by Lisa Jackson
“Ophelia!” The dean came unglued. “This is an interview, you’re being recorded.”
“Well, it’s true. It’s all she ever talked about. God, Jesus, and the damned Holy Spirit. She was a freak. Went on and on about promising herself to God and being married to Him and how she couldn’t wait to join an order of nuns, that she was just in college to appease her parents.”
“How’d that sit with you?”
“How do you think?” she said and Montoya noticed a small red stone pierced into one nostril as well as a necklace that was really a long leather cord that encircled her neck. Hanging from the thin, twisted strap was a tiny glass vial that was dark from the liquid inside.
Using the exposed fingers of one gloved hand, she plucked up the end of the necklace and held the small bottle to the light. “Are you looking at this? Wanna know what it is?” She lifted one dark eyebrow in a vampish, sexy come-on. “It’s blood, okay.”
“That’s enough!” the dean said, reaching for the recorder. “Let’s turn this off, at least for the moment.”
Ophelia actually smiled, her glistening purple-colored lips stretching. “Don’t turn it off. I want to get this over with, and for the record, we’re on the record, right, isn’t that what the recorder is all about? This is not only blood.” She wiggled the tiny little jar with its dark liquid contents splashing against the glass. “It’s human.”
At that point Brinkman, reeking of smoke, walked in, glanced around, and took up his vigil by the door.
Ophelia was in full shock mode now. Montoya waited, showed no emotion, let her run her game.
“Of course it’s not human blood,” the dean said, but her own face had whitened and one of her hands had curled into an anxious fist. “We have rules about these kind of things.”
“No, you don’t. It’s my blood and I can carry it around however I want whether it’s in my body, or in a test tube or in this.” She wiggled the leather strands. “It’s rare blood, too,” Ophelia added proudly. “AB negative.”
Brinkman cleared his throat. Looked uncomfortable as hell.
“About your roommate,” Montoya said, refusing to be derailed. The shock show was over as far as he was concerned. “Can you tell me the last time you saw Courtney LaBelle?”
Ophelia didn’t bother correcting him on the victim’s name this time. “Okay, on the day she was killed, nothing big was happening. I saw her getting ready to go to the library like she always does . . . did. She had her backpack with her and had changed into her jogging clothes, the ones she always wore when she was going to study and then run afterward.”
“She seemed normal?”
“Oh, whoa. No way. She never seemed normal to me,” Ophelia said, twisting the vial in her fingers. “She was at least ten beads shy of a full rosary, to put it in her vernacular. But if you mean did she seem any different than usual? No. She was the same. Weird and holy as shit as ever.”
“Ophelia,” the dean warned.
“It’s O, remember?”
Montoya asked, “What time did she leave that day?”
Ophelia dropped the vial and shifted in the chair. Her cleavage disappeared. “I’m not sure, but it was after dinner, if that’s what you call the food they serve in the dorm.” She shuddered and pulled a face.
“So it was night?”
“Yeah. Dark. Like . . . seven, seven-thirty, in there somewhere.”
“What time did she usually come back?”
“Before midnight, I guess,” she said, then looked out the window, where the reflection of her pale face was visible.
“Do you know if she met anyone?”
Ophelia shook her head, wound a finger in a strand of her straight black hair. “I don’t know. Don’t think so. She was like a loner. I told you. Extremely odd. Ultrareligious. A real nut case.”
“She must’ve had friends.”
Ophelia shrugged. “Maybe through the church. I don’t really know. There’s a youth group and then she knew someone, a nun, I think, in an order somewhere . . . hell, what was her name? Melinda or Margaret, maybe. No . . .”
“Maria?” Montoya asked and a feeling of dread settled deep in his gut.
“Yeah! That was it.”
“From Our Lady of Virtues?” He felt cold inside, cold as death.
“Could be. Yeah, maybe.” She chewed on a small black fingernail, then sighed and trained her eyes on Montoya again. “I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, y’know. I can’t remember.”
“And as far as you know, she wasn’t dating anyone special,” Montoya asked.
