A Place in the Wind

by Suzanne Chazin

  “Is that Mercedes of yours in hock? Because I just found this in the snow behind my truck.” Vega knew that sometimes dealerships installed GPS devices on leased vehicles to guarantee a quick return if the client defaulted.

  Wendy looked offended. “We bought our Mercedes outright. In cash. From Alan’s bonus last year.”

  It figured.

  “Besides,” said Wendy, “why would you think it came from my car when it was sitting in back of your truck?”

  “Because my truck’s paid off too.” Vega turned the tracker off and walked the perimeter of his black Ford pickup. He’d hit a bad pothole turning onto the lake community’s main road last night. Could that have dislodged it from his rear bumper? If so, who put it there? And why? No one would be interested in taking possession of a seven-year-old truck with eighty thousand miles on it. He didn’t have a wife looking for proof of infidelity. He didn’t owe anyone money. Those were the usual reasons people put a tracking device on a vehicle without the owner’s permission.

  “Well, you turned it off now.” Wendy shrugged. “Problem solved.”

  Vega wondered if the problem was just beginning.

  Chapter 29

  Zoe’s mother’s name was Patsy Walker. She lived above a nail salon at the north end of Lake Holly, in a neighborhood that had largely turned Hispanic. She was home this morning because one of her younger children was sick with a respiratory infection and her mother, who had diabetes and was in a wheelchair, needed Patsy to drive her to the doctor later. When Vega entered the small, well-kept living room, he could smell the acetone from the nail salon radiating through the floorboards. He wondered if that was one of the reasons the child had a respiratory infection.

  “Thank you for coming over,” said Patsy. “Maybe we can speak in the kitchen. I don’t want Travis, my little one, overhearing any of this.”

  The boy with the croupy cough looked to be about eight. He was sitting in front of a large flat-screen TV that took up most of the living room. A cartoon was playing at top decibel. Patsy’s mother, sitting in the wheelchair, was watching too.

  “Sure. No problem,” said Vega. He tried to gauge Patsy’s age. He couldn’t. She had girlish eyes and brassy hair, which was growing out pale brown at the roots. And yet her cheeks were gaunt. Two parentheses bracketed her lips. He wondered if she’d lost a tooth or two due to lack of dental care or an accident. She looked like she’d been quite stunning as a teenager—far more than her daughter. But her stomach bulged now and her shoulders sagged. He had a sense she’d had Zoe young. Probably as a teenager. Which meant she was no more than about thirty-five.

  “This is my third sick day this month,” Patsy explained. “I’m probably going to lose my job at this rate.”

  “At the Safeway?”

  “At Lake Holly Discount Tires. I work at the Safeway in the evenings and at the tire store on weekends and while the kids are in school. I also do nails downstairs when they need me to fill in.”

  Patsy Walker held three jobs—seven days a week, it seemed—and she still lived here, in these few rented rooms above a nail salon. Vega hadn’t seen her car or Zoe’s, but he was betting they both were on their last legs, held together with repairs they were still paying off on maxed-out credit cards. Vega thought back to his own single mother and their couple of rooms in the Bronx. He wondered at the grit and determination it had taken for Luisa Rosario-Vega to get him beyond this. It didn’t look like Patsy ever would. And now Zoe might not either—all because of some callous and twisted boy.

  Patsy gestured for Vega to have a seat on one of the mismatched chairs at a rickety kitchen table. There were jam stains in one corner where the laminate had peeled off. She wiped the sticky spot down. On a wall above the table, Patsy had tacked up a poster of footprints in the sand. The “Jesus carried you” poem. Vega’s mother used to tack up inspirational religious poems all over their apartment as well. Vega saw more such poems on the refrigerator, along with a formal snapshot of a young, fair-skinned black man in a U.S. Marines uniform. It sat next to a magnet from the Mike Carp campaign: Take Back Our County! Nobody needed to ask from whom. Everybody who voted for him knew.

  Patsy assumed Vega was staring at the photograph.

  “My nephew,” she said. “He’s done three tours in Afghanistan.”

