Salvation in Death

  “Put those trips to Trenton and beyond on hold,” she said. “She’d pass the bodega where Penny works any time she went to church, and she’s been going to that church—I’ll lay odds—for most of her life. One of the faithful,” she murmured. “But for Penny, just a mark, just a means to an end. Now I have to bring this woman in, I have to put her in the box and make her confess to me. And when she does, I have to put her in a cage.”

  “Sometimes the law is transitory,” Roarke repeated. “And sometimes it turns its back on real justice.”

  Eve shook her head. “She took a life, Roarke. Maybe it was a bad life, but it wasn’t her right.” She turned to him. “The cops did nothing about what happened to Marlena. They were wrong cops at a wrong time. But this woman could have come forward with what she’d been told, or what she knew. Detective Stuben? He’d have done what had to be done. He cared. He cares. Part of him’s never stopped working the case, and none of him has ever forgotten the victims of the bombing, or their families.”

  “How many are there like him?”

  “Never enough. She has to answer for Lino Martinez, whatever he was. She won’t answer for Jimmy Jay Jenkins, but her act of revenge led to his death, too. It planted the seed. Or . . . tossed in the pebble. Ripples,” she reminded him. “We can’t be sure where they’ll spread. Somebody’s got to try to stop them.”

  “He was barely sixteen.” He brought the ID photo back on-screen of the young, fresh-faced, clear-eyed boy. “The line’s less defined on my side than it could ever be on yours. What now?”

  “Now, I contact Peabody and have her meet me here, so I can brief her in the morning before we go pick up Juanita Turner for questioning. Contact her voice mail,” Eve said when she caught his look.

  “And then?”

  “We go to bed.” She glanced back toward the screen. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  She slept poorly, dogged by dreams, images of a boy she’d never met who’d died simply because he’d been in the wrong place. The young, fresh face was torn and ruined, the clear eyes dull and dead.

  She heard his mother weeping over his body. Mindless, keening sobs that echoed into forever.

  As she watched, Marlena—bloodied, battered, broken as she’d been in the holo Roarke had once shown her—walked up to the mangled body of the dead boy.

  “We were both so young,” Marlena said. “We’d barely begun to live. So young to be used as a tool. Used, destroyed, discarded.”

  She held out a hand for Quinto Turner, and he took it. Even as his blood poured over the floor of the church, he took it and got to his feet.

  “I’ll take him now,” Marlena said to Eve. “There’s a special place for the innocents. I’ll take him there. What was she to do?” She gestured to the grieving mother, covered with her son’s blood. “Can you stop it? Can you stop it all? You couldn’t stop what happened to you.”

  “I can’t stop it all. But murder isn’t an end. Murder isn’t a solution.”

  “She was his mother. It was her solution.”

  “Murder doesn’t resolve murder. It perpetuates it.”

  “What of us, then? What of us? No one stood for me. No one but Roarke.”

  “And still it wasn’t an end. He lives with it.”

  “And so do you. Now you’ll perpetuate her loss, her grief, for justice. You’ll live with that, too.” With her hand holding Quinto’s, Marlena led him away.

  Eve stared at the pools of blood, the ripples in them.

  And watched them spread.

  She woke edgy, and with none of the energy the imminent closing of a case usually brought her. She knew the answers, or most of them, saw the pattern clearly, and understood, accepted, what she had to do.

  But the acceptance and the restless few hours of sleep left her with a dull headache.

  “Take a blocker,” Roarke ordered. “I can see the damn headache beating at your skull.”

  “So, you’ve got X-ray vision now, Super-Roarke?”

  “No point in taking slaps at me.” He rose, walked toward the bathroom. “I won’t slap back. You’ve got enough weighing on you.”

  “I don’t want a damn blocker.”

  He came back with one, walked up to her as she yanked on her weapon harness. “Take it, or I’ll make you take it.”

  “Look, step back or—”

  He cupped his hand on the back of her neck. She braced for him to try to force the pill down her throat. In fact, she welcomed the attempt and the battle. Instead, his mouth came down on hers.

