But first, Vega wanted to spend a calm and quiet morning with his daughter. Breakfast at the Lake Holly Grill. A walk in the park. Maybe one of those stupid art films she liked seeing. Anything to restore normalcy to her life and help her start to heal.
“I’ll take you down to Mayfair for your interview this afternoon,” he told Joy when he called to lay out his plans for their day together.
“Um . . . I think Mom’s going to take me down there this afternoon.”
“But I’m the one who knows my way around a criminal investigation,” said Vega. “I already spoke to the detective—”
“Which is why I don’t want you there, Dad. It’s embarrassing enough without having your father listening in. Plus, you talk cop stuff when you’re with other cops. I just want Mom.”
“Oh. Okay.” He felt slighted. He tried to brush it off. “How about lunch afterward?”
“Mom’s taking me to lunch at the mall,” Joy told him. “Retail therapy.”
“Your favorite kind,” joked Vega. “So when do I get a chance to talk to you about everything?”
“That’s just it, Dad,” said Joy. “I’m going to be talking about this to the police. To lawyers. To a therapist. I don’t want to talk about it with you too.”
“Because you think I’ll judge?”
“Because I don’t want our relationship to be defined by what happened last night. I’m really, really grateful to you for rescuing me, Daddy.” Daddy. She hadn’t called him that since she was maybe six. “You were right about Dr. Jeff. But . . . I want to have fun with you. Like we always did. I don’t want that to change.”
“It won’t,” he promised.
“Good.”
“So can you think of something you would like to do with me this morning before you’re off with Mom?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You remember when I was little? You used to take me to that place in the mall? Build-A-Bear?”
“You want to . . . make a stuffed animal?”
“Yeah. But . . . can we pretend we’re building it for someone else? Some five-year-old cousin?”
Vega laughed. “Your secret’s safe with me, chispita.” Every one of them. Always.
* * *
They made a pink rabbit with long floppy ears. Joy picked out a sparkly white dress, ballet slippers, and a straw bonnet to dress her in. Vega called the slippers “shoes” and the bonnet a “hat.” He fumbled with all the zippers and bows. Joy loved every minute of his ineptness. She was happier than if Vega had gotten her new tickets to see 5’N’10.
On the way home, they stopped at Joy’s favorite candy store in Lake Holly and bought lollipops shaped like diamond rings that turned their tongues blue. They tossed around names for Joy’s new rabbit: “Princess.” “Bella.” “Pinkie.”
“The Mayfair Police aren’t going to believe anything I say with blue-stained lips,” said Joy.
Vega grinned. “Just don’t take the bunny. They’ll think you’re smuggling heroin.”
Vega drove her back to her mother’s and wished her luck with Detective Garrison. She opened the door and closed it again. “Dad?”
“What is it?”
“How did you know Dr. Jeff was going to assault me? I mean, all you saw was him putting his hand around me at a rally.”
Vega tapped the steering wheel. “There’s another girl who was also his victim. I’m trying to get her to come forward and testify.”
“Zoe Beck?”
Vega stared at his daughter.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out, Dad. She worked as Dr. Jeff’s intern before me. She dropped out of school. Was that why?”
“I can’t comment.”
“I feel so bad for her.” Joy fingered the ears of her rabbit. “Zoe never had anyone in her corner—except maybe Catherine, and now she’s dead. I’m a lot more fortunate.” Joy kissed Vega on the cheek. “Pinkie Girl.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what I’m naming the bunny. Pinkie Girl. Because she’s pink and she’s . . . well . . .” Joy flushed. “She’s her daddy’s girl.”
Vega hugged her. “Never forget that.”
* * *
Joy was right. Zoe didn’t have anyone in her corner. It was time he put someone there. As soon as Vega left Joy’s house, he drove over to Zoe’s mother’s place. He wanted to find the girl and give her the good news that Langstrom was in jail. She didn’t have to be scared anymore. She could step forward and testify—the same as Joy. He would help her every step of the way. But when he got to Zoe’s apartment, the girl’s mother, Patsy Walker, greeted him at the door.
