by J. D. Robb
“Spread the word that you were the target. They came after you. Now you hit back, hit harder.”
“Okay, but why leave?”
“You leave important, your name on people’s lips. You make sure word goes that you’ve left so no more innocent people are killed when the Skulls try for you again. And you leave a body count behind.”
Like Peabody, Eve leaned on the car. Across the street a woman swept her stoop, and beside it flowers made a colorful waterfall down a glossy white pot. The early morning rain still glittered on petals and leaves.
“The cops can’t hassle you,” Eve continued, “not only because you aren’t there, but because evidence says you weren’t. He’s patient, the son of a bitch was patient. You’re going to come back one day, come back rolling in it. Could be he didn’t plan for it to take so long. You’re seventeen, and full of yourself. You think, I’ll score, big score, in a few months, go back, live like a king.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” Peabody mused. “Plus, you’re seventeen, and you’re out of the box for the first time in your life. There’s a big world out there. You’re whoever you are, whenever you want to be. I like it.”
“So do I. Might be half bullshit, but some of it’s got to play in.”
They went into the center. Magda stood behind the counter making a ’link call. A couple of boys sat on bright yellow chairs, with expressions that indicated to Eve they were planning nefarious deeds. Another woman stood nearby, keeping an eagle eye on them.
Magda held up a hand, two fingers indicating two minutes. “I know, Kippy, but this is the third fight in two weeks. That’s an automatic suspension. Both Wyatt and Luis need to be picked up as soon as possible. I’ve already contacted Luis’s dad. Yes, that’s fine. I’m really sorry. Oh, I know.” Magda rolled her gaze toward the two boys. “I absolutely know.”
She clicked off. “Okay, sorry about that. One more second. Nita? Wyatt’s mother and Luis’s father are coming in. It’s going to take Kippy about an hour to arrange it. Can you hold them until then?”
Nita, a sturdy-looking woman with her back to the desk, nodded. “I’ll stay here. Do you need me to man the desk?”
“No, I—This won’t take long, will it?” she asked Eve, then angled back toward Nita. “Nita’s in charge of our six- to ten-year-olds, and our nurse. We’d be lost without her. Nita, this is Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody.” Magda gave the boys a meaningful look. “In case anybody around here needs to be arrested.”
Nita turned slightly, a cold look in her eye. Eve started to speak, but the boys needed only that split second. They fell on each other like wolves.
Even as Eve started forward, Nita waded in. Eve had to admire the way the woman grabbed both kids by the shirt collars and yanked them apart.
“You there. You there.” She hauled them to chairs. “You think punching each other makes you strong? It makes you stupid. Fighting’s for those not smart enough to use their words.”
Eve might have disagreed—she liked a good fight—but the lecture had the kids staring at the floor.
“My partner and I can take them downtown,” Eve said casually. “Looks like a couple of assaults, disturbing the peace, and being general dumb-asses to me. Couple hours in a cage . . .” She let it trail off.
Both boys stared at her, jaws on the toes of their skids, which had been the intention. Nita, however, stared holes through her, with no trace of humor, for an icy moment before turning her back again. “It’s for their parents to deal with.”
“Sure. So . . .” She turned back to Magda. “I’m looking for Father López.”
“Yes, he’s in the gym. Marc told me he ran into you this morning, that you said you had some leads.”
“We’re working it. Gym?”
“Through that door, straight down to the end of the corridor, turn left.”
“Thanks. And, ah . . .” She jerked her head toward the boys. “Good luck.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Nita doesn’t like cops,” Eve commented as she headed down the corridor with Peabody.
“Either that or she took you seriously. If I didn’t know you, I’d have taken you seriously.”
“I thought scaring kids out of being little assholes was SOP.”
“Well . . . It’s a method.”
“Did you see the kid on the right. Little bastard can take a punch.”
And so, Eve noted when they went through the gym doors, could López. What looked like a portable sparring ring stood behind the center court line. A scatter of kids practiced on equipment on the other half, under the supervision of a couple of women in gym shorts. López—red boxing gloves, black face guard, black baggy shorts, and a white tee—sparred with Marc.
And Marc snuck one in.
Other kids grouped around the ring, called out encouragement. The gym rang with voices, the slap of feet, and the whop of padded gloves finding meat.
Both men had worked up a sweat, and despite the age difference appeared evenly matched to the casual onlooker. But Eve saw López was quicker, and carried that innate boxer’s grace.
An out-fighter, she noted, making his opponent come to him.
He weaved, jabbed, danced right, hooked. Disciplined poetry in motion.
Why, exactly, was fighting the answer of the weak and brainless? Eve wondered.
She watched until the timer rang, and both men stepped back. She’d counted two hits for Marc, six for López. And the way Marc bent at the waist to catch his breath told her he was done.
She walked forward. “Nice round.”
Puffing, still bent over, Marc turned his head. “The guy kills me.”
“You drop your right before you jab.”
“So he tells me,” Marc said bitterly. “You want a shot at him?”
Eve glanced up at López. “Wouldn’t mind, but I’ll rain-check. Have you got a few minutes now?” she asked López. “We have some questions.”
“Of course.”
