Land of Careful Shadows (7 page)

“I liked Abuelita's accent. I would've liked to have known that side of my culture better. Now she's dead, I never will.”

Something parched and painful settled in the back of Vega's throat. Regret. He'd never expected it to have such physical weight. God, he missed his mother. Every minute of every day. And where was he when it all could have been different? Going through the divorce, he supposed. Moving to cheaper digs farther upstate. Taking on more overtime to pay for child support.

Never once did his mother berate his choices, even if some of his visits were hurried between work shifts, even if he rarely brought Joy because Wendy considered the Bronx too dangerous, too dirty—too Spanish. His mother cooked things like
alcapurrias
and
piñon
—fried meat fritters and beef-and-plantain casserole that Vega loved but sometimes upset his daughter's stomach. The neighborhood wasn't safe for an innocent like Joy to wander in so they stayed in his mother's stuffy apartment where his daughter sat, pale and mute on the slipcovered couch, the blue of the television drifting across her face until Vega took her home. He wanted their worlds to mesh. He wanted the two people he loved most to get to know each other better. But it required the conviction that his world—his life—was
worth
getting to know and Vega, always trying to fit in elsewhere, never had that sort of confidence. And now, as Joy said, it was too late. The concrete had set. It would never be other than what it was.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

“I should've tried harder,” he said softly. “I guess I didn't want to force a world on you that you weren't interested in.”

“But I
am
interested.”

“You say that now, Joy. Now, when it's cool, or whatever, to be ethnic or different. When you were a kid, it was the last thing you would have wanted. You remember how you used to complain that Abuelita's apartment was always too hot—even in winter? And you were never comfortable sitting on her furniture because of those plastic slipcovers. Remember?”

Joy giggled. “My legs used to stick to them. Every time I moved, they made like, farting noises. How did you deal with that growing up?”

“I never sat on the living-room furniture. It was always for company.”

She got a sudden dreamy-eyed look on her face. “You know what I did like? That little doll she crocheted on the back of the toilet. The one whose pink skirt hid the extra roll of toilet paper. What happened to that doll, Dad?”

Vega closed his eyes and leaned back on the headrest. He tried to blot out the image that stuck in his head. The crocheted doll lying on the black-and-white ceramic floor tiles of his mother's bathroom, one eye open, one closed, her cotton-candy pink yarn skirt soaked red with his mother's blood.

“I don't know what happened to it,” he said finally.

They both were silent after that, listening to the soft hum of warm air percolating through the vents.

“I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't mean to bring up Abuelita. I know you're still hurting a lot.”

“I'm glad you brought her up. She'd be glad too. As a matter of fact, there's something I've been meaning to give you.”

“What?”

“I came across her favorite pearl earrings a couple of weeks ago. I took them out of her apartment after . . .” Vega's voice dropped off. To say it was to imagine it and he was still wrestling with that. “Anyway, I know she'd want you to have them.”

“I'd like that.”

They were at the police station now. Vega gestured to the parking lot. “If you can turn in here, my car's right there in the lot.” He pointed to the black Escalade.

“Wow Dad, nice car.”

“It's not mine. It belongs to the county.”

“They let cops tool around in Escalades?”

“It was impounded from a heroin dealer. Last night I needed to look the part. I won't get it again, trust me.”

“I thought you weren't working undercover anymore.”

“I'm not. I just had to help another cop make a few connections.”

“In Lake Holly?”

“Nah. South of here. I'm in Lake Holly to help the local guys track down the identity of a dead woman.”

“Dead? As in murdered?” Vega forgot that violent death wasn't an everyday occurrence for most people. Plus, Joy had always been impressionable. When she was little, movies had to be prescreened, nightlights left on throughout the house. Before bed, Vega used to have to make an elaborate show of rendering her room monster-free by dabbing witch hazel on the doorknobs. So he lied.

“She drowned. That's all. These things happen.” Vega undid his seatbelt and put his arm around her. It felt good to feel her loose and willing for once in his embrace. “This Kenny stuff—you'll see—it's not going to matter once you're up at Amherst.”

