A Blossom of Bright Light (21 page)

“How come?”

“Because HF dissolves metal and glass. It needs to be stored in plastic. And I've never seen beer or wine in plastic.”

Vega grinned. “That's 'cause you hang in better circles than I do. All the hard-core drunks drink bargain-basement vodkas. And they're all stored in plastic.”

“Then where is the container Mr. Garcia drank from?”

In the woods still?
Vega wondered.
No. Impossible.
Greco and Hammond would have found it. Unless . . .

Unless the bottle's not there
, thought Vega
. Because the person who gave Zambo the solvent—in whatever form—took it with them to hide the evidence.
This was no accidental poisoning. This was planned and calculated.

This was murder.

“You said HF is an industrial solvent,” said Vega. “I would imagine it's hard to get a hold of, especially in fatal concentrations.”

“Not at all, Detective,” said Gupta. “It's usually purchased in high concentrations and then watered down for various industrial uses. That's why I asked whether Mr. Garcia worked.”

“What sort of work could a guy like Zambo”—Vega caught Gupta's frown and corrected himself—“Mr. Garcia do that would require something as exotic as hydrofluoric acid?”

“HF is a common ingredient in tire-rim cleaners,” said Gupta. “I thought perhaps he worked at a car wash.”

Chapter 26

I
t was Adele's turn to bring snacks to Sophia's Friday after-school soccer practice and act as parent chaperone. What did other mothers bring? Grapes? (Weren't they on the list of pesticide-laden fruits?) Oranges? (Too messy.) Pears? (They bruised too easily.)

Last week, Libby Reynolds's mom brought organic fruit kebabs, home-baked oatmeal-raisin cookies, and lemon-lime seltzer. Adele settled on a bag of McIntosh apples, a package of Oreos, and a gallon of no-name springwater with paper cups. She heard her daughter groan the moment she appeared with it on the sidelines.

Adele delivered the snacks and walked back to the other side of the field. The hills were a tapestry of orange and gold set off by mown fields of deep green, squared off with white lines, nets, and orange cones. The afternoon sun bathed the landscape in a butterscotch glow that looked warmer than it felt, so Adele had to alternate between watching the scrimmages from the sidelines and from the warmth of her car.

There were several teams practicing on the field today, some boys and some girls. Every last kid wore a navy blue uniform jersey with their names and numbers on their backs. You'd have thought they were all playing for the World Cup. Sophia dribbled the ball down the field to her team and then ran over to the scrimmage line to laugh and joke with her friends. She was more social butterfly than soccer standout. Still, Adele's heart sank watching her confident nine-year-old doing some complicated hand slap with a teammate. Lake Holly was Sophia's whole world. She was born here. She expected to graduate high school here.

Why couldn't she make up her mind?

Adele ducked into her car to warm up and check her messages on her iPhone. She was looking for one message in particular. From Falls Church, Virginia. From the Honorable Judge Quentin Hallard of the U. S. Board of Immigration Appeals.

Ever since Charlie Gonzalez called her yesterday to tell her that Manuel Serrano had lost his bid to stay in the U.S., Adele had been trying to come up with some way to do what Adam Katz could not. It was sheer hubris on her part. Katz was an expert in these areas. Still, she couldn't sleep knowing that she hadn't tried every last thing to help Serrano. And so, for the past twenty-four hours, she'd called in favors from every contact she could think of: from Harvard, from her law firm days, from her immigration contacts. Through a chain of connections, she'd managed to come up with someone who knew someone who could put Serrano's case before Judge Hallard.

Whether Hallard would look at the case or answer her call was another matter. In all likelihood, Hallard would do the politically astute move: he'd wait to return Adele's call late on Monday or possibly Tuesday. By then, he could reasonably argue that it was too late to do anything for Manuel Serrano. The matter was out of his hands.

There was no message from Hallard. Adele put her phone away and stepped out of her car again so Sophia couldn't claim later that her mother had been too busy with work to watch the practice. A faded red Honda Civic nosed into the parking space beside her—perhaps a parent who'd decided to pick up their child early. They still had fifteen minutes of practice time left. Adele turned to say hi. But it wasn't a mother or father. It was Claudia Aguilar's daughter, Inés. Adele recalled that she had a couple of daughters as well as her son, Neto. But Adele remembered them being older than Sophia. Maybe they were on other teams.

Inés got out of her car. Adele rarely saw her without a counter between them. The woman had to be in her early to mid-thirties, but her round girlish face and tiny, childlike body made her look younger than her years. She could have almost fit in as a player on Sophia's team.

Inés wrapped a jacket tightly around her waist and sidled up to Adele. “I'm so sorry to bother you at your daughter's soccer practice, Doña Adele. Ramona at La Casa told me I could find you here.”

So this wasn't a coincidence.
“Is something the matter?” asked Adele.

“The police, they've got Romeo at the station.”

“Your ex-husband? Why?” But Adele could already guess why. Romeo was a good-looking Salvadoran who seemed born to his name. When he and Inés were married, it was common knowledge that he cheated. Since their divorce, he'd apparently moved on to short flings with some of his American clients in his landscaping business. He'd never been picky about trampling marriage vows—his or anyone else's. It was only a matter of time, in Adele's opinion, before one of these gringas had second thoughts or was caught by her husband and cried “rape.”

Adele couldn't say she felt bad for Romeo. He'd been a cheat with Inés and a possible abuser too, from some of the things Claudia had hinted at through the years. But Adele felt bad for Inés and her children. It had been hard enough having her first child so young and dealing with his disabilities without having to deal with all the stuff Romeo had thrown at her since.

“The police want to stick a Q-tip inside Romeo's mouth,” Inés told Adele. “They told him they need to test his DNA. He's afraid to give it. He does not have—um—”

“Papers?”

