Salvation in Death (27 page)
Read Salvation in Death Online
Authors: J. D. Robb
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths
When her computer announced its task complete, Eve scanned the media reports for the weeks surrounding the time of Lino’s departure.
Murders, rapes, burglaries, robberies, assaults, one kidnapping, assorted muggings, illegals busts, suspicious deaths, and two explosions.
None of the names listed in the reports crossed her list, but she’d run them as a matter of course. Still, it was the explosions that caught her interest. They’d occurred exactly a week apart, each in rival gang territory and both had cost lives. The first, on Soldado turf, at a school auditorium during a dance, had killed one, injured twenty-three minors, two adults—names listed—and caused several thousand in damages.
The second, on Skull turf, at a sandwich joint known as a hangout, a homemade boomer—on timer as the first, but more powerful—had killed four minors, one adult, and injured six.
The police suspected retaliation for that explosion, blah blah, Eve read. Known members of Soldados were being sought for questioning.
She used her authorization to request the case files on both explosions. And hit a block. Files sealed.
“Screw that,” she muttered, and without thinking contacted her commander at home. The blocked video and rusty voice had her glancing at her wrist unit. And wincing.
“I apologize, sir. I didn’t check the time.”
“I did. What is it, Lieutenant?”
“I’m following a lead, and it involves a pair of explosions in East Harlem seventeen years ago. I believe the as-yet-unofficially identified victim may have been involved. Those files have been sealed. It would be helpful to know if any on my list were questioned or suspected of involvement.”
He let out a long sigh. “Is this a matter of urgency?”
“No, sir. But—”
“Send the request to my home and office units. I’ll have you cleared in the morning. It’s nearly midnight, Lieutenant. Go to bed.”
He clicked off.
She sulked for a few seconds. Stared thoughtfully at the doorway connecting her office and Roarke’s for a few seconds more. Roarke could get into the sealed files in minutes, she had no doubt. And if she’d thought of that
before
she’d tagged Whitney, she might’ve been able to justify asking Roarke to do just that.
Now she’d started the tape rolling, and had to wait for it to unwind.
She sent the formal request, added the evening’s interviews and notes to her own case file. She pinned more names and photos to her board. Teresa, Chávez, Joe Inez, Penny Soto.
Then she crossed to the doorway. “I’m done. I’m going to bed.”
Roarke glanced up. “I’ll be done shortly.”
“Okay. Ah, could you make a boomer, on timer? I don’t mean now, because, duh, I mean back when you were a kid?”
“Yes. And did. Why?”
“Could you because you’re handy with electronics or with explosives?”
“Both.”
She nodded, decided it would give her something to chew on until morning. “Okay. ’Night.”
“Who or what did Lino blow up?”
“I’m not sure. Yet. But I’ll let you know.”
15
A MORNING STORM RUMBLED OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS. The thunder, a bit dim and distant, sounded like the sky clearing its throat. Rain slid down the windows like an endless fall of gray tears.
As much for comfort as light, Roarke ordered the bedroom fire on low while he scanned the morning stock reports on-screen.
But he couldn’t concentrate. When he switched to the morning news, he found that didn’t hold his interest either. Restless, unsettled, he glanced over as Eve grabbed a shirt out of her closet. He noticed she’d removed the cold patch.
“How’s the shoulder?”
She rolled it. “It’s good. I sent a text to Peabody last night to have her meet me here this morning. I’m going to go down and head her off before she comes up and tries to cage breakfast. What?” she added when he rose and walked to the closet.
He took the jacket she’d pulled out, scanned the other choices briefly, and chose another. “This one.”
“I bet everyone I badge today is going to take special note of my jacket.”
“They would if you’d worn the other with those pants.” He kissed the top of her head. “And the faux pas would, very possibly, undermine your authority.”
She snorted, but went with his selection. When he didn’t move, but stood in her way, she frowned and said, “What?” again.
This time he cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her mouth, very gently. “I love you.”
Her heart went gooey, instantly. “I got that.”
He turned, crossed to the AutoChef, and got more coffee for both of them.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“Nothing. Not really. Miserable morning out there.” But that wasn’t it, he thought as he stood, staring out through the dreary curtain of rain. That wasn’t it at all. “I had a dream.”
She changed her plans, and instead of going downstairs walked over to the sofa, sat. “Bad?”
“No. Well, disturbing and odd, I suppose. Very lucid, which is more your style than mine.”
He turned, saw that she’d sat down, that she waited. And that was more comforting than any fire in the hearth. He went to her, handed off her coffee. And sitting beside her, rubbed a hand gently on her leg in a gesture that was both gratitude and connection.
“It might be all the talk about the old days, childhood friends, and so on kicked my subconscious.”
“It bothered you. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“When I woke it was over, wasn’t it, and I didn’t see the point. And then, just now . . . Well, in any case, I was back in Dublin, a boy again, running the streets, picking pockets. That part, at least, wasn’t disturbing. It was rather entertaining.”
“Good times.”
