Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

“I think so.”

  Cole, walking toward his Jeep, whipped around, facing the direction from which the sharp report had come.

  Pop!

  “Shit!” Montoya grabbed for his weapon, knowing that something bad had just gone down. He met the prick lawyer’s gaze. “Yeah, go. You can leave. For now.” And then he was on the move, reaching for his radio, talking in short bursts. “Detective Reuben Montoya,” he said, giving his badge number. “Gunshots. Somewhere off St. Charles.” He rattled off Eve’s address. “I don’t know…checking now. Send backup!”

  “Where’s Tiggs?” one of the uniformed cops asked.

  “He was going to talk to the neighbors….” Montoya’s eyes moved up the street, where he’d seen Tiggs heading less than ten minutes earlier. All of the neighbors were looking toward the sound of the gunshots, but there was no evidence of a uniform among them.

  Fuck!

  He jogged to his car. His radio crackled, and the dispatcher’s voice confirmed what he’d already feared. “Officer down!”

  Yelling at a patrolman to secure the scene, Montoya listened as the dispatcher spat out the address of the shooting.

  Less than three blocks away in a restaurant parking lot.

  Jesus Christ, this was getting worse by the second.

  He was shaking inside.

  Worried.

  His guts twisting, mind in a panic, he drove out of the city limits, always checking his rearview mirror, never completely certain he wasn’t being followed. He charged out in the wrong direction, doubled back, then did the same thing again, crossing the river four times before he finally headed in the right direction and the lights of New Orleans faded. On the outskirts of the city, the traffic thinned. But only when he was on the two-lane road, winding through the woods and swamps with no bright headlights glaring in his mirrors, did he draw a relieved breath. Twice he encountered the red glimmers of taillights ahead of him when the road straightened, but he slowed until they vanished from sight.

  By the time he reached the lane to his private retreat, he was alone, his heart rate having slowed to normal. But the smell of blood reached his nostrils. He’d disobeyed.

  Never had God told him to kill a cop.

  Never.

  He blinked rapidly, hoping all was not lost. Surely the Voice would come to him tonight, to reassure him he’d only done what was necessary; that still he would be deified.

  I will do anything. ANYthing.

  As he parked his truck, the series of pitfalls, of mistakes, came back in quicksilver images: Eve at the house with Cole Dennis; his own private fantasy that had clouded his judgment; the cop approaching and the ensuing chase through the neighborhood.

  He’d had no choice. He’d had to shoot. Even though it was not part of the mission, even though the Voice had not told him to take the cop’s life.

  But it hadn’t ended with that one shot.

  As he’d gone down, somehow Tiggs had fired.

  The Reviver had flinched.

  The bullet had gone wild, ricocheting off the hood of his truck.

  Adrenaline fueling him, the Reviver had rammed his pickup into gear and tromped on the accelerator. Burning rubber, his truck had screamed out of the lot.

  Heart hammering, blood pumping, fear shooting through his veins, the Reviver had hazarded a quick glance in his rearview mirror.

  Tiggs had lain still, not moving, bleeding onto the asphalt. Dying. People began streaming from the restaurant into the lot. Shouting. Pointing fingers. One son of a bitch had even run for his car to give chase. Someone else had fallen to Tiggs’s side in a vain attempt to save him.

  Too late, the Reviver had thought, driving out of sight, losing the would-be hero and knowing the cop’s fate.

  Tiggs was one victim who would never be revived.

  Now he walked briskly through the surrounding woods, ignoring the taunt of an owl hooting from a nearby tree, taking no heed of the whir of bats’ wings as he unlocked the cabin’s door and entered the dark, welcoming interior.

  He would shower.

  Wash away the blood.

  And then he would fall to his knees in front of the cold grate, and he would pray.

  For guidance.

  For strength.

  And ultimately, for forgiveness.

  Bentz stared at the woman sitting across from him in his office. Her name was Ellen Chaney. She was black, slightly plump, pushing fifty, and she’d come in because of what she’d heard on the news.

