“And your killer’s killer?”
“Working on it. I’ve got more pressure to put on Penny now. She knew all of this. He’d have told her the details of it. And if she had a part in his murder—and she damn well did—she had a line to the Ortega money. No way she’d have given up millions just to ditch Lino. She helped kill him so she could have it all. I’m going to need the name of that lawyer.”
“I’ll get it now.” He turned toward his office, glanced back. “That’s quite a bit from one cake, Lieutenant.”
She grinned fiercely as she went to her ’link. “It was one hell of a cake.”
In short order, she read over the initial report, the statements, the interviews. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to read one of those statements came from one Steven Jorge Chávez, identified as a longtime friend of the MP who’d come to Vegas to meet up at the MP’s request.
“Chávez, Lino’s co-captain in the Soldados, backed him on Ortega,” Eve told Roarke. “As Ken Aldo’s data stated he’d been born in Baja, and had spent his childhood in California and New Mexico, there was no reason to look for a connection between him and Chávez. He told the cops Ortega had confided in him one night that he was feeling closed in, pressured—by his marriage and his responsibilities back East. That he wished he could just ‘disappear.’ ”
“Laying it on a bit thick,” Roarke commented.
“Yeah, but they bought it. Had no reason not to. And the high stakes played through. Ortega rolled in a couple hundred thousand at the blackjack tables two days before he was reported missing.”
“Lucky streak, good or bad, depending on your point of view.”
“Yeah, could have been the springboard for getting rid of him.”
“In any case”—Roarke studied her board, crowded now with all the players—“it’s enough to buy a new face.”
“The rest of the finances wouldn’t zip straight to the spouse as, until they had a body, the MP would be considered alive and well. At least for seven years.”
He looked over at Eve. She was revving now, he noted. Juiced. Between the adrenaline and the coffee, she’d run half the night. “And Chávez goes in the wind shortly after the statement.”
“Both he and Flores. Check this. In the investigators’ notes, they mention that Aldo was so distraught, he asked if there was a priest or a chaplain he could talk to.”
“And Flores was there.”
“I think Flores was in the wrong place at the wrong time on his sabbatical. I think when Lino worked a con, he went into it deep. When he came back to check with the police the next day, he had Flores with him. The report says he identified himself as Miguel Flores, and Aldo referred to him as Father. The cop did the job, checked Flores out, ran him, and got the background, verified. He came in twice more, with Flores, then stated that he intended to return home, to Taos, and left his contact information with the investigators. He checked in weekly for three months, and every month for a full year. Then he dropped it.”
She sat back. “I think we narrow our search for Flores, for his remains to Nevada. A lot of desert around Vegas. A lot of places to bury a body. Or two. We’ll focus that on the area from Vegas to Taos, figuring if he convinced Flores to travel with him at all, he’d have stuck to the route he gave the cops.”
“You won’t be able to close this, not in your mind, until you find Flores. Or what remains of him.”
She sat back. She didn’t need the board, the photos to see Flores. She had his face in her head. “Peabody said that cases like this make her wish bad guys would just be bad guys. There are plenty of those, that’s what I said. Somebody like Flores, he never did anyone any harm. He got a big cosmic slap when bad guys took his family, but he doesn’t do any harm. Tries, in fact, to live a life that does the opposite.”
“It’s more often than not innocents, isn’t it, who get caught in the cross fire.”
“Yeah, and this one wanted to examine his life. His faith, I guess. That’s what I get from it. They took that life because he tried to help someone he thought was in need.” No, she didn’t need the board, didn’t need the photo. “I’ve got to find who killed Lino Martinez. That’s my job. But Flores deserves somebody to stand for him. He deserves that. Anyway.” She glanced at the memo cube Roarke had put on her desk. “Is that the lawyer?”
“It is, yes.”
She turned to her ’link with the memo.
“Eve, you’re in the same time zone now, and it’s closing on midnight.”
She only smiled. “Yeah, there’s this small, petty satisfaction I’m getting at the idea of waking up a lawyer. It’s wrong, but it’s there.”
20
THE LAWYER DIDN’T APPRECIATE THE MIDNIGHT call, but she snagged his interest.
“Mr. Aldo and I are in contact regularly, and have been since Mr. Ortega’s disappearance.”
“You’ve met Mr. Aldo.”
“Not in a personal sense. We correspond via e-mail most usually. He lives in New Mexico, and has a secondary residence in Cancún. He travels extensively.”