Salvation in death

7

SHE FELT PISSY. EVE COULDN’T QUITE FIGURE out why, but the pissiness stayed full-blown through the drive home. The floods of tourists cavorting in New York’s spring like a bunch of chickens before the plucking couldn’t shift the mood into mildly irritated or cynically amused. Even the animated billboards announcing everything from summer fashions-shoes this summer would apparently be clear to show off pedicured feet-to butt enhancers didn’t make a dent. She tried to imagine the city full of invisible shoes, painted toes, and padded asses, but it didn’t cheer her up.

The ad blimps cruising overhead and tying up air traffic didn’t cut through the cloud of irritation as they blasted their litany of Sale! Sale! Sale! (in English this time) at the Sky Mall.

She couldn’t find her appreciation for the chaos, the cacophony, the innate craziness of the city she loved, and so when she finally turned into the gates, couldn’t find her pleasure in being out of it. In being home.

What the hell was she doing here? She should’ve stayed at work where she could turn a pissy mood to her advantage. Should’ve locked her office door, programmed a pot of black coffee, and dug in. To the evidence, the facts, the tangibles.

Why the hell had she asked López what he’d done before wrapping that collar around his neck?

It wasn’t relevant. It didn’t matter. What difference did it make to the case that some bastards had beaten, raped, and strangled the love of his life? It wasn’t connected.

Identifying the victim was connected. Finding the killer mattered. The job didn’t include imagining some girl in Mexico left naked and dead by a river. She had enough blood and death crowded in her brain without adding more-more that didn’t apply to her or the work.

She slammed out of her vehicle, strode into the house. And with that pissiness tangled with a depression she hadn’t acknowledged, barely spared a snarl for Summerset.

“Kiss my unenhanced ass,” she said before he could speak, and kept walking. “Or I’ll plant my visibly shod foot up yours.” She stormed straight into the elevator, ordered the gym. What she needed, she thought, was a good, sweaty workout.

In the foyer, Summerset merely cocked an eyebrow at the pensive Galahad, then stepped to the house ’link to contact Roarke up in his office.

“Something’s disturbing the lieutenant-more than usual. She’s gone down to the gym.”

“I’ll take care of it. Thanks.”

He gave her an hour, though he checked on her by house screen once or twice. She’d hit the virtual run first, and it was telling, Roarke supposed, that she’d chosen New York’s streets rather than her usual beach canvas. Then she hit the weights, worked up a solid sweat. Roarke found it mildly disappointing when she didn’t activate the sparring droid and beat it senseless.

When she’d moved into the pool house and dived in, he shut down his work. By the time he got down, she was out of the pool and drying off. Not a good sign, he decided. Swimming generally relaxed her, and she tended to draw out her laps.

Still, he smiled. “And how are you?”

“Okay. Didn’t know you were home.” She pulled on a robe. “I wanted a workout before I went up.”

“Then it must be time to go up.” He took her hand, brushed her lips with his. Summerset’s barometer was, as usual, accurate, Roarke thought. Something was disturbing the lieutenant.

“I’ve got to put a couple hours in.”

He nodded, led the way to the elevator.

“The case is a bitch.”

“They’re rarely otherwise.” He watched her as they rode to the bedroom.

“I don’t even know who the vic was.”

“It’s not your first John Doe.”

“No. It’s not my first anything.”

He said nothing, only moved to the wall panel to open it and select a wine while she grabbed pants and a shirt from her drawer.

“I’m going to stick with coffee.”

Roarke set her wine down, sipped his own.

“And I’m just going to grab a sandwich or something. I need to do a search on the records I just got, do some cross-references.”

“That’s fine. You can have your coffee, your sandwich, your records. As soon as you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I just told you the case is a bitch.”

“You’ve had worse. Much worse. Do you think I can’t see you’ve got something knotted inside you? What happened today?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” She scooped her fingers through the messy cap of hair she hadn’t bothered to dry. “We’ve confirmed the vic isn’t Flores, followed a lead that didn’t pan, have a couple of others that may.” She picked up the wine she’d said she didn’t want, and drank as she K drad paced the bedroom. “Spent a lot of time talking to people who worked with or knew the vic, and watched the various degrees of meltdown when I informed them he wasn’t Flores, or a priest.”

“That’s not it. What else?”

“There is no it.”

“There is, yes.” Casually, he leaned back on the dresser, took another sip of his wine. “But I’ve time to wait until you stop being a martyr and let it out.”

