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Plot Summary[]

In the year 2060, sophisticated investigative tools can help catch a killer. But there are some questions even the most advanced technologies cannot answer.

Ridley Pearson has praised J. D. Robb’s suspense as “taut” and “nerve-jangling.” Her latest thriller sets a new standard for suspense, as the priest at a Catholic funeral mass brings the chalice to his lips—and falls over dead.

When Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas confirms that the consecrated wine contained potassium cyanide, she’s determined to solve the murder of Father Miguel Flores, despite her discomfort with her surroundings. It’s not the bodegas and pawnshops of East Harlem that bother her, though the neighborhood is a long way from the stone mansion she shares with her billionaire husband, Roarke. It’s all that holiness flying around at St. Cristóbal's that makes her uneasy.

A search of the victim’s sparsely furnished room reveals little— except for a carefully hidden religious medal with a mysterious inscription, and a couple of underlined Bible passages. The autopsy reveals more: faint scars of knife wounds, a removed tattoo—and evidence of plastic surgery, suggesting that “Father Flores” may not have been the man his parishioners had thought. Now, as Eve pieces together clues that hint at gang connections and a deeply personal act of revenge, she believes she’s making progress on the case. Until a second murder—in front of an even larger crowd of worshippers—knocks the whole investigation sideways. And Eve is left to figure out who committed these unholy acts—and why.

--Product description from Amazon.com

Map[]

Please reference the Salvation in Death Map for locations or approximate locations of sites listed here.

Timeline[]

Spoiler warning!
This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.

Approximate Story Start Date: May, 2060[1]

Day 1[]

Chapter 1[]

  • Father Miguel Flores is officiating the funeral mass for Hector Ortiz, who died quietly in his sleep at age 116, 10 months after his wife died. When Father Flores drinks the wine (blood of Christ), he immediately dies.
  • Eve Dallas arrives, and notices that the body had been moved and that it is bright pink. She notes the gold chalice and asks what the victim was doing.
  • Father López answers her, stating that Flores was performing communion when he collapsed; Dr. Pasquale and another doctor tried to help him before either of the two police officers attending the mass could intervene.
  • López explains to her what the hosts (thin wafers) and wine represent during mass/communion, and states that he was the one who poured the wine into the decanter that Flores used to pour into the chalice. He takes Eve to the tabernacle to show her where the wine is stored, and explain the process. He led an earlier mass that morning with nine people in attendance.
  • Officer Graciela Ortiz, Hector’s great-granddaughter, was at the funeral, along with her cousin Matthew, who is with Illegals; she confirms the events López described. Eve asks her to talk to family members and get their impressions of Flores and releases Hector Ortiz's body to complete the funeral elsewhere.
  • Eve and Peabody head next door to the rectory, where the priests live; Eve notes minimum security on the house. Rosa O'Donnell, their housekeeper, lets them in and they search Father Flores's living quarters. The room is neat and tidy with no personal effects or photographs. Peabody looks at the rooms for the other two priests and reports that they are more lived-in, with photos and sports memorabilia.
  • Eve finds a silver medal taped behind a drawer in Father Flores's dresser with a note ‘Lino, May La Virgen de Guadalupe watch over you—Mama,’ dated May 12, 2031. Flores was orphaned at about age 6 so they think maybe Lino is a nickname and bag it, along with his 'link and Bible and his date book.

Chapter 2[]

  • Peabody runs a background check on Miguel Flores:
    • His parents, Anna and Constantine, were killed when their bodega was robbed in 2027 (he was two)
    • His parents’ killers are serving life sentences with no parole
    • Flores was placed into the system at that time
    • He attended private schools
    • There was a one-year gap in employment before he came to New York
  • Eve and Peabody go by the morgue to see if Morris has determined COD. Eve and Peabody discuss and discount self-termination. Eve speculates that Father Flores was the target, but will determine that after speaking with Morris.
  • Morris tells Eve that Flores died from a lethal dose of potassium cyanide and other than being dead he was very healthy, but there are knife wound scars, a tattoo removal scar, and extensive, expensive face work, all from about 6 years ago.
  • Eve suspects the victim is not Father Flores, but Lino (whoever Lino is), and tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to get more information from people who knew him before he came to New York. She is told that he was sponsored by Monsignor Quilby, who paid for his education in New Mexico, but died during the victim’s sabbatical (the year off).

