A Blossom of Bright Light

by Suzanne Chazin

“Were there any other businesses there you can remember?”

  “Yeah. A clothing store. For kids. A secondhand place, I believe. I remember because I saw a really nice robe in the window that I thought Sophia would have liked, but the store was closed. And anyway, I couldn’t exactly go in when we were supposed to be chatting up voters.”

  Vega typed secondhand children’s clothing into his computer. He came up with only two stores in the county. He typed the first address into Google Maps Street View to show Adele. It was in a storefront attached to a Victorian house.

  “No. That’s not it.”

  Vega typed the second address into Google Maps Street View. The image showed a strip of single-story poured-concrete stores all joined together in front of a small parking lot. In the middle was a plate-glass window with the words ONCE AGAIN KIDS spelled out overhead.

  “That’s it,” said Adele. In the same bank of stores was a plate-glass window with the words SUNRISE CAFÉ above it. “And that’s the diner. I’m sure of it.”

  Vega typed the address of Once Again Kids into his GPS. “They’re both in the Crossroads Shopping Center about ten minutes’ north of I-84. But the Google view isn’t showing a car wash.”

  “Because it’s off to the side and away from the road,” said Adele. “Plus, it looks like the image was shot in the summer when all the trees were leafed out, so it’s harder to see. But that car wash is definitely there. I know it is.”

  Chapter 41

  A door behind Luna opened, cutting a shaft of bluish light onto the cold, damp garage floor. Luna craned her neck to see a shadow filling the doorway. She made out the outline of a ponytail, the glow of those unnaturally white teeth. Luna was still tethered to the pipe, so she couldn’t run. She couldn’t even stand. Instead, she curled herself more tightly and tucked her head between her knees. Esme had killed the señor. Luna had no expectations that she would be spared. She just didn’t want to see the bullet when it came.

  Esme’s shoes clicked across the concrete floor. She tripped on the grooves of the tracking but caught herself in time. She stood before Luna and huffed out a laugh.

  “I’m not going to shoot you, mami. You are such a foolish girl.”

  Slowly Luna lifted her head. Esme was standing in front of her, the gun in her gloved hand, her breath forming white clouds in the space between them. “The señor raped my baby. He shamed me. Over and over again. He deserved to die. The only possible way to preserve my honor was to become a widow, do you understand?”

  She squatted down next to Luna, grabbed hold of the duct tape on her mouth, and ripped it off. Luna cried out in pain.

  “He’s lying in his car,” said Esme.

  The skin around Luna’s lips was throbbing. She tried to suck back the pain and focus on Esme’s words.

  “At some point the police will find him. I’ll leave the gun with his body, or you can take it with you.”

  “I—don’t want to take it,” Luna stammered out.

  Esme shrugged. “Suit yourself. The police will be looking for you. Probably it’s better to travel without it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The señor has been shot dead with his own gun. Your prints are on it.”

  “But you shot him.”

  “And who will believe you, chica? My car was never here. There’s no evidence we were together this afternoon. I’m taking the CRV back to the other car wash now. Don’t worry. The police will understand. You’re fifteen. A minor. The crime was self-defense. The señor brought you here to rape you, and you grabbed his gun and shot him. Everyone will understand.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “Look, I’m running out of time. Either I cut you loose and you run or I leave you like this and you starve or die of exposure. What’s it going to be?”

  “Cut me loose.”

  “Let me get a scissors from the office.”

  Esme walked back through the door. Luna heard the harsh metal clang of her life as she knew it ending. This was not the future her father had planned for her. She couldn’t believe how fast it had all unraveled.

  She waited for the scissors, but Esme never returned. She called out and suddenly, in the puddle by the garage door, Luna saw alternating flashes of red and blue like the color of snow cones.

  She wondered if her life was about to unravel even more.

  Vega’s car beams picked up a dark blue CRV in the parking lot by the Sunrise Café. He didn’t pull into the lot. Instead, he parked the car on the gravel shoulder just south of the shopping center.

  “Aren’t we going in there?” asked Adele.

  “I am. You’re not. You’ll stay locked in my car out here on the shoulder. I’m calling for backup and heading in on foot.”