“Can’t you ever mind your own business? Do you always have to stick your fingers in mine?”

Pissing her off, he knew, was a shortcut to getting to the core. His lips curved, very deliberately. “My wife is my business.”

If her eyes had been weapons, he’d be dead. “You can stick that ‘my wife’ crap. I’m a cop; I’ve got a case. One to which, for a change, you have no connection. So butt out.”

“How’s this? No.”

She slammed down her wine, started to storm for the door. When he simply stepped into her path, her fists bunched. “Go ahead,” he invited, as if amused. “Take a shot.”

“I ought to. You’re obstructing justice, pal.”

In challenge, he leaned in a little more. “Arrest me.”

“This isn’t about you, goddamn it, so just move and let me work.”

“And again, no.” He caught her chin in his hand, kissed her with more force. Drew back. “I love you.”

She spun away from him, but not before he saw both the fury and frustration on her face. “Low blow. Fucking low blow.”

“It was, yes. Sod me, I’m a bastard.”

She rubbed her hands over her face, raked them back through her damp hair. Kicked the dresser. Coming around now, he thought. He picked up her wine, crossed over to hand it back to her.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the case, okay? I’m just pissed off it has a hook in me.”

“Then take the hook out. Otherwise, aren’t you the one obstructing justice?”

She took a slow sip, watching him over the rim. “You may be a bastard, but you’re a cagey one. Okay. Okay. We followed through on some information,” she began, and told him about Solas.

“So I find myself thinking, this Lino or whoever the hell he is, he may have killed Flores. Murdered him in cold blood for all I know. He was a killer.”

“You established that?”

“He was Soldados. Badasses in El Barrio. He had the gang tat, had it removed before the ID. They were a New York gang back in the day, and his tat indicates he was high up the chain. He had the Soldados kill mark on the tattoo, so he killed, at least once.”

“Harder, isn’t it, when your victim had made victims?”

“Maybe it is. Maybe. But at least he did something about this, about this kid. He beat the shit out of Solas, protected the kid, when nobody else did, would. He got her out, got her away.”

No one got you out,Roarke thought. No one got you away. Until you did it yourself.

“So we go to see the mother, get a gauge on whether she or the kidfucker might’ve done Lino.” Eve dug her hands into her pockets as she wandered the bedroom. “No chance on her, no way in hell. I can see it as soon as I see her, shaking and shuddering at the thought the husband got out of Rikers. I wanted to slap her.” Eve stopped, closed her eyes. “A slap’s more humiliating than a punch. I wanted to slap her-and I guess I did, verbally.”

He said nothing, waited for her to finish digging it out.

“She was there, goddamn it.” Her voice rang with it, with the anger, the misery, the bitterness. “She was right there when that son of a bitch was raping the kid, over and over. She let him beat her, and that’s her business, but she did nothing to help her own kid. Not a damn thing. Didn’t know, didn’t see, oh my poor baby. And I don’t get it. How can you not see, how can you not know?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some don’t see, refuse to know what they can’t stand.”

“It’s no excuse.”

“It’s not, no.”

“And I know it’s not like me, it’s not the same. My mother hated me, hated the fact of me. That’s some-thing I remember, one of the few things I remember about her. If she’d been there when he raped me, I don’t think she’d have cared one way or the other. It’s not the same, but…” She stopped, pressed her fingers to her eyes.

“It pushed it back into your face,” Roarke finished. “It made it now again, instead of then.”

“I guess.”

“And wasn’t it worse, isn’t that what you think? Worse for this girl because there was someone there who should have seen, should have known, should have stopped it?”

“Yes, yes.” She dropped her hands. “And I found myself detesting this pitiful, sad, terrified woman and giving props to a dead man I strongly suspect-hell, I know-was a murderer.”

“Giving him props for doing the right thing for a child isn’t excusing the rest, Eve.”

Calmer, she picked up her wine again. “It got a hook in me,” she repeated. “Later, the priest came back to see me. The real one. López. There’s something about him.”

“Suspicious?”

“No, no. Interesting. King of… compelling. He…” It struck her, shot out of far left and beaned her with insight. “He reminds me of you.”

If she’d fielded the ball and winged it straight into his face, he’d have been no less shocked. “Me?”

“He knows exactly who and what he is, and accepts it. He’s tough and he gets your measure pretty damn quick. Lino slipped by him, and that’s in his craw. He takes responsibility, and he blurred the lines to do what he saw was right.”

