“When we find Catherine’s killer, the town will begin to heal,” Greco promised Adele.
“When the police apologize for their grossly negligent behavior toward the Latino community,” Adele replied, “the town will begin to heal.”
Around and around, it went—one giant stalemate. Everyone was suffering. Latinos, because La Casa remained closed and boarded up. Anglos, because a lot of the downtown businesses depended on immigrant patrons, who no longer felt comfortable walking the streets of their own town.
The Lake Holly Police worked Catherine’s murder. But at every turn, they were stymied. Alex Romero, the former Magnolia Inn waiter, had left the area. His cousin Carlos said Alex came into some money—no one knew from where—and had moved to Florida. Either Carlos didn’t know or, more likely, wasn’t telling where in Florida Alex had gone, or what name he was using—which slowed efforts to find him.
“I don’t like the sound of ‘came into some money,’” said Vega as he helped himself to a seat in Greco’s cubicle. Greco had invited him for once. Vega wasn’t sure why. “What’s that mean? That he won the lottery? I’d like to have that kind of luck.”
“You and me both.” From the look of Greco’s cubicle, he was pulling a lot of overtime and taking all his meals at his desk. His trash was filled with empty coffee cups from Starbucks. His stapler was balanced on top of a stack of napkins from Dunkin’ Donuts. Assorted packets of ketchup, mustard, and soy sauce were fanned out like playing cards next to his computer. Beside his phone was a plastic bottle of Tums—the economy size—to wash everything down.
“How about the arson at La Casa?” asked Vega. “Have you made any progress there?”
“That’s why I called you in,” said Greco. “We’re about to make an arrest.”
“Shouldn’t you be telling Adele?”
“My chief asked me not to make a public statement. What you do with the information is up to you.”
“An arrest is a public act,” Vega pointed out. “Whether or not you make a statement about it.”
“Yeah, but this ‘public act’ is being handled with as little fanfare as possible. One, because the arsonist is fifteen years old. And two, more importantly, because he’s the son of a major Carp supporter.”
Vega cursed. “So you’re going to charge him with the equivalent of littering, and the judge will give him a slap on the wrists.”
“Not if I can help it,” said Greco. “But then again, I’m just a pair of eyes and legs, cataracted and arthritic—”
“Yeah, yeah. Save it for your retirement speech.” Vega rose. The law looked pretty one-sided to him right now. “Looks like this kid won the lottery too.”
* * *
The following morning, Vega picked up Carp from a racquetball game at his sports club. On the drive over to county headquarters, Carp was all smiles and good humor.
“You see the latest approval ratings, Jimmy?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you should. My future’s your future—never forget that. I’m up twenty points since that CNN profile aired. Not to mention that my ‘Carp for Governor’ campaign chest is fifty percent ahead of goal. Hell, at this rate, I may skip the governorship and go for even bigger game. I’m the guy who could do it too. You gotta give the people what they want. That’s the secret. That’s why I’m the best. I understand that.”
Carp was on a roll. Vega had driven him enough now to recognize the signs. He was audience, speaker, and biographer wrapped up in one. A full-service wall of words. Most of the time, Vega tuned it out. He lived for his off-hours these days. His music. Jogs with Diablo. Dinners with Joy. Time with Adele. When they were together, Vega shut off everything in his life that had to do with Carp.
“So . . . Jimmy.” Carp leaned forward between the two front seats. “You’re good friends with the Lake Holly PD, right?”
“I know some people on the force,” Vega said. He was always circumspect around his boss.
“That, uh . . . fire at that community center. You know the one I’m talking about?”
“You mean La Casa?”
“Yeah. I hear the local cops drummed up an arson case against some feckless kid just to appease the illegals. Sort of a tit for tat.”
“That doesn’t sound like something the police in Lake Holly would do,” said Vega.
“From what I hear,” said Carp, “the whole thing was an accident. Seems a shame the police are caving in to community pressure, trying to ruin a promising young man’s future over a prank.”
“You just said it was an accident.”
