Devious

by Lisa Jackson

  Backing up, she felt a hot rip of pain slice through her hip.

  The demon! He was tearing at her!

  Scared out of her mind, she saw the fires of hell flaming in her brain, and she tried to run. Failed. Tripped.

  “Help me!”

  She tripped again, falling backward.

  Thud! Her head banged against the floor.

  Her walker toppled.

  Her jar of spaghetti sauce went flying.

  Smash! It crashed into a wall.

  Glass shattered.

  Red gravy streamed down the plaster walls.

  Still Constantina screamed, over the horrible music, loud enough to wake the damned dead.

  The nearest corpse being Gracie Blanc.

  Praying, screaming, knowing that the Devil was somewhere in the room, Constantina threw off the metal beast that was her walker, untangled her skirt, and clawed her way over the green shag toward the doorway.

  It seemed miles away.

  “Help!” she cried again. “For the love of Mother Mary, someone call the police!”

  Her old heart was pounding, her leg shrieking in agony.

  For just a second, she thought she saw God, a powerful, brilliant light appearing in the doorway. “Father . . .” She raised her hand, lifting her outstretched arm, hoping that he would save her pious soul.

  Then she realized the brilliant beam was from a flashlight trained on her. Beyond the glare, holding the long handle, was that horrid, lazy super for the building.

  Harold Horwood.

  “What the fuck’s going on here?” he demanded.

  “Call nine-one-one,” she ordered, gasping for breath, trying not to see Satan in every corner. She clutched her heart. “Get the police and an ambulance.”

  “What the fuck for?” he said.

  “For Grace.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Walking to the bedroom, stepping around the overturned walker, he skidded to an abrupt stop in a pool of Rubino’s Pure Old Country Italian Spaghetti Sauce.

  “Shit!” he half screamed. “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Just call nine-one-one!” she repeated sharply to the moron of an apartment manager. “And watch your language!”

  CHAPTER 38

  Bentz was beat, and he felt it in each of his muscles as he sat in the passenger seat of the department’s cruiser and listened to the police band radio squawk.

  Montoya, true to form, pushed the speed limit as he drove. Neither detective was in the mood for conversation; both were processing what they’d learned at St. Marguerite’s.

  Traffic was thick, the Crown Vic as hot as the surface of the sun, the humidity sweltering, Bentz’s mood deteriorating with each passing stop sign. He was just too damned old for this shit. No two ways about it. The lack of sleep caused by a colicky baby on top of the all-night interrogations brought out the worst in him. Add to that his sticky shirt, compliments of the heat and humidity, and the frustration of getting nowhere on a case that was quickly attracting statewide and national attention.

  The case was getting to him. Someone was getting off on killing nuns, for God’s sake . . . nuns! Why?

  The evidence was all over the place, too. Sexy, sadistic diaries, self-flagellation, orphaned girls who eventually joined the order, priests who were all too absent and one who would have been better suited as a gigolo. Then there was the secretive mother superior and one of the nuns disappearing in San Francisco. Two convents were involved so far; he wondered how far the horror would run. Were St. Marguerite’s and St. Elsinore’s the only two involved, or were they just the tip of a very heinous and far-reaching iceberg? Would the Catholic Church take another hit?

  He didn’t like the odds against it, and that worried him. Though not particularly religious, at least not in the traditional, organized manner, Bentz believed in God and he trusted that most churches and the people within them—clergy and parishioners—were good souls with all the right intentions.

  But this case, and his job in general—where he saw the ugly underbelly of society and was faced with the utter depravity, evil, and psychoses of sadistic criminals on a daily basis—made him sometimes second guess the goodness of the Almighty.

  His wife and two daughters, one a headstrong twentysomething, the other not yet crawling, always brought him back to center, to believing in good and, in so doing, squared him up with the Man/ Woman/Being Upstairs.

  “More company,” Montoya muttered, and reached for his pack of recently purchased Marlboros. He nodded toward the street where, just across from the parking lot, a news van with the WSLJ insignia emblazoned across its white sides was parked.

