Salvation in Death (In Death #27)(34)

“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 kidf*cker 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.