A soft sigh accompanied but the sound of shuffling papers. “Uh... sure,” she said, even though she didn’t sound sure at all. She actually sounded like she’d been sleeping. “I guess I can cut out for a bit. Where?”
Using the key fob in her hand to unlock the car, she tossed the files she’d printed into the passenger seat before sliding behind the wheel. “St. Rose,” she said, stabbing the key into the ignition.
The other end of the phone went so quiet that for a second, she thought Ellie hung up on her. “Okay,” she said, finally answering her. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
The lot was empty when Sabrina pulled in. Not surprising—St. Rose’s congregants were in the fields that surrounded it, bending and tossing in sweat-soaked shirts and wide-brimmed hats.
Comparatively, the chapel was dark and cool—empty save for an old woman knelt in front of the altar, covered head bent over a lit candle. Feeling intrusive, Sabrina gave her little more than a glance before surveying the rest of the sanctuary. She spotted Father Francisco in the prayer garden, sitting on the bench, an open book in his lap.
Not just any ol’ bench is it? That’s our bench, Darlin’.
He wasn’t alone. The man who’d attended last night’s mass with Paul Vega was with him, standing over him, hands dug into the pants pockets of his expensive suit, an affable smile on his familiar face. Despite the man’s relaxed posture and smile, Sabrina got the impression that the two of them weren’t having a friendly chat. Father Francisco looked almost angry. He sat as still as stone, his gaze aimed at the other man’s tie, a grim expression on his face, listening to what was being said to him.
As soon as the door leading to the sanctuary opened, his head popped up, his gaze aimed directly at her. The other man stopped talking, his gaze following the priest’s. He gave her a look that said her intrusion wasn’t a welcome one but it was fleeting, covered it up with another pleasant smile. “See you on Sunday, Father,” he said, leaving out the garden gate without another word.
Father Francisco smiled like he was glad to see her. “Agent Vance,” he said, closing his book before setting it aside. “What brings you back?”
“I’m meeting someone.” Sabrina smiled back. She had a few minutes to kill before Ellie showed up. She might as well put them to use. “Who was that man? He looks familiar.”
The relieved look bled away. “His name is Arturo Bautista.”
“Paul Vega’s attorney?” she said, her tone sharp and hard against her ears. Why would Vega’s lawyer be here, giving what looked like a stern lecture to his client’s priest?
He looked startled that she’d know what he was. “Yes, he represents Vega Farm,” he said evasively before offering her another small smile when she didn’t retreat back into the sanctuary. “Was there something I can do for you, Agent Vance?”
“I have a few questions that need answering.”
His smile folded in at the corners, getting smaller as he looked at his watch. “I have confession in a few minutes,” he said, retrieving his book before standing. “Perhaps—”
“I won’t take too much of your time.” The smile on her face remained firmly intact while she waited for his manners to force him to concede. “I promise.”
As predicted, he caved after a few seconds. “Okay,” he said, giving in with a small nod. “What can I do for you?”
“Who is Nulo?” she said, going for the jugular and she wasn’t disappointed. The welcoming look he’d given her was completely blown away, replaced by something that looked like fear.
Father Francisco shook his head, nervously transferring the book from one hand to another “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do.” She cocked her head and gave it a short, quick nod. “You are the same Father Francisco who ran this place in 1998.” It wasn’t a question and she didn’t phrase it like one. “The same Father Francisco who found Melissa Walker, half-dead, on that bench you’re sitting on.”
He visibly blanched; his face draining of blood so fast it was a miracle he didn’t pass out. “I am—but I don’t know who you’re asking me about.”
He’s lying. He knows exactly who Nulo is. Probably even knows what he is…
“I’ve never arrested a priest before,” she said quietly, nailing him with a look perfected over the course of nearly fifteen years and hundreds of interrogations. “Please don’t make me do it now.” When he did nothing but stare, she continued. “It was Nulo. He was the one who found Melissa Walker the night Wade Bauer left her here. Not you. He was here... with you. A young, handsome priest, alone in a church with an even younger, presumably impressionable, boy. I understand why you lied.”
