Land of Careful Shadows (21 page)

“I—uh—just wanted to be sure you're okay.” Now that he was standing in this lot, freezing, he felt mildly foolish.

“I called my insurance. The adjuster's coming tomorrow—”

“—I mean—you know.” He rattled some change in his pockets.

She went to say something and stopped herself. He had no idea what she was thinking. In the end, all she said was, “I'm glad things worked out tonight.” She opened her car door.

“Wait.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it, and fished out four twenty-dollar bills. He folded them and shoved them into her hand.

She frowned. “We already settled our bet.”

“I realize that.” He nodded to the car. “Buy him some new boots.”

“What?”

“Work boots.” Vega shoved his wallet back into his pocket and hunched his shoulders against the cold. “You should be able to get a halfway decent pair for eighty bucks.”

“You—want to do this?”

Vega shrugged. “What the hell? The guy can't work in the ones he's got.”

A slow smile crept across Adele's face. She tucked the money in her coat pocket. “I don't know what to say.”

“Don't say anything. Not to anyone. Especially not to him. You got that? I mean it.” He backed away. “If you tell anyone where you got the money from, I swear, I'll find a way to lock you both up.”

“Thank you,” she called out, but he had already turned away from her. He threw a quick hand of acknowledgment over his shoulder and jogged quickly back to the building.

In the detectives' bullpen, he found Greco at his desk, hunched over the Verizon records. Greco lifted his glasses when Vega came into view, a grim look on his face. The guy knew fifty ways to ruin a good mood.

“What?” asked Vega.

“We shouldn't have let him disappear so quickly.”

“You found something? In the phone records?” Vega felt broadsided. His breath left his body. He'd looked at the evidence every which way and his gut and logic told him Rodrigo Morales couldn't have been involved in Maria's death. If he was, he'd never stay in Lake Holly. By tomorrow, he'd be in Georgia or Colorado or half a dozen places in between. In new boots, no less. Courtesy of Detective Vega. If Vega had made a mistake here, it was a big one.

“What did you find?” He was almost afraid to ask.

“Something you're not gonna believe.”

Greco spread the Verizon records out on his desk. Maria's last three cell phone calls were all on Sunday, March eighth. To the same local number. The first two were short. The final call, at eight-twelve p.m., lasted almost fifteen minutes.
To Morales?
Vega couldn't recall his number offhand. He didn't need to. Greco took out his cell phone and dialed the digits on the computer printout. Then he handed his phone to Vega and sat back. Vega expected tinny mariachi music or one of those robotic voices asking him to leave a message—anything but what he got:

V
ega leaned his arms on the puckered chain-link fence and drank in the sounds of the morning: the windchime chatter of children, the squeak of swings, the rumble of Hot Wheels tricycles tearing up the driveway of the Head Start preschool. He saw Linda Porter before she saw him. Her straw ponytail swinging as she scooped a girl off a slide. The milk white of her neck as she twirled a boy around like an airplane. She was a ballet of motion and purpose, beautiful to him for what she was and what she would never be—the prize he'd won and lost so many years ago.

She cupped a hand to her forehead to block out the sun and waved when she saw him. He lifted his arm halfway off the fence and let it drop again like it was made of lead. He wasn't happy about why he was here this morning or what he had to do. Right now, he wished he'd never set foot back in Lake Holly.

She walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She was light and loose today, welcoming of his presence. But that just made what he had to do more difficult.

“I saw Rodrigo this morning at La Casa” she said.

“Yeah. We released him last night.”

“Thank you.”

“Don't thank me,” said Vega. “If there was any chance he was involved in a crime, he'd be at the county lockup right now.”

It would have been easier all around if Morales had been guilty. Case solved. None of the uncomfortable loose ends that were plaguing him now. He'd spent a good part of yesterday evening trying without success to reach Maria Elena's mother in Guatemala using the number they'd found on Maria's Verizon printout. Each time he dialed, Vega geared himself up to deliver the news. And each time this uncomfortable Spanish robotic voice would ask him to leave a message. He didn't, of course. What was he going to say?
Hello, señora. Your daughter's dead. Her possessions are at a police station in a cardboard box?
This was a call that demanded a live voice on the other end.

“Things are looking up for Rodrigo in any case,” said Linda. “Adele said somebody donated a brand new pair of work boots in his size this morning. So he's finally got a decent pair of shoes.”

“Huh.” Vega was glad Linda didn't know. He wanted to keep it that way. He looked over at the kids on the playground. He wished Joy was still that age. Back then, a lollipop and a kiss could solve all her problems. Now, he couldn't even guess what they were. “You, uh—working here all day today?”