  The hands she’d lifted to fight dropped to her sides as lips simply defeated her with tenderness.

  “Damn it,” she said when his lips left hers to brush her cheek.

  “You hardly slept.”

  “I’m okay. I just want to close it down, get it done.”

  “Take the blocker.”

  “Nag, nag, nag.” But she took it, swallowed it. “I can’t leave it open. I can’t pretend I don’t know. I can’t just let her do murder and turn away.”

  “No. You can’t, no.”

  “And even if I could, even if I could find some way to live with it, if I let her go, I let Penny Soto go. How can I?”

  “Eve.” He rubbed at the knots of tension in her shoulders. “You don’t have to explain yourself, not to me. Not to anyone, but especially not to me. I could turn away. I could do that. I could do that and find some way outside the law to make sure the other paid. You never could. There’s that shifting line between us. I don’t know if it makes either of us right, either of us wrong. It just makes us who we are.”

  “I went outside the law. Asked you to go outside it with Robert Lowell. I did that to make sure he paid for the women he’d tortured and killed. I did that because I’d given Ariel my word he’d pay.”

  “It’s not the same, and you know it.”

  “I crossed the line.”

  “The line shifts.” Now he gave those shoulders a quick, impatient shake. “If the law, if justice has no compassion, no fluidity, no humanity, how is it justice?”

  “I couldn’t live with it. I couldn’t live with letting him take the easy way out, letting the law give him the easy way. So I shifted the line.”

  “Was it justice, Eve?”

  “It felt like it.”

  “Then go.” He lifted her hands, kissed them. “Do your job.”

  “Yeah.” She started toward the door, stopped, and turned back. “I dreamed about Marlena. I dreamed about her and Quinto Turner. They were both the way they were after they’d been killed.”

  “Eve.”

  “But . . . she said she’d take him, and she did. She said there was a special place for the innocents, and she’d take him there. Do you think there is? A place for innocents.”

  “I do, actually. Yes.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  She left him, went to her office to prepare for what had to be done.

  When Peabody and McNab came in, she simply gestured toward the kitchen. There were twin hoots of joy as they scrambled for the treasure trove of her AutoChef. She stuck with coffee. The blocker had done the job—and maybe the conversation with Roarke had smoothed the rest, at least a little.

  She cocked her eyebrows when Peabody and McNab came back in with heaping plates and steaming mugs.

  “Do you think you’ve got enough to hold you off from starvation during the briefing?”

  “Belgian waffles, with seasonal berries.” Peabody sat down, prepared to plow in. “This may hold me forever.”

  “As long as your ears stay as open as your mouths.”

  She began with Ortega, took them through her premise.

  “At the end of the seven years, he’d stand to inherit, by spousal right, upward of six hundred and eighty-five million—not including personal property, and the profits from the real property and businesses over the seven.”

  “That’s a lot of waffles,” McNab commented.

  “Set for life,” Peabody agreed. “Wel
l, if he’d lived.”

  “His bed buddy didn’t want to split. She wanted it all. We’re going to prove that, nail her for accessory after the fact on Ortega and Flores, fraud, conspiracy to murder on Lino, and being a basic skank bitch. We’ll meet with the lawyer later today, and set up a little sting.”

  “We lay down on her,” Peabody added, “and get her to flip on her co-conspirator.”

  “Don’t need it. Screen on,” she ordered, and Juanita’s data flashed on. “Juanita Turner. Her son was a victim in the second bombing.”

  “How did you . . .” Peabody paused, narrowed her eyes at the image. “She looks a little familiar. Did we interview her? Was she at the Ortiz funeral?”

  “If she was, and I think it’s likely, she slipped in and out before the scene was secured. We saw her at the youth center. The medical.”

  “That’s it! I didn’t get much of a look at her there. Her son?”

  “And her husband, a year later—to the day—by self-termination.” Eve ran through it, flatly. “Penny needed a weapon,” Eve concluded. “And Juanita fit the bill.”

  “Man, man, it had to be horrible for her to realize this guy she’d thought was . . . that he was the one responsible for her son’s death.”

