A Place in the Wind Page 11

  And then there was Wil. Standing before her with that peach fuzz face. Those intelligent eyes offset by big goofy ears that only a mother could love. Even if she could betray Benitez, how could she betray this boy?

  She dropped her hand to her side and forced a smile. “That’s still the plan.”

  Chapter 14

  “He’s staggering toward the preschool, Vega,” said Greco. “O’Reilly can flank him from the south end. Novak can flank him from the north. Jankowski and Sanchez are locked and loaded across the street. We should abort the mission. Take him down now. Outside. Where we can neutralize the threat. Then pick up the brother after.”

  “That’s not what Adele agreed to.”

  “Forget what Adele agreed to!” said Greco. “Your boy’s forty-five minutes late and three sheets to the wind. Tap a spigot in him and he’d be a keg.”

  Vega brushed his knuckles across his chapped lips. It was hot in the room. Sweat poured down his body. His T-shirt felt clammy against his skin. He stared at the kitchen video monitor. Martinez had been talking on his cell phone. Now, he was back to having what looked like hot chocolate or instant soup with Adele. She brought her hand up to her hip, then dropped it.

  Talk to me, nena. What do I do? Vega turned to Greco. “Your guys move on him too soon, you could spook him off. End up with a foot chase through a residential neighborhood.”

  “Possibly,” said Greco. “Then again, that dirtbag walks through those doors, there’s no telling what could happen.”

  “Adele said no takedowns,” Vega repeated again. “People in the community find out she set this guy up, they’ll say her word’s no good.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what the community thinks.”

  “But she does, Grec. Without Adele, we wouldn’t have Benitez right now. We agreed to this arrangement.”

  “Yeah? Well, your boy pissed that agreement away the moment he decided to show up here at a hundred proof.”

  “Can O’Reilly see a weapon? Even a backpack that might contain a weapon?”

  Greco cursed under his breath. “I’ll ask.” He radioed the question, then delivered the answer. “O’Reilly says it doesn’t appear Benitez is carrying anything. He doesn’t have a backpack or obvious weapon.”

  Vega frowned at the monitor. No earlobe tug. Martinez had to know his brother was drunk. But would he tell Adele? Maybe all he told her was that Benitez was coming.

  If Adele knew the brother’s condition, would she abort the mission? Should Vega abort it for her?

  What do I do, nena? Do I chance your safety? Or your reputation?

  Vega took a deep breath. “Maintain position.”

  “You gotta be kidding me, Vega—”

  “I said, tell your guys to maintain position.”

  “This is a Lake Holly PD operation,” Greco growled. “You don’t get to call the shots.”

  “So in other words, your word’s no good either—is that it, Grec? You should have a really fine time with the community after this.”

  Greco gave Vega the finger. But he muttered into his radio: “Bravo, Charlie, Delta—maintain position.”

  It felt like an eternity after that, the two men sitting there in the dark, sweating and breathing heavily, waiting for Benitez to arrive. His first heavy boot on the porch steps felt like a burst of cannon fire. Like they were hunched in a trench, waiting for the battle to begin, no sense what the outcome might be.

  Vega heard staggered steps across the wood planking, followed by a fist on the door. He hunched over the monitors, watching Adele and Martinez put their mugs down and move from camera to camera, like they were on a film set.

  Martinez opened the front door—not Adele. That was good, Vega decided. It kept Adele out of arm’s reach of Benitez. That’s what Vega wanted right now. He wanted Adele as far from Benitez as possible.

  Benitez stumbled into the hallway, trailing clumps of snow on his boots. His dark black hair was tousled and greasy. His eyes were glazed. His face was unshaven. He was much bigger than his kid brother. Broad shoulders. A muscular build, if a little bloated from all the drinking. He was tall for a Guatemalan. Plus, he had a menacing appearance—and that didn’t even count the tattoos that crawled up one side of his neck. He wore a puffy parka like his brother, only his was black or dark blue—Vega couldn’t be sure from the monitors. It had two big patch pockets in the front that could contain anything. Benitez unzipped his parka, but didn’t take it off. He was wearing baggy jeans and a loose sweatshirt beneath—also big enough to conceal a weapon. No backpack, at least.

  Keep your distance, nena. Just keep your distance and you’ll be all right.

