by Lisa Jackson
“Maybe we should.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Jesus, Kristi, listen to us. We love each other. Don’t we?”
“I don’t know, Jay,” she admitted, leaning back on the headboard and feeling tears burn at the back of her eyes. She’d thought she’d loved him. But that was high school. Before she’d graduated. Before she’d learned that her dad wasn’t really her dad and her uncle … oh, God … She knew she’d run off to college primarily to get away from the mess. Avoidance and Denial, stuff weird Dr. Sutter talked about all the time … and Jay was right on that score. Some of the people up at All Saints—Dr. Sutter, Dr. Franz and Dr. Northrup included—were definitely beyond “eccentric.” Between them, oddball Lucretia, that nerdy Willie Davis who always took a seat behind her in Psychology and stared at her, and the dykie swim coach, All Saints had more than its share of looney tunes.
“You don’t know,” Jay repeated, disgust tainting his words. “Well don’t you think you’d better figure it out? Oh, shit. I get it. You found someone didn’t you? Holy crap, you’ve only been up there a few months and you’re already cheatin’ on me. Damn it, Kristi, what is it with you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she said, matching his anger with her own, then slamming the receiver down, standing, then giving the punching bag a quick kick. So this was the beginning of the end. Big deal. The truth was she’d outgrown Jay. It was better to let him find someone else.
Because she had Brian.
The alarm shrieked.
Olivia sat straight up in bed.
Over and over again the sirens bleated. Her dream disappeared. Oh, God, someone was really breaking into her house! She shot out of bed. Hairy S, barking angry, belated warnings, was already at the bedroom door, eager to charge into the hallway.
The gun … Shit! The shotgun was down in the closet behind the slickers and boots … oh, God, no … Her mind cleared, and over the rapid-fire screams of the alarm, she heard her name and a stream of swearing that would make a sailor blush.
Sarah!
Olivia flew out of the bedroom and down the stairs to find Sarah, reeking of gin, at the control panel for the security system. Cursing and red-faced, she was frantically pushing buttons. “How the hell do you turn this damned thing off?” she yelled as the alarm continued to shrill.
“Here …”
Someone pounded on the door. “Open up. Police!”
“Holy shit,” Sarah said as Olivia punched in the appropriate numbers and the alarm went suddenly quiet.
“It’s all right, Officer! I’m coming!” Olivia shouted just as the door splintered open and two plainclothes officers, weapons drawn, burst into the front hallway. Sarah screamed. Hairy was still barking his fool head off.
Olivia and Sarah threw their hands in the air. “It’s okay, it’s okay, she didn’t know how to disengage the security system!” Slowly, the officers lowered their sidearms.
“You’re sure everything’s all right?” the heavyset one with the crewcut asked.
“Yes! Didn’t you see Sarah drive in?” Olivia demanded, her arms coming down to her sides.
Sarah, holding one hand splayed over her heart, braced her back against the wall. “Jesus,” she whispered. “Jesus.”
“We did see her drive in. But the alarm went off. We couldn’t take a chance,” the younger one with the square jaw insisted.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sarah demanded.
“They’re watching the house,” Olivia said, not knowing whether to be angry or relieved. On the one hand, she was furious that her privacy had been breached; on the other, she was grateful that the police were nearby in case there had been an intruder. “I told you that I could be a target for the serial killer.”
“You were serious? God,” Sarah whispered, the color draining from her face.
“We’re fine,” Olivia told the officers. “The system’s new, my friend is here visiting, and she isn’t used to dealing with this …” Olivia gestured to the control panel.
“If you’re sure.”
“I said we’re okay.” The officers helped secure the door again, though the door frame would have to be repaired, the lock replaced. Once the officers had left, Sarah followed Olivia upstairs. A few minutes later Sarah had changed into faux leopard pajamas and was brushing her teeth in the bathroom. Olivia flipped down the lid of the toilet and sat with her knees pulled to her chin.
“I nearly peed in my pants,” Sarah admitted around a mouth full of foam. “Jesus, it’s like we’re part of a stakeout.”
