by Louisa Luna
Vega thought this was interesting but didn’t let on. It allowed her to slide Palmer into the category of conflict avoider.
“Is your son…” Vega paused. “Sensitive?”
Then Palmer broke into a nervous laugh.
“I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. He’s a great kid, gets good grades, plays football. He can just be a little shy.”
“Is he nervous?” said Vega.
Palmer cast her eyes down. Vega knew she had something to say, on the fence if she should say it.
“He’s been in therapy and on medication for anxiety since he was fourteen,” she said. “But there’s no shame in it,” she added defensively. “His sister, my daughter, who’s in the eighth grade now, is the opposite—outgoing and has a ton of friends, but RJ’s had a harder time of it.”
Palmer looked away for a moment and then appeared to gain some steam.
“He’s done amazingly well. He has some good friends now, but you know, we’re all getting ready for him to start applying to colleges and I just didn’t want to rock the boat upsetting Roland any more than he already was.”
“What colleges are you thinking of?” said Vega.
“Oh, we have a big list,” Palmer said, her face relaxing, smiling a little. “UCSD, of course, and some other UCs…”
She kept talking but Vega wasn’t listening and didn’t care. She just needed a minute to think.
“Has your son ever gotten into trouble at school?” Vega asked, interrupting Palmer.
“No,” she said. “Never.”
Vega thought of Nell, the same age as Otero’s son.
“He ever get pulled over or get a traffic ticket?” asked Vega.
“Oh, no,” said Palmer. “He’s like his dad in that way, plays by the rules.”
“What about your daughter?”
“Elsie?” Palmer said, as if she were asking Vega. “She’s great. And she’s very pretty but in a little girl sort of way. She still likes unicorns and glitter and all that.”
“Did she ever get in any kind of trouble at school?” Vega asked, unable to help the feeling that she was getting closer to something. It was like playing Marco Polo in a pool, sensing where people were by the movement of the water.
“No,” said Palmer, but held on to the word a little bit, which made Vega think there was more coming.
“But?” said Vega.
“But, this is really nothing, just a bit of teen drama,” said Palmer. “We didn’t even tell Roland about it. Earlier in the summer a friend of RJ’s from the football team, they come to the house a lot and, you know, clean us out of all the snacks we buy at Costco.” She rolled her eyes then. These kids. “And he, Graham, he flirted with her a little bit, and she flirted back but I don’t know if she even knew she was flirting. She’s just…”
“Outgoing,” Vega added.
“Right. And he just got a little carried away, that’s all.”
Palmer paused again and smoothed out her jean legs. Then Vega realized she wasn’t pausing; she was done with the story.
“What does that mean exactly, carried away?” said Vega.
Palmer sighed, seemed annoyed at the memory of it.
“He kissed her. He grabbed her and kissed her in the kitchen. I wasn’t there, but she told me about it later and said it scared her. So I said just never be alone in a room with him again and it would be fine. And it was.”
Vega cocked her head, as if she had missed something.
“What did Graham’s parents say?”
“I never spoke to them,” Palmer said, shocked, like she’d never considered it. “I didn’t want to—”
“Rock the boat,” they said at the same time.
“Exactly,” said Palmer, giggling at the coincidence.
“You ever tell your husband about it?”
“No,” she said, growing agitated now. “It wasn’t necessary.”
“Does Graham still come to your house?”
“Sure, he’s one of RJ’s best friends.”
“So,” said Vega, feeling a little agitated herself. “A teenage boy assaulted your daughter, and you allow him back into your house on a regular basis.”
Palmer’s nostrils flared, her lips growing tight.
“It was not an assault. It was a kiss, one kiss. And I took care of it.”
“Because he’s one of your son’s best friends,” said Vega.
“That’s right.”
Palmer seemed to reach the end of her patience. She stood.
“I don’t have to listen to this,” she said with a burst of self-righteous energy. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
“You are helping your husband,” said Vega, remaining seated.
That shut her up for a second but then she continued: “I’ve made a huge mistake telling you all this. I don’t know you. You could be making all of this up.”
“It would be a pretty elaborate thing to make up,” said Vega, standing.
The cut began to pulse again. She pressed her elbow against it, chicken-wing style. Vega watched as Palmer registered this information, then shook her head to push it away.
“I’m leaving now,” she said bravely, her voice quavering.
She gathered the makeup bags and mirrors and shoved them into the suitcase.
“I’m calling my husband,” she said, gaining some defiance.
“You do you,” said Vega. “You leave here, call him, tell him where you saw me and what I told you, and you watch his face fall apart; you listen to his voice crack. And you tell him I can help him, because no one else will. I know he’s stuck, and the waves are getting faster and stronger and they’re coming so fast he can’t get a breath in his lungs or a foot in the sand. But I can. So you have him call me.”
Palmer’s gently moisturized face buckled into a frown, tears crowning from her eyes and smearing the hypoallergenic mascara. Vega stepped aside, and Palmer rushed past her, out the door.
Vega waited before emailing the Bastard and texting Cap. She stood in the middle of the darkening room, hearing only the hum of Mia’s refrigerator and the screech and whine of a seagull outside.
