Voice with No Echo

by Suzanne Chazin

  Chapter 2

  Vega helped Max Zimmerman into the front passenger seat of Vega’s black Ford pickup.

  “Thank you for driving me home, Jimmy,” said Zimmerman. “I don’t like driving at night anymore at my age. Wil drove me over. But he has a lab to finish at school.”

  Wil Martinez was a young college student who lived with Zimmerman and helped take care of him. Adele had introduced them to each other. The arrangement was working out well, but the old man was still fiercely independent. He hated asking favors.

  “I don’t mind,” said Vega. “I’m on rotation this evening anyway. There’s not much I can do except monitor my phone.”

  “Sort of like a doctor on call,” Zimmerman noted.

  “Sort of,” said Vega. “Except a doctor gets called to save lives. I get called when that’s not an option anymore.”

  “Ah, yes. Good point.”

  They rode in comfortable silence along the crest of a hill into town. Vega saw the rickrack rooflines of houses and churches all bathed in the warm glow of an early spring evening. He powered down his window and drank in the scent of lilac bushes and fresh-cut grass.

  “I would have skipped services this evening since my friend who usually drives me couldn’t make it,” said Zimmerman. “But I wanted to speak for Edgar. He’s a good man in a very difficult position.”

  “Once ICE sends a letter like that, it’s pretty much over,” said Vega. “The best he can hope for is that his lawyer can argue his case while he cools his heels back in El Salvador.”

  “You can’t . . . do anything?”

  “This is a federal issue, Mr. Zimmerman. Like I told you, I don’t have the authority.”

  “How about Adele?”

  “She’s had a lot of sad stories come across her desk these past few years,” said Vega. “There’s very little she can do.”

  Vega stopped at a red light. From somewhere in the distance, he heard a siren split the air. Probably an ambulance heading to a traffic accident. May was a bad month for teenage drivers. Vega hoped it wasn’t a serious crash.

  “Listen,” said Vega, turning back to the old man. “It was very nice of you to stand up for your handyman this evening. But I agree with the other board members. Giving him sanctuary is illegal. It would put the synagogue in a very tough position.”

  “You think these ICE police are going to come with their guns and break down Beth Shalom’s doors? Bah! They wouldn’t dare.”

  “I don’t think ICE would breach the sanctity of a house of worship,” Vega agreed. “Legal or not, the backlash would be too great. But even so, wouldn’t it be awkward for the synagogue? Aviles is an employee, sure. But his situation has nothing to do with the Jewish community.”

  “It would be a temporary measure,” said Zimmerman. “Until his lawyer could help him. Or at least until his little boy improves.”

  “How many kids does he have?”

  “Three,” said Zimmerman. “A fourteen-year-old boy, an eight-year-old girl, and the five-year-old who has leukemia.”

  Vega heard more sirens in the distance. The musician in him heard the different pitches that likely signaled different emergency vehicles. An ambulance, perhaps. But also, a police cruiser. And maybe a fire truck. They were getting nearer. Vega wasn’t sure Zimmerman could even hear them. His hearing wasn’t especially good.

  “It’s a sad situation,” said Vega. “But like your board member said, nothing can be done.”

  “Ach,” Zimmerman waved the statement away. “Sam Lerner would look at the rain and tell you the sun is impossible.”

  “Maybe he’s being realistic.”

  “Realistic is, we’re all going to die,” said Zimmerman. “Everything between now and then is a talking horse.”

  “A what?”

  “A talking horse. You don’t know the story of the talking horse?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I will tell you.” Zimmerman clapped his hands together. He relished telling a good story.

  “A prisoner is sentenced to die. So he says to the king, ‘If you give me six months, I will teach your horse to talk.’”

  They were driving through the downtown now. Two police cruisers whizzed past, their light bars dancing across the fish-scale siding of Victorians and the hanging baskets of flowers dangling from wrought-iron lampposts.

  “Such hubbub,” said Zimmerman, his face going from light to shadow in the passing strobe lights of police cars. “Is there some great excitement I’m missing?”

