The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [282]
Tears spilled down her cheeks, streaming out of misery. “Do you think it matters what you say, what you do? I sent my boy to the place where they killed him. Do you think it matters if you take my life from me now, if you put me away for the rest of it? I can’t see God, just like my husband. There’s no salvation without redemption. I can’t ask for true forgiveness. I killed the one who killed my son. And I don’t repent. I hope he’s burning in hell.”
“Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner.” Peabody’s voice soothed, calmed. “You were Quinto’s mother. He was only sixteen. It must have been devastating, the loss. It must’ve been devastating all over again when Penny told you that the man you believed to be Father Flores was Lino Martinez.”
“I didn’t believe her. At first I didn’t believe her.” When Juanita lowered her head into her hands, Eve gave Peabody a small nod of approval. “Why would she tell me this? She’d been his whore once. How could I believe it, believe her? I worked with him, took Communion from him, confessed to him. But . . .”
“She convinced you,” Peabody prompted.
“Little things. The way he walked, the swagger of it. The basketball, so much pride. He had so much pride in his skill with a ball and a net. His eyes. If you really looked, if you really looked he was there. Inside the priest’s eyes.”
“Still she could’ve been lying,” Eve insisted. “You killed a man on her word? The word of Lino Martinez’s whore?”
“No. No. She had a recording, she’d recorded him, talking to her. Talking about how he was fooling everyone. How he could play the priest and be the sinner. She asked him to say his real name, and he laughed. Lino Martinez, he said. And even his mother didn’t know it. But how everyone would know him again, respect him, envy him. In just a little more time.”
“She made the recording for you.”
“She said she made it because I’d need proof. That she was ashamed of what he’d made her do. What he made her do still. She had loved him as a girl, and she’d fallen back when he’d come to her. But then he told her what he’d done. The bomb, and she couldn’t live with that.”
She wiped at her eyes. “Who could live with that? Only evil can live with that. She couldn’t. She’d found God, found strength, and came to me.”
“And helped you,” Peabody said, very gently. “She understood how shattered you were, and offered to help.”
“He wouldn’t pay for Quinto. He would never pay, unless I made him pay. Unless I stopped him. I could get the poison. I could get in the church, the rectory, the tabernacle. Still, I waited. I waited, because to take a life, even in justice, is a terrible thing. Then she showed me another recording, where he’d talked of the bombing, bragged about it. How he’d pretended to leave days before, but how he’d watched the store blow up. Blow up, with my boy inside. How he’d watched that, and then drove away. His work done.”
The memory straightened her spine. Defiance cut through again as she stared at Eve. “Would God want him to go unpunished?”
“Take us through it, Juanita,” Eve said. “How did you do it.”
“Old Mr. Ortiz died. He was such a good man, so well loved. I took it as a sign. I knew the church would be full, and this murderer on the altar. I went to the rectory before Rosa got there, when Father López and that one were at morning Mass. I got the keys for the tabernacle. I waited until Father López left from morning Mass, and I went in, put the poison in the wine.”
Juanita’s whole body trembled. “Only wine, and never to be the blood of God. I’d be God’s hand, she said.”
“Penny said?”
“Yes, she said I would be God’s hand and strike him down. So I sat in church and watched him do his false prayers over that good man, and I watched him drink the wine. Watched him die. And as he had, with my baby, I walked away.”
“You confessed to Father López,” Eve said. “No, he didn’t tell me. He wouldn’t. But you confessed to him. Why?”
“I hoped somehow, I could be forgiven.