Chapter 3
Greenbriar Lane was blocked off by the time Vega arrived. Red and blue lights pulsed against the sprawling contemporary houses. Neighbors gathered behind police sawhorses, their voices drowned out by the rumble of pumps and generators.
Lake Holly may have labeled Talia Crowley a 10-56—a potential suicide. But that was never how Vega approached a death investigation. To him, every death was a homicide until proven otherwise, and he treated it with all the care and precision of one.
It was much easier to discard evidence you didn’t need than to scrounge around later for something you did.
Vega ran through what little he knew about Talia Danvers Crowley as he pulled up to the checkpoint. She’d been a paralegal in the district attorney’s office, a pretty, perky blonde Vega recalled once staying late to look up a case file for him.
At some point, she and the DA struck up an affair. Vega was betting it wasn’t Crowley’s first. He had a reputation for playing as hard as he worked. Still, up until Talia, he’d managed to hang on to his marriage of thirty years with his first wife, a prominent socialite from an old-line Southern family. When Talia got pregnant, everything changed. Crowley divorced his first wife, married his paralegal, and set up house here in Lake Holly.
It was supposed to be a whole new life. Then Talia miscarried. And now she too was gone.
Vega opened the window of his pickup and flashed his badge at the Lake Holly patrol officer manning the checkpoint. Ryan Bale was his name. Shaved white head. Tree-trunk neck. Shoulders like he bench-pressed three hundred on an off day.
“You working this?” asked Bale as he handed Vega the sign-in log. “I thought you got shuffled off to pistol permits or something.”
Vega felt the sting of Bale’s words. It had been five months since Vega had accidentally shot and killed an unarmed civilian. He’d been cleared of all charges. And yet the shame of it stuck to him like a piece of toilet paper on his shoe, following him wherever he went. In whispers in the locker room. In new encounters with other cops. On restless nights when he couldn’t sleep.
Vega said nothing as he scribbled his badge number and name on the sign-in log and handed it back to Bale. He wasn’t looking to get into a pissing match. But Bale wouldn’t let it go. He made a show of walking around Vega’s truck and copying down not only the license plate number but the registration as well.
“I’m sort of in a hurry here,” said Vega.
“It’s a suicide. She’ll wait.” Bale smiled like a shark sensing blood. “You always were a little jumpy on the trigger.”
Vega thrust out a hand. “Gimme the log.”
“Huh?”
“The log. You know what you’re holding, right?”
Bale handed it to Vega. Vega drew a big fat circle around the sign-in name above his: Veronica Chang. The assistant medical examiner. He drew another big fat circle around the time Bale had scribbled in beside it. 10 a.m. He shoved the log back at Bale.
“Two things while I’m working here, Officer.” Vega leaned on the word. “One, nothing’s a suicide until I say it is. And two, P.M. is night. A.M. is day. It’s a simple concept. Learn it.”
Vega left Bale at the checkpoint and followed the flashing lights to the end of the cul-de-sac. He parked back from the fire truck and police cruisers and snaked his way between the county crime scene van and a white sedan. An official vehicle. It had a thick blue slash angled across the rear doors and a federal eagle logo on its side. The writing across the door read: IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT .
ICE was here. Had they found Edgar’s niece?
The Crowley house was all peaked roofs and walls of glass. Cables snaked across the lawn. Generators spewed gasoline fumes into the night air. The flood in the basement had probably shorted out the electrical panel, forcing the cops inside to rely on portable halogen lamps to see their way around.
Vega watched firefighters packing up in front of the house, the water pushing out of hose lines, fanning across the driveway before collecting in a storm drain at the curb.
The flood bothered him on some level he couldn’t articulate. He’d worked a steady stream of suicides since he’d gotten off desk duty after the shooting. Old men with debts. Jilted lovers. Teenagers who came up with permanent solutions for their very temporary problems. They took their lives in cars, bathtubs, and garages. Over bridges and in front of trains. He couldn’t recall one that had flooded their house. A murderer might do it—and then commit suicide. But here, he didn’t buy it.
Vega put a check in his mental notebook: strike one.
“Took you long enough,” growled a familiar voice.
Vega saw Lake Holly detective Louis Greco barreling toward him, encased head-to-toe in white Tyvek coveralls, booties, and blue latex surgical gloves. A clear shower cap covered his bald head. He looked like a circus tent with a couple of poles removed.
“I interrupt some hot sex between you and Adele?” Greco grunted. “I figured after a year, you two would be down to quickies.”
“I figured after a year, you wouldn’t care. Besides, I wasn’t with Adele,” said Vega. “I was driving her elderly neighbor home from synagogue. He doesn’t see so well at night anymore.”
“Yeah? Well, when my cataracts kick in, remind me to call you.” Greco handed Vega a set of coveralls, booties, cap, and gloves. “Here. It’s a mess down there.”
Vega slipped into the gear and slung his badge on a chain around his neck. In all that rubber and vinyl, he felt like a walking condom. “What do you have so far?”
