A Blossom of Bright Light (12 page)

“What's
jowww?”VegaaskedJoy
.

“
Jowwwmeans‘find'inChinese
. The trooper said many handlers give their dogs commands in lesser-known foreign languages. A lot use Czech and Dutch. She chose Chinese. That way, no criminal can ever control the animal.”

“Unless he wants to order sweet and sour pork.”

The dog's tail was curled tightly. She lowered her head and kept her nose close to the ground, pulling the trooper along by the leash. The dog seemed headed in a straight line for Joy.

“What will Daisy do when she finds me?” asked Joy.

“Usually they're taught to sit at attention and bark,” said Vega.

“She won't attack or anything?”

Vega felt the throb in his calf and winced. He hadn't told Joy about getting bitten last night. And this certainly wasn't the time to discuss it. “She won't attack. Not unless the trooper gives the command to bite. But hey, she'll probably want chopsticks and a fortune cookie first.”

“Not funny, Dad.”

Daisy was halfway to Joy when a gust of wind blew through the quad. The dog stopped in her tracks and lifted her snout in the air. Then she turned in a circle like she was chasing her tail. When she came out of the spin, she began heading north of Joy's location, maneuvering between legs and bicycles and skateboards with such single-minded determination, the trooper had to jog to keep hold of the leash.

“What the—?” said Vega, cupping a hand over his eyes.

“Where does that dog think it's going?” asked Adele.

“What is it?” Joy asked from beneath the table.

Vega was no dog handler, but he'd been around a fair number of police dogs through the years. He'd seen dogs fail to track a scent. He'd seen dogs give up. But he'd never seen a dog so focused and so entirely wrong.

“The dog is heading north,” he said. “I haven't been on campus in a while. I thought there was just woods back there.”

“Until you hit the shopping center,” said Joy. “But there's a fence in between.”

Vega expected the trooper to tug on the dog's leash and shove Joy's jacket in the animal's face again. But the trooper continued to let the dog take control. She was either some sort of dog whisperer or she was too embarrassed to admit that her dog had screwed up.

The dog stopped at the far end of the quad and circled again. There was something in the German shepherd's posture that felt like alarm, something eerily human in the way the animal kept doubling back and rechecking herself. None of the students seemed to register the change in the atmosphere. But Vega felt it. Like static electricity. It pricked his skin and revved up his senses like he'd just mainlined a double espresso. It was the same sharp bite he used to feel in uniform when he made a traffic stop that he sensed was going to turn into anything but routine. Daisy was, after all, a search-and-rescue dog. Some SAR dogs are also cadaver dogs. He didn't want to alarm Adele or Joy, but he didn't think this dog was just plain incompetent, either.

“Should I get up?” asked Joy.

“Yeah. All right,” said Vega. Dogs have terrible eyesight. If Daisy couldn't smell Joy, she definitely wasn't going to be able to see her at this distance.

“Maybe there are too many students in the quad,” Adele suggested. “All those different smells.”

“Dogs smell like we see,” said Vega. “They don't combine scents. Each one is distinct. That's why you can't wrap cocaine in fabric softener sheets and expect to sneak it past a trained police dog.” And Daisy
was
trained, Vega reminded himself. A dog like that was too smart to make such a big mistake. Then again, maybe this wasn't a mistake. Maybe Daisy had a bigger mission in mind.

“Wait here,” Vega told both of them. “I want to see what's going on.”

He caught up to the trooper and Daisy on a pathway north of the quad. Daisy was pulling hard and fast on her harness and panting as she tracked and then circled, lifting her snout into the air before zeroing in on the pavement again. Swear to God, Vega would kill that dog if all she was following was some kid's discarded meatball hero in a Dumpster behind the shopping center.

“So much for tracking my daughter,” Vega huffed as he trotted alongside the trooper. The trooper was young and fair-haired, with the sort of sinewy build and even, unassuming features that separately promised beauty but together added up to bland. “Pioneer stock” was the way Vega might have described her. Of course the uniform didn't help, with its Smokey-the-Bear hat and Gestapo-tailored gray jacket and pants.

