Fernandez states that he also used his cell phone to call the victim’s priest, Father Francisco Delgado from St. Raymond’s Catholic Church.
Vega knew Delgado. Everyone knew Delgado, even Adele. He was widely respected in the Latin American community.
First officers arrived at 10:26 P.M. and found Father Delgado in the apartment administering CPR to victim. Officers took over CPR while Delgado performed last rites. Fire Department EMS arrived at 10:27 and pronounced victim D.O.A.
Vega sat back in his chair and frowned. His mother lay beaten and unconscious in her apartment for almost twenty minutes after she was discovered and before any kind of help arrived. How had he missed this before?
He tried to remember that night but it was a blur. Sirens. Rubberneckers. Indifferent cops. People that he didn’t even know rushing up to hug him. His mother’s body bag being hefted from the apartment like an oversized piece of luggage. Some police officer on his cell phone arranging his girlfriend’s birthday party. Father Delgado was there. He probably tried to talk to Vega but Vega was too distraught to remember the exchange. He hadn’t even registered until now that the priest had performed CPR and tried to save his mother’s life.
I killed Hector Ponce and Hector Ponce may have killed my mother. That was simplistic, he knew. But at the very least, Ponce’s delay may have contributed to his mother’s death. Was it incompetence? Or was there a much darker reason behind the man’s actions? Vega noted that there was a security camera in the building’s lobby that was wired into a digital video recorder. Brennan’s notes indicated that the wire connecting the camera to the recorder had come loose and the DVD was blank. As the building super, it would have been easy for Ponce to yank that wire. Then again, as the super, he wouldn’t have needed to. No one would have questioned his presence anywhere in the building—certainly not the lobby.
Vega thumbed through the painful forensic details of his mother’s death again. She hadn’t been raped, thank God. But aside from probably emptying a few bills from her wallet (she never carried much cash), she hadn’t been robbed either. There was Chinese takeout food on the table (not something his mother normally ate), but the food could have been for one person or two—the number and placement of dishes didn’t make that clear. There was no receipt from the purchase and no menu clipped to the bag, though there was a staple puncture from where a menu or receipt might have been.
A homicide detective named John Renfro who took the case over from Mike Brennan canvassed the area’s takeout joints and their grainy video cameras but Vega’s mother didn’t appear on any of them, nor were they able to match up the very standard Chinese food items—dumplings, white rice, sweet-and-sour pork—to a specific customer. Renfro was only on the case a short time. He was promoted to a joint FBI task force on organized crime after that. Vega didn’t even know where he worked in the city anymore.
Vega was desperate for new leads but he didn’t see any. At the time, the police had theorized that his mother had opened her door expecting someone else and her assailant had pushed in and attacked her for her wallet. But the police were never able to come up with the person she might have been expecting. Her last call that evening, three hours earlier, had been to the apartment of her best friend, Martha Torres, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, when the police interviewed Martha after the murder, she couldn’t remember his mother’s call despite phone records that showed they spoke for at least twenty minutes.
Vega hadn’t been a homicide detective back when his mother died. He still worked undercover in narcotics. Now however, with a few dozen homicide cases behind him and his mind less clouded by emotion, there were so many questions he wished he’d asked. Why the 911 time lag? How did the wire come loose from the building’s security camera? Were there other videos from store security cameras in the neighborhood? From any of the Chinese takeout joints? In Vega’s defense, he had to be diplomatic about backseat driving the NYPD. Everything they sent him was done as a courtesy; they could have rescinded it at any time. But still—he should have pushed harder.
Now he had to. He scrolled through his cell phone and was able to locate a phone number for Mike Brennan. He dialed. The phone number was no longer in service. The Bronx detectives division would have Mike Brennan’s new number in Florida. They’d have John Renfro’s too. But there was no way they’d give them to Vega. No cop was going to stick his neck out for Vega at the moment, especially a cop from another jurisdiction. Then again, maybe Vega didn’t have to be the one who did the asking.
He dialed another number and got through on the third ring.