Ophelia let out a puff of exasperation. “I think we covered that. She was married to God, remember? No dates with mortal males. I guess that was out. It wasn’t an open marriage.”
Ignoring the comments, Montoya pressed on, “Did she wear a ring?”
“Oh, yeah. Always. The virgin ring.”
“What?”
“That’s what I call it. It’s what some kids do who are really into the God-thing. They get a ring, or someone important gives it to them, like, I dunno, a parent or something, and they, the girl, she, like promises not to do the wild thing, you know. Have sex? It’s like some kind of a covenant between the girl who gets the ring and God. She swears to remain a virgin until she gets married, or . . . maybe forever in Mary’s case, you know, since she was married to God and all.” Ophelia rolled both palms toward the ceiling. “What’s that all about? Virginity forever? Give me a break.” She shook her head as if ridding it of obscene ideas. “See what I mean? Mary was really, really fuck . . . messed up.”
“Did she ever mention Luke Gierman?” Montoya asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Ophelia said dismissively. “Once, maybe, twice when she’d overheard part of his show and was”—she held up her hands and made air quotes with her fingers—“‘shocked’, by what he said. Jesus, wasn’t that the whole point?”
Montoya felt a little jolt of electricity, that bit of adrenalin rush he always experienced when he hit on the first glimmerings of a connection. “Did she know him?”
“Nah. I don’t think so.”
“She ever call his program?”
Ophelia opened her mouth to answer, then closed it quickly and thought for a second. “I was gonna say ‘no’ for sure, but I don’t know. She never said she called and I never heard her phone in. She wasn’t like that. Didn’t have the balls. Was kinda mousy. But hey, stranger things have happened. She could have phoned, I guess. I just never heard about it.”
“But she did talk about him?”
“Not really. Oh, wait, no . . . she maybe said something to me once, maybe twice. About him needing to find Jesus. But then, she thought everyone did, including me, so I didn’t really think too much about it.”
“But you don’t know if she ever talked to him about it,” Brinkman clarified and O shook her head.
“Let’s back up a second,” Montoya suggested. “Courtney, Mary, did go out with friends, though? She did things, had a social life?”
“I guess, if you could call it that. But it wasn’t the normal stuff. She didn’t hang out at the local pub or go to concerts or games or anything like that.”
“Isn’t she too young for the pub?” Brinkman asked and Dean Usher tensed another notch.
Ophelia sent Brinkman an exasperated, don’t-play-dumb, we-both-know-about-fake-IDs look. “She usually went to the library after we ate, then she’d jog back, change clothes, and go to the chapel for an hour or two to pray or whatever it was she did there.”
“The chapel on campus?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think she got that far that night,” Ophelia said, her foot no longer bouncing. “She didn’t come back to change like she always does and she wouldn’t have gone to the chapel in her running gear.”
“You keep tabs on her?” Brinkman asked.
Another bored glance his way. “No way. After the first week of school, I didn’t ask her anything. She had a way of twisting everything and I mean everythin
g to God. It didn’t matter if I was studying or on the phone or going to the shower, she was right there, always with a cheery face and a suggestion that I find Jesus. You know, I was raised Catholic, went to St. Theresa’s in Santa Lucia. That’s in California, by the way.”
“I thought you were from Lafayette,” Montoya said.
“I mean when I was younger. My dad was transferred to Lafayette during my junior year. It was a real pisser.”
“Anyway, all that Catholic school, and I never had to go and beat the bushes to find someone to convert. Most of the kids I went to school with at St. Theresa’s were cool about it; kept all the God-stuff to themselves. No way were they out on some kind of mission to save the world. But Mary, she’s like one of those born-agains. Avid. Rabid. All of the above. So, no, I did not keep tabs on her. In fact, I tried to avoid her. She was a real freak-out. I’d already put in a request for a new roommate.”
Montoya glanced at Dean Usher, who nodded.
“Let me get this straight,” Brinkman said, folding his arms over his chest. “She freaked you out?”
O nodded. “Amen and end of story.”
