Claudia’s shoulders sagged. All the fight left her. “I tried to tell Manuel that his children might be better off with his cousins. But he thought Luna would have more opportunities if she stayed in Lake Holly. He wanted her to go to college. I thought perhaps—there were three of them. Safety in numbers, yes? I thought—maybe things would be different with Luna.”
“But Mami,” said Inés, “don’t you see? No girl is safe with him. It’s only a matter of time before he does this to Luna. We have to come forward. This has to stop!”
Claudia sighed. “I understand.”
Vega turned to Greco. “Call in one of your patrol cars to take you and Mrs. Aguilar to the station and get her statement. Start drawing up search warrants and arrest warrants.” Vega headed for the door. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Gonzalez house.”
“We can get child services to go up there,” said Greco.
“After five p.m.? On a Saturday? Nothing doing,” said Vega. “I want those kids now. Not an hour from now. Now.”
Chapter 36
Doña Esme didn’t talk in the car. She looked grim-faced and determined as she gripped the steering wheel. Luna heard the steady rhythm of the highway seams hitting their tires. She watched the sky ahead of them turn pink and the hilly landscape turn flat and black. Oncoming headlamps flashed at intervals across Doña Esme’s face. Light and dark, light and dark. That’s what Luna’s life felt like right now. There were periods when everything seemed almost normal. And then suddenly, it didn’t.
It was a straight ride west from Lake Holly, New York, to Lords Valley, Pennsylvania. They were traveling toward the Newburgh Beacon Bridge that spanned the Hudson River. From there, they would drive a little longer in New York, then head into Pennsylvania and the Pocono Mountains. There wasn’t much traffic. Luna thought they’d make it in under two hours.
They were only in the car about fifteen minutes, not even over the bridge yet, when Doña Esme took a turnoff and began heading north.
“I need to stop at one of our car washes,” she said. “I need some cash.”
It was four-thirty p.m. and already dark on the side roads. She turned again and again until Luna had no idea what direction they were headed in. The land was mostly wooded. It looked rural, but not in the pleasing way of Wickford. This area was decidedly shabbier. Most of the houses along this stretch had been turned into businesses. A hairdresser. A mechanic’s garage. A day-care center. They passed a billboard advertising a bail bond agency and another for credit counseling. They passed a gas station selling no-name-brand gas.
Luna looked in the rearview mirror. Behind her, the light had slipped from the sky. The darkness hemmed in the landscape, narrowed that sense of possibility. Her fate had felt like her own when they’d started this journey. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Doña Esme’s voice pricked the silence between them. “You love your papi, yes?”
“Yes,” said Luna softly.
“You’re lucky. My father was a terrible man.” Doña Esme kept her eyes on the road. “My mother died when I was twelve, and as soon as she passed, my father started raping me. He said her duties had to fall to me.”
“I’m sorry.” Luna was shocked by her confession. She didn’t know what to say.
“My other relatives—they knew what he was doing. They didn’t care—until I got pregnant at fourteen. Then they cared. They took my baby daughter away from me and sent me to a Catholic convent where the nuns beat me every day. I vowed that if I could escape that life, I would do anything it took not to have to live like that again.”
Luna’s saliva felt like glue. She couldn’t swallow. It was cold in the car, but she started to sweat. Doña Esme didn’t seem to notice. She was lost in her own life story.
“When I was seventeen,” she continued, “the señor came to my town in Chiapas—the same town he’d left sixteen years before. He was thirty-two. An ugly little man. But rich. And American. A citizen by then. He wanted a young virgin. I made him believe I was. And he married me. I knew about his obsession with virgins, Luna. I knew. But he treated me okay, so I accepted things the way they were.”
A strand of hair fell out of Doña Esme’s ponytail. It cut like a slash of charcoal pencil across her face. She tucked it behind one ear as she caught Luna’s eye in the windshield. Was Doña Esme trying to tell Luna that she’d protect her?
“Men are wild animals,” she continued. “You can corral a wild animal, but you cannot tame it. There were young girls before I knew him. There were young girls after. But nobody got hurt. Nobody.”
