Land of Careful Shadows (2 page)

“Are we discussing the latest census figures? Or does this conversation have a point?”

“Got something you should take a look at on the hill.”

Greco led Vega up an embankment slick with mud. On the other side of a downed tree, two county crime-scene techs Vega knew were on their hands and knees, poking around a thicket of thorny barberry bushes. Greco picked up an evidence pouch beside one of them and handed it to Vega. It contained a red shoulder bag with two buckles across identical outer pockets. The vinyl had flaked off in places, exposing a whitish backing beneath.

“You haven't found a wallet, I take it?”

“No wallet, driver's license, cash, or ID,” said Greco.

“Sounds like a robbery.”

“Could be. The photograph was zipped into a small pocket. I don't think the person who tossed the bag even knew it was there.”

Greco handed Vega another evidence bag containing the snapshot. A square-shouldered young woman with almond-shaped eyes was sitting on a sagging beige couch with an infant girl on her lap. Both the woman and child appeared to be Hispanic. The resolution was fuzzier than Vega would have liked, as if the woman had been bouncing the child on her knee when the photographer snapped the picture. Still, Vega could make out enough details that he would have been able to identify the woman if he'd known her. Her smile revealed two prominent front teeth that were slightly bucked. Around her neck, she wore a silver-colored crucifix with tiny bird wings dangling beneath each of Christ's bound arms.

“Never saw a crucifix with wings on it before,” said Greco.

Vega thought about his own much simpler crucifix that his mother had given him when he got confirmed at Our Lady of Sorrows. He'd stopped wearing it after he married Wendy. Not that she'd asked him to. It just seemed hypocritical to pretend to a faith he had no connection to anymore. Looking at this photograph, however, he felt a sudden urge to dig that crucifix out of his dresser drawer and wear it, if only for the joy it would bring his mother.

But it wouldn't. Not anymore. Funny what you remember and what you can make yourself forget.

“If the crucifix doesn't turn up in the lake, we should check the state pawn registry,” said Vega. “It's distinctive enough that we might get a hit if someone tries to hock it.”

“We'll have better luck tracing the crucifix than we will tracing the kid,” said Greco. “Even if the photograph's only a few months old, she'll be tough to identify.”

The little girl in the photo had to be no more than about five or six months old. From the tender, possessive way the young woman held the child and the comfortable ease of the baby, Vega felt certain he was staring at a mother and daughter. The little girl was wearing a bright red velvet dress with silk white bows across the front. Her crown of shiny black hair was carefully combed and held back from her face by a headband with an enormous red bow. Gold posts glimmered from her earlobes. She gave the photographer an unfocused smile that could have been the result of familiarity, or the bouncing gyrations of her mother. The red velvet dress made Vega think the picture was taken around Christmas. He flipped the bag over to look for any markings on the photo.

“No date? No names? Nothing? This could have been taken anywhere.”

“You got it,” said Greco.

“At any time.”

“Yep.”

The baby could be a year old by now. Or she could be twenty. In the lake, two scuba divers bobbed and dove like overfed seals, looking for something no one wanted to find. If the woman in the photograph was the corpse on the shore, where was the baby?

“That's not the worst,” said Greco. “There's one thing more.” He picked up a third evidence bag and handed it to Vega. Inside was a single sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper that was beginning to disintegrate.

“This was found inside the main zippered compartment.”

Vega brushed the rain off the bag and looked down at the handwriting. The words were printed in capital letters using black ballpoint ink that had blurred slightly from dampness and exposure to the elements. But the words—in English—were still easy enough to read:

“Shit,” said Vega.

“Shit is right. Walk with me,” said Greco, handing the bagged envelope back to the techs. “We need to talk.”

They walked in silence, their boots kicking up the slick leaves underfoot. Vega tugged the drawstring tighter around the hood of his coveralls to seal out the rain and fought the limp that was coming on from the blisters that were blooming, large and watery, at the back of each ankle. Voices and sounds came at him from every direction. He could hear the whoosh of water as divers broke the surface. He heard the rustle of a body bag being loaded and zipped by the lake. He listened to the static of walkie-talkies from different police agencies drowning each other out until even the occasional moment of radio silence seemed punctuated with feedback.