  “Great.”

  “Leave ’em to Sinclaire.”

  “Ya got that right.”

  They climbed out of the vehicle, and Montoya paused to light up.

  “Abby know you’re smoking again?”

  “I’m not,” Montoya said, “but, yeah, that woman’s got the nose of a bloodhound. Soon as this case wraps, I’m done with these cancer sticks.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Seriously!”

  Bentz sent his partner a we’ve-all-been-there-before look and rubbed the back of his neck as he walked up the steps of the station. Montoya took two more long drags, then crushed his cigarette into the canister of sand near the entrance.

  It was late, just in time for shift change.

  Cops in uniforms and plainclothes coming and going, voices buzzing, heels clicking, laughter ripping through the hallways as Bentz shouldered open the door.

  Bentz made eye contact with a few people he knew, even threw out a rare smile when he spied Vera, from Missing Persons, hurrying in the opposite direction.

  He was still thinking about his day. He and Montoya had spent a lot of hours being stonewalled by the priests at St. Marguerite’s and not getting much further with the staff at St. Elsinore’s, which, really, was another jurisdiction, not that it mattered much. The crusty old reverend mother, Sister Georgia—though outwardly much more modern and, well, maybe not exactly “hip” but appearing more worldly than Sister Charity—wasn’t going to give them any more information than she had to. Mentioning that Sister Camille’s sexually graphic diary had been found at St. Elsinore’s had only made her more tight-lipped and stiff. Sure, she wore no habit, but in her slacks, blouse with its big bow of a collar, and more fashionable glasses, she was just as rigid as Sister Charity.

  Great.

  They’d gotten nowhere.

  The priests had been no better. Father Paul had been nervous to the point of chewing on the corner of his lips and fingering the folds of his cassock. Father Frank wouldn’t speak without a lawyer, so that interview had been postponed, and Father Thomas of St. Elsinore’s had been conveniently indisposed. Again.

  Bentz was beginning to think that Thomas Blaine was little more than a figment of Sister Georgia’s imagination, her “beard” for lack of a better word. She, at least to Bentz, appeared to be running the show at the deteriorating parish.

  He walked into his office where the AC was struggling and tossed his jacket over his coat rack before sitting in his desk chair. What he’d learned today was that both Sister’s Camille and Asteria had been adopted out of St. Elsinore’s. As had Sister Charity and quite a few of the novices and nuns at the convent.

  An important connection?

  Maybe.

  Then there was Camille’s room and the mattress. Nothing else had been found, just the single envelope slipped into the stuffing. A note never sent to her lover.

  Frank O’Toole?

  Or someone else?

  He slid his holster and sidearm off his shoulder and hung them on the back of his chair. The fact that he’d worn his weapon at all through the hallowed hallways and offices of two churches and convents told him just how nuts this case had become.

  And what about the missing dresses? His gut told him that was not good. Not good at all.

  Hell.

  Sister Charity had provid
ed names of the nuns who had been orphaned and left in the care of St. Elsinore’s orphanage:

  Sister Asteria McClellan

  Sister Camille Renard

  Sister Dorothy Reece

  Sister Maura Voile

  Sister Irene Shikov

  Sister Devota Arness

  Sister Zita Williams

  Sister Louise Cortez

  Sister Angela Peterson

  Sister Edwina Karpovich

  So different. Their only links being St. Marguerite’s and St. Elsinore’s. Most of them were from the Gulf states, but not all, and certainly they were not all in love with Father Frank O’Toole.

  Maybe he was jumping to conclusions.

  Maybe St. Elsinore’s orphanage had nothing to do with the murders.

  Maybe involvement with Frank O’Toole was just coincidence, actually. As far as he could tell, Sister Camille had been the only victim who had consummated an affair with the priest. Sister Lea De Luca and Sister Asteria had only had fantasies about the man. Perhaps flirtations. There was no proof that they’d actually had sex with him.

  Yet, the guy just wasn’t the kind of man who should be wearing a priest’s alb.