  Dispatch had called him, ruining his dinner date with Olivia. He’d hated to cut the evening short, but fortunately his wife, who had been through her own share of terror, had understood.

  So he’d met with Chaney at the station, where a few detectives were working at their desks. Compared to the noise of the day shift, the place was quiet.

  “So you came in because of the press conference?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her dark eyes troubled. “I was a nurse at Our Lady of Virtues,” she said, twisting her wedding ring nervously. “For a while. It…well, it depressed me.” She looked away from him into the middle distance. “Some of what went on was just plain wrong and…I should have reported it to someone. The medical board, the state, even the Archdiocese, but I didn’t. I just did my job, and when an opportunity to move on came along, I was all over it.”

  Bentz listened, his small recorder taping the conversation.

  “I thought it was all behind me. Especially during your investigation last fall, when that other serial killer was on the loose. So much came out, and I read about it, feeling as if I was finally free, but then”—she was working the ring so hard, it was nearly cutting into her flesh—“then all this started up again, and there’s talk about Faith Chastain. I figured that when her body was exhumed, someone would notice that she’d had a C-section.”

  Bentz hid his sharpened interest, let the woman run with her story. The information about Faith Chastain’s surgery had been kept away from the press for a reason. Only those close to her or to the hospital would know of another baby.

  “And…”

  “And she had a baby. I was there. The attending nurse. Dr. Renner delivered the baby himself.”

  “He was a surgeon?” Bentz asked, surprised.

  “A psychiatrist. A medical doctor. He’d done surgical rounds in med school. At least that’s what they told us.”

  “Why not call in an ob-gyn?”

  Chaney looked at her hands. “They were worried about a scandal.”

  “Who was?”

  “Hospital administration and the Reverend Mother. The baby, it wasn’t Faith’s husband’s.”

  “How did they know?”

  “Because there was over a year where they didn’t see each other at all.”

  Bentz wasn’t sure how much to buy, but the woman had enough facts to make her story believable. He just couldn’t separate fact from fiction. She seemed truly rueful, her face tortured, the cross dangling from her neck testament to her faith. And yet…

  “So, who was the father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Renner?”

  “What?” She’d been staring at her ring finger, but her gaze swept up quickly, offense evident on her face. “The doctor? No.”

  “What about Dr. Simon Heller?”

  “Oh, no…I mean, I don’t know. There was talk that he, um, was caught with a patient, but nothing ever bore out. But I really don’t know whom it could have been. All I know is that the baby was stillborn. A boy. Faith named him Adam.”

  “Dead?” Bentz said, surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw him? This male child?”

  She nodded gravely. “He wasn’t breathing, and…and Faith was beside herself. The doctor sedated her, and then they shuffled me out of the room.”

  Bentz eyed the woman, watching as she avoided his eyes. Telling the truth? Maybe…just not all of it. And if what she was saying was true, then Eve Renner was not Faith Chastain’s missing child. T
he acid in his stomach started to roil. He’d chosen to meet with her instead of joining Montoya at Eve Renner’s house because he’d thought maybe they were going to catch a break with Ellen Chaney. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “I told you. He died.”

  “I mean the body.”

  “Buried in the cemetery. A grave with a blank headstone, as if he hadn’t even existed. The only reason they marked it at all was for Faith, so she would have a place to go to visit. We were all sworn to secrecy.”

  “You and the doctor?” he surmised.

  “As well as Faith, Sister Rebecca, and Father Paul.”

  “Sister Rebecca Renault?” he asked, noting the connection. “The Reverend Mother at Our Lady of Virtues?”

  Ellen nodded and bit her lower lip. “I read about what happened to her. I wonder if she might still be alive if only I’d come forward earlier.”

  “What about this Father Paul? Is he still alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Um, he was in his late fifties, I’d guess, at that time.”

  “What was his last name?”