He caught a shadow of something cross her face and wondered what secret fear or insecurity he'd blindly trampled now. Her moods changed like quicksilver these days. She could seem so brash and independent one moment, so childlike the next.

“I'm sorry, Daddy,” she said thickly.

“About what?”

“About totaling your car.”

“I don't care about the car,
Chispita
. You're the only thing that matters.”

Chispita
: “Little Spark.” He used to call her that after the plucky young heroine in a Mexican telenovela his mother used to watch when he was a kid. The last time he called her
Chispita
, she cringed. This time she seemed almost grateful that someone could still see the little girl inside the skimpy pink jacket and black leather boots.

She shrugged off his jacket and handed it back to him. Vega kissed her cheek, feeling the dampness from her earlier tears with Kenny, the way they made her skin smell all yeasty like she was a little girl again, riding on his shoulders, burying her face in his chest when something frightened her or turned her shy. He would have to get comfortable with saying good-bye to her in a couple of months. It felt too soon.

He stepped out of the car. “Drive safely,
Mija.
” It's what he always said. His stand-in for “I love you,” when I love you was too hard to say. He slapped the window of the passenger's side and stood shivering in the cold as he watched her red taillights fade down the street, braking at a traffic light before turning into the darkness beyond.

“O
ur Juanita Doe didn't go into that lake under the influence, that's for sure. The average five-year-old in this country's got more pharmaceuticals in him than she had.”

At least Greco wasn't calling her a “chick” anymore. Vega supposed he had to be thankful for small favors. Like the bad coffee Greco was handing him now as he walked into the detectives' bullpen on Monday morning. Neither of them had gotten much sleep the night before.

Vega leaned against the side of Greco's cubicle. “I gather the autopsy results are in?”

“Nah. I just figured I'd make something up. Keep it interesting.” Greco pushed the report into Vega's hands. Vega pulled up a chair and set down his coffee. He could smell the remains of an Egg McMuffin in Greco's trash. There was still a smudge of bacon grease next to his computer. Greco's workspace was demarcated by a fabric partition and a file cabinet with a two-year-old calendar of Florida travel scenes taped to one side. It had been up there so long, the edges had curled and the Gulf waters had faded to the color of urine. Vega knew Greco had three or four grown kids and a wife up north somewhere but there were no pictures in sight. He wondered what that said about the man.

“You've looked through the report already?” asked Vega.

“Enough to give you the highlights.” Greco pulled a red Twizzler from an open package on his desk and offered one to Vega. Vega declined.

“I don't know why you eat that sugar-coated wire insulation.”

“This, from a Puerto Rican who's probably never met a food he hasn't deep-fried and smothered in Tabasco sauce.” Greco tore off a piece of the red licorice between his teeth and adjusted his black glasses. They were too big for his face and gave his eyes a perpetually startled expression.

“Cause of death is a skull fracture,” said Greco. “Manner, undetermined. Estimated time of death was four to six weeks ago. So she died in late February or early March. Any earlier, and Gupta says she would've just been fish food.”

“No water in the lungs,” Vega noted. “So whoever tied her down didn't do it to drown her. She was already dead.”

“I ran a check on those ropes this morning,” said Greco. “They had a green tracer line running through them. I thought that might make them easy to pin down. But it turns out everybody carries that rope, including Rowland's Ace Hardware downtown. All the landscapers use it.”

“Yeah, but Rowland's has like nineteen different kinds of rope with any number of different-colored tracers running through them,” said Vega.

“You shop there?”

“Nah. I just remember all the ropes from when I was a kid. Bobby Rowland and I used to hang out in the store a lot. We were friends. His dad was our landlord.” Vega thumbed the report some more. “Dr. Gupta has no idea how her skull got cracked?”

“She says it could have been the result of an assault with a weapon like a baseball bat. There were fractures to her ribs consistent with an assault. But she says the cracked skull also could have been the result of falling backward against a hard surface.”

“Like being thrown off Bud Point?”

“I asked. Gupta said she'd have sustained more broken bones and compression injuries. And don't tell me about your little swan dive at seventeen, Vega. You were the luckiest bastard in the world.”

