“When he was a little boy, and would still let me, I would tickle him here. This way.” She traced her finger in a quick Z pattern. “The freckles, you see. Four little freckles, and you can make a Z.”
Eve studied the pattern—so faint, so light, so vague. Something, she supposed, only a mother would notice.
“See how long his eyelashes are? So long and thick, like a girl’s. It embarrassed him when he was little. Then he was proud and vain about them, when he noticed the girls noticed.”
“Do you know your son’s blood type, Mrs. Franco?” Morris asked.
“A-negative. He broke his arm when he was ten. His right arm. He slipped while he tried to sneak out the window. Only ten, and already sneaking out. You can tell if his arm had been broken when he was a boy?”
“Yes.” Morris touched a hand to hers. “Yes.”
“This is my son. This is Lino.” Leaning down she pressed her lips to his cheek. “Siento tanto, mi bebé.”
“Let me take you out, Mrs. Franco.” Peabody put an arm around Teresa’s waist. “Let me take you out now.”
Eve watched her go, Peabody on one side, her husband on the other.
“It’s a hard thing,” Morris said quietly. “A hard thing for a mother. No matter how many years between.”
“Yeah. Very hard for her.” She turned back to the body. “He had someone who loved him, all the way, every day. And still, it looks like every choice he made brought him here.”
“People are messed up.”
“Yeah.” It lightened her mood, just enough, made her smile into Morris’s understanding face. “They really are.”
16
TO GIVE TERESA A LITTLE TIME TO COMPOSE herself, and Penny more time to stew, Eve asked Tony Franco to bring his wife to Central. She booked the smallest conference room.
“I’ll handle the mother,” Eve told Peabody. “I started a run on a partial list of John Does, in the area and at the time of Flores’s disappearance. Start following up. If I’m not done in thirty, check on Spitting Penny. She’ll be crying lawyer by then. Let her contact one.”
“Check. What about the case file access?”
“I’m hitting that between the mother and the bitch. Tag Baxter, see if he got anywhere with his part of the John Doe list you’re on. And check my incoming. I’m expecting lists of names from Officer Ortiz and from López on former members of the Soldados still in the neighborhood. Soto’s the key,” Eve added, “but we’ll cover the bases.”
“On that. It’s coming together. It feels like it’s coming together.”
“Parts of it.” Eve peeled off, set up her conference room. At her go, one of her men brought in the Francos.
Teresa’s eyes were swollen and red, but she appeared to have the weeping under control.
“I want to thank you for your help. I know that wasn’t easy.”
“It was never easy with Lino. I made mistakes. I can’t unmake them. Now I’ll bury my son. You’ll let me do that.”
“As soon as I’m able. I need to ask you questions now.”
“All right. I feel like I’m between worlds. The one that was, the one we have.” She took her husband’s hand. “And that I won’t ever be all the way in either again.”
“Why was he here?” Tony asked Eve. “Do you know? I think it would help to know.”
“Yes.” Teresa steadied herself. “It would help to know. Why was he pretending to be this priest? I raised him to have respect for the Church. I know he went wild. I know he went bad. But I raised him to have respect for the Church.”
“I think he was hiding, and I think he was waiting. I don’t know why yet. But I think some of the answers go back to when he was with the gang. Do you know what the Clemency Order was?”
“Yes, they told me. I didn’t know where Lino was, but he contacted me after it passed. I begged him to come home. He could start fresh. But he said he wasn’t coming back until he drove back in a big, fancy car with the keys to a big, fancy house.”
“Due to the Clemency Order, even though it was later repealed, all of Lino’s police records from when he was a minor were deleted. What can you tell me about the trouble he’d been in?”