  “You must be very proud of him.” Vega looked at the photo and back at the campaign magnet. He couldn’t reconcile the two. Patsy Walker’s nephew was biracial. Her daughter’s friend, Lydia Mendez, was the child of undocumented immigrants. Her daughter’s other close friend, Catherine, volunteered at La Casa. Patsy Walker lived among Latinos and had more in common with the poor, deeply religious people here than with the Mike Carps of the world. And yet she’d obviously voted for Vega’s new boss. Maybe it was the way Carp promised something to a woman whose life seemed so desperate for promise. Like a secular version of the Old Testament God—powerful, vengeful, ready to smite all enemies. Promising much to the faithful. Delivering little but their faith.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Patsy asked him.

  “No, ma’am, thank you—”

  “Patsy. Please call me Patsy. I feel like I sort of know you, since I know your ex-wife a little. And Joy, of course.”

  “Where’s Zoe right now?” asked Vega.

  “She’s at work over at the department store. She hustles between jobs, like me. I guess you saw the video. She’d be mortified that I showed you.”

  “Did she tell you anything about where it came from?”

  Patsy shook her head. “Only that some frat boy took it. I have no idea if she even knows his name. He wasn’t a boyfriend. She doesn’t have time for a boyfriend and well . . . boys have never been especially kind to Zoe, as you can see.”

  Patsy’s eyes turned glassy. She snuck a glance out to the living room to make sure her son hadn’t seen. Vega wished he had a tissue to offer her. He noticed a stack of tiny square napkins by his elbow with a McDonald’s emblem in the corner. He held one out to her now.

  “Thank you,” said Patsy. She dabbed her eyes.

  “Why doesn’t Zoe want to see this boy punished?”

  “Embarrassment, I guess. Humiliation. Zoe doesn’t do drugs. She’s not a drinker. It was totally out of character for her to get drunk and pass out. Totally out of character to end up in some boy’s room.”

  Every parent says that. Even Vega. They were almost always wrong. He’d misjudged Joy more than once.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Patsy. “You see her purple hair and nose ring and tattoos. You look at where she comes from and you figure her for a druggie and a girl who sleeps around—”

  Vega started to protest, but Patsy stopped him. “It’s all camouflage—more to keep people away than to attract them. Until Catherine and Lydia came into her life, Zoe never had a real friend. She spent all her time holed up reading science fiction and fantasy books. It breaks my heart what happened to Catherine. She was a year younger than Zoe, but they just clicked on every level. Do you know what she did for Zoe’s birthday earlier this month?”

  “What?”

  “Between tuition and everything, Zoe didn’t have any extra cash at all. I baked her a birthday cake, of course. But Catherine—she came over while Zoe was at work and decorated the whole apartment with balloons and butterfly stickers. Zoe loves butterflies. It was just so Catherine—to figure out what Zoe needed and then try to make it happen. It really lifted her spirits. She’d been sort of down before that.”

  “Did she say why she was down?”

  “I think it was just the workload. Classes. Her jobs. She loved her internship, but that was a lot of work too.”

  “So Zoe and Catherine were still close after she went off to Valley?”

  “Oh, very. Catherine went to the campus nearly every Friday night. I think she liked the social life there.”

  “Really?” Vega thought about the Archers insisting that Catherine spent her Fridays at La Casa. Their daughte
r wouldn’t be the first teenager to lie about that sort of thing.

  “What did Zoe and Catherine do together there?” asked Vega.

  “They took in a lot of the art films. They went to some rallies. Zoe was involved in a lot of environmental issues on campus. She wanted to go into wildlife conservation. She loves animals. We’re not allowed to keep pets here, but if she could, she’d keep a whole menagerie. That’s the saddest part about her quitting college,” said Patsy. “She had to quit her internship as well. That was going to be a really big opportunity for her. She didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.”

  “Did Catherine’s parents know she was spending so much time with Zoe?”

  Patsy hesitated. “They have . . .” She stopped herself. “I feel so bad for her mother right now. I don’t think it’s my place to say anything.”

  “I’m not asking for the sake of gossip,” said Vega. “I’m asking as a cop.”

  Patsy balled up her napkin and took a deep breath. “Robin Archer didn’t want her daughter socializing with my Zoe.”