Luna wondered what Doña Esme meant by “hurt.” If the señor was forcing himself on young girls, wouldn’t that qualify as “hurt?” But maybe to a girl who had known such brutality from her own father, it didn’t.
“And then . . .” Doña Esme’s voice drifted. It had been soft and trancelike until now, but there was a sudden sharpness when she shot Luna a sideways glance.
“Let’s not pretend you don’t know about the girl in the flyer, chica,” she hissed at Luna.
Luna studied her hands. She folded them together to keep them from shaking.
“It was a terrible mistake.” Doña Esme’s voice was soft and pleading again. “I told my relatives to keep her in Mexico. I knew what he’d do to her. She’d just be another campesina to him, some farm girl of no consequence. I tried to stop it. But how could I, without confessing the lie that made him marry me in the first place?”
Her words swam across Luna’s brain. Luna was afraid to understand their meaning.
“I tried to get her out,” said Doña Esme. “And then she got pregnant. In a way, it was a blessing. He never touches a girl once she’s pregnant. I figured I would hide her until she had the baby and then send them both back home. She would get money to stay quiet. Lots of money. He would pay. He always paid. But the birth—it was terrible. Things went wrong. Doña Claudia wanted to call 911, but how could I? I would have had to tell them the truth. They would have arrested the señor—arrested me. Can you imagine the gossip at Our Lady of Sorrows? At La Casa? At Claudia’s? Everything would have been ruined. Everything.”
Why is she telling me this? Panic rose in Luna’s chest like a soda she’d gulped down too fast. Doña Esme made a right onto another winding two-lane, and Luna started to realize for the first time that this was not some motherly advice designed to guide or comfort her. This was a confession. And whom do you confess to? A priest. Someone who could never tell anyone what you’ve uttered. Ever.
Luna was not a priest.
What if she just opened the door and jumped out? True, they were traveling at easily thirty miles per hour. But she’d probably survive. She could run into the woods perhaps. And then what? Dulce and Mateo were still in that house. Her father was still in that jail and likely to be sent back to Mexico on Monday. His future rested in the señor’s hands. Anything she did put her entire family at risk.
Doña Esme plunged ahead. Luna wasn’t sure she even realized the effect her words were having. “I wanted this to be different,” she choked out. At first Luna thought Doña Esme was referring to their relationship. But then she realized she was talking about the dead girl.
“I wanted to get back all those years.” Her voice was thick and nasal. She palmed her eyes. “I couldn’t tell Mia that, mind you. She could never know. No one could. But I think she knew there was some sort of connection.”
Doña Esme turned to Luna and blinked back tears. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, chica? Do you understand who she was?”
“I think so.” Luna could barely get the words out because of the question that kept buzzing inside of her brain:
If she could do that to her daughter, what will she do to me?
Chapter 37
The Gonzalezes weren’t home when Vega went to their door. Esme’s cousin Yolanda answered. She was a chunky girl in her twenties with skin-tight jeans and f
ake bright orange nails with black tiger stripes across them. She said she was babysitting for the Gonzalezes and had just gotten back from the movies with the kids.
“Charlie and Esme are probably at that political dinner already,” she told Vega. She was an American-born Mexican, clearly. None of the Latinos in town would dream of referring to Charlie and Esme by their first names only.
The Wickford police had already told Vega that the Gonzalezes hadn’t shown up to the country club where Schulman’s fund-raiser was being held. Unless they were on their way, something was wrong. And that something was the next topic of Vega’s concern. He peeked into the kitchen and counted five children with Yolanda: the three Gonzalez boys and Serrano’s two younger ones: Dulce and Mateo.
“Where’s Luna?”
“She didn’t come to the movies with us,” said Yolanda. “I don’t know where she went.”
“She didn’t leave a note?”
Yolanda shook her head.
“How about Dulce and Mateo? Maybe she told them?”
“Maybe. I’ll ask.” She was the least curious person Vega had ever met. Perhaps that’s why the Gonzalezes liked having her around.
