Voice with No Echo

by Suzanne Chazin

  “These guys never do.”

  * * *

  The sun was setting by the time Vega drove into Port Carroll. The harbor, normally stagnant, had gone golden. Even the long-shuttered bakery plant had a peachy glow like an artist’s rendering. It made Vega think of the stories Adele used to tell him about growing up here, when the yeasty scent of fresh bread used to waft up from the plant and seep into everything. Clothes. Closets. Even people’s hair.

  Vega pulled off Main Street and made a right into the visitor parking lot of the Port Carroll police station. The station was built around the same time as Lake Holly’s—right after the Great Depression—and it had the same optimistic view of government in its design. Everything was sturdy brick and built to last forever.

  Vega asked for Danny Molina. Instead, a detective came out to greet him.

  “Carl Rafferty,” said the man. He had the extra-hardy handshake of a used-car salesman and a shelf of eyebrows large enough to park a Mack truck on top. “Danny will be here soon. He and I just came from making the notification to Hilda Ardon. He wanted to stay with her a few extra minutes, seeing as they’re friends.”

  “The NYPD signed off on Port Carroll making the notification?” asked Vega.

  “I think they were only too pleased to be relieved of the burden,” said Rafferty.

  The detective ushered Vega back to his desk. The walls were covered in pictures of golf greens and cartoons about golfing. Vega wondered if he knew Mark Hammond, the detective in Wickford. Golf was like its own branch of policework.

  “Did Hilda say whether Deisy was abusing drugs?”

  “She insisted she wasn’t,” said Rafferty. He raised one of his thick eyebrows. “Of course, every parent says that. And these kids who came over on their own from Central America . . .” He shook his head. “Some of them have seen and done everything long before they arrived.”

  That was probably true, thought Vega. Still, Deisy was a sixteen-year-old girl. Whatever her life before, she was still considered a child here.

  “Did her mother mention a boyfriend?”

  “She claimed Deisy didn’t have one.”

  “How about her clothes?” Vega pressed. “Did you take a look in her closet? See if she tended toward suggestive clothing?”

  “You think that stuff’s just going to be hanging there?” asked Rafferty. “Next to her confirmation gown and her prom dress?”

  No. Vega didn’t. But even if a girl is concealing a second life, some part of it was bound to show up someplace in her room. If only Rafferty had bothered to look.

  Vega was already getting the sense that this guy lived for golf. Investigations were a sideline.

  “Did you mention that when she was found, she had no cell phone or ID on her?”

  “Molina mentioned it,” said Rafferty, stifling a yawn. “The mom said she’d lost her cell phone and wallet a couple of weeks ago. So it has nothing to do with her running away.”

  Vega recalled the story Molina had told him about Deisy losing her phone—and how, right after that, the girl had run away. But the mention of the wallet was new.

  And then it hit him.

  Vega pulled out his phone. “Is Danny still with Hilda?”

  “The mother?” asked Rafferty. He’d already forgotten her name. “I think so.”

  Vega dialed Molina’s cell. “Hey, man. It’s Jimmy. Where are you?”

  Molina said he’d already left Hilda Ardon’s apartment and was heading to the station.

  “I’m going to text you a picture when I hang up,” said Vega. “I need you to go back to Hilda and show it to her. Ask her if the wallet in the picture belonged to her daughter. The wallet has a cell phone compartment. Ask her if that’s where Deisy kept her phone.”

  Vega hung up and texted Molina the picture of the wallet. His gaze settled on the compartment that was designed to hold a cell phone. It was empty. He didn’t want to think of the implications.

  “You county hotshots really like to take over, don’t you?” said Rafferty.

  “I’m not taking over. Deisy Ramos was connected to a case I’m working on.”

  “Yeah? Well her death ain’t your case, Vega. It ain’t even ours. It belongs to the NYPD. You’re here as a favor to Danny.”

  “I’m here”—Vega pressed a knuckle on the table—“to ID Ramon Ramirez. You want? I can do it with your chief.”