16
cap perked up in his seat when he saw vega approaching the corner of Mia’s block. McTiernan saw her too, slowed the car and pulled over so Vega could get into the backseat. Cap could sense the chemistry in the car change when she sat down and shut the door: like a hit of adrenaline had been added, or a B12 shot. It shook him awake from the taco fugue.
McTiernan sped around the corner and away from the beach. Cap turned toward the backseat and handed Vega a taco in a white paper tray.
“It’s shrimp. It’s hot,” he warned her.
“Thanks,” she said.
She ate it almost as quickly as Cap had but managed not to get any of the sauce on her face. Practice, thought Cap. There are more tacos in California. He passed her a bottle of water.
“We getting on the freeway?” asked McTiernan.
“Yeah,” said Vega. “Escondido.”
She cracked open the water and took a healthy sip. McTiernan watched her from the rearview.
“At least you made it out of there,” he said.
“I did,” said Vega, pinching the corners of her mouth to siphon the excess water off. “She wanted to talk. Otero’s been acting weird around the house for the last week or so.”
“Weird how?” said Cap.
“Nervous. On edge. Not sleeping. Which is so unlike him that she’s noticed. She, herself, doesn’t know why, but I think it has to do with their kids.”
McTiernan glanced at her in the mirror and said, “Teenagers, right?”
Vega nodded and continued: “Daughter’s twelve or thirteen. Son’s a senior in high school. I think he’s at the middle of this somehow, but the girl�
�s involved secondarily.”
“Isn’t the kid a football star?” said McTiernan.
“I wouldn’t say star. Looks like he’s made the local paper a few times along with the rest of the team,” said Vega, skimming the email the Bastard had just shot back to her. “He, Roland Junior, RJ, according to Palmer, has some emotional issues. Been on medication for a few years to manage it.”
Vega paused to quickly read the rest of the email.
“How’s the son involved?” Cap asked.
“Not sure yet,” said Vega. “But he’s the weakness.” She thought about it for a minute. “He’s Otero’s weakness.”
“How did you leave it with the wife?” said Cap.
“I told her to have Otero call me.”
“He called again but didn’t leave a voice mail,” said McTiernan.
“What now?” said Cap.
“Whatever Boyce and Mackey are holding over him is enough that Otero’s willing to trash his career and reputation over it. He needs help,” said Vega, as if all of this were obvious.
“Us, Vega,” said Cap, tapping his chest with his fingers. “We need help. We escaped from the goddamn Twilight Zone hospital.”
“I need help as well,” said McTiernan, raising his hand like he wanted a hall pass.
“Don’t just look at this one thing,” said Vega. “Look at all of it stacked up. Otero doesn’t want to do what he’s doing. We neutralize the threat to him, we can pull him over to our side and take on Boyce and Mackey together.”
Cap pressed his hands together and held them to his lips.
“Okay,” he said, unable to disagree. “How do we start?”
“What’s in Escondido?” McTiernan added.
“That’s where Otero lives, right?”
“You want to talk to the son?” Cap said. “That’s a high-risk situation for us, don’t you think?”
Vega actually agreed with him. Her instinct was important; sometimes it was all she had, but she could not guarantee that Palmer wouldn’t completely spin out and call every cop she knew to chase them down. And if they showed up at Otero’s house to interrogate his son, they could very well be driving into an ambush with no guns or even a white flag to wave.
“Yeah, I do,” Vega said thoughtfully.
She read the email from the Bastard once more, looked over the Facebook and Instagram links for RJ Otero, the articles pulled from the paper about the team. Black-and-white action shots of field goals, touchdowns, the lines of scrimmage. A caption under one: “Quarterback Graham Miller calls the winning play.”
A window popped up on her screen alerting her to a new email. It was sex spam—“Hot Young Girls” read the subject. Vega intuitively thumbed the “x” in the corner, then zoomed in on the pictures of Graham Miller. She swiped into his Facebook page. He seemed to be a standard level of good-looking—clean-cut and straight teeth. Holding footballs, throwing footballs, at football games.
Vega scrolled back to her deleted items and brought up the Hot Young Girls email again and opened it, examined the pictures. The girls didn’t look particularly young, just dressed that way. Pleated skirts and kneesocks, blowing big pink gum bubbles.
Vega sat forward in her seat.
“We’re not going to talk to RJ Otero yet. We need Graham Miller first,” she said.
“Still in Escondido?” confirmed McTiernan.
“Think so. I’ll check,” she said, typing fast to the Bastard.
“Who’s Graham Miller?” said Cap.
“RJ Otero’s good friend. So good in fact, Palmer was totally complicit when he forced his tongue in her daughter’s mouth.”
“What?” Cap said, enraged. “What the hell’s wrong with her?”
“Unclear,” said Vega. “I think she’s so worried about the son having a normal life she’s willing to sacrifice anything.”
“Even her daughter?” said McTiernan.
Cap tightened his lips and shook his head angrily.
“I don’t think she sees it like that,” said Vega.
“So what do you think the friend has to do with us?” asked McTiernan.
