No Witness But the Moon(78)

Chapter 28


Vega called Joy from Dr. Cantor’s driveway.

“I did it,” he said. “I saw the shrink.”

A heavy silence hung on the line. “And that’s supposed to make everything okay?”

“No.” He felt small and powerless. He wanted so much to earn back his daughter’s respect. He had no idea how.

“About last night—” he began. “I was only trying to protect you—”

“Dad, when are you going to learn to quit rationalizing things and start owning up to them?”

Vega closed his eyes. He wanted to do better. Joy deserved better.

“I know I suck at apologizing.” It took all his willpower to admit that. “It probably cost me my marriage to your mother. Or helped, in any case.” He took a deep breath. “But for what it’s worth, I’m really, truly sorry for what I did. All of it. The shooting. My behavior on campus. And especially that fistfight last night at the diner. I embarrassed you. I embarrassed myself. I can’t bring back a man’s life. But I can try to make things right between us. I want to do that, chispita. If you’ll let me.”

Silence. Vega felt a sudden panic that he’d said the wrong thing. Everything that came out of his mouth toward his daughter—about her tattoo, her career choices, her friends—was wrong. He wondered if it was already too late to earn back her trust.

“Do you know,” she said finally, “that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you really apologize?”

“I guess it was overdue.”

“By about a decade.” And just like that, a light switch flipped back on. Her whole manner toward him changed. Was that how it worked? Vega wondered. Could genuine remorse, honestly expressed, really be that cathartic between people? He felt embarrassed that it had taken him all these years to figure that out. Then again, you could say sorry for a fistfight and maybe put the pieces back together. No amount of sorrys brought back a life. Maybe that’s what Greco meant about being forever changed.

“You aren’t anywhere near Lake Holly, I suppose?” asked Joy.

“I’m in Dr. Cantor’s driveway in Wickford. Why?”

“Mom and Alan and the boys had to go to an event at the synagogue” said Joy. “Can you give me a ride to the train station?”

“You’re still going to see your friend today?”

“At Fordham. Yes.”

Fordham. Just the word made Vega’s stomach ricochet like he was on some carnival ride.

“Dr. Torres is also going to give me a tour of his school after the basketball tournament is over this afternoon.”

“Look, Joy, maybe you want to hold off. People hear you’re my daughter and—”

“I’m not walking around with a banner over my head, Dad. I’ll be fine. See you in ten.”

Vega drove to Lake Holly taking the same local roads he’d driven on the way over. He was testing himself. Testing his nerve.

I can handle this.

He went back to the signpost with the crime scene tape. He tried to breathe and found that he could. Good. He swilled some water in his mouth and made the turn onto Oak Hill. He’d do one drive around the cul-de-sac and then head back down. So far, so good. He wasn’t shaking. He was breathing steadily. His stomach was a little off. But okay, that was to be expected.

That was before he saw Adele’s pale green Prius parked by the curb.

He knew it was Adele’s. She had a Lake Holly Elementary School bumper magnet on the hatch and a little soccer ball with the Ecuadorian flag dangling from her rearview mirror. What was she doing here? Vega’s insides felt like they’d been folded, creased, and sent through the shredder.

He quickly reversed his car and sped down the hill. He turned on the radio to distract himself. “Heat of my Heart” blasted out of the speakers. Goddamn this guy! Vega angrily punched the radio button off. All his misery these last forty-eight hours began and ended with Ricardo Luis. There was so much Vega wanted to ask him and couldn’t. Why was he alone in that house Friday night? How come he answered the door? Did he ever see a second assailant?

What was he doing with Adele?

Vega tried to push the last question out of his head and concentrate on Friday night. He wished he knew what Luis was thinking when he dialed 911. But the police would have that audiotape under lock and key at county dispatch now, given that it was part of an ongoing investigation. Vega would need a case number to access it. And nobody on the investigation was about to give him that—especially not after the way he’d been behaving.

Then again, maybe he didn’t need to ask. In Joy’s driveway, Vega pulled out his phone and scrolled through his photos until he came to the evidence pictures Dolan had sent him Friday night. There it was, on the upper right hand corner. His way in.

“So what are you planning to do today, Dad?” Joy asked him on the drive to the train station.

“Oh, this and that.”

Joy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I won’t get into any fistfights, I promise.”

She kissed him on the cheek as she left the truck. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Always.” He could hope.

*

The county’s emergency dispatch headquarters was located in a shoebox of a building on the state medical college campus, a sprawling patchwork of parking lots that cobbled together the most unlikely collection of services. Besides the county hospital, there was the county jail, rimmed in double razor wire so no one mistook it for the equally unattractive hospital. There was also the medical examiner’s office, a shelter for battered women, and the county’s emergency dispatch service. Each division had its own unattractive beige cement building complete with a parking lot, a couple of ugly rotting picnic benches, and itty bitty signage so that if you didn’t know where you were going, you probably shouldn’t be there.