Voice with No Echo

by Suzanne Chazin

  “Will do,” said Solero. “Is that your connection to the case?”

  “No.” Vega told Solero about catching the rotation for a 10-56—only to find out it was the DA’s young bride.

  “I heard,” said Solero. “You’re on that?”

  “Just assisting Lake Holly,” said Vega. “They’re under pressure to close it down cleanly and quickly. If it’s a suicide, fine. But her housekeeper’s missing and this morning, when I was at the ME’s office, Gupta told me that when Elmer Ortega’s body was found, he had a list of names in his pocket. One of those names may be the housekeeper’s uncle.”

  “Which name?”

  “Edgar Ceren-Aviles,” said Vega. “The housekeeper’s name is Lissette Aviles. Her uncle is Edgar Aviles-Ceren. It might not be the same guy. On the other hand, Ceren’s not a common name.”

  Solero played with the tab on his soda can while he thought about that. The tab made a tinny sound that seemed to drown out the ringing telephones and cops’ voices in the halls.

  “Maybe the uncle’s a gangbanger.”

  “He was a handyman at a synagogue in Lake Holly,” said Vega. “I say, ‘was,’ because this morning, ICE tried to arrest him on a removal order and he split. I’m trying to figure out where he went and if his niece—our witness—is with him. Were you ever able to track down any of the names on that gangster’s list?”

  “No hits from our gang database or criminal records,” said Solero. “Mostly, we were concentrating on putting a name to the body. Now that we have one, we may be able to do something with the names.”

  “Got any theories?” asked Vega.

  “Cheetos was a small-time drug dealer and thief—”

  “I thought he was MS-13?”

  “He was,” said Solero. “But up here, every small-time Latin-American hood identifies himself as that. These guys aren’t the Mafia, you know. They’re opportunistic, impulsive thugs. So long as they pay their overlords, they can freelance all they want. My guess is that Cheetos was shaking down illegals in the neighborhood and those names correspond to people too scared to come forward.”

  “If that’s the case,” said Vega, “why Aviles? He lives in Lake Holly—not Warburton. Same with his niece.”

  Solero shrugged. “You said yourself, it may not be him.” “Can you do a little legwork on this for me?” asked Vega. “I know your primary focus is on getting the gang-bangers who killed and dismembered Cheetos. But can you ask around on that list of names? Maybe the Avileses have connections to Warburton we don’t know about. The family’s not talking.”

  “Gotcha. Thanks for the intel. I’ll check it out.” Solero rose and tossed his can in the trash. Vega did the same.

  “Come on,” said Solero. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Solero’s black Jeep Grand Cherokee was easy to spot in the lot. It had two stickers on the rear bumper: WARNING: I BRAKE FOR DRUM SOLOS and another, with a picture of a drum kit and the words THE TEMPO IS WHATEVER I SAY IT IS.

  Vega pointed to the “tempo” sticker. “Least you’re honest,” he teased.

  “Least I’m in tune.” Solero grinned and punched Vega playfully on the shoulder. Vega was sure he’d see a bruise there later. “Danny said to try and act excited when we do the ‘Macarena’ tonight.”

  Vega groaned again. “Give me Luis Fonsi’s ‘Despacito’ any day. Or even Ricky Martin—”

  “Maybe after a few drinks, they’ll forget to ask for it,” said Solero.

  “You kidding? That’s always when they ask for it.”

  Chapter 11

  The County Intelligence Center was just a few blocks from Richie Solero’s police precinct, in a rundown part of Warburton. The outside still looked like a warehouse. No signage. No windows. Cement block walls. A flat roof with fan-coil vents and razor wire. Only the elaborate security gate and surveillance cameras spoke of something more.

  Vega showed his badge and ID to a cop in the security booth who scanned them into his computer and directed Vega to the parking lot. Another officer checked his ID again in the lobby, beneath the county police emblem and a sign that read: LUX ET VERITAS. Light and Truth.

  There was more than a little irony to the CIC’s motto.

  “Sergeant Burke will be out in a few minutes,” said the officer at the front desk.