Chapter 3[]

  • Eve shows Peabody the correct way to cut through red tape getting Flores’s dental records.
  • Eve speaks with Sister Patricia, Alexander Quilby’s attending physician at the time of his death – she can’t positively confirm Flores from the picture Eve sends (it’s been seven years since she's seen him) but does say that she contacted him after Quilby died and even though he agreed to perform the funeral mass for Quilby he never showed or replied to Sister Patricia.
  • Eve & Peabody go to Abuelo's to interview Roberto Ortiz, who has nothing but praise for Father Flores. The rest of the family is equally enamored of Flores.
  • Eve returns to St. Cristóbal’s to look around. Father López tells her the church is never locked, but the anteroom is because of the tabernacle. He compares his calling to Eve’s as a cop. He confirms that he used to box, and Flores wasn’t a good boxer, ‘he had an undisciplined style, more a street style,’ but was a genius on the basketball court.
  • The youth center is closed out of respect and so the kids could stay home with their families that night, so Eve says she will come by in the morning.
  • Eve goes home and outlines the case while she and Roarke take an evening stroll in the gardens.

Chapter 4[]

  • Roarke confirms that Flores’s ID is fake, issued a month before being assigned to St. Cristóbal’s, but a good one and he paid to have his fingerprints substituted for the real Flores. Since he specifically requested that parish, Eve tries to figure out why.
  • Roarke and Eve end the evening with outdoor sex on the roof terrace.

Day 2[]

  • Eve and Peabody meet at the youth center, question a kid before school, get answers after Eve shows off some nice basketball moves. Kiz tells her everybody liked Flores, who ‘don’t go preaching every five … gets what it’s like in the world (lotta shit).’
  • Eve questions Magda Laws, the youth center co-director, who has worked there for eight years, and along with her fiancée/co-director, Marc Tuluz, were friendly with Flores. She doesn’t have info on what Flores did before St. Cristóbal’s beyond working in Mexico and out West.
  • The only altercation Magda can remember is when Flores and Marc confronted a parent at his home in February; the man was physically and sexually abusing his family and Flores came back with bloody knuckles. The wife and children went to a shelter for a month and then the three of them helped her get a new place and another job.
  • Magda tells Eve he and Father Martin Freeman jogged most mornings, and that although Flores never made a move on her, she did get an unpriestly vibe from him.

Chapter 5[]

  • Eve and Peabody go back to the church, where they meet Freeman, who’s drop-dead gorgeous. He confirms that Flores beat Mr. Solas up, maybe would have gone farther if Marc hadn’t stopped it, but stated that Solas is in prison now and Mrs. Solas is in counseling, along with her children.
  • Eve gets a call that confirms the victim was not Flores, lets the Fathers know, and asks if he ever mentioned Lino. Freeman says he used him as an example of someone who had grievously sinned but then devoted a portion of his life to helping others as restitution – Freeman disagreed with him: ‘It’s more than good deeds. It’s intent. Are the good deeds done to balance the scales, or for their own sake? Did the man truly repent?’ Eve requests baptism records from 2020-2030 in case he was baptized at St. Cristóbal’s.
  • Eve and Peabody go to the Trinidad hotel to interview Mrs. Solas, who works there as a housekeeper. She tells Eve she thanks God for Flores every day for saving them. Solas took a plea, is at Rikers for ten years, and doesn’t know where they are – they went to Dochas for a few weeks before finding a new place to live and work. Flores told them Solas would never trouble them again and that there were people who could help them if they needed to hide.
  • Eve is pissed at Mrs. Solas for waiting until her daughter got them out (after being continually raped and seeing that her father was going to begin on his second daughter). They head back to Central so Eve can clear her head; Eve decides to wait to talk to Mira until she can bank her rage.
  • Nadine has bribed her way into Eve’s office with doughnuts, and they talk for a few minutes about Charles and Louise’s upcoming wedding, which Eve is hosting. Nadine tells Eve she and Peabody are planning Louise’s bridal shower, which will be at Eve’s house. She also gives Eve a copy of Deadly Perfection: The Icove Agenda, her book, to proofread.
  • Eve tells her that ‘the NYPSD has confirmed through medical records that the man poisoned in St. Cristóbal’s was not Miguel Flores, but an as of yet unidentified individual who posed as same’ and tells Nadine he had some facial surgery to more closely resemble Flores, but they have no other info on the victim.

