“So would I, but he’s stuck in New Jersey, there’s a jam at the tunnel. He’ll be lucky to get home in under two hours. What is it?”
Eve took out her badge.
“Oh, Joe said the police were here last night. Something about one of the tenants being a witness in a hit-and-run.”
“Is that what your son told you?”
“Actually, Joe filled me in.” Awareness came into her eyes. “And that wasn’t entirely accurate. What is this about?”
“We’re investigating an old connection of your husband’s. Do you know Lino Martinez?”
“No, but I know the name. I know Joe was in the Soldados, and I know he did time. I know he had trouble, and he pulled himself out of it.” She gripped the doorknob, eased the door closed a few more inches, as if to shield the children behind her. “He hasn’t had anything to do with any of that business for years. He’s a good man. A family man with a decent job. He works hard. Lino Martinez and the Soldados were another life.”
“Tell him we were here, Mrs. Inez, and that we’ve located Lino Martinez. We’re going to need to follow up with your husband.”
“I’ll tell him, but I’m telling you he doesn’t know anything about Lino Martinez, not anymore.”
She closed the door, and Eve heard the locks snick impatiently.
“She’s pissed he lied to her,” Peabody commented.
“Yeah. Stupid move on his part. It tells me he’s hiding something from his wife. Something from now, something from then? Either way, something. I’m going to drop you at the subway and work from home. Keep on those John Does. I think I’ll comb through those old case files, see if something swims up from the deep.”
“I know what you said back there to López is right. We’ve got to do the job no matter what a creep Lino was. But when you know some of the shit he pulled, and the shit we think he pulled, it’s hard to get worked up because somebody ended him.”
“Maybe if somebody had gotten worked up a long time ago, he wouldn’t have been able to pull so much shit, his mother wouldn’t be crying tonight, and somebody who strikes me as an especially good man wouldn’t be honor-bound, or faith-bound, to protect a murderer.”
Peabody sighed. “You’ve got a point. But I like it better when the bad guys are just the bad guys.”
“There’s always plenty of them to go around.”
18
SHE NEEDED THINKING TIME. CLOSED IN WITH the case time where she could put the pieces of everything she knew, didn’t know, everything that had been said, left unsaid together with people, events, evidence, and speculation, and see what kinds of pictures formed.
She needed to take a good hard look at the victims in the two bombings, and their families, their connections. She needed to consider the blackmail angle, which she already knew would be a deep and sticky well. If López wouldn’t tell her the name of a murderer, he sure as hell wasn’t going to share the names of people who’d confessed blackmail-able transgressions to him.
She didn’t buy murder for blackmail in Lino’s case, but she couldn’t discount it as possible. Or connected.
How had Lino collected the money? she wondered as she drove home. Where had he kept the funds, or had he just pissed it away as it came in? Expensive hotel rooms and lavish meals, gaudy jewelry for his bed partner.
Not enough, she thought. A few thousand here and there? What was the point in risking exposure for a fancy suite and a bottle of champagne?
Showing off to the old girlfriend? Stuben said Penny Soto had been his weak spot. So . . . It could be that simple. Wanting to be rich, important, and having his woman see him as both.
Or as simple as needing the rush, of knowing you were pulling a fast one. Reminding yourself who you were while you were pretending to be another. Like a hobby.
Something else to think about.
She drove through the gates, then slowed down. There were flowers where she was damn sure there hadn’t been flowers that morning. Tulips—she was pretty sure—and daffodils. She liked daffodils because they were so bright and silly. Now there were rivers of both where there hadn’t been so much as a drop ten hours earlier.
How did that happen?
In any case it was . . . well, it was pretty, and added a splash to the hazy green of the trees.
She continued on, stopped and parked. And there were three enormous red pots literally engorged with petunias. White petunias—her wedding flower. Sentimental slob, she thought even as she went gooey herself. Simple pleasure warred against the ugly tension she’d been fighting to ignore since her interview with Penny Soto.
She walked in to see Galahad perched like a pudgy gargoyle on the newel post—new spot for him—and Summerset hovering, as usual, in the foyer.