They questioned her a little more, then, after securing the file from Dean Usher of all of Courtney’s classes, they visited the chapel and met with Dr. Starr, a man in his early thirties. Fit and lean, Starr blinked as if his contacts were ill-fitting. He showed them into his tiny office, a room barely larger than a closet, which was situated on the second floor in one of the massive stone and brick buildings that surrounded the quad. There were two padded folding chairs on one side of his chipped wooden desk and on the other, a rolling executive-type chair upholstered in oxblood leather. “Please, have a seat,” he suggested after introductions were made. His desk was huge, but neat, as if he spent his days patting the piles of essays and phone messages into precise stacks. The bookcase behind him was carefully arranged, not one bound volume out of place, and Montoya, though he didn’t say it, thought the room looked as if it were more for show than work. At the station, Montoya’s own desk was organized, but functioning, and always changing with the reports, files, and messages that landed in his in basket. Bentz’s was cluttered, in an order only he could decipher, and Brinkman’s was a pigsty, with seven or eight coffee cups in the litter of reports, newspapers, messages, and jumbles of pens.
But this guy’s . . . it just looked too perfect.
“I know this is about Mary,” Starr said as he snapped on a desk lamp that glowed in soft gold tones. Montoya made a note that he was familiar enough to call her by the name she preferred. “What a tragedy. It’s shocked the faculty and student body, I assure you.”
“How well did you know her?” Brinkman asked, getting right to the point.
“Enough to see that she was a talented writer. Her essays were insightful, her observations in class, deep, though theologically narrow.” He smiled and slid a glance at his watch.
“Small class?” Montoya asked. “Enough that in the first few weeks of school you know all of your students?”
“This one was,” he said patiently. “And yes . . . eight in the morning isn’t a popular time for most students. The class is only twenty-six.” He blinked. Frowned. “Or was.”
Brinkman said, “We were told you had Luke Gierman come and speak to the class.”
“Luke Gierman, yes, I know, the shock jock who was killed. His body was found with Mary’s. I saw it on the news.” Some of Starr’s cool facade slipped and Montoya thought a few beads of sweat showed at his hairline. “I asked Gierman to speak to PC 101 because—”
“PC 101?” Brinkman asked. “As in Politically Correct?”
“Personal Communications,” Starr explained, a slight edge to his voice. “I thought the kids would like him and that it would shake up the system here a little. The only time he could make it was the eight o’clock, so we set it up.” Starr glanced away, looked through the tiny window in his office. “Of course, I had no idea what would happen.”
“Of course,” Brinkman said, and Starr looked up at him sharply.
“I assure you, all I did was invite a speaker from a radio station.” He rearranged his pens around the ink blotter covering the wood desk. “You know, I would appreciate your keeping my name out of this investigation as much as possible . . . I’m fairly new here and though I wanted to, you know, create some interest by bringing a radio personality to the classroom, I . . . I, well . . . I don’t need this kind of trouble.”
“We’re investigating a double homicide,” Montoya said, unable to hide his irritation. “We’re not trying to mess with anyone’s reputation, but we have a job to do and we’re going to do it.”
“I understand, but—”
“Have you had trouble with the law before?” Montoya asked and the man paled.
“A little, yes,” Starr admitted, then was quick to add, “It wasn’t anything serious. Some eco-terror stuff. I didn’t do anything, was just involved in a protest, but . . . this is a very conservative school.”
“And they don’t know?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so, no.”
“If you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve got nothing to hide,” Montoya said, sick of the theatrics. One of his students had been killed and Starr was worried about his reputation. What a dick.
From that point on, the interview was straightforward, and they didn’t learn anything that would help. If Starr was to be believed, and Montoya wasn’t convinced the guy was being completely honest, the professor had landed in the middle of a murder investigation through circumstance.
Starr was obviously relieved when the detectives left.
As they walked across the quad, Brinkman lit up and said, “The jury’s still out on that guy. You see how he played with his pens? Nervous Nellie. Means guilt to me.”
“Of what?”
“Don’t know, but I’d like to run him in for being a pompous ass. Too bad that ain’t a crime.”