“Then how does Gupta explain the rib fractures, if not from assault?”

“She said it also could have been bad CPR.”

“Bad CPR?” Vega made a face. “That's like killing someone by taking their pulse.”

“Gupta says she's seen similar rib fractures in people who have heart attacks and get CPR from someone who doesn't know what they're doing.”

“Welcome to the future of managed health care,” said Vega. Greco gave a throaty chuckle. It sounded like a car backfiring. Vega took a sip of coffee. Next time he'd bring his own. Anglos didn't have a clue how to make coffee. “Did Gupta manage to lift any fingerprints?”

“The tissue was too damaged from being in the water so long,” said Greco. “But the lab did manage to match her DNA to a bloodstain on the shoulder bag so we can be pretty confident the bag was hers and she's probably the face in the photograph. The lab also lifted a fingerprint from that letter. I ran it through the database. No matches. Whoever wrote that letter has no police or immigration record.”

“Anything come up on the Dora sneaker?”

“The model was manufactured within the last five years. Sold in Target and Walmart. No DNA or prints. No way to tie it to a particular child.”

Vega had already combed the missing persons databases. Nothing matched. Even the pawn registry came up cold for that crucifix. He could see how a woman could end up unreported. But a little girl? How does someone not miss a child?

But he knew the answer to that already. With his own eyes, he had seen how a child could become forever lost. Desiree was two. She never saw three. He would always blame himself no matter what the official report said.

“What gets me,” said Vega, “is the media. Not one newspaper or television station has picked up on the flyers we sent. I figured, with a child involved—”

“—Technically, we don't know for a fact that the child
is
involved,” Greco reminded him.

“Her mother's dead. Little kids don't stray far from their mothers.”

“Could be a father or grandparent is raising her,” said Greco. “As for the woman—well,” Greco spread his hands apologetically. “Comes with the territory.” They both knew that a dead Latina, especially one who might be undocumented, was unlikely to garner the same sort of media coverage as a white American woman.

“We'd get all the media attention we needed if we broadcast our suspicions,” said Vega.

“That'd be like using a fire hose to extinguish a candle. No thank you,” said Greco. “I don't want to be the guy cleaning up
that
mess.”

“Is that what you told Adele Figueroa after someone torched the community center's Dumpster last month?”

Greco drummed his fingers on his desktop. “What, Sherlock? So now you think a bunch of dumb-ass kids decided to move from vandalism to murder?”

“How do you know the fire was started by kids?”

“I don't. But in my book, if it walks like a dog and shits like a dog, it's not a camel with a personality disorder. That fire had all the earmarks of a few punks fired up on their own rage and bravado.”

“The words that were spray-painted across La Casa's parking lot seem a little close for comfort, don't you think?”

“Easily a hundred people saw those words, Vega. They weren't poetic. Or original. That situation is nothing like what we found at the lake.”

“How about Ernesto Reyes-Cardona? Is he a dog or a camel in your analogy?”

Greco blew out a long breath of air as if Vega had been sent as a personal test from God. Job's final burden. “That's not a Lake Holly police matter.”

“I know. It's Metro-North jurisdiction. But it happened
here,
Grec. All of these crimes happened
here.
Scott Porter told me about two other Latino men who were beaten in Michael Park. Don't all these potential bias incidents make you wonder what's going on in town?”

“So now you're taking your cues from a guy who wants to hand out green cards like they're grocery coupons?”

“Is Porter right about what's happening in town or not?”

“That shit happens? That people sometimes behave badly? Of course. But I don't like your insinuation that we're not doing our jobs. Hell, you know the drill as well as I do. You try to interview an illegal, he won't talk to you. Or he gives you a fake name. Or a fake address. Even if these people give you a real address, they move every fucking week. They don't have steady jobs. How the hell can I catch a criminal if the witnesses and victims scatter like cockroaches every time I step into a room? Never mind all the shit I have to do when I finally
do
talk to them. I can't ask them the same things I'd ask my own kids if I caught them messing around. I see a white guy pissing on the sidewalk, I can bust his ass and no one's gonna do anything but applaud me for doing my job. I do the same thing to an illegal, and in two minutes flat, I've got Scott Porter and every Hispanic group in the county breathing down my neck and calling me a racist.”