  “Thanks.”

  Vega suspected Sergeant Burke was either a grizzled veteran waiting to retire or a newly promoted officer dying to escape. Although the CIC was technically part of the county police, it operated independently. Recruits were often taken straight out of the academy or via some circuitous route like internal affairs. Ninety percent of the yearly budget came from civil forfeiture—confiscated cars, cash, and electronics. The so-called spoils of victory. It always left Vega a little squeamish.

  Sergeant Burke was not a grizzled veteran. He was a she. A very pregnant she. With a cascade of long beaded braids—a style Vega really liked on African-American women. Leticia Burke’s badge was looped around her neck. It rode the belly of her maternity blouse as she shook Vega’s hand.

  “Detective Vega—I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  “I don’t think so.” Vega wasn’t sure if he should congratulate Sergeant Burke on her obvious pregnancy or pretend it didn’t exist. His mouth had gotten him into so much hot water with Michelle earlier, he decided to say nothing.

  “We only got the intel request from Detective Greco this morning,” Burke explained. “I can give you a broad idea of what we have. But if you want a more targeted approach, we’d need another twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

  “Can you take me through what you’ve got so far?” asked Vega. “We have a meeting at noon and I’d like to go in with something.”

  “Sure.”

  Vega followed the sergeant down a fluorescent-lit hallway with doors on either side, all locked and nameless. The CIC had only been in existence for about two years, but it already seemed to contain a massive amount of information. Every day, all over the county and beyond, small cameras known as license-plate readers or LPRs, took pictures of plates on public roads and stored that information in police computers, making it possible to track the movements of suspects and law-abiding civilians alike. Cashless tolls at bridges added another layer of surveillance. Cellular phone trackers known as Stingrays operated like cell towers and collected still more information on people’s whereabouts.

  In addition to these devices, the CIC had access to dozens and dozens of databases, from both law enforcement and civilian sources. Everything from drone footage at rallies to credit scores to real-time video feeds from public cameras. And that didn’t include public access databases like real estate, Google Maps, and social media, that added another layer of knowledge.

  “Big Brother,” Adele had groaned, when Vega told her about what the CIC could track these days.

  “Maybe,” said Vega. “But if you’ve got a snatched kid or a would-be school shooter, you want this data on your side.”

  At the end of the hall, Burke held up her badge to unlock another set of doors. They opened onto a large windowless room with rows of desks across the center and banks of television monitors along one wall. About a dozen men and women sat hunched behind the desks, their eyes glazed by the glow of the screens while the monitors shifted from one video feed to another in timed intervals. The whole room was physically static but visually frenzied—like an airport control tower.

  On a wall opposite the monitors sat three glass-enclosed offices and a small conference room. Burke gestured to the conference room. “I’ve got us set up in there.”

  “Can I . . . carry anything in for you?” asked Vega.

  Burke smiled, showing a perfect space between her two front teeth. “One of my analysts already did. Thank you.”

  The stack of papers on the conference room table looked like it weighed twenty pounds.

  “All this stuff is for the Crowley case?” asked Vega.

  “It’s an inverse ratio,” said
Burke. “When a department knows exactly what it wants, the information is precise and targeted. When it goes on a fishing expedition, this is the result.”

  Vega took a seat and pulled out his notepad. “What, exactly, did Detective Greco ask you for?” Vega didn’t want to start mentioning his doubts about the district attorney’s alibi if Greco hadn’t.

  “The detective gave us three license plates and asked us to run them through our LPR database for all travel since last Monday.”

  Vega saw the three plate numbers on the top request sheet.

  “May I?” Vega asked, pointing to the page.

  “Help yourself.”

  The sheet indicated that one of the tracked plates was registered to a black Mercedes leased by Glen Crowley. Another was registered to a white Lexus, leased by Talia. The third was a Lincoln Navigator owned by the county—likely the one Victor Franco drove on Thursday night to Albany. Sergeant Burke had to know what Greco was trying to pin down here—even if Vega didn’t expressly come out and say it.

  “Did anything leap out at you?” Vega asked Burke.

