Eve rose, and made sure Penny saw the irritation cross her face. “My bosses want to close it up, so there’s a deal on the big hit for coming at me with a knife, and a deal on the fraud.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Let the fraud go down to falsifying documents. Deal the intent to kill a police officer down to simple resisting. Couple of years against oh, maybe seventy.”

“That’s on record.”

“Yeah, that’s a deal on record. I hope you don’t take it. I hope you don’t.”

“One moment.” Montoya leaned in close, whispered in Penny’s ear. She jerked that bony shoulder.

“Maybe Lino told me some shit.”

Eve dropped back down in the chair as if annoyed, and disappointed. “You’ve got the goddamn deal of a lifetime, thanks to my superiors, Penny. But some shit has to lead to results, or no deal.”

“Okay. I’ve got plenty, so eat this.” She sneered across the table. “Lino and Steve hooked up with Ortega, figured they’d skin him for some of what the old man left him. Played him awhile, scammed him for a couple hundred thousand. Chávez got him hooked again, so they played him some more. Lino said how he figured they’d just about tapped it, and he’s working on getting the deed for our old headquarters out of Ortega. That’s the prize—or was—then the idiot ODs. They got a dead guy on their hands, and Lino is pissed.”

She leaned back in her chair and laughed. “’Til he thinks how to work it. They take him out to the desert, and they bury him. And Lino does his thing with ID. He’s got the skills, and he’s got a nice, fat pile from the scam, and Ortega’s winning in Vegas. He invests, gets a marriage license on record for him and Ortega. Ortega always was a queer anyway, and they’ve been sharing this big, flashy house out there for close to three months.”

Idly, Penny examined her red and black nails. “Backdates the license, pays some guys he knows back in Taos or some shit, back here and all that to say how they knew this Aldo guy, and Ortega. Happily married couple.”

She tipped back up, snorted out a laugh. “That Lino, he covered his ass. Mostly. So, he reports Ortega missing. Now he’s sitting pretty. Real pretty, ’cause Ortega’s got millions back here in property and shit.”

“But he has to sit for seven years.”

“Got that. He figures he’ll sit as this Ken Aldo guy, except he can’t come back here with that one—it’s just a beard, some hair changes. Anybody who knew him would see it. Then the priest just falls into their lap. Lino said he wasn’t going to kill the guy. It just gave him the idea, you know? He was going to make up another ID, work that, maybe come back here as an indie priest or some shit. But Chávez got mouthy, and the priest started clueing in, and Chávez killed him. Hacked him up bad, Lino said. Lino, he had some religion, you know? Didn’t like the idea of killing a priest like that. Bad luck, wrath of God, or whatever.”

“Yeah, I bet he felt bad.”

“Bad enough so he killed Chávez. He said he tried to stop Steve from slicing and dicing the priest, and hey, it just happened. Besides, he’d enough of the screwups. He buried them out where he’d buried Ortega.”

“Where?”

“You want the where?” Penny’s eyes went sly. “I can give you the where but, the charges go away—all the way.”

“My client has valuable information,” Montoya put in. “She’s cooperating. I believe if you want further information, further cooperation, the charges must be dropped. I’m sure the families of these men want closure.”

Eve didn’t have to fake the disgusted look. “You tell me where, and the bodies of Miguel Flores, José Ortega, and Steven Chávez are recovered, the falsifying docs and resisting go away.”

“He said he buried them, all of them about fifty miles south of Vegas, in this place the native guys call Devil’s Church because there’s this rock formation thing with what looks like a cross on top. He put them in right at the base. He always had that religion thing in him, see? He liked burying them under the cross.”

Penny sneered, tipped back in the chair again. “Nice doing business with you, pussy cop.”

Eve studied her face. That was the truth, as Penny knew it. “We’ve got more business. Now we go back, Penny, we come home and go back. The bombings in 2043.”

“That was Lino’s deal. And with no charges on record, I’m free to go. Bitch.”

“No, bitch, you’re not. You had prior knowledge regarding the bombings. You knew he intended to set both those bombs, blaming the first on the Skulls. It’s called accessory.”

“I was, like, fifteen, what the hell did I know?”

“Enough, according to my witness, to be a part of the planning and execution of the first, and to help plan the second. And push the button yourself.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“I’ve got a witness, willing and able to testify. That wraps you up in six murder charges.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit.” She slapped at Montoya when he started to speak. “I know how to handle myself here, asshole. I was a minor. So what if I pushed the button, so the fuck what? If there’d been twice as many assholes blown to hell when I did, it doesn’t mean dick. Clemency Order covers me.”

Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net