  “Yeah. It’s rough.” But it couldn’t influence the work. “I’ve contacted Reo,” Eve said, referring to the APA she preferred working with. “We’ve got enough, in her opinion, to get the communications. Which is where e-boy here comes in. I want you to dig in, dig out,” she told McNab as he gorged on waffles. “Anything that so much as sniffs like it’s connected. We’re picking up Juanita. While we have her in the box, you find us a communication with Penny. Find a memo, a journal, a receipt for the cyanide. Find something hard, and find it fast.”

  Peabody swallowed waffles and berries. “We’re picking her up before Penny?”

  “Penny orchestrated it. Juanita executed it. I’ve contacted Baxter. He and Trueheart are keeping a tail on Penny. Now, if you’ve finished stuffing yourselves, let’s get to work.”

  Peabody said nothing as they walked downstairs. She got into the passenger seat, finally turned to Eve. “Maybe we get Penny on conspiracy, but it’s a stretch. It’s more likely we get accessory after the fact there. And that’s a maybe. She can claim she let it slip out about Lino, or felt guilty and spilled it to Juanita Turner.”

  Peabody put a hand on her heart, widened her eyes. “I swear, your honor and members of the jury, I didn’t know she’d do murder. How could I know?” Dropping her hand, she shook her head. “Juanita’s going to get hit with first degree, no way around it unless Reo wants to deal it down, but Penny? She’s likely to slither out of it.”

  “That’s not up to us.”

  “It just seems wrong. Juanita loses her son, her husband. And now, all these years later, she gets used. And she’s the one who’s going to go down the hardest.”

  “You play, you pay. She killed a guy, Peabody,” McNab said from the back. “If Dallas has this right, and it sure fits nice and tight, she did the premeditated—cold-blooded killed his ass.”

  “I know that. But she was set up to do it. Jesus, you ought to see the crime scene photos from that bombing. There wasn’t much left of her kid.”

  “Vic was a downtown bastard, that’s coming crystal. And I give you she took the hardest of the hard knocks. But, come on, that gives her the go to poison him?”

  “I didn’t say that, you ass, I’m just saying—”

  “Shut up and stop arguing,” Eve ordered.

  “I’m just pointing out,” Peabody said in the gooey tones of reason that told any detractors they were stupid, “that Juanita took some really mean hits, and Penny—who probably was in on them—used that. And—”

  “I’m just pointing out, hello, murderer.”

  Peabody swung around to glare at McNab. “You’re such a jerk.”

  “Bleeding heart.”

  “Shut up!” Eve’s snapped order had them both zipping it. “You’re both right. So stop bickering like a couple of idiots. I got rid of one headache this morning. If you bring one back, I’m booting both of you to the curb and finishing this myself.”

  Peabody folded her arms, stuck her nose in the air. McNab slumped in the backseat. It was, in Eve’s mind, a sulkfest all the way over to the East Side.

  21

  EVE DOUBLE-PARKED IN FRONT OF THE YOUTH center, flipped on her On Duty light. The same group of kids shot hoops on the court, while adults hustled, dragged, and carried smaller ones into the building.

  The daily life of kids was a strange one, she thought. You got hauled to various locations, dumped there, hauled out again at the end of the day. During the dump time, you formed your own little societies that might have little or nothing to do with your pecking order in your home life. So weren’t you constantly adjusting, readjusting, dealing with new rules, new authorities, more power, less?

  No wonder kids were so weird.

  “You wait for the warrant,” she told McNab. “Once we confirm Juanita’s here, or confirm her location, Peabody will relay that information. You can make your way to her apartment.”

  “I don’t see how I can relay information when I’m supposed to shut up—and if I wasn’t supposed to, I still wouldn’t be speaking to him.”

  “Do you really want to experience the thrill of having my boot so far up your ass it bruises your tonsils? Don’t even think about it,” Eve snapped at McNab when he snickered. “Detective Jerk, stand by. Detective Bleeding Heart, with me.”

