Vega’s defense—his only defense—was that he was doing what he was supposed to do as a police officer. Then again, he thought he was doing the same thing Friday night, and look where that got him.
Vega slumped against the wall and woodenly offered the facts as he knew them. He told Greco about Yovanna, the loan, and the threatening calls to Marcela for repayment. Greco listened, his face contorted in stomach distress or concentration, Vega couldn’t say which.
“So Ponce owed some thug eight thousand dollars,” said Greco, trying to recap the basics. “Presumably borrowed to finance Yovanna’s little excursion to the U.S. When the thug heard Ponce was dead, he leaned on Marcela for repayment.”
“In a nutshell,” said Vega.
“But this opens more questions than it answers,” said Greco. “Where was Ponce Friday night?”
“In the woods at Luis’s house, I think,” said Vega.
“Where’s the proof?”
Vega told Greco about Joy’s friend Katie who saw a man who looked like Ponce running out of the woods. “She never heard the shots so she couldn’t say if she saw him before or after. But now I’m wondering if it was after.”
“I don’t know, Vega. A pothead scoring weed is not my idea of a good witness. And don’t forget, a neighbor gave the DA a statement that she saw you shoot Ponce point-blank. She didn’t see anyone else. For that matter, neither did Luis.”
Luis. Vega straightened. “Luis said he shot Ponce.”
“So?” asked Greco. “Luis wouldn’t know who he shot until the police told him the guy’s name.”
“Yeah, but unlike me, Luis saw the face of the man he shot. In good light. At close range. Ponce’s picture was all over the news. If the man Luis shot wasn’t Ponce, why didn’t he say anything?”
“Luis probably never gave the guy more than a passing thought except as to how it might affect his career.”
Greco’s phone dinged with a text. “My guys just brought Marcela in.” Greco sighed. “I hate telling people their loved ones are dead. And I really hate delivering that news twice.”
Vega left Greco and returned to the emergency room waiting area. It felt like hours had passed but it had only been twenty-five minutes. Adele still hadn’t come out. Vega was glad. He couldn’t tell her any of what he’d just found out.
He pulled out his phone and played a game to distract himself. He never felt normal hunger anymore, only sudden waves of intense desire for sugar or caffeine. He walked back to the vending machine, bought a Snickers bar, and another weak cup of coffee, and sat at a small table in the snack area trying to eat slowly and feel the food travel from his mouth to his stomach. The sweetness soothed him. He brought the cup to his lips—and froze.
Two uniformed police officers walked by. Between them stood Marcela and her husband, Byron, both of them looking grim-faced and cowed in the presence of so much authority. Vega ducked his head. He felt the cup shaking in his hands. It was only a few weeks ago that he’d driven Marcela home in the rain. He remembered walking her to her door, both of them huddled under his umbrella. How could he have guessed their lives would become entwined under such horrible circumstances?
Marcela didn’t see Vega, thankfully. She was too focused on her little boy, who looked like he’d just awoken from a deep sleep. The child was still wearing his pajamas and clutching a stuffed dog. Marcela handed him off to a young teenage girl accompanying the family. Yovanna? The teenager took the sleepy child in her arms and started heading for the vending machines.
Vega felt trapped, as if he’d been caught spying or shoplifting. He shoved the rest of the candy bar in his mouth and threw the wrapper in the garbage. He picked up the coffee to leave when the teenager walked into the small snack room with the little boy in her arms. The child was fully awake now. He’d spotted the candy in the machines.
“Quiero caramelos!” the boy whined. He wanted candy. The teenager shushed him. “I have no money,” she told him in Spanish.
Vega fished some change from his pockets and held it out to the girl.
“Here,” he said in Spanish. “For you and the little boy.” Vega couldn’t remember the child’s name. But he wouldn’t have used it anyway. It would have frightened the two children to think this stranger knew who they were.
The girl shook her head no and kept her eyes on the floor. Adele had said she was thirteen but she looked much younger than that. She had her mother’s dark skin, wide face, and Asian-looking eyes. Her clothes looked too small on her and more suited to spring than winter. She wore only a light pink windbreaker. Vega wondered if this was all Marcela had had on hand for her when she arrived.
