A Blossom of Bright Light (13 page)

Chapter 15

I
t was dark when Luna woke up. Daylight saving time was still two weeks away.

She wondered where they'd be by then.

The apartment felt drafty and muted, weighted down with cardboard cartons stacked on top of one another where their things used to be. She hustled Dulce and Mateo out of bed and into their clothes for school. She braided Dulce's long, shiny black hair. Above them, feet pounded the creaky floors and water rushed through the pipes. All their neighbors woke up early too. Luna heard the trill of Spanish through the walls drowned out by the scrapes of pots and pans in their own kitchen as Papi prepared breakfast.

It was Wednesday morning. Papi's court date was tomorrow.

Luna, Dulce, and Mateo drifted into their tiny kitchen one by one. Mateo was always last. He hated getting up, but he rose as soon as he smelled onions and peppers frying. These days, the family could afford only hot cornmeal for breakfast. This morning, however, Papi had made omelets. Luna saw him in the kitchen expertly flipping one in a pan. She didn't think he'd cooked at all in Mexico. Cooking was women's work. But he was a good cook now. He put the first omelet, all sizzling and golden brown, on Dulce's plate and cut it in half for Dulce and Mateo to share. It smelled good. The cheese oozed out of the sides like warm sunshine.

“And now for yours,” he said to Luna. “With just a little onion and cheese, the way you like it.” He smiled at her, his mustache turning up at the edges just below his prominent cheekbones. He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, but he was freshly shaved and showered. Luna wondered if he had another meeting with the lawyers this morning.

He turned his back to his daughter and cracked the eggs. Luna felt a bit like a condemned prisoner facing her last meal. She wanted to savor this moment with her father in the kitchen cooking for her, knowing just how she liked her food—how much salt and hot sauce to add, dicing the onions extra fine, skipping the green peppers.

She had lived with her father every moment of her life save for about ten months when she was a baby and he went to California to find work. They knew all those little things about each other that you could only learn over long periods of time. She knew how he hummed to himself when he thought no one could hear. How he hated the taste of avocados and the smell of peanut butter. His favorite soccer team was Chivas because all their players were Mexican. He danced just like a little kid when they won.

Her father was always the one who chased the monsters out of her room at night when she was small. He worked the factory's graveyard shift when they lived in Queens, but he stayed awake every morning to walk her to school after a boy on their block tried to bully her. He once spent a whole day turning a refrigerator carton into a playhouse for her, complete with doors and shelves. Luna knew he was proud of her. He'd always encouraged her dream of becoming a doctor. And she knew that she was his support too. She was probably the only other person in the world beside Mami who had ever seen him cry.

She couldn't imagine her life without him in it.

Mateo scraped a chair across the floor and slid his body between it and the table. Luna tried to remember whether he or Dulce had a spelling test today. One of them did, she was sure. Then she remembered that she'd left her geometry homework in Dulce's math workbook while she was helping her last night. She walked over to her sister's backpack and began pawing through it.

“What are you doing?” Dulce demanded. “Get out of my backpack!”

“I left my geometry homework in your math book.”

“No, you didn't!”

“Yes, I did. Remember? When I was helping you with your addition last night?”

“You took it out. I saw you.”

“Where did I put it then?”

“I don't know.”

Luna pulled out Dulce's math workbook and rifled through the pages. The homework wasn't there. She shoved Dulce's workbook back into her backpack.

“Hey!” Dulce yelled. “You smushed all my stuff!”

“Luna,” Papi said gently. “Eat your omelet. It's getting cold.”

Luna didn't listen. She raced into their bedroom. She opened drawers and tossed out their contents. She pulled apart the blankets on her bed. She yanked boxes out of her closet and began ripping open the carefully sealed packing tape. Luna knew she had a solid A in the class. One misplaced worksheet wouldn't change that. But she couldn't stop tearing things apart. She'd packed all those boxes so carefully, and now everything was in one big trash pile on the floor. She stared at the heap—the huge, confusing jumbled heap that represented her life. Her baby pictures. Her school mementos. Pictures of Mami. It was all a mess. She sank to her knees and began to cry.