  “Must be free-cone night at Ben & Jerry’s,” Vega joked. He wanted to keep things light with the old man. But inside, he already felt a surge of adrenaline in his veins. He repositioned his cell phone on the console between them. No messages had come in. It was probably a car crash or house fire. Nothing that required county assistance. He gestured for Zimmerman to continue his story.

  “Oh yes, of course. The talking horse. So the king, intrigued, agrees to postpone the prisoner’s death sentence for six months so he can teach the horse to talk.”

  “Which means,” said Vega, “in six months, when the horse can’t talk, the prisoner will die anyway.”

  “Maybe . . . Maybe not,” said Zimmerman. “In six months, the horse could die. In six months, the king could die. Or . . . who knows?” Zimmerman spread his palms and shrugged. “Maybe the horse will talk. Why not? Plenty of jackasses do.”

  Vega laughed.

  “The point is,” said Zimmerman, “as long as Edgar stays in this country, he has a chance. To fight his deportation. To provide moral and financial support for his family while Noah goes through chemo. To be a role model to his fourteen-year-old, Erick.”

  “You know the family pretty well, it seems,” said Vega.

  “Erick helps his father on weekends at the synagogue. And I’ve seen Edgar’s wife, Maria, with Noah and Flor. Noah has no hair right now. It’s so sad.”

  Vega suddenly felt the weight of the handyman’s crushing burden. A sick wife. A little boy with cancer. And now this—separated from his family forever. It was a lot.

  “That’s what the talking horse is, Jimmy,” said Zimmerman. “It’s hope. It’s all any of us ever has.”

  Vega’s phone vibrated beside him, A text message. Vega nosed his truck to the curb.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Zimmerman, I need to check this. It will only take a minute and then I’ll get you home.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait,” said Zimmerman. “At my age, the only emergency I have is finding a bathroom—and I went at Beth Shalom. Nice restrooms, by the way. Very clean, thanks to Edgar. You should check them out sometime.”

  Vega grabbed his phone and checked the screen. One new text. From county dispatch:

  10-56 reported in Lake Holly. Locals request county assistance. Respond via phone. Sensitive info.

  10-56—a potential suicide. That’s what all the sirens must have been about.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Vega told Zimmerman, “I’ve got to make a quick phone call. I won’t be a minute.”

  “Something bad just happened, yes?” asked Zimmerman. “It’s all over your face.”

  “Just police business,” Vega assured him. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Vega stepped out of the pickup and dialed the county police. Lasky, the night desk sergeant, picked up.

  “I just got a text,” said Vega. “About a possible suicide in Lake Holly.”

  “Twelve Greenbriar Lane,” said Lasky. “White female. Age thirty-four. A neighbor walking her dog saw water gushing out of a basement window and called the fire department. When they shut off the water main and pumped out the basement, they found the victim.”

  “Gunshot? Drug overdose?” asked Vega.

  “She hung herself from a pipe.”

  “She hung herself and the water main just happened to break at the same time?”

  “Initial report says it was a washing machine hose that either tore or got disconnected,” said Lasky. “Lake Holly think
s it looks a little squirrelly too. That’s why they’re asking for county assistance.”

  “I understand there’s some sensitive info,” said Vega.

  “Yeah. The victim’s name is Talia Crowley.”

  “Crowley? As in the district attorney’s new wife?”

  “You know another Talia Crowley?”

  Vega thought about the handyman’s niece. “Anyone else home?”

  “The DA’s in Albany at a conference,” said Lasky. “He’s been up there since Thursday evening. The state police are escorting him back now.”

  “I understand they have a housekeeper,” said Vega. “A young Salvadoran woman. Was she in the house?”

  “Not that I heard,” said Lasky. “Hey, it’s Friday night. Chumps like you and me gotta work. But even the help gets off.”

  Chapter 3

  Greenbriar Lane was blocked off by the time Vega arrived. Red and blue lights pulsed against the sprawling contemporary houses. Neighbors gathered behind police sawhorses, their voices drowned out by the rumble of pumps and generators.

  Lake Holly may have labeled Talia Crowley a 10-56—a potential suicide. But that was never how Vega approached a death investigation. To him, every death was a homicide until proven otherwise, and he treated it with all the care and precision of one.