“It’s part of Bentz’s plan.”
“Who’s Bentz?”
Olivia hesitated. “The detective in charge of locating the killer.”
“Tell me about him,” Sarah said, her eyes narrowing as she gave her teeth a final swipe, then spit into the sink.
Olivia summed up the last week or so, giving her a quick rundown of what had been happening and how Bentz had been involved, though she sidestepped the part about sleeping with the cop. But Sarah glanced at her friend in the mirror before leaning under the tap and rinsing her mouth. “You like that guy, don’t you?” she asked, straightening.
“He’s okay.”
“No, I mean you really like him, like in a boy-meets-girl, well, more like a woman-man sort of way.”
“As I said, ‘He’s okay.’ ”
“Don’t bullshit me.” She turned, folded her arms over her chest. “You’re falling for the cop. My God, Olivia, are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?”
“I’m not falling for him.”
“Bullshit! I don’t sell tons of Dr. Miranda’s Love Beads to lovesick teenagers and don’t recognize the symptoms. You’ve got the hots for Detective Bentz! Oh, no, don’t tell me you’re into handcuffs and some of that weird kind of stuff that I sell.”
“No, not that it’s any of your business. And since when are you the expert on love?”
“Well…” She sighed and shook her head. “Maybe not, considering the situation.” Ducking her head under the sink, she rinsed her mouth a final time, then wiped her lips with the sleeve of her pajamas. “So don’t try to dodge the issue, you’d like to be involved with the cop.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Olivia said, drawing her knees up to her chest and balancing her bare feet on the edge of the toilet lid. She felt like a kid at a slumber party discussing the new boy in school. “So tell me, what happened to you tonight?”
“Nothin’ good.”
“You find Leo?”
Sarah shook her head. “I think he was with her, the bitch he met at that convention in Nashville.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, but I called her.”
“What?” Olivia shrieked. Oh, no, this wasn’t good.
“Yeah, I had a couple of martinis and got up my nerve. Phoned her at her place.” She turned to the mirror and plucked an errant hair from the corner of one eyebrows.
“You didn’t.”
“Sure did. He’s my husband.” Sarah seemed proud of herself.
Olivia groaned. “I don’t think I want to know what happened.”
“I told her to back off.”
“And?”
“She hung up. I called back and the phone just rang and rang. She must’ve unplugged it.”
“You really think Leo was there?”
“Probably. The chicken shit!” Some of the starch left her spine. With a sad, humiliated sigh, she closed her eyes. “Oh, Olivia,” she said, resting her forehead on the mirror. “What am I going to do?”
“For now, you’re going to bed. It’s late. We’ll talk in the morning. Maybe things will be clearer.”
“I doubt it, but,” she said, her shoulders sagging, “I’m beginning to think you’re right. Somehow I’ve got to get over Leo. This … this emotional tornado we’re in is killin’ me.
“Then we’ll cook up a storm for Thanksgiving.”
Sarah managed a smile. “Turkey, stuffing, sweet
-potato pie … comfort food.”
“And maybe I’ll whip up a surprise,” Olivia said with a wink as she snapped off the bathroom light. It was a long shot, considering Sarah’s current state of mind, but maybe Father James McClaren could help.
“You’re going to work on Thanksgiving?” Kristi groaned from beneath the covers.
“Someone has to keep the streets of this city safe for law-abiding citizens, ma’am.” Bentz was standing in the doorway of her room, staring at the lump in the middle of the bed that was his daughter.
“Save me,” she said.
“It’s just for a couple of hours.”
“Oh, yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before.”
“I’ll be back in time to get the turkey into the oven.”
“You’re actually cooking?” She lowered one edge of the coverlet and opened a bleary eye. Bentz drew in a swift breath. Sometimes, in the right light, Kristi looked enough like her mother to stop him short. “I thought we’d go out to a restaurant and a movie or somethin',” she said around a yawn.
“Didn’t you see the turkey in the refrigerator?” he asked.
