Chapter 15 Chapter fifteen

It was a long time before the alarm clock rang, and Lily woke up.When she saw it, she was shocked, and Shana had already gotten up.She rushed to Shanna's room and found the door open; no one was there, but she heard noises in the kitchen. Shanna must have been up hours ago, she thought, because her room was spotless, everything organized, clothes hung neatly. A chill came over Lily suddenly; she felt as if she were standing in front of a stage set.Although these props belong to Shana, they are no longer full of vitality because of her appearance, which is encouraging.This was not her daughter's room, which was impeccably kept.

She found Shanna dressed and sitting at the kitchen table with her school work spread out in front of her and the puppy on her lap. Lily walked over, stroked her hair, put her hands on her shoulders, and glanced sideways at the homework she was doing. "What time did you get up?" "About four o'clock, I couldn't sleep." "Do you really want to go to school today?" "Of course I don't want to stay here all day, but I really can't bear to leave Di." She paused. "I'm going to school." Later, as Lily drove her to school, she told Shanna that she planned to move her new bedroom furniture, along with the canopy over the bed frame, from the rented house to her room for two days.The bed on which the accident happened, that is, Lily's bed, she planned to ask someone to take it to the garbage dump and burn it.

Shanna looked at Lily with soft, cloudy eyes. "That's great! Mom. I would have loved that bed." John left earlier than Lily that morning, so she had to drive the Honda to work.As she approached the Civic Center building, her hands tightened on the steering wheel.Maybe they were waiting for her in the office with a warrant, and when she showed up they would handcuff her and take her away in front of the entire staff. "Arrest me if you can!" she said defiantly through the windshield.If it wasn't for Shana, she wished she could end this life-like life and bear the consequences of what she did.That way, she wouldn't have to act any more and continue to pretend nothing had happened, always fearful of being caught.That way, maybe you can escape the painful torment of fear and guilt.

She took the elevator upstairs without a word, passed through the security door, and hurried to her office.Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and she ignored the small talk, the ringing of the phone, the overflow of copy paper in the copier.Someone mentioned her name, she walked faster as if she didn't hear it, and her heart was beating so hard that she could hear it herself. Her office was dark, and the corridor in front of the door was empty.She turned on the light to see if everything was still the same, to clear her doubts. Checking the drawer, she found that no one had turned through the contents, as she had left them.Sinking herself into the spring-loaded office chair, she felt a moment of peace.

It's a place she loves, a workplace she considers her life.is her refuge.Here she is a respectable career woman, here she is a person of integrity. "Morning!" Clinton came in briskly, and sat down in a chair at her desk. "How are you? Have the flu, huh?" So he didn't know yet. "Thank God!" she thought.Clinton is the kind of guy who can't hide his words. "I'm much better today, but I'm still a little weak." Say something else, she screamed in her heart.Suddenly, she saw herself standing there naked, with the victim's blood dripping from her fingertips.

"Now, you have a good chance! Although you may only be the acting director of the internal affairs department now, you will definitely be promoted in the future. Are you satisfied?" "Of course, but when I can finally hold my breath here, I have to go back to the same stupid cases." He made a face. Then, the expression on his face suddenly became rich again, and he sat forward excitedly. "I almost forgot, because it happened yesterday when you asked for leave. Hernadez was killed by someone. Do you believe it?" Clinton might be baiting her, she thought.He might even be here undercover, with a bug on him.

"Hernadez? Which case?" "That hooker case, the one I dismissed the day before yesterday. The Oxnard Police Department called me yesterday and asked for everything. They thought it was a gang feud and the victim was shot in a drive-thru. Anyway, Somebody saved the taxpayers a ton of money." Lily grabbed the arm of the chair, trying to keep herself composed. They asked about the Hernadez case, and she couldn't help feeling flustered at the thought.What should she say now that Clinton may have told them that she took the file home and that it was in her possession at the time of the crime?

Her mind was running wild, as if she saw a big party going on, people throwing candy in the air to celebrate saving taxpayers so much money, and in the middle of the room was the body of Hernández, laid out in the middle of the room. In a coffin. Seeing that her glasses were folded and placed under a file as before she left, she picked them up and put them on, moving the official documents on the desk here and there, then again. Move back over there. "The detectives are looking for information about the victim in the case and they want to question her. Strangely, she is still missing."