Chapter 6[]

  • Eve checks in with Feeney for an update on the ID (none).
  • Marc Tuluz comes in to talk to Eve, tells her Flores was smart, interesting, and competitive, that the kids ‘related to him, and he to them. Hell, half the time they didn’t think of him as the priest. Just as one of us.’ Eve tells him he wasn’t a priest or Flores, which blows his mind.
  • Tuluz tells Eve about the day they visited Solas, that Flores had a temper. But that was the only time Tuluz had seen it so unleashed: ‘He jumped him, pounded him. Not like sparring in a ring… street moves. He had Solas on his knees and retching in under ten seconds.’ He tells Eve he had to pull Flores off before he killed Solas. Eve figures that was a trigger for him – he had a minor sister or other relative who was sexually abused.
  • The lab comes through with the tattoo – it is from the Soldados, a New York gang formed just before the Urban Wars and disbanded about a dozen years ago. The victim’s tattoo was ‘a block cross, with a heart at its intersection. The heart dripped blood – three drops – from the tip of the knife stabbed through it.’ The knife and blood indicated blood spilled during combat (required for full membership), and there was an X at the bottom of the cross symbolizing a kill, required to be able to serve on the council, i.e., the victim ‘wasn’t just a member, he was brass.’
  • Eve reports to Whitney, who lets her know ‘the church isn’t pleased with the publicity, and are put off by the disrespectful manner the primary investigator on the case had employed to gain information.’ He recognizes the tattoo, and tells her that ‘any minors who were members, and who were not convicted of any crime that entailed sentencing, had their records expunged’ by a Clemency Order that was overturned the following year (but too late for records to be restored), so as long as the victim kept clean after 2045, there would be no prints or DNA on file through NYPSD or IRCCA records.
  • Eve runs into López while she’s heading back to her office by way of vending to buy a Pepsi. He came to give her the baptismal records, letting her know that he’s doing so without authorization because the church is trying to stall as much as possible. She brightens his day with real coffee and then dims it with the information about the tattoo. He said he would give Eve information about past gang members who belonged to his congregation the following day.
  • López explains that he became a priest after his girlfriend was raped, beaten, and strangled – he spent two years living on the hate with drink and drugs, but after they found and prosecuted the men, his girlfriend came to him in a vision and told him to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos and bring as an offering a drawing of the Blessed Mother. Once there he realized his life was now for God.

Chapter 7[]

  • Eve drives home in a bad mood, works out, and Roarke pulls it out of her that she is mad at Mrs. Solas for not noticing her daughter was being raped, impressed that Lino stood up to Solas even though she knows he was a killer, and admires López for not seeking vengeance. She wants to know if Roarke felt pleasure when he killed Marlena’s killers; he says no, but also no regret.
  • They eat dinner and Eve updates Roarke on the case. She wonders what Lino was doing out west, and why he returned to Spanish Harlem. Roarke offers to look for major heists between six and eight years ago, and she will look for a cop who worked that sector back when Lino would have been an active Soldado.
  • Meanwhile at Madison Square Garden, Jimmy Jay Jenkins, the founder of the Church of Eternal Light, drinks about half of the third of the seven bottles of mostly water with a little vodka he would normally consume during the evening, and keels over dead.
  • Eve has narrowed down her list of baptized babies to twelve, when she is tagged with Jenkins’ murder. Roarke tells her he hasn’t found any major heists with the take outstanding or the doers at large, and drives her to the murder scene so she can get background on Jenkins while he's driving.