  Benitez wrapped his kid brother in a bear hug that nearly knocked the smaller, younger man off his feet. He kissed him. Then he started crying. Coño! Vega never trusted drunks in the first place—and he especially didn’t trust emotional ones.

  “I don’t like this,” said Greco. “Benitez is bawling like a toddler.”

  Vega didn’t answer. He didn’t like it either. He was starting to think Greco had been right about aborting the mission. But he couldn’t say that now.

  Martinez held his brother’s face between his hands in a tender gesture that seemed designed to calm him down. Benitez wiped his eyes. He leaned against the wall. Okay, they were going to stay in the hallway—right at the bottom of the stairs. Closer to Vega and Greco. That was good. Adele took out her cell phone. Vega watched her saying something to Benitez—most likely explaining the call she was going to make to Jankowski and Sanchez and how they would proceed from there. Vega felt a tiny bit of air escape his chest. Relief. He hadn’t realized that he’d never fully exhaled since Benitez’s boots touched the porch.

  Adele put a finger to her phone. Martinez said something to her. She paused.

  Make the call, nena. Finish up and get out.

  Benitez was bawling again. Martinez was hugging his brother, trying to keep him on his feet. Adele dropped the phone to her side. Martinez said something to her.

  “What the hell is she waiting for?” growled Greco. “Benitez to sober up?”

  Adele turned to Benitez. Her body was loose and soft, with a forward thrust of concern. Vega knew her well enough to read her, even at this distance. It was not in her nature to believe that people were capable of great evil. Adele wanted to help him. She believed she could help him. Vega wondered if at some point Catherine Archer had felt the same way. And look where it had gotten her.

  Adele took a step toward the crying man.

  “Stay back,” Vega murmured. “Don’t get close to him.”

  Greco cursed. “What is this? An intervention? We need that asshole to surrender, not get a slot on the Lifetime channel.”

  Benitez was waving his hands and gesturing to his brother. Vega could hear him over the hiss and clank of the radiators, sobbing uncontrollably. Vega couldn’t make out what he was saying, but the tenor was unmistakable. He was panicking. Martinez started crying too. Ay puñeta! This was turning into one of those telenovela Mexican soaps on Univision.

  Adele put a hand on Martinez’s shoulder. She was just steps from Benitez.

  “For chrissakes,” hissed Vega. “Stay back. Stay back!”

  “Benitez puts a hand on her,” said Greco, “there’s no telling what he’ll do after that.”

  Vega wiped an arm across his sweaty forehead. The temperature in the room felt like it had risen twenty degrees.

  Make the call, nena, thought Vega. Goddamnit, please! Just make the call!

  Benitez pushed himself off the wall. He teetered as if he was going to fall. Adele stepped forward reflexively. Benitez sank into her embrace.

  “Shit!” Greco sprang from his seat. “He’s got her. He’s got her!”

  Before Vega could say a word, Greco was out the door. He was faster on his feet than Vega would have given him credit for. By the time Vega caught up, Greco was halfway down the stairs, with his hand on his holster.

  “Police!” Greco p
ulled out his gun and aimed it at Benitez. Which meant Vega had to do the same. It was part of the code: You always had your partner’s back. Even if your partner overreacted.

  “On the floor!” shouted Greco. “Hands on your head!”

  Benitez froze, tears sliding down his cheeks. But his surprise lasted only a millisecond. Then something more primal took up residence in his eyes. It flashed like lightning, changing the landscape of his features. His jaw tightened. His shoulders tensed. His tattoos bulged along the ropy muscles of his neck. The gentle embrace he’d given Adele cinched up into a chokehold. He spun her around like she was a rag doll. In the second it took to do that, he reached into his left front coat pocket and pulled something out. It gleamed in his hand. A knife. Three inches—enough to do serious damage. He waved it at Greco and Vega on the staircase.

  “Vaya por delante y máteme!” (“Go ahead and kill me!”)

  Greco didn’t need to understand Benitez’s words. He understood his intentions. He pushed the call button on his radio.

  “Code Four. Ten-fourteen.” Suspect with a knife holding someone hostage. Not the kind of thing a cop wants to blurt in plain English over his radio. “All units respond, ASAP.”