“That was your daughter?”

“She's a freshman here.”

The trooper flung Joy's leopard-print jacket at him. “Then you might as well take this.”

He caught the jacket and kept up his stride.

She regarded Vega from the corner of her eye. “You're welcome to go back to your daughter.”

“Think I'll tag along.”

“I'm perfectly capable of working my dog.”

“Well,
your
dog is in
my
jurisdiction, so you're stuck with me until we figure out whether Daisy's got a bead on something, or she just has a Jones for some shrimp fried rice.”

“She
responds
to Chinese, Detective. She doesn't eat it.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe next year, the state police can just bring pens like everyone else. In China, she'd be a menu item.”

The trooper gave Vega an appalled look but stopped suggesting he stay behind.
Good.
Beyond the path, the campus trailed off into untended woods and thickets of brambles. Clouds swirled overhead like ink stirred into water. The wind picked up. Vega felt the first drops of rain.
Shit.
He didn't even have a jacket on now.

Daisy hopped over a fallen log and into the woods. Vega and the trooper followed. Thick gray stalks of maples and oaks obscured their field of vision. A lot of the leaves back here had already fallen, and the ground was blanketed with moldering acorns. Vega felt the first insistent drops of rain. His calf hurt. The gauze bandage scraped against the fabric of his pants every time he swung his leg.

“We'll be at the shopping center in a minute at this rate,” he panted.

“There's a shopping center back here?”

“That's why you need a cop who knows the terrain, Trooper—?”

“Sorenson. Becca Sorenson.”

“Jimmy Vega.” Vega nodded to the dog's harness. It kept getting snagged on low-lying branches. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner they could take cover before the rain came down in earnest. “Is your dog trained to search off harness?”

“Yes.” Sorenson unhooked the animal and shouted, “
Chooo!”
Daisy bounded ahead.

“That a sneeze? Or did you just tell the dog something?”

“
Chooo
is the command to fetch in Chinese.”

“A Chinese German shepherd,” huffed Vega. “You couldn't have at least taught it German?”

“The dog doesn't know she's a German shepherd,” said Sorenson.

“Well, she better know she's a search-and-rescue dog or she's gonna be retired after this.”

Thirty feet in front of them, the dog stopped and began pacing back and forth in front of a dark, moss-covered tree limb that was lying across a pile of wet fallen leaves. Vega would have passed right by the spot. It looked identical to the rest of the woods except for the chain-link fence ten feet ahead that had been cut open at the pole and curled back like peeling wallpaper. It was the sort of small-time delinquency that might have gone unnoticed for months, especially with winter closing in. It felt ominous now.

“You see the strip mall?” Vega asked Sorenson. It sat just beyond the fence, an acre of asphalt anchored by a long rectangle of stores with a KFC and a Payless shoe outlet at one end and a Staples office store at the other. Rain darkened the curtain of asphalt surrounding the building and beaded the windows of cars parked in tidy rows close to the stores.

The dog sat in front of the tree limb and barked.

Sorenson hooked the dog back onto her leash. Vega yanked the limb to one side and used his foot to feel around beneath the slick pile of leaves. His shoe brushed against something weighty and solid. He sprang back as if on fire—and he knew. He patted his pockets for a pair of disposable gloves. He always kept a spare pair on him, but they were in his sports coat and his sports coat was wrapped around Joy.

This was awkward.

“Um—Trooper? Do you happen to have an extra pair of gloves on you?”

Sorenson blew out a slow breath of air as she reached on her duty belt and extracted a sealed pair of gloves. “Maybe the state police should bring gloves instead of pens next year, hmmm?”

Vega ignored the dig and slipped into the gloves. Then he squatted down and brushed aside a few of the leaves. Daisy whimpered. Sorenson stroked the shepherd to calm her and fed her a treat.