Chapter 8[]

  • Jenkins’ bodyguard, Clyde Attkins, fills Eve in on the happenings and shows her the water bottle Jenkins was drinking from when he collapsed. Eve tracks down the hysterical Mrs. Jenkins, who confirms Attkins’ take on the events. Eve interviews Billy Crocker, Jenkins’ business manager, who reveals the details of Jenkins’ will, and Josie, the youngest daughter, who spiked the water bottles with vodka that evening.
  • Eve thinks Jenkins had a mistress, Attkins thinks so also, but didn’t know who. He doesn’t think Jolene knew because she would have confronted Jenkins and made him break it off.

Day 3[]

Chapter 9[]

  • Eve watches a replay of the live feed, sees that Jolene is genuinely shocked by Jenkins’ death, Attkins acted quickly to hold everybody back, and one of the Eternal Light Singers, Ulla Pintz, was obviously the sidepiece. McNab tells Eve one of the sons-in-law is a lawyer so between that and the fact that it’s 2 a.m., she sends everybody home. Roarke finds nothing unusual with the church finances.
  • Eve thinks the business manager found out about the mistress and killed Jenkins so he could spin it as another figurehead of God being targeted by the same killer rather than a disgraced preacher to drum up more business until a new leader is appointed.
  • Eve dreams about Lino and Jenkins talking to her about salvation while her father is beating and raping her and she stabs him but knows she will be alright because it’s justified. Since it’s almost 6 a.m. when she wakes from the dream/nightmare, she stays up and gets ready for work.

Chapter 10[]

  • After shower sex, Eve writes up her report on the Jenkins investigation. The computer gives an 86.3% probability that the two crimes were committed by the same killer, but Eve doesn’t buy it, and Roarke agrees. Since the church owns the live feed, every time anybody shows the death it’s money in the bank. Eve figures the church is going to make a mint from that feed alone.
  • Eve & Peabody stop at the morgue to confirm that Jenkins died from cyanide poisoning, and it was in one large dose, so just one of the water bottles was spiked; Eve figures the third one made the most sense for theatrics since Jenkins drank it right before the break.

Chapter 11[]

  • Eve & Peabody visit the townhouse where the Jenkins family is staying. Eve tells Jolene her husband was poisoned. They interview Crocker with Samuel Wright (the lawyer son-in-law) present, and Crocker reluctantly tells them that Jenkins had six affairs over the years. Samuel is shocked and tells her not to come back without a warrant. Eve tells Crocker off-record that she knows he killed Jenkins, and speculates to Peabody that Crocker is in love with Jolene, that he stayed in the wings until Jolene went down when Jenkins collapsed.
  • Peabody suggests Lino had a single mother, and Eve tells her to pursue that. Peabody mentions that she’s meeting Nadine and Louise later to finalize plans for the bridal shower/bachelorette party. Eve demands that games and strippers are off the table, and all she has to do is show up.
  • Eve heads over to meet Mira for a lunch consult at Ernest’s but encounters two women coming out of a shop in a physical fight; it turns out they were fighting over a purse they both wanted. One of them bites Eve’s shoulder as she is separating them.
  • Eve apologizes to Mira for being late, explaining the delay, and Mira calls the shop to have the owner put the purse aside for her. She tells Eve Lino’s killer probably has strong ties to the Catholic Church, and will confess to their priest, just as Jenkins’ killer will confess to Eve because of the guilt.