Papi walked into the room and gathered Luna in his big strong arms like she was five again. She'd been trying to hold everything in, but she couldn't anymore. She sobbed like someone holding onto a jackhammer. Her whole body shook with it. Dulce and Mateo stared open-mouthed from the doorway. They'd cried often. Luna suspected it scared them that she'd finally succumbed as well.

“Don't cry, Mija,” Papi said softly, stroking her hair. “I'm not dead. It's just for a little while. Not forever.”

“I don't want you to go,” Luna sobbed.

“I know. And I don't want to go.” His voice caught and he swallowed hard. He was trying to be strong. She had to be strong too. She took a deep breath and palmed her eyes. Papi knelt down and started helping her put everything back into the boxes. Luna had no idea where her geometry homework had gone. She didn't care.

“Listen,” he beckoned Dulce and Mateo next to them on the floor. The black box on his right ankle made a soft thud as it hit the bare wood. “I wanted to tell you this over breakfast. But I will tell you now.”

“You're staying?” Mateo piped up hopefully. Papi stared at his hands.

“I wish, Mijo. I pray for that more than anything.” He took a deep breath. “But this? This is good news even if it's not the news we hoped for. You will not have to move to Queens. All of you will be able to stay together here in Lake Holly.”

Dulce and Mateo looked at Luna. She was the mami now. Her reaction would be their reaction. Luna could tell they were relieved to be staying in Lake Holly. She was relieved too. But it was a muted sort of relief because wherever they were, they wouldn't all be together, and that was the only part that mattered. Still, she tried to act happy. She knew that was what her father wanted.

“That's wonderful, Papi.” She forced her voice to sound confident. “Are we going to stay with a family?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “A good family. They are willing to provide for you until I can pay them back.” Luna was sure the “payback” arrangement was her father's idea. He'd have never consented otherwise. “You won't have to move schools or change friends.” Papi leveled his gaze at Luna. “And you, Mija
—
you'll be able to apply for the science program this summer and audition for the talent show.”

Luna didn't think her father even knew about these things. She'd been trying not to burden him. Dulce probably told. She was such a bigmouth. Still, something warm and pleasing bubbled up inside her chest, a sensation Luna recognized as excitement. She was a teenager again. She could do teenager things. She could gossip with her friends at recess under those big maple trees by the school fence. She could dream. She could hope.

And then Luna felt guilty because of course Papi could do none of these. He'd be two thousand miles away in rural Mexico.

Luna wondered if he'd read her mind. Her father put a hand on her forearm. “It's not forever, Mija. We have friends—important friends now. They will help me come back. You'll see. This is not good-bye. This is—a vacation, yes?”

“Señora Figueroa arranged this?” asked Luna.

“She helped, yes.”

“Is the family Spanish?” Luna had no idea why she asked that. She had Spanish friends and non-Spanish friends. She supposed she was searching for comfort and familiarity.

“Yes,” said Papi.

“Do they have children?” asked Dulce.

“Yes. Children. And a backyard with a playground—and a trampoline.” Her father's eyes twinkled. Mateo guessed right away.

“Is it Alex Gonzalez's family?”

Her father sat back and smiled like he'd just presented them with a wonderful gift.

Dulce got up from the floor and began jumping up and down. “Yes! Yes! Yes! I'm going to live in a mansion.” She was like Papi. She embraced each moment and tried to squeeze as much pleasure from it as possible. Mateo, however, was like Luna—like Mami. He was careful not to judge things too hastily. He offered a cautious smile.

“It will be nice to have someone to kick a ball with.” He'd always wished for brothers. Papi had four, all in Mexico.

Luna said nothing. She looked at the floor. She couldn't face her father's searching gaze.

“Luna? How do you feel about this?” he asked softly.

She looked at Dulce's flushed face, all lit up like she'd just won a trip to Disney World. She saw Mateo's cautious yet secretly pleased curl of the lips. And there was her father's eagerness and yearning. What could she say? Her fears were vague and unformed. She had no reason to speak against this decision. Anything she said would only fill her father with worry. That's not what Papi deserved right now.