“All that?” Roarke asked.

“Yeah. He brought me information I needed, even though his superiors wanted to debate and stall on it. He went around them, followed his own code. Then I asked him-it didn’t apply, I don’t know why I asked him-what he did before he became a priest.”

She sat now, had to sit now, and told him about López and Annamaria.

“You thought of yourself again, of being trapped and defenseless all those years when your father beat you, raped you. And more, you thought of Marlena,” Roarke added, speaking of Summerset’s daughter.

“God.” Her eye swam with the memories, the nightmares. “When he was telling me, I could see it. And I could see myself, that last time, in the room when he broke my arm, and was raping me, when I went crazy and killed him. I could see Marlena, and how it must have been when those men took her to get at you, when they tortured and raped and killed her.”

She rubbed away tears, but couldn’t stop them. “And he’s talking about visitations and miracles, and I’m thinking: But what about before? What about the terror and the pain and the horrible helplessness? What about that? Because I’m not dead, and I can still feel it. Do you have to be dead not to feel it anymore?”

Her voice broke. Roarke felt the crack in his own heart.

“And he asks me if I’ve killed, and he knows the answer is yes because he asked me before. But then, he asks if I got pleasure from it. I said no, automatically. I’ve never taken a life in the line, I’ve never used my weapon as a cop for pleasure. But I wondered, for a minute, I had to wonder, did I feel it that night? That night when I was eight and I put the knife in him, when I kept putting it in him, did I get pleasure from that?”

“No.” He sat beside her now, took her face in his hands. “You know better. You killed to live. No more, no less.” He touched his lips to her forehead. “You know better. What you’re wondering, what you need to know, is did I find pleasure in killing the men who murdered Marlena.”

“There’d have been no justice for her. They killed her-brutalized and killed her to strike at you-and they were powerful men in a corrupt time. No one stood for her. No one but you.”

“That’s not the point.”

She laid her hands over his, joined them. “The cop can’t condone vigilantism, can’t condone going outside the law to hunt down and execute murderers. But the victim inside the cop, the person inside the cop understands, and more, believes it was the only justice an innocent girl would ever get.”

“And still you won’t ask what you need to know. Are you afraid you won’t be able to stand the answer, and would rather not see? Rather not know?”

Her breath shuddered out. “Nothing you could say will change the way I feel about you. Nothing. So okay, I’m asking. Did you get pleasure from killing them?”

His eyes stayed level on hers, so clear, so desperately blue. “I wanted to feel it, more than anything, I wanted to revel in it. I wanted to fucking celebrate their deaths-their pain, their end. For every second of pain and fear she’d had. For every second of life they’d taken from her, I wanted it. And I didn’t. It was duty, when it came to it. Not revenge, but duty, if you can understand that.”

“I guess I can.”

“I felt the anger, the rage, and maybe at the end of it, that lessened a bit. I can kill with less pain than you-for you feel it, even for the worst of them. We don’t stand in the same precise spot on moral ground, on everything. And because I don’t believe we must to be what we are to each other, I wouldn’t lie to spare your feelings. So if I’d felt pleasure from it, I’d say it. Neither did I feel, nor do I now feel, a single drop of regret.”

She closed her eyes, resting her brow to his as another tear slid down her cheek. “Okay. All right.”

He stroked her hair as they sat, as she calmed. As she came back. “I don’t know why I let myself get twisted up this way.”

“It’s what makes you who you are. A good cop, a complicated woman, and a pain in the ass.”

She managed a laugh. “I guess that’s about right. Oh, and about what you said before? I love you, too.”

“Then you’ll take a blocker for the headache, and have a decent meal.”

“How about I have a decent meal first, and see if that takes care of the headache, which isn’t so bad anymore, anyway?”

“Fair enough.”

They ate where they’d shared breakfast, in the bedroom sitting area. Because she’d dumped on him, Eve thought it only fair to bring him up to date on the case. For a civilian, he had a sharp interest-and sharp sense-of cop work.

Besides, she knew he’d programmed cheeseburgers for the same reason some people offered an unhappy kid a cookie. To comfort her.

“Don’t Irish gangs go for tats?” she asked.

“Sure. At least back when I was running the streets.”

She cocked her head. “I know your skin intimately. No tats on you.”