  She strode off. In seconds, Peabody clipped along beside her, insult in every step. “Be pissed later,” Eve advised. “There’s nothing about this that’s going to be pleasant or satisfying. So do the job now, and be pissed later.”

  “I just think I ought to be able to express an opinion without being—”

  Eve stopped, whirled. Fire kindled and flashed in her eyes as she scorched Peabody with them. “Do you think I’m looking forward to hauling in a woman who had to bury the torn and bloody pieces of her son that could be scraped up off the floor? That I’m rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of putting her in the box and sweating a confession out of her for killing the man who I believe was responsible for that?”

  “No.” Peabody’s shoulders drooped. “No, I don’t.”

  The fire shut down, and Eve’s eyes went cop flat. “Personal opinion, feelings, sympathy—none have any place in this. This is the job, and we’re going to do it.”

  Eve pulled open the door and stepped inside to the morning chaos. Crying babies, harassed parents, squealing kids milled around—including one who appeared to be making a break for it, at surprising speed on all fours.

  Peabody scooped it up before it could make it to the door, then passed it to the man rushing after it.

  Eve wound her way through, caught Magda’s attention. “Juanita Turner.”

  “Oh, Nita’s riding herd on the earlies in the activity room. That way.” Magda signaled. “Through the double doors, up the stairs one level. Second door, left. It’s open.”

  When Peabody started to pull out her communicator, Eve shook her head. “Not until we see her. In all this insanity, she could have walked out.”

  Eve followed the direction, and the noise. The activities room held tables, chairs, shelves full of what she supposed were activities. Sunlight blasted through the windows to wash a space done in aggressively bright primary colors. Six kids sat at tables, drawing, doing puzzles, and talking at the top of their lungs at the same time.

  Juanita walked among them, looking over shoulders, patting heads. The easy smile she wore dropped away when she saw Eve. If guilt had a face, Eve thought, Juanita Turner wore it.

  Eve gestured, stepped just outside the doorway. “Tag McNab,” she mumbled to Peabody. “Step off aways.”

  She waited until Juanita walked to the doorway. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “You’re going to need to have someone cover for you, Mrs. Turn
er.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You know why. You have to come with us now. We can do it quietly.” Eve glanced beyond Juanita to the half a dozen kids. “It would be better for you, for the kids, if we do this quietly.”

  “I’m not leaving the children. I’m not—”

  “Do you want those kids to see me take you out of here in restraints?” Eve waited two beats, watched it sink in. “You’re going to get someone to cover for you, Mrs. Turner, and I’m going to arrange for you to be taken down to Central. You’re going to wait there until I come to question you.”

  The thin skin of outrage couldn’t cover the bones of fear. They poked through, raw and sharp. “I don’t see why I should go with you when I don’t know what this is about.”

  “I’m going to have Penny Soto in custody by the end of the day, Mrs. Turner.” Eve nodded at the jolt of awareness. “You understand exactly what this is about. Now choose how you want it to go down.”

  Juanita walked across the hall, spoke briefly to the young man inside. He looked puzzled, and mildly irritated, but crossed over into the activities room.

  “I don’t have to say anything.” Juanita’s lips trembled on the words.

  “No, you don’t.” Eve took her arm, led her down the stairs, led her out of the building. And waited until they were on the sidewalk, away from the kids still shooting hoops, before she read Juanita her rights.

  At Central, she had Juanita taken to an interview room and split off to her own office. She had some arrangements to make. As she turned toward the bullpen, she spotted Joe Inez and his wife on the waiting bench. Joe rose.

  “Ah, the guy said you were on your way, so . . .”

  “Okay. You want to talk to me, Joe?”

  “Yeah, I . . .” He glanced toward his wife who nodded, a kind of support gesture. “We need to talk about before. It’s about before, about what happened. The 2043 bombings.”

  Eve held up a hand. “Why did you come in? Why are you here, on your own?”

  “We talked.” His wife laid a hand on Joe’s arm. “After you came by, we talked, and Joe told me about it. We’re here to do what’s right. Me and Joe. Together.”