A Blossom of Bright Light

by Suzanne Chazin

  Students were filing into Joy’s classroom, scraping chairs across the floor, unloading laptops onto desks. Joy shifted her backpack and looked at the doorway.

  “I’ve got to go,” she told them.

  “Wait,” Vega held an arm in front of Joy, blocking her. He could read the hesitation in Dolan’s eyes. Dolan wanted to tell Vega what he knew, but he was afraid to at the same time. Vega decided to lean on him a little.

  “C’mon, Teddy—if you know something, spit it out, man. Look, maybe we can straighten this whole thing out, the three of us, right here and now.” It was the sort of thing Vega often said to suspects to get them to confess: Let’s straighten this out. He wasn’t sure whether Dolan would take the bait. But he absolutely needed to know what sort of evidence the cops had on his daughter.

  Dolan turned to Joy. “You know a quiet place where the three of us can talk?”

  “But my class is starting,” Joy protested.

  “Ay, puñeta! Will you forget the class?” said Vega. “This, Joy—this is what matters right now. Nothing else! You are in no position to bargain with the law.”

  She got that hooded, sulky look she sometimes got when she thought her father was being heavy-handed with her. Vega didn’t care. He meant what he said. Nothing was more important than figuring out who this girl in the woods was and how Joy knew her.

  “The cafeteria’s usually empty at this hour,” Joy muttered. “Kids with morning classes are in them already and everyone else is sleeping.”

  Vega and Dolan traded looks. College students. They would’ve liked a schedule like that.

  Joy was right about the cafeteria. Except for a man mopping the floor and a woman at the register, the place was empty. Vega bought two coffees for him and Dolan and an herbal tea for Joy. They sat at a small table by a large bank of windows overlooking the shopping cart sculpture in the middle of the quad. Dolan parked himself at the small end of the table, and Vega sat catercorner to him with Joy on the other side. Vega was determined to stay between his daughter and the police at all times.

  “So what have you got?” Vega asked Dolan.

  Dolan sipped his coffee, made a face, and added more sugar. “I know what we haven’t got: an ID for her.”

  Dolan rolled up his sleeves. Vega could see the red-and-black Harley Davidson eagle tattoo on his forearm. Vega was never into tattoos. He was squeamish about needles. He had a piercing in his left ear that he got back in his early twenties when he still thought he was going to make it as a guitarist. He nearly fainted from that. Joy kept begging for a tattoo. Vega wouldn’t allow it. He wondered how long it would be before she did it anyway. For all he knew, she’d done it already.

  “She’s not a student here,” Dolan continued. “She isn’t an employee of the shopping center behind the campus. We’ve run her prints, and she’s not showing up on any missing persons’ registries. She has no criminal record—”

  “Immigration?” asked Vega.

  “I checked with ICE,” said Dolan. “No matches.”

  “That would lead me to believe her connection to Joy is accidental.”

  “I’d say you’re right,” said Dolan. “Except for this.” He pulled out his cell phone and brought up a photo on the screen. He slid the picture in front of Vega and Joy. It was a scan of a credit card receipt from Tony’s Pizza, a popular takeout place in Lake Holly. The receipt was for two plain slices and a Snapple. It was dated July 12, a little over three months ago.

  “I don’t understand,” said Vega.

  Dolan focused on Joy. “Recognize the receipt?”

  Joy blinked at him. Vega noticed her looking a little pale and scared for the first time. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  “I traced the card last night,” said Dolan. “It’s your credit card, Joy. Your mother is the cosigner. It wasn’t reported stolen. Is it still in your possession?”

  Joy opened her backpack and pulled out her wallet. The card was inside. She made a small burbling sound in her throat. “I guess maybe I bought some pizza and a Snapple there in July?” She sounded unsure.

  “Somebody at Tony’s Pizza knows the girl?” asked Vega.

  “Nobody at Tony’s Pizza knows the girl,” said Dolan. “But that receipt? For food bought on a credit card in your daughter’s possession? It was inside a pocket of the black zippered hoodie the victim was wearing last night.”