“No, indeed. Then again, I wouldn’t consider my old street mates and associates a gang. Too many rules and regs with gangs, to my way of thinking, and that constant cry to defend the home turf as if it’s holy ground. They could’ve taken my square of Dublin back then and burned it to ashes for all I cared. And tattoos-as you’ve so recently proven-are an identifying mark, even when removed. And the last thing a young, enterprising businessman, with brains, wants is an identifying mark.”

“You got that, which is why Lino had it taken off. The marks it leaves are so faint, it’s not going to pop to the naked eye so much-and not at all to the casual glance. Even if it’s noticed, it can be explained away-and was-as a youthful folly.”

“But it gives you another point of reference toward his identity.” He took a thoughtful bite of his burger. “What sort of burke marks himself with an X to announce he’s killed? And what sort of killer values ego above his own freedom?”

She gestured with a fry. “That’s gang mentality. But still, can’t take an X to court. What I need to know is why he left his beloved turf-for how long-and why he needed to assume another identity to come back. It tells me he did something-and something major-after the Clemency Order was revoked, or after he reached legal age.”

“You believe he killed Flores.”

“Had to be before that. As far as we can track, Flores was out West. Why was Lino out West? And since I’m not going to buy Lino decided to spend the rest of his life pretending to be a priest, there’s a reason he came back under that cover, and an endgame. Patience.”

“I’d say there’s a score involved.”

She nodded. “Money, jewels, illegals-which translate back to money. Enough so this gangbanger from Spanish Harlem could afford expensive face work, top-grade ID. Enough that he’s got to go under for a solid stretch of time, either because it’s too hot, or because he’s going to take that stretch of time to get the whole pie.” She narrowed her eyes. “I need to do a search for major heists, robberies, burglaries, illegal deals between six and eight years ago. Maybe six and nine, but that’s the cap. And run the baptism records. Then I need to find a cop who worked that sector back when Lino would have been an active member of the Soldados. Somebody who’d remember him, give me a picture.”

“Why don’t I take the first search? I so enjoy heists, robberies, and burglaries. And I did deal with dinner, so deserve a reward.”

“I guess you did, and do.” She sat back. “How big a bitch was I when I got home?”

“Oh, darling, you’ve been bigger.”

She laughed, held out a hand. “Thanks.”

Backstage at the recently reopened Madison Square Garden, Jimmy Jay Jenkins, founder of the Church of Eternal Light, prepared to greet his flock. He prepared with a short shot of vodka, followed by two breath strips, while the voices of the Eternal Light Singers poured in faith and four-part harmony through his dressing room speakers.

He was a big man who enjoyed good food; white suits-of which he had twenty-six and wore with various colorful bow ties and matching suspenders-tailored for his girth; his loving wife of thirty-eight years, Jolene; their three children and five grandchildren; those occasional sly swigs of vodka; his current mistress, Ulla; and preaching God’s holy word.

Not necessarily in that order.

He’d founded his church nearly thirty-five years before, laying those bricks with sweat, charisma, a talent for showmanship, and the utter and unshakable faith that he was right. From the tent revivals and country fields of his beginnings, he’d erected a multibillion-dollar-a-year business.

He lived like a king, and he preached like the fiery tongue of God. At the knock on the door, Jimmy Jay adjusted his tie in the mirror, gave his shock of white hair-of which he was not-so-secretly vain-a quick smooth, then called out a cheerful, basso, “Y’all come!”

“Five minutes, Jimmy Jay.”

Jimmy Jay beamed his wide, wide smile. “Just checking the package. What’s the gate, Billy?”

His manager, a thin man with hair as dark as Jimmy Jay’s was white, stepped in. “Sold clean out. We’re going to take in over five million, and that’s before the live-feed fees or donations.”

“That’s a godly amount.” Grinning, Jimmy Jay shot a finger at his manager. “Let’s make it worth it, Billy. Let’s get out there and save us some souls.”

He meant it. He believed he could-and had-saved scores of souls since he’d first taken the road, out of Little Yazoo, Mississippi, as a preacher. And he believed his lifestyle, like the diamond rings on each of his hands, was reward for his good works.

He accepted he was a sinner-the vodka, his sexual peccadillos-but he also believed only God could claim perfection.

He smiled as the Eternal Light Singers finished to thunderous applause, and winked at his wife, who waited in the wings, stage left. She would enter as he did, meet him center stage as the back curtain rose and the towering screen flashed their images to the back rows of the upper balconies.

His Jolene would take some of that spotlight, and just glitter and glow in it like an angel. After they’d greeted the crowd together, after she’d done her signature solo, “Walking by His Light,” he would kiss her hand-the crowd loved that. And she would return to the wings while he went to work, saving those souls.