“Accident. Prank. It’s piddling shit either way—you hear what I’m saying?”
Vega said nothing. He kept his gaze on the windshield as he snaked the Suburban in and out of stop-and-go traffic.
“You know, Jimmy, I like you. I really do,” said Carp. “What I like about you is that you understand me. Understand my problems. Like this problem I have here. I mean, I feel bad for this kid. The police mishandled the case. They manufactured some flimsy evidence to make a few professional troublemakers happy. I can understand the pressure the department is under. But hell—I wouldn’t blame them in the least if that evidence just . . . I don’t know . . .” Carp threw up his hands. “Got lost. Or maybe ended up in the wrong file. It happens, right? Cases don’t pan out for any number of reasons. If that happened here, you tell your friends, I’d totally understand. No officer would ever be questioned in the matter.”
Vega nearly crashed into the car bumper in front of him. He couldn’t believe what the most powerful man in the county was asking him to do. He caught his boss’s eye in the visor mirror.
“Mr. Carp, sir—do you understand what you’re suggesting? You’re suggesting that I—as a police officer—ask other police officers to tamper with evidence in a criminal case. That’s a serious crime. For a cop? It’s an automatic felony. I could get fired—maybe even go to jail—for asking such a thing.”
“Did I say that?” Carp touched his chest like Vega had just shoved it with the heel of his hand. “Did I order you to do anything? All I did was suggest you inquire about the evidence against this kid. He’s fifteen. Don’t tell me you didn’t have lapses in judgment when you were fifteen. You really want to destroy this kid’s whole future?”
“I don’t want to do anything, Mr. Carp. And neither does the Lake Holly Police. The matter’s up to a judge.”
“Keppel,” Carp grunted. “Liberal asswipe who released Benitez’s brother on his own recognizance. Who let that illegal who interrupted Catherine’s vigil get off with a fine.”
“Whatever Judge Keppel does or doesn’t do,” said Vega, “I can’t ask fellow cops to destroy evidence.”
“Did I ask anyone to destroy evidence?” Carp gave every syllable his full indignation. “I resent your tone and insinuations, Jimmy. How dare you even suggest that?”
Vega forced himself to concentrate on the traffic in front of him. The grip of the wheel. The friction of rubber on asphalt. Inside, he felt stripped of bearings. Had he misheard? Misinterpreted? Or was Carp just good at manipulating any situation to his advantage?
“I’m sorry if I misunderstood you, Mr. Carp.”
“I think we both suffered a big lapse in judgment here. Because you see, Jimmy, I’m a very simple guy. I’m all about loyalty. You do for me? I do for you. You screw me over. I make sure it’s the last thing you ever do. I think we can be pretty clear on that message, yes?”
So that was it. Vega was being fired. In truth, he felt like a burden was being lifted from his shoulders. He didn’t care what he did after this—pistol permits, directing traffic, evidence storage. Anything was better. “I take it that I’m being relieved of my duties as your driver.”
Carp laughed. “You think you can just walk away? Like this is some job flipping burgers—which, by the way, after this, you won’t even be able to do in this county.”
“Clearly, we don’t share—”
“You think I give
a shit about what we share? This isn’t a partnership, Jimmy. You work for me. You do what I tell you to do. I told you I check out the people I do business with. You think you’re any different? I know about your little girlfriend who used to run La Casa and is now spending her days looking after that old Jew and the brother of that murderer. I know about your daughter who’s all excited to work an internship with that con artist, Langstrom. I know the names of all the cops in your band—where they work, who they report to. You want to mess with me? There are a thousand and one ways I can mess back. And not just with you—with everyone connected to you.”
Vega felt he’d swallowed a fistful of needles and they were piercing the lining of his gut. There was only one way Carp could know all these things.
“You put that GPS tracker on my truck. You’ve got it bugged. And maybe other things as well.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” said Carp. He smiled because, of course, he didn’t. He had others who did those things for him. “But I’ll tell you this,” he added. “I make it my business to know other people’s business. So go ahead, Jimmy. Be noble. Make your stand. It’s not like anyone gives a damn one way or the other. You’re a throwaway cop.”
