In Death 27 - Salvation in Death

thinking, that would fluctuate somewhat due to the interior. Is the kitchen, are the baths, high-end, how much of the original materials remain, and all manner of things.”
    “That’s a lot of tacos.”
    “New York tacos, darling Eve. The same house in a different location. Let’s say . . . Baltimore or Albuquerque? About a third to a half of that market price.”
    “Geography.” She shook her head. “Once a New Yorker,” she added, thinking of Mavis’s remark. “So he runs by this, and the rest every day. Patrols this area, every day. And whoever killed him knew him, whoever killed him goes to St. Cristóbal’s, whoever killed him lived in this sector when Lino lived here as Lino. Knows Penny Soto, because that bitch, she’s in this. She’s in all of it. Whoever killed him was smart enough to wait for a big ceremony like the Ortiz funeral, or got lucky enough to hit. I think smart. I just think smart.
    “Cyanide. Doesn’t come cheap. We’re not pulling anything from black market sources, but hell, I didn’t expect to ring the bell there.”
    “There are buttons I could push there.”
    “Yeah, I bet there are. If it comes to it, maybe, but either way, it costs. Whoever killed him’s Catholic enough to be compelled to confess to his priest. I don’t know, I don’t know, that says older to me. That says it’s not some kid, but someone mature. Yeah, Mira said mature,” she said half to herself. “Mature enough to pull this off, mature enough to feel guilt over it. Not for gain, not for gain, that angle’s bullshit. If the killer was looking for gain, knife the bastard.”
    She tapped her fingers on her knee as she ran it through, imagined it. “If it’s just gain, even the most simple kind of revenge or survival instinct, you’d work with Penny and lure him, hack him up like he and Penny hacked up her father. Make it look like a mugging—you’re smart enough to do that.”
    “But you don’t,” Roarke put in, “because it’s not simple.”
    “It goes too deep for that. Penny, she’s in this for gain. That’s all she’s in it for. But you? It’s not about that. It’s about payment and penance. An eye for an eye. Who’d he kill or harm? One of yours. But you don’t confront him, you don’t report him, you don’t point the finger.”
    She slowly straightened. “Because it didn’t work before. He got away before. No payment, no penance. It has to be done, and it has to be done in God’s house. You’ve held on to your faith all these years. You’ve been faithful, even though you lost something so vital. And here he is, back again, blaspheming, defiling the church, running free, every day. In your goddamn face. Doing it for five years, and you had no way of knowing. Not until Penny told you.”
    She frowned down at the holo, could almost hear the conspiratory whispers. “Why, why, what’s the angle there? Gotta get back to that. Because that has to be it. Penny ratted him out to you, and you had to act. You had to balance the scales.”
    She stepped back. “Damn it. There’s this, and this and that. And I can see it. I can see each point, but how do they come together?”
    “Keep going. If it’s an eye for an eye, who did Martinez kill?”
    “Soto. Nick Soto because of what he’d done and was doing to Penny. And thinking of her, of what it was like for her, he beat the crap out of Solas. But nobody gave a shit about Soto, nobody looked at a couple of kids, fourteen, fifteen years old to rip a man to pieces like that. Probably a lot of people had several small, private celebrations when he was offed. It may have been his first kill—Lino’s first kill. Made his mark with it. The timing’s about right, and the cop I talked to from back then remembers him as a troublemaker, as a badass, but they never hauled him in for questioning on murder—not for Soto, not before. After . . .”
    She went back to check her notes. “Gang-related violence, questioned numerous times regarding the deaths or disappearances of several known members of rival gangs. No evidence, alibied.”
    “Members of the parish?”
    “No. But there’s those blurred boundary lines.” She moved back to the holo. “Could be friends, family along that blur, connections who were in the parish, were members of the church. But . . . Catholic question.”
    “I don’t know why in hell you’d ask me.”
    “Because. Could it be eye for an eye—payment, penance—if the past vic was a known gang