The nerve it’d taken him to lie to her abandoned him, leaving him weak and he sunk slowly, as if the heat of her glare was melting him into the bench. “If you think I hurt that boy or that I took advantage of him in some way—”
“What I think is irrelevant.” She could feel it welling up inside her, the shame and humiliation. “You told the paramedics you found Melissa Walker because the truth would put you in the very awkward position of having to explain why he was here.” They must’ve known, the moment they saw her, what’d happened to her. How long did Nulo stand over her, watching her, before Father Francisco found him? Had he touched her? Had he felt the same sick excitement that Wade had over what have been done to her? Is that why he wrote to him? Because he’d stood over her and felt a kinship to the monster who destroyed her?
“Do you know what Nulo means, Agent Vance?” Father Francisco shook his head sadly. “It means nothing. Zero. Void. No one was looking for that boy. No one cared where he was. What happened to him.”
“What did happen, Father?” She said it quietly, tempering the hard edge of her tone. “What was he doing here?”
“He was just a boy, Agent Vance—” He looked up at her helplessly. “He was frightened. Unsure of what he’d witnessed.”
“He knew exactly what he was witnessing.” She took a step forward, closing the gap between them until she was almost standing over him. “Why would you lie to me about him? Why are you protecting him?”
Father Francisco shook his head. “I…” he glanced up at her for a moment before he looked away. “I was newly ordained when I came to St. Rose. Barely twenty-five—too young and inexperienced to be given my own church, but the head priest here died not weeks after my appointment and there was no one else.”
“Regardless,” she said, even though impatience gnawed at her. “You must’ve made an impression if they were willing to give you your own church so quickly.”
He scoffed at her. “The only impression made was by my last name. I was soft—eager to win over my flock.” His mouth flattened into a grimace. “I allowed things that I shouldn’t.”
“Like?”
“Nulo was young, just a boy… I didn’t know how to stop what was happening to him so, I allowed him to sleep here. He’d sneak into the church at night and hide from his uncle…” His eyes found hers again, showing her a lifetime of regret and sadness. “He did things to Nulo that should never be done.”
“Who is he?” She didn’t ask what kind of things—she didn’t have to. She already knew. “What’s his real name?”
“I don’t know. I never knew.” The priest shook his head sadly. “His parents died when he was little more than a baby. I don’t think he even knew what his given name was.”
“What do you mean was?” she said, picking up on the word.
“I mean was, Agent Vance.” he said, looking up at her. “A few years after he found that poor girl, Nulo disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” She said it quietly, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on edge.
“He showed up one night, late. I thought he wasn’t coming so I locked the doors and put out the candles...” Father Francisco sighed, his hands tightening around the book in his lap. “He woke me, broke that window,” he said, pointing at the pane of glass set into the heavy wooden door that le
d to the chapel. “He was covered in blood. At first I thought he’d cut himself trying to get in. When I dragged him into the bathroom to clean him up I realized that he wasn’t hurt. The blood wasn’t his. I didn’t ask what’d happened. I already knew.”
So did she. “He killed his uncle.”
“He was hysterical.” The man nodded his head. “Rambling on and on about that night—”
“When?” The word slipped between them, as thin as sharp as a blade. “When did he kill his uncle?”
One of his hands fell away to rest on the bench he was sitting on. The bench Wade had left her on. “When...” he said, shaking his head. “It was spring, 2001.” The hand on the bench curled into a fist. “He’d just turned eighteen.”
“You didn’t call the police, did you?” she said, even though she already knew the answer.