  Benitez kept his right arm tight around Adele’s neck and pointed his left hand with the knife at Greco and Vega. Adele’s face drained of color. Her whole body tensed. The brother, Martinez, danced around Benitez, waving his arms.

  “Put the knife down, Lando,” the teenager pleaded. “Let the nice lady go.”

  “Drop your weapon now!” Greco echoed in much harsher tones.

  Puñeta! Vega cursed to himself. Why couldn’t Greco just shut up? Everything he did made the situation worse. Vega tried speaking to Benitez in calm, even Spanish. Maybe the familiarity would soothe him.

  “Escuche a su hermano,” said Vega. (“Listen to your brother.”) “He wants what’s best for you. So does the señora. She’s done nothing to hurt you. Come on, man. You can still walk out of this.”

  “Sólo quiero morirme!” Benitez choked out between sobs. Then he added in English, so that nobody in the room could fail to understand his intentions: “I . . . just . . . want to die!”

  He kept a tight grip on Adele and backed up toward the front door. Tears and snot poured down his face. Vega felt something hard and cold as a river stone settle in his gut. Benitez knew he wouldn’t escape. He didn’t care. He’d already stated his mission: I want to die. He was going to provoke a police encounter. Suicide by cop. Vega knew the statistics. Police bullets hit their target about a third of the time. Which meant there was a two-out-of-three chance they’d hit something other than Benitez.

  Adele.

  Vega saw all their mistakes in slow motion. Adele’s choice of this preschool. Her insistence on handling the surrender herself. The Lake Holly Police’s capitulation. Greco’s too-quick response upstairs.

  All of it paled beside Vega’s errors. He was the one who stopped the cops from grabbing Benitez off the street before he ever got in the door. Adele would have been safe if not for him. He made the call. And now she might pay the ultimate price.

  “Please, Lando,” Martinez continued to plead. “Don’t say such things. Think of Mami! How will I tell Mami? This will kill her!”

  Something registered in Benitez’s eyes. For a moment, the booze and squalor seemed to wash out of him. A curtain lifted. The black eyes softened and Vega caught a glimpse of the son and brother Rolando Benitez could be—even if he rarely was anymore. His mother. No matter what else this hardened ex-con had done, he could not hurt his mother.

  Benitez unclenched his arm from around Adele’s neck. He lowered his knife. Adele took a step back and tried to breathe. Benitez started to speak. “No lo hice . . .” He slurred. A fragment of a sentence. (“I didn’t . . .”) Benitez spread his palms with the knife still gripped in his left hand. A big, raw hand with a jagged stitch of lightning tattooed on the back.

  He never finished his sentence.

  Boots raced up the front steps and onto the porch. Someone kicked open the door. It banged back so hard against the inside wall that the beveled glass cracked in its frame.

  “Police! Drop your weapon!” screamed voices on the other side. Panicked voices. As scared of their own adrenaline as they were of whatever was on the other side of the door. Detective Omar Sanchez was the first one through. Like a man who’d rehearsed lines for a play that was no longer in production. But he couldn’t know that. None of them could—not him or Jankowski or O’Reilly or Novak.

  Benitez turned toward the door, swaying like he was ready to pass out. He stood three paces from the opening, still holding his three-inch knife in his outstretched left hand. Still standing close enough to Adele to grab her. His gait was wobbly enough to suggest he just might. So Omar Sanchez did what any cop in that situation would do. What training and instinct told him to do. He fired. Two shots. At close range. He aimed, as he’d been taught, for the center mass. Benitez’s chest.

  Pop. Pop. The shots exploded like firecrackers. Detective Omar Sanchez had beaten the one-in-three odds. Both bullets hit their target.

  For once, Vega wished they hadn’t.

  Chapter 15

  “You son of a bitch!” Adele shouted at Omar Sanchez as he knelt next to Rolando Benitez, shoved his trembling fingers into surgical gloves and administered CPR. “You didn’t have to shoot him!”

  Sanchez kept his head down, kept his hands on Benitez’s chest. His pale blue gloves turned red with each compression. Jankowski knelt on the other side, pretending to check for vital signs, but mostly giving moral support to his partner. Vega was pretty sure both of them knew that Benitez was dead. But as cops, they had to keep up the first aid until the ambulance arrived. Only the hospital could declare him dead.