  Vega radioed his location to dispatch. He reported the suspicious CRV in the lot. Then he flicked on his light bar. The bare branches on either side of the road came alive with splotches of red and blue. “This way, the cops who come will know you’re not one of the bad guys.”

  “Do cops really say bad guys?”

  “Nah.” He winked at her. “We usually say lawfully disadvantaged.”

  “Smartass.”

  Vega pulled on his jacket and a pair of gloves and did a quick inventory of his gear. He had his gun in his duty holster along with a flashlight and a radio. From his glove compartment, he pulled out a set of handcuffs. In one back pocket he felt for his Swiss Army knife. In the other were his wallet and cell phone.

  “If I find Luna, I’ll call you and bring her to you, okay? Promise me you’ll stay back where it’s safe.”

  “But we haven’t got much time—”

  “Promise me, Nena.”

  “Okay,” Adele sighed, “I promise.”

  He left her in the car and hiked back to the shopping center. He kept to the shadows around the perimeter while he surveyed the parking lot. The CRV appeared to be empty. There was another car parked in the lot as well. Near the car wash. Vega hadn’t noticed it before, but he could see the front of it now: that silver hood ornament that identified it as a Mercedes. He couldn’t see the license plate, but he was betting the car belonged to Charlie Gonzalez. He didn’t see Esme’s black Cadillac Escalade. Perhaps only Gonzalez was here.

  Vega unholstered his Glock nine millimeter and kept it down by his side. He stepped gingerly into the open to get a better look at the CRV. It was locked and definitely unoccupied. He moved to the Mercedes. It was a silver-colored sedan just like Gonzalez’s. Vega saw someone sprawled across the front seat. He took out his flashlight and shined it inside. Even in the half-light, he could see the big nose and balding head of Charlie Gonzalez. The beam picked up a dark, slick, dinner-plate-size stain on his shirt and another at his crotch. Vega wondered whether the shot to his heart or to his crotch came first. He could think of a lot of women who would probably have aimed low and worked their way up.

  He opened the driver’s-side door. Then he removed one of his gloves and felt Gonzalez’s neck for a pulse. There was none. He put his glove back on, closed the door quietly, and backed away from the sedan. He scanned the shopping center and the woods surrounding it.

  Somebody shot and killed Charlie Gonzalez. In all likelihood, they drove here in that CRV. Where were they now?

  A muffled female voice called out behind him. Vega turned. It was coming from inside the drive-through car wash.

  “Luna? Is that you?” Vega leaned up against the door of the car wash. It was constructed of heavy-duty steel and locked in the rolled-down position.

  “Help me, please,” the girl’s voice cried out. “I’m trapped. Esme Gonzalez tied me up and shot the señor.”

  “Where is she?” asked Vega. He cupped his eyes and squinted past the harsh glare of the center’s security lights. Nothing moved.

  “I don’t know,” said Luna.

  “Hang on. I’ll get you out.”

  The roll-down door would be impossible to break into without a locksmith or a hydraulic saw. But the o
ffice was unlocked. Vega went in and found a door that joined the office to the garage. He pushed it open and scanned the space with his flashlight. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but then he saw her. She was curled up in a ball on the cement floor, her hands and feet bound in duct tape, her ankles joined by a long strand of tape to a pipe on the wall. Her face and arms were filthy and scraped. She blinked in the harsh glare of the beam. She was shivering.

  Vega took off his jacket and wrapped it around her.

  “I’m a police officer, Luna. A friend of Adele Figueroa’s. She’s in my car. You’re safe—okay, Mija?” Vega took out his radio and called in a request for an ambulance. He was relaying the information when a loud slam echoed through the cavernous interior. The world went from shadowy to pitch black, save for the beam of Vega’s flashlight.

  “The door!” cried Luna.

  “It’s okay,” said Vega. “I’m right here.” Though he had no idea where “here” was anymore. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He couldn’t tell where Luna was except by the sound of her panicked, rapid-fire breathing behind him. Vega retraced his steps, feeling his way along the metal tracking and across a set of pipes mounted on the wall. His flashlight beam picked up the door. It sat between two large spinning brushes. He tried the handle. It wouldn’t budge.