“Do you know what that man did to Nulo?” The priest shook his head like he was disappointed in her. “I do. Horrible things, from the time he was barely old enough to walk... He would have been arrested. Surely convicted. At eighteen he would’ve been sentenced to life in prison, and that was the best case scenario. No, Agent Vance—I didn’t call the police. I cleaned him up and gave him clean clothes. Then I took every last dime out of my collection box and gave it to him,” he said, his jaw set at a self-righteous angle. “Afterward, I drove him to the bus station and I never saw him again.”
40
Sabrina sat in the back pew, watching people file in for confession while she waited for Ellie to show up. Nothing Father Francisco had told her made any sense—and none of it connected to Paul Vega or what’d happened to Rachel Meeks.
Pulling her phone from her pocket, she checked it for messages for what felt like the hundredth time. No messages, which meant either Church and Croft hadn’t turned anything up or her partner had decided to let her sweat. Checking the time, she noted that Ellie was nearly twenty minutes late. Dropping her phone into her lap, she settled in to wait.
She’d managed to get one more question in before Father Francisco cut her off completely. “Who was his uncle?” she’d said, blocking the door with her hand so he couldn’t open it. “What was his name?”
The priest’s grip tightened around the handle of the door she was barring him from using. “What does it matter?” he said, stubbornly yanking on the handle. “He is dead and Nulo is gone.”
“You do know why I’m here, don’t you?” She slammed the door shut and glared at him. “That people are being murdered, violently tortured. Raped and—”
“Enough.” He barked the word at her, no longer the soft-spoken priest. “And you think that Nulo did it?” he said, shaking his head at her. “Did you not hear me when I told you that he left? That he hasn’t been back?”
“Why? Because you haven’t seen him?” she said, eyes locked on his face. Instinct told her he was telling her the truth—that he hadn’t seen Nulo since the night he’d dropped him off at the bus station but she’d fooled before. “Yuma holds over one hundred thousand people, Father. Do you know every single one of them?”
His hand fell away from the handle, his arm suddenly slack at his side. He opened his mouth but nothing came out so he closed it again, averting his gaze to stare at her shoulder. “Olivero.” He shifted his gaze again, looking her in the eye. “Nulo’s uncle was named Tomas Olivero,” he said, reaching for the handle again. This time, when he pulled the door open she let him go.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Sabrina looked up to see Ellie standing in the row in front of her. She sat, turning on the bench to drape her arm over the back of it so that they were face to face. She looked nervous. Like she didn’t want to be there. “It’s okay,” she said, offering her a small smile, trying to put her at ease. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s okay,” Ellie said, wincing a bit. “I wanted to apologize and thank you for being such a good sport last night.”
“There’s no need to do either one,” she said. “Your mother is a lovely woman.”
Ellie nodded, looking at her lap for a moment before raising her gaze again. “I don’t think you asked me to meet you here to ask me about my mom, Agent Vance,” she said quietly, worrying something flat and silver between her fingers. “Mark called me. He told me you asked him about the corrupted sample I took off Stephanie Adams.”
Sabrina didn’t know which surprised her more—that Alvarez would call Ellie to warn her that the big, bad FBI agent was sniffing around her mistake or that he and Ellie were on a first name basis. “I’m not here to drag you through the mud,” she said, shaking her head. “I just want to know what happened, Ellie.”
Ellie sighed. “I noticed particulates under Stephanie Adams’s fingernails so I bagged her hands at the scene, according to department procedure. Back at the lab, I processed the sample and ran it through CODIS against possible matches… and I got two hits.”
“Stephanie Adams and Melissa Walker,” she said, carefully gauging Ellie’s reaction to the name. She flinched slightly, like the name carried a current of electricity that shocked and stung every time it was uttered.
“Yes. I thought it must’ve been some sort of mistake so I… I ran it again.” Ellie nodded, finally looking up at her, fingers still working and worrying. “The whole procedure—from start to finish—with a new sample. I even changed my gloves… and I got the same results,” she said firmly.
Separate samples meant that the department’s official story of contamination was unlikely but for a small department with limited resources, not impossible. “Then what’s your explanation for your results?”
