The In Death Collection, Books 26-29

by J. D. Robb

  “If they’ve been having it on for that long, he told her what he was up to.”

  “Yeah. I think he may have helped her kill the first time, earn her mark—maybe they earned them together as the timing jibes with Teresa’s statement. Her father. He’d been sexually abusing her. She had enough. They cut him up.”

  “She admitted—”

  “No. She admitted the abuse, and that was truth. She admitted she’d joined the gang at fourteen to escape it, to make family, for protection. Her father was found hacked to pieces in an abandoned building when she was fourteen. He was a known dealer, and the cops put it down to an illegals deal gone bad. Probably didn’t work it very hard. Why bother? She and Lino would’ve been covered for it anyway. Others in the gang would’ve alibied them, or threatened someone else into it.”

  She heard Peabody close the office door, turned.

  “Are you doing okay?” Peabody asked.

  “Yes.” Eve walked to the AutoChef, programmed coffee. “Let’s keep going. We’re going to want to dig back into that case file. I’ve got the case files for the bombings, and we’ll need to reach out to the investigators. I need to put some pressure on Penny. More pressure than a couple months in over slapping at a cop.”

  “Do you think she killed Lino?”

  “We’ll check her alibi, but I bet it’s nice and tight. She had it ready for me, and on a platter. No, she’s the hothead. I don’t think she did the kill. But I think she’s connected. At the very least she knows who did.”

  “Maybe they had a fight. Lovers’ tangle.”

  “Maybe. I can’t see her going five years without getting pissed off at a lover. Or being exclusive,” she said slowly, and handed one of the coffee mugs to Peabody. “Let’s find out if she was banging anybody else besides Lino. Lino used his confessional privileges to blackmail when it suited him. Can’t see him hitting up for nickels. So we see who’d use the church who had enough to make paying for sin worthwhile. And we need full information on the victims and fatalities of the restaurant bombing.”

  “You know how I said I thought it was starting to fall into place? Now it feels like it’s spreading out all over.”

  “Just more pieces. They’re going to fall somewhere. Let’s start with the bombings, work forward. The primary investigator’s still on the job. Contact Detective Stuben, out of the Four-six. See if he and/or his old partner have time for a sit-down.”

  “Okay. Dallas.” She wanted to say more, it was all over her face. The need to comfort or reassure.

  “Right now let’s just work the case, Peabody. That’s it.”

  With a nod, Peabody stepped out, and Eve turned back to the window. Time enough, Eve thought, time enough later to feel it, to let herself feel any empathy or connection to another young girl who’d killed to escape the brutality of her father.

  She finished off her coffee, then requested the case files for the Soto murder. And was grateful that Peabody buzzed through with an affirmative from Stuben before she had the chance to dig into them.

  Stuben wanted to meet at a deli by his own cop shop. He was already packing into a mystery sandwich and a side of slaw when Eve and Peabody arrived. “Detective Stuben, Lieutenant Dallas. My partner, Detective Peabody.” Eve offered a hand. “Thanks for taking the time.”

  “Not a problem.” His voice was tough-edged Bronx. “Getting my lunch in. Food’s good here, if you want to eat and meet.”

  “Wouldn’t mind.” Eve settled on a steamed dog and some sort of pasta curls, and noted Peabody was offsetting her morning burrito with a melon plate.

  “Kohn, my old partner’s off on a fishing trip. Testing retirement out, see if it suits him before he takes the jump,” Stuben began. “If you want to talk to him, he’s due back tomorrow.”

  Stuben dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. “I used to take that file out every couple months, the first year or two after the bombings. I guess longer.” He shook his head, bit into his sandwich. “Take it out again, review, maybe do more follow-ups once or twice a year for another stretch. Dack, too—my partner. We’d sit down like this, over a meal or a brew, and go through it again. Ten, twelve years down, I’d still get it out. Some of them don’t leave you alone.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “That area, it was going through a bad time then. Couldn’t bring itself back after the Urbans. We didn’t have enough street cops, not enough on the gang patrols. And the gangs shoved it up our ass, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Did you know Lino Martinez?”