  “Oh…Gosh…I…can’t remember…. A simple name, I think. There were a lot of priests who passed through, you know, and stayed for a few months or a year before they were assigned somewhere else, but Father Paul, he was there a long while.” She massaged her temple, trying to think, like someone rubbing a lamp and hoping for a genie to appear. “It was a common name, I think. Like Smith or Johnson or Brown.…I really can’t remember.” She paused, lost in thought.

  Bentz was trying to add her information into the total puzzle. Face grim, he didn’t immediately ask another question, and after a silent stretch, Ellen reached for her purse.

  “Well, I hope that helps you. I don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you,” she said.

  “Just a minute, Mrs. Chaney.” He looked through the pages of notes he’d taken over the course of the past few days. He’d seen the name Paul somewhere. Running a finger down one page, he located one of the names he’d found in Faith Chastain’s file. “How about Father Paul Swanson?”

  She hesitated, her hand in midair over her purse. “That’s it, I think.”

  He made a mental note to find the priest with all the secrets. “Can you think back to the people who were employed by the hospital at the time of the birth of Faith’s child? Anyone who was a patient? It could help.”

  “It’s been nearly thirty years.”

  “I know,” he said, offering a tight smile. He felt the clock ticking. He was running extremely late. Montoya was going to be really pissed. “Here’s a partial list. Maybe these names will help jog your memory.” He slid three pages across the desk. On it were the names of the patients whose files Eve claimed to have seen in the attic cabinet. Bentz had added a few more himself, names taken from the notes in Faith Chastain’s folder, including Dr. Terrence Renner and Simon Heller, as well as others he hadn’t recognized, such as Father Paul Swanson.

  Ellen Chaney dutifully picked up the papers and skimmed the first page. “Oh. Enid Walcott. She was a sweet little woman, such a sad case, too nervous to sit and eat or do anything, and she was allergic to so many of the meds. Oh, and Neva. She was so lost, in her own world. A severely autistic child.” She flipped over to the second page and stopped short, her expression turning to shock. “Oh no…Dear Lord…” She looked up sharply and dropped the paper onto his desk.

  “What?”

  She shivered and ran her hand through her hair. “I probably shouldn’t say anything, but this person…” She pointed a long finger at the name of Ronnie Le Mars. “I’ve never in all my life met anyone I thought was born evil. I mean, I believe in Christ our Savior and redemption through prayer and that everyone can be saved, but…but that one, Ronnie, he’d sooner take a knife to your throat than look you in the eye.”

  “Whose blood was that?” Eve whispered once they were driving away from the house. “All over the bed. Whose blood was it?”

  “I don’t know.” Cole squinted into the night. They’d loaded up his Jeep with the cat, some sleeping bags and pillows, and their personal belongings and left the police still finishing up. Though there was no body, no obvious homicide, the fact that there was so much blood in her room, and the sick message incriminating Cole, had left the police certain that this newest incident was linked to the crime scene at Our Lady of Virtues. They were treating her house as part of the overall homicide investigation.

  “He wouldn’t have collected blood from Sister Vivian and then poured it over the doll and the bed, would he?” she asked, the idea so repulsive she could scarcely voice it.

  “I don’t know what he’d be capable of.”

  She glanced out the window, tried to gain strength in the lights of the city.

  From the backseat, trapped in his carrier, Samson started howling.

  “Wherever you’re taking us, you’d better get there fast, before Samson drives us both crazy.”

  “It’s not far,” he said, and to Eve’s surprise he didn’t drive her to the little camelback bungalow where he’d picked up his clothes hours earlier. However, the apartment he ushered her into wasn’t an improvement. If possible, he’d found a worse place, a one-room fleabag of a studio apartment, with no furniture, that seemed to trap all the heat of the day within its thin walls.

  “What is this?” she asked as he threw the sleeping bags on the floor.

  “I think of it as a safe house.”

  “Hmmm…” She looked around the room. “All it needs is a ten-gallon bucket of Lysol, some paint, new carpeting, appliances, and, oh yeah, furniture. Maybe a few throw pillows and pictures. Then it would be cozy.”