  Vega sat up straighter. His fingers tingled with pins and needles. He folded them over each other to try to staunch the sensation. He couldn’t meet Dolan’s gaze. The implications were clear: Joy knew this girl, at least since mid-July. Joy had bought her pizza, perhaps. And she’d lied to the cops—lied to him—about all of it. Dolan had kept them talking long enough for Joy to produce the credit card and admit it hadn’t been stolen. Vega had thought he was playing Dolan. But Dolan, it turned out, was playing him. And he’d fallen for it.

  Vega took a deep breath and tried to think. He was so deep in thought, he almost missed his daughter’s next words.

  “What hoodie?”

  “The hoodie the girl was wearing when the dog found her yesterday,” said Dolan. “Didn’t your dad show you a picture of her?”

  “He only showed me her face.”

  Dolan scrolled down his screen and put another image in front of her. “That’s her, head to toe.”

  Joy squinted at the screen. The light was bad. It was raining. She asked, “Do you have any other pictures?”

  Dolan clicked through several more close-ups and long shots from every position. Joy pointed to something on one of the pictures. Her fingers were steady. She didn’t try to backtrack or qualify her statements the way most suspects did when they were caught out in lies.

  “Does that hoodie have a pink lining?” asked Joy. “And black piping around the pockets?”

  “What’s piping?” asked Dolan.

  “Trim. A satiny black trim,” said Joy.

  Dolan frowned at Vega. Vega shrugged. They were homicide cops, not fashion designers. They noticed blood spatter and bullet holes. “Piping” to them was a hollow piece of steel, very effective in bashing in someone’s brains.

  Dolan stroked his mustache. “What’s it matter whether it’s got ‘piping,’ as you say?”

  “Because I used to own a zippered black hoodie with a pink lining and black satin trim on the pockets. My mother asked me to clean out my closets over the summer, and I gave her a bunch of stuff to give to Goodwill, including that hoodie. This sort of looks like the same one. I probably left the pizza receipt in the pocket.”

  Vega reared back. He saw the implications even before Dolan. He turned to Joy, his pulse racing. “So if you gave the hoodie away and nobody had it cleaned, your scent would still be on it.”

  “I guess,” said Joy.

  “So conceivably, you might never have had any contact with this girl. She just happened to be in possession of a hoodie you’d given away.”

  “That’s all I can think of.” Joy shrugged.

  Dolan placed his palms flat on the table and leaned forward. “I’m not casting aspersions, Joy. You understand? But to make that story stick, you gotta be able to prove your mom gave that hoodie away.”

  “Well, she’ll tell you it’s true,” said Joy.

  “That’s a start,” said Dolan. But a weak one, as Dolan and Vega both knew. Parents will often lie for their kids. Vega wouldn’t, but his ex-wife was another matter. Hell, she’d lied to him often enough.

  “What would be better,” Dolan continued, “is if your mother can give me a sworn statement to that effect and produce a donation receipt from the particular Goodwill store she donated the stuff to that would allow me to track the probability that what you’re telling me is true. Otherwise—you understand—it’s just a theory.”

  Dolan’s tactful way of calling Joy a liar.

  “Theory or not,” said Vega, leaning on the word. He wanted Dolan to know he didn’t appreciate the insinuation. “It can’t hurt to figure out if
the hoodie the girl was wearing is the same one Joy’s describing.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Let me call Dr. Gupta. I think her clothes are still over at the ME’s office.”

  Dolan excused himself and walked out of earshot to make the call. Vega laced a hand into Joy’s. His was sweaty. Hers was cool. She disengaged.

  “You didn’t have to be so rude to me earlier, Dad. I told you I didn’t know that girl. Do you think I’m lying?”

  “Maybe you’re protecting someone.”

  “Is that your way of calling me a liar too?”

  “No. It’s just that—this is a very serious situation, Chispita. I don’t think you get that. If I’m being rude, as you say, it’s to protect you.”

  “I can protect myself.”

  “Famous last words.”