“Detective? You heard already? That animal! I hope they put him away forever!”
Vega was surprised Zoe’s mother knew—and even more surprised that she had no idea Joy was also a victim.
“That’s why I’m here,” said Vega. “To see if Zoe might come down to the police station with me and give a statement.”
“She did already. Early this morning.” A television blared from the living room. A commercial for Pop-Tarts. Two little boys sat on a shag rug smashing toy trucks into one another. Patsy shouted at them over her shoulder.
“Hush up! I can’t hear myself think!” Then she turned back to Vega and finger combed stray wisps of her brassy blond hair. “It’s very nice of you to stop by like this.”
“Not at all,” said Vega. “I’m so glad Zoe came forward. Can I ask if she showed the police that video? It’s crucial evidence.”
“Video?” Patsy gave him a blank look. “You mean the one . . . ?”
“That Langstrom took.”
“Langstrom never took a video.”
Vega felt like he’d walked in on someone undressing. He wanted to back out without being seen. He didn’t know how. “I’m confused,” said Vega. “Who did Zoe go to the police about?”
“That monster,” said Patsy. “The brother of Rolando Benitez. I thought you knew.”
“You mean Wil Martinez?”
One of the boys was whining that the other one hit him. Patsy yelled at them from the doorway. “If I have to come over . . .” She turned back to Vega. “Zoe found a letter Catherine wrote to that creep. So she confronted him. And he confessed.”
“To . . . ?”
“To killing Catherine,” said Patsy. “Wil Martinez murdered Catherine Archer!”
Chapter 45
Vega tried calling Adele, but she didn’t pick up her phone. He left her a message, then raced down to the police station to find Greco and Jankowski. The desk sergeant told Vega they were busy, but Vega happened to see Greco coming out of the men’s room. He cornered him before he could cross to the detectives’ bull pen, a room partitioned like a rat’s maze into cubicles with computers, phones, desks, and not much else. The place had all the ambience of a cut-rate telemarketer’s office.
“I just came from speaking to Zoe Beck’s mother,” said Vega. “She told me that Wil Martinez confessed to Zoe that he killed Catherine Archer?”
“Yep. The arrest warrant just got approved. My guys are at the Lake Holly Grill now, putting the cuffs on Martinez.” Greco’s eyes softened. “I, uh . . . heard about what went down in Mayfair last night. With your daughter. I’m real sorry, Vega.”
“Thanks. But it’s not over, Grec. I’m convinced Langstrom had the motive and means to kill Catherine. Are you sure this stuff about Martinez is correct?”
“Jankowski just got off the phone from a detective down in Mayfair,” said Greco. “Garrison, I believe? His guys confirmed that Langstrom was at an academic social the night of Catherine’s murder. Twenty different faculty members saw him there. He’s a bastard of the first order. No argument there. But he didn’t kill Catherine. Martinez did. We ran the DNA last night. Martinez is the father of her unborn child.”
“Didn’t you run his DNA when he first got locked up? I figured you would have cleared him by now.”
“The jail
gave us DNA from the wrong Martinez,” said Greco. “We discovered the error when we were revisiting the evidence. We took another sample last night and there was no doubt.” Greco turned to the bull pen. “Again, my condolences to Joy and your family.”
Vega blocked his path. Down the hall, he could hear cops debating, with the same intensity as a stakeout, New England’s chances in the Super Bowl. Alpha males on caffeine. The job was loaded with them.
“So . . . Zoe just walked in here and told you all this?” asked Vega. “And you’re not a little bit curious why she waited this long? Because I sure as hell am.”
“Teenage girls are secretive,” said Greco. “You, of all people, should know that. She probably thought she was protecting Catherine by not mentioning her pregnancy to anyone. Then she opened a paperback that Martinez loaned her and found a letter inside that Catherine had written to him. She confronted him. He confessed.” Greco raised his eyebrows in mock resignation. “It’s the usual story. Girl meets boy. Girl leaves boy. Boy gets angry and bashes her brains in.”
