Salvation in death

EPILOGUE

THE ROCK CROSS CAST A SHADOW ON SAND STRUCK GOLD BY A vicious sun. That sun bleached the sky white, and forced a breathless heat into the air.

Eve stood under it, under the shadow and the sun.

The gauges found the bodies quickly, and the diggers unearthed them, the remains of what had once been men. And in one burning grave, with the bones, lay a silver cross, and a silver medal. Santa Anna, in honor of a dead priest’s mother.

It was enough.

Still, they verified with DNA, with dental.

She stood and remembered what the local cop, the detective who’d run the missing persons on Ortega had said.

“You know how you smell something, but you can’t figure out where it’s coming from? I smelled something on this one. But the guy-the ID, the records, wits-it all checked out.”

“No reason for you not to think he wasn’t who he said he was.”

“Except that smell. We checked out the house they’d rented. Sweet place, let me tell you. Fancy. No signs of foul play. We looked good, too. I like to think we looked good. We didn’t find a damn thing. MP’s clothes, or most of them, gone and this guy Aldo-Martinez-leaking like a bad faucet. I get the background on the MP, see he’s got some illegals trouble. You figure he took off, went on a binge. And the other, he asks for a priest, a counselor. Jesus, I watched that priest walk off with him. Just let them go.”

Wrong place, Eve thought. Wrong time. Like young Quinto Turner.

Death was a mean bastard.

So she’d come back, to the shadow of the cross, to the graves dug in the sand under the violent sun. Because the priest had asked her to.

She knew he was praying over those now empty graves. And suspected he prayed for all three with equal devotion. It made her feel odd, so she stayed back with Roarke.

López turned, and aimed those sad, serious eyes on her. “Thank you. For all you’ve done.”

“I did my job.”

“We all have them. Thank you both. I’ve kept you out in the sun long enough.”

They walked to the small, sleek plane waiting on the plate of the sand.

“A drink, Father?” Roarke asked when they took their seats.

“I should ask for water, but I wonder, would you have any tequila?”

“I would, yes.” Roarke fetched the bottle and glasses himself.

“Lieutenant,” López began. “May I call you your name?”

“Mostly people call me Dallas.”

“Your name’s Eve. The first woman God created.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t have a real good rep.”

A smile ghosted around his mouth, around those sad eyes. “She shoulders blame, I think, not entirely her own. Eve, I’ve put in a request to hold Father Flores’s funeral mass at St. Cristóbal’s, and to bury him in the place our priests are buried. If I’m allowed to do this, would you attend?”

“I can try.”

“You found him. Not everyone would have looked. It wasn’t your job to find him.”

“Yes, it was.”

He smiled, sipped the first of his tequila.

“I’ve got a question,” Eve said. “I’m not Catholic or anything-he sort of is.”

Roarke shifted, drank. “Not precisely.”

“What I mean is I’m not, so it’s not like I’ll-how is it put-take it as gospel, but I’d like an opinion from, you know, a rep of the church.”

“What’s the question?”

“It’s something Juanita Turner said in the box, in interview. It bugs me. Do you believe that someone who self-terminates can’t go to heaven, on the supposition there is one?”

López sipped again. “The Church has a firm policy regarding suicide, even as suicide has become legal in most places, most parts of the world, with proper authorization.”

“So that’s a yes.”

“The Church ruling is very clear. And rules often ignore the human and the individual factor. I think God ignores nothing. I think His compassion for His children is infinite. I can’t believe, in my heart, God closes his door to those in pain, to those in desperation. Does that answer your question?”

“Yeah. You don’t always follow the rules.” She glanced at Roarke. “I know somebody else like that.”

Roarke slid a hand over hers, laced fingers. “And I know someone who thinks about them entirely too much. Lines can blur, wouldn’t you agree, Father?”

“Chale. And yes, lines can, and sometimes should, blur.”

She smiled, listened to two men she found fascinating and intriguing debate, discuss over glasses of tequila.

And she watched out the window as the dry gold of the desert receded. As the plane banked east, to take them home.