  It was much easier to discard evidence you didn’t need than to scrounge around later for something you did.

  Vega ran through what little he knew about Talia Danvers Crowley as he pulled up to the checkpoint. She’d been a paralegal in the district attorney’s office, a pretty, perky blonde Vega recalled once staying late to look up a case file for him.

  At some point, she and the DA struck up an affair. Vega was betting it wasn’t Crowley’s first. He had a reputation for playing as hard as he worked. Still, up until Talia, he’d managed to hang on to his marriage of thirty years with his first wife, a prominent socialite from an old-line Southern family. When Talia got pregnant, everything changed. Crowley divorced his first wife, married his paralegal, and set up house here in Lake Holly.

  It was supposed to be a whole new life. Then Talia miscarried. And now she too was gone.

  Vega opened the window of his pickup and flashed his badge at the Lake Holly patrol officer manning the checkpoint. Ryan Bale was his name. Shaved white head. Tree-trunk neck. Shoulders like he bench-pressed three hundred on an off day.

  “You working this?” asked Bale as he handed Vega the sign-in log. “I thought you got shuffled off to pistol permits or something.”

  Vega felt the sting of Bale’s words. It had been five months since Vega had accidentally shot and killed an unarmed civilian. He’d been cleared of all charges. And yet the shame of it stuck to him like a piece of toilet paper on his shoe, following him wherever he went. In whispers in the locker room. In new encounters with other cops. On restless nights when he couldn’t sleep.

  Vega said nothing as he scribbled his badge number and name on the sign-in log and handed it back to Bale. He wasn’t looking to get into a pissing match. But Bale wouldn’t let it go. He made a show of walking around Vega’s truck and copying down not only the license plate number but the registration as well.

  “I’m sort of in a hurry here,” said Vega.

  “It’s a suicide. She’ll wait.” Bale smiled like a shark sensing blood. “You always were a little jumpy on the trigger.”

  Vega thrust out a hand. “Gimme the log.”

  “Huh?”

  “The log. You know what you’re holding, right?”

  Bale handed it to Vega. Vega drew a big fat circle around the sign-in name above his: Veronica Chang. The assistant medical examiner. He drew another big fat circle around the time Bale had scribbled in beside it. 10 a.m. He shoved the log back at Bale.

  “Two things while I’m working here, Officer.” Vega leaned on the word. “One, nothing’s a suicide until I say it is. And two, P.M. is night. A.M. is day. It’s a simple concept. Learn it.”

  Vega left Bale at the checkpoint and followed the flashing lights to the end of the cul-de-sac. He parked back from the fire truck and police cruisers and snaked his way between the county crime scene van and a white sedan. An official vehicle. It had a thick blue slash angled across the rear doors and a federal eagle logo on its side. The writing across the door read: IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT .

  ICE was here. Had they found Edgar’s niece?

  The Crowley house was all peaked roofs and walls of glass. Cables snaked across the lawn. Generators spewed gasoline fumes into the night air. The flood in the basement had probably shorted out the electrical panel, forcing the cops inside to rely on portable halogen lamps to see their way around.

  Vega watched firefighters packing up in front of the house, the water pushing out of hose lines, fanning across the driveway before collecting in a storm drain at the curb.

  The flood bothered him on some level he couldn’t articulate. He’d worked a steady stream of suicides since he’d gotten off desk duty after the shooting. Old men with debts. Jilted lovers. Teenagers who came up with permanent solutions for their very temporary problems. They took their lives in cars, bathtubs, and garages. Over bridges and in front of trains. He couldn’t recall one that had flooded their house. A murderer might do it—and then commit suicide. But here, he didn’t buy it.

  Vega put a check in his mental notebook: strike one.

  “Took you long enough,” growled a familiar voice.

  Vega saw Lake Holly detective Louis Greco barreling toward him, encased head-to-toe in white Tyvek coveralls, booties, and blue latex surgical gloves. A clear shower cap covered his bald head. He looked like a circus tent with a couple of poles removed.