  “Was there a specific reason?”

  “Well,” Patsy gestured to the small kitchen with its mismatched appliances, “we aren’t them, clearly. But also, Zoe has always been her own person. Very headstrong. She probably encouraged some rebellion in Catherine toward her mother and her mother’s values. She would have been against the Archers going into business with Mike Carp and building on those wetlands. I’m sure she expressed her beliefs to Catherine.”

  “At the vigil the other night,” said Vega, “I saw Zoe go over and try to speak to Robin Archer. Robin rebuffed her.”

  “I think Robin blames Zoe for Catherine becoming more independent-minded as she got older. She probably thought that once Zoe started Valley, their friendship would fade. But if anything, it grew stronger. I’m sure they both thought they’d be best friends forever.” Patsy dabbed at her eyes. “Catherine even wrote that on Zoe’s birthday card.”

  “I’d really like to speak to your daughter,” said Vega. “Can you ask her to call me?”

  “I will,” said Patsy. “But like I said, Zoe’s very stubborn. I can only hope she follows through.”

  Vega rose from the table. Then a thought occurred to him.

  “Do you think Catherine knew about this video?”

  “Possibly,” said Patsy. “The girls shared everything.”

  Vega wondered if “everything” included Catherine’s pregnancy and the identity of the baby’s father. If so, then Zoe knew far more about Catherine than anyone imagined. Including the police.

  Chapter 30

  Vega left Patsy’s apartment unnerved by all she’d told him. At the very least, some frat boy on Joy’s campus had filmed a girl he’d likely raped—and scared her enough she was unwilling to come forward. Vega couldn’t tell Joy all of this, but he could warn her. He sent her a text: dinner tonight?

  She didn’t answer. She wasn’t the only one ignoring him.

  Adele.

  Vega couldn’t take the silence between them any longer. So he swallowed his pride and stopped by Hank’s Deli to pick up some bagels and cream cheese—a peace offering. Maybe food could do what his words could not. Lord knew, Oscar needed the business. Daily it seemed, the shrine to Benitez outside his store grew bigger and the number of patrons inside grew smaller.

  He expected to find Adele home, but when he got to her house, her car wasn’t in the driveway and there was a police cruiser parked outside Max Zimmerman’s. Two uniformed cops were banging loudly on the old man’s door.

  Vega pulled into Adele’s driveway and ran over. He recognized both officers from the vigil the other night, though he’d forgotten their names. The younger one was so fair-skinned that Vega could see the blue of his veins on his wrists. The older one had a name Vega could never remember. Something Italian with a lot of vowels.

  “What are you doing, Vega?” asked the Italian cop. His name tag read, Ianelli. “Following us around?”

  “My girlfriend lives next door. I know Max Zimmerman. What’s wrong?”

  “We got a report that some old guy was walking around on the sidewalk exposing himself. When we got here, he was already back inside. He won’t answer his door. We may have to break it down.”

  “What? For an eighty-eight-year-old man? He forgets to lock half the time anyway.”

  Ianelli tried the handle. It was unlocked. That’s when Vega remembered the gun on Zimmerman’s side table. “He owns a .357 Magnum.”

  Both cops felt for their holsters. Vega threw himself in front of the door.

  “Before you guys get any ideas of pulling a Benitez here,” said Vega, “the gun’s legal. Zimmerman has no criminal record—not even a driving infraction. The man just got out of the hospital from a fall. He’s probably shaky and nervous. Let me talk to him, all right? He knows me.”

  Vega knocked on the front door. “Mr. Zimmerman? Sir? It’s Jimmy Vega. Adele’s boyfriend? I helped you when you fell the other day? Please open up, sir. There are police officers here. We’re all trained professionals. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “They want to break into my house and take me away!” came a raspy voice on the other side of the door. “Nobody will ever do that to me again! Nobody!”

  Vega decided not to point out that Zimmerman had forgotten to lock the door and no break-in was necessary. “Mr. Zimmerman, nobody is going to take you away. I promise. Just open the door and talk to us. I’ll be right here.”