  Rafferty’s brows narrowed until they were one continuous dark mark separating his forehead from the rest of his face. He turned to his computer and punched in the password like each key needed to be personally hammered down. He pulled up a mug shot and turned the screen to face Vega.

  “This is Ramon Ramirez. Is this the mutt you saw Deisy with in the Bronx?”

  Vega stared at the picture. There were things he hadn’t been able to take in about Ramon Ramirez at a distance. The sloped forehead and low brow, like he was posing for one of those National Geographic renderings of prehistoric man. The dark pelt of hair resting high atop his scalp. That slight upward thrust of his chin that suggested he’d never met an adversary he was scared to take on.

  But the one thing Vega couldn’t forget was that eye. The way it wandered like a lighthouse searchlight.

  “That’s him,” said Vega. “I’m sure of it. He has brothers?”

  “One we know about,” said Rafferty. He pulled up another mug shot on the screen and showed it to Vega. The brother was leaner and slighter with a turn of the lips that suggested he was mocking the camera. He had pitted, acne-scarred skin and eyes that looked like they registered slights easily. Vega suspected he was the brains to Ramon’s brawn.

  “This one is Carlos Ramirez,” said Rafferty. “Also known as ‘Chucky.’ Like the doll from the horror movies.”

  Vega looked over the rap sheets on both men. Both had been arrested numerous times. For possession of stolen property, possession of narcotics, and pimping. But either the charges were thrown out or bargained down. There were no charges for the past three years.

  “It’s like Danny said,” Vega noted. “The gang went dark. I guess they moved to the Bronx and paid the right people.”

  “Or they found a scam we haven’t been able to catch them at.” Rafferty tucked his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. He’d surrendered to the notion years ago, it seemed, that some criminals couldn’t be beaten.

  “With a record like this, how come the Ramirez brothers haven’t been deported?”

  “They’re American-born, my friend. Raised in El Salvador with a deported mom but born right here in the good ole U.S.A. Some dirtbags, you can’t return to sender.”

  Vega’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He looked at the screen, assuming it was Molina calling about the wallet. But it wasn’t Molina. It was Adele’s best friend, Paola Rosado. Vega picked up on the first ring. His mind raced at all the terrible reasons Paola—instead of Adele—would be calling him.

  Never could he have imagined the real one.

  Chapter 31

  The cops in the station house acted like schoolkids when Officer Bale brought Adele inside. All conversation stopped. They flattened themselves against the walls, mouth breathing as Bale led her down the hall for booking. She could feel their eyes watching her while they pretended not to. She had a sense the entire station had heard the report over the radio. They all knew what she’d been stopped for.

  Adele tried to hold her head up with dignity and remind herself that she’d never used heroin in her life. She’d barely puffed a joint—and that wasn’t until she got to Harvard. She was so boringly clean, the first time she tried pot, she choked on the fumes, got nauseous, and ended up nursing a Diet Pepsi while everyone else laughed over nothing and stuffed their faces with potato chips.

  This was a sham arrest. In time, everyone would know that.

  In the meantime, how would she explain this to Sophia? Her ten-year-old was bound to find out. Arrests were a matter of public record. This one was likely to spark the interest of
the local press. Not to mention a barely veiled mention on the Lake Holly Moms Facebook page. Parents would gossip. Kids would overhear.

  Bale walked her over to a bench in the hallway. He uncuffed her hands from behind her back. Adele felt a burning in her shoulders and pins and needles along her biceps.

  “Sit,” said Bale. Adele obeyed and Bale cuffed one wrist to the bench. Then he walked away.

  “Wait. You’re leaving me?” she asked. “I want to call my lawyer.”

  When people say, I have the kind of best friend who’d spring me from jail, no questions asked, they mean Paola Rosado. Literally. Not that Adele ever expected to take her up on it.

  “This isn’t the Hilton,” Bale growled. “You’ll get your call when I’m ready.”

  Lake Holly wasn’t a hotspot of crime, especially on a Sunday evening. There were two uniformed officers sitting at a counter, doing paperwork. The entire detectives’ division and all the brass had gone home. The place looked dead. Adele was sure Bale was doing this just to humiliate her.