“Outside maybe? We’ll wait for you on the blacktop.”
“He’s built,” Peabody said when they walked out of the gym. “Who knew that under all the priest gear he was Father Seriously Ripped.”
“Keeps in shape. And something’s up. Father Seriously Ripped had his sad eyes on, but there was more. There was dread.”
“Really? I guess I wasn’t looking at his eyes. He could have heard about Lino by now. Word like that starts traveling fast. Since he’s the man in charge, he’s going to have to explain, I guess, why he didn’t realize a man like that was working under him. Everybody needs a fall guy, right? Maybe the church brass is aiming at him.”
Since the blacktop was swarming with kids, Eve stayed at the side of the building. “Why aren’t these people in school?”
“School’s out for the day, Dallas. On the technical end of things, it’s nearly end of shift.”
“Oh. Maybe he’s worried about his career. Do priests have careers? But that wasn’t it. I know the look that says, ‘I don’t want to talk to the cops.’ That’s what he had in his eyes.”
“You think he’s hiding something? He didn’t know Lino—as Lino. He’s only been in the parish for a few months.”
“He’s been a priest a hell of a lot longer.” She thought of what Mira had predicted, and decided not to dance and jab, but to try for the knockout as soon as López came out.
His hair was damp, and the sweat had his T-shirt clinging to his chest. Yeah, Eve mused, he kept in shape.
She didn’t wait a beat. “The victim’s been officially identified as Lino Martinez. You know who killed him. You know,” Eve said, “because whoever did told you.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “What I know was told to me within the sanctity of the confessional.”
“You’re protecting a murderer, and one who is indirectly responsible for a second death in Jimmy Jay Jenkins.”
“I can’t break my vows, Lieutenant. I can’t betray my faith, or the laws of the Church.”
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“Render unto Caesar,” Peabody said, and had López shaking his head.
“I can’t give to man’s law with one hand, and take from God’s with the other. Please, can we sit? The benches over there, away from the building. This needs to be very private.”
Resentment bubbling, Eve walked over to where benches, their legs set into concrete, were facing the court. López sat, rested his hands on his knees.
“I’ve prayed on this. I’ve prayed since I heard this confession. I can’t tell you what was told to me. It was told not to me, but to God through me. I received this confession as a minister to God.”
“I’ll take the hearsay.”
“I don’t expect you to understand, either of you.” He lifted his hands from his knees, palms up. Lowered them again. “You’re women of the world. Of the law. This person came to me to unburden their soul, their heart, their conscience, of this mortal sin.”
“And you absolved them? Good deal for them.”
“No, I did not. Cannot absolve them. I can’t unburden them, Lieutenant. I counseled, I instructed, I urged this person to go to you, to confess to you. Until this is done, there can be no forgiveness, no absolution. They will live with this sin, and die with it unless they repent it. I can’t do anything for you, for them. I can’t do anything.”
“Did this individual know Lino Martinez?”
“I can’t answer you.”
“Is this person a member of your church?”
“I can’t answer you.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “It makes me ill, but I can’t answer.”
“I could put you in a cage. You’d get out. Your church will campaign, send their lawyers, but you’d do time first while we’re fighting it out.”
“And still, I can’t answer. If I tell you, I’ll have broken my vows, betrayed them. I’ll be excommunicated. There are all kinds of cages, Lieutenant Dallas. Do you think I want this?” he demanded, with the first hint of heat. “To block your justice? I believe in your justice. I believe in the order of it as much as you. Do you think I want to stand by, knowing I can’t reach a wounded, angry soul? That my counsel may have turned it away instead of bringing it to God?”
“They may come after you. You know who they are, what they did. I can take you into protective custody.”
“They know I won’t break my vows. If you took me away, I’d have no chance to reach them, to try, to keep trying to persuade them to do true penance for the sin, to accept man’s law and God’s. Let me try.”
She could all but feel herself beating her fists against the solid, the impenetrable wall of his faith. “Did you tell anyone? Father Freeman, your superiors?”
“I can’t tell anyone what was said or who came to me. As long as they live with it, so do I.”
“If this person kills again . . .” Peabody began.
“They won’t. There’s no reason.”
“It goes back to the bombings in 2043.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Everyone in the parish knows of them. There’s a perpetual novena for the victims and their families. Every month a Mass is dedicated to them. To all of them, Lieutenant, not just the victim from El Barrio.”
“Did you know that Lino selectively blackmailed some who came to him in confession?”
López jerked as if struck with sudden, shocking pain. Rather than sorrow, it was fury that flashed into his eyes. “No. No, I didn’t know. Why didn’t any of them come to me for help?”
“I doubt seriously they knew who was blackmailing them, or where the blackmailer got the information. And now I know whoever killed him wasn’t one of them.”
Eve pushed to her feet. “I can’t force you to tell me what you know. I can’t make you tell me who used your church, your faith, your ritual, your vows to murder. I could squeeze you, and sweat you, but you still wouldn’t tell me and then both of us would be pissed off. But I’ll tell you this: I’m going to find out who it was. Whatever kind of slime Lino was, I’m going to do my job, the same as you.”
