by Lisa Jackson
“Good. And Le Mars?”
“No luck yet.” She twirled a pen in her fingers. “I’m checking with all his known contacts, friends, family, old girlfriends. So far, zilch. But I’m still working on it.”
As they all were. Bentz and Montoya each had spent hours running down leads on Ronnie Le Mars. They’d all ended up going nowhere. Zaroster’s phone started ringing again. “This might be it,” she teased. “The call that breaks the case.”
Montoya snorted. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
“Yeah, that’s right. God and I are real tight. He answers all my prayers pronto.” She reached for the phone. As they headed downstairs, they heard her answer, “Homicide. Detective Zaroster…”
They found Bonita Washington in the photo lab, talking with Inez Santiago. “Montoya…glad you came along. Come over here and take a look at this.” She guided them to a long counter and switched on undercabinet lights. “Here’s the original photo that Abby Chastain took of the hospital. There’s definitely a shadow of a man in the window. Now, I could give you the long and boring speech about how we enlarged, sharpened, and enhanced the image, but it doesn’t matter. What does is this.” She pointed to the last in a series of about twenty prints. “It’s the clearest image we have.”
“Pretty good,” Bentz observed. The image was definitely a man, a big man, his features a little muddy but distinct enough to be recognizable.
“Not pretty good, Detective. It’s damned good. Got it? Damned good. Now…take a look at this.”
She handed him a mug shot of Ronnie Le Mars, the same picture Bentz had already viewed when he’d checked the computer records. “I’d say this could very well be your guy.”
Montoya, who had been silent so far, nodded. “It’s him.”
“Maybe.” Bentz wasn’t completely convinced.
“Good chance,” Santiago piped up. In a lab coat, her red hair twisted onto her head, she added, “We’ve got more good news.”
“That we do,” Washington agreed. “Blood work.” She led them around a corner and along a well-lit corridor to an area dedicated to examining bodies and body parts. “We’ve got company,” she announced to A. J. Tennet, who was seated on a rolling stool and staring into a microscope.
He looked up. “Good.” Sliding his chair along a counter, he stopped sharply and picked out some papers from a basket. “First of all, the blood found at the Eve Renner house was porcine, not human.”
Bentz felt a wave of relief. “I think we found the pig.”
Tennet nodded. “We’re double-checking that now and looking for any other stains or epithelials in the coffin.”
“The coffin’s old,” Washington explained. “We figure it might have been used before. We’re taking soil samples from the area around Our Lady of Virtues, from the pig’s hooves, and from the coffin, just to see that they match. Any other trace evidence, including the sheet, will be analyzed.”
“Good.”
“Montoya, why don’t you go over the lab work here with A. J. in more detail,” Washington suggested. “Detective Bentz, I’d like to show you something else. In private.”
Montoya lifted a dark eyebrow, obviously curious, but didn’t follow as Washington led Bentz into her office.
“What’s going on?” he asked as she closed the door behind them.
“Something I thought you should find out about alone. Then you can handle it any way you see fit.”
“Okay.” Bentz felt more than a little apprehension. Bonita Washington had always been a straight shooter. Never pulled any punches. Not into high drama in the least. “So what’s up?”
“The DNA report came in on Eve Renner.”
“She’s not related to Faith Chastain,” Bentz guessed. “We already know that Faith had a son who died at birth, the baby who was supposed to be in that coffin.”
“Then you got your information wrong.” She handed him the report. “Not only does Eve have enough identical genetic markers to make it clear that she is Faith’s daughter, she also has markers that match another person.”
“Who is that?” Bentz asked. “Ronnie Le Mars?”
“No.”
“Not Roy Kajak?”
“No.” She was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Then I don’t know. Who else?”
Washington looked him squarely in the eye. “You, Detective,” she said, watching his reaction. “According to our tests, and I ran them three times to make certain of the data, you’re related to Eve Renner.”
