She slammed down her wine, started to storm for the door. When he simply stepped into her path, her fists bunched. “Go ahead,” he invited, as if amused. “Take a shot.”
“I ought to. You’re obstructing justice, pal.”
In challenge, he leaned in a little more. “Arrest me.”
“This isn’t about you, goddamn it, so just move and let me work.”
“And again, no.” He caught her chin in his hand, kissed her with more force. Drew back. “I love you.”
She spun away from him, but not before he saw both the fury and frustration on her face. “Low blow. Fucking low blow.”
“It was, yes. Sod me, I’m a bastard.”
She rubbed her hands over her face, raked them back through her damp hair. Kicked the dresser. Coming around now, he thought. He picked up her wine, crossed over to hand it back to her.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the case, okay? I’m just pissed off it has a hook in me.”
“Then take the hook out. Otherwise, aren’t you the one obstructing justice?”
She took a slow sip, watching him over the rim. “You may be a bastard, but you’re a cagey one. Okay. Okay. We followed through on some information,” she began, and told him about Solas.
“So I find myself thinking, this Lino or whoever the hell he is, he may have killed Flores. Murdered him in cold blood for all I know. He was a killer.”
“You established that?”
“He was Soldados. Badasses in El Barrio. He had the gang tat, had it removed before the ID. They were a New York gang back in the day, and his tat indicates he was high up the chain. He had the Soldados kill mark on the tattoo, so he killed, at least once.”
“Harder, isn’t it, when your victim had made victims?”
“Maybe it is. Maybe. But at least he did something about this, about this kid. He beat the shit out of Solas, protected the kid, when nobody else did, would. He got her out, got her away.”
No one got you out, Roarke thought. No one got you away. Until you did it yourself.
“So we go to see the mother, get a gauge on whether she or the kidfucker might’ve done Lino.” Eve dug her hands into her pockets as she wandered the bedroom. “No chance on her, no way in hell. I can see it as soon as I see her, shaking and shuddering at the thought the husband got out of Rikers. I wanted to slap her.” Eve stopped, closed her eyes. “A slap’s more humiliating than a punch. I wanted to slap her—and I guess I did, verbally.”
He said nothing, waited for her to finish digging it out.
“She was there, goddamn it.” Her voice rang with it, with the anger, the misery, the bitterness. “She was right there when that son of a bitch was raping the kid, over and over. She let him beat her, and that’s her business, but she did nothing to help her own kid. Not a damn thing. Didn’t know, didn’t see, oh my poor baby. And I don’t get it. How can you not see, how can you not know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe some don’t see, refuse to know what they can’t stand.”
“It’s no excuse.”
“It’s not, no.”
“And I know it’s not like me, it’s not the same. My mother hated me, hated the fact of me. That’s something I remember, one of the few things I remember about her. If she’d been there when he raped me, I don’t think she’d have cared one way or the other. It’s not the same, but . . .” She stopped, pressed her fingers to her eyes.
“It pushed it back into your face,” Roarke finished. “It made it now again, instead of then.”
“I guess.”
“And wasn’t it worse, isn’t that what you think? Worse for this girl because there was someone there who should have seen, should have known, should have stopped it?”
“Yes, yes.” She dropped her hands. “And I found myself detesting this pitiful, sad, terrified woman and giving props to a dead man I strongly suspect—hell, I know—was a murderer.”
“Giving him props for doing the right thing for a child isn’t excusing the rest, Eve.”
Calmer, she picked up her wine again. “It got a hook in me,” she repeated. “Later, the priest came back to see me. The real one. López. There’s something about him.”