  Zimmerman opened it a crack and stood there in his dead wife’s fluffy pink bathrobe, holding on to his three-pronged cane. Vega saw right away what some neighbor—Mrs. Morrison, no doubt—had called about. He wasn’t wearing any clothes beneath his robe. Not even boxer shorts. He probably hadn’t realized it.

  “Mr. Zimmerman? The police just want to talk to you. Can you please open the door and show us both your hands?”

  “Why?”

  “So we can make sure you’re not armed. You’re afraid of these men. But believe me, they’re just as afraid of you.” Vega could feel the two officers behind him shuffling around. No cop likes to admit that he’s scared of the people he comes into contact with. And yet, if civilians realized how often simple fear, rather than malice, played a role in police encounters, maybe everyone would calm down a little.

  Zimmerman opened the door wider and showed Vega and the two officers his hands. One was wrapped around the handle of the three-pronged cane. The other was empty. It was pretty clear he wasn’t carrying a concealed weapon. His open robe left nothing to the imagination.

  “Sir? May we come inside?” asked Vega.

  “Okay.”

  Vega stepped into the foyer, followed by the two uniforms. The air was hot and fetid.

  “Mr. Zimmerman,” said Ianelli, “we received a complaint from a neighbor—”

  “What?” asked Zimmerman. “Speak up! I can’t hear you.”

  “I said, we received a complaint from a neighbor that you were walking around on the sidewalk exposing yourself.”

  “You mean like some queer fairy or something?” Zimmerman was old-school. No PC here. “Who said this terrible thing? Who? Mrs. Morrison?”

  “Mrs. Morrison lives right across the fence,” said Vega. “She and her kids are always throwing dog feces and garbage in his yard—”

  Ianelli put up a hand to silence Vega. He turned to Zimmerman. “Sir, the issue is not who alleged it, but whether it took place.”

  “I have a cane. I’m wearing a robe that requires two hands to tie. Two hands. Please tell me how I’m supposed to keep my robe closed and also get my morning paper. And what sort of meshuggener goes looking at an old man anyway?”

  Vega noticed the two cops taking in the house. Newspapers all over the floor. The smell of stale food in the garbage or left on a counter. The younger cop wrinkled his nose. Hart was his last name. Ianelli got a kind look on his face. Maybe he had older relatives he cared for too. “Sir?” Ianelli asked. “Do you h
ave a nurse’s aide? A helper who comes in?”

  Zimmerman waved the question away. “ I can take care of myself.”

  “You should probably get someone. A family member or someone from an agency. If we have to come back here again for the same complaint or similar complaints, we may have to notify social services. The matter may be out of your hands and ours.”

  “You would take an old man from his house? Against his wishes?” Zimmerman’s eyes grew wide. Something like fury burned deep within. Vega sensed he’d been a fighter in his youth—if not physically, then certainly in spirit. Vega had an image of Zimmerman taking his cane and swatting the officers in the legs. Assault. They would definitely take him then.

  “This is supposed to be a free country. A free country!” Zimmerman shouted. Vega stepped in between him and the officers. He turned to the cops. “How about you let me take it from here, okay?”

  Officer Hart went to object, but Ianelli stopped him. He turned to Vega. “He needs care, Vega. I’m happy to step back, but someone’s got to get him help. He can get help from an agency. Or go to a home. But something has to change. Otherwise, the next time, we may have to act.” The cop looked over Vega’s shoulder. “You understand me, Mr. Zimmerman?”

  “Nobody takes me out of my house,” Zimmerman repeated. “Nobody.” Vega wasn’t sure if the old man was responding to the officer’s threat or restating what he’d said before. Vega just wanted the two cops gone. He ushered them to the door.

  “Let me see what I can do.”

  After the officers left, Zimmerman was still muttering about being taken from his house. Vega tried to make him sit down and get calm. He brought him a glass of water. He sat across from him on a chair in the living room beneath a colorful framed poster of a carousel. He leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, relaxed and casual. But his voice was stone-cold serious.

  “Mr. Zimmerman—you need to listen to what I’m about to tell you,” Vega said. “You can’t stay alone anymore. You’ve got to get someone to come in and help you. That, or maybe go to assisted living. Some of those places are very nice.”