Page 26 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER XXVI

Eugene Seeley was in his workshop. The cover of the poetry book was in worse condition than he’d hoped and he could only speculate how long it had been languishing on the shelves of the late Antonio Elizalde. But then, the cover wasn’t his priority. Seeley had some expertise as a restorer but preferred repurposing old volumes, making something new from what was in a parlous, even seemingly unrecoverable, state. He enjoyed rebinding, and adding new capitalization and alternative illustrations while retaining the spirit of the primary text. The clients to whom he sold his books were not interested in acquiring first editions as close to their original state as possible, although some were happy when Seeley was able to oblige. Instead, they admired how he could take a battered, ill-used book, like this collection of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and from it forge a hybrid of the antique and the modern. Purists would object, of course, but Seeley wasn’t selling to purists and labored for his own satisfaction. Books didn’t keep him in bread and wine, but they were a useful disguise for what did. Working on them was also a source of calm and helped him think.

Now, as he picked at the spine of the de la Cruz, he was considering what had been learned from Roland Bilas, who was given up before his death by Antonio Elizalde, just as Elizalde had been named by a man named Manuel Chacon Pocheco, who had, a year earlier, performed electrical repairs at a property in Zirandaro, Mexico, owned by one Blas Urrea, currently Seeley’s nominal employer. Bilas was the most important link yet established in the chain. Pocheco knew only of Elizalde, and Elizalde knew only of Bilas and some former soldiers, but Bilas knew many names and had surrendered all of them before he died.

Seeley had elected to leave Bilas’s body in the motel room; there was little point in moving it, and not only because of the risk of attracting attention. Bilas’s blood had soaked through the sheets and into the mattress, so disguising the fact of his death would have been difficult. Nobody who had bled that much was likely to survive, but the corpse would also serve as a warning to Bilas’s accomplices, a harbinger of what awaited them as punishment for their transgression. Seeley was not worried about the pigeons scattering. It would have happened sooner or later, even without what was left of Bilas to focus their minds.

Most usefully, thanks to Bilas, Seeley now knew the identities of the culprits, and he possessed an instinct for the hunt. Bilas’s murder might even encourage them to consider handing over the children, although Seeley doubted it. They were not stupid people—foolhardy, yes, but not unintelligent—and must have realized that relinquishing the children wouldn’t save them. Seeley might have been of a forgiving nature, but Blas Urrea was not.

As for the other party, currently seated in a corner out of reach of daylight, staring vacantly at a silent television, Seeley wasn’t sure of her nature, wasn’t sure of it at all.