She forced a smile. “If we stick together, I'm sure we'll be fine until you return.”

Luna wondered if those words were for him or for herself.

Chapter 16

V
ega arranged to retrieve his sports coat from Joy on campus Wednesday morning before either of them started classes or work. She had foundations of sociology at nine a.m. in Field Hall, a building off the quad with all the charm of a Soviet-era bunker. Vega pushed through the throng of teenagers and followed the under-lit and dingy halls until he came to the right doorway.

When he got there, Joy was standing in the hallway outside her classroom with Teddy Dolan. Dolan had one arm braced against the cement-block wall next to Joy and his feet positioned directly in front. Cop body language, all of it designed to overpower and intimidate. Vega had done the same thing to suspects. There was no mistaking how Dolan perceived his daughter.

“What the—?” Vega called out as he hustled over.

Dolan turned and poured on the Irish charm. “Hey, Jimmy. Just saying hi to your daughter seeing as I'm working on campus right now—”

“Save it for some street mutt.” Vega inserted himself between Dolan and Joy. Dolan took a step to one side and opened his arms like a priest about to give a benediction.

“C'mon, Jimmy. I'm gonna have to talk to her at some point—”

“Says who?” Vega backed Dolan against the wall. It made no difference that Dolan was four inches taller and probably sixty pounds heavier. If being a kid in the South Bronx had taught him anything, it was that size only deterred a fight. It didn't necessarily determine the outcome. He pointed a finger at the big man's chest. “You have something to say to Joy, you say it to me first, got that?”

“Hey, man, don't make this adversarial.”

“Dad, you're embarrassing me—” Joy tugged on his arm. “—It's okay if he talks to me. I didn't do anything. I told him that already.”

Vega knew what every cop knew, what Teddy Dolan was banking on right now: the next best thing to a suspect who admits his guilt is a suspect who swears he's innocent. Life is full of half-truths. The longer you talk, the more likely they are to come out.

“Shut
up!
” Vega snapped at her. Joy looked aghast. Her father never spoke to her that way. But this was like pushing someone out of the path of an oncoming train. You don't have time to be delicate about it.

Vega turned to Dolan. “What happened to watching my back, Teddy? Is the captain leaning on you? 'Cause Joy's only link to this girl is a jacket—a jacket that could have been anywhere.”

“It's way more than a jacket at this point.” Dolan brushed a finger across his thick blond mustache and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. With his shaved pink head and wall of flesh just muscular enough to do some damage, Teddy Dolan looked like every black and Spanish person's nightmare image of a cop—right down to his laser-blue eyes and the Harley Davidson tattoo on his forearm. When Vega first met him, he took Dolan for the sort who might shoot first and ask questions later or take a cheap shot when no one was looking.

But Dolan wasn't like that at all. He never lost his temper during an arrest. He was quick to mediate situations where other guys might try to assert authority. Five years ago, while still in uniform, Dolan rescued two toddlers from a crack house. He and his wife, Cathy, a teacher, became their foster parents. Two years ago, the Dolans finally got to adopt Andre, now six, and Keisha, who was seven. Dolan's cubicle at work was plastered with photos of Andre in his beloved Yankees baseball cap and Keisha in cornrows.

Students were filing into Joy's classroom, scraping chairs across the floor, unloading laptops onto desks. Joy shifted her backpack and looked at the doorway.

“I've got to go,” she told them.

“Wait,” Vega held an arm in front of Joy, blocking her. He could read the hesitation in Dolan's eyes. Dolan wanted to tell Vega what he knew, but he was afraid to at the same time. Vega decided to lean on him a little.

“C'mon, Teddy—if you know something, spit it out, man. Look, maybe we can straighten this whole thing out, the three of us, right here and now.” It was the sort of thing Vega often said to suspects to get them to confess:
Let's straighten this out
. He wasn't sure whether Dolan would take the bait. But he absolutely needed to know what sort of evidence the cops had on his daughter.

