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 Lily's throat. His other hand was on Shana's neck. Lily grabbed his arm, and with the abnormal strength of terror, 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 her open mouth, the sharp edges nicking the tender edges of her lips. She bit down on the blade with her teeth, her tongue touching something crusty and vile.

“Taste it,” he said, a look of pleasure on his face. “It's her blood. Lick it with your tongue. Lick a whore's blood, a cheating fucking whore's blood.”

Removing the knife from Lily's mouth and placing it back at her throat, he moved his other hand from Shana's neck and shoved her gown up, exposing her budding breasts and her new panties. Shana desperately tried to push the gown 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 from 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 and I'll give you the best fuck you've ever had. I'll do anything.”