  A teenager with multiple tattoos and piercings shot past the cafeteria window on a skateboard. Vega nodded at the boy.

  “What’s with all the tattoos on campus? I see more ink here than at the county jail.”

  “I know him, Dad. His name’s Tosh and he’s a pre-med like me.”

  “Huh. Looks like he’s had plenty of meds already.”

  Joy rolled her eyes. “You are such a cop sometimes.” She pulled her phone out of her backpack to check her messages. “I saw Adele with you at the career fair yesterday. Have you patched things up?”

  Vega folded his arms across his chest and looked out the window. Just hearing Adele’s name made him heartsick all over again. “You were right about the job in D.C.,” he said. “She’s leaving.”

  “She told you that?”

  “She didn’t have to. I can see that’s where things are headed.”

  “So?” Joy shrugged. “What’s the big deal? You can’t date her long distance?”

  “I barely see her as it is!”

  “Well, you’ll see her even less if you break up.”

  Vega didn’t answer.

  “If I got a job offer like that, you’d be encouraging me,” Joy pointed out.

  “That’s different.”

  “It shouldn’t be. If you love her, you should want what’s best for her—whatever that is.”

  Dolan got off the phone and walked back to their table. There was a deliberateness in his step that Vega couldn’t read. He wasn’t breaking out the handcuffs, but he wasn’t breaking out the champagne, either.

  “Well?” asked Vega. “Does the hoodie have a pink lining?”

  “It does,” said Dolan. “In all likelihood, it’s the same one Joy is describing.”

  “Good.” Vega felt like he could breathe again. “Talk to my ex, get a statement, and then you can focus the investigation in a different direction.” Vega began to rise from the table. “I gotta get to work.”

  Dolan put a hand out to stay him. He turned to Joy. “You should probably get back to class. Your dad or I will be in touch if we need anything.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” She kissed her father on the cheek, a surprise. “See you later, Dad.” She didn’t look worried in the least. Should she be? Vega felt like his insides were going through the spin cycle. He waited until Joy had left the cafeteria to speak.

  “Spit it out, Teddy. What did Gupta tell you?”

  “Some good news and some bad.” Dolan sighed like even the good news wasn’t all that good. “The teenager—and Gupta says she’s definitely a teenager—wasn’t murdered. She died of an internal hemorrhage. From a rupture to her uterus in childbirth. She died elsewhere and was moved to that location.”

  From somewhere just outside the cafeteria, Vega could hear voices and the sound of someone putting change in a vending machine. He understood before Dolan could even get the words out what the bad news was. He understood too that he was going to be part of this case after all. Whether he wanted to or not.

  “The bad news,” said Dolan, “is that Gupta tested her DNA as part of your dragnet. It came back positive. I think you just found the mother of Baby Mercy.”

  Chapter 17

  Dr. Gupta had Baby Mercy’s DNA. She had her mother’s DNA. By process of elimination, the police now had a complete DNA profile of the baby’s father as well. Unfortunately, the profile didn’t match anyone in the police database. So until they could find and question the baby’s father, Joy would remain on everyone’s radar.

  Captain Waring’s first instinct was to remove Vega from the Baby Mercy end of the investigation since it was now related to the dead teenager on campus. But Vega pointed out that for another detective to step into the case at this juncture would entail a lot of overtime—perhaps even a handoff to the state police. Waring was loath to assign more overtime and even more loath to hand over jurisdiction. So for the time being at least, Dolan and Vega were working opposite ends of the investigation, with support from Louis Greco and the Lake Holly police in between. For Vega, it felt like waking up a Red Sox and being traded to the Yankees. But at least now he could get his hands on the teenager’s autopsy report.

  Not that it told him much. Dr. Gupta put the girl’s age at between fifteen and seventeen, given that only some of her bones had completely ossified and her wisdom teeth had only started to erupt. She had no tattoos or obvious scars. Her teeth in general were in poor condition, which Gupta noted would be expected if she grew up in a place that lacked water fluoridation—a situation common in Latin America. She was small in general—just under five feet tall. At death, she weighed only 115 pounds, and that was after having given birth to a full-term baby.