That would be the time to get down to the serious business of the Lord.

His Jolene looked a picture to Jimmy Jay’s loving eyes. As they began the routine they’d made their own over decades, her pink dress sparkled in the stage lights as her eyes sparkled into his. Her hair was a mountain of gold, as bright and shining as the trio of necklaces she wore. He thought her voice when she broke into song as rich and pure as the forest of gems along that gold.

As always, her song brought them both to tears, and brought down the house. Her perfume drenched him, saturating his senses as he kissed her hand with great tenderness, watched her walk offstage through the mist of moisture. Then he turned, waiting until the last clap had died to hushed silence.

Behind him, the screen blasted with light. God’s spear through the gilt-edged clouds. And as one, the crowd gasped.

“We are all sinners.”

He began softly, a quiet voice in a silent cathedral. A prayer. He built, in volume, in tone, in energy, pausing with his showman’s timing for the cheers, the applause, the hallelujahs and amens.

He worked up a sweat so it glistened on his face, dampened his collar. He wiped at it with the handkerchief that matched his tie. And when he stripped off the white jacket, went down to shirtsleeves and suspenders, the crowd roared.

Souls, he thought. He could feel their light building. Rising, spreading, shining souls. While the air thundered with them, he lifted the third of the seven bottles of water (with just a whisper of vodka in each) he would consume during the evening.

Still mopping sweat, he drank with gusto, draining nearly half the bottle in one go.

“ ‘Reap,’ the Good Book says. ‘You will reap what you sow!’ Tell me, tell God Almighty: Will you sow sin or will you sow-”

He coughed, waved a hand as he pulled at his tie. He choked, sucking for air as his big body convulsed, as he tumbled. With a piping squeak, Jolene rushed across the stage on her pink glittery heels.

She shouted, “Jimmy Jay! Oh, Jimmy Jay,” while the roars of the crowd turned to a wall of wails and screams and lamentations.

Seeing her husband’s staring eyes, she swooned. She fell across her dead husband, so their bodies made a white and pink cross on the stage floor.

At her desk, Eve had narrowed her list down to twelve male babies, baptized at St. Cristóbal’s in the years that jibed with the age range of her victim who had Lino as a first or middle name. She had five more that skirted the outside boundaries of those years in reserve.

“Computer, standard run on the names on the displayed list. Search and-hold,” she added, muttering a curse under her breath when her ’link signaled.

“Dallas.”

Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to Madison Square Garden,

Clinton Theater. Suspected homicide by poisoning.

“Acknowledge. Has the victim been identified?”

Affirmative. The victim has been identified as Jenkins, James Jay.

Report immediately as primary. Peabody, Detective Delia, will be notified.

“On my way. How do I know that name?”

“Leader of the Church of Perpetual Light. Or no, Eternal Light. That’s it,” Roarke said from the doorway.

Eve’s eyes sharpened, narrowed. “Another priest.”

“Well, not precisely, but in the ballpark.”

“Shit. Shit.” She looked at her work, at her lists, at her files. Had she gone completely off, taken the wrong turn? “I’ve got to go.”

“Why don’t I go with you?”

She started to say no, to ask him to stay, continue his search. No point, she thought, if she was after a man-of-God killer. “Why don’t you? Computer, continue assigned run, store data.”

Acknowledged. Working… it announced as she headed for the door.

“You’re thinking dead priest, dead preacher, and you took the wrong line of investigation.”

“I’m thinking if it turns out this guy drank potassium cyanide, it’s no damn coincidence. Doesn’t make sense, doesn’t make any sense.”

But she shook her head, shut it down. She’d need to walk onto the scene objectively. She detoured into the bedroom, changed into street clothes, strapped on her weapon.

“It’ll have cooled off out there.” Roarke passed her a short leather jacket. “I’ll have to tell you that so far I haven’t found any major heists, nothing that fits your bill. Not with the take outstanding or the doers at large. At least,” he added, “none that I don’t know the particulars of, personally.”

She simply stared at him.

“Well now, you did ask me to go back a number of years. And a number of years back, I might have had my hand in a few interesting pies.” He smiled. “So to speak.”

“Let’s not,” she decided, “speak about those particular pies. Crap. Crap. Do me a favor and drive, okay? I want to get some background on the victim before we get there.”

As they walked out of the house, Eve pulled out her PPC and started a background run on the recently deceased Jimmy Jay.