A Place in the Wind Page 3

  “But what did they say?”

  What could they say? The Lake Holly cops had their suspicions. They were the same as Vega’s. Catherine Archer was a beautiful young girl. She was working closely with men who were twice her age and more. Some of them were in this country without their families, sometimes for years. They were lonely. They were horny. Even the most honorable among them would look at her and feel something. How could they not? What’s more, a seventeen-year-old girl would not necessarily be off-limits in their own culture the way she would here. But Vega saw no point in telling Adele any of this right now. It would only make her more upset.

  “Please, nena. Let me get you to your car. Where is it? I’ll follow you home.”

  “It’s up the street. Near where the crowd is gathered. I had to move it when they roped off the parking lot.”

  The crowd had doubled in size since Vega arrived. This wasn’t just friends and family anymore. Vega saw the satellite dish of a news van. No way was Adele going to be able to slip into her pale green Toyota Prius and just drive away. Not to mention that it was obviously her car. It had a big La Casa magnet on the trunk with a logo of smiling stick people encircling the planet. It had a small flag from Ecuador—her parents’ country of birth—dangling from the rearview mirror.

  “Maybe I should drive you,” said Vega. “I don’t want some reporter sticking a microphone in your face.”

  “I can’t run away, Jimmy. Those people are Catherine’s friends and family. She’s one of my volunteers. I owe them my time and attention.” Adele pushed open the front door and walked toward her car. Vega scanned the crowd. Their heavy coats and hoods couldn’t hide the stiffness in their postures, the squint in their eyes. These people weren’t looking for Adele’s sympathies. They were looking for someone to blame.

  “Nena,” Vega grabbed Adele’s elbow. “Go back to my truck. This isn’t such a good—”

  Before he could say more, a young man pushed his way past the sawhorses and ran up to Adele.

  “Where’s my sister?” he shouted. “What sort of people are you letting into this place?” His big blue eyes were wild with rage. His upturned nose was red from the cold. A five o’clock shadow of reddish beard made him seem older than he probably was. Vega put him somewhere in his early twenties. Anger sharpened the almost girlish contours of his face.

  Vega threw himself between the young man and Adele. A uniformed officer escorted the brother back behind the barricade. He shook off the officer’s grasp, but held up his arms, like he was disgusted with all of them, and faded back into the crowd. Several people tried to calm him down.

  Adele stood frozen in place—a stray dog in the center of a four-lane highway. Vega locked an arm around her shoulder and ushered her into his truck.

  “But my car—”

  “I’ll fetch it later this afternoon,” he promised. “Right now, you’re coming with me.”

  He made a three-point turn. The police officer parted the sawhorses and Vega drove through.

  “That was Catherine’s brother,” Adele murmured as she stared into the rearview mirror.

  “So I gathered.”

  “I wish I could talk to him.”

  “You can’t,” said Vega. “Not even to say you’re sorry. Do you understand that now?”

  Adele hunkered down in her seat as Vega drove along Lake Holly’s Main Street. Century-old wood-frame buildings and brick storefronts sat mute and dark, waiting to open. It was still early. At the train station, day laborers huddled in groups, waiting for jobs that might never come, especially this time of year when contractors didn’t need help with landscaping or paving. The men probably would have preferred to wait for work in the cozy comfort of La Casa, but it was anybody’s guess when the center would open again.

  “I feel like all of this is my fault,” said Adele. “I’m beginning to understand what you went through.”

  “You mean, in December?”

  “Yeah. After . . . you know.”

  The shooting. It was going on seven weeks now since Vega fired those four fateful shots that ended a man’s life. An unarmed man. Not that Vega knew it at the time. Eighteen years of solid police work—some of it in dangerous, undercover situations—and not once had he fired his gun. Two seconds in the woods had changed all that. And although Vega had been cleared of any wrongdoing, the man’s face still haunted his dreams. Six weeks of desk duty and half-a-dozen therapy sessions had done little to shake his inner sense of guilt and anguish. He prayed Adele wasn’t about to travel the same road.