CHAPTER 30
“There’s got to be a mistake,” Bentz declared, disbelieving. He was holding his hands up and shaking his head emphatically as the wheels whirled in his mind. “I never met Faith Chastain. Never.”
“Well, someone related to you did. And it was a whole lot more than just meeting her.”
“Wait.” There had to be something wrong! But the first dark worm of understanding was boring through his brain. “Jacques Chastain was her husband. He could have…There’s a mistake,” he repeated.
“You’re not listening to me, Detective,” she said determinedly. “This is Bonita. I don’t do anything half-assed. I checked your daughter’s DNA as well. We still had a sample on file from that case a few years back, you remember, with that psychopath who called himself the Chosen One?”
Bentz nodded. Both Kristi and Olivia had nearly lost their lives because of that twisted maniac.
“So I ran the sample…and sure enough, bingo, Kristi’s an instant winner too. Related to Eve Renner.”
“Through Eve’s biological father.” Bentz felt the need to sit down, but he stayed on his feet by sheer will.
“I knew there was a reason you were promoted so quickly.” She slapped the reports into his hand and let him scan them for himself. Some of her bad-ass attitude fell away, and her intense green eyes appeared surprisingly compassionate. Pushing a hank of kinky hair from those eyes, she said, “Look, Bentz, I don’t know what this means, other than you and Eve are related, but I figured you might want to process this yourself and decide how you’re going to tell the rest of the department. Anyone working on this case will be privy to this information.”
He shook his head to clear it. How could this be? Who in his family had even met Faith Chastain. For a second, he questioned his own legitimacy.
With a kindness he hadn’t thought her capable of, she added lightly, “I figure you owe me big-time.”
“Diamonds. I know.”
“You got that right.” She patted his shoulder. “Remember: big ones.”
Report in hand, Bentz connected with Montoya, who was on his phone pacing through the labyrinth of hallways, deep in conversation. “Uh-huh…I’ll check it out. Yeah, that’s fine.…We’re done here now. Okay, we’ll meet you there. Thanks.” Montoya fell into step with Bentz. Together they headed out of the building. “That was Eve Renner,” he explained. “She and Cole Dennis have cooked up this theory. Kind of out there, and I wouldn’t buy into it all, but it’s a lot like yours.”
“How so?”
He explained about the names or titles of the victims being palindromes, how the numbers at the crime scenes read both left to right and right to left, how they also might represent room numbers for the hospital. “Terrence Renner’s office was room 101, and Sister Rebecca’s was 111. They’re not sure about all of the victims, but it’s worth looking into.” Montoya tugged at his goatee. “Seems kinda far-fetched to me, but we’ve walked down that road before.”
Bentz grunted in agreement. “Far-fetched” sometimes felt like it was the norm.
They continued single file as two officers came through, hurrying the opposite way. Montoya added, “Eve’s really freaked because she can’t get hold of her sister-in-law, Anna, who has one of those backward-forward type of names.”
“Does this Anna have any connection to the hospital?”
“None we’ve found. Yet. Hell. But Eve does, and she’s obviously already in the killer’s sig
hts.”
“Maybe they’re on to something.” Bentz fell into thought as his shoes clicked on the polished floor. “The whole palindrome thing is too much of a coincidence.”
“I told Eve we’d meet at her house. She’s already got a cleaning crew and locksmith lined up. We’re done there, right? We can release the house to her. All the evidence and photographs have been taken. We’ve got the sheets, blood samples, prints. No reason to keep her out of the house.”
“If she wants to go back there.”
“I wouldn’t,” Montoya admitted as they walked outside.
Heavy clouds had rolled in, blocking what was left of the afternoon sun, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. Traffic, full in the throes of rush hour, sluggishly snarled its way through the streets as, cars, buses, and trucks moved out of the city.
“So, what was it Washington wanted to talk to you about?”
“DNA.” Bentz handed the pages to Montoya, who scanned the information quickly.