  Dolan made up a flyer in English and Spanish listing the dead teenager’s height, weight, and approximate age and where her body was found. The flyer also contained front and side photographs of her face—eyes closed—and a description of her clothing. What Dolan didn’t disclose was any mention of her pregnancy or that her baby was the one found in Lake Holly. They would leave that to a suspect to reveal. Right now, the key to the whole case was putting a name to this girl. And Vega knew the first place he needed to visit.

  The block surrounding La Casa was a lot busier on a Wednesday afternoon than it had been on Sunday morning. The auto body shop was open, hydraulic saws squealing from the dim recesses of the garage. There was a sandwich truck in front of the propane company where several workers in dark blue uniforms were lined up, placing their orders.

  Vega parked his unmarked Impala in the lot and walked in. He was instantly greeted with what sounded like a jackhammer coming from the back of the building. The entire place vibrated from it. Ramona, Adele’s assistant, poked her head out of the front office.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Vega, cupping his ears. “Teaching a course on demolition?” In the front room, a gray-haired volunteer was scribbling an English lesson on a dry-erase board in front of a semicircle of day laborers. Vega wondered how the men could concentrate.

  “A couple of clients are installing some bookshelves for Adele in the back room,” shouted Ramona. “They have to drill through cement block to do it. She’s back there if you want to talk to her.”

  “Thanks—I think.”

  Vega found Adele in the back room near the snack bar, directing three men on the installation of a six-foot-high bookshelf that would delineate an area in which children could do their homework after school. She was standing with her back to Vega, wearing a soft, cream-colored blouse over dark tan pants, her bob of silky black hair glistening under the strips of industrial lights. He tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and her face softened at the sight of him. He felt a momentary skip in his heart to know he could still do that to her. She said something. He shook his head. He couldn’t hear her over the noise from the drilling.

  “Can I talk to you for a moment?” He shouted. He motioned outside. At least they’d be able to hear each other there.

  Adele mimed that she needed a jacket from her office. Vega waited, and they both walked into the parking lot. The sun was warm and felt good on their backs, but a stiff breeze fanned the trees on the hillside. Adele wrapped her jacket tightly a
round her shoulders. Vega nodded to the noise coming from inside.

  “Make sure your guys installing those bookshelves don’t put too much pressure on the drill bit when they sink those holes.”

  “But I want the screws to hold in concrete.”

  “Too much pressure will just pulverize the concrete and plug up the holes,” Vega explained. “You’ll end up breaking apart the very thing you wanted to hold together.”

  Adele tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and studied him for a long moment.

  “What?” he asked. “I know construction, Adele. That’s how it works with concrete.”

  “That’s how it works with people too.”

  “Huh?”

  She turned away. “Forget it.” The sandwich truck across the street was leaving. “You didn’t come all the way over here today to tell me how to mount a bookcase.”

  “No.” He could see she was cold. “Wanna sit in my car?”

  “I was just about to grab lunch.”

  “From the truck?” Vega made a face.

  “No. I was going to drive over to Claudia’s. Her food is much better. Want to join me?”

  Vega kept his gaze on the hillside. Yellow crime-scene tape still fluttered like ribbon in a girl’s hair. Baby Mercy’s death and all its implications rested like a giant minefield between them. He wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to breach the divide.

  Adele must have read his mind. “We’re not going to solve our problems over lunch, Jimmy. I know that. But you came to talk to me about something and I’m hungry.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. Hop in. I’ll drive.”

  On the outside, Vega’s unmarked Chevy Impala looked like a standard, forgettable medium-blue American sedan. Inside, it was equipped with scanners, a radio, and a laptop computer. He lowered the volume on his police radio and closed up his laptop. Nothing much was happening in the county at the moment. A few minor traffic accidents. A request for uniformed assistance on a couple of highways. He pulled a flyer from his envelope and handed it to Adele while he drove the six blocks through town to Claudia’s.