Greco removed his latex gloves, one inside the other, and shoved them into a bag. From a pants pocket beneath his coveralls, he produced a package of red licorice Twizzlers and held them out to Vega. Vega declined. Greco took one and shrugged.

“Used to smoke.” The detective looked down at his gut. “Sometimes I think smoking was better for my health.”

He yanked a piece of red licorice off with his teeth and stared out at the lake. The edges were indistinct this time of year. Runoff from the winter snows swelled the shore, drowning small saplings and birches that would normally rest on solid ground. Mud compressed around their heels, tugging at them like an insistent beggar. Above, a canopy of bare branches laced a lint-colored sky.

“Both our agencies need to sit on that letter,” Greco said finally. “Far as I'm concerned, we're best off not calling this a homicide until we get a suspect. It'd be like putting a torch to gasoline, if you know what I'm saying.”

“Because of Dawn and Katie Shipley,” said Vega. It wasn't even a question. Everyone in the county knew about the mother and her four-year-old daughter who were struck and killed in Lake Holly on Valentine's Day by an illegal alien driving drunk without a license. For weeks now, there had been rallies and angry editorials in the local newspaper calling for more stringent laws against illegal aliens—though not, Vega noted curiously, for stricter penalties against drunk drivers, as if the man's immigration status was what killed the mother and child rather than his intoxication.

“They just set a court date for Lopez this week,” said Greco. “It'll be months before he's tried—on the taxpayers' dime, no less. Who knows if they'll even deport him after he's served his sentence? Probably depends on who's hanging curtains in the White House.”

“So I guess we'll blanket the media with that photo and hold back the rest.”

“Yeah. If the press asks what happened to this chick, we'll just tell 'em it's under investigation.”

“She's a mother,” said Vega softly.

“Huh?”

“The woman. In the photograph. She's a mother. Same as Dawn Shipley.”
Same as my mother,
Vega wanted to say. But he refused to offer up any more of his grief to police indifference.

“Yeah, okay, she's a mother. Whatever. I'm just saying we're best off doing this slowly and quietly, without all the ruckus you know will take place if we make this public.”

“What about the baby?”

Greco surveyed the lake where the divers continued their grim search mission. One of them suddenly broke the surface, holding something over his head. It was a Velcro-strapped sneaker. Toddler-sized. The white leather had turned dark green from the water but Vega thought he could make out the round cartoon face and punchbowl haircut of Dora the Explorer on the side. Suddenly, everyone got a little quieter.

Greco cursed so softly, it sounded like a prayer. He swallowed the rest of his Twizzler and wiped a sticky hand down the side of his coveralls. Even the radios went silent. Vega saw one of the officers near the shore make the sign of the cross. Greco did the same. Vega kept his hands at his sides.

And he tried, as always, not to think about Desiree.

“Y
ou didn't tell me you were new to homicide.”

Those were Greco's words of greeting as Vega settled himself at the borrowed desk of a Lake Holly detective on vacation. The town had maybe six detectives with at least two on leave at any given time. It simply wasn't equipped to handle a homicide without help from the county. That didn't mean, however, that every local cop liked having a dance partner.

“I'm not exactly a rookie, you know,” said Vega. “I've been a detective for seven years and a patrol officer for eleven before that.”

“Yeah, but a pal of mine over at county tells me you were working undercover until about eight months ago.”

“Four commendations for doing it too. That's why they still haul my ass back on occasion like they did last night. Either way, this is hardly my first homicide.”

Greco wedged himself into the only other chair in the cubicle. He had to step over a python-sized bundle of cables to do it. The Lake Holly police station was housed in an eighty-year-old building muscled out of Depression-era brick and full of half-hearted renovations that didn't quite work. There were new Andersen windows set into crumbling concrete sills, handicap-access ramps that led to areas only accessible by stairs, and enough computer wiring snaking across the perimeter of every cubicle to rival a den of hackers.