“So…wait a minute. Ellen Chaney swears Faith Chastain had one baby, a boy, who was stillborn. How do we get from that to a dead pig in a coffin and a woman who is very much alive and Faith’s daughter?”
“Read on.”
“There’s more?”
“Oh yeah.” Bentz flexed his hands, still trying to process the information Bonita Washington had handed him. The story wasn’t hanging together—the dead baby, Eve’s DNA matching Faith’s…Something was wrong somewhere. Ellen Chaney was either lying or hadn’t gotten her facts straight. That bothered him. He could usually sense bullshit, but Chaney had seemed sincere. Now, running a hand through his hair, he felt his stomach begin to roil and thought the hell with it. To Montoya, he said, “I’ll take that smoke now, if you’ve got one.”
“Sure.” Montoya found his cigarettes and handed the pack and his lighter to Bentz.
Bentz lit up, drawing deep, sensing smoke curl into his lungs as his partner flipped through all the pages slowly, his eyes narrowing as he read.
Montoya stopped dead in his tracks and looked up at Bentz. “What the hell does this mean?”
Bentz handed over the rest of the pack and the lighter, enjoying the first buzz of nicotine. “Don’t know. I never met Faith Chastain.”
“But—”
“I can’t explain it,” Bentz said, but his mind was taking a trip of its own, running down a long, dark corridor with doors to rooms that he’d hoped would never be opened again. No matter how hard he wanted to lock the truth away, it always fought to get out, to be known. His gut gnawed, and he reached into his pocket for his antacids.
Montoya’s dark eyebrows slammed together as he read the information for the second time. “For Christ’s sake, you must know something. This is your damned family.”
“Yours too, if you marry Abby.” He plopped a pill into his mouth and chewed. “We might all be related.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Related?” Montoya shook out a cigarette for himself, jabbed the Marlboro into his mouth. He flicked his lighter to the tip of the cigarette, inhaling as if the smoke were life giving. “That’s sick,” he said as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.
You don’t know the half of it, Bentz thought as he considered all the possibilities of who in his family could be Eve Renner’s father. He didn’t like where his logic took him and couldn’t imagine how to tell Eve or Kristi. Montoya was right. It was sick. “Looks like Abby can start adding Eve’s name to the family Bible after all.”
“And yours too? Man, what a mess.”
Amen, brother, Bentz thought, crushing out his cigarette on the sidewalk. A-damned-men.
Eve couldn’t believe her ears. Stunned, she stood next to Cole in the backyard of her grandmother’s house. The wind was sighing through the branches of the magnolia tree, dusk was slowly creeping across the land, and Bentz’s shocking statement still hung in the air as if it were a living being.
“The DNA tests prove that you’re Faith Chastain’s daughter. And I’m afraid there’s more. It looks like you’re related to me as well.”
She stared at Detective Rick Bentz, and he stared back. “How…I mean…” She held up her good hand and processed the unlikely information all over again. She was related to Bentz. And she also was
Abby Chastain’s half sister. And Faith’s daughter. But not Jacques Chastain’s child. “I don’t believe it.”
Cole, too, was skeptical, but then he’d never trusted the police. “You’re sure?” he asked Bentz, his gaze moving from Montoya, who was resting a hip against the fender of his car, to Bentz, who was standing closer, delivering the unlikely news.
“I understand this is difficult.”
“Difficult?” Cole laughed silently at the understatement.
“I have the reports. The tests were run three times. I had trouble believing this too. Believe me. But the DNA markers are clear,” Bentz said.
Eve regarded him with new eyes, trying to decipher if there was any resemblance between them. The answer to that question was a firm no. Eve had a slim build, curly reddish hair, a short nose, and blue eyes tinged with green. Bentz was stocky, with brown hair showing hints of gray, a square jaw, and flinty, deep-set eyes. “Related how?” she asked suspiciously. She needed more specifics before she could swallow this story. She saw no reason for him to lie, but…this just couldn’t be true! What was he saying? That he was her father, her brother?