  Nobody spoke to her. She was a bag of trash to them. Only Fitzgerald, the rookie, seemed mildly uncomfortable with the situation.

  “You want a coffee?” he offered.

  “No. Thank you,” said Adele. “What I want is to call my lawyer.” Adele had left her handbag in her car. Her wallet, keys, and cell phone were inside. She had nothing—not even a way to reach her daughter and tell her where she was. She was glad she knew Paola’s cell number by heart.

  It took twenty minutes for Bale to appear again. He was nursing a can of Red Bull when he returned.

  “I want to call my lawyer,” Adele repeated.

  “You don’t need a lawyer,” said Bale. “You can go home right now.”

  Adele waited. She knew there was a catch.

  “Just sign an affidavit that the heroin is yours and I’ll get you a desk appearance ticket,” Bale assured her. “Get you released on your own recognizance. It’s a first offense. The judge is just going to order you into treatment, anyway.”

  He was lying and Adele knew it. He didn’t catch her with one baggie of heroin. He caught her with 140 baggies. Felony weight. Either way—one baggie or a 140—Adele wasn’t confessing to anything.

  “I want my lawyer,” she said again.

  Bale rocked on the balls of his feet. Like a lot of weight lifters, he didn’t look especially agile. All those muscles might pack strength, but they made him look awkward and heavy-footed. He let out a tense breath of air like he’d just bench-pressed a buffalo.

  “You want to do it the hard way? Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  He took out a key and unlocked the cuff that was attached to a ring on the bench. Then he attached it to her other wrist in front. He walked her down the hall to a small room with a glass window that looked out on the detectives’ bullpen. He pushed her shoulders down in a chair across from him and powered up a computer. He scrolled the screen until he came to what looked like some kind of intake form. He asked Adele for her full name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. He pecked them into the computer without looking at her. The glow of the screen lit up a look of surprise in his beady eyes as something opened on a window in the right-hand corner.

  “You were arrested before?”

  Adele didn’t answer. It was all there. When she was at Harvard, she’d participated in a demonstration against stop-and-frisk tactics being used in Cambridge on people of color. She’d been arrested on a misdemeanor charge of unlawful assembly. The citation was almost twenty years old.

  Bale ran a hand across his shaved head and smiled at her like a shark zeroing in on prey. “Sure you don’t want to reconsider my offer? You go to trial, it’s going to be on felony weight.”

  Adele didn’t answer. Bale gave up and finished typing in her basic information. Then he uncuffed her hands and scanned her prints into a digital scanner. At least she wouldn’t have ink-smudged hands. When Bale was finished, he stood her up in front of a height board and took front and profile photographs. Even if the case was dismissed, Adele’s prints and mug shot would forever show up in the system.

  “You know,” said Bale, while he was setting up the shots.

  “You give me your dealer on this dope, I could make this whole case a lot easier on you. Hell, you probably know half a dozen dealers in Lake Holly through that immigrant center of yours. You could pick one out at random.”

  Was that what this was about? Adele wondered. Had she been set up because the cops thought some immigrants were dealing heroin and figured she had insider knowledge?

  Bale couldn’t delay the inevitable. He took Adele over to a phone on the counter, punched nine to get an outside line, then let her make her call. Adele got Paola on the first ring. Her best friend was rightly shocked and promised to be over as soon as possible.

  “Can you make two phone calls for me first?” asked Adele. “Can you call Peter and tell him what’s happened. Tell him not to tell Sophia. Just say I had car trouble and I need her to stay with him tonight.”

  “Of course.”

  “And can you also call Jimmy for me?”

  “Will do.”

  Bale walked Adele down to the basement holding cells after she’d made her call. He unlocked a metal door and swung it open. A stench of sweat, mixed with the odor of mildew and urine, assaulted her. The heating ducts thrummed overhead.

  There were three cells, measuring about six feet by nine, each with a concrete bunk covered over in a thin, ripped vinyl pad that Adele didn’t even want to sit on, much less lie down on. Across from the bunk was a stainless-steel toilet—right there in the open for every cop on camera to watch. There were no windows—only fluorescent lights that blazed twenty-four-seven, and a TV in a corner tuned to whatever the cops wanted it tuned to. Right now, it was Fox News.