“I don’t know.” Ellie dropped her gaze again. “All I know is I didn’t mess up.”
“I believe you.”
Her words jerked Ellie’s head up on her neck, and she pinned her with a look that was half hopeful, half wary. “You believe me,” she said, shaking her head. “Just like that—you believe me.”
“Yes, just like that,” she said, giving the woman in front of her a small smile.
Ellie let out the breath she’d been holding in a relieved gust. “Now what?”
The smiled on her face went sharp, stinging the corners of her mouth. “Now, we figure out what DNA from a twenty-year kidnapping old case was doing under Stephanie Adam’s fingernails.”
“I think I might already know,” Ellie said quietly. “I tried to explain it, to tell them it wasn’t a mistake, but no one would listen to me.”
“Explain what?” she said, leaning forward to close the gap between them.
“After the second round of tests came back with the same results, I ran a full composite analysis on the scrapping I took from Stephanie Adams.” Ellie lowered her voice even more, looking around the chapel before continuing. “The particulates comprised of dirt, calcium, aluminum and limestone.”
Sabrina thought about it for a moment. “What is that? Concrete?”
Ellie nodded. “Melissa Walker’s blood was adhered to what turned out to be pieces of cement block,” she said, her tone carrying the words carefully, like they meant something. “The kind used in building.”
Sabrina could feel them. The stinging scrape of them against her shoulder as she walked. Pushing herself forward, propped against the wall, moving as fast as her drug tangled legs would carry her.
She thought of Nulo again. Wade’s student. His progeny. The one he passed it all down to. The sickness. The rage. Wade would tell him where he’d kept her. A safe place that would never be found. A place where a person could scream and never be heard.
You got it, Darlin’. Our boy’s been keeping the home fires burning.
“The same place,” she said slowly, like she was trying to shake herself from the nightmare she was suddenly convinced she’d been plunged into. “He’s keeping them in the same place.”
41
Ellie stared at her for a few moments, waiting for her to elaborate. Sabrina leaned forward, adopting the same hushed tone Ellie had used on her earlier. “That�
�s why Melissa Walker’s blood was stuck to those cement particles under Stephanie Adam’s nails.” The words were coming fast now, carried on the wave of excitement that coursed through her. “He’s keeping his victims in the same place Wade Bauer kept Melissa. Stephanie Adams must’ve dug her nails into—”
Ellie shook her head, stopping her cold. “No,” she said firmly. “That’s the thing—there was no digging. No ripped nailbeds. No torn cuticles. No signs she fought back or tried to escape.”
She imagined Stephanie Adams, crouched in the dark, totally accepting of what was happening to her. Resigned to her own death. Patiently waiting for it like someone waits for a bus. “That can’t be. How else could particulates get under her nails? It’s not like he put it there.”
“That’s exactly what he did. You might be right about where it came from but that blood evidence was placed under Stephanie Adam’s fingernails on purpose,” Ellie said, her tone hard and determined. “All victims were meticulously bound and posed. Intricately positioned... and washed with bleach.”
I taught our boy well, Darlin. He don’t make mistakes.
She could still smell it, the flat, caustic stench of it. Feel it bite, turning sharp inside her nose, making her eyes water as he smoothed the sponge over her skin. The burning agony of it when he forced the sponge inside her.
The hand in her lap curled into a fist, so tight her knuckles nearly punched through her skin. Ellie was talking. She dug her nails into the palm of her hand to clear the fog that floated around her brain.
“... She’d been scrubbed clean just like the others, inside out. No way someone who pays that much attention to detail forgets the nails. No way.” Ellie shook her head again. “The only thing I can’t explain is why. Why would he purposely place Melissa Walker’s blood under one of his victim’s nails?”
The way she said it cleared the rest of Sabrina’s cobwebs. Like she knew why but was afraid to say it. “Well, what’s your theory?” she said, forcing her hand flat against her thigh. “You must have one.”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 51