“Just filling in,” said Linda. “The head teacher had car trouble this morning. She's here now so I'm actually about to walk over to La Casa to do client intakes.”

“Can I buy you a quick cup of coffee before you head over?”

She stiffened. “The last time we talked, an innocent man ended up behind bars. I'm not sure I want to go through that again.”

“I'm not gonna ask you anything about your clients.”

“Then what are you going to ask me about?”

“I can't talk to you?”

Vega read the reluctance in her pale eyes. He had a weakness for women with blue eyes, the way they promised something that was always out of reach, a lure trapped beneath the surface of a frozen lake. He could never reach her, not entirely, not even when they were together. That was part of the attraction. Part of the pain, too.

“He doesn't like you, you know,” she said softly.

“So I've noticed. But that's okay. I don't like him, either.”

“I can't go behind his back.”

“I'm asking you for coffee, Linda. Not to go to bed with me.”

A flush came to her cheeks and Vega felt for one brief moment like she wished he would. Damn, he wanted to. What was it Greco said about “never say never”?

“C'mon, Linda. It's just coffee. What do you say? My treat. I'll meet you out front.”

“I can't stay long.”

“Leave whenever you want.”
You always do
, he thought
.

He drove her to the Starbucks across from the train station in the center of town. He tried to come off as relaxed and casual, but inside, he felt like all his synapses were firing at once. He hated that everything he had to do today would undermine whatever feelings she had left for him.

He parked at a meter, didn't pay, and stuck his police ID on the windshield so he wouldn't get a ticket. Linda rolled her eyes.

“Cops always have an angle.”

“This, from a defense attorney's wife?”

She stuck her tongue out at him playfully and he laughed. He forgot for a moment why they were here and when he remembered, it hit him all over again like a punch to the solar plexus. It made him feel the same way he sometimes did when he thought of a story or joke his mother would have liked and then remembered he couldn't tell her anymore.

Starbucks was bustling with women and toddlers and retirees with laptops. At the counter, Vega ordered an extra-large black coffee and refused to call it anything else, no matter how many times the server insisted it was a “venti.” Linda ordered some complicated tea mixture that she made even more complicated by adding honey and soy milk and God-knew-what-else from the condiment bar. Then they settled into seats across from each other by a window. Linda loosened her ponytail and let her blond hair fall to her shoulders. Vega watched the spectacle with fascination and a certain embarrassment that after all these years, she could still hold his attention so completely. He suspected she knew it too. He tried to focus his mind elsewhere and pointed out the CVS that used to be Holtzman's Pharmacy.

“You used to work at Holtzman's, didn't you?” asked Linda.

“All through high school.”

“Kids used to call him, ‘the Nazi' behind his back.”

“I remember,” said Vega. When anyone thumbed the comic books, Holtzman would bark, “Buy it or stop reading it,” in his thick German accent. If two prices were accidentally stuck to one item, he always charged the higher one. And he followed teenagers around the store with the grim countenance of an executioner, certain they were shoplifting. But in a curious way, Vega preferred the old German to the nervous native-born liberals in town, the ones who smiled too broadly in his presence, as if being Puerto Rican was like a fart in the room that might just go away if everyone pretended not to notice.

“You didn't invite me for coffee to discuss old times, did you, Jimmy?”

“No.” Vega played with his napkin. “You and Scott—you get along okay?”

She gave him an expression halfway between amused and appalled. “We get along fine. Why are you asking?”

“He doesn't seem—you know—your type.”

“You don't know him.”

“Apparently, I didn't know you, either. Or rather—I didn't know you first.”

She stirred her tea. If there was any surprise in her, it was only that he hadn't known before now.

“Jimmy,” she said, leaning forward, a serious look in her eyes. “What is it you want?”

He balled up his napkin and stuffed it into his empty coffee cup. He couldn't muster any of the finesse he normally had as a detective. His default mode with her would always be seventeen. “I don't know how to ask this except to ask it,” he sighed. “Has Scott ever fooled around?”

“What?” She reared back. “What kind of question is that?”

“A question you're better off answering with me than with half the Lake Holly PD looking on.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“We've identified the body at the lake as a thirty-year-old Guatemalan woman by the name of Maria Elena Santos and we have her cell phone records. She and Scott exchanged calls. Twelve of them between February first and March eighth. He said he didn't know her.”

“He said he didn't
recognize
her. And why would he? She was probably a referral who consulted him over the phone.”

“She called his private cell phone number, not his office.”

“Scott gives his cell phone number to everyone. He's an immigration and criminal defense attorney, Jimmy, not a bank lawyer. You think he gets everyone's name, address, and driver's license photo before he speaks to them?”

