Vega felt the grind of gears as Greco sorted through that complication. “What’s his name?”
“Edgar Aviles.”
“Same last name as Lissette,” said Greco. “Do you know where he lives?”
“In town somewheres,” said Vega. “The temple would know. The whole family lives together.”
“I’ll get Sanchez on it,” said Greco. “Maybe send him over first. ICE’ll just spook ’em.”
“Where is this ICE agent?” asked Vega. “Is he in the basement?”
“It’s a she,” said Greco. “She’s got one of those long Spanish names with a million parts.” Greco pointed to a figure leaning against the side of one of the police cruisers, scribbling something in a notebook.
“There she is.”
She had her back turned to Vega and Greco so all Vega could see was her navy-blue windbreaker with the letters I-C-E printed boldly across her back. She was on the tall side, with short, kinky hair, dark at the roots and dusted blond at the tips.
Greco walked Vega over. The woman looked up from her notes, then reared back, blinking as if strafed by a beam of spotlight. Vega felt the same off-kilter sensation. Like this whole scene was taking place in his dreams.
Her full lips parted in a smile that had more to do with nerves than delight. Vega knew this because he saw her crooked eyetooth. It only revealed itself when the smile wasn’t genuine. Same with him.
He never realized it was a family trait.
“Michelle.” Vega’s mouth felt like someone had stuffed it with cotton.
“Wow. Jimmy.” She held out a hand. But instead of directing it at Vega’s palm, she touched his arm and gave it a squeeze. “Of all places to run into each other.”
Greco’s face scrunched in confusion. “You two met before?”
“You could say that,” said the woman. “Jimmy Vega is my half brother.”
Chapter 4
Half. Brother. Neither of those words sounded right to Vega. He had to think back to the last time he saw Michelle Carmelita Vega-Lopez. It was at his mother’s funeral in the Bronx over two years ago. Vega hadn’t invited her. He hadn’t invited anyone from his father’s side of the family. Not his father or Michelle or her younger sister Denise or the little one—Natasha—the child of yet another of Orlando Vega’s many dalliances.
Michelle, the sibling closest in age to Vega, was the only one who showed up. Alone. Without her two kids. Without her husband—the Lopez guy. She hugged Vega afterward in the receiving line and mouthed the usual platitudes. What else could she say? They were strangers. He accepted that. What he couldn’t accept was her referring to him now as her “half brother.” In front of Greco. Coño!
“You’re kidding, right?” Greco looked at Vega. Vega looked at the cops traipsing in and out of the house. He wanted to be them. He wanted to be anybody but who he was at the moment, the son of a man who gave his DNA far more freely than he gave his fidelity. Or, for that matter, his financial support.
“You work for ICE?” Vega asked Michelle. His tone sounded accusing—better fit for an interrogation room than a family reunion. “I thought you worked for the New York City Department of Corrections.”
“I left,” said Michelle. “Five years ago. After my divorce. ICE offered better opportunities.”
Five years. Vega was embarrassed to admit that he knew more personal history about his barber and the teenager who walked his dog than he did Michelle. He felt like all the spotlights on the lawn were pointed straight at him. He needed escape.
“Excuse me,” said Vega. “I need to look at the body.”
Vega didn’t exhale until he was inside the house. It was a beautiful house—or at least it had been until the first-due cops and firefighters trudged through, leaving a black, soggy trail of footprints. The living room had a two-story timber-frame ceiling with a fieldstone fireplace running up the height of one wall. The furniture was comfy, large and expensive-looking. Lots of linens and leathers in neutral shades. The kitchen was all white marble. On the counter was a folded New York Times, still in its blue delivery bag. Vega peeked inside. It was this morning’s edition.
He felt a presence hovering at his elbow. He turned and saw Michelle standing there. She’d slipped white coveralls over her clothing and tucked her curls into a shower cap.