While Clinton continued talking, Lily tapped her pen on her desk frantically. Seeing the expression on his face, she stopped her hand: "What's so strange? She's a whore, hiding, so what's so strange." She knew her voice sounded tense, upset, and anxious. "Hi, I know you have too much to do." He said, standing up to leave. "No, I'm interested. Go on, finish your sentence." She put her hands under the table so she wouldn't be noticed. "Well. She left her two children behind, and according to the detectives, her sister said she had always been a good mother. She had no skills, and she made money mainly by soliciting customers on the street for the sake of her children. So they didn't take her word for it. What was heard. Four days after she filed her complaint, Hernadez was arrested, and virtually no one has seen her since his arrest."

The scene of that night appeared before her eyes again, so vivid!Recalling the knife on his neck and his words of "tasting the blood of a shameless bitch", Lily can't help but sweat.She pressed her hand to her cheek, and didn't take it off like a compress. Did the Oxnard police think he might have murdered her so she wouldn't come out and testify?Did they search his house and find any evidence?She had the outline of the house he lived in, his blood all over the sidewalk. Had the police dogs licked her vomit on the tarmac?Or did the police officer surveying the scene scrape it off and let the dog lick it?Maybe the whore's body was mutilated and kept in that old refrigerator with the big padlock on the porch.