Chapter 12[]

  • Eve goes back to Central, where she sees Baxter flirting with Officer Graciela Ortiz. Eve assigns him work to try to find a deceased John Doe to match the real Flores and asks Ortiz to find her Soldado members of the church who are the same age as Lino. McNab is tracking down Lino Salvadore Martinez, who was the right age and location of birth – unknown whereabouts for the father beginning when Martinez was five years old, mother, Teresa, worked at Abuelo’s as a waitress before remarrying and moving to Brooklyn.
  • Eve tags Peabody to head to Brooklyn to interview Teresa, but Luke Goodwin, Wright, and Crocker are there so she snags an interview room instead; Luke is there to bear witness and serve as Crocker’s spiritual advisor. Peabody is once again relegated to good cop (until she’s ‘willing to kick a puppy out of the way to take down a suspect’). Eve refuses Wright’s request to take Murder One off the table, or in fact, to cut any kind of a deal, Goodwin councils Crocker to confess in order to receive salvation and make things right with God.
  • Crocker tells them that Jenkins was straying farther and farther off the path, what with the drinking and the women and all, but with his latest mistress he refused to see it as sinful, claiming he gained more light, insight, and truth with her and with the drink. When Crocker confronted him before the service, Jenkins claimed that in order to preach against sin, a man must know sin, and he thought man should have more than one wife. Crocker thought it was too late to bring him back and the only way to save him was to end his mortal life. Eve arrests him and requests a media block on the details. Peabody puts him on suicide watch.

Chapter 13[]

  • Roarke and Eve drive to Brooklyn to interview Teresa after they have excellent pizza. Lino left home at 17, which is the last time Teresa saw him, and she hadn’t heard from Lino in almost seven years – he was in Nevada and called or emailed every few months until then, sending money sometimes. She says he always carries trouble with him, like his father. Hector Ortiz gave him a job busing tables and sweeping up at Abuelo's when Lino was 15, and he stole from him. Teresa didn’t attend Ortiz’s funeral because had there was a parent-teacher conference that day for her son David.
  • Teresa identified Lino’s medallion, which she gave him for First Holy Communion when he was seven and still a good boy. Eve explains that Lino was posing as Flores when he was killed. Teresa and her husband will go to the morgue the following morning to identify Lino’s body. She gives Eve the names of his closest friends in the Soldados – Steve Chávez, the worst of the Soldados, Joe Inez, and Lino's girlfriend, Penny Soto.

Chapter 14[]

  • On the way back to Manhattan Eve runs the three names Teresa had given her:
    • Steven Chávez has a long, crowded sheet, in various states; assault, assault with deadly, a couple of illegals pop, sexual assault (acquitted), grand theft auto, fraud, robbery. He spent a lot of time in many state facilities, and disappeared about seven years ago after being arrested for possessing stolen goods and making bail in Arizona.
    • Joe Inez is still in New York, working as a maintenance mechanic at an apartment complex; he did time for robbery in his teens, but has been clean for more than a decade.
    • Penelope Soto has hits on illegals – sales and possession, sexual solicitation without a license, and assault. She is recently off parole and works at the bodega next door to St. Cristóbal’s.
  • Since Joe Inez lives where he works, they visit him. Eve is sure that he didn’t know Lino was back, nor that he was posing as Flores, and doesn’t mention it. He wants nothing to do with either Lino or Penny – he’s been sober for almost 13 years, and has a settled life now, with a wife and three children.
  • Roarke and Eve drive home, have car sex, and Roarke tends to Eve’s shoulder bite. Eve finds two explosions around the time of Lino’s departure from New York – one on Soldado turf, in a school auditorium, with one dead and 25 injured (23 minors, 2 adults), the second on Skulls (rival gang) turf – a sandwich joint/gang hangout spot that killed four minors, one adult, and injured six. The files are sealed so Eve contacts Whitney at home, not realizing that it’s nearly midnight and not urgent.

Day 4[]

Chapter 15[]

  • Roarke wakes up restless, tells Eve about his dream with his old friends, and thinks Lino would have made contact with somebody from his past.
  • Eve and Peabody go to the bodega where Penny works, Eve goads her into assaulting her so Peabody can book her on assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, and being armed (she has a knife in her pocket). Eve asks Jenkinson to jam up the arrest until Eve gets back to Central, figuring Penny will lawyer up, with the lawyer advising her to talk to Eve about Lino. Eve thinks she’s too hotheaded to have killed Lino but that she knows something.
  • They head to the morgue to meet with the Francos, and Teresa is able to positively identify Lino.