  “C’mon, Adele. Give them space.” Vega tried to pull her back. Novak and O’Reilly were on the other side of the room with the sobbing teenager between them. Wil Martinez wasn’t walking out of here either. Vega had a feeling the boy didn’t know that yet. Neither did Adele. With Benitez gone, the police’s only potential witness—maybe even accomplice—to Archer’s murder was the brother. No way were the police about to release him.

  Adele shrugged out of Vega’s grip. “Let go of me! You’re siding with them!”

  “Adele—” Vega patted the air to make her calm down. “Detective Sanchez had no choice. It was a hostage situation.”

  “He was letting me go. You saw him!”

  “He couldn’t know that. Nobody could.”

  Vega heard the wail of an ambulance siren growing nearer. At least Adele and Martinez wouldn’t have to keep looking at Benitez’s body.

  “This was supposed to be a peaceful surrender!” Adele turned her head to where Benitez was lying. His jacket and sweatshirt were soaked with blood. It was dark and glossy, almost like some exotic nail polish. It wasn’t flowing anymore. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.

  Vega wasn’t going to answer that. Not with Martinez within earshot. He pulled her close. “Nena, you’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

  She wiped her eyes. Her mascara came back black in her hands. “I need to talk to Wil.” She started to walk over to him. Vega blocked her path.

  “You can’t. He’s a witness. You’re a witness.”

  “And what are you right now? My jailer?”

  “C’mon, Adele. You’ve got to calm down. There are procedures we have to follow—”

  “To hell with your procedures!” Vega had never seen her so angry. “Where are the police taking him?” she demanded.

  He gave her a pained look. “You’re a lawyer, Adele. You know what has to happen here.”

  She blinked at Vega, then fell against a wall. The adrenaline and anger seemed to drain from her features. But the despair that replaced it cut right through Vega’s marrow. “This is all my fault,” she said.

  Vega wasn’t sure what to say or do. He felt the burden of her guilt. He felt the burden of his own.r />
  Two EMTs hustled through the door with a stretcher. There were more sirens outside. More emergency vehicles. This was a police shooting. Every inch of it would be scrutinized.

  Greco walked over to Vega. “Can I see you for a minute?” He grunted to Adele. “Glad you’re okay.”

  “I’m not,” she shot back.

  “You could be a lot worse.”

  Adele opened her mouth. Vega squeezed her arm. “Nena, take a deep breath. We can talk about this later.”

  “Walk with me,” said Greco. Vega followed him down the hall into the kitchen. Adele’s and Martinez’s mugs were still on the counter, half filled with hot chocolate gone cold and gritty. Greco pushed open the back door and Vega followed him down the steps into the fenced-off playground. It was late afternoon and the sun’s shafts were long and amber across the untrammeled snow. Here and there, the bright plastic equipment showed through—the underside of a red slide, the seat of a blue swing balancing a soft cushion of white.

  Greco pulled a red licorice Twizzler out of his coat pocket and chewed. “The DA’s gonna clear this shooting, you know. Sanchez did the right thing.”

  “Benitez was letting her go,” said Vega.

  Greco held his gaze. “You don’t know that.”

  “Are you asking me, Grec? Or telling me?”

  “Just . . .” Greco spread his palms. “Stating the obvious. We could’ve taken Benitez down on the street. One-two-three. He’d have been sitting on a concrete bunk right now with three squares and an attorney on the public dime.”

  “Are you saying that’s my fault?” asked Vega.

  “I’m saying, it ain’t Sanchez’s.”

  “Well, maybe it’s yours, Grec. Ever consider that? Things were going okay until you jumped the gun.”

  Greco’s eyes got as dark as the barrel of a shotgun. “Look, Vega, don’t blame me because you don’t have the cojones to stand up to your girlfriend.” Greco wrapped up the rest of the Twizzlers in his pocket.

  “You know as well as I do,” Greco continued, “that as soon as Benitez put his hands on Adele, the game was over. We were playing for real after that. Sanchez did the right thing. I did the right thing. The only person who didn’t do the right thing is you.” Greco pointed a thick-knuckled finger at him. “So if you start getting any ideas that you want to play hero with your girlfriend—say, encouraging her to sue the PD for wrongful death or maybe riling up the community for some bogus police protest—just remember who’s really to blame.”