Yolanda went into the kitchen and asked the Serrano kids to come into the foyer. Both children took in the badge on Vega’s belt and the gun in his holster. They turned quiet and shy. The law was not their friend. Vega squatted down to make himself less threatening.
“Hey there,” he said softly. “I’m a friend of Señora Figueroa’s.” He suspected the connection might help ease their fears. “I’m trying to find your sister Luna. Not for anything bad. I just need to speak to her. Does she have a special friend? Someplace she likes to go?”
It was the boy who studied him most carefully, whose eyes seemed to be measuring every twitch in Vega’s face. He didn’t trust adults anymore. Not that Vega could blame him.
“What do you want to speak to her about?” he asked Vega.
“A couple of things. But mostly, I need to make sure she’s okay.”
Vega saw the boy weighing his words. Their father had been gone only a few days, and already it seemed he and his sister had aged out of childhood.
“Get the book,” Mateo told his sister. Dulce went upstairs and emerged a few minutes later with a children’s paperback. She handed it to Vega. He flipped to the inside page to see the loopy scrawl of a teenage girl:
Going with Doña Esme to see Papi. Back tonight. Love you, XXX Luna.
“Where’s your papi?” Vega asked the children.
The children exchanged wary glances. Vega realized they were embarrassed to tell him.
“I already know he’s in a detention facility. I just want to know where.”
“Pennsylvania!” Dulce blurted out. Mateo frowned at her. He wasn’t ready to trust Vega with so much information.
“Do you know where in Pennsylvania?”
They didn’t.
“Do you know if Señor Gonzalez went with them?”
The children shook their heads, no. Dulce studied her feet. “I saw the señor with my sister last night,” she muttered.
“You saw him—where?”
“In a room in the basement. The one with the bolt on the door. He had his hand on her hair.”
Vega exhaled like he’d been punched. There was no time to lose. “Okay. Wait here,” he told the children. He walked outside, pulled out his phone and dialed Adele.
“Luna’s gone.” He breathed it into the receiver like he’d just run a mile. His whole body felt like he was trying to outrace a forest fire that was gaining on him. He was too slow. Too slow.
“What?”
“Luna left her brother and sister a note that she went to visit her father. With Esme. Where is Serrano being detained?”
“In Pennsylvania. At the Pike County Correctional Facility,” said Adele. “But Esme and Charlie are supposed to be at the gala tonight.”
“Have you heard from either of them? Do you know where they are?”
“No.” Adele paused as it sank in. “Oh my God, Jimmy. Did the DNA—?”
Vega cut her off. He couldn’t divulge the specifics, not even to her. “If you hear from any of them, will you let me know right away?”
“Luna will be all right, won’t she?”
Vega hesitated. “Just focus on tonight, okay, Nena? It’s a big night for you. I can’t be there, but—whatever you do is fine with me. I mean it.”
He hung up and asked Yolanda to gather the kids in the kitchen and keep them there pending the search warrant for the house. It finally started to dawn on Yolanda that something was wrong.
“Charlie and Esme would never deal drugs!”
“No one said they did.”
“Then what is this about?”
“I can’t comment. I would just like to ask for your cooperation.”
Vega questioned Dulce a little more about Luna and Gonzalez, but the child knew very little. Whatever had gone on in that basement Luna had managed to shield fairly well from her siblings. Still, the child’s account confirmed to Vega that Gonzalez had already started making moves on the teenager.
Vega conferred by phone and email with Greco, Dolan, and Captain Waring, who was on his way back from the Albany police conference. They issued arrest warrants for both of the Gonzalezes. They put out an Amber Alert on Luna. Vega still held out hope that the girl would turn up at the jail in Pennsylvania.
Within half an hour, Greco showed up with the search warrant and a squad of cops. Vega and Greco quickly found the room in the basement with the bolt on the door that Dulce had mentioned. They took pictures of the bloody mattress. They found the drawer of photos of the dead girl. And they knew:
Luna would never make it to see her father this evening.