“Ay, bendito, Jimmy,” she hissed. “Why did you have to run off and embarrass me like that in front of Detective Greco?”
“I embarrassed you?” asked Vega. “Who discussed our family relationship back there? Why not draw a Venn diagram while you’re at it: all the women Orlando Vega has chingar-ed in his life. Literally and figuratively.”
“Was I supposed to pretend not to know you?”
“You don’t know me,” said Vega. “And for the record, I don’t even get why you’re here. Lake Holly doesn’t need the feds to find an undocumented witness.”
“If she is just a witness,” said Michelle.
Vega thought about explaining the presence of the morning’s newspaper and how ludicrous it seemed for Lissette to have fetched it if she’d murdered Talia the night before. But even he knew it was too early to start speculating. Instead, he scrutinized her from across the counter.
“How many deaths have you cleared? Not counting, of course, the ones ICE caused.”
She ignored the cheap shot and answered. “Twenty-seven. Nine homicides. Eighteen suicides or other causes.”
Vega couldn’t hide his surprise. He’d been a detective on the homicide task force for a couple of years now, not counting his time on desk duty. He had eleven cleared homicides under his belt and twice that many deaths from other causes. She had nearly the same level of expertise.
“That’s impossible,” said Vega. “ICE doesn’t—”
“I was in charge of all death investigations for the New York City Department of Corrections before I left,” said Michelle. “And unlike the civilian police, I was able to clear every one. Every . . . single . . . one.” She let that sink in for a moment. “So let’s stop playing king-of-the-sandlot and get down to business. Bueno?”
They made their way down the basement steps. An odor of wet wood and diesel fuel permeated their nostrils, along with the stench of decaying flesh. Three shadows moved across the high-water mark on the buckling Sheetrock wall. Vega saw that they belonged to Veronica Chang and the two crime-scene techs, Jenn Fitzpatrick and her partner, Derek Watson. Vega gave the group a collective nod and introduced them to “Agent Lopez.” Then they took in the body, still hanging from the sewer pipe.
Talia Danvers Crowley wasn’t a pretty sight. She was bluish gray and stiff from rigor mortis. Her dark purple tongue protruded from her mouth—a common occurrence in hangings. Only the hardware-store rope around her neck retained its original yellow-crayon color. It felt like it was mocking them all.
Vega turned to Veronica Chang. She was a small Asian woman with pin-straight, jet-black hair and an ageless face. Vega had worked with her for years and still had no idea how old she was.
“How long do you think she’s been like this?” Vega asked her.
“With immersion deaths, it’s difficult to say,” said Chang. “The cold temperature and movement of the water could have slowed the decomp down. On the other hand, there would have been some stagnation once the water reached the windows and flowed out. At that point, the process could have sped up.”
“Ballpark figure?”
“It’s reasonable to assume she’s been dead at least twelve hours—if not longer.”
Vega tried to judge time of day or state of mind by her soaked clothing. He couldn’t. She was dressed in black yoga pants that ended mid-calf, a clingy, gray long-sleeved shirt, and black lace-up sneakers. It was almost a uniform among the upper-middle-class women Vega saw in and around Lake Holly. He couldn’t say for sure if she was finishing a morning workout, just back from having lunch with friends, or lounging around watching a late-night show on TV.
She was short and slight. Five
two. A hundred and ten pounds. There were blisters from rope slippage around her neck, as well as some bruising. But not enough to suggest she’d been put up there against her will or endured any change of heart. Her nails were bitten short, but absent of obvious debris that would have signaled a fight or offered a killer’s DNA.
Of course, the water could have washed it all away.
“Any suspicious markings to suggest she didn’t put herself in that noose?” Vega asked Chang.
“Not on first inspection,” said Chang. “The only bruising appears consistent with the noose.”