For once, Montoya agreed.
They stopped at the chapel, found the priest on duty, Father Stephen, a small, slight man with thick glasses and a hearing aid that he kept adjusting. They learned nothing more than the elderly priest thought of Mary LaBelle as a “breath of fresh air,” or a “good girl,” or any and all the antiquated clichés about young women who had chosen “a path of devotion over a more selfish and material lifestyle.”
All in all, it made Montoya’s blood boil, but he held his tongue and let the tired old man ramble on without learning much. When Luke Gierman’s name came up, Father Stephen clucked his tongue, but didn’t comment.
On the way back to the car, Brinkman muttered, “Jesus, can you believe that guy? Was he born in the sixth century or what?”
Montoya couldn’t help smiling. Maybe Brinkman wasn’t such a jerk after all, but in the car ride home, the older detective reverted to his usual, aggravating ways.
“That roommate was one weird chick,” Brinkman said as Montoya drove through the gates of the university and headed past the grand estates on his way to the freeway. The night had cleared, and he only had to use his windshield wipers sparingly when trucks drove past.
“Ophelia?”
“Oh, wait . . . don’t call her that. She’s ‘O’ and Courtney’s ‘Mary.’ Christ, doesn’t anyone use their given names anymore? Shit. Did I hear the tail end of that conversation right? She wears her own blood in a little teardrop thing hanging around her neck?”
“So she claims.” Montoya eased the Crown Vic toward the freeway heading east.
“Freakoid, that’s what she is.” Brinkman cracked his window, pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He fired up his last Marlboro and crushed the pack in his fist. “Can you imagine banging her? Jesus. Probably bite your damned neck just before you came!” He drew hard on the cigarette.
“She’s just a kid. Trying to get a reaction.”
“By wearin’ a fucking thimbleful of blood?” Shooting a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth, he muttered, “Maybe
she did it.”
“Killed Gierman?”
“The girl’s weird.”
“She has an alibi.”
“Yeah, freakoid friends like her.” Smoke drifted out of his nostrils. “They all could have been in on it. A cult of some kind.”
“No evidence that there was anyone there but the two vics and maybe one other person. The guy with the big feet.”
“We don’t know yet. I’m telling you that looney girl hasn’t got all her marbles. That getup. The dark lipstick, the white face, those gloves without fingers.”
“You’ve seen worse, man. A lot worse. You work in New Orleans. Haven’t you been on Bourbon Street?” Where was this coming from?
“Yeah, yeah, but this sick-o crap isn’t in the Quarter. No way, José. It’s at some frickin’ Catholic college.”
“Kids are kids.”
“I’m just sayin’ she could be involved.” Another long drag on his smoke. “Damned crazy chick.”
Anyone could be involved, Montoya thought; that was the problem. His jaw slid to the side as he flipped on his blinker and accelerated onto the freeway ramp while the police band radio crackled and the tires sang. Brinkman studied the end of his cigarette. “But the more I think about it, my money’s still on the ex-wife.” He slid Montoya a look. “Just you wait and see, I bet she stands to inherit whatever Gierman had.”
“They were divorced.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Brinkman took one last drag, then slid the butt through the window. “My money says Mrs. Ex-shock-jock is gonna end up with some cash from this, I tell ya, and when she does, she’ll become suspect numero uno.”
Montoya didn’t want to believe it, but as he drove through the night watching the stream of red taillights, he knew Brinkman was right. Abby Chastain was a suspect. Whether he liked it or not.
Abby stared out the window. The night was black and wet, a growing wind whistling through the trees. And something outside was bugging the hell out of Hershey. The Lab was nervous, whining and growling at the back door. But that wasn’t unusual. Every time Luke had brought the dog over for a visit, Hershey had been eager and anxious, wound tight with pent-up energy. Now, the dog danced and whined, ready to rip outside and tear into whatever night creature had the misfortune to wander too close to the house. Not that Hershey was that big of a threat. In a fight with a raccoon or opossum, Abby suspected Hershey would end up the loser.