  “I interrupt some hot sex between you and Adele?” Greco grunted. “I figured after a year, you two would be down to quickies.”

  “I figured after a year, you wouldn’t care. Besides, I wasn’t with Adele,” said Vega. “I was driving her elderly neighbor home from synagogue. He doesn’t see so well at night anymore.”

  “Yeah? Well, when my cataracts kick in, remind me to call you.” Greco handed Vega a set of coveralls, booties, cap, and gloves. “Here. It’s a mess down there.”

  Vega slipped into the gear and slung his badge on a chain around his neck. In all that rubber and vinyl, he felt like a walking condom. “What do you have so far?”

  “Not a lot,” said Greco. “Dispatch got the nine-one-one call from a neighbor out walking her dog around eight p.m. The neighbor said water was pushing out the Crowley’s basement windows. Fire department showed up. Took ’em about an hour and a half to shut off the water main and pump out the basement. It wasn’t until they’d almost finished, that the first-due officers—Bale and Fitzgerald—discovered the body swinging from a pipe.”

  “Any evidence of foul play?” asked Vega.

  “No gunshot or stab wounds,” said Greco.

  “Find a suicide note?”

  Greco snorted. “Down there? If she’d left one, it’s been sucked up and disintegrated by the sump pumps by now. Same with pills. We found a broken wine bottle. No cork. She may have been drinking it. Then again, it could have been in the basement for some other reason.”

  “So, no note.” They’d need a search warrant to go through Talia’s computer files. There could be a copy of a note in there—or other evidence that she was suicidal. Google searches of how to commit suicide. Good-bye letters to friends and family. There was a lot they didn’t know. Still, the absence of a ready note bothered him. Vega put another check in his mental notebook: strike two on the suicide theory.

  Vega noticed on the front mailbox there was a plaque from an alarm company. “The house has a monitoring system, right?”

  “Electronic sensors. A keyless entry. The works,” said Greco. “None of it was turned on.”

  “Any burglary activity in the area?”

  “A few break-ins,” said Greco. “Teenagers looking for pills and cash—that sort of thing. The jewelry-store hei
st in town is still open and unsolved. But that’s a different sort of job.”

  “Any suspects on that?”

  “One,” said Greco. “A gangbanger by the name of Ortega. We lifted his prints off a glass case after the heist. But he’s been a ghost since we put out a BOLO on him.”

  Vega stared at the house. The cold white light from the halogen lamps spilled from the windows, sucking the color from the weeping cherry tree on the front lawn. Cops’ flashlights bobbed and weaved between the bushes like fireflies. The static from their walkie-talkies trailed behind—the only sound Vega could hear over the din of generators.

  “What’s Crowley’s ETA?”

  “He’s on his way from Albany now,” said Greco. “He should be here in less than an hour.”

  “When did he last speak to his wife?”

  “He says she was here when he left about six yesterday. He texted her last night when he got to Albany and again this morning, but she never texted back.”

  “Did he say whether she had any issues with alcohol or drugs? Was she seeing a shrink?”

  Greco gave Vega a sour look. “Those aren’t the kinds of questions you ask the DA over the phone.”

  “I know,” said Vega. “I’m just laying the groundwork—”

  “For what? We don’t know that we have anything here. This is the top lawman in the county,” Greco pointed out. “We need to reconstruct the family situation tactfully. I’m already getting pressure from my chief to make this quick and painless.”

  “Then why’d you call me in?”

  “Because suicides don’t normally include missing housekeepers,” said Greco. “Crowley said their housekeeper should have been here today from eight thirty to five. Nobody’s seen her. She’s not answering her cell. We’d like to question her.” Greco jerked a thumb at the white sedan parked at the curb. “That’s why I called in ICE. We believe the housekeeper’s illegal.”

  “Probably,” said Vega. “At least, that’s the impression I got from her uncle.”

  “You know the family?”

  Vega shook his head. “I don’t even know the woman’s full name. I just happened to meet her uncle this evening when I gave Adele’s neighbor a ride home from the synagogue. The uncle’s their handyman. He got a letter from ICE a few days ago, telling him he’s going to be deported.”