“
Y
our boy’s lawyered up,” Brinkman said as Montoya walked into the lunchroom the next day. It was not the news Montoya wanted to hear this early in the morning, never the type of news to be received from the guy who put the “dick” in
detective.
Irritated, Montoya moved away from Brinkman, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the floor, which was shiny from the previous night’s cleaning. The lingering odor of some pine-scented cleaner mingled with the aroma of brewing coffee.
Several cops were grabbing their morning cups; a few others leaned over the tables cluttered with newspapers and magazines. While sipping from their steaming mugs, they scanned headlines and exchanged barbs before heading to their desks. On one of the round tables, a box of cupcakes lay open, crumbs and wadded, used cupcake papers surrounding half a dozen remaining cakes decorated with white frosting and chocolate sprinkles.
When Montoya didn’t respond, Brinkman added, “You know, the priest. Seems as if his daddy is some hotshot attorney.”
Montoya remembered Frank’s old man. Tall, lanky, always well dressed in a suit or polo shirt and slacks with a perfect crease down each leg. Even if he was just going to one of his kids’ basketball practices or a football scrimmage, Raymond “Buzz” O’Toole looked the part of the successful attorney. A scratch golfer with a taste for scotch, he’d been disappointed when his son had preferred soccer to football.
Montoya imagined that Buzz was nearly apoplectic that his son, a man of God, was involved in a sordid scandal.
Montoya said, “I thought Buzz O’Toole was an estate attorney. Never touched criminal stuff.”
“Yeah, well, he’s got friends in low places.” Brinkman scowled at the near-empty coffeepot. “Someone over at that firm where your brother-in-law used to work.”
Technically, Cole Dennis was Abby’s brother-in-law, not his, but Montoya wasn’t in the mood to split hairs. Especially with Brinkman, who was always looking to bring up something uncomfortable.
What a jerk.
“The upshot is that I talked to the attorney, who’s claiming his client’s innocence because good ol’ Father Frank has B-positive blood.”
“Then he’s not the baby’s father.”
Montoya felt a flash of relief. He’d found it impossible to believe that Frank O’Toole had killed anyone. At least not the Frank O’Toole he remembered.
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do her,” Brinkman said. “And I’m not talkin’ in the biblical sense; we know he did that. But he could have found out she was bangin’ someone else and went off. Killed her.”
“After making sure she was wearing a wedding dress?”
“Whatever turns him on.” Brinkman’s smile was smarmy.
“Nah. Too premeditated.”
“Ya never know. Just a theory.”
“We need facts,” Montoya said.
“I gave you some. You don’t even have to wait for DNA to start lookin’ for another guy as the kid’s father. Man, nuns weren’t this hot when I was growin’ up. I had to get off on the girls in their uniforms—y’know, with the knee socks and pleated skirts—”
“Oh, God, please, stop now,” one of the female officers said. She cast Brinkman a pained look as she placed a sack lunch in the refrigerator. “Let’s be grown-ups.”
Montoya agreed. He didn’t have time for Brinkman’s sexual fantasies. He had his own to deal with. Last night, he’d been able to patch things up with Abby, which had included the kind of lovemaking session they’d shared before the baby had been born. If he let himself, he could get a hard-on just thinking about it, so he didn’t. At least he’d woken up in a decent mood, one Brinkman seemed intent on ruining.
“Back to O’Toole,” he said, interrupting Brinkman’s sleazy train of thought.
“I’m just sayin’, we have to get his attorney involved.” Edging over to the near-empty box of cupcakes, Brinkman added, “Pain in the ass,” before snagging one of the treats. He crossed to the coffeepot, picked it up, and scowled. To the few cops still hanging out in the lunchroom, he said, “If anyone else wants a cup of Joe, they’re SOL.” Even though he obviously hoped someone would take the bull by the horns and brew another pot, no one jumped up to take over.
