Doctors always get to bury their failures. Cops usually have to live with theirs.
Vega wanted to feel some measure of peace from the news. If what Greco said was true, Vega hadn’t killed Hector Ponce. Then again, Ponce was dead either way and Vega had still killed someone. Some other unarmed, Hispanic man. Some other human being with a family who was about to get the devastating news that a loved one was gone. The stain on Vega was no less great just because the name had changed.
The human being in him grieved. The cop in him wanted answers.
“Are you sure that was Hector Ponce in the operating room?” he asked Greco.
“No. But I just tagged the evidence in his wallet,” said Greco. “That family photo is identical to the one Alma Ponce released to the media. Do you keep pictures of other people’s families in your wallet?”
Vega leaned back against the wall of the operating room waiting area with its soothing watercolors of sunsets and flowers. He wondered if Adele was looking for him. He wondered how he’d explain where he was. He couldn’t tell her about any of this. Not until the police made it public—and they weren’t about to do that until they knew a whole lot more.
“I don’t understand it,” said Vega. “Marcela ID’d the other man as her father.”
“Marcela ID’d a man whose face you shot off.”
Vega flinched. Greco’s words were true but they still pained him greatly.
“Most likely,” Greco continued, “what Marcela Salinez ID’d was her father’s coat and the pay stub in the pocket. As I understand from Mark Hammond over in Wickford, the ID in the man’s wallet listed an entirely different name.”
“Antonio Fernandez,” Vega remembered. “Still, it seems to me, a man is more likely to part with a family photo than he is his paycheck.”
“Unless Ponce lent this Fernandez guy his coat and was planning to take it back after the robbery.” Greco tossed off a laugh. It sounded like someone sawing wood.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m picturing the look on Ruben Tate-Rivera’s face when he realizes that he’s built an entire media scandal around you shooting a guy only to have him show up dead twenty-four hours later.”
“I killed somebody, Grec.”
“Yeah, you did. But that’s too complicated for Tate and the media to handle. They like things they can fit into a hundred and forty-character tweet. No one can even say for sure which one of these two bodies is Ponce’s until Dr. Gupta compares the DNA, and those results won’t come back until tomorrow at the earliest. And that’s the least of my problems.”
Vega nodded. They both knew that the Lake Holly PD would have to treat this as a homicide investigation for the time being. Most likely, Vega’s department would be involved too, given the serious nature of the crime and its connection to the Wickford shooting. “You think he jumped? Or was pushed?”
“We’re looking at video in the area, trying to figure out how he got there.”
“Any video from the bridge?”
Greco shook his head. “The town board was talking about installing security cameras at both entrances awhile back. But the price tag made them decide to just not install any nighttime lighting on the walkway instead.”
Vega raised an eyebrow. “Those cameras will look cheap next to the lawsuit the town could be facing.”
“Yep.” Greco agreed. “Ponce’s family may get richer claiming he couldn’t see and took a fall than they ever would’ve with you shooting him.”
“That is, if he fell.”
“Ah, the million-dollar question,” said Greco.
“More like eight thousand.”
“Huh?”
Vega closed his eyes. There was no way around this. Adele had told him that Ponce was in hock for $8,000 to some gangster who’d threatened Yovanna’s life. She’d handed Vega the motive for Ponce’s robbery. And now Ponce was dead under suspicious circumstances, so that motive was more crucial than ever to the case. As an officer of the law, he couldn’t hold back evidence of this magnitude.
“Hector Ponce owed eight thousand dollars to a loan shark at the time of his death.”
“What?” asked Greco. “Where did you hear this?”
“Marcela told Adele,” said Vega. “In confidence.”
“Ain’t no such thing in a police investigation and you know it,” said Greco.
Vega gave Greco a dirty look. Yes, he knew it. But he also knew that Adele would feel betrayed. She’d wonder how Vega could refuse to confirm or deny a single shred of information on the shooting to her, and yet so freely divulge her confidences to another police officer. It would sever Adele’s relationship with Marcela. It would break trust between her and the immigrant community. Worst of all, it would break them.