Vega saw the gray-tinged skin first, followed by a fan of long black hair threaded with bits of leaves and twigs. A woman. No, scratch that. She looked more like a teenager. A Hispanic teenager. She was lying faceup, her body preserved enough for Vega to think she hadn't been here more than a couple of days. She was wearing a pair of baggy gray sweatpants and a black hoodie that was unzipped to reveal a faded yellow T-shirt beneath. There were no obvious gunshot or knife wounds. She could have died of a drug overdose and been covered up by a panicked companion. Or she could be a murder victim. It was impossible to tell at this point. With the breach in the fence, there was no way to even know if she was a student at the college or from somewhere else, via the shopping center.

“I'm going to call this in to my people,” said Vega. “Do me a favor? Get campus security on your radio and let them know about this as well. This girl could be a student here. Tell 'em she's Hispanic, maybe five-one, slight build. Maybe someone at the college can identify her—”

“Your daughter can.”

“Your daughter can identify her,” said Sorenson. “Daisy's a search-and-rescue dog, Detective. She's trained to go after scents she detects on the bait I give her, not look for bodies whenever the urge strikes her. If Daisy tracked us to this body, she did it by picking up the scent on your daughter's jacket.”

No. Impossible. Sorenson had to be mistaken.
“My daughter's very particular about her clothes,” said Vega. “She wouldn't lend them out.”

“The victim didn't have to be wearing your daughter's jacket, Detective. Your daughter just had to be in close contact with her.”

“You mean”—Vega corrected—“the jacket had to be in close contact with her.” That distinction was everything, at least to Vega.

“The jacket. Yes,” said Sorenson. She held Vega's gaze for a moment and he looked away. He didn't want to dwell on the implications.

The rain was coming down steadily now, darkening the shoulders of Vega's blue polo shirt. The heat from his jog into the woods had worn off. Sweat congealed on his skin. He shivered, not just from the cold, but from something deeper. He stared at the teenager's body. She was surrounded by a glossy frame of wet orange and yellow leaves. With her Hispanic features and long black hair, she reminded him of those statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico—the ones encircled by golden rays of light.

Vega held Joy's leopard-print jacket away from his body. Its shimmer felt cheesy and tainted suddenly, like it belonged to someone he didn't recognize.

Or worse, someone he used to.

Chapter 14

J
oy stared at the head shot on her father's cell phone. “I swear, Daddy, I don't know her. I mean, maybe I passed her on the street somewhere. But honest, I don't know her.”

They were sitting in Vega's car, rain drumming hard on the roof, waiting for the crime-scene techs to show up. Joy was hunkered down in Vega's sports coat since her own leopard-print jacket had been bagged as evidence. Vega had sent Adele home without telling her anything except that they'd found a body in the woods. Then Vega called Wendy and told her to cancel Joy's evening tutoring engagements. He didn't explain why. Nor did he elaborate when he ordered Joy into his car. She stopped protesting when he thrust that picture of the dead girl's face at her. He'd hoped Joy would know the girl and have a ready, innocuous explanation for the jacket fiasco. She didn't. That worried him more.

“Think, Joy.
Think.
You were wearing the jacket when I saw you at the hospital on Sunday. When did you last get it cleaned?”

“I don't know. I don't take it to the dry cleaners every week.”

“Did you loan it to anyone? Did you leave it behind somewhere?”

“I don't remember.”

“Well, you've got to. You've goddamn well got to!”

Vega punched the dashboard and let out a stream of Spanish invectives. Joy started to cry. That made him feel worse. “Chispita,” he pleaded, using her childhood nickname, “Little Spark” in Spanish. “Don't you understand? That girl was covered up. Somebody covered her. Even if she just died of a drug overdose, at the very least someone is guilty of failing to get her medical attention and trying to hide her body. She might even have been murdered. We don't know yet. And right now, whatever happened to her, you're the prime suspect.”

“But I don't know her!”

“That's not a defense. Better that you
did
know her and could explain the situation. Maybe she was in a class?”

“Not that I remember.”

“How about at Dr. Feldman's? Maybe she was one of the participants in his study?”

“It's possible.” Joy sighed. “I hang my jacket on a coat tree in the waiting area.”

