“Maybe they had a fight. Lovers’ tangle.”
“Maybe. I can’t see her going five years without getting pissed off at a lover. Or being exclusive,” she said slowly, and handed one of the coffee mugs to Peabody. “Let’s find out if she was banging anybody else besides Lino. Lino used his confessional privileges to blackmail when it suited him. Can’t see him hitting up for nickels. So we see who’d use the church who had enough to make paying for sin worthwhile. And we need full information on the victims and fatalities of the restaurant bombing.”
“You know how I said I thought it was starting to fall into place? Now it feels like it’s spreading out all over.”
“Just more pieces. They’re going to fall somewhere. Let’s start with the bombings, work forward. The primary investigator’s still on the job. Contact Detective Stuben, out of the Four-six. See if he and/or his old partner have time for a sit-down.”
“Okay. Dallas.” She wanted to say more, it was all over her face. The need to comfort or reassure.
“Right now let’s just work the case, Peabody. That’s it.”
With a nod, Peabody stepped out, and Eve turned back to the window. Time enough, Eve thought, time enough later to feel it, to let herself feel any empathy or connection to another young girl who’d killed to escape the brutality of her father.
She finished off her coffee, then requested the case files for the Soto murder. And was grateful that Peabody buzzed through with an affirmative from Stuben before she had the chance to dig into them.
Stuben wanted to meet at a deli by his own cop shop. He was already packing into a mystery sandwich and a side of slaw when Eve and Peabody arrived. “Detective Stuben, Lieutenant Dallas. My partner, Detective Peabody.” Eve offered a hand. “Thanks for taking the time.”
“Not a problem.” His voice was tough-edged Bronx. “Getting my lunch in. Food’s good here, if you want to eat and meet.”
“Wouldn’t mind.” Eve settled on a steamed dog
and some sort of pasta curls, and noted Peabody was offsetting her morning burrito with a melon plate.
“Kohn, my old partner’s off on a fishing trip. Testing retirement out, see if it suits him before he takes the jump,” Stuben began. “If you want to talk to him, he’s due back tomorrow.”
Stuben dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. “I used to take that file out every couple months, the first year or two after the bombings. I guess longer.” He shook his head, bit into his sandwich. “Take it out again, review, maybe do more follow-ups once or twice a year for another stretch. Dack, too—my partner. We’d sit down like this, over a meal or a brew, and go through it again. Ten, twelve years down, I’d still get it out. Some of them don’t leave you alone.”
“No, they don’t.”
“That area, it was going through a bad time then. Couldn’t bring itself back after the Urbans. We didn’t have enough street cops, not enough on the gang patrols. And the gangs shoved it up our ass, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Did you know Lino Martinez?”
“I knew the little bastard, and the rest of them. I worked those streets when I was in uniform. He was a badass by the time he was eight. Stealing, tagging stores, busting things up just to bust them. His mother, she tried. I’d see her dragging him to school, to church. I caught him with a pocketful of Jazz when he was about ten. I let him off, ’cause of the mother.”
“Did you know Nick Soto?”
“Dealer, street tough, liked to rough up women. Slippery bastard. Then someone slipped a knife in him. Fifty, sixty times. I didn’t work that one, but I knew him some.”
“Did anyone talk to the daughter or Lino on that one?”
He paused, rubbed a finger over his cheek. “Had to. Lino and the Soto kid were tight. The fact is, I think she was worse than he was, worse than Lino. He stole something, it was for money. He beat the shit out of somebody, there was a reason. Kid had a purpose. Her? Carried hate around in her. She stole, it was to take it from somebody else. She beat the shit out of someone, it was for the hell of it. You’re sniffing at them for that case?”
“I had Penny Soto in on something today. She claims her father raped her, regularly. That didn’t come out.”
“Like I said, I didn’t work it. But I knew some of the particulars.” He shook his head. “That had come out, I’d know.”
“You looked for Lino after the bombing.”
“He’d taken over the Soldados by then, him and Chávez served as captains. The site wasn’t strict Skull territory. It was in the disputed turf, but plenty of them hung there. It was retaliation. I know it was Soldados, and the Soldados didn’t breathe without Lino telling them to. Mrs. Martinez said Lino took off, two days before the bombing.”
He shook his head. “I had to believe her, or I had to believe she believed it. She let us go through the place. No sign of him, and we checked with neighbors, and not all of them had any love for the son of a bitch. Got the same story. He lit out before the incident. We put the heat on the Soldados, and turned it up. We couldn’t get one of them to refute that. Not one. But they did it, Lieutenant, they set it up, Martinez and Chávez. I know it in my guts.”
“My guts say the same.”
“Have you got a line on them? Either of them?”
“I’ve got Lino Martinez in the morgue.”