Salvation in Death

by J. D. Robb

  She leaned back in her chair and laughed. “’Til he thinks how to work it. They take him out to the desert, and they bury him. And Lino does his thing with ID. He’s got the skills, and he’s got a nice, fat pile from the scam, and Ortega’s winning in Vegas. He invests, gets a marriage license on record for him and Ortega. Ortega always was a queer anyway, and they’ve been sharing this big, flashy house out there for close to three months.”

  Idly, Penny examined her red and black nails. “Backdates the license, pays some guys he knows back in Taos or some shit, back here and all that to say how they knew this Aldo guy, and Ortega. Happily married couple.”

  She tipped back up, snorted out a laugh. “That Lino, he covered his ass. Mostly. So, he reports Ortega missing. Now he’s sitting pretty. Real pretty, ’cause Ortega’s got millions back here in property and shit.”

  “But he has to sit for seven years.”

  “Got that. He figures he’ll sit as this Ken Aldo guy, except he can’t come back here with that one—it’s just a beard, some hair changes. Anybody who knew him would see it. Then the priest just falls into their lap. Lino said he wasn’t going to kill the guy. It just gave him the idea, you know? He was going to make up another ID, work that, maybe come back here as an indie priest or some shit. But Chávez got mouthy, and the priest started clueing in, and Chávez killed him. Hacked him up bad, Lino said. Lino, he had some religion, you know? Didn’t like the idea of killing a priest like that. Bad luck, wrath of God, or whatever.”

  “Yeah, I bet he felt bad.”

  “Bad enough so he killed Chávez. He said he tried to stop Steve from slicing and dicing the priest, and hey, it just happened. Besides, he’d enough of the screwups. He buried them out where he’d buried Ortega.”

  “Where?”

  “You want the where?” Penny’s eyes went sly. “I can give you the where but, the charges go away—all the way.”

  “My client has valuable information,” Montoya put in. “She’s cooperating. I believe if you want further information, further cooperation, the charges must be dropped. I’m sure the families of these men want closure.”

  Eve didn’t have to fake the disgusted look. “You tell me where, and the bodies of Miguel Flores, José Ortega, and Steven Chávez are recovered, the falsifying docs and resisting go away.”

  “He said he buried them, all of them about fifty miles south of Vegas, in this place the native guys call Devil’s Church because there’s this rock formation thing with what looks like a cross on top. He put them in right at the base. He always had that religion thing in him, see? He liked burying them under the cross.”

  Penny sneered, tipped back in the chair again. “Nice doing business with you, pussy cop.”

  Eve studied her face. That was the truth, as Penny knew it. “We’ve got more business. Now we go back, Penny, we come home and go back. The bombings in 2043.”

  “That was Lino’s deal. And with no charges on record, I’m free to go. Bitch.”

  “No, bitch, you’re not. You had prior knowledge regarding the bombings. You knew he intended to set both those bombs, blaming the first on the Skulls. It’s called accessory.”

  “I was, like, fifteen, what the hell did I know?”

  “Enough, according to my witness, to be a part of the planning and execution of the first, and to help plan the second. And push the button yourself.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “I’ve got a witness, willing and able to testify. That wraps you up in six murder charges.”

  “Bullshit. Bullshit.” She slapped at Montoya when he started to speak. “I know how to handle myself here, asshole. I was a minor. So what if I pushed the button, so the fuck what? If there’d been twice as many assholes blown to hell when I did, it doesn’t mean dick. Clemency Order covers me.”

  “You’d think, but the PA’s just chomping to challenge that, and given the fact you were neither arrested nor charged for that crime before or during the Clemency period, you’re fair game.”

  “What kind of shit is this? It’s bull.” She looked to her lawyer. “It’s bull. I was a minor.”

  “Just don’t say anything. Lieutenant,” Montoya began, in a tone of outrage, “my client—”

  “Not done yet. You’ll also find on the menu conspiracy to murder Lino Martinez. She didn’t toss the ’link, Penny. And now that she knows your finger was on the button, she’s cooperating fully.”

  “That bitch Juanita killed Lino.” Penny shoved to her feet, stabbing a finger in the air. “I never touched him. I was never in that goddamn church. Juanita Turner did Lino, and she can’t pin it on me.”

  “I never said who she was,” Eve commented.

  “I don’t give a shit what you said. Juanita poisoned Lino, over her kid. You can’t pin that on me. I wasn’t fucking there.”

  “That’s why it’s called conspiracy to murder.”

  “I want a deal. I want a deal and I’ll tell you just how she did it. Shut the fuck up!” she screamed at Montoya when he tried to silence her. “Listen, just listen.” She sat back down. “The bitch went psycho when she found out Lino was back, that he’d been back, using the priest cover.”

  “How’d she find that out?”

  “Look, so I let it slip one day, that’s all. I let it slip. It’s not a crime. She’s the one who did it. She used Old Man Ortiz’s funeral for cover, got the keys out of the rectory. She poisoned the wine. She did it because her son got blown to hell, and her old man offed himself.”

  “Thanks for confirming it, on record—which is, again, why it’s called conspiracy to murder. There’s also accessory after the fact in the matter of the murders of Miguel Flores and José Ortega and Steven Chávez.”

  “What the fuck! What the fuck! Why don’t you say something?” she demanded of the lawyer.

  “I think he’s struck dumb.”

