He could barely keep his mind on the road as he drove to the community college campus. He tailgated in the left lane, driving too fast, taking the turns too quickly, whipping in and out of traffic like he had some sort of death wish for himself and anyone who came into contact with him. I’m toxic. Stay away from me, cabrones. The world hates me and I hate the world! If he could find a bumper sticker to proclaim it, he would.
Up until this moment in his life, he’d always tried to find the essential goodness in people. And sure, with some, you had to paw through a pile of manure to uncover it. But he never quit looking. He wanted to help people. He wanted to keep them safe. He wanted to guide them through their time of crisis to that moment when things would get better. He believed that even when they lied to him or cursed at him or took a swing at him that it was only the uniform or his position of authority that they were angry at. They were acting out of impulse. It wasn’t personal. When everyone calmed down, they would see that. Things would improve.
He wasn’t sure he could believe that anymore. Never had humanity looked darker or more threatening to him than in these last twenty-four hours. Never had he felt so vulnerable and alone.
Do whatever you want to me! he felt like screaming. But spare the people I love! He was a man with a bull’s-eye on his back. Everyone he cared about was likely to become collateral damage.
Valley Community College was county police jurisdiction. His jurisdiction—if he weren’t on administrative leave. He managed to keep himself together long enough to ask his department to send over two officers to file a formal report. He didn’t want this swept under the rug by campus security.
He tried to force himself to calm down enough so that he didn’t look like a raging lunatic when he pulled up to the campus security building. It was a portable trailer that looked like a giant Twinkie with a handicap accessible ramp in front and two flowerpots that seemed to be used mostly for cigarette butts. There was a small parking lot facing the building with one campus patrol car in a marked spot and an aging Nissan sedan across from it. Joy’s car wasn’t here. It was probably in the student lot. Just as well, thought Vega. He wasn’t ready to face the casual viciousness of the crime yet. He parked his truck next to the Nissan and walked inside.
The trailer was one long overheated room. It smelled of burnt coffee and damp wood. Joy was sitting on a plastic chair between two girlfriends who were hovering protectively around her. All three of them looked like variations on the same theme, with their skintight, ripped jeans, ponytails, and childish accessories. The girl on Joy’s right was black with Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed Reindeer mittens on her hands. The one on her left was blond with freckled skin and a wool hat adorned with pom-poms pulled low across her forehead. Vega wished he knew their names, wished he paid more attention to such things.
Everybody stared at Vega when he entered. Besides the girls, there were three officers in the room. There was the campus security officer, a black guy with the ramrod posture of a retired soldier. There were also two uniformed officers Vega recognized from his own department—Wilson, a white guy with soft eyes whose father used to work with Greco in the Lake Holly PD, and Duran, a fellow Puerto Rican who was short-listed to make detective soon. At this rate, maybe he’d take Vega’s job.
All conversation stopped when Vega entered. The only sound was the squawk of the department radios. Vega nodded to the three officers. There was no point in introducing himself to the campus security guy. Anybody who hadn’t been under a rock the past twenty-four hours knew who he was.
“So what do you have so far? Any witnesses? Any video footage?”
“No witnesses,” said Duran. He had a weight lifter’s physique—all shoulders and biceps and pecs—probably a compensation for his relatively short stature. He lifted his gaze to meet Vega’s but his eyes seemed to be focusing on a spot just past Vega’s earlobe. “We’ve pulled the video. One suspect. A white male, maybe five-nine, a hundred and fifty pounds wearing a dark hoodie.”
“That’s like a third of the student body.”
“The video’s very grainy,” said the campus officer. His nameplate read STEVENS. “The county hasn’t appropriated any funds to update our security equipment in a long time so we’ve got no clear facial shots. We do know that he got into a dark-colored jeeplike vehicle with someone else behind the wheel. Though again, we’ve got no idea who that person is.”
“Model? Color? License plate?” asked Vega.
“Can’t tell from the video,” said Stevens. “It looks like a Jeep. Maybe a Renegade. Black or dark blue or maybe even dark green.”
“You can’t cross-check the Jeep with student-registered vehicles?”
“We did. But right now, we have no proof it was a student. The campus has no perimeter security so in theory, anyone could have driven in.”
Vega turned to Joy. “Can you narrow the field of suspects, perhaps? Any boy you rejected? Or who thinks you rejected him?”
“That’s sexist, Dad.”
“How is that sexist?”
“To assume that I’m somehow to blame for this.”