Inés nodded. “He's afraid they'll do to him what they did to Manuel Serrano.”

“Has Romeo ever been arrested before? Has he ever received an order of removal?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Then he's not in the same situation as Manuel. Either way, he can refuse the DNA test until they get a court order.”

“He can?”

“Do you want me to call down to the police station and find out what's going on?”

“Can you?”

Ay, Dios mío!
It was always something. “Okay,” said Adele. “But first, I need to know why they want to test Romeo's DNA.” She didn't want to get embroiled in a rape case that he'd brought about through his own stupidity—or worse.

“The police told Romeo that the dead baby they found in the woods behind La Casa is his.”

Adele raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“He says no. He lied all the time when we were married. Now? No. I believe he's telling the truth.”

“Why would the police think the baby is his then?”

“They told Romeo they have Neto's DNA and it shows that my Neto is the baby's brother.”

“You're kidding.” Adele was floored. She had to repeat it to be sure. “Neto is the brother of the baby in the woods?”

“That's what the police are telling Romeo.”

Inés's ex was up to his eyeballs in this one. Adele was already regretting her offer to speak to the police on his behalf. “I don't know what you want me to do here, Inés. DNA doesn't lie.”

On the field, the coach blew a whistle. Practice was over. The girls were fetching their balls and getting their bottles of water. Sophia would be hungry. Adele didn't want to get mixed up in Romeo's sexual escapades and their inevitable fallout. She tried to explain to Inés why the police would likely get a court order to do the test, no matter how much Romeo protested and how it would probably prove exactly what they were claiming.

“If Neto is the baby's brother, then Romeo is the baby's father, Inés.”

“But Romeo isn't Neto's father.”

“He isn't? Who is?”

Inés shook her head. “I can't say.”

“Why?”

“Please. That's not possible. If Romeo gives the police his DNA and it shows he's not the father, will they let him go?”

Sophia was headed across the field toward Adele's car.

“If that's all the reason they have to detain him, I don't see why not,” said Adele. “But there's still a dead baby without a name, and the police deserve to know who her parents are and what happened. If you know who Neto's father is—”

“No! Please, Doña Adele! Please don't make me go through all that again!”

Inés started to cry. In the parking lot of the soccer field. Before all of Sophia's teammates. Before all of their parents. Anyone observing would think Adele had said or done something terrible to the woman. Adele saw Sophia hang back, her face red with a mixture of shame and fury. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea that they might be leaving town after all.

“In your car,” Adele ordered Inés under her breath. “Right now.” Then she turned to the field and called to Sophia to get in their own car and wait for her.

Inside Inés's car, Inés opened her handbag and searched for tissues. Tears dripped down her face, smudging her mascara. “I'm so sorry, Doña Adele. I didn't mean to embarrass you in front of your daughter like that.”

“It's okay,” said Adele. What could she say? It was her own fault that there were no dividing lines between her personal and professional life. Some days it seemed, she failed in both. She didn't even have a tissue to hand Inés. All the other moms leaving the field probably had packages of tissues in their bags—in addition to hand wipes, safety pins, sunscreen, Life Savers, and bottles of water. All Adele had in her purse was a small container of hand sanitizer, and that wouldn't do anybody any good. Inés ended up palming the tears from her face, streaking her mascara until she looked like Adele had given her a black eye.

Adele patted Inés on the shoulder, trying to calm her down. She seemed so fragile right now, like a little porcelain doll Adele might break if she handled it too roughly.

“I'm just trying to understand,” Adele said softly. “Were you with Romeo at the time you got pregnant by someone else?”

Inés shook her head, no. She stared into her lap. “I was barely fifteen. An innocent. I didn't even meet Romeo until I was seventeen, and then we married a year later when I got pregnant with Isabel.”

“So Romeo knows who Neto's father is?”

“No. I can't say—ever.”

Adele heard the rising panic in her voice again.

“Can you tell me why you can't say?”

Inés dabbed at her eyes. “I can't.”

“Did the baby's father rape you?”

Inés looked at Adele darkly. “I had no choice. Do you understand?”

Unfortunately, she did.

“Was he a family member?” Adele's mind spun with possibilities.
Father? Stepfather? Uncle?

“I can't say—not even to you.”

“Does your mother know?”

Silence.
Claudia knows.
Which was one more person than Adele ever told.

“Inés,” said Adele gently. She touched her hand. It was ice cold. She tried to get Inés to look at her, but she could see Inés was ashamed. Adele wished Inés could open up—wished they both could. But that was impossible. Twenty years ago, talking about sexual abuse was rare, even in North American culture. It was unheard of in the Latin world.

“Inés—listen to me. The man who did those things to you may have done them to the mother of that baby who died in the woods. He could be doing them to a girl right now. Don't you feel perhaps you should come forward?”

Inés closed her eyes. “No one will believe me.”

“I believe you.”

The air in the small Honda Civic turned warm and close. Through the windshield, Adele watched Sophia and her friends running after each other like puppies, all of them so comfortable in their bodies, so bold and fearless. Adele wished she could tell Inés she understood. But some things are buried so deep, you can't unearth them without destroying the entire structure that's been built on top.

Inés took a deep breath. She looked ready to speak.

Sophia ran up to the passenger-side window where Adele was sitting and thumped on the glass. “Mom! I'm hungry! Can we go home?”

“In a minute, Sophia!” barked Adele.

The spell was broken.

“I need to go,” said Inés. “I have to be back at the store. Please tell the police that Romeo is not Neto's father. I hope that helps him. Please ask them not to tell Neto. He's very fond of Romeo and Romeo never told him . . .” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

“But the real father—”

“Men do what they want, Doña Adele. It does not matter what a woman says. Even you, surely, must know that.”