  Then Vega heard a gurgle and hiss that made his heart stop in his chest, made him feel five years old again, sitting next to his father all those years ago.

  Someone had started up the car wash.

  Chapter 42

  Gears groaned as they shifted into position. Water percolated through the pipes. Vega heard the clanking of heavy machinery and the whir of brushes, some of which he couldn’t see, not even with his flashlight. He ducked a boom that swung across his field of vision and stepped back from something spinning behind him. Strips of cloth thrashed his arms and legs, snagging on his trousers and dragging him closer to their whirling tentacles. He stumbled as he fought to free himself. A hiss of water circulated above him. Vega felt the ice-cold sting as it rained down.

  “Help me!” Luna cried.

  “I’m coming!”

  Vega took a step forward, but a blast of water shot out from a pipe on the wall, drenching him and knocking the flashlight from his hand. It skittered off into the darkness. He took a step forward, tripped on the metal track, and landed hard on the concrete floor. He tried to get back on his feet, but a slick coating of soapsuds now covered the floor. It stung his eyes. He couldn’t see. His gun, radio, and phone were waterlogged and useless. His flashlight gave off a faint blur in the distance. Huge brushes and buffers spun around him. Already Vega had seen how easy it would be for one of these spinning monsters to attach itself to his arm or his leg and reel him in like a fish. When there was no more reel, it would cinch him tight enough to sever a limb or fling him headfirst against a cement wall.

  Miedoso, miedoso. His father’s taunt of “coward” echoed in his brain. The old man was right. He was terrified of this dark, wet, slippery tomb with its giant machines that could kill him with one wrong move. But he was more scared of something else at the moment. He couldn’t hear Luna.

  “Luna!” he screamed through the churning suds. He heard something like a choked cry. He felt his way forward through the icy pounding water, trying to navigate away from the machines by touch and sound. His foot stumbled over a sneaker. She was gasping.

  He groped around in the dark. His fingers were so cold he could barely move them. He felt the rubber soles of her sneakers and traced his hands along the duct-tape rope that was attached to her ankles like an umbilical cord. The rope stopped in a cinch around her neck. One of the spinning brushes was grabbing it, pulling it tighter with each rotation.

  There had to be an emergency shutoff button inside the car wash, but it wasn’t illuminated, and it was too dark to see it. By the time Vega found such a button, Luna could be dead. He had to get that duct tape off her neck right away, or she’d choke to death.

  My Swiss Army knife. Vega dug into his back pocket. Cutting through the tape was the only way he could save Luna. But his fingers were numb and the knife sharp. He couldn’t see, blinded as he was by the water, suds, and darkness. If he slipped, he could slit her throat. If he waited, the spinning brush would kill her anyway.

  He opened his knife and tried to snake a finger between the soft cartilage of her neck and the rolled thickness of the duct tape. He was choking her, but he didn’t have a choice. Better he cut his own finger than slice her jugular.

  “Hold on, Luna!” he begged over the roar of the machines and the rumble of the spinning brushes. Every second that ticked by cinched the cord tighter. He pulled it as far away from her neck as he could and shoved the knife blade under. Then he yanked the knife toward him. He felt the duct tape bend and kink, but he couldn’t get it to tear. He tried again, but the blade was no match against the sticky fibrous layers. He had stretched the tape enough to buy her time, but he hadn’t freed her. With each rotation of the brushes, it would cinch a little tighter no matter what he did.

  I have to find the emergency shut-off button. I have to stop the machines. It’s the only way to save her life.

  Vega spotted his flashlight glowing beneath the gears of one of the undercarriage washers. He dove beneath the spray to retrieve it, shivering from the blasts of water that assaulted him. He closed his eyes against the stinging soap and strained until his numb fingers were able to wrap themselves around the flashlight. He pulled it toward him and cradled it to his chest so it didn’t skitter out of his hands again. Then he ran the beam of light along the walls. There had to be a way to cut the power. There just had to be.