  “I knew the little bastard, and the rest of them. I worked those streets when I was in uniform. He was a badass by the time he was eight. Stealing, tagging stores, busting things up just to bust them. His mother, she tried. I’d see her dragging him to school, to church. I caught him with a pocketful of Jazz when he was about ten. I let him off, ’cause of the mother.”

  “Did you know Nick Soto?”

  “Dealer, street tough, liked to rough up women. Slippery bastard. Then someone slipped a knife in him. Fifty, sixty times. I didn’t work that one, but I knew him some.”

  “Did anyone talk to the daughter or Lino on that one?”

  He paused, rubbed a finger over his cheek. “Had to. Lino and the Soto kid were tight. The fact is, I think she was worse than he was, worse than Lino. He stole something, it was for money. He beat the shit out of somebody, there was a reason. Kid had a purpose. Her? Carried hate around in her. She stole, it was to take it from somebody else. She beat the shit out of someone, it was for the hell of it. You’re sniffing at them for that case?”

  “I had Penny Soto in on something today. She claims her father raped her, regularly. That didn’t come out.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t work it. But I knew some of the particulars.” He shook his head. “That had come out, I’d know.”

  “You looked for Lino after the bombing.”

  “He’d taken over the Soldados by then, him and Chávez served as captains. The site wasn’t strict Skull territory. It was in the disputed turf, but plenty of them hung there. It was retaliation. I know it was Soldados, and the Soldados didn’t breathe without Lino telling them to. Mrs. Martinez said Lino took off, two days before the bombing.”

  He shook his head. “I had to believe her, or I had to believe she believed it. She let us go through the place. No sign of him, and we checked with neighbors, and not all of them had any love for the son of a bitch. Got the same story. He lit out before the incident. We put the heat on the Soldados, and turned it up. We couldn’t get one of them to refute that. Not one. But they did it, Lieutenant, they set it up, Martinez and Chávez. I know it in my guts.”

  “My guts say the same.”

  “Have you got a line on them? Either of them?”

  “I’ve got Lino Martinez in the morgue.”

  Stuben scooped up noodles. “Best place for him.”

  “How about any of the alternate gangs? Would any of them take a hit at Lino after all this time?”

  “Skulls, Bloods. Most of them are dead, gone, or locked up. Always a few around, both sides of that. But that fire’s been out a long while. How’d he buy it?”

  “You’ve heard about the murder at St. Cristóbal’s? The one posing as a priest.”

  “Martinez?”

  “Yeah. How’s that play for you, him going under like that for five years—in plain sight?”

  Stuben sat back, gave it some thought over his tube of cream soda. “He was wily. He had brains and could stay frosty. It was hard, even when he was a kid, to pin anything on him. Knew how to cover his tracks, or get someone to do it for him. He fought his way up to the top level of the Soldados by the time he was sixteen. Had to be something in it for him, some game. Something big to keep him under. You had the Soto girl in on this?”

  “Today.”

  “She’d have known, no question in my mind. He came back, he’d go to Penny Soto. Lino had a weak spot, she was it. He made her a lieutenant, and she’
s not fifteen, for Christ’s sake. Word was, there was some dissention in the ranks about that. Lino took out the dissenter with a pipe, and let her kick the shit out of him. ’Course, the dissenter claimed, from his hospital bed with his jaw wired, that he fell down some stairs. Back then? You couldn’t work one of them against the other. They’d take a knife to the heart first.”

  “Times change.”

  Stuben nodded. “They do. You might try Joe Inez.”

  “I ran it by him once. Weak link?” she asked, but for courtesy as she already knew.

  “That’d be the one. Joe, he didn’t have the kill switch in him. Didn’t have the hardness for it.”

  “Is there anyone else I should talk to? Any other former members? I’ve got a couple people working on getting me names, but you’d know better.”