Lynn Zaroster, one of the youngest female detectives, walked into the kitchen at that moment and saw Brinkman holding up the empty pot. He offered her a wink and smile.
Charming.
She wasn’t buying it. “Oh, yeah, zero in on the woman because all this kitchen stuff is women’s work, right? Give me a break, Brinkman!”
“Hey, I’m just talking about making a fuckin’ pot of coffee.”
“Got it.” Lynn did a quick one-eighty out of the lunchroom, her short, black curls swirling indignantly behind her.
“It’s not about being a woman. It’s because you’re better at it than I am,” Brinkman called after her.
“Yeah, right.”
The female cop who had taken on Brinkman earlier sent him a look guaranteed to send his soul straight to hell and then walked out of the lunchroom.
Louis Brounier, who had observed the whole exchange, shook his head as he stood and gathered his paper. A big, burly African American with a fleshy face and silver hair, Brounier couldn’t move as fast as he once had, but his dark eyes caught everything, including Brinkman’s ridiculous self-imposed predicament. “Ya know, Brinkman, you might have to break down and make your own coffee.”
“Bite me, Brounier.”
“You wish.”
“Look, I got a case to solve,” Brinkman complained.
“Just one? Lucky you.”
“You know, Brounier, you can be a real douche bag.”
“I’m just saying we’re all busy.” Brounier tucked his newspaper under his arm and sauntered out of the lunchroom, muttering, “Pansy ass,” under his breath.
Brinkman called out, “I heard that!”
“Good.”
Brinkman snagged a second cupcake and motioned toward the box. “What’s the occasion anyway?”
“Peggy’s, in Missing Persons, birthday,” Del Albright said out of the corner of his mouth. He was leaning against the counter, perusing the Sports page. “Rita brought ’em in. You might want to save one for Peg.”
“Why?” Brinkman bit off half the cupcake and said around a mouthful, “She’s always on a diet.”
Montoya had had enough. He left the conversation behind and went to his desk to start reviewing files and double-checking the timeline for the last hours of Camille Renard’s life.
Her last twenty-fours hadn’t been that out of the ordinary. She’d spent most of her day at the convent, only going out for about six hours to where she worked in the orphanage in the preschool.
If she’d hooked up with O’Toole or any other man, she’d been discreet.
And she’d never sent the letter tucked inside her mattress. The lab was still processing that kinky bit of unsent correspondence. There had been a desperate, almost pleading tone in her demands for sexual favors.
Why the hell was she a nun? Montoya believed there might be some unfulfilled sexual needs in most members of the clergy. Hell, celibacy was a bitch. Abstinence nearly impossible.
People were sexual creatures.
To take a vow of celibacy, one’s convictions had to be so much stronger than natural animal attraction. He really believed most members of the Catholic clergy pulled it off. But there were a few who couldn’t.
Sister Camille was obviously one.
And she knew it, was thinking of leaving the order.
“Too late,” he whispered, caught up in the enigma that was Camille Renard.
He took a few calls while he waited for the autopsy report, but in the back of his mind, he wondered who the father of Camille’s baby was. A parishioner? Maybe a father of one of the kids she worked with? Or workers at the convent? Clifton Sharkey was the maintenance man for St. Marguerite’s, fifty-four, the father of six and a grandfather twice over. Elwin Zaan a forty-two-year-old janitor. Both with airtight alibis for the time of Camille’s death.
Nothing was making any sense, he thought, finishing his coffee just as the autopsy report came in through his e-mail. Setting his cup aside, he viewed the photographs and read through the notes. He wasn’t surprised that the coroner confirmed what the prelim had suggested: Camille Renard, eight or nine weeks pregnant, had died of asphyxiation due to having her air supply cut off by a garrote that was uneven in texture. The cuts and abrasions on her neck were deeper in some spots, a pattern clear.
But there was an oddity, too. The ME had discovered scars on Camille’s back, tiny lines crisscrossing her shoulders and lower, mostly healed, certainly not part of the attack that killed her.