Greco was such a hopeless romantic.
“This letter,” said Vega. “Do you have it?”
Greco let out a slow breath of air. “Look, Vega, if I show it to you, will you be a good boy and go home after that?”
“Your odds are greatly improved.”
Lake Holly’s evidence storage room was only slightly larger than a walk-in closet. It had no windows, only a ventilation fan. Even with the fan, it still smelled like coffee and Lysol.
Greco unlocked the room, signed the evidence log, then retrieved a tray from a gray metal locker. He set the tray on a standing-height table—designed, Vega supposed, so that you didn’t get too comfortable hanging around the evidence.
There were two items on the tray, both sealed in plastic bags with the case number, item description, and date typed on a label on top. One bag contained an old, dog-eared science fiction paperback by Philip K. Dick. The novel was opened to the inside cover, where Wil Martinez had carefully scrawled his name in black Magic Marker. The other bag contained a single sheet of lined loose-leaf notebook paper with five sentences in loopy, girlish scrawl:
I care about you, Biffle. It’s not that I don’t. But I have to think of my family. They’d kill me if I went through with this.
Love, Catherine
“‘Biffle’?” asked Vega. “Who the hell is ‘Biffle’?”
“Text speak,” said Greco. “You know—‘best friends for life’?”
“If Martinez knocked her up, I’d say they were more than ‘biffles.’”
“I think ‘biffle’ used to be someone of the opposite sex you didn’t sleep with,” said Greco. “Then it turned into someone you did. Friends with benefits—that sort of thing. There are probably thirty other uses for the word. Who knows?”
“You got a night job as a Starbucks barista or something?” asked Vega. “’Cause even I don’t know all this millennial crap.”
“My niece,” said Greco. “She’s crashing with us for a couple of weeks while my sister’s on vacation. I swear, we don’t need a nuclear bomb to destroy our country. All we need is an Apple virus and everyone under thirty’s a goner.”
“Where did Zoe find this letter?”
“She said she found it tucked inside that paperback. Apparently, Martinez loaned it to her shortly before Catherine’s murder.”
“So Zoe knew Martinez well enough to borrow books from him. Yet not well enough to tell the police he was screwing around with her friend?”
“She was holding back, clearly,” said Greco. “Maybe out of loyalty to Catherine.”
Vega smoothed the evidence bag to study the note more clearly. It was written in blue ballpoint pen. The wording felt formal and impersonal for a teenager. Then again, teenagers rarely write real notes anymore, so maybe she intended it to be formal.
“How do you know Catherine actually wrote this?” asked Vega.
“Her mom and brother came in this morning and confirmed that it was Catherine’s handwriting. They provided a couple of samples. As far as I could see, it looked like a match.”
“Did they know Martinez was involved with her?”
“Judging from their reactions? No,” said Greco. “Catherine’s mother was livid, and you don’t see Robin Archer lose her cool too often. As for the brother? He seemed more—disappointed. I think he really wanted to believe that Martinez was an innocent in all of this. He’s been trying to heal the ill will in the community. This was a complete blow to his faith.”
Vega knew he should have felt relief that Catherine’s family would get justice. And yet something about the letter bothered him. He read the last line again. “Grec? What do you make of the words, ‘They’d kill me if I went through with this’?”
“Sounds to me like Martinez was putting pressure on Catherine. Was the pressure to have his baby? Or to abort it? I don’t know. But either way, she was clearly having second thoughts.” Greco removed the tray and locked it back in the cabinet. “C’mon. I’ll walk you out.”
The desk sergeant found them in the hallway. “Detective? You’ve got a call on line two.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He turned to Vega. “I’ve gotta take this.”
“Listen, Grec . . .” Vega didn’t like betraying a confidence, even to a fellow cop. But if Zoe was going to come forward like this—out of the blue—then Greco deserved to know about all the other stuff she’d been holding back.
“Did Zoe tell you anything else?” asked Vega. “Anything about Jeffrey Langstrom?”
“What about Jeffrey Langstrom?”