  Luna wasn’t crying. She wasn’t gasping. Was he already too late? Vega scanned the walls. And then he saw it—a glowing red button. It was on the other side of a boom that moved up and down, probably to spray water over the hood of a car. If he tried to cross under it at the wrong time, the whole boom would come down like a guillotine and crack his skull or break his back. It was like a deadly game of double Dutch. The girls in his old Bronx neighborhood could jump those ropes with their eyes closed. Vega had to hope that his timing as a musician gave him at least some of their precision and dexterity. Luna’s life depended on it.

  One . . . two . . .

  . . . Miedoso . . .

  Three. He slid under, skidding through the soap, his eyes burning as he held on tightly to his flashlight. His feet hit the cement wall. His body barely missed the boom. He stood, made a fist, and pounded the button.

  Instantly, everything stopped. The spinning brushes. The gears. The jet streams spurting from pipes. The only sound Vega heard was the feathery pitter-patter from the cloth strips overhead.

  There were no other sounds.

  “Luna!” he screamed, his voice rubbed raw from the chemicals and the cold.

  She didn’t answer. Vega scanned the darkness with his flashlight until the beam picked her up. She was lying on the floor of the car wash still covered in his jacket, not moving. Her skin looked pale. Was he already too late? He still couldn’t cut the tape, but without the spinning brush yanking on the cord, he was able to unwind it from the rotors and ease it off her neck. He saw the red welt where it had been. Her pulse was weak. She wasn’t breathing. He tilted her head and began CPR.

  “Hang on, Luna. Your family needs you,” he grunted to her between chest compressions. “Dulce and Mateo are waiting. You can’t let them down. You can’t let your father down.”

  He heard sirens in the distance. The ambulance was on its way. It felt like too little, too late.

  Chapter 43

  A state police trooper unlatched the bolt across the door that separated the car wash from the office.

  “What the—?”

  Vega pushed past him with Luna in his arms, both of them trailing puddles of water and white foam. She was breathing on her own at least now—a good sign. Still, her pulse was erratic and she was shaking uncontrollably. V
ega laid Luna across a bench in the office and scanned the parking lot. He expected Esme to have taken the CRV and left. But the CRV was still parked in the exact same spot.

  “Sir?” said the trooper. “I’m going to need to ask you—”

  Vega cut him off. There was no time to spare. He fished a soggy wallet out of his wet pants and opened it to his badge and ID. “I’m a detective with the county police. I’m the cop who called in the shooting.” Vega didn’t want the trooper to mistake him for the suspect. “The assailant is a thirty-one-year-old Hispanic female by the name of Esmeralda Gonzalez. She’s armed. Have you apprehended her yet?”

  “I just pulled in and saw your car parked down the road a little ways and the victim in that Mercedes. I haven’t seen anyone else.”

  Vega flashed on his last words to Adele: Promise me you’ll stay back where it’s safe.

  Coño! For once, she’d listened.

  He fished his cell phone out of his pocket. He couldn’t get it to turn on. There were watermarks beneath the screen. He cursed.

  “You need a phone?” asked the trooper, handing Vega his.

  “Thanks. Do you have an emergency blanket in your car for the girl?”

  “Affirmative. I’ll get it now.” Vega dialed Adele. Her phone rang, then went to voice mail.

  Pick up. Pick up . . .

  The trooper hustled back through the doors with a thermal blanket that looked like a roll’s worth of aluminum foil. Vega spoke quickly. There was no time to spare.

  “I need you to wrap the girl and stay with her until the ambulance arrives,” said Vega. He bent down so Luna could see him. “I’ll be right back, Mija. My vehicle’s parked just down the road. I need to check on something.” No way did he want to advertise that he’d brought a civilian to a crime scene. No way did he want Adele out there by herself.

  His black leather lace-ups squished as he ran across the asphalt parking lot. Adrenaline was keeping him warm, pumping him up with anxiety and dread. She should have been at that gala for Schulman tonight. She should have been accepting a political post in Washington, D.C.—not out here on this dark, forsaken two-lane with a small-time cop who couldn’t rescue a kid without nearly getting her killed. A lot of good he could do anybody now anyway. His phone was toast. It was possible his radio and gun were too. About the only thing that still worked was his cheap Timex watch. It showed eight thirty on the dial. The whole reason Adele had come out here was to try to free Manuel Serrano, and already, it seemed too late.