  “Leap?” Burke smiled. “Raw data like this doesn’t leap, Detective. It limps. I simply don’t know enough from this information to tell you if their movements were normal. I can tell you that the three vehicles didn’t travel outside the state and—except for the Navigator’s Thursday-night excursion to Albany—all of the travel was local. That’s about it.”

  “Fair enough.” Vega liked Burke. He decided to go out on a limb. “Here’s my concern. Our district attorney and his driver claim they left Lake Holly at six p.m. Thursday night and didn’t get to Albany until nine. They explain the delay by saying they stopped at a pizzeria up in Taylorsville called Mario’s. I don’t buy the long delay.”

  “You think they left later? Made more than one stopover?”

  “I don’t know,” Vega admitted. “I just think they’re covering up something. What? I can’t say—except that one lie often leads to others.”

  Burke let the allegations settle over them for a moment. She thumbed the pages of the report until she found the one that mapped out the Navigator’s journey from Lake Holly to Albany on Thursday evening.

  “License-plate readers aren’t GPS trackers,” Burke explained. “We don’t have a minute-by-minute recounting of where the vehicle traveled. But given the points we’ve been able to track, it backs up their statements. The Navigator left Lake Holly around six, arrived in Albany around nine, and made one detour off the New York State Thruway, passing by an LPR in the westbound lane of Route 113 at seven thirty and one on the eastbound lane, at eight thirty-five.”

  Vega tapped his pen on his notepad. “Can I ask you a question? Hypothetically?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why would the district attorney go five miles off the highway to visit a crummy little pizzeria? I Googled Mario’s. They’re not on any Zagat-rated list. They’re a take-out joint with ninety-nine-cent slice specials on Tuesdays.”

  Burke shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t about the pizza. Maybe they just needed a place with good Wi-Fi. Reception can be lousy on parts of the Thruway.”

  “True . . .”

  “Maybe we can work this another way,” Burke suggested. “Do you have a copy of the purchase receipt from Mario’s? That would give us an exact time they were in the place.”

  “I don’t, but I can get it from Greco.” Vega pulled out his phone and texted a message to Greco. Then he thumbed the stack of printouts while he waited for a reply. He felt like a big chunk of what he really wanted to know was missing here.

  “I hate to ask you to do more work,” Vega began. “But . . .” He smiled his most flirtatious smile.

  “What?”

  “If I gave you a cell phone number, do you think you could track it?”

  Her face paled. “You want the CIC to track our district attorney’s cell phone?”

  Vega waved his hands in front of his face. “No. Of course not. Nothing like that.” Relief flooded her eyes. She was clearly counting on a long career at the CIC.

  “Talia Crowley’s housekeeper, Lissette Aviles, has been missing since Talia’s death. Lissette’s family isn’t cooperating. The number I want you to track belongs to the housekeeper. I only need the period from Thursday night until now.”

  “You do realize I have no way of telling you who she called,” said Burke. “Not without a court order. All I can tell you is whether her phone was on and what cell tower it pinged off of.”

  “I understand,” said Vega. “I’ll take what I can get.”

  Vega gave Burke Lissette’s phone number. Burke left the room to ask an analyst to run the data. When she returned—with a laptop under her arm—Vega showed her Greco’s reply, along with a copy of the receipt from Mario’s showing the purchase of two slices of pizza and two Snapples at seven forty-five. From her wrinkled nose, Vega gathered Burke didn’t buy the long lead time between Mario’s and Albany either.

  She flicked back her braids and opened the laptop. “Maybe Mario’s wasn’t his destination.”

  She pulled up Google Maps and typed, Mario’s, Taylorsville, NY. She clicked on street view. Up came a photograph of a one-story strip mall with four stores of plate-glass windows beneath cheap signage. From left to right, Vega counted an insurance agency, a car parts store, Mario’s, and a place that sold tropical fish.