“I pray you will find them, and I pray that before you do, they come to you. I pray that God gives me the wisdom and the strength to show them the way.”
“I guess we’ll see which one of us gets there first.”
Eve left him sitting on the bench.
“I get he’s doing what he thinks he has to,” Peabody said. “But I think we should be taking him in. You could break him in Interview.”
“Not sure I could. He’s got titanium for faith. And even if . . . isn’t that going to make him one more victim? I break him, make him slip enough, and he’d never be the same. He wouldn’t be a priest anymore.”
She remembered what she’d felt like when they’d taken her badge. How she’d felt empty, helpless. Like nothing, like no one.
“I’m not doing that to him. Have I even got a right to do that to an innocent man? One who’s taken an oath pretty much the same as ours?”
“Protect and serve.”
“We do people, he does souls. I’m not going to sacrifice him to make my job easier. But I’ll tell you what we are going to do.” She got into the vehicle, switched on the engine. “We’re putting him under surveillance. We’re getting a warrant to monitor his communication devices. I’d put eyes and ears in the damn church if they’d clear it, but that’s not going to happen. We’re going to know where he goes, when, who he sees.”
“Do you think the killer will go for him?”
“He’s got that titanium faith, so he thinks not. Me? I’ve got faith that people mostly look out for their own ass. So we cover him—we protect—and we leave him out here as bait, hoping the sinner needs another shot at redemption. Put it in play, my authorization.”
As Peabody started that ball, Eve glanced at the time. Thought, Shit. “One more stop. We’ll see if we can jangle anything out of Inez.”
A woman answered this time, a looker with warm brown hair pulled back in a jaunty tail from a rose-and-cream face. Behind her, two little boys rammed miniature trucks together and made violent crashing noises.
“Pipe down,” the woman ordered, and they did, instantly. The crashing noises continued, but at whispers.
“Mrs. Inez?”
“Yes?”
“We’d like to speak to your husband.”
“So would I, but he’s stuck in New Jersey, there’s a jam at the tunnel. He’ll be lucky to get home in under two hours. What is it?”
Eve took out her badge.
“Oh, Joe said the police were here last night. Something about one of the tenants being a witness in a hit-and-run.”
“Is that what your son told you?”
“Actually, Joe filled me in.” Awareness came into her eyes. “And that wasn’t entirely accurate. What is this about?”
“We’re investigating an old connection of your husband’s. Do you know Lino Martinez?”
“No, but I know the name. I know Joe was in the Soldados, and I know he did time. I know he had trouble, and he pulled himself out of it.” She gripped the doorknob, eased the door closed a few more inches, as if to shield the children behind her. “He hasn’t had anything to do with any of that business for years. He’s a good man. A family man with a decent job. He works hard. Lino Martinez and the Soldados were another life.”
“Tell him we were here, Mrs. Inez, and that we’ve located Lino Martinez. We’re going to need to follow up with your husband.”
“I’ll tell him, but I’m telling you he doesn’t know anything about Lino Martinez, not anymore.”
She closed the door, and Eve heard the locks snick impatiently.
“She’s pissed he lied to her,” Peabody commented.
“Yeah. Stupid move on his part. It tells me he’s hiding something from his wife. Something from now, something from then? Either way, something. I’m going to drop you at the subway and work from home. Keep on those John Does. I think I’ll comb through those old case files, see
if something swims up from the deep.”
“I know what you said back there to López is right. We’ve got to do the job no matter what a creep Lino was. But when you know some of the shit he pulled, and the shit we think he pulled, it’s hard to get worked up because somebody ended him.”
“Maybe if somebody had gotten worked up a long time ago, he wouldn’t have been able to pull so much shit, his mother wouldn’t be crying tonight, and somebody who strikes me as an especially good man wouldn’t be honor-bound, or faith-bound, to protect a murderer.”
Peabody sighed. “You’ve got a point. But I like it better when the bad guys are just the bad guys.”
“There’s always plenty of them to go around.”
18
SHE NEEDED THINKING TIME. CLOSED IN WITH the case time where she could put the pieces of everything she knew, didn’t know, everything that had been said, left unsaid together with people, events, evidence, and speculation, and see what kinds of pictures formed.
She needed to take a good hard look at the victims in the two bombings, and their families, their connections. She needed to consider the blackmail angle, which she already knew would be a deep and sticky well. If López wouldn’t tell her the name of a murderer, he sure as hell wasn’t going to share the names of people who’d confessed blackmail-able transgressions to him.
She didn’t buy murder for blackmail in Lino’s case, but she couldn’t discount it as possible. Or connected.
How had Lino collected the money? she wondered as she drove home. Where had he kept the funds, or had he just pissed it away as it came in? Expensive hotel rooms and lavish meals, gaudy jewelry for his bed partner.
Not enough, she thought. A few thousand here and there? What was the point in risking exposure for a fancy suite and a bottle of champagne?
Showing off to the old girlfriend? Stuben said Penny Soto had been his weak spot. So . . . It could be that simple. Wanting to be rich, important, and having his woman see him as both.
Or as simple as needing the rush, of knowing you were pulling a fast one. Reminding yourself who you were while you were pretending to be another. Like a hobby.