  “I can tell you anybody who was top rungs back that time, they’re gone. Dead, in a cage, or in the wind. Some are still around, but they’d’ve been rank and file. Martinez and Chávez were in charge. And Soto. She took it over when they lit out.”

  “I appreciate it, Detective.”

  “You get anything leads to closing the bombing, we’re square.”

  She got to her feet, paused. “One more thing. The families of the victims. Are you in touch?”

  “Now and then.”

  “If I need to, can I tap you again on this?”

  “You know where to find me.”

  17

  EVE FOLLOWED HER NOSE TO ST. CRISTÓBAL’S. Rosa, her hair bundled over a face prettily flushed, answered the door. She wore an apron over a colorful top and slim black pants.

  “Hello. How can I help you?”

  “A couple of questions for you, and for Fathers López and Freeman.”

  “The fathers aren’t here right at the moment, but . . . Would you mind coming back to the kitchen? I’m making bread, and you caught me right in the middle.”

  “Sure. Making it?” Eve added as she and Peabody followed Rosa through the rectory. “Like from flour?”

  “Yes.” Rosa tossed a smile over her shoulder. “And other things. Father López is especially fond of my rosemary bread. I was just about to shape the dough, and don’t want it to over-rise.”

  In the little kitchen, a work counter held a large bowl, a stone board, a bin of flour.

  “My mother bakes bread,” Peabody commented. “And her mother, my sister. My dad gets his hands in sometimes.”

  “It’s a nice skill, and a relaxing chore. Do you bake?”

  “Not much, and not really in a while.”

  “It takes time.” Rosa punched a fist into the bowl of dough, and had Eve frowning. “Therapeutic.” Rosa laughed, then turned the dough onto the board, and began to pat and pull. “Now, how can I help you?”

  “You lived in the neighborhood,” Eve said, “in the spring of 2043. There were two bombings.”

  “Oh.” Rosa’s eyes clouded. “A terrible time. So much loss, pain, fear. My kids were just little guys. I kept them close, took them out of school for a month because I was afraid of what might happen next.”

  “There were never any arrests.”

  “No.”

  “Did you know Lino Martinez?”

  “If you lived in the neighborhood during that time, you knew Lino. He ran the Soldados, him and that gorilla Steve Chávez. To protect the neighborhood, he’d say. To keep what was ours. His poor mother. She worked so hard. She worked for my uncle, at the restaurant.”

  “The investigators suspected Lino for the bombing, but were never able to talk to him.”

  “I always thought he had his hand in it. The gang was his religion, and he was, at that age, a fanatic. Violence was his answer. But he was gone before it happened—the second bombing, I mean. Most thought he’d planned it, set it in motion, then ran off to avoid arrest.”

  She formed three long, narrow rolls of dough, and to Eve’s reluctant fascination, began to braid them like a woman braided hair. “He was supposed to be at that dance, when the first bomb went off,” Rosa continued. “He liked to dance. But he didn’t go. None of his inner circle, except Joe Inez, were there when it happened. Lupe Edwards’s daughter, Ronni, died in that bombing. She was barely sixteen.”

  Eve cocked her head. “And neither Lino nor Chávez were there? That would’ve been unusual?”

  “Yes. As I said, he liked to dance, and he liked to swagger and show off. I heard they were on their way there when the bomb went off. So, maybe that was true. In any case, Ronni was killed. A lot of kids were hurt, some seriously, and the rumor was Lino was the target. When he left, so soon after, a lot of people said it was because he knew the Skulls would try again. They said, some said, he left to prevent innocent people from being hurt.” Her lips twisted. “Like he was a hero.”

  Eve studied Rosa’s face. “That’s not what you said.”

  “No. I think he left because he was a coward. I think he ordered the second bombing and made sure he was far away when it happened.”

  “There were no arrests on that bombing either.”

  “No, but everyone knew it was the Soldados. Who else?”

  Eve debated with herself a moment. “Did you ever have any trouble with Lino, you specifically?”