“I figured it was just for show. Like the false face of a building. That you were trying to impress me.”
“It’s the real thing, kiddo. But did I?”
“Impress me? No!” Then she giggled the way she had when she was a little girl, and the sound brought back memories of a happier time. “Well, yeah, you did, okay. I’m superimpressed. Now go, leave me alone. What time is it anyway?” She lifted her head off the pillow. “Eight-fifteen? On Thanksgiving? Are you crazy, Dad?”
“Some people think so.”
“Well, they’re right!” She pulled the blankets over her head and rolled over. “You can wake me up around noon. Maybe.”
“Count on it. You’re on to mash the potatoes.”
She groaned again as he slid out of the room and closed the door behind him. It was nice to have her back, even if she was a little grumpy. He’d missed her. When she’d lived at home, they’d fought all the time, about her curfew, her grades, her boyfriend, her attitude. She’d been quick to point out that he was far from being fault-free. His being a cop “sucked,” her having to clean up the place was part of his “medieval thinking,” her lack of a car was “the worst,” and the fact that he suspected her of having sex was a violation of a basic trust issue. When he’d left some condoms on her dresser, she’d been “grossed out” and accused him of being jealous because he “wasn’t getting any.”
Living with her the last three months had been hell.
And he missed it. He drove to the station and joined the crew that had elected to work the holiday. The first thing he saw was a report that Olivia’s new security system had gone off the night before last. The officers indicated it had been a mistake, a friend had tripped the alarm and not been able to reset it at one-thirty in the morning.
Bentz dialed her number. She answered groggily. “Hello?”
His heart twisted a little. “It’s Rick. I heard you had trouble the other night.”
“Oh … no, Sarah’s visiting … my friend from Tucson. She was out late and the alarm system got the better of her.” Her voice sounded thick, still full of sleep, and he remembered how it had been to hold her and smell her scent all night long, to hear her soft breath as she cuddled up next to him.
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Fine … fine …” she said and explained what had happened. Her story gelled with the report and she promised that she’d get the door fixed permanently after the holidays, then later, as she sounded a little clearer, she thanked him for calling and wished him a “Happy Thanksgiving,” but he heard the change in her tone, the wariness. Somehow she’d found a way to deal with the fact that whatever they’d shared the other night couldn’t be repeated. And it bothered him. Not that he wanted her clinging to some belief that they actually could have something together, but the fact that he knew it would never work. The world seemed a little colder when he hung up and severed the connection.
Refusing to dwell on stupid romantic visions, he checked his e-mail and in-basket and made some calls, hoping to come up with an ID of either of the newly found victims.
So far, he didn’t have IDs or an autopsy report on either, but the cause of death was pretty evident and he was fairly certain that the times of death would coincide with the timing of Olivia’s visions. If they were lucky, the killer had slipped up and the crime scene team had found some evidence linking someone to the murder scene—a hair, a piece of fabric, skin under one of the victim’s fingernails, a fingerprint left carelessly, a tire track, a witness who’d seen a car or truck … anything.
They just needed a break—one tiny break. Something more concrete than Olivia’s revelations
Olivia. Even though he’d called her earlier he’d tried not to think too much about her and had attempted to close his mind to all thoughts of the night he’d shared with her. Nonetheless he was worried about her and had checked to make sure that her place was being kept under police watch. He only prayed the killer wouldn’t strike again soon.
Oh, yeah, and why not?
Sipping bitter coffee, he glanced down the list he’d put together on a legal pad, a list of martyred women saints whose feast days were coming up. It wasn’t good news. In the next few weeks the calendar was ass-deep in feast days and Bentz had written down the ones that he expected would appeal to the killer.
December second, St. Vivian or Bibiana, flogged and left for the dogs; December ninth, St. Gorgonia, trampled by a team of mules, her bones crushed, her internal organs mashed to a pulp. She supposedly survived not only the trampling—oh, yeah, right—but some other form of paralysis, to end up dying of “natural causes.” Then there was December thirteenth, the feast day of St. Lucy. Lucy had been hitched to a team of oxen who couldn’t budge her. When the oxen failed to drag her to death or pull her apart, she was tortured by having her eyes ripped out before she was set afire. Apparently she survived the blaze because she ended up being stabbed to death.