  “We had a deal. On record—”

  “For the fraud, for the assault with intent on a police officer. No deal on the rest.” Now it was Eve who tipped back in her chair. “I could afford to let those slide, seeing as you’ll be in for, oh, a couple lifetimes. Off-planet, concrete cage, no possibility of parole. And even though those words sing to me, that’s not everything you deserve. Detectives.”

  At her word, Stuben and Kohn came in. “The charges are murder in the first,” Stuben began, “in the deaths of . . .”

  He spoke all the names, all the dead from 2043. When Penny leaped up, Eve simply wrenched her arms behind her back and cuffed her.

  “I thought you’d like to take her down, book her,” she said to the detectives. “On all the charges.”

  “It’d be a nice cap on it. Thanks, Lieutenant. Thanks.”

  She listened to Penny scream obscenities as they hauled her out. “Record off. This is probably a lot more than you bargained for,” she said, casually to the lawyer. “If I were you? I’d run.”

  She turned, walked out. Roarke stepped out of observation.

  “Would we be leaving for Nevada tonight?” he asked.

  Hardly a wonder she was raving nuts about the man. “Yeah, that’d be best. I’m going to want to take someone along, if that’s okay with you.”

  • • •

  For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit

  www.penguin.com/robbchecklist

  EPILOGUE

  THE ROCK CROSS CAST A SHADOW ON SAND STRUCK GOLD BY A vicious sun. That sun bleached the sky white, and forced a breathless heat into the air.

  Eve stood under it, under the shadow and the sun.

  The gauges found the bodies quickly, and the diggers unearthed them, the remains of what had once been men. And in one burning grave, with the bones, lay a silver cross, and a silver medal. Santa Anna, in honor of a dead priest’s mother.

  It was enough.

  Still, they verified with DNA, with dental.

  She stood and remembered what the local cop, the detective who’d run the missing persons on Orteg
a had said.

  “You know how you smell something, but you can’t figure out where it’s coming from? I smelled something on this one. But the guy—the ID, the records, wits—it all checked out.”

  “No reason for you not to think he wasn’t who he said he was.”

  “Except that smell. We checked out the house they’d rented. Sweet place, let me tell you. Fancy. No signs of foul play. We looked good, too. I like to think we looked good. We didn’t find a damn thing. MP’s clothes, or most of them, gone and this guy Aldo—Martinez—leaking like a bad faucet. I get the background on the MP, see he’s got some illegals trouble. You figure he took off, went on a binge. And the other, he asks for a priest, a counselor. Jesus, I watched that priest walk off with him. Just let them go.”

  Wrong place, Eve thought. Wrong time. Like young Quinto Turner.

  Death was a mean bastard.

  So she’d come back, to the shadow of the cross, to the graves dug in the sand under the violent sun. Because the priest had asked her to.

  She knew he was praying over those now empty graves. And suspected he prayed for all three with equal devotion. It made her feel odd, so she stayed back with Roarke.

  López turned, and aimed those sad, serious eyes on her. “Thank you. For all you’ve done.”

  “I did my job.”

  “We all have them. Thank you both. I’ve kept you out in the sun long enough.”

  They walked to the small, sleek plane waiting on the plate of the sand.

  “A drink, Father?” Roarke asked when they took their seats.

  “I should ask for water, but I wonder, would you have any tequila?”

  “I would, yes.” Roarke fetched the bottle and glasses himself.

  “Lieutenant,” López began. “May I call you your name?”

  “Mostly people call me Dallas.”

  “Your name’s Eve. The first woman God created.”

  “Yeah, she doesn’t have a real good rep.”

  A smile ghosted around his mouth, around those sad eyes. “She shoulders blame, I think, not entirely her own. Eve, I’ve put in a request to hold Father Flores’s funeral mass at St. Cristóbal’s, and to bury him in the place our priests are buried. If I’m allowed to do this, would you attend?”

  “I can try.”

  “You found him. Not everyone would have looked. It wasn’t your job to find him.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  He smiled, sipped the first of his tequila.

  “I’ve got a question,” Eve said. “I’m not Catholic or anything—he sort of is.”

  Roarke shifted, drank. “Not precisely.”

  “What I mean is I’m not, so it’s not like I’ll—how is it put—take it as gospel, but I’d like an opinion from, you know, a rep of the church.”

  “What’s the question?”

  “It’s something Juanita Turner said in the box, in interview. It bugs me. Do you believe that someone who self-terminates can’t go to heaven, on the supposition there is one?”

  López sipped again. “The Church has a firm policy regarding suicide, even as suicide has become legal in most places, most parts of the world, with proper authorization.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “The Church ruling is very clear. And rules often ignore the human and the individual factor. I think God ignores nothing. I think His compassion for His children is infinite. I can’t believe, in my heart, God closes his door to those in pain, to those in desperation. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yeah. You don’t always follow the rules.” She glanced at Roarke. “I know somebody else like that.”

  Roarke slid a hand over hers, laced fingers. “And I know someone who thinks about them entirely too much. Lines can blur, wouldn’t you agree, Father?”

  “Chale. And yes, lines can, and sometimes should, blur.”

  She smiled, listened to two men she found fascinating and intriguing debate, discuss over glasses of tequila.

  And she watched out the window as the dry gold of the desert receded. As the plane banked east, to take them home.