  “You can’t think like that,” Vega told Adele. “A, we don’t know yet what happened to Catherine. And B, even if it’s something bad, you aren’t responsible.”

  “I feel like I am,” said Adele. “I feel like it’s my duty to be there for the family.”

  “They don’t want you there, nena—any more than the family of the man I shot wanted me around. You’re not on the same side. It’s something you may have to accept.”

  “You’re talking like one of my clients is definitely involved in this.”

  Vega reached across the gearshift and gave Adele’s thigh a reassuring squeeze. “Just take this one step at a time, all right? Food. Sleep. We can talk about the rest later.”

  * * *

  Adele lived a short drive from La Casa, in a narrow blue Victorian a handshake’s width from the houses on either side. Too close for Vega’s comfort. He loved looking out the back deck of his cabin and seeing nothing but trees and a crystalline lake. She loved sitting on her open front porch and waving at neighbors as they strolled past. When Vega stayed over—on those occasions Adele’s nine-year-old, Sophia, wasn’t home—he felt like he was living in a fishbowl. When Adele stayed up at his lake house, she left all the lights on at night, certain that a pack of wild coyotes was going to break in. Never mind that the house was locked and Diablo, Vega’s dog, slept on the bed with them. They both agreed that the only thing that mutt was likely to catch was fleas.

  As Vega pulled into Adele’s driveway, he noticed old Mr. Zimmerman next door in a fluffy bright pink bathrobe, struggling to drag his garbage can to the curb for pickup. He was taking baby steps across his icy front path. He looked like a roll of fiberglass insulation in moccasin slippers.

  “He’s going to break his neck,” said Adele.

  “Worse,” said Vega. “He’s going to ruin the image of Victoria’s Secret in young men’s minds forever.”

  “Can you go help him?”

  “He’s managing okay. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “All I want to do is soak in the tub and clear my head.”

  “Great. I’ll run your bath—”

  “I can do that myself, Jimmy. Really. I need a little time alone. If you want to help me, you can do it by helping him.”

  “You sure?”

  Adele leaned across and kissed him. “I’m sure.”

  Adele went inside. Vega turned off his engine and got out of his truck.

  “Mr. Zimmerman!” he shouted. The old man was hard of hearing, especially over the scrape of the can as he dragged it across his flagstone path. Vega hopped the low white picket fence that separated Adele’s house from Zimmerman’s and ran over.

  “Nice robe.” Vega grinned.

  “It was my late wife’s. What? I should throw it out because it’s pink?” Zimmerman’s voice carried a trace of accent. Something European.

  “Looks good on you. Here, let me do that.” Vega grabbed the can from Zimmerman and carried it out to its place on the sidewalk. It was an old-fashioned aluminum can, dented in so many places it was a wonder it could still hold garbage. Vega suspected Zimmerman had used the same can for twenty years. Everyone else had big plastic ones with wheels.

  “You know,” said Vega, “for, like, a hundred bucks a year, the garbagemen will pick up at your door so you don’t have to carry it curbside.”

  “A hundred dollars? For that price, they should gift wrap it too.”

  “It wo
uld be easier on you.”

  “You think I can’t carry my own garbage?” Zimmerman flexed an arm beneath his Pepto-Bismol–colored robe. Liberace at bedtime. “I could lift you and put you on the driveway if I had to.”

  “I don’t doubt it, sir.” For a man in his late eighties, Max Zimmerman still had a surprisingly robust build. Thick, squared-off shoulders. A full head of silver hair slicked down with so much styling cream that Vega could see the tines of the comb he ran through it each morning. Sharp, intelligent eyes behind heavy black-framed glasses. He was so physically competent that you had to know him awhile to realize he was missing part of the middle finger on his left hand.

  “Well, thank you anyway, Jimmy. Now go keep the streets safe in Gotham City.” Zimmerman chuckled. He seemed to equate Vega—or perhaps cops in general—with Batman. Vega didn’t mind. He’d been called worse.

