“I don’t know about this,” Edwina said, her voice wavering as Lucia shouldered open the double doors and stepped outside. A stiff wind smelling of the Mississippi hit her full in the face. Clouds scudded over the moon, dimming the stars.
Lucia didn’t wait for the other nun but hurried along the pathway, through open gates and into the cemetery.
Please God, be with me.
She tried to reach out to the Lord despite the evil whisper that prodded her along.
Edwina, who had been lagging behind, caught up with her just inside the cemetery gate.
“Are you out of your mind?” Edwina’s pale eyes drilled into hers as the tombs and crypts impeded their paths.
Maybe,
Lucia thought, but didn’t have time to consider her sanity. She didn’t answer, just picked up the pace, running now. Although the voice of the demon no longer propelled her, she knew precisely where she was going, and she was afraid of what she might find.
Please let me be wrong,
she thought wildly, her heart racing as the night wind teased her hair.
Let this be a mistake!
Lucia’s steps didn’t falter as her eyes locked upon the angel statue from the vision. An unworldly gray, her wings were spread wide, her arms uplifted, dirt and grit trailing from her eyes like the tracks of her tears.
Just like in the vision.
And at the statue’s base, in front of the tomb, lay the still form of a dead woman.
Sister Edwina turned the corner behind her and let out a skull-shattering scream.
Thin moonlight shimmered over the corpse. This woman, like Camille, was dressed in a tattered wedding gown, its gauzy folds lifting with the gusts of wind that scraped through the cemetery, rattling the branches of the trees, moaning softly.
“Holy Father, no!” Edwina cried as Lucia bent down to see if there was a breath of life in the small body. Edwina let out a low, grief-filled moan. “Not Asteria . . .” She wrapped her arms around her midsection and fell to her knees, weeping.
Sister Asteria stared up at them, her gaze fixed on the night sky.
Lucia’s hands flew to Asteria’s wrist, searching for signs of life . . . hoping . . . praying.
But Asteria had no pulse.
She didn’t breathe.
She lay motionless.
Her soul, presumably, already rising.
Tears rained from Lucia’s eyes.
A prayer came to her lips, its cadence broken by her sobs.
And the midnight bells were finally silent.
“
D
on’t tell me, an old classmate of yours?” Bentz said as Montoya crouched beside the body and stared down at the cold form of Sister Asteria. In death, her skin had taken on a bluish tint, and her fixed gaze was as lifeless as all the tombs surrounding them in the graveyard.
“Funny,” Montoya snorted.
“Well?” So Bentz was half serious.
“No, Bentz,” he said as he straightened, relieved. “The first time I met her was during the interviews.” God, had that been only a couple of nights ago? It seemed like a lifetime.
“Good.”
More than good. Knowing so many people involved in a homicide was beyond surreal; it caused him to think that he might be the common denominator. But now, with Asteria McClellan’s death, that had changed.
“This is a damned nightmare,” Bentz said under his breath as they walked away from the spot where the ME was quickly examining Asteria’s body before stuffing it into a body bag and hauling it away.
Giving the crime scene a wide berth, Lynn Zaroster approached. She flashed Montoya a humorless smile. They’d been partnered up recently, while Bentz had been on leave recuperating from the injury that had nearly cost him his job as well as his life. Once Bentz was reinstated, Zaroster had been partnered with Brinkman, whom she detested. Zaroster was the one person in the department who wanted Bentz to retire so she could partner up with Montoya again.
Now she said, “The press is wanting answers. Pronto. They’re talking serial.”
“Already? Jesus.” Bentz shook his head.
“A little premature to label the killer as a serial,” Bentz said, but Montoya didn’t agree. Just because the texts suggested at least three vics with a cooling-off period between the murders didn’t make it so. Who really knew the mind of a true psychopath? They couldn’t be pigeonholed. Two nuns killed in the same method screamed
serial
to him, either the start of a rampage or, maybe, the killer had struck before.
“Brenda Convoy is pretty persistent,” Zaroster said, surveying the scene and frowning, her face illuminated by a few flashes from cameras and the pale, watery light from a shrouded moon. Montoya frowned. He’d never liked the pushy reporter with WKAM, but then he wasn’t too close to anyone in the press.