“I’m not sure,” said Vega, meeting his eye in the rearview. “But the underage girl connection—it’s too much of a good fit, you know?”
Cap faced forward, squinting through the windshield. His fatherly fury appeared to dissipate, and he grew pensive.
“Vega, the doctor I staked out when I first got here, the guy who might have sent an email to Ben Davis—Dr. Scott Miller.”
Vega hit Send on the email to the Bastard and remembered.
“Yeah. From the clinic.”
“In Escondido,” Cap said.
“You want to put a chip down on them being related?” said Vega.
Cap turned to face her again and smiled with exactly one half of his mouth.
The Bastard fired back the address of Graham Miller, and Vega knew it was the same as Dr. Scott Miller, didn’t even have to open the email before telling McTiernan where to go. The pain from the cut in her side had reduced to intermittent thumps against the bandage, and she felt a familiar twitch in her fingertips, ready for the next thing.
* * *
—
Cap couldn’t say he recognized the block or the house since it was in a subdivision where all the blocks and houses looked the same. Tan and white upscale townhomes, two or three cars in the driveways, palm-tree-lined streets. The sun had sunk completely now, but the sky retained a faint, almost celestial golden glow in its memory.
McTiernan pulled over down the block from the Millers’ house. They all unsnapped their seatbelts and examined themselves. Vega looked at the selfie-mode camera app and thought the lotion and lipstick from Palmer had actually done her skin quite a bit of good. She didn’t look as tired as she felt, and she’d even gained some of her natural color back.
“You two start, front door?” Vega said.
“Where are you gonna be?” said Cap.
Vega looked up from her phone and said, “I’m just going to take a look around back.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” said McTiernan, patting the sides of his hair with his hands. “Trespassing could bring some attention on you pretty quick.”
“Look at me,” she said. Waving her hand, presenting her outfit. “Just going for a jog, right? Joggers get lost all the time.”
Cap shot her a reproachful glance and then went back to his reflection in the sun guard mirror. The bags under his eyes remained, and there was no way to cover up the Kennedy-dollar-size burn on his temple. Add the unshaved cheeks, he thought he could be a good stand-in for the hobo in a Norman Rockwell painting.
“Christ, I look like shit,” he said.
“Yeah, you do,” said Vega.
A laugh burst out from McTiernan, and he said, “Damn.”
“Yeah, damn, Vega,” said Cap.
She shrugged one shoulder.
“I got the badge,” said McTiernan. Then, to Cap: “You’re the consultant. Cover could be, I don’t know, string of burglaries?”
“Sure,” said Cap. “We just have to keep them talking. Mom, Dad, son. Whoever’s home. There’s got to be some connection between the kid being best friends with Otero’s boy, and the dad having something to do with the missing IUDs and Ben Davis.”
“Yeah, think about the lineup here,” said McTiernan, counting on his fingers. “LoSanto, who we got. From the people you all described as being suspects at the Salton house: Ben Davis; Fat Guard, and the big guy, the guy who hooked you up,” he said to Cap, unable to remember the name, pointing to Cap’s burn.
“Rafa,” Cap said, his mouth very dry.
“Rafa,” McTiernan repeated. “I don’t see any of these guys able, I’m saying trained to insert IUDs in those girls. LoSanto comes the closest but he’s an X-ra
y tech. And Rafa, I have a feeling he’s not trained in the medical profession to do what he does.”
“Safe to say,” Cap said, flipping the sun guard up with a snap.
“So someone had to do it,” said Vega, picking up McTiernan’s thread.
“That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “And we got a doctor right here used to work at a clinic primarily serving women.”
“Start with burglaries and see what lands,” said Cap.
“Yes,” agreed McTiernan. He turned to Vega. “You want to walk with us or wait?”
“I’ll wait,” said Vega. “Give you guys a chance to settle in with them.”
“Answer your texts, please,” Cap said, sounding like a dad.
Vega showed him her phone.
“Eighty percent battery,” she said in her defense.
Cap shook out his shoulders with nervous energy.
“Ready?” said McTiernan.
“Yeah.”
They got out of the car, and Vega watched them go. Cap began to recognize the street a little bit as they got closer to the house, saw the space across the street where he’d parked the other night, right next to a palm tree with a NO DOG POOP sign stuck in the dirt at its base.
“You lead?” he said to McTiernan.
McTiernan nodded, and they crossed the street, walked up the driveway to the door. McTiernan pressed the bell, and they heard it ringing hollow inside.
Mrs. Miller opened the door a few seconds later, and though she wasn’t in an evening gown, Cap recognized her right away. She appeared sober now, and her brunette hair was long, past her shoulders in gently coiling waves, as opposed to the other night, when her hair had been up in a twist. She still looked thin, wearing an off-the-shoulder white ruffled blouse, exposing her upper arms and clavicle. Her face was cleanly made up; Cap could see the shine of a gloss on her lips. She was attractive close-up, he thought, probably in her early forties like him, though from the stones on her ears and fingers, he also gathered she had expensive tastes.
“Mrs. Miller?” said McTiernan softly but with a coppish air of authority.