“Before I formed thee in the belly I
knew thee; and before thou camest
forth out of the womb I sanctified
thee…
Jeremiah 1:5
PROLOGUE
SUNDAY MORNING
Milton Iglesia had taken a window seat in the last row of a Trailways bus way before the birds began their morning chorus. There would barely have been enough room for even a small child to squeeze in next to him. It was pitch-black outside. The bus picked him up at the nearest bus stop to the Tekakwitha Home for the Emotionally Disturbed at three a.m. sharp in the sleeping host town. It was located at the remote northwest edge of New York State, an eight-hour drive from New York City, not far from the Canadian border. The locals preferred the guests of Tekakwitha to go back to where they came from in the middle of the night.
When he got on the bus it was empty. The driver didn't utter a word when he stepped up, nor did he make eye contact with the big man. Milton pressed into the rear seat. He could see the blotches of grey in his own bearded, burly reflection in the window among the passing lights on the Thruway.
The authorities thought he could go back to New York City—to society—on his first pass. And after twenty years under the care of the Tekawitha psychiatric team, and no signs that he would commit violence again, the state pronounced he was ready for the outside. He’d only been sixteen when he committed that one evil act.
Over the course of the long silent ride through the dark rolling hills of the Adirondacks and Catskills, the light started to ease through the nighttime mist finally bringing the green into full view. Passenger cars started to join the bus on the road. For half the trip the thruway seemed restricted to only buses and tractor-trailers.
Each car the bus passed the big man leered deep down into its interior, hoping to grab the sight of a woman’s thighs. It didn’t matter if the unsuspecting woman was a mother traveling with her child sitting at her side. It did not matter at all. He captured the image and saved it.
Tekakwitha notified Father Manuel Gonzalez, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in the South Bronx—Milton’s half-brother—during one of the priest’s monthly visits, that he would be released in thirty days. The state also notified the Upper Westside precinct where he would temporarily live, but it was not that police precinct that could have benefited from the information. As a registered sex offender, the precinct notified the local community board, but the people who lived in the area where he would take a room—residents of the Upper West Side—had not much to fear from the big man. As it turns out he would quietly check into an S.R.O. hotel on West 73th Street, and come-and-go, without disturbance.
But it was Bronx detectives that could have used that information. Especially Detective Toni Santiago and Lieutenant Ryan Condon of the Bronx Homicide Squad, but they hadn't been told. There was no reason to notify police in the borough in which he formerly lived and committed his one crime, or so it was thought.
The Manhattan skyline climbed into view. The big man’s face had been so close to the window that circles of eager mist momentarily obstructed his view with each vulgar breath. The bus barreled through the Lincoln Tunnel emerging in front of the big city’s obese Port Authority bus terminal. Milton grabbed his backpack from the rack above his seat and lumbered off the bus and into the bustling lobby that Sunday afternoon, and took it all in. She was there to greet him. Just as she said she would be.