"They're slow down there, you know, there's an average of three or four murders a month, but we're sure they're going full steam ahead on this one. They've impounded his big van, and they're working on it from every angle. Detective. Bruce Cunningham handles the case. You must have heard of him, quite a man." The phone on Lily's desk rang.She heard it, and thought it might be from the other end of the corridor. She looked up, saw Clinton staring at her, and pressed a button on the intercom. "All my calls are on hold for now, Jane." "You may have been right from the start on this case, Lily. I'm going to turn it over to you." "I took it and let me know everything you can get from Cunningham." Of all the detectives who might be assigned to the case, this man was the scariest, and the more Lily thought about it, the more she panicked. He was the best detective in Oxnard, perhaps in the entire county, and she knew him—knew his behavior. motivation. They've worked together a few times before, and the man has a clean résumé.When the case investigated by Cunningham came to trial, the verdict was almost certain.This person has never made mistakes, is calm and stable, never acts rashly, pursues the perfection of ethics and morals, and never compromises.He is the dream partner of prosecutors, and also the nightmare of criminals.But now, he has become her opponent. "The whole case may become more and more troublesome, I mean, I don't want you to be happy for nothing, but..." Lily's hand firmly grasped the edge of the table, and her body leaned forward desperately. "Don't hesitate, come on, Clinton!" She couldn't play this scene any longer. "Well, Cunningham is pretty tight-lipped at the moment--only a little bit. Seems like Hernadez and his brother just got 'field reports' from the police a few months ago, you guessed it? Who else is there? Carmen Lopez, and, damn it, Nevarro and Valdez." Lily almost jumped out of her chair, which could mean the MacDonald-Lopez massacre It was her first real breakthrough. Of course, there were other reasons why she attached so much importance to this case. Perhaps handling the case seriously was also a kind of redemption for her sins.If Hernadez killed the whore and participated in the murder of the other two, he was a multi-killer, an incurable psychopath. "I want Cunningham to report immediately to me any evidence, even the slightest trace, that he has on this case, and I want our own investigators to have the information immediately. Call Butler and, of course, Fowler. .Don't reveal a word to the press, understand?" "Understood, boss," Clinton replied, feeling the same urgency.At the door he turned his head, looked at Lily and said, "You know, I didn't want to work for you. I thought you were too strong and unreasonable. What a fucking fool I am! If the manpower can be arranged, I will I'd rather come back." She glanced at him over the glasses. "Brilliant, hey! Not because I'm a girl, but because I'm so powerful? That's a new way of saying it. You'll be back, Clinton. Just, don't forget to keep using that pomade on your hair!" He laughed heartily, and Lily wanted to catch the booming voice for herself, to swallow it in her stomach.She just twitched the corner of her mouth, and then returned to normal. "That's expensive, will you pay for it?" "There is no door." She replied, trying to force a smile. As soon as he left, she couldn't sit still any longer, she stood up and turned around the desk.She felt that she was going to be claustrophobic if she stayed in this small office any longer.Once out of here, however, she had to talk politely to more people, listen to the nonsense babble, and at the same time pretend to be listening. All she could think about was Cunningham, Cunningham, Cunningham!She repeated his name over and over again.He is indeed well-known, and it can be said that he is well-known in the entire judicial circle. All the papers had carried the Owen case, and Lily couldn't understand how the man had managed to get enough evidence for a jury to come to a guilty verdict without a dead body.That woman might one day show up alive. She was full of inferiority complex fear, since he could collect the evidence of that case so completely, he could also conclude that she killed Bobby Hernardez. Hernadez's own brother saw her.How could she have thought that she would kill someone in broad daylight and have the luck of not being discovered?She is trying to survive.Her behavior is absolutely stupid and unreasonable.Suddenly, she found Richard standing at her door, frowning and watching her steps with concern. "I've been calling you all morning, but Jane said you weren't answering any calls, and then Clinton called me and told me what was going on with the MacDonald-Robez case. Are you all right, Lily?" She backed away and walked behind the desk, as if looking for something. "No," she said, "it's not very comfortable yet, but I'm trying to adjust." It seemed to her that he was a stranger from another world, another time and space, and had nothing to do with her. "How about having a drink with me after get off work? We can find a quiet place." "I can't, I have to take my daughter to a therapist." He stood for a moment, then walked across the room, taking Lily's hand in his own.She didn't move, just let her lifeless, cold hand rest there, "When will I see you again? I want to hold you tight and touch you." Lily withdrew her hand: "I don't know, really I don't know." "You mean you don't know when you can see me, or if you want to see me?" "I live at home now." She stared at him. "I don't know what will happen in the future. I don't know anything at the moment." The phone rang, and Lily grabbed the receiver.Jane told her it was Bruce Cunningham and asked Lily if she wanted to answer. "I have to do something, Richard, and I'll give you an answer." As soon as he left, Lily took a breath and pushed off the flashing button. Before she could answer, the detective's voice came. "Sylvestan called my house and yelled at me and gave orders, who is this guy, what do you people think you have the right to teach me how to go about investigating a case?" "I'm sorry, Bruce. Please accept my apology. Of course I know you're an expert on this kind of thing...but..." She desperately tried to excuse herself, secretly admonishing herself to play the role well and not to show any flaws in her words.Like an animal with a keen sense of smell, he would sense her panic. "This MacDonald-Robez case is driving all of us here in the head. It's the kind of case that grabs your heart." "That's right," he said, his anger subsided. "Well, if I have any news, I'll let you know right away, but the evidence I have right now may be trivial." She sensed that he was about to hang up. That sentence was in her throat, and the words got stuck on the edge of her mouth. Finally, she asked: "About the Hernadez case, what exactly do you know?" "I thought I'd got something useful, but it didn't work. A neighbor provided a license plate and swore she remembered it perfectly, but upon investigation it turned out the car wasn't the same model, and the license plate was registered by a young man. An old man who is 69 years old and lives in a nursing home." Cunningham must have been eating, there was chewing and the rattle of cups and plates coming from the phone. "We've got a patchwork sketch of the suspect, a white male, five feet ten inches tall, thin, blond, fair skinned, probably a hitman. No one knows. It looks like someone is doing it for us. Did a good job." "Thanks, Bruce," Lily said. "Call us if there's anything new." She hangs up dazedly, "Good job done," she thought, wondering if people realize the meaning of the words they use when they blurt out an opinion. She imagined herself sitting in a circle with a group of people on the floor, and the big detective stood in the center like a teacher, looked at the heads of the group of children below, and said, "Well, tell me, which one of you will replace us?" Everyone did a good thing and killed that bad Mr. Hernardez?" Lily would definitely raise her hand proudly. She felt as if she was out of her mind. If it weren't for that Parker, she would have been in prison long ago.They're looking for a man, a hitman.This is what he said, but Cunningham is a smart person and very cunning. She knows very well that he may be planning to deal with her, follow her, and wait for the real evidence from the laboratory that is completely unfavorable to her. She held her head, inserted her fingers into her hair, and pulled her hair vigorously. She tried to pull herself back to reality through the pain, but it didn't work.When her hands were down, there was a mass of red hair wrapped around her fingers.