“I'm just, you know, feeling you out,” said Greco. “We're gonna work together and all, I'd like to know how come the county sent you.”

Because I find kids,
Vega wanted to say. But he didn't want to talk about that case or the fact that finding them didn't always mean finding them alive. So he searched his borrowed desk for a pad and pen and scribbled a name that he handed to Greco. “That's Captain Frank Waring's direct number and e-mail. He's the commanding officer of the county detective division. You want to question his judgment, please feel free.” If Greco really had a friend at county, he'd know that calling a decorated ex-Navy SEAL like Waring with such a punk question was likely to bounce a townie cop back to handing out parking tickets for the remainder of his career.

Greco folded the paper without looking at it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. “So, what sorts of homicides have you handled?”

Vega crossed a bare ankle over the opposite thigh and picked at a blister. He was going to have to buy some socks and gauze pads if he hoped to get through the day.

“My last involved two gangbangers who got into a fight over a haircut one gave the other.”

Greco chuckled. “And my barber gets mad when I don't tip enough. What'd the scumbag do? Take a little too much off the ears in retaliation?”

“I could've lived with that,” said Vega. “No. He pulls out a Jennings .380 piece of crap and misses. Kills a grandmother in the next apartment, a woman who was the sole caretaker for her three grandkids who are now all in foster care.”

“Figures.”

“I had to convince the makeover king to cough up his dissatisfied customer in open court.”

“Talk about a bad hair day.”

There was a knock on the fabric partition. “Excuse me, Detectives?”

Vega broke into a sweat at the sound of that voice. A wave of shame and disgust fisted up in his chest that this freckle-faced kid could have such power over his senses. He told himself he was being ridiculous, but fear is such an unreasonable emotion. It makes you hate yourself almost more than the thing you feared.

“Do your mea culpas later, Fitz,” said Greco. “We're busy here.”

“I know. But I wanted to bring something to your attention.” The kid kept his eyes on Greco. He seemed almost as nervous of Vega as Vega was of him. “I just took a call from a landlord in town who said his tenants skipped without paying their last month's rent.”

“This is news?”

“No, sir. But I ran the tenant's name—José Ortiz—through our database to see if he had any outstanding warrants. I found a José Ortiz at that address who was cited about six weeks ago for harassment after an officer responded to a nine-one-one domestic violence call from his wife. The police report said the couple has a two-year-old daughter as well. The landlord hasn't seen any of them in several weeks. Plus, Ortiz missed his court date two weeks ago on the harassment charge.”

Vega and Greco exchanged looks.

“Who was the officer on the call?” asked Greco.

“Bale. He's on vacation in Florida right now. But I pulled a copy of his report.”

Fitzgerald handed Greco a copy. Greco scanned it and cursed. Then he handed it to Vega. According to Bale's notes, the complainant, a woman who gave her name as Vilma Ortiz, had bruising and swelling on the left side of her face. A man in the apartment, who said his name was José and that he was her husband, admitted to punching her in the face because he believed she had a boyfriend. On paper, it was a textbook case of domestic violence assault.

Except it wasn't—because the officer never made the arrest.

“Let me get this straight,” said Vega. “Your patrol officer sees obvious evidence of physical assault, the perpetrator admits the assault, and your officer slaps him with the equivalent of a parking ticket—which he skips out on anyway? What do you have to do to get arrested for assault in Lake Holly? Put someone in intensive care?” He turned to Fitzgerald. “Or maybe it's just traffic stops that get you guys fired up.”

Fitzgerald studied his feet. Greco spread his palms, all reason and beneficence. “These domestic situations usually work themselves out.”

“
Work—themselves—out.
” Vega repeated the words slowly. “Far as I can see, the only workout going on here was a man using his wife as a punching bag. If Bale had arrested him like he should have, we'd have fingerprints and a positive ID. Now, we've got zip.”

“Who's the landlord?” Greco asked Fitzgerald.

