Salvation in death

“Yes. I know, but…” Teresa pressed her lips together. “I don’t want it to be Lino. Can I-is it possible for me to see? To go in, where he is, and see?”

She’d hoped the screen viewing would be enough. Eve realized she’d set it up that way for the same reason Morris had removed the toe tag. To spare the mother. “Is that what you want?”

“No, no, it’s not. But it’s what I need.”

Eve moved back to the com. “I’m bringing Mrs. Franco in.”

Eve led the way out, down the corridor, and through double doors. Morris came in from the back. He wore a suit, the color of polished bronze, without any protective cape.

“Mrs. Franco, I’m Dr. Morris. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“I don’t know.” Clinging to her husband’s hand, Teresa stepped closer to the body. “So tall,” she murmured. “His father was tall. Lino, he had big feet as a boy. I used to tell him he’d grow into them, like a puppy does. And he did. He was nearly six feet when he left. And very thin. No matter what he ate, so thin. He was like a whip, and when he played ball, fast as one.”

Eve glanced at Peabody. “Basketball.”

“Yes. His favorite.” She reached out a hand, drew it back. “Can I, or can you… the sheet. If I could see.”

“Let me do that.” Morris stepped forward. “There’s an incision,” he began.

“I know. Yes, I know about that. It’s all right.”

Gently, Morris lowered the sheet to the victim’s waist.

Teresa took another step. This time when she reached out, she touched fingertips to the body’s left side, high on the ribs. And the sound she made was caught between sob and sigh.

“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 Pe

“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 Pe

“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?”

“He stole. Shoplifting, that was first. Little things, foolish things… at first. If I found out, I made him go back to the store with me, take back what he stole. Or I’d pay for it. He broke into places after they’d closed, and into cars on the street.”

She sighed, then reached for the water Eve had on the table. “He broke windows, tagged buildings, started fights. The police would come, take him, question him. He went to detention, but it didn’t help. It was worse after. He got into more fights, worse fights. He’d come home bloody, and we’d argue. They said he cut a boy, and put him in the hospital, but the other boy said no. He lied, I know, but the boy said he didn’t see who cut him. He killed, my Lino. He took a life.”

“Whose life?”

“I don’t know. They never came for him, never arrested him, not for that. It was always smaller things. But I knew he’d killed. I knew what it meant the night he came home with the mark under the tattoo on his arm. We fought-terrible, terrible fight. I called him a killer. I called my son a murderer.”

She broke then, tears rolling. Pulling out a tissue, she mopped at her ravaged face. “He told me I didn’t understand, that he did what he had to do, and he was proud. Proud, and now the others, they knew he was a man. Now, he had respect. He was fifteen years old. Fifteen years old when he came home with the kill mark still raw on his arm.”

She stopped, struggled. “I wanted to get him out of the city. If I could get him away from the streets, the gangs. But when I told him what I pla

“Your godmother?”

“A friend of my mother’s, from their childhood. My mother was dead. My father beat her to death when I was sixteen. I ran away, and he beat her to death. So I married the same kind of man. I know it’s typical, it’s a cycle. It’s a sickness. But my godmother had a house and work, and she said to come. I told Lino, and he refused. I threatened, argued, and he went out, slammed out. He was gone a week.”

She stopped, sipped water.