  The old man turned to go back inside his house. It was a small white Cape Cod–style home with dormered windows on the second floor. Vega eyed the flagstone path that led to the front door. It was slick with ice that had melted and refrozen several times over. He was surprised Zimmerman hadn’t broken his neck just walking out here.

  “Mr. Zimmerman, do you have a shovel?”

  “What do I need a shovel for?” Zimmerman lifted his flared pink sleeves to the milky sky. “The Big Man who put it here will also take it away.”

  “Yeah. In April. Let me get you inside. I’ll see if Adele has a shovel.”

  Vega locked an arm under Zimmerman’s elbow and guided the old man back to his front door. His movements were tentative. He was getting frailer, Vega noticed. Not that he was the sort of person to discuss such things.

  In the nine months Vega had been dating Adele, he’d never heard Zimmerman ask anything of her. He was already widowed by the time Adele moved to the neighborhood twelve years ago. Very occasionally they saw a younger man here. A son, perhaps. Vega thought he lived in California.

  There were few other visitors—which was why Adele always tried to look out for him. She sent clients from La Casa to cut his lawn and trim his hedges in summer and vacuum and dust inside every now and then. The old man always gave the people a few bucks—never enough. His wage scale seemed permanently stuck in 1974. Adele made up the difference. She didn’t tell him, of course. But she hated seeing him struggle.

  Vega helped Zimmerman up the front steps. On the scuffed molding to the right of the front door was a small brass holder the size and shape of a pencil case. It was mounted at an angle. There were words printed in Hebrew. The old man touched it before he opened the door. Vega noticed one of the screws was coming loose.

  “You want me to tighten that screw on the mezuzah for you?”

  Zimmerman peered at Vega over the tops of his black glasses. “What do you know from a mezuzah?”

  “I know it contains prayers from the Torah. My ex-wife is Jewish. So’s my teenage daughter.”

  “Hmmm.” Vega couldn’t read the old man’s expression. Surprise? Discomfort? The first time Vega met him it was because Zimmerman had called the cops on Vega as a prowler. Vega suspected the old man saw a dark-skinned Puerto Rican and automatically assumed the worst. Vega tried not to hold it against him. Max Zimmerman came from a different generation. He’d always been nice to Vega since then. And at the very least, he was looking out for Adele’s safety.

  Vega helped the old man inside. The house smelled of too much steam heat and too many layers of dust. And something else too—some faint smell of things that had hung around too long. Food. Dead plants. Dirty laundry. Newspapers and books that should have been tossed ages ago. The living room sported heavy carpets and drapes, lots of big, dark Colonial furniture and brass floor lamps. But it was neat at least.

  Vega got the old man settled and tightened the screw on his mezuzah. Then he walked back to check on Adele. She was still in the tub. He knocked on the bathroom door.

  “You okay, nena? You’ve been in there awhile.”

  “I wish,” she replied. “I got tied up with emails and phone calls. Can you give me maybe fifteen minutes?”

  “Take as long as you need. I’m just borrowing your shovel to clear Mr. Zimmerman’s walkway.”

  The front steps to the old man’s house were easy. It was the path along the side that was more problematic. Not because of the snow or ice, but because of the piles of dried dog feces and fast-food wrappers. Not Zimmerman’s. He didn’t even own a dog. The trash came from the Morrisons on the other side of his house. Three thuggish preteens and their surly mother. They were always dumping their garbage on his lawn. Zimmerman never confronted them. After today, Vega was more than ready to.

  The old man called to Vega as he was finishing up.

  “Come here. I want to give you something.”

  “I don’t need anything, sir. Thanks.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to give you.”

  Vega trudged over. Zimmerman held out a white mug. I Love You A Latke was stenciled across the side. Vega laughed.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Just something I had. Maybe your daughter would like it.”

  Joy was on the fence these days about her culture—both the Jewish and the Puerto Rican sides. But Vega didn’t want to disappoint the old man so he took the mug.

  “Thanks very much, Mr. Zimmerman.”