Chapter 16[]

  • Back at Central, Eve interviews Teresa, who tells her how Lino constantly got into trouble, and how when he came home with the X on his tattoo, he was 15, and Teresa knew that meant he had killed. She says he left New York two days before the second explosion, after cleaning out her bank account.
  • After the Francos leave, Eve reads the (now available to her) police reports for the two explosions – the detective in charge of the second one couldn’t locate Lino or Chávez but didn’t believe they’d left town before the incident, nor that they had nothing to do with the planning.
  • As anticipated, Penny has lawyered up. She admits she and Lino were having sex while he was posing as Flores – before she knew who he was, and then he told her. She said he liked people looking at him like he was a big deal, that he liked the respect. She thinks he did some blackmailing, since once in a while they would go to a fancy hotel, where he always paid cash, and he bought her jewelry. She hints that she and Lino killed her father, who had been raping her since she was twelve. She claims not to know why Lino came back, what he waiting for, what happened to the real Flores, or who killed Lino, most of which Eve thinks is lies.
  • Eve and Peabody meet with Detective Stuben, who handled the second bombing case. He said Penny was worse than Lino because ‘he stole something, it was for money. He beat the shit out of somebody, there was a reason. Kid had a purpose. Her? Carried hate around in her. She stole, it was to take it from somebody else. She beat the shit out of someone, it was for the hell of it.’ At the time of the bombing, Lino and Chávez were captains of the Soldados, and after they left Penny was in charge.

Chapter 17[]

  • Eve and Peabody visit with Rosa (the priests aren’t home) and get more information about Lino and the bombings. Rosa thinks the first bombing was intended for Lino but he and Chavez were on their way to the dance when the bomb went off. The talk was that he left town after that because he knew the Skulls would try again, but Rosa is with everybody else, thinking that Lino had something to do with the second bombing, at least with the planning. Eve tells Rosa that Lino was posing as Flores, and she is shocked.
  • Eve thinks Lino was behind the first bombing and that’s why he and Joe argued. This way Lino leaves as a hero, so he is ‘protecting’ others from getting hurt.
  • Eve and Peabody go next door to the youth center to speak with Father López, who’s boxing with Marc (and beating him). Eve thinks Lino’s murderer confessed to López, which he confirms. He advised the person to confess to Eve, but says he can’t force them to and can’t break their confidence. She narrows it down to someone related to one of the bombing victims, and someone who Lino wasn’t blackmailing, and López says he will continue to counsel the murderer to confess to Eve.
  • Eve puts surveillance on him – she thinks the killer may go after him, even though he doesn’t think that.
  • Eve and Peabody go to Inez’s place next, where Mrs. Inez thinks they are there to follow up on a tenant being a witness in a hit-and-run (the explanation he gave her for the previous police visit) and is pissed that he lied to her, but says he doesn’t know anything about Lino anymore. Since Joe is stuck in New Jersey, Eve asks Mrs. Inez to tell her husband they have located Lino and need to follow up with him.

Chapter 18[]

  • Eve drives home and sees the spring flowers Roarke had planted, including white petunias (her wedding flowers). Roarke thanks her for having Sinead contact him (Eve asked Summerset to do that after Roarke’s dream), and tells her about his day. She tells him about Penny, and how she and Lino killed her dad, and he assures her it’s nothing like when she killed her dad – Penny was 14 and not imprisoned, and also mutilated the body – she did it for revenge, while Eve did it for survival, and Penny wears the tattoo with pride.
  • As they are heading to Eve’s office to update her murder board, Summerset calls up to let them know their guests have arrived – Ariel Greenfeld and Erik Pastor. Ariel has set up a new shop, with Erik and Roarke’s help, she and Erik are getting married, and she brought Eve a cake to thank her for saving her life: ‘an edible New York spread out, with its streets, its buildings, its rivers and parks, the tunnels, the bridges,’ with vehicles, people, shops, and glide-carts, including an illegals deal going down and a guy getting mugged in Central Park, and Eve standing on a slim tower, looking over the city, wearing her long, black coat and scuffed boots, with her badge in one hand and her weapon in the other.
  • Eve is getting ready to take a slice of the Upper East Side, when she notices that the area has changed ownership since the Soldados days (gentrification) and thinks Lino was there because of property he owned or would inherit, so eats a slice of SoHo instead. She thinks Lino had his eye on property in the area and was waiting for something so he could officially own it and show it off. Roarke offers to program a holo-model of the sector so she doesn’t have to hack off that part of the cake to bring upstairs with her.