“Candy! Candy! Candy!” the boy cried again in Spanish.
The teenager bounced the boy on her hip. “We’ll get candy later maybe,” she offered. But the boy kept up his chant.
Vega took the money he’d offered her and fed it into the vending machine. “Please,” he said to her. “Have what you want.”
The girl regarded Vega from the corner of her eye. She lifted a skinny little hand to the machine but it just hung there. Vega realized she had no idea how the machine worked.
“Would you like this?” He pointed to a Snickers bar. “It has peanuts and chocolate. Or maybe this?” He pointed to a Mounds bar. “It has coconut. Or maybe this?” He pointed to a Milky Way.
She pointed to the Mounds bar. Vega pushed the buttons and the bar spiraled forward and down into the delivery tray. The girl just stood there. Vega reached into the tray, pulled out the candy bar, and held it out to her.
“Here. Enjoy.”
“Thank you,” she said in a voice so tiny, it was as if she hadn’t spoken at all. Not once did her eyes leave her feet. Vega tried to think back to what Joy had been like at thirteen. She giggled. She gossiped with her friends. She spent hours playing with her hair in mirrors. She was afraid of spiders, sure. And scary movies. But she walked through the world like she owned it. This girl looked so frightened and diminished by comparison. She seemed both younger and older than Joy had at the same age. Vega thought about the terrible stories he’d heard of undocumented minors traveling through Central America and Mexico. The life-and-death rides atop freight trains. The brutal desert treks where death by thirst or snakebite were common. The shifty-eyed coyotes who routinely beat or raped their charges. No wonder she looked so cowed. Vega felt the same way right now. Traumatized. Angry. In despair. He wished he could give her Dr. Cantor’s phone number. She’d probably make better use of a therapist than he would.
“Jimmy?”
Vega turned at the sound of Adele’s voice. He drained the last of his coffee and switched to English.
“How’s—?”
“It’s just a sprain. She’ll need a boot brace for a week or so and then she’ll be fine. Peter wants to drive Sophia home.” Adele frowned at the children sitting at a table by the vending machines. The girl was carefully parceling out the candy bar for the boy and herself. “Damon?” Adele called to the little boy.
He smiled at Adele. The girl’s body language grew suspicious and defensive. She hunched closer to the boy. Vega realized that the teenager hadn’t yet met Adele.
“Damon?” asked Adele. “Is that your sister?”
“Yovanna, yes,” said the boy.
Adele turned to Vega. “These are Marcela’s children,” she said in English. She sounded alarmed. “What are they doing here?”
Vega swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” he lied. He couldn’t say anything that would jeopardize an ongoing investigation.
Adele addressed the girl in Spanish. “Yovanna? I’m a friend of your mother’s. Is she okay?”
“Yes.” The girl kept her eyes on the table.
“She’s not hurt?”
“No.”
“Byron? Is Byron hurt?”
“No.”
Adele turned back to Vega. “What’s going on?” Vega beckoned her out of the room.
“Marcela and Byron aren’t hurt or in trou
ble. I can’t tell you anything more than that.”
“But you know what’s going on?”
“Some of it. Look, Adele—” He took her hand. Her fingers had gone clammy and cold. “This whole case is changing right now. You have to trust me.”
“What about Marcela’s situation?” Adele must have read it in Vega’s eyes. She pushed his hand away. “You didn’t tell anyone what I told you, did you?”
“Nena, I had to let the police know that someone threatened the family.”
“You told? After I asked you not to?”
“I had to. It’s going to go to Dolan and my department anyway.”
“But not like this! Not for the police to use any way they want! What’s going on?”
“I can’t say. Not yet.”
“Oh, you can’t say. Goody for you. You can’t talk about the shooting. You can’t tell me why Marcela’s children are here. You betray my confidence and won’t tell me why—”
“C’mon, Nena. Don’t be like this. Things are happening. I have a duty—”
“Don’t tell me about your duty. Your duty got Marcela’s father killed!”