  God, she hated Fox News.

  Adele was relieved that at least she was the only one down here on a Sunday evening.

  “When is Judge Keppel coming in for the arraignment?” asked Adele.

  Bale unlocked the cell closest to the door and motioned for Adele to step inside. He slammed the bars shut with a little too much gusto. “Sometime tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow . . . ?” Adele felt a moment of panic surge through her. “But he lives in town. He could come in right now if necessary.”

  “I’m not calling the judge in on a Sunday evening,” said Bale. “Besides, I think he’s away for the weekend.”

  “This is absurd,” she fumed. “You could release me on my own recognizance right now and let me just show up tomorrow morning.”

  Bale gripped the bars as if testing their strength. His neck bulged. His jaw tightened. He was like one giant rubber band pulled too taut.

  “You’re a lawyer, Adele,” he sneered. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the law. The police have twenty-four hours to bring charges—habeas corpus and all that crap. Which means you got two choices. You can park your corpus here until nine a.m. tomorrow. Or you can take our chauffeur-driven limo to the county lockup.”

  Not the jail, thought Adele. She wanted to stay as far away from that hellhole as possible.

  “I’m staying here until my lawyer can get me out.”

  “Well then.” Bale pushed himself off the bars. “Have a good night.”

  * * *

  Paola showed up in under an hour—the longest hour of Adele’s life. Bale was out on patrol when she arrived. Fitzgerald, the rookie, brought Adele up from the holding cells and into one of the interrogation rooms. The station didn’t have a formal room for suspects and their lawyers to confer.

  Paola was already seated at the flimsy Formica-topped table. Her long, glossy black hair was pulled into a tight bun. Her white blouse and navy slacks looked Supreme Court ready. She wore only lipstick this evening—she probably didn’t have time to do more. But she looked cool and professional as always.

  Growing up, Adele was the girl who sweated every assignment and got places throug
h her fiery intellect and sheer force of will. Paola worked less, charmed more, and ultimately achieved the same success. She went to an Ivy League law school—University of Pennsylvania instead of Harvard. She became a criminal defense attorney at a top law firm. She was on track to make partner in about four years. Adele sometimes wondered if sweating all the small stuff had really worked out in the end.

  It certainly didn’t look that way now.

  “Thank you for coming,” said Adele.

  “You think I wouldn’t? I’m as outraged as you are.” Paola opened up a large black leather briefcase and took out a notebook and pen.

  “First things first,” she said. “I spoke to Peter. He’s keeping Sophia for the night. She’s angry that you’re ‘working’ again”—Paola lifted her fingers in quote marks—“but she’ll survive.”

  “Until some PTA mom who subscribes to the local on-line rag reads the arrest log.”

  “Let’s worry about that when it happens, shall we?” said Paola. “I spoke to Jimmy too. He’s doing a little legwork for me.” Paola set the notebook and pen in front of her. “Now. Tell me what happened—from the beginning.”

  Adele gave Paola some background on Edgar Aviles and his situation at the synagogue. Then she walked her through her flat tire, Bale showing up and offering to change it and then finding the bag of heroin bundles when he went to retrieve the spare.

  “Needless to say, I’ve never seen those bundles before in my life,” said Adele. “I don’t even know if they are heroin. The field test could be bogus. This could be some ridiculous prank.”

  Paola’s eyes darkened. She tapped her pen absentmindedly on her notebook. “I checked with Bale on the phone before I drove in. He tested a second sample here at the station. It also came back positive for heroin and fentanyl. If this goes to trial, I’ll insist all of it be tested, but for now, we have to assume we’re dealing with about seven grams of the real thing.”

  Adele cursed under her breath. “I feel like an idiot. I mean, I had no idea there were narcotics in my car. But even so, I’m a criminal defense attorney. I should know better than to allow a police officer access to my car without a warrant. What the hell was I thinking?”