  “Nothing of interest there,” said Burke. She hit the little arrow compass on the picture and spun the viewfinder 180 degrees, as if they were standing in the parking lot facing the other side of the two-lane county roadway. Across the street, Vega saw a gas station with a mini-mart attached. The gas was off-brand. Everything about the area looked tired and dated and slightly seedy. The concrete ramp to the gas station was cracked. The parking lot of Mario’s had potholes and weeds growing around the edges.

  “Guess I was wrong,” said Burke. “I thought perhaps they hadn’t stopped there for the food.” She went to hit escape.

  “No. Wait,” said Vega. He spun the arrow back to Mario’s parking lot and hit the street arrow to take him just east of the pizzeria. He saw nothing but a dilapidated trailer park. He turned the arrow around and walked it just west of the pizzeria. He came to a cement block building with weeds in front and windows covered in shades. A big neon sign on top advertised the business as RELAX SPA.

  Vega zoomed in on the picture. “What day spa do you know that advertises with a neon sign?”

  “They ain’t licensed in shiatsu,” Burke said, grinning. “That’s for sure.”

  There was a knock on the glass. A young white guy in a polo shirt and khakis waved a piece of paper at Burke. Vega wasn’t sure if he was a civilian or a cop. The CIC had civilian employees too.

  Burke got up from her chair and retrieved the piece of paper. She frowned as she settled herself back in her chair.

  “Lissette Aviles’s phone number hasn’t registered an incoming or outgoing call in the tristate area since ten p.m. last night,” said Burke.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” asked Vega. “That her phone’s been turned off?”

  “Could be,” said Burke. “It could also mean she’s not in the tristate area anymore. Or that she’s in an area where cell phone reception is spotty. Or simply, that she ran out of juice.”

  “Where was her last known location?”

  Burke pointed her finger at a series of codes on the page. “These numbers correspond to a cell tower up near the Lake Holly Reservoir,” she explained. “That region is notoriously bad for cell reception.”

  Vega knew the area well. His daughter lived out that way with his ex-wife and her second husband. The houses were on acre-plus lots of land, surrounded by woods. The roads were narrow, twisting two lanes with no sidewalks or public transit. Aside from the old Magnolia Inn restaurant, there were no businesses in the vicinity. You had to crest the hill and drive through the horse farms and estates in Wickford or Clairmont before you hit anything resembling a town.

&nbs
p; Vega scribbled Magnolia Inn into his notes. Maybe Lissette had a friend who worked at the inn. There were plenty of Latino busboys and waiters who might know the twenty-three-year-old and want to help her hide.

  The question was—from what?

  Chapter 12

  The phone calls started as soon as Adele Figueroa dropped off her ten-year-old daughter at soccer practice on Saturday morning. They came from clients. From volunteers. From the weekend staff at La Casa. They were all about one thing:

  “There’s been another ICE raid,” they told her in whispers and choked sobs.

  “Where?” Adele asked them. “When?”

  Last week, it had been a busboy from Guatemala. Two weeks before that, it had been a high school student from Ecuador. Now, it was the synagogue’s Salvadoran handyman. The names and nationalities changed but little else.

  She sat in her car in the elementary school parking lot and watched Sophia and twelve other little girls dribble and pass their soccer balls while Adele probed her callers for details. Every ICE raid felt personal. Adele had spent her entire childhood living in fear that her own parents would be deported, that a morning’s kiss or bedtime tuck-in could be their last.

  Her father died of a heart attack on American soil when Adele was sixteen. Her mother succumbed to cancer six years later. They never ventured farther than New York City after they left Ecuador. Yet to their dying day, they lived in fear of that early-morning knock on the door. And here Adele was, all these years later—a Harvard Law School graduate, head of La Casa, on the advisory board of an immigration think tank in Washington, DC—and she still felt as powerless as she had all those years ago.

  “His wife says he ran,” Adele’s assistant, Ramona, explained. Ramona was first-generation American, the daughter of undocumented parents just like Adele so raids cut deeply into her psyche as well.

  “Does the wife know where he’s hiding?”

  “If she does, she’s not saying.”

  “What happened to our agreement with the police about courtesy calls?” asked Adele. “I thought we settled that six months ago.”