He frowned, made a note, and kept reading.
As he perused the report, ugly memories assailed him, gruesome images from another case where victims were killed in a like manner. He typed the name of that killer into his computer, just as his partner paused in the doorway.
“Father John,” Bentz said, eyeing the screen.
Montoya froze at the mention of a serial killer who had terrorized the city years before. “He’s dead. You took care of that. Remember?”
He pointed to the computer monitor where a picture of the first victim of the serial killer, known as Father John, appeared. Cherie Bellechamps, a local prostitute, had had the misfortune of meeting the twisted psycho masquerading as a priest, only to come to a horrifying, grisly end.
“Maybe.”
“Holy Christ, Father John has to be dead.” Montoya thought of the madman, a tall, good-looking man with a sordid penchant for killing. Bentz had shot him dead in the swamp. Right?
“Same weapon.” Bentz had come to the same conclusion as Montoya: Camille Renard had been killed with a rosary used as a garrote.
“Jesus, don’t even go there.” Montoya didn’t like the dread crawling through him. “It’s been years. What, ten? Twelve?”
“About that.” Bentz’s brow furrowed.
“But Father John killed prostitutes, or people he thought were whores.” Montoya was still shaking his head.
“Maybe a nun who got herself pregnant qualifies.”
“He’s dead, man!” Montoya thought Bentz was definitely barking up the wrong tree.
“Never found his body.”
“Well, shit, so what? It was the goddamned swamp. You nailed him!” Montoya felt his blood pressure rise. He wanted that son of a bitch dead. Forever. “Besides, in this case, the MO is way different. The killer didn’t leave any C-notes with Ben Franklin’s eyes blacked out sitting around, the way that other sick bastard did. Nobody’s complained about a priest running around in sunglasses. And the biggy—Camille Renard wasn’t raped. No sign of sexual trauma, according to the autopsy report. Father John got off on raping his victims as well as killing them.”
“You’re right,” Bentz said, “but still—”
“I’m tellin’ ya, this isn’t the work of a serial killer,” Montoya said. “This murder”—he tapped Camille Renard’s autopsy report with one finger—“it’s personal. The killer knew her.”
Bentz tugged at his tie. From his pinched eyes and washed-out face, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, which was probably right on. Bentz’s infant daughter was colicky, kept Bentz and his wife, Olivia, up at all hours. “Just a thought.”
“Yeah, well, a bad one,” Montoya said. To prove his point, he opened the computer image of Camille Renard as she’d been found in the yellowed wedding dress, lying near the base of the altar. Then he put the two photos side by side, Camille beside the battered body of Cherie Bellechamps spread-eagle on the dingy sheets of a cheap motel room bed. There were other photographs as well, and he clicked through them, searching for any link to the other victims of Father John, a nutcase if ever there was one.
“I hope he’s dead,” Bentz said fervently, then, dragging his gaze from the computer screen, added, “I’ve got one lead. Found the wireless service Camille Renard used and got the records for her BlackBerry. The cell phone company sent them over this morning.”
That was a start. “You have a chance to go through them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And?”
Bentz laid the list of telephone numbers on Montoya’s desk. “Most are what we expected—calls to her sister and to O’Toole, of course. To the orphanage, where she worked, and even a call here”—he pointed to one number in the list—“to the parish.” He slid his finger lower, to another number. “The only one that is a question mark is to a prepaid cell phone. Get this, I already talked to the store where it was purchased, by cash, of course, but the person who bought it was none other than Camille Renard.”
“So she had two cell phones?”
“Unless someone posed as her or she bought it and gave it to someone else,” Bentz said. “They’ve got security cameras in the store and keep the tapes for several months. Later today I’m gonna review the tape for the day it was purchased, just to make sure Camille was the buyer. If someone else was impersonating her, we’ve got ourselves a lead to follow. And if it was Camille Renard, where the hell are the damned phones?”