  * * *

  When Vega returned to Adele’s, mug in one hand, shovel in the other, a dark blue Chevy sedan was pulling into the driveway behind his truck. Vega recognized the man behind the wheel before he even hefted himself from the driver’s seat. Body like a shell casing. Bald head circled by a fringe of graying hair. A scowl across his chins that sometimes doubled as a smile. He was wearing a puffy jacket. Black goose down. Not his best wardrobe choice. It made Lake Holly detective Louis Greco look like an overinflated tire.

  Greco took a red Twizzler out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. His addiction. Vega could never see the attraction. He chewed as he frowned at the mug in Vega’s hand. “What’s that?”

  Vega held it up so Greco could read the words.

  “I finally get used to all your Puerto Rican crap and you turn Yid on me?” Greco didn’t believe in PC. He said if God wanted everybody to love and accept one another, he wouldn’t have created Congress. Or Kanye West.

  “I shoveled Adele’s next-door neighbor’s walkway. He gave it to me.”

  “Well, aren’t you the busy Boy Scout. The bosses take you off desk duty yet?”

  “Captain Waring keeps talking about reviewing the situation. But I’m starting to feel like that’s not going to happen for three more Windows updates.”

  “Bureaucracies have long memories, Vega. And you have a bad habit of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Part of the reason.” Greco polished off the rest of his Twizzler. “Let’s get you and your bar mitzvah favors inside. I don’t want my guys catching me here. They’re pissed enough already.”

  Vega left the shovel on Adele’s front porch. There was snow in the forecast. He had a feeling she was going to need it.

  “You want coffee?” asked Vega as Greco shrugged off his puffy black jacket. He wasn’t any less puffy beneath.

  “What I want,” said Greco, “is to be out of here as quickly as possible.”

  Vega plonked the latke mug on the mission-style table next to two bright-colored Mexican pottery candlesticks. The house was Victorian in architecture, but the interior was pure Adele: lots of deep, vibrant colors and Latin-American art. Vega heard water draining from the tub upstairs.

  “Adele was in the bath, but it sounds like she’ll be down any minute.”

  “Let’s leave Adele out of this for the moment,” said Greco. Vega didn’t need to ask why. The two had been on opposing sides of most issues in Lake Holly for the better part of a decade—far longer than Vega had known either of them. They were like marinara and hot sauce. S
ome of the same ingredients. Best served apart.

  Vega leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “First off, Catherine Archer isn’t my case. She belongs to Jankowski and Sanchez. I’m just another pair of eyes and legs, cataracted and arthritic as they are.” Greco was always talking about retiring, but Vega sensed his heart wasn’t in it.

  “It’s not your case. Got it.”

  “Not soon enough or I wouldn’t be here.” Greco wagged a finger at Vega. “In the future, you want something from me, ask. Quietly. On the side. Don’t go using my name as leverage, capiche?”

  “I didn’t know it would bite you in the ass.”

  “It wouldn’t have if you were just another local cop with a police interest in the case,” said Greco. “But you’re connected to Adele. And you’re county. Nobody likes you assholes in the first place—and they especially don’t like one who’s sleeping with the enemy, if you get my drift.”

  “I just asked a few questions.”

  “Which I’m here to answer. And then we close down this channel and you let Lake Holly do its job, got it?”

  “You haven’t found her yet, I take it.”

  “We haven’t even found half those clients—and I use the term loosely—that were in La Casa last night.”

  “Did you bring in the K-9 unit to do a search?”

  “Duh. What would we do without you county hotshots telling us how to do our jobs? K-9 was useless. The dog lost the scent at the end of the block. The ground was frozen last night and warmed up this morning. Hence, moisture—which tends to wash away scent cones, as you know.”

  “La Casa has two surveillance cameras. They give you anything?”

  “They told us Catherine never got in her car. Never even went near her car. Just headed off in the same direction as the clients—most of whom we can’t locate now.”

  “Car trouble?”

  “The car started up perfectly when we tried it.”

  “Any phone or credit card activity?”

  “None.”

  “Have you checked other surveillance cameras in the area?”

  “We’re checking them now. So far? Nothing.”