Carp leaned forward and caught Vega’s eyes in the visor. “Just remember, I got a long memory. So the payback will come. Maybe your daughter will get pulled over one day for speeding and the police will find drugs in her car. Maybe that girlfriend of yours will get implicated in some ring that’s smuggling in prostitute immigrants. You can check their vehicles every day of your life. Spend your off-time looking over your shoulder. But I’ll find a way, Jimmy. Bank on it. And when your daughter’s crying from some holding cell, ask yourself then if her freedom wasn’t worth a little misplaced evidence against some snot-nosed kid.”
Chapter 39
Wil had to do this. Alone. Without the señora. Without Mr. Zimmerman. He’d been putting it off for a week. But he couldn’t any longer.
He was carrying too many ghosts. He had to lay them to rest. Or try to, in any case.
It was a sunny weekday morning when he took a taxi to his old street. Icicles dripped from the bent gutters of the narrow clapboard houses. The wind rattled the chain-link fences. A train barreled past on the tracks out back, sucking all the ambient noise from the landscape and sending a shiver of air in its wake.
Wil hefted his flattened cardboard cartons up the porch steps of an old yellow row frame. He still had his key, so he unlocked the front door and climbed to the attic. The hallway was dark and smelled of mildew and fried food.
At the top of the second set of stairs, he braced himself for the sight of his room. He hadn’t been inside since the police tore through it with a search warrant. On the center of the door were several big black scuffmarks. The hinges were partially torn from the frame. Remnants of yellow crime-scene tape were still twisted around the handle. The cops hadn’t been bashful about making an entrance.
Wil dropped his folded cartons and fished out his room key. The Lake Holly Police had already provided him with an itemized list of what they’d taken. His laptop computer. His brother’s cell phone. Textbooks, personal papers, and photographs. They’d returned his computer and personal effects, but not his brother’s cell phone. Or his mother’s religious necklace, which some girl turned in. Or Catherine’s key chain. He figured he’d get the phone and necklace back eventually. But not the key chain.
Not that he could ask for it.
Wil unlocked the door and pushed it open. He expected the room to stink of food that had rotted in the mini fridge. He expected to find everything in his drawers and shelves dumped on the floor and then walked on and broken by the police. He propped his cartons against the open door and pulled back the bedsheet from the window. Dust motes danced on a shaft of light across the wood plank floor.
There was no mess. No chaos. The floor was bare. The fridge was empty. Were the cops this neat and courteous? He didn’t think so. He wondered if his anonymous benefactor, who’d picked up his rent, had also picked up his room. If so, Wil wished he or she hadn’t. Everything was here. His clothes. His shelf full of science-fiction paperback books. His box full of old mementos—menus from restaurants he used to work in. A game token from an arcade where he and Lando once spent an afternoon. A postcard of the whitewashed church in Santiago where his mother went to pray.
Still, something about the neatness made Wil uncomfortable. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he felt more invaded by the order imposed than he ever would have felt if it had just been left in a shambles.
Someone knocked on his open door. Wil jumped. He turned to see a tiny Mayan woman, with a long, shiny black braid down her back.
“Señora Calderon.” His neighbor. She was standing in the hallway, struggling to zip a toddler into a snowsuit. The child was so bundled, his arms stuck out like the ends of a coat hanger.
“Wil!” She straightened and gave him a hug. “Are you back?” she asked in Spanish.
“Just to pack up.” He pointed to the cardboard propping open the door. “I’m taking care of a man in town. I’m living there now.”
“That’s good—yes? Your life is okay?”
Wil wasn’t sure how to answer that. He went to classes. He had his job back at the Lake Holly Grill. He’d settled in with Mr. Zimmerman. The old man and the señora were both kind to him and gave him plenty of space. The Morrisons had stopped throwing their dog’s doo over the fence. There had been no more incidents with the neighbors.