  And who would be that right individual?

  Remember your brother? James? Not exactly a shining example of a man who took an oath of celibacy and held tight to it.

  Disturbed, his thoughts traveling along dark roads he’d rather avoid, Bentz made some calls, checked his e-mail, read over the final autopsy report on Camille Renard and her unborn child. She’d died by asphyxia due to strangulation, and the deepest abrasions and contusions on her neck were in a singular pattern that Bentz had seen before: a rosary, the beads sharp, the wire holding the strands strong enough to resist any attempts by the victim to break it.

  There were scratch marks on her neck where she’d tried to yank the garrote off her neck, abrasions made by her own fingernails in the wild attempt to free herself.

  His stomach soured at the thought of her frantic, terrified, and ultimately doomed struggle as she gasped for air, kicked at her attacker, her eyes bulging.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked as the air conditioner wheezed. Through the window, he heard a semi’s engine growl as the big truck rumbled down the street. He would have bet his pension on Father O’Toole, the lothario disguised as a priest.

  However, the blood tests of Camille’s fetus cleared him as the father.

  But not necessarily of the murders, he reminded himself as his cell phone jangled. The caller ID indicated it was his daughter.

  “Hey,” he said, cradling his cell between his shoulder and ear.

  “Hey back atcha,” Kristi said, and her voice was a little weak, muffled by the sound of air movement, as if she were driving and trying to speak over her obstinate headset. “I just thought I’d call and offer a little moral support.”

  “Really?” he asked, unable to mask his doubt. Kristi had just finished her first true-crime book. It hadn’t been picked up yet but was being looked at by several agents, one of whom had suggested Rick Bentz, as the homicide cop who had helped solve the case of a killer with vampire leanings at All Saints’ College, write an intro.

  He passed.

  Didn’t like the fact that his daughter was dabbling anywhere near a killer.

  “Yes, really, though if you wanted to talk over the case with me, I’d be glad to listen.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Oh, Dad, come on.”

  The battle they’d had all her adult life. Headstrong and as beautiful as Jennifer, her mother and Bentz’s ex-wife, Kristi had given him most of the gray hairs that were silvering his head—and prematurely, he thought. “How’s married life?”

  “Oooh. Smooth segue,” she said, but wasn’t really pissed that he’d abruptly changed the subject. “I’ll tell you all about it this weekend. I thought I’d drop by and see Ginny . . . uh, you and Olivia, too.”

  He grinned; she was needling him. “We’ll look forward to it. Bring Jay along.”

  “I intend to.” She laughed. “You know me, Dad—I never go anywhere without my husband.”

  “And you probably pump him for information, too.”

  “Only when he wants sexual favors.”

  “Ouch! TMI, Kristi. I’m your dad, remember?”

  “My dad who has an infant. Don’t pretend you don’t know anything about sex, but, okay, let’s change the subject.”

  He laughed and his eyes fell onto the list of names from St. Marguerite’s. Orphaned girls who’d been adopted from St. Elsinore’s. All young and full of life. All potential murder victims.

  “I’ll call Olivia and set something up, okay?” Kristi said, and he nodded.

  “Great. She’ll love it.”

  “Okay, Dad. I’ll see ya.”

  She hung up, and he held the phone for an instant. Kristi’s life had been in danger more times than he wanted to think about, times when, because of who he was, the cop, she’d come into a killer’s sites.

  He hoped to hell that was all over now.

  Troubled at the thought of his daughter and her penchant for mystery and crime, he noticed that the tox screen for Camille Renard had come through on his e-mail. He scanned it and scowled when he recognized that she’d had Rohypnol in her bloodstream. Rohypnol, or “roofies” as it was called on the street, was the date-rape drug. Slipped into food or drink, the strong sedative could render a victim more than pliable, could even induce memory loss.

  He wasn’t surprised.

  Now at least he understood why the victims went along with their killer’s need to have them in bridal dresses. It explained why Camille was found in the chapel, apparently of her own free will, and why Asteria died in the cemetery. But it didn’t tell him who had drugged them and forced them into being an integral actor in his bizarre play.