He laughed a little. “Some of them were. I could smell it—the crowds on
“Couldn’t work there often, no more than a couple hits a month, lest the locals caught wind to it. But when we did, we’d pull in hundreds in the day. If I was careful enough with my share, even with what the old man kicked out of me, I’d eat well for a month—with some to spare for my investment fund.”
“Investment fund? Even then?”
“Oh aye, I didn’t intend to live a street rat the whole of my life.” His eyes kindled, but unlike the mellow fire in the hearth, dark and danger flashed there. “He suspected, of course, but he never found my cache. I’d sooner he beat me to death than give it over.”
“You dreamed about him? Your father?”
“No. It wasn’t him at all. A bright summer day, so clear I could hear the voices, the music, smell the fat frying for the chips we always treated ourselves to. A day on
“How?”
“Jenny’d wear her best dress on Grafton day, and her hair would be shining with a ribbon in it. Who’d look at a pretty young girl like that and see a thief, was the thought behind it. I passed to her, clean and smooth, and moved on. You have to keep moving. I set my next mark, and the fiddler was playing ‘Finnegan’s Wake.’ I heard it clear, each note, lively, quick. I had the wallet—and the mark never flinched. But Jenny . . . she wasn’t there for the pass. Couldn’t take the pass because she was hanging by her hair ribbon. Hanging and dead, as she’d been the last I saw her. When I was too late to save her.
“I was too late.”
Roarke shook his head. “She died because she was mine, part of my past. And I ran to try to get her down, across Grafton, with the buskers playing, still lively and quick, while she hung there. But there was Mick. Blood spreading over his shirt. The kill blood. He was mine, too. He took the knife for me. The fiddler kept playing, all the while. I could see Brian, far off. Too far to reach, so I was there with dead friends. Still children in the dream, you know? Still so young. Even in the dream I thought, wondered, if they were, in some way, dead even that long ago. And me and Bri, all that’s left of us.
“Then I walked away. I walked away from
“I could tell you that what happened to them wasn’t your fault. Part of you knows that. But another part will always feel responsible. Because you loved them.”
“I did. Aye, I did.” He picked up his neglected coffee, drank. “They’re part of me. Pieces that make me. But just now, standing with you, I realized I can stand all that, stand the loss of all those parts of me. Because I have you.”
She took his hand, pressed it to her cheek. “What can I do?”
“You just did it.” He leaned over, kissed her again.
“I can reschedule some stuff, if you want me to—”
He looked at her, just looked, and the heaviest of the grief that had woken with him eased. “Thanks for that, but I’m better just for having it out.” He skimmed a finger down her chin. “Go to work, Lieutenant.”
She wrapped her arms around him first, hugged hard. And holding her, he drew in her scent—hair and skin—knowing it would come with him through the day.
She drew back, stood. “See you tonight.”
“Eve? You asked me before if I thought your victim, your Lino, would tell someone who he really was. I think, if they stood as family for him, if he considered them part of him—any of the pieces that made him—he had to. He didn’t go to his mother, but there had to be someone. A man can’t stand on a bridge alone, not at home, not for five years. Even the hardest needs someone to know him.”
She managed to cut Peabody off, but barely. Eve jogged down the steps just as Summerset opened the door to her partner. Eve kept going. “Peabody, with me.”
“But I was just . . .”
“We’re moving,” Eve said and pointed toward their vehicle. “Get in. One minute.” Eve turned to Summerset while Peabody sulked her Danish-deprived way to the passenger side. “Roarke could use a call from his aunt.”
“He wants me to contact his aunt in Ireland?”
“I said he could use a call from her. He’s fine,” Eve said, anticipating him. “He could just use the connection.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Knowing he would, Eve climbed behind the wheel, and put her mind back on the job.
“Are we running hot or something?” Peabody demanded. “So a person can’t take a minute to have a cup of coffee and maybe a small bite to eat, especially when the person got off a full subway stop early to work off the anticipated bite to eat.”
“If you’re finished whining about it, I’ll fill you in.”
“A real partner would have brought me a coffee to go so I could drink it while being filled in.”
“How many coffee shops did you pass on your endless and arduous hike from the subway?”
“It’s not the same,” Peabody muttered. “And it’s not my fault I’m coffee spoiled. You’re the one who brought the real stuff made from real beans into my life. You addicted me.” She pointed an accusing finger at Eve. “And now you’re withholding the juice.”
“Yes, that was my plan all along. And if you ever want real again in this lifetime, suck it up and do my bidding.”
Peabody
stared. “You’re like Master Manipulator. An evil coffee puppeteer.”
“Yes, yes, I am. Do you have any interest, Detective, in where we’re going, who we’re going to see, and why?”
“I’d be more interested if I had coffee.” At the utter silence, Peabody sighed. “Okay. Where are we going, Lieutenant, who are we going to see, and why?”
“We’re going to the bodega beside St. Cristóbal, and I can actually
hear
you thinking ‘breakfast burrito.’ ”
“Psychic Master Manipulator! What, besides breakfast burritos, is of interest at the bodega?”