And yet Wil felt a great weight inside him. He still hadn’t called his mother and told her about Rolando. She deserved the truth. He wasn’t sure he could give it.
“I’m doing okay.”
“I pray for your family,” Señora Calderon told him.
“Thank you,” said Wil. “Do you know if the landlord let himself into my room since the police raid?” Landlords were always poking around, even under the best of circumstances. Still, Wil had never met one who picked up after his tenants.
“He’s let a bunch of people in after the police took the crime scene tape down,” said the señora. “I wanted to say something but some of us,” she hesitated, “we weren’t sure you’d ever be back.”
“Who did he let in?”
“Some neighbors on the street who were curious—curious enough to slip him some cash, I think. I wasn’t always here to know. There was one . . . a blond man. With a beard. He cornered me in the hallway. He asked a lot of questions. I was afraid not to answer.”
“What did he ask?”
“About the girl who was murdered. He wanted to know if I’d ever seen her here. I told him no. Why would she come here?”
“Did he spend any time in my room?”
“He was in there a while, yes.” Señora Calderon hefted the toddler into her arms. “I thought maybe he was your lawyer or something. Maybe he was helping with your case—no?”
Wil felt like a wet towel had just been snapped across his face. Someone—maybe more than one someone—had been in his room, carefully sorting through his and Rolando’s things. Not a cop. Definitely not a friend. What was he looking for? Wil wondered.
And more worrisome—had he found it?
Chapter 40
Vega waited until Carp had gone into a meeting to dial his old boss, Captain Waring. He didn’t do it inside the Suburban. He couldn’t be sure whether the whole vehicle was bugged. Instead, he paced the far end of the parking lot, shivering, while he waited for the call to go through. He was relieved when Waring picked up.
“Captain. It’s Detective Vega. It’s very important that I speak with you.”
“We’re not reconsidering the assignment, Detective.”
“This concerns a criminal matter.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Mike Carp wants me to engage in evidence tampering.”
That got his attention. “Continue, please.”
“Lake Holly just arrested a juvenile for the La Ca
sa arson. His father’s a major Carp supporter. Mike Carp wants me to ask them to lose the evidence.”
“You’re sure about this? You didn’t misinterpret?”
“He made himself crystal clear,” said Vega. “And that’s not all.” Vega told Waring about Carp’s threats against Vega’s daughter and girlfriend if he didn’t cooperate. He mentioned, too, about the GPS device placed on his truck and the suspicious packages Carp regularly asked him to hand deliver, but he didn’t dwell on those. He didn’t have the same level of proof and he didn’t want Waring to think he was paranoid.
“I’m already in enough trouble with the shooting,” Vega explained. “I don’t want to get swept into a corruption scandal.”
“I see.” Waring’s voice was flat and unreadable. Vega scanned the parking lot for signs of Carp or any of his entourage. He ducked out of the line of the building’s surveillance cameras. Everything spooked him. Maybe he really was paranoid.
“So you’ll pull me off this detail?”
“I fail to see how that addresses the problem,” said Waring. “All it does is expose some other officer to the same alleged situation.” Vega heard the word “alleged” like a knife between the shoulder blades. Didn’t his boss believe him?
“What we need,” said Waring, “is documented evidence of criminal activities.”
Vega’s insides shrank. He had a sense what was coming.
“If what you’re saying is true, Detective, then we’ll need recordings from your phone. Notes from conversations. A thorough and detailed log of dates, times, and places of suspected illegal activities, along with the names of anyone who appears to be engaging in them along with Carp. Meanwhile, I will take your concerns through channels. If the evidence is strong enough, we’ll hand you over to the FBI.”
Then they will force me to wear a wire and entrap people who may only be tangentially involved. Local police officers, like the cops in Lake Holly. Maybe even Greco. The feds would have no allegiance to Vega or his career. By the time they were through with him, he could kiss off any future in the county police. Every cop in the area would remember him as the guy who wore a wire against fellow officers.
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