Dolan turned to Joy. “You know a quiet place where the three of us can talk?”

“But my class is starting,” Joy protested.

“
Ay, puñeta!
Will you forget the class?” said Vega. “
This
, Joy—
this
is what matters right now. Nothing else! You are in no position to bargain with the law.”

She got that hooded, sulky look she sometimes got when she thought her father was being heavy-handed with her. Vega didn't care. He meant what he said. Nothing was more important than figuring out who this girl in the woods was and how Joy knew her.

“The cafeteria's usually empty at this hour,” Joy muttered. “Kids with morning classes are in them already and everyone else is sleeping.”

Vega and Dolan traded looks.
College students.
They would've liked a schedule like that.

Joy was right about the cafeteria. Except for a man mopping the floor and a woman at the register, the place was empty. Vega bought two coffees for him and Dolan and an herbal tea for Joy. They sat at a small table by a large bank of windows overlooking the shopping cart sculpture in the middle of the quad. Dolan parked himself at the small end of the table, and Vega sat catercorner to him with Joy on the other side. Vega was determined to stay between his daughter and the police at all times.

“So what have you got?” Vega asked Dolan.

Dolan sipped his coffee, made a face, and added more sugar. “I know what we haven't got: an ID for her.”

Dolan rolled up his sleeves. Vega could see the red-and-black Harley Davidson eagle tattoo on his forearm. Vega was never into tattoos. He was squeamish about needles. He had a piercing in his left ear that he got back in his early twenties when he still thought he was going to make it as a guitarist. He nearly fainted from that. Joy kept begging for a tattoo. Vega wouldn't allow it. He wondered how long it would be before she did it anyway. For all he knew, she'd done it already.

“She's not a student here,” Dolan continued. “She isn't an employee of the shopping center behind the campus. We've run her prints, and she's not showing up on any missing persons' registries. She has no criminal record—”

“Immigration?” asked Vega.

“I checked with ICE,” said Dolan. “No matches.”

“That would lead me to believe her connection to Joy is accidental.”

“I'd say you're right,” said Dolan. “Except for this.” He pulled out his cell phone and brought up a photo on the screen. He slid the picture in front of Vega and Joy. It was a scan of a credit card receipt from Tony's Pizza, a popular takeout place in Lake Holly. The receipt was for two plain slices and a Snapple. It was dated July 12, a little over three months ago.

“I don't understand,” said Vega.

Dolan focused on Joy. “Recognize the receipt?”

Joy blinked at him. Vega noticed her looking a little pale and scared for the first time. “I don't know,” she said finally.

“I traced the card last night,” said Dolan. “It's your credit card, Joy. Your mother is the cosigner. It wasn't reported stolen. Is it still in your possession?”

Joy opened her backpack and pulled out her wallet. The card was inside. She made a small burbling sound in her throat. “I guess maybe I bought some pizza and a Snapple there in July?” She sounded unsure.

“Somebody at Tony's Pizza knows the girl?” asked Vega.

“Nobody at Tony's Pizza knows the girl,” said Dolan. “But that receipt? For food bought on a credit card in your daughter's possession? It was inside a pocket of the black zippered hoodie the victim was wearing last night.”

Vega sat up straighter. His fingers tingled with pins and needles. He folded them over each other to try to staunch the sensation. He couldn't meet Dolan's gaze. The implications were clear: Joy knew this girl, at least since mid-July. Joy had bought her pizza, perhaps. And she'd lied to the cops—lied to
him
—about all of it. Dolan had kept them talking long enough for Joy to produce the credit card and admit it hadn't been stolen. Vega had thought he was playing Dolan. But Dolan, it turned out, was playing him. And he'd fallen for it.

Vega took a deep breath and tried to think. He was so deep in thought, he almost missed his daughter's next words.

“What hoodie?”

“The hoodie the girl was wearing when the dog found her yesterday,” said Dolan. “Didn't your dad show you a picture of her?”

“He only showed me her face.”

Dolan scrolled down his screen and put another image in front of her. “That's her, head to toe.”