“Did she tell you that he’d sexually assaulted her as well? That he’d filmed the assault? That Catherine tried to engineer a horse trade to get the film back?”
“Where did you get this information?” asked Greco.
“From Zoe,” said Vega. “You can follow the bread crumb trail yourself from here. Langstrom filmed Zoe, then blackmailed her with the film for more sex. Zoe told Catherine. Catherine knew about some video her father had that Langstrom would be interested in. So she offered to make a trade. Don’t you see, Grec? This was probably the flash drive that Jocelyn Suarez claimed Catherine stole and Alex Romero got fired over.”
“Where’s this flash drive?”
“Zoe doesn’t know. She said Catherine got cold feet and never turned it over.”
“What was on the video?”
“She doesn’t know that either.”
“So at the center of this convoluted story is a video of unknown content that’s now missing, though no one but Zoe and that fifteen-year-old Mexican chick have ever mentioned it—both to you, I might add. Meanwhile, I’ve got a flesh-and-blood murderer to arrest. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Greco walked into the bull pen and disappeared behind his partition to take the call. Vega turned to leave. He had only taken a couple of steps, when he heard Greco cursing loudly. A stream of invectives so colorful, it could almost double as poetry. In the middle of it, Vega heard “Martinez.” He spun around, walked straight into the bull pen, and leaned over Greco’s partition.
“What’s up with Martinez?” asked Vega. “I thought you were arresting him.”
“Yeah? We thought so too. He’s split.”
“He won’t get far on a bicycle.”
“He’s not on a bicycle anymore,” said Greco. “O’Reilly just talked to your girlfriend. Martinez and Zimmerman left in his Cadillac a half hour ago. And I’ll tell you right now—I have no doubt Zimmerman’s gun left right along with them.”
“Martinez wouldn’t hurt the old man,” said Vega.
“Martinez just confessed to murdering the seventeen-year-old mother of his unborn child. After that, pretty much anything is possible.”
* * *
Vega drove straight to Adele’s. A police cruiser was parked out front, halfway between Adele’s and Zimmerman’s driveways. The old man’s pearl-gray Cadillac Seville was missing, the only telltale sign that it had been
there, the square on the driveway that was free of snow and ice.
Vega parked behind Adele’s Prius, then bounded up the front-porch stairs. He rang Adele’s doorbell. “Nena. It’s me. Open up.”
Adele opened the door a crack. Vega pushed in and closed it behind him. She fell into his arms.
“Oh God, Jimmy. Have you heard? I was so blind! You were right all along. I should never have trusted Wil.”
“You, me, and the Lake Holly PD,” said Vega. “Greco just told me, so I came right over.”
“You should be with Joy today.” She gave him a searching look. “How is she?”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” said Vega. “She’s down in Mayfair with Wendy, giving a statement. I feel like I should have been able to keep her safe. Then again, I’m sure the Archers feel the same way about Catherine.”
“Did you know? That Catherine was pregnant?”
Vega didn’t answer. Adele gave him a shocked expression.
“C’mon, nena. I’m a cop. Just because I know something doesn’t mean I can tell you. Right now, we need to concentrate on getting Max back safely. Have you tried calling his or Wil’s cell numbers?”
“Calling and texting,” said Adele. “I haven’t gotten a reply. Both phones are probably turned off.” She paced the floor. “I feel so helpless. Sophia’s at a birthday party and I’ve got to take her to gymnastics later. What do I do, Jimmy? I’m going crazy here, worrying.”
“I’m off today. I can do some checking around.”
“But you need to be with Joy—”
“I was. All morning. She’s spending the afternoon with Wendy. I can’t interfere with a police investigation. But I can canvass some of the area bus terminals and train stations and alert the PD if I see them.”
“After everything Max has survived in his life, I can’t believe he might come to harm over this.”
“He’ll be okay. You’ll see.” Vega pulled her into his arms and chucked a hand beneath her chin. “Max has survived worse than this. He can take care of himself. Believe me. He’s a tough old guy.”
A Place in the Wind Page 32