“And you're sure of this?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

Vega rested his elbow on the table, chin cupped in his palm, and looked at her without saying a word. He'd learned as a cop not to fill in the silences. People did a good job of filling those all on their own.

“You don't believe me,” Linda said finally.

“I'd have sworn when I was married that my wife was faithful. And seven months after she left me, she and the man who became her second husband had full-term twins.”

“I'm sorry,” said Linda.

Vega shrugged. “That was five years ago. I've pretty much recovered. The point is, it happens a lot more than you think. And the last person to know is always the spouse.”

“I'm not in denial. Scott would never do that to me, not after all we've been through. Three miscarriages. A bunch of infertility treatments. An adoption that fell through and broke both our hearts. Before Olivia came along, I swear, there were days I didn't want to get out of bed, days I wanted to kill myself. Scott lived through all of that. Loved me through all of that. I'd have probably died in Iowa if not for him.”

Iowa.
The word gave Vega the same dull ache at the back of his head as when he drank too much wine.
Iowa.
If he were pressed to name all fifty states, it would be one of the last that would come to mind. He pictured grain silos and church steeples. Cows and cornfields. Tractors and pickups. None of his imagery made room for Scott and Linda Porter. None of it for immigrants like Maria Elena Santos either.

“Where did you live in Iowa?”

“Cedar Rapids. That's where Scott's family is from.”

“He didn't handle any immigration law there, did he?”

“Are you kidding? He was one of the lead defense attorneys in the Perkinsville case. You know—the one at that food processing plant where something like three hundred Guatemalans were deported?”

“Maria Elena Santos was arrested in that Perkinsville raid.”

“So there's your reason for the calls,” said Linda. “She knew his name or maybe had a friend who'd been his client. Why don't you just ask Scott? He'll tell you.”

Not likely. The way Porter felt about him, he'd need a court order to find out what the guy ate for breakfast. But he didn't want Linda to think he had deliberately gone behind Porter's back so he said simply: “He's at Luis Guzman's arraignment today.”

Linda's cell phone rang and she checked the number. “Olivia's elementary school,” she apologized. “I need to take the call.”

From the conversation on Linda's end, Vega gathered the child had taken a tumble at recess. Nothing catastrophic. Linda didn't look alarmed. She was off the phone in a matter of minutes.

“Is your daughter okay?”

“A scraped elbow from leaping off the jungle gym. Nothing a Band-Aid at the nurse's office can't cure. She's already back on the playground. Olivia's tough as nails—always has been. I never had her bravado or athletic ability. Neither does Scott.”

“I guess it's a surprise package when you adopt,” said Vega. “Did the agency ever tell you anything about her mother?”

“We didn't go through an agency,” said Linda. “Olivia's birth mother was a client of Scott's.”

“Scott had a client in Guatemala?”

“No, silly. Olivia wasn't born in Guatemala. She was born here. Her birth mother got arrested in the Perkinsville raid and asked Scott to take care of her baby. She didn't want the child going into foster care. Then she died in prison. It was so sad for her but so very lucky for us. Socorro had no family in the United States so we got to adopt her daughter.”

“Her birth mother's name was Socorro? Socorro what?”

“Socorro Medina-Valdez. Olivia's middle name is Socorro, after her birth mother.” A small crease settled in the middle of Linda's forehead. “Why does this interest you all of a sudden?”

“I'm just trying to find the connection between Maria and Scott. Maybe it was Socorro. Do you have any family contacts for Socorro? Siblings? Cousins?”

“No.” A switch seemed to flick off inside of Linda. She drained her tea and rose from the table. “I have a lot of work to do, Jimmy. I really need to get back. If you want anything else, you'll have to ask Scott.”

In the car, Linda was stiff and guarded. Vega tried for a breezy tone. There was so much more he needed to know and he didn't have a prayer of getting it from Porter.

“What a coincidence, huh?” he said. “You and Scott and Maria all lived in Iowa and all ended up a thousand miles away in Lake Holly.”

“It's not a coincidence at all,” said Linda. “We have dozens of clients at La Casa who all come from this one little area in Guatemala and all ended up in Lake Holly. They go where they have friends and family. For all I know, Scott has several ex-clients who were deported from Perkinsville and ended up here. They all try to come back to the United States, you know. Very few who get deported stay that way.”

She had an answer for everything, like one of those Jehovah's Witnesses who show up at your door. She wouldn't—couldn't—believe there was anything unusual about a woman making twelve calls to her husband's cell phone and him never mentioning her to the police. Everyone has life stories they tell themselves whether they are true or not. Nobody knew that better than Vega.