Vega stood there, feeling everything, saying nothing.
“Just—” Adele held up her hands and backed away from him. “I think you were right, Jimmy. I think it’s best we took a break from each other. You’d better call a cab. I don’t think I can handle having you around right now.”
Chapter 26
Vega’s cell phone rang by his bedside on Sunday morning. He rolled over to grab it and felt the ice-pick sharpness of strained muscles and bruised skin. Every inch of his body ached, right down to the shafts of his hair. Even the sunlight peeking through the cheap room-darkening shades felt like an assault.
He squinted at the name that came up on the screen. He was hoping it was Adele. Or Joy. Or even Teddy Dolan or Louis Greco with an update. The name on the phone read: Ellen Cantor.
Greco’s shrink. No way did he want to talk to her. No way did he want to call her back, either.
“Yeah?” He hoped his hoarse clipped voice would indicate his displeasure at being called so early.
“Is this Jim Vega?”
If she’d listened to his voice mail properly, she’d have realized that he identified himself as “Jimmy.” How could she help him if she couldn’t even get his name right?
“This is Jimmy Vega.”
“This is Ellen Cantor. You called me yesterday?”
“Yeah.” Vega searched for his manners. Why was he being so hostile?
He knew why. One word: Wendy. His ex-wife. He could never look at any kind of counselor and not think of her. The therapy queen. The woman who believed talking things out could solve all your problems—and then promptly cheated on him and left with nary a session of marital counseling. They’d been divorced almost six years now. She was long remarried. Joy was grown. Those twin rug rats that Alan had impregnated her with while she and Vega were still together were in kindergarten now. It was time to stop hating her for how she’d hurt him. But for some reason, the wound never closed. His psyche felt like a minefield that poor Ellen Cantor was glibly planning a picnic on.
“Thanks for calling me back,” said Vega finally. “I, uh—don’t know if you know who I am.”
“You’re the police officer who was involved in that shooting incident.”
Involved-in-that-shooting-incident. That was kind. Better than he’d have said.
“I’ve been—sort of—ordered—by my job to get some counseling before I return to work and uh, a friend gave me your name.”
“When would you like to meet?”
“I don’t know,” said Vega. How about never? Is never good for you? “Next week? The week after?”
“I’ve been following the news. I think we should meet sooner than next week. Are you free today?”
“Today? On a Sunday?”
“Unless your religion precludes it.”
Does football count?
“I’m pretty booked all week otherwise,” said Cantor. “I don’t normally do appointments on a Sunday. But I’m happy to put the time aside for a patient who really needs it.”
Coño! She thought he was a head case. He hesitated.
“Let me guess,” said Cantor. “You would rather have a colonoscopy than visit a psychiatrist.”
Vega laughed. “Yeah. I guess I would. Okay. How about ten A.M.?
“That would be fine.” She gave him an address in Wickford. He was hoping not to have to go back to Wickford so soon.
“Is that an office?”
“My house. I have a private office entrance. Sort of like some dentists.”
“I’d rather have root canal.”
Vega hadn’t been back to Wickford since the shooting. He told himself it was just a place. No big deal. He texted his lawyer and Joy to let both of them know he was seeing a shrink like they’d wanted. He hoped this might make up for his behavior with Joy last night. He didn’t hear back.
Wickford was almost an hour south of his house. He managed the first part of the drive just fine. He felt calm and reasonably collected on the highway. The sky was a hard shell of blue and pierced with a bright morning sun that promised to fade quickly under December’s heavy baggage of night. Vega kept his mind blank by alternating his music CDs with sports talk on the radio.
But as soon as he made the turnoff to Wickford, everything changed. A headache throbbed at the back of his head. His neck felt like someone had tried to dislocate it from his shoulders. His fingers developed pins and needles. He flexed and unflexed his hands at the steering wheel as he navigated the winding roads and backcountry horse farms. He relied on his GPS to get him to Ellen Cantor’s place and damned if it didn’t take him in practically the same direction as Ricardo Luis’s house.