Greco's view of the world, 101. Vega leaned an elbow on the corner of Greco's desk and rested his cheek against his fist. “I see the county-mandated sensitivity training had a big impact on you.”

“Yeah? Fuck you. You can't decide if you're for them or against them. That's your problem. Least I know where I stand.”

Vega's view of the world, 101: wherever you are, you don't belong.

Neither man spoke for an instant. Then Greco turned away from Vega and punched a number into his phone. He told the person on the other end to wait around another ten minutes. He hung up and turned back to Vega.

“Ever meet a guy named Tim Anderson?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Depends,” said Greco. “He's an accident reconstruction specialist for Metro-North Railway. He's down by the station now. You want to know about this Reyes guy, you can ask him yourself.”

It took Vega a moment to process what Greco was saying. “So you mean to say that Lake Holly is working with Metro-North on the Reyes case—as we speak—and it didn't occur to you to tell me?”

“It occurred to me,” said Greco. “But like I've said from the beginning—we want this situation at the lake to remain under the radar. There's no proof right now that Reyes was chased to his death, much less that his case has anything to do with any other. Is Lake Holly looking at the particulars? Hell, yeah. But are we broadcasting it from the rooftops? Not if we want this town in one piece, we're not.”

“Not even to me?”

“Your jurisdiction is the reservoir. Not Metro-North or anything else that goes on in my backyard. You asked, so I'm telling you. But when you're not on lake property, we play things my way.” He put his palms on his desk and pushed himself out of his chair. “Want to talk to Anderson or not?”

They found Tim Anderson on the northbound side of the tracks, about fifty feet from the Lake Holly station platform. He had an ex-military bearing about him—rigid posture, buzz-cut blond hair, hundred-yard stare. He was wearing a hard hat, insulated boots, and a fluorescent vest that made him look like a maintenance employee, but he was taking photographs and notes. Vega assumed, given his radio and credentials with Metro-North, that he knew how to stop the trains from whipping through here when he was on the tracks. But the vest gave Vega pause. He never liked trusting his fate to anyone who relied on procedure—or the attention span of a civil servant during baseball season.

Greco made the introductions. A small crease gathered between Anderson's eyebrows at the mention of Vega's name. He ran a finger across his hedge-clipper-perfect blond mustache.

“Do you have a teenage daughter?”

“Yeah.” Everybody in town seemed to know Joy. But this time, Vega wasn't so quick to trot out his efficacy speech. He felt suddenly protective. “Why?”

Then it hit him. If Tim Anderson did accident reconstructions for Metro-North, he was probably involved in Joy's stall-out on the tracks. Vega wasn't there when it happened. He was working in the southern part of the county that evening, handling a shooting outside a bar. By the time he'd learned about the accident, it was all over. Joy was back home; his Acura was history.

“You're a lucky man,” said Anderson, shaking his head at the memory. “Never seen a stranger situation. But she walked away, so that's what matters.”

“It was my car,” said Vega. “I loaned it to her, so you can imagine how I feel. It never stalled on me before.”

Anderson held Vega's gaze for a moment.

“Your daughter,” he said. “She's what? Five-three?”

“Five-two. Why?”

“Her driver's seat was pushed all the way back.”

“So?”

“Strange—don't you think?” Tim Anderson had the arctic eyes of an Alaskan husky. Cold and humorless. If they worked together ten years, they'd never become friends.

“What's strange about it?”

“Hard to believe she was driving.”

“If she said she was driving, she was. My daughter doesn't lie. Or drink. She passed the Breathalyzer the police administered on the scene.”

“That she did.” The words came out flat—almost sarcastic. Vega wondered if Anderson would be so free with his insinuations if Vega were a white detective. He could never be sure and it was the not knowing that always put him on the defensive, made him feel like a punk if he didn't react, a prick if he did.