Chapter 19[]

  • Eve checks with Mavis to see what the longest con she ran was; it was four months, but Eve thinks Lino’s con was seven years. Roarke creates a holo of St. Cristóbal’s, and Eve walks through it. She’s sure the house she’s looking for was on his running route so he could go by it every day. She thinks the killer is a regular church-goer and only recently found out about Lino, from Soto.
  • Eve finds José Ortega, and Roarke recognizes the name as a major property owner. Roarke had looked to buy one of his properties but there was some kind of legal tangle with his estate. Roarke made an offer but the owner (the grandson of the original José Ortega) couldn’t be located, and Roarke found something he liked more.
  • Eve sees that the grandson (also named José Ortega) is the same age as Lino and searches missing persons for him. He was reported missing by Ken Aldo, his spouse, in September, 2053 in Las Vegas; Ken Aldo is a disguised Lino, and José was a Soldado. Since it takes seven years to legally declare somebody dead without a body, Lino was coming up on inheriting all of Ortega’s properties in a few months. She thinks he told Penny, who told his killer.
  • Eve gets the missing person report from Vegas and sees that Chávez was also in Vegas at that time, as a longtime friend of José’s, and told the police José had confided in him that he was feeling closed in, trapped by his marriage and his responsibilities back east, and that he wished he could just disappear. He won $200,000 before he disappeared, which Eve figures was enough for good facial reconstruction to look like Flores, who he met there when he was looking for a spiritual advisor to cope with his sorrow over losing José.

Chapter 20[]

  • Even though it’s almost midnight, Eve calls Ortega’s lawyer, Feinburg; he lets her know he hasn’t met Aldo since he lives in New Mexico, with a secondary residence in Cancún, but is in regular email correspondence with him. Being a lawyer, he doesn’t want to discuss the finances with Eve, but following a hunch, she asks him if Lino recently contacted him to add a female beneficiary as his legal partner, with full power of attorney, which is exactly what happened. The new partner contacted Feinburg yesterday to let him know that Aldo would be traveling for several months.
  • Eve and Roarke think Lino told Penny all of it, and she betrayed him. Eve looks for relatives of victims of the second bombing. She quickly realizes that Lino’s killer is Juanita Rodriguez Turner, who lost her son in the bombing and her husband a year later when he hanged himself on the one-year anniversary. She lives a few blocks from the church and Eve realizes she met her at the youth center, where she is the daycare manager and onsite medical. When Eve met her she kept her back to Eve and was nervous (Eve thought it was irritation at the time).

Day 5[]

  • Eve fills Peabody and McNab in on the case and they head out to pick up Juanita and her electronics.

Chapter 21[]