Brutal. Ugly. Twisted.
A priest?
He didn’t think so.
He shoved his notes aside. The feast days he’d pulled were only a few, those celebrating the deaths of martyrs before the middle of the December. There were more … lots more. With each day that passed.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Bentz stood and looked out the window to the gray, wet day. Pigeons fluttered and cooed, perching beneath the eaves.
In New York there was the traditional parade, while all around the country, people were hosting their families, gorging themselves, and sitting around the television to watch football.
But here, in New Orleans, there was a killer. And he was waiting, ready to strike again.
Chapter Thirty
“I told you I know nothin’ about any of these murders and I don’t ‘precíate my ass being dragged down here on Thanksgivin'.” Reggie Benchet’s eyes glittered angrily as he sat under the harsh fluorescent glare in the interrogation room. His scrawny butt was balanced on the edge of a battered chair, his elbows propped on the table. Thin to the point of being gaunt, appearing older than his sixty-eight years, he spat a stream of tobacco juice into a tin can on the floor. “Now, do I need a lawyer? You gonna charge me with somethin’ or you gonna let me walk out of here?” Pointing a gnarled finger at Bentz, he added, “I know my rights. You cain’t hold me without chargin’ me, so unless you boys come up with somethin', I got me a Thanksgivin’ dinner to go to.”
“Where?”
“It don’t matter none, but at my girlfriend’s place.”
Bentz checked his notes. “Claudette DuFresne?”
“Yeah, but don’t you be botherin’ her now, not on the holiday. She’s got herself a bad heart and she don’t need any trouble.”
“She was arrested for selling crack,” Bentz said, flipping through a two-page rap sheet that included everything from soliciting to
dealing. “Yeah, she’s a real sweetheart.”
“That was a few years back. She’s cleaned herself up and taken Jesus into her heart. She’s a good Christian woman, takes care of her sick ma and works down ta the senior center in Lafayette.” He scrabbled in a pocket of his shirt and pulled out a pack of Camel straights. “Mind if I smoke?” He didn’t wait for an answer and lit up, chewing and smoking all at once. A tobacco company exec’s dream consumer.
“You found God yourself, didn’t ya?”
“That I did and you all can rest easy that I’ll be sendin’ up prayers for your souls.”
“You’re not a priest,” Montoya interjected from his spot near the door. His arms were folded over his chest, his usually neat goatee a little ratty, and he was wearing an I’m-not-buying-it expression.
“Nah. ‘Course not. I’m born again. Found Christ in stir … hell, that sounds like a great country song, now, don’t it?” he asked, coughing as he laughed at his own joke.
“But you were Catholic?”
“Me? Hell, no. That was my wife. ‘Scuse me, my ex-wife. Bernadette.” He shook his head violently, as if he were trying to dislodge water from inside his ear. “Now there’s a woman I should never have gotten myself hitched to.”
“Let’s talk about that.”
“Ancient history.”
“You had three children with her.”
His smile faded. He spat again.
“We know that one daughter survived and another drowned as a toddler, but you had a son as well.”
“For all the good it did me. No one ever told me ‘bout the boy, y’know. I suspected, though, found some old doctor bills when I was married to Bernadette, but she always got real quiet and claimed she had a miscarriage. Years later, when I was locked up, she came clean. I guess her conscience got the better of her and she wrote me a letter, told me the boy was out there, she just didn’t know where. I did what I could from prison, which wasn’t much. Once I tried to get more information from her, then from her mother, and even from the doc. But he was dead. I didn’t get squat.”
“And that’s where you left it?”
He paused, took a long drag, then blew a smoke ring to the ceiling. “Not me. That there’s my only boy and he was took from me. Thirty damned years ago. I ain’t done lookin’ for him.”