He must’ve read the questions in her eyes. “I’m not exactly certain how we’re related, but no, I’m not your father. I never met Faith Chastain.”
Eve was more than a little relieved. She’d suffered too many blows in the father department as it was. Terrence Renner had just been brutally murdered, not even as yet buried, and she couldn’t come to grips thinking this rugged detective with whom she’d been so combative could be the man who had sired her. Bentz, along with Montoya, had doubted her word from the moment they’d met, and both men had been dogged in their quest to see Cole put behind bars.
Nonetheless, she was convinced by his expression that he believed the news he was delivering was the truth.
“Could you be my half brother?” she asked, rubbing the arm that was still in a sling. “Could we have the same father?”
Montoya found his cigarettes and fired one up.
Bentz responded, “I don’t see how. My dad was shot in the line of duty, long before you could have been conceived.”
“An uncle, then?”
“I don’t have the answers yet. But believe me, I’ll get ’em.” His jaw set determinedly.
“But Abby’s my half sister?”
“Yes.”
Montoya, leaning against his car, gave Eve a searching look. “I was going to tell her tonight, unless you want to.”
She didn’t have to think twice. “I’ll leave that to you, Detective. But ask her to call me when she wants to.”
Montoya nodded. “Knowing her, it’ll probably be as soon as she hears the news.”
“Anytime would be fine.” She felt strange. At sea. If it were true…if…then Abby and Zoey Chastain were both her half sisters, and somehow Rick Bentz was part of her family as well.
“You should also know that we found a grave, the one that was supposed to have held Faith’s child, her boy child,” Bentz said.
“A grave?” Eve froze, felt Cole step closer to her. “With a baby?”
“There was no baby, at least none that we could find.”
She pressed the heel of her palm to her head and closed her eyes. “You found an empty grave for Faith’s baby, for me, is that what you’re saying?”
“We think it was originally for Faith’s child, but it had been tampered with, the earth fresh, and when we opened the casket we found a dead pig inside.”
Repulsed, she wrapped her good arm around her middle and turned into the safety of Cole’s arms.
Montoya added, “Not just a dead pig. There was a message inside as well, written in blood. ‘Live not on evil.’”
&
nbsp; Cole said, “‘Live not on evil.’ Another palindrome.” His expression grew darker. “The hits just keep on coming.”
“The blood we found in your bedroom—it was the pig’s.”
“Oh for the love of God, why?” she whispered, digesting the news. Though she was relieved that the blood splashed all over her room hadn’t been human, she was still sickened by the idea of the horrible, gruesome mess, that someone was perverted enough to mutilate a doll, pour blood onto her bed, then take the time to write a cryptic message in that blood. It was sick and psychotic and chilled her to the bone.
“What kind of a pervert are we dealing with?” Cole asked as a thick, starless twilight stole over the city.
Montoya pushed away from the car. “This guy’s a psychopath. Sick. Deranged. And yeah, if you’re asking, for some reason he’s focused on Eve. We’re just not certain why.”
She knew about psychoses, had witnessed for herself the results of such severe mental disorders, and yet, faced with an unknown killer who somehow drew great satisfaction, perhaps even sexual excitement, in gruesomely terrorizing her, she felt sick inside.
“Police protection is available,” Montoya offered.
“You think I’m in serious danger.”
“Don’t you?”
“I think that if he had wanted to kill me, he would have by now. I’m sure he’s had opportunities.”
“But he’s stringing it out, getting off on scaring the hell out of you,” Cole said. “I think you should accept.”
She was astounded. Cole never trusted the police. Never. His eyes met hers, and she saw that he was wrestling with his own conscience, that he was really worried.
“It couldn’t hurt. Might deter the maniac,” he said.
Bentz added chillingly, “He’s going to escalate. He’s already taken lives.”
She quivered inside. But police protection? Someone watching her around the clock? Having zero privacy?