  “No.” As she spoke, she turned the braided dough into a circle, set it on a baking sheet, then began to form three more strips. “I was older than he was, of course, and my kids too young to interest him as recruits. Plus, his mother worked for my family. He left me and mine alone. I know he tried to recruit some of the older kids, but my grandfather had a talk with him.”

  “Hector Ortiz?”

  “Yes. Lino respected my Poppy, I think, because of what he’d built, and my Poppy’s pride in the neighborhood. Lino left us alone.”

  She stopped braiding the second batch to look at Eve. “I don’t understand. Lino’s been gone for years and years. Do you think he’s involved with Father Flores—well, whoever he was—with his death?”

  “The man posing as Flores was Lino Martinez.”

  Rosa’s hands jerked away from the dough as she took a stumbling step back. “But no. No, that can’t be. I knew him. I would have known. I cooked for him, and cleaned, and . . .”

  “You knew him at seventeen, stayed out of his way, and he left you alone.”

  “Yes. Yes. But still, he would come into the restaurant, or I’d see him on the street. How could I not know him? Penny Soto! At the bodega next to the church. She was . . . they were—”

  “We know.”

  Rosa went back to her dough, but now her eyes were hard. “Why would he come back like this? Pretend all this time. And I can promise you, she knew—the one at the bodega. And they would have gone to bed. They would have had sex while he wore the collar. It would’ve excited her. Bitch. Puta.”

  She rolled her eyes, paused to cross herself. “I try not to swear in the rectory, but there are exceptions. And I can tell you this,” she continued, wound up. “If he was here like this, it wasn’t for good. However much he pretended, however much time he gave to the center, to the church, his reasons wouldn’t be for the good.”

  “He had friends here, old friends. But old enemies, too.”

  “Most he warred with are gone. I don’t know, and I’d tell you if I did, who would kill him if they’d known. Whatever he’d done, whatever he was doing or hoped to do, killing isn’t the answer. So I’d tell you.”

  “If you have any thoughts on it, I hope you’ll tell me that, too.”

  “I will.” She sighed, slowly turned the braid into a circle. “His mother, Teresa, she sent flowers to the funeral. I talk to her now and then, not as often as I should. Does she know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it all right if I talk to her? If I give her my condolences? He was her son. Nothing changes that.”

  “I imagine she’d like to hear from you. Can you tell us where we’d find either Father López or Father Freeman?”

  “Father Freeman is doing home visits. He’ll prob
ably be back in an hour or so. Father López went to the youth center.”

  “Thanks. We’ll get out of your way. One last thing. Penny Soto, who does she run with? Sleep with?”

  “If she has friends, I don’t know them. And she has a reputation for sleeping with many. Her mother was a junkie, and her father was a dealer. He was killed when she was still a child, and her mother OD’d years ago.”

  Shaking her head, Rosa placed the second braided circle on the baking sheet, began to brush both with some sort of oil. “It was a hard life, hard beginnings, but she refused help from the Church, from the neighborhood, from everyone. She chose the gang instead. She chose her life.”

  Impressions?” Eve asked as she and Peabody started toward the youth center.

  “She’s a straight arrow, and one who’s kicking herself for not clueing in on Lino while she kept house for him. She’s going to think about all this, and think hard. If she comes up with anything, she’ll contact us.”

  “That’s how I read her, too. Now try this. Lino and company routinely attend the dance deal where the bombing took place. But they’re not there when it gets hit. Just Joe’s there, in what you could call the line of fire. And days later, right before Lino takes off, he and Joe argue. No arrests. The cops look hard at members of the Skulls, but they can’t tie them. Maybe because there was no tie.”

  “You think Lino was behind both? Wait a minute.” When they got out at the center, Peabody leaned on the vehicle, stared off into middle distance. “You want war, you want to be a hero—important. Retaliation’s sexier than unprovoked offense. The bombings kicked the level up from street fights. Bomb your own turf—school dance, plenty of innocents. Even people who don’t look kindly on you, on gangs, they’re worked up.”