“I told her to wait for a statement from the PIO,” Zaroster said, “and she looked like she wanted to spit little green apples.”
“That’s shit little green apples,” Brinkman said, correcting her.
Zaroster’s jaw clenched.
Brinkman didn’t notice. “And that’s just too damned bad. Even Convoy knows she can’t get anything without talking to Sinclaire.” Tina Sinclaire was the latest in a string of public information officers with the department.
“What’ve ya got?” Montoya asked.
“So far nothing.” Even Brinkman looked perturbed, some of his smirk having disappeared. “This is a bad one,” he admitted.
“Hey, do you mind?” Bonita Washington, the head crime scene investigator, demanded. “We got a scene to work.” She was big and black and didn’t take lip from anyone. Her hair was scraped away from a face shiny with perspiration, and she was carrying a clipboard in one hand and a small toolbox in the other.
“Sooorry,” Brinkman said with a condescending sneer, his attitude clearly back in place. “We were just trying to do our job.”
“So do it already,” Washington said, her green eyes snapping, “and let me do mine.” She turned away to confer with Santiago as the photographer snapped pictures, flashes pulsing eerily, lights splaying for milliseconds on the crypts and statues of the graveyard.
Brinkman pulled a face. “Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“I heard that, Brinkman, and yeah, I don’t like being jerked out of the house in the middle of the night.” Washington eased her way closer to the statue under which Asteria had been found.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the Lone Ranger, here,” Brinkman muttered. When he elicited no response, he gave up trying to needle her and turned his attention back to the case.
“So what’s the deal? Again the same nun finds the body?” Brinkman asked Montoya as he nervously searched his pockets for a crumpled pack of Marlboros. Deftly, he shook out a cigarette and jabbed the filter tip between his lips as they walked through the cemetery with its sun-bleached tombs rising from the ground. Here in New Orleans, the dead were buried aboveground, as most of the city was at sea level or lower. No one wanted dead grandma coming back to visit in case of a flood that could wash away the ground and cause previously subterranean caskets to float away from their final resting places. “What’s up with that, the same person finding the corpse before it’s even gotten cold?” The unlit cigarette bobbed as he spoke.
“Don’t know yet,” Montoya said. “I’ll find out. I’m questioning Sister Lucia first.”
“Seems like she knows more than she’s saying.”
They reached the gate to the cemetery and walked through. Brinkman snapped his lighter open and paused to light up, the scent of burning tobacco tantalizing, the red tip of his cigarette burning like a tiny beacon in the night.
“What about the priest?” Brinkman asked.
“I’ve got him. As soon as his lawyer shows up,” Bentz said.
Brinkman let out a plume of smoke. “You been to the vic’s room?”
“Not yet. Zaroster’s got it.”
“I’ll go with her,” Brinkman said. “That way the mother superior won’t give herself a coronary to think a man’s alone in the bedrooms of the sacred virgins.” He turned away, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake.
“Insufferable,” Bentz said as they headed inside.
“Beyond.” Montoya wended his way along the path to the wide double doors leading into the hallway connecting the cathedral to the convent.
Any sense of propriety or decorum at St. Marguerite’s had fled when the 911 call had come into the department and cops had been sent to the scene.
Now the staid old cathedral and grounds were a madhouse.
Not only the cemetery where the body had been discovered, but also the chapel, cathedral, outbuildings, and convent itself had been roped off, on lockdown. Police were crawling over the old brick buildings. The press, ever alert, was on hand, reporters standing in front of the cathedral, with camera crew and lights, alerting the city of another homicide at the nunnery.
The circumstances were almost identical to Camille Renard’s murder.
Another nun.
Another bridal gown.
Another altar cloth placed over her face by the reverend mother.
Another ring of jewel-like beads of blood in the fabric around her throat.
This time, though, the killer had struck in the cemetery rather than the chapel.
Why?
Already the interviews were being set up, the parish sealed off, everyone within the walls being questioned. Other cops had been dispersed into the neighborhood, still more patrolling the streets, all hoping to find someone suspicious, something out of the ordinary that would help them nail the son of a bitch.
Of course, the killer could already be long gone, having made good his escape before the police arrived.