“Charlie Gonzalez is well-known in these parts,” Greco assured Vega. “He’s not likely to get far.” All around them, cops were traipsing in and out of the house, testing for blood and bagging every piece of evidence that looked the least bit valuable to the case. None of it gave Vega any solace.
“It’s not Charlie I’m worried about so much as Esme,” said Vega. “Luna was in that room. She knows what they did. She’s a witness. That’s reason enough for Esme to kill her. I think Esme’s plan was to whisk Luna away and make everyone believe she’d run off because she was distraught over her father. If she disappeared after that, no one would pin it on the Gonzalezes. They’d just say the girl was grief-stricken and she ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“There’s a lotta road between here and that jail in Pennsylvania,” said Greco. “We’ve got a cell tower search on the Gonzalezes’ phones, but nothing’s coming up. I think they’re turned off. They haven’t used a credit card or been picked up on a security camera. Unless a trooper calls in a license plate, we’re going to have to sit back and wait.”
“Maybe not.” Vega pulled out his cell phone and typed Car Wash King car washes on Google. A couple dozen came up. He zeroed in on the ones situated between here and Lords Valley, Pennsylvania. He counted four between Lake Holly and the Newburgh Beacon Bridge and another three on the other side of the Hudson River before they hit the New York-Pennsylvania border.
“Those car washes wouldn’t even be open after five on a Saturday evening in October,” said Greco.
“I know,” said Vega. “That’s what makes them a perfect spot for Esme or Charlie to go to. They’d have access to cash from the register and could disable the video cameras. They’d have the equipment to hose down any surface covered in blood or other trace elements. In the locations where they do detailing, they’d even have access to customers’ cars so they wouldn’t have to travel in their own.”
“We can ask the state troopers to swing by each and check them out,” said Greco. “But you’re still talking seven locations spread over a hundred-mile vicinity. It’s gonna take most of the night to hunt this down.”
Vega watched two techs maneuver the bloody mattress—now bagged—out of the ho
use.
“I’m not sure we have most of the night.”
Chapter 38
Doña Esme drove until they came to a small shopping center with a McDonalds, a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Payless shoe store, and a JC Penny. In the far corner of the mall, Luna saw a Car Wash King. It looked just like the one the Gonzalezes owned in Lake Holly—like a drive-through bank. No one was there. It was closed for the evening.
Doña Esme pulled her big black Escalade behind the car wash. Then she reached across Luna and opened the glove compartment. She removed a knit hat, a pair of gloves, a flashlight, and a ring of keys. She slipped into the hat and gloves. It was getting colder. Luna wished she had a hat and gloves herself.
“Stay in the car,” Esme ordered. She unlocked the car wash and walked in. She didn’t turn on any lights. She only flicked on her flashlight. Luna watched the pale beam zigzag across the walls. Her thoughts flew in every direction. It would be easy to get out of the car and run. She’d have to run to the other side of the shopping center to find people. But even so, they were in a well-lit public place. She could do it. But what would she say to them? She was a girl—let’s face it—an undocumented girl. The police would never take her rambling accusations over Doña Esme’s. And still, the biggest question remained: What would happen to Dulce and Mateo and Papi?
So she sat cursing her indecision while she watched Doña Esme walk out of the office with a small zippered case in her hands and a set of car keys. She frowned like she was concentrating hard on something as she unlocked another garage behind the car wash. Then she walked back to the Escalade and barked at Luna to get out of the car and help her roll the garage door up. The garage door was probably operated by a remote that Doña Esme didn’t have. It was hard work to get the thing up manually, but they did it. It growled as it rolled into place.
There were seven cars in the garage: three SUVs and four sedans. Doña Esme squinted at the set of keys she took from the car wash and clicked them at a dark blue Honda CRV with permit parking stickers for a town Luna didn’t recognize and a Dave Matthews Band sticker on the rear window. She was pretty sure this car was here to be cleaned and didn’t belong to Doña Esme. The door locks popped open.
A Blossom of Bright Light Page 28