Vega walked the perimeter of the soggy basement. The remains of waterlogged cardboard boxes littered the floor, along with wet, grease-stained clothes, buckets and laundry baskets, trails of loose nails and rusted screws. He noted the broken wine bottle. No cork. Vega wondered if she’d been drinking it before she died. He knew Jenn Fitzpatrick and Derek Watson would bag the bottle for prints and evidence. He didn’t need to tell them how to do their jobs. His job was to look for the less obvious things. The pieces of the puzzle that didn’t fit.
Vega walked over to the washing machine.
“Everything already photographed?” Vega asked the two crime-scene techs. He knew better than to mess with the scene otherwise.
“Affirmative,” Jenn Fitzpatrick answered.
Vega picked up the loose end of the hose in his gloved hands. The original installer had used a compression clamp to fasten it to the drain. There was no way to pry it off. Instead, someone had sliced the hose in half with a clean horizontal cut. Probably from a utility knife.
He didn’t see the knife—a fact he pointed out to Fitzpatrick and Watson. “You bag it already?”
“Negative,” said Watson. “We’ve come across other things. Scissors. Wire snips—”
“Lying around?”
“In a toolbox. Maybe she cut the hose and then put the tool away.”
Which would make her the most OCD suicide Vega had ever seen, or . . .
. . . The tool that cut the hose was missing.
Vega circled the basement slowly, beginning at the body. He walked past the stairs to a mirrored wall where a waterlogged treadmill and exercise bike sat near a rack of free weights. The weights were chrome-plated with black rubber hexagonal ends. Every weight—from three pounds to twenty-five—was there. Two of each. All of them with their poundage displayed, faceup.
All except for one twenty-five-pound weight. It was lying with the weight display a quarter turn from the face-up position. Vega couldn’t say why that one weight bothered him. But it did.
So did something else.
“Where’s the chair or stepstool she stood on to get a rope over that pipe?”
Watson found a wooden footstool on the other side of the stairs. He brought it over and set it beneath Talia’s dangling legs.
“There,” he said proudly. “She climbed on that and kicked it away after.”
Vega picked up the stool and handed it to Watson. “What would you say this weighs? Fifteen pounds?”
“About,” Watson said, nodding.
“How did a fifteen-pound footstool travel all the way to the other side of the stairs?”
“You ever seen that footage of tsunamis?” asked Watson. “Water can move mountains. It can certainly move a fifteen-pound footstool.”
“Look at the free weights,” Vega countered. “Some of them are only three pounds. They didn’t move at all.”
“How about this?” asked Michelle. She walked over to a plastic bucket, lying on its side. She turned it upside down near the body. It was the right height.
“Problem solved,” she said.
“Stand on it,” he told her.
“Okaay,” she said slowly, as if humoring a crazy man. She put one foot on top. The bucket began to shake before she got close to adding a second foot.
“The problem is not solved,” said Vega. “Not even near to being solved.” He knew it, even if they didn’t.
Strike three.
Chapter 5
Erick Aviles raced home and locked his bike behind the porch. He bounded up the row-frame’s stairs, two at a time, and into his family’s tiny second-floor apartment. His father sat at the kitchen table, still in his white dress shirt—the one he wore to funerals. His mother stood at the stove, heating up a plate of rice and beans.
“Papi!” the boy cried. “Two men kidnapped Lissette!”
Edgar Aviles pressed his meaty hands on the kitchen table and rose. “Where, mijo? Where did you see this?”
“In the old cemetery,” Erick huffed out. “One of them choked me. When I opened my eyes, they were driving away.”
Erick’s father eased the teenager into one of the kitchen chairs. His mother brought him a glass of water. He downed it in one gulp.
“Take a deep breath,” his father urged. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from the boy’s forehead. “When did this happen? Just now?”
“Maybe half an hour ago. I tried to chase them on my bicycle. But I wasn’t fast enough.”
His father tucked his handkerchief away and pulled out his cell phone. “We must call the police.”
“Papi—one of the men who took her was an ICE agent.”
