“Better stay shattered, pal, or I’ll come back from wherever and kick your ass.”
“A given. Anyway, then the next day it comes out that you weren’t Eve Dallas. You’d killed the actual Eve Dallas a few years before, dismembered her and fed the pieces into a human-waste recycler.”
“Go back to beating your tits.”
“Breasts, otherwise it’s not the same thing. So anyway, now I’m shattered again because the person I thought was my friend, my partner, and blah de blah, was in reality a lying bitch.”
Peabody turned to stare, narrow-eyed, at Eve’s profile.
“Keep that up and you’ll be dismembered and fed into a human-waste recycler.”
“I’m just saying. Anyway, back to Flores, who we’ll now call Lino.”
“We get the records, check out all the Linos, narrow it down.”
“Unless he wasn’t baptized there, because his family moved there when he was, like, ten. Or he was never baptized, or he stuck a pin in a map to pick this parish for his hidey-hole.”
“Which is why EDD will be working on the fake ID, and why we’ll be running his prints and his DNA through IRCCA, Global, and so on. Something’s going to pop out.”
“I think it’s pretty damn low,” Peabody added, “faking the priesthood thing. If you wanted to fake something, you could fake something else. Like something you did before, something you were. Hey! Hey! Maybe he was a priest. I mean not Flores, but another priest. Or he tried to be one and washed out.”
“That’s not bad. The washing out. We get the records, you cross-check with guys who washed out of the priesthood. Then do another check on the seminary where Flores trained. Maybe the vic knew him, trained with him.”
“Got that. I’ll kick it back a little more, do a search on men of the right age span who went to the private schools with Flores, might have connected with him there.”
It was an angle, Eve thought, and they’d work it through. “The guy had to figure he had the ultimate cover. Nobody’s going to run a priest, at least not like we’re going to. Not when he keeps out of trouble. And the only time we’ve learned he came close to the line was with this Solas. And we’ll be checking that, too.”
As she spoke, Eve pulled over to the curb in front of the Trinidad, a small business hotel on East 98th. She flipped on her On Duty sign.
It didn’t run to a doorman—which was a shame only because she enjoyed snarling at them—but the lobby was bright and clean. A sultry-looking brunette manned check-in. Eve headed for the distinguished silver-haired guy standing as concierge.
“We need a few moments with Elena Solas.”
“I see.” He skimmed the badges. “Is there a problem?”
“Not as long as we get a few moments with Elena Solas.”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me.” He moved to the far end of his station and began speaking to someone on his headset. When he came back, he kept his neutral smile in place. “We have a small employee lounge on the fifth floor. I’ll escort you, if meeting her there will suit.”
“That’s good.”
He walked them down to a staff elevator. “Mrs. Solas has only worked here for a short time, but has proven to be an excellent employee.”
“That’s good, too.”
Eve said nothing else, simply followed him as he stepped off the elevator, turned down a hallway, then used his key card to open a pair of double doors.
It was more of a locker room than a lounge, but as with the lobby, clean and bright. The woman who sat on one of the padded benches had her hands clutched in her lap, fingers threaded as if in prayer. She wore a gray dress under a simple white apron, and thick-soled white shoes. Her dark, glossy hair rolled into a thick, tight bun at her nape. When she lifted her head, her eyes were dull with terror.
“He got out, he got out, he got out.”
Even before Eve could move, Peabody hurried over. “No, Mrs. Solas. He’s still in prison.” She sat, laid her hands over the knot of Elena’s. “He can’t hurt you or your children.”
“Thank God.” A tear slid down her cheek as she crossed herself, and rocked. “Oh, thank God. I thought . . . My babies.” She launched off the bench. “Something happened to one of my kids.”
“No.” This time Eve spoke, and spoke sharply to cut off the rising hysteria. “It’s about the man you knew as Father Flores.”