You’re behaving like an idiot, he told himself. You’re acting like some traumatized kid—like Marcela’s daughter at the hospital last night. That poor girl had had no hand in the cards she’d been dealt. But Vega? His misery was of his own making.
Calm down. Control your breathing. He was sweating profusely. The trees, the stone walls, the white clapboard houses—all of it filled him with dread. He rolled down his windows and gulped in air that had the same bite of wood smoke mixed with decaying leaves that he’d smelled Friday night.
The scent took him back, hard and fast. His mouth went dry. His stomach tightened. He tried to think about anything except how much he wanted to puke up the bagel he’d grabbed on his way out. He drove past the road where all the cop cars had been parked on the night of the shooting. Just seeing the bent signpost where yellow crime scene tape still fluttered made his whole body shake.
Bicho es! He was going to be sick. Vega pulled his truck to the side of the road and vomited in the leaves by the woods. Thank God this wasn’t Adele’s neighborhood where every inch of grass was mowed and trimmed. Thank God this wasn’t Luis’s driveway. At least here, maybe the rain would wash it away.
He grabbed some water from his truck and tried to wash out his mouth. He popped breath mints and left his door open to cool himself down while he tried to gather his composure. His striped Oxford shirt felt clammy and sweaty. He’d nicked his chin shaving this morning. I can’t even be trusted with a razor anymore. How can I ever be trusted again with a gun?
By the time he showed up at Ellen Cantor’s office door on the side of her sprawling white colonial, he looked every bit the mess he felt. He begged his stomach to obey him as he rang her doorbell. Whatever else he felt about visiting a psychiatrist, he did not want to upchuck on her doorstep.
Ellen Cantor looked nothing like Wendy, and for that, he was grateful. She was short and stocky with curly silver hair and thick eyebrows that overshadowed all her subtler features—her swanlike neck, her high cheekbones, her small, dainty mouth. She had beautiful hands with long, expressive fingers. Piano fingers. He wondered if she played.
She flicked her eyes down him as she extended a hand. Her touch was war
m and firm.
“Detective Vega? Are you all right?”
He’d forgotten how beat-up he looked from the fight last night. Plus, he was pale and shaky from the sudden bout of vomiting earlier. He wasn’t about to tell her that, however.
“I think I’m coming down with a virus.”
She didn’t buy it. He didn’t care. She opened the door wider and beckoned him in. She had a small, cheerful waiting area with yellow checked gingham furniture and flouncy curtains on the windows. Martha Stewart on steroids. Fortunately, her office was a little more sedate. Deep rust-colored couches and chairs. Some leather and dark wood. It was hard enough talking to a psychiatrist he’d never met before. It would be harder still in a room that looked like a sorority den.
He took a seat on a plush leather sofa. He didn’t know where to begin. Was he allowed to talk about everything?
“This is confidential, right?” he grunted.
“I am bound by HIPAA laws, Detective. I can’t reveal anything about our sessions without your written consent, not even to a court of law.”
“Okay.” He didn’t know if he should tell her that he might have killed a different man. Did it matter for therapy purposes? Dead was dead, wasn’t it?
She got him a glass of water. He sipped it and tried to recount all the salient details he could think of about the shooting. Time. Date. Place. Number of shots. Wounds to the victim. Whatever he’d told Isadora Jenkins would probably work for Ellen Cantor. He left out last night’s fistfight and his lovely little vomiting session this morning. Then he sat back, looked at his watch, and pretended not to at the same time. Forty minutes to go and he’d be finished.
Cantor had a yellow legal pad in front of her but she didn’t write down a single word he’d said. Not one. Jesus. He interviewed people all the time and he wrote down everything.
Vega shifted his weight on the leather couch. He jangled his keys and change in his pocket. He felt like a kid in the principal’s office. Thirty-seven minutes to go.
“I’d like you to call me ‘Ellen.’ May I call you ‘Jimmy’?”
Vega shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”
Cantor leaned forward. “You don’t want to be here, do you?”
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