  He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Would you rather be back at your house?”

  An image of the bloodied doll and bed flashed through her mind. “You have a point. This is just as good as a five-star hotel.” She set the cat carrier on the floor and opened the gate. Samson immediately streaked out and began exploring the room. “I guess we’re lucky. We brought our own furry, four-legged pest control with us.”

  Cole walked to the window, left it shuttered but flipped a switch on the air-conditioning unit. It rattled to life; she hoped it would bring down the temperature and create some air movement. “The good news about this place is that no one knows about it.”

  “Except the landlord.”

  “Petrusky won’t say anything,” Cole told her. “He’s got too much to lose.”

  “Ahhh. A client.”

  He shot her another look then organized the sleeping bags and pillows on the floor. She didn’t want to think about what kind of creatures might have crawled across the stained carpet, nor who might have lived here before Cole took up residence.

  “Now, Ms. Renner, if you can find a way to keep your hands off me, we could work.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We need to find out who’s behind all this, and I’ve decided to treat it like a case. Whenever I had to defend someone against the police department, I made it my business to know as much as they did.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  He smiled. “There’s always someone willing to talk. For a price.”

  “That’s the most jaded piece of cynicism I’ve heard yet. Even from you.”

  He let the jab slide. “But it’s true.”

  “Wait. Are you telling me you have a leak in the department?” she asked, astounded.

  “Not just a leak, lady,” he assured her, reaching into a cupboard and coming up with two legal pads and a box of pens. “A goddamned reservoir.”

  She was skeptical as she settled onto the makeshift bed and opened the box of Sharpies. “Why haven’t you used this untapped reservoir before?”

  He sat down beside her and took up a pen. “I have, but I had to be careful. I was a suspect. I was followed, dogged, tailed, whatever you want to call it. Maybe I was paranoid, but I was certain my phones
were tapped, and I didn’t even trust my cell phone. I couldn’t risk getting any of my sources into major trouble, so I’ve laid low.”

  “And now?”

  “Montoya and Bentz would love to nail my ass, but neither one of them is a moron, and now it’s blatantly evident I’m not behind any of the murders. Including Roy’s.”

  She was about to ask who this source was, but mention of Roy’s name brought her up short. She felt a click inside her head, truly felt it, as if something had just unlocked in her brain.

  Memories of that night suddenly flooded her mind. She recalled making love to Cole, the fight, her race down the stairs as he, behind her, was pulling on his clothes. He’d tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t hear of it, and when she’d arrived at the cabin she found Roy already dead, blood everywhere, the horrid number written in blood on the wall and, in the glass, pointing a gun at her…no…not at her…but close, as if he were aiming above her shoulder…

  She blinked, and the image became sharper. Clearer. More defined.

  “Cole,” she whispered now, aloud.

  Her heart raced as pieces of her memory forged and melded only to shatter again. But she had a glimpse, a very real glimpse, of what had happened that night.

  “What?” he asked, but she was lost to the memory.

  It was Cole’s face showing in the darkness, the barrel of his gun steady. “Don’t!” she’d yelled. But the weapon fired, a white flash as glass shattered and searing pain had exploded in her shoulder and head.

  “Eve!” he’d screamed. The world had spun crazily. She’d fallen, her eyes fixed on him, her mind screaming, NO, NO, NO! He was so close and yet so far away…. And the knife…There’d been a wicked knife. Blood dripping onto the floor. Cole had been carrying a knife…. No! The knife wasn’t in Cole’s hand…. Someone else’s. Whose?

  The blackness had come at her from the outside in, eating at her consciousness. Within seconds she’d passed out.

  Now she stared at Cole with new eyes. Shaking, her guts clenching painfully, she saw that he knew. His blue eyes registered pain and regret. He knew. And he’d known all along. For the past three months, and yet he’d kept his secrets. Lied to protect himself.