“Not a lot,” said Greco. “Dispatch got the nine-one-one call from a neighbor out walking her dog around eight p.m. The neighbor said water was pushing out the Crowley’s basement windows. Fire department showed up. Took ’em about an hour and a half to shut off the water main and pump out the basement. It wasn’t until they’d almost finished, that the first-due officers—Bale and Fitzgerald—discovered the body swinging from a pipe.”
“Any evidence of foul play?” asked Vega.
“No gunshot or stab wounds,” said Greco.
“Find a suicide note?”
Greco snorted. “Down there? If she’d left one, it’s been sucked up and disintegrated by the sump pumps by now. Same with pills. We found a broken wine bottle. No cork. She may have been drinking it. Then again, it could have been in the basement for some other reason.”
“So, no note.” They’d need a search warrant to go through Talia’s computer files. There could be a copy of a note in there—or other evidence that she was suicidal. Google searches of how to commit suicide. Good-bye letters to friends and family. There was a lot they didn’t know. Still, the absence of a ready note bothered him. Vega put another check in his mental notebook: strike two on the suicide theory.
Vega noticed on the front mailbox there was a plaque from an alarm company. “The house has a monitoring system, right?”
“Electronic sensors. A keyless entry. The works,” said Greco. “None of it was turned on.”
“Any burglary activity in the area?”
“A few break-ins,” said Greco. “Teenagers looking for pills and cash—that sort of thing. The jewelry-store heist in town is still open and unsolved. But that’s a different sort of job.”
“Any suspects on that?”
“One,” said Greco. “A gangbanger by the name of Ortega. We lifted his prints off a glass case after the heist. But he’s been a ghost since we put out a BOLO on him.”
Vega stared at the house. The cold white light from the halogen lamps spilled from the windows, sucking the color from the weeping cherry tree on the front lawn. Cops’ flashlights bobbed and weaved between the bushes like fireflies. The static from their walkie-talkies trailed behind—the only sound Vega could hear over the din of generators.
“What’s Crowley’s ETA?”
“He’s on his way from Albany now,” said Greco. “He should be here in less than an hour.”
“When did he last speak to his wife?”
“He says she was here when he left about six yesterday. He texted her last night when he got to Albany and again this morning, but she never texted back.”
“Did he say whether she had any issues with alcohol or drugs? Was she seeing a shrink?”
Greco gave Vega a sour look. “Those aren’t the kinds of questions you ask the DA over the phone.”
“I know,” said Vega. “I’m just laying the groundwork—”
“For what? We don’t know that we have anything here. This is the top lawman in the county,” Greco pointed out. “We need to reconstruct the family situation tactfully. I’m already getting pressure from my chief to make this quick and painless.”
“Then why’d you call me in?”
“Because suicides don’t normally include missing housekeepers,” said Greco. “Crowley said their housekeeper should have been here today from eight thirty to five. Nobody’s seen her. She’s not answering her cell. We’d like to question her.” Greco jerked a thumb at the white sedan parked at the curb. “That’s why I called in ICE. We believe the housekeeper’s illegal.”
“Probably,” said Vega. “At least, that’s the impression I got from her uncle.”
“You know the family?”
Vega shook his head. “I don’t even know the woman’s full name. I just happened to meet her uncle this evening when I gave Adele’s neighbor a ride home from the synagogue. The uncle’s their handyman. He got a letter from ICE a few days ago, telling him he’s going to be deported.”
Vega felt the grind of gears as Greco sorted through that complication. “What’s his name?”
“Edgar Aviles.”
“Same last name as Lissette,” said Greco. “Do you know where he lives?”
“In town somewheres,” said Vega. “The temple would know. The whole family lives together.”
“I’ll get Sanchez on it,” said Greco. “Maybe send him over first. ICE’ll just spook ’em.”
“Where is this ICE agent?” asked Vega. “Is he in the basement?”
“It’s a she,” said Greco. “She’s got one of those long Spanish names with a million parts.” Greco pointed to a figure leaning against the side of one of the police cruisers, scribbling something in a notebook.
“There she is.”
She had her back turned to Vega and Greco so all Vega could see was her navy-blue windbreaker with the letters I-C-E printed boldly across her back. She was on the tall side, with short, kinky hair, dark at the roots and dusted blond at the tips.
Greco walked Vega over. The woman looked up from her notes, then reared back, blinking as if strafed by a beam of spotlight. Vega felt the same off-kilter sensation. Like this whole scene was taking place in his dreams.
Her full lips parted in a smile that had more to do with nerves than delight. Vega knew this because he saw her crooked eyetooth. It only revealed itself when the smile wasn’t genuine. Same with him.
He never realized it was a family trait.
“Michelle.” Vega’s mouth felt like someone had stuffed it with cotton.
“Wow. Jimmy.” She held out a hand. But instead of directing it at Vega’s palm, she touched his arm and gave it a squeeze. “Of all places to run into each other.”
Greco’s face scrunched in confusion. “You two met before?”
“You could say that,” said the woman. “Jimmy Vega is my half brother.”