  Drugs were easy to get these days. They could be bought on the street, stolen, or even purchased on the Internet. How many times had he, a cop for crying out loud, been bombarded with offers for GHB, another date-rape drug, in his personal e-mail account. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.

  It was hours later, and he’d gotten through the last of his paperwork and was no closer to figuring out what had happened to the victims than he had been.

  Stymied, he stared at the images on his computer screen. Camille lying dead near the altar and Asteria in the cemetery, her gaze fixed on the night sky and the angel over the tomb where she lay.

  Both orphans from St. Elsinore’s.

  Both enamored with the same priest.

  Both joining the convent because of trouble with men. He tapped his fingers and hadn’t noticed that beyond the window, night had fallen, darkness above the glow of city lights.

  “Hey!” Montoya appeared in his doorway. Without his jacket, stubble darkening the usually shaved area of his face, looking as rough around the edges as Bentz felt.

  “Yeah?”

  “Look what I got in the mail.” He slid a prepaid cell phone wrapped in an evidence bag across Bentz’s desk.

  “Camille Renard’s?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who sent it?” Gingerly, Bentz picked up the bag.

  “Anonymous.”

  “You check it out?”

  “The info on the phone? Yeah.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Not sure yet, but it’s something.”

  Bentz nodded. “Yeah, it’s something.” The trick was to find out just what.

  “The lab’s going over it, see if they can come up with prints or even DNA from the saliva used to seal the packet, but that’ll take time.”

  Which was fast escaping, Bentz thought. Still, it was something. “You think the killer sent it in? For attention? You know, playing games, showing how smart he is, smarter than us?”

  “Could be.”

  At that second, Brinkman poked his head through the doorway, forcing Montoya aside. “Just caught a call,” he said. “Homicide. Single white female.
Working girl.”

  “Prostitute.”

  Brinkman offered a smug little sneer. “See, Montoya, you are smart after all. She’s been picked up before. Gracie Blanc, aka Grace La Blanc and Grace Lee Blanco. One and the same.” His grin was hideous. “As if an alias would throw anyone off track.”

  “Any sign of the killer?”

  “Nah. She’s been dead for a while. The neighbor, an old lady who lives down the hall, found her first and freaked out, fell down and started screaming, and the super, whom I’m making as her pimp, heard the screams, found the old lady and the vic, then made the call. When the officer who took the call arrived, he found our girl Gracie dead as a doornail. Now the ME’s on his way; another couple of uniforms are there already.”

  And probably the press, Bentz thought.

  “I’m in,” Montoya said, and Bentz was already reaching for his jacket and holster. It looked like the long day wasn’t going to end soon.

  “Good.” Brinkman’s eyes narrowed and his lips thinned into that cat-who-ate-the-canary smile Bentz hated. “Cause here’s the kicker. The old lady? Turns out she’s a bit of a snoop, and guess who she saw leaving our dead girl’s apartment last night?”

  “Who?” Montoya asked.

  “A priest.”

  “What?” Bentz froze.

  “That’s right.” Brinkman was eating up Bentz’s surprise. “The old lady was definitely not minding her own business and was looking through her peephole, and she saw a guy she described as a young priest leaving the vic’s apartment around midnight.”

  CHAPTER 39

  As the radio plays softly, I file the edges of the glass beads, carefully honing them to perfection, making certain each edge is as sharp as a razor, each facet able to slice through flesh cleanly.

  At the thought of the tiny, glittering beads doing their deadly work, I smile. The rosary in my hands, strung together with heavy wire, seems to wink at me.

  The swamp is still tonight, water lapping quietly, the smell thick with the odors of rotting vegetation and fish. Crickets are singing their nightly chorus, and a bullfrog supplies the bass notes.

  The music, a tune from the eighties, stops and Dr. Sam’s voice fills the airways with her sick psychobabble as callers dial her up and ask inane questions about their relationships, or their children, or their dying parents.