“Okay.” Vega felt like he was finally breathing again. He flicked the heater vents to deliver a blast of warm air in his direction. He was going to have to make do tonight with a rain slicker over his short-sleeved polo shirt. He couldn't let Joy go home without a jacket. “That's good. That's a start. I'm going to send this photo over to Dr. Feldman's e-mail right away so we can try to get a positive ID.”

Through the fogged-up windows, Vega saw the pulse of red lights in the parking lot. The campus police had cordoned off the woods. A couple of uniformed officers from his department had joined them on site protection. Sorenson had signed out with her dog, her job more or less done except for submitting a statement to the county police. But a whole new army was about to descend. Vega rubbed the sleeve of his vinyl rain slicker against the window to clear it. He made out four vehicles: the county crime-scene van, the medical examiner's van, and two detectives' cars. It was going to be another long night. He needed to change the dressing on his stitches. It would have to wait. He turned to his daughter.

“Listen, I want you to go home and stay home tonight. Don't talk to anybody about this right now. Let's see what Dr. Feldman has to say, okay?”

“Okay.” She started to shrug out of her father's sports coat.

“No, Chispita
.
Take it. You can give it back to me tomorrow.”

“But you'll be cold.”

“I'll be all right.”

“Thanks, Dad.” She kissed him. “Thanks for always looking out for me.”

“I hope I always can.”

Vega watched Joy get into her own car and leave. Then he drew the hood of his rain slicker tight around him and got out of his county police car. He hoped crime scene had brought the extra pair of Tyvek coveralls he'd requested, along with some tents to keep the immediate scene dry and preserve evidence.

He recognized a detective getting out of one of the other county cars. Vega didn't have to see the blond walrus mustache. Or the shaved head. He could pick Detective Teddy Dolan out anywhere by the way he stood, feet spread apart, like the Jolly Green Giant surveying his territory.

“Yo, Teddy,” Vega walked over. “You working this one with me tonight?”

“Actually—” Dolan ran a finger back and forth across his mustache. There was something guarded in his eyes. “—Captain Waring—he, uh, he thought maybe you should sit this one out. Go home and rest that leg.”

Vega stared at Dolan and watched the big man squirm. Cops were lousy liars with other cops.

“Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining, Teddy.”

“What? You need the overtime that badly?” Dolan spread his big, fleshy pink palms.

“This isn't about overtime, and you know it,” said Vega. “This is about that state trooper—what's her name—making a call to Captain Waring about my daughter. She's a
dog handler,
man.” He wanted to be angry at the trooper. Her and that stupid Chinese-speaking mutt. But the rational side of his brain knew it wasn't personal. If he were in her shoes, he'd have done the same thing.

“Let it go, Jimmy, okay? You can't do anything about it, anyway. The decision's been made from on high. Conflict of interest and all. C'mon man, you don't think I'll watch your back? If there's anything you need to know, I'll tell you.”

Vega wiped a wet sleeve across his face. He could taste acid bile at the back of his throat. This couldn't be happening. “It's a jacket, Teddy. A freakin' jacket. It could have been in contact with the victim anywhere. It doesn't mean anything.”

“Of course not. I hear ya.”

Vega's phone dinged with an e-mail. He cupped a palm over the screen to shield it from the rain and checked his messages. Dolan turned to leave.

“Hold up,” said Vega. “This message is from that doctor Joy works with. I asked him if he recognized our Jane Doe. That could be the point of contact.”

Vega opened the message:
I'm sorry, Detective. I don't recognize her. She's not one of my clients. I'd know if she were.

Dolan nodded at the screen. Vega noticed he wasn't quite as reassuring as before.

“Hey, no sweat. I'm sure there's a logical explanation for all of this.” He put a paw on the sleeve of Vega's rain slicker. It felt just like the hold Vega put on suspects when he was trying to wear them down. Part paternal. Part threatening.

Dolan gave Vega's arm a quick squeeze and then released him. “Just tell your daughter maybe at some point we can sit down and talk, okay?”