His father’s hand tightened on the phone. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the big wall clock with an image of Jesus’s hands clasped in prayer on the dial.
“ICE?” his father whispered. “Are you sure?”
“He was wearing a jacket with a big white I, C, and E stitched across the back.”
Erick’s parents traded glances. No one spoke for a long moment.
“We still have to call the police,” said his father.
“You want to call the police? Against ICE?” asked his mother. “How will that help her? It will only hurt you.”
His father sank down in a chair next to Erick. “Mijo,” he asked. “Were both men wearing ICE jackets?”
“Only one,” the boy replied. “The one who choked me. The other had tattoos all over his arms. He looked like a mara.”
Mara. The word sent a new and different kind of terror across his parents’ faces. Mara. Mara Salvatrucha. MS-13. Gangsters.
“What did they want?” his mother asked.
“I don’t know,” said Erick. “I couldn’t hear. I think they were looking for money. The mara slapped Lissette. That’s when I called out.” Tears came to the teenager’s eyes. He was embarrassed he couldn’t stop. “It’s all my fault for calling out!”
“No, mijo.” His father said softly. Something in his dark eyes retreated. Erick had seen that look before, when Noah had to have something painful done to him in the hospital. His father couldn’t bear to see someone he loved suffer. “The fault is mine. All mine.“ He pulled out his cell phone. “We have to call the police. This isn’t right.”
Erick’s mother clasped a hand over his phone. “If you call the police, then what? These people could still hurt Lissette. And the police will just turn you over.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“We do,” she insisted. “Maras want money. That’s what they always want. We give it to them, the police never have to get involved.”
His father pressed a knuckle to his lips—a habit he had when he was nervous. “I don’t know—”
“Mi vida, please.” Tears streamed down the butterfly-shaped rash across her cheeks. Tonight, her lupus looked particularly angry. “You are the glue that holds our family together. I need you. The children need you.”
“Okay.” A deep sigh expelled from his chest, like a beach ball deflating. “We wait.”
* * *
The phone didn’t ring right away. It took an hour. By the time it did, they were all nervous wrecks, huddled on the couch listening to every noise from the apartments above and below them. Televisions. Babies’ cries. Slamming doors. Cars tearing up the street. Commuter trains rattling the windows in back.
The call lasted less than a m
inute. Erick heard only his father’s panicked voice, not the voice on the other end.
“I want to speak to Lissette,” his father demanded. “I will pay you whatever I can. Just please, don’t hurt her.”
The caller didn’t put Lissette on the line. He didn’t ask for money either. He wanted something else.
A phone.
“Lissette’s phone?” Erick asked his father afterward.
“No. Someone else’s.” His father bounced a look from Erick to his mother. “Did she ever mention a special phone to either of you?”
Both of them shook their heads. “Why can’t he ask Lissette?” his mother demanded.
“Maybe she won’t tell him.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t either,” she said.
His father sank onto the couch. He looked defeated. His broad shoulders sagged. His knuckle pressed hard against his lips.
“He said they’re watching our house. Watching to see if we go to the police.” His father shot a glance at the two bedrooms where Noah and Flor were sleeping. “He said if we don’t find the phone and turn it over, they’ll hurt Lissette. Then they’ll come after us. All of us—even Flor and Noah.” His father’s voice cracked. “Maria—he knew their names.”
Until that moment, Erick thought the worst that could befall his family had already happened.
He had no idea how much worse things could get.
Chapter 6
Detective Louis Greco found Vega in Glen and Talia Crowley’s master bathroom, pawing through their medicine cabinet with a flashlight. The house still had no power.
“The DA’s here,” said Greco. “Just arrived from Albany.”
“Great.” Vega straightened. “Let’s go talk to him.”
“Not so fast.” Greco blocked the doorway. “I don’t like this business between you and your sister.”
“She’s not my sister.”
“Okay, half—”
“We’re distantly related.”
“You share the same father.”
Voice with No Echo Page 3
