In Death 27 - Salvation in Death

“I spoke with Peabody’s mother about making them a tea set. Pot, cups, saucers, and so on. She’s an excellent and creative potter.”
    “Huh. That was a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that idea for the Louise present?” She brooded over it for a short time. “Inez is the only one of the group Teresa named who ever married.”
    “And how we wind around,” Roarke commented.
    “It just made me think—you know, showers, weddings. He’s the only one who got married, had kids.”
    “And the only one who, at least, appears to have rehabilitated himself.”
    “I don’t know if one has to do with the other, but it’s interesting. Then there’s Teresa herself. The way it reads, she got knocked up, married a wrong guy. Got kicked around, did what she could, or did what she thought she had to. Guy takes off, and she raises the kid on her own. Supports them, but she can’t keep the kid out of trouble. Then the kid takes off. She gets married again, to a decent guy, and has another kid. Makes a decent life, and this kid stays out of trouble.”
    “Is it nature or nurture?”
    “It’s both. It’s always both, and more, it’s about making choices. Still, Lino spent the first few years of his life watching his mother get knocked around, watching the father abuse her. So he hears about the Solas bastard beating on his wife, sticking it to his daughter, he breaks out of the priest mold long enough to kick some ass. His weak spot. He carried that medal—didn’t see his mother, didn’t come home to her, but he carried the medal she gave him.”
    “And sent her money occasionally.”
    “Yeah. Going to come home a rich man—important. Nothing like that bastard who knocked his mother up. That’ll be an underlying factor in his pathology. If we give a rat’s ass.”
    “Why do you?”
    She said nothing for a few moments. “She knew he was lost. Teresa. She knew there was something in him that she could never pull out, get rid of. Something that made him take the course he did. She’s got her good life now, and still, she’s going to grieve for him. Hell, she already is.”
    “Yes. She is.”
    “And when I can clear it and give it to her, she’ll keep that medal for the rest of her life. Her reminder of her little boy. I’ve interviewed people who knew him these past few years, worked closely with him, and they liked him. Respected him, enjoyed him. I think he was a stone-cold killer, or at least someone who killed or did whatever he wanted when it was expedient. But there was something there, something buried under the hard case. Sometimes you wonder why, that’s all. Why it gets buried.”
    “He wanted more,” Roarke said. “Wanted what he couldn’t have, or didn’t want to earn. That kind of desire can overtake all the rest.”
    She paused a moment. “You were going to be a rich man. Important. That was the goal.”
    “It was.”
    “But you never buried who you were under that goal.”
    “You see the parallels, and wonder. For me, the legal lines were . . . options. More, they were challenges. And I had Summerset, as a kind of compass at a time when I might have taken a much darker path.”
    “You wouldn’t have taken it. Too much pride.”
    His brow winged up. “Is that so?”
    “You always knew it wasn’t just the money. Money’s security, and it’s a symbol. But it’s not the thing. It’s knowing what to do with it. Lots of people have money. They make it or they take it. But not everybody builds something with it. He wouldn’t have. Lino. If he’d gotten the rich, he’d still never have gotten the important. And, for a short time, he stole the important.”
    “The priest’s collar.”
    “In the world he came back to, that made him important. I bet he liked the taste of it, the power of it. It’s why he could stick it out so long.”
    “A little too long, obviously.”
    “Yeah.” How much longer had he needed to go? she wondered. How much longer before he’d have collected on those riches and that honor? “Teresa may not be able to confirm the ID—actually, I can’t figure how she could. But it’s Lino Martinez in that steel drawer downtown. Now I just have to figure out who wanted him dead, and why.”
     
    Maybe Joe Inez would have some of the answers. Eve studied the twelve-story apartment building, a tidy, quiet block of concrete and steel with an auto-secured entrance and riot bars on the windows of the first two levels.
    She bypassed security with her