Joy squinted at the screen. The light was bad. It was raining. She asked, “Do you have any other pictures?”

Dolan clicked through several more close-ups and long shots from every position. Joy pointed to something on one of the pictures. Her fingers were steady. She didn't try to backtrack or qualify her statements the way most suspects did when they were caught out in lies.

“Does that hoodie have a pink lining?” asked Joy. “And black piping around the pockets?”

“What's piping?” asked Dolan.

“Trim. A satiny black trim,” said Joy.

Dolan frowned at Vega. Vega shrugged. They were homicide cops, not fashion designers. They noticed blood spatter and bullet holes. “Piping” to them was a hollow piece of steel, very effective in bashing in someone's brains.

Dolan stroked his mustache. “What's it matter whether it's got ‘piping,' as you say?”

“Because I used to own a zippered black hoodie with a pink lining and black satin trim on the pockets. My mother asked me to clean out my closets over the summer, and I gave her a bunch of stuff to give to Goodwill, including that hoodie. This sort of looks like the same one. I probably left the pizza receipt in the pocket.”

Vega reared back. He saw the implications even before Dolan. He turned to Joy, his pulse racing. “So if you gave the hoodie away and nobody had it cleaned, your scent would still be on it.”

“I guess,” said Joy.

“So conceivably, you might never have had any contact with this girl. She just happened to be in possession of a hoodie you'd given away.”

“That's all I can think of.” Joy shrugged.

Dolan placed his palms flat on the table and leaned forward. “I'm not casting aspersions, Joy. You understand? But to make that story stick, you gotta be able to prove your mom gave that hoodie away.”

“Well, she'll tell you it's true,” said Joy.

“That's a start,” said Dolan. But a weak one, as Dolan and Vega both knew. Parents will often lie for their kids. Vega wouldn't, but his ex-wife was another matter. Hell, she'd lied to him often enough.

“What would be better,” Dolan continued, “is if your mother can give me a sworn statement to that effect and produce a donation receipt from the particular Goodwill store she donated the stuff to that would allow me to track the probability that what you're telling me is true. Otherwise—you understand—it's just a theory.”

Dolan's tactful way of calling Joy a liar.

“
Theory
or not,” said Vega, leaning on the word. He wanted Dolan to know he didn't appreciate the insinuation. “It can't hurt to figure out if the hoodie the girl was wearing is the same one Joy's describing.”

“Yeah. You're right. Let me call Dr. Gupta. I think her clothes are still over at the ME's office.”

Dolan excused himself and walked out of earshot to make the call. Vega laced a hand into Joy's. His was sweaty. Hers was cool. She disengaged.

“You didn't have to be so rude to me earlier, Dad. I told you I didn't know that girl. Do you think I'm lying?”

“Maybe you're protecting someone.”

“Is that
your
way of calling me a liar too?”

“No. It's just that—this is a very serious situation, Chispita. I don't think you get that. If I'm being rude, as you say, it's to protect you.”

“I can protect myself.”

“Famous last words.”

A teenager with multiple tattoos and piercings shot past the cafeteria window on a skateboard. Vega nodded at the boy.

“What's with all the tattoos on campus? I see more ink here than at the county jail.”

“I know him, Dad. His name's Tosh and he's a pre-med like me.”

“Huh. Looks like he's had plenty of meds already.”

Joy rolled her eyes. “You are such a cop sometimes.” She pulled her phone out of her backpack to check her messages. “I saw Adele with you at the career fair yesterday. Have you patched things up?”

Vega folded his arms across his chest and looked out the window. Just hearing Adele's name made him heartsick all over again. “You were right about the job in D.C.,” he said. “She's leaving.”

“She told you that?”

“She didn't have to. I can see that's where things are headed.”

“So?” Joy shrugged. “What's the big deal? You can't date her long distance?”

“I barely see her as it is!”

“Well, you'll see her even less if you break up.”

Vega didn't answer.

“If I got a job offer like that, you'd be encouraging me,” Joy pointed out.

“That's different.”