No Witness But the Moon(66)
Name of therapist? Date and time of appointment? Answer NOW.
Co?o! She wasn’t going to leave him alone about this. He was fine. When he was helping Sophia in the woods this evening, he felt strong and in control.
But would I have been if I’d been alone? he wondered. If I wasn’t focused on helping someone else?
He pulled out his wallet and rifled through the billfold until he found that scrap of paper Greco had given him with Ellen Cantor’s name and phone number. He left a message on her answering machine with his name, number, and a request for an appointment. At least it would get his lawyer off his back.
He walled himself off from the noise and commotion of the emergency room waiting area. All around him he heard babies crying and children whining for candy. Across from him he noted several glassy-eyed teenagers who’d clearly gotten into daddy’s booze and were now regretting it. He hoped they didn’t decide to get sick right now. His clothes had been through enough these past twenty-four hours.
An ambulance barreled up to the sliding glass doors of the emergency entrance. Vega lifted his head to see two EMTs hustling a bloody man on a stretcher through the doors and into the back. The man’s face was covered with an oxygen mask. A saline drip hung from a bag. On a Saturday night, he could be anything from a motorist in a car wreck to a drunk after a fistfight. Still, he looked to be in bad shape. He’d take precedence over all the sprains and broken bones in the waiting area. Adele might be awhile.
A Lake Holly uniformed patrol officer walked over to the admitting desk and began giving the nurse some basic check-in information. Vega went back to scrolling through his messages. He looked up just in time to see a familiar face hustling through the doors with a red licorice stick in his mouth. He took the licorice out of his mouth and began talking in low murmurs to the uniformed officer.
This was no car wreck. Detective Greco wouldn’t be wasting his Saturday night in the emergency room for that.
Vega got up from the couch and sidled up to Greco while he was speaking to the nurse. Greco turned, a sour look on his face.
“What are you doing here, Vega? You’re supposed to be under the equivalent of house arrest and you end up in the emergency room? I don’t even want to know what you two were up to.”
“Adele’s daughter sprained her ankle. I’m just waiting for them now.” Vega nodded his head toward the emergency room doors. “So is that the victim? Or a suspect you leaned on too hard?”
Vega expected Greco to toss off some snide comment and tell Vega to beat it. It wasn’t any of Vega’s business who the man was or what the Lake Holly PD wanted with him. Instead, the big man’s jaw set to one side and he studied Vega.
“Come. We need to talk.” Greco showed his badge at the security desk and ushered Vega into a waiting area by an operating room. He jerked a thumb at the doors.
“Call came in right after I dropped you off,” said Greco. “Couple of teenagers found him on the banks of the Brighton Aqueduct right near the pedestrian bridge.”
“A jumper?”
“That’s what I thought. Until I checked his wallet.”
“He was robbed?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing about him. It was the picture I found inside his wallet that got me. One of those department store Christmas photos. Of a man, a woman, and their two boys.”
“It’s gonna be a tough Christmas for them,” said Vega.
A door to the operating room opened and a doctor in scrubs emerged. These guys all used to look so ancient and biblical when Vega was a kid. Now they all looked like pro golfers in shower caps. The doctor pulled down his face mask and fixed his gaze on Greco. His eyes looked grim. “Are you the detective who brought him in?”
Greco nodded. “He didn’t make it?”
“Afraid not.”
“All right. Thanks.” The doctor went back into the operating room to clean up. Greco kicked the chair. Vega had never seen him so visibly distressed over a victim before.
“You probably couldn’t have saved him,” said Vega. “I guess you’re going to have to break it to his family that he’s dead.”
“That’s the problem,” said Greco. “They already think he is. The photograph I found in this guy’s wallet? It’s a picture of Hector Ponce with his family.”
Chapter 25
Vega paced the waiting area, barely able to breathe. He heard the rattle of metal trays, surgical instruments, and gurney wheels on the other side of the operating room door. The dead man was being spirited away down to the hospital morgue.
Doctors always get to bury their failures. Cops usually have to live with theirs.
Vega wanted to feel some measure of peace from the news. If what Greco said was true, Vega hadn’t killed Hector Ponce. Then again, Ponce was dead either way and Vega had still killed someone. Some other unarmed, Hispanic man. Some other human being with a family who was about to get the devastating news that a loved one was gone. The stain on Vega was no less great just because the name had changed.
The human being in him grieved. The cop in him wanted answers.
“Are you sure that was Hector Ponce in the operating room?” he asked Greco.
“No. But I just tagged the evidence in his wallet,” said Greco. “That family photo is identical to the one Alma Ponce released to the media. Do you keep pictures of other people’s families in your wallet?”