The officer checked his notes. “Salvatore Bustamente.”

Greco groaned. “Guy's got four broken-down buildings in town and enough tenants packed into them to populate a small banana republic. If this county had any balls, we'd enforce the housing codes and put that asshole out of business.”

“I gather you know this upstanding citizen,” said Vega.

“I've been in his buildings on complaints numerous times. Even the roaches try to find other accommodations.”

“Sounds like you two have a history,” said Vega. “Want me to talk to him?”

“Nah. He'll respond better to a fellow
paisan,
trust me. In the meantime, you should probably visit La Casa, the Latino community center, and see if anybody there can identify the photograph or tell us where Ortiz has disappeared to.”

Vega grabbed his jacket to leave. Still, something about that police report bothered him. On his way out, he cornered Fitzgerald away from the detectives' bullpen. Fitzgerald tried to duck into a conference room but Vega blocked the door.

“About this morning,” Fitzgerald stammered. “I didn't know—”

“—Save it for the family of the guy you put in the morgue one day.” He could see he was scaring the kid a little. Good. He needed scaring. “Look, you want to square things between us?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Then tell me what happens when Lake Holly gets a domestic violence complaint.”

“Nothing.” Fitzgerald looked around nervously. “I mean, nothing out of the ordinary, Detective—”

“—Vega's fine. Just call me Vega. How 'bout you walk me to my car?”

The kid got a panicked look in his eyes.

“You think I'd be stupid enough to assault a fellow cop in uniform?” asked Vega. “What you did to me this morning was a huge overreaction. But I'm willing to chalk it up to inexperience if you level with me now.”

Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving serrated puddles that collected along the uneven blacktop. An American flag flapped crisply on the flagpole above them. Fitzgerald looked down at Vega's blistered ankles beneath his dark slacks. “You're limping.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

At the Escalade, Vega turned to face Fitzgerald.

“So, you get a DV complaint. How do you determine whether or not to make an arrest?”

“Well, if the victim wants to press charges and all, we can arrest the assailant—”

“—And do you? Normally?”

“Um, it depends—”

“—On the victim's immigration status?”

Something in Fitzgerald's eyes retreated. “We're not allowed to ask about immigration status.”

“I know that,” said Vega. “But you've got an idea the moment you meet them—from their ethnicity, where they live, how willing they are to give you their full names—”

“—That's profiling. We're not allowed—”

“—Cut the police academy bullshit, Fitzgerald. What do you think you did to me? You know as well as I do that every cop sizes up the people he comes into contact with even if he doesn't admit it. All I want to know is why Bale didn't arrest José Ortiz for beating the crap out of his wife. Was Bale lazy? Does he believe domestic violence is a personal matter? Or is there some unwritten rule in town that frowns on making DV arrests when the parties involved are suspected illegals?”

Bingo.
Vega read his hunch in the young man's eyes.

“It's—it's sort of discouraged. With complainants we suspect are—undocumented. On account of—then the victims have like, you know—special victim status—”

“—They're eligible for U visas,” said Vega.

“Yeah.” Fitzgerald kicked at a puddle. “I mean, I personally don't have a problem with a crime victim petitioning the government for permission to stay in this country legally. And maybe it really would be dangerous for a woman like Vilma Ortiz to go back with her husband to her own country. But there's a feeling in Lake Holly that letting undocumented women file for U visas because their husbands or boyfriends hit them is—sort of—”

“—A way to con the system into supplying green cards to illegals.”

“Yeah.”

Better black and blue than green seemed to be the sentiment in Lake Holly. Vega sighed. “Okay, Fitz. We're even now.”

The rookie didn't seem so sure. He looked back at the building. “I hope I didn't just screw myself out of a job. How's it going to look if Vilma Ortiz ends up being the body in the reservoir and I just drew a big fat bull's-eye on the department for allowing her husband to put her there?”

“Could've been the boyfriend, don't forget.”

“Fat chance of him ever coming forward.”

“Oh, he'll come forward,” said Vega. “I'm going to find him and send him an invitation.”