Montoya walked along the hallway to the reverend mother’s office. Once again, the body had been found at midnight, the chapel bells still ringing. The first officer had arrived eight minutes later, just long enough for Sister Lucia to phone the police and wake the reverend mother, in that order, much to Sister Charity’s dismay.
Sister Lucia.
Again.
What was that all about? Brinkman was right—her discovery of both bodies put her under suspicion. Along with all the “how did that happen?”
Montoya had arrived at twelve twenty-seven. He’d parked near the cemetery as a news van from a local station had rolled down the street, nosing into a spot near one of the emergency vehicles.
There was a surreal and chilling quality to this murder, another layer.
He, and the rest of the department, had believed that the murder of the first victim, Sister Camille, had been an isolated case. He’d thought she was killed because she was pregnant, involved with a priest, or because of some other personal reason. He’d believed her to be a target, not a random victim, because whoever had killed her had taken time with the crime, ensuring that she was wearing a wedding dress, killing her at close range, feeling her life ooze from her body.
But he hadn’t suspected there would be other victims, that Camille might just be the first trophy of a serial killer. Man, he didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to think that someone off his nut was into picking off nuns.
Not just nuns, but sisters who lived here, at St. Marguerite’s.
Unless there was another connection between the two women.
His shoes rang down the old hallways as he made his way to the rooms set up for interviews. Once again, he was going to spend the wee hours of the morning talking with the inhabitants of St. Marguerite’s, and it would probably be worse than before.
This time they knew a killer was in their midst.
And, apparently, he wasn’t going away.
“Wake up, sunshine, let’s go!”
Somewhere, as if far in the distance, Val heard Slade’s voice.
“Hey, Val!”
Her eyes flew open, and she noticed sunlight streaming through the windows. Slade, dressed, his hair wet from a recent shower, was towering over her bed. Bo, who had climbed onto the foot of the iron four-poster, lifted his head and thumped his tail wildly as Slade scratched his ears.
“What time is it?” she said, rolling over the bed and looking at the clock. “Six-thirty?” She felt as if she hadn’t slept a wink.
“Get a move on.” Through the blankets, he slapped her on the butt.
“Hey! What’s the rush? I thought you said eight o’clock or nine or . . .” She blinked her eyes open, the bleariness receding. “How did you get in here?”
“Freya gave me a key.”
“Remind me to wring her neck.”
“Run through the shower. I’ll make the coffee.”
“Or maybe I’ll just shoot her. Easier.”
“Come on!”
“I don’t like to be bullied.”
“I remember.” His voice held a note of nostalgia, but before she could pin him in her gaze, he walked out of the room.
What was his rush?
Not that she didn’t feel the urgency to find out what happened to Camille, but she’d spent all night and most of the wee morning hours studying Camille’s diary, trying to understand the sister she now felt she’d never really known.
She rolled off her bed and started stripping out of her oversized T-shirt. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the antique mirror on the counter and cringed when she saw her wild hair and red-rimmed eyes. Her lips were devoid of any color, her eyes had huge circles under them, and the skin beneath her freckles was a sickly white. Rather than linger on the image, she walked to the shower, taking a few seconds to wash and rinse her hair, then snapped it back into a wet ponytail. A dash of lipstick and blush, a swab of mascara, and her makeup was complete. She threw on her clothes and walked barefoot into the living room to the smell of brewing coffee. In the living area, the television was on, the volume low on the local news, and Slade was just coming into the kitchen through the back door with Bo at his heels.
“Dog’s been fed and let out. Grab a to-go cup and let’s roll.” He’d already grabbed Camille’s diary within its plastic bag.
As she poured a cup and added a splash of cream, she saw Slade pause behind the sofa, sipping coffee, his eyes focused on the television screen. “You’d better come see this,” he suggested.
She walked up to stand next to him just as the camera panned over a scene she recognized, the double doors to St. Marguerite’s Cathedral. A reporter stood before the edifice, eyes staring straight into the camera’s lens.
Before she could tune in to what the report was saying, Slade said, “This isn’t an old tape. This is live, Val.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard it on the radio. Your sister’s murder isn’t an isolated case any longer. Another novice has been killed at St. Marguerite’s.”