  • At the youth center, Eve arrests Juanita, while Peabody alerts McNab to search Juanita’s apartment. Eve returns to Central, has Juanita set up in an interview room, and sees Joe Inez and his wife waiting for her. She confirms with Joe off-record that she knows he had no part in any killings. She then puts the Inezes in an interview room and demands witness immunity for Joe from Reo, asks that Mira join her in observation for her interviews, and contacts Feinburg for the last part of her plan. Reo agrees to offer immunity as long as Joe didn’t commit murder, which he didn’t, and Eve and Peabody interview him.
  • Joe was at the dance, waiting for Lino, Chávez, and Penny to arrive, when a bomb went off, killing a childhood friend of his ten feet away from where he was standing. Lino, Chávez, and Penny are suddenly there, ‘hauling kids out like heroes, and saying how it was the Skulls.’ After that Joe went to their headquarters (a building Ortega owned) and overheard Lino and Penny talking about ‘planting the boomer at the dance got the community involved. How they’d hit the Skulls now, and everyone would cheer. The Soldados would be heroes because everybody thought the Skulls attacked, the Skulls brought blood to neutral territory. And Penny said they should’ve used a bigger bomb.’
  • Joe confronted Lino, who threatened him if he said anything, and then somebody jumped him a few hours later in case he didn’t get the message. Then Penny told him if he said anything they would do to him what they did to her old man. That was the last day he saw Lino or Chávez, and the gang fell apart shortly after the second bombing. Joe stayed drunk for a long time, got busted for robbing a 24/7, and then cleaned up and got married, had kids. Eve thanks Joe and sends him home.
  • Eve has Peabody take the lead in Juanita’s interview, and they confirm that Penny set her up to kill Lino; Penny played a recording of Lino stating his name for Juanita to convince her of the deception, and then another recording of Lino describing the second bomb, watching the store blow up. Penny said she’d been to the police, but they didn’t believe her and Lino said he would kill Penny if she ever betrayed him. Eve tells Juanita that Penny played her, and afterwards Reo agrees to second degree murder with special circumstances – 10-15 years, on-planet, minimum security.

Chapter 22[]

  • McNab found the ‘link Juanita used to talk to Penny, and he was able to match the voiceprints from Penny’s interview. Penny called Juanita to confirm the kill, and when she sensed Juanita backing off, she played the ‘Lino raped me’ card, then the ‘if you don’t kill him I will kill myself’ one, following up with the ‘he’s getting bored here and said he’s going to put a bomb in the church before he leaves town’ one.
  • Since all of Ortega’s properties were occupied, Eve borrows an empty house from Roarke to lure Penny to, then contacts Feinburg to set up the sting, telling Penny that this property is being added to her inheritance, so she needs to come over to sign some paperwork, etc.
  • Once Penny arrives at the property, Eve allows herself to get cut a little before offering to fight. She then takes a kick from Penny, and a few more blows before knocking her down and having her arrested.
  • Eve offers to waive the fraud and intent to kill an officer charges in exchange for information on the whereabouts of Flores, Ortega, and Chávez. Ortega OD’d, Chávez killed Flores, and Lino killed Chávez. All of them are buried in the Nevada desert.
  • Eve then springs the rest of the charges on Penny – the bombings, conspiracy to murder Lino, accessory after the fact on the murders of Flores, Ortega, and Chávez. Then Detectives Stuben and Kohn charge Penny with murder in the first for all of the bombing victims.

Epilogue[]

  • Roarke, Eve, and Father López fly to Nevada to dig up the bodies and López and Roarke debate religion and law over glasses of tequila on the way back to New York.

Character List[]

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]

Deaths[]

Victim Cause of Death Weapon Perpetrator
Nick Soto (pre-book) multiple stab wounds knife Lino Martinez and Penelope Soto
Ronni Edwards (pre-book) bombing at a school auditorium in 2043 bomb The Soldados/Lino Martinez & Penelope Soto
Kobie Smith (pre-book) bombing at convenience store in 2043
Quinto Turner (pre-book)
Three unnamed minors (pre-book)
Joseph Turner (pre-book, year 2044) hanging Suicide
José Ortega (pre-book) drug overdose unnamed drugs unintentional suicide
Miguel Flores (pre-book) stabbed unknown Steve Chávez
Steve Chávez (pre-book) unknown unknown Lino Martinez
Lino Martinez poisoning potassium cyanide Juanita Rodriguez Turner
Jimmy Jay Jenkins Billy Crocker

Trivia[]

Eve goes "parking" for the first time (with Roarke of course).

Other Covers[]

Additional covers here

UK edition cover French edition cover German 1st edition cover German Book Club edition cover Hungarian edition cover Brilliance Audio unabridged edition cover
UK edition cover French edition cover German 1st edition cover German Book Club edition cover Hungarian edition cover Brilliance Audio unabridged edition cover

Footnotes[]

  1. Page 5: "The May sunshine beamed through the exit."

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