“You’re sure you won’t want anything?”
“Not now, and if I do, I can come and get it.”
First Cammie, then Val, had climbed down the rough ladder that was built into one side of the garage. Val had pulled the trapdoor shut.
“You’ll be in the convent.”
“I know, but it’s not a prison. I can come and go as I please.”
Val had dusted her hands as they’d walked out the garage door and into the bright Louisiana sun. “I kinda got the idea that once you were in the convent, that was it. There wasn’t much getting out.”
“Maybe back in the Dark Ages. But Sister Charity has told me I can work in the clinic at St. Elsinore’s or with the kids there, if I want to.”
“Do you?”
Cammie had shrugged. As if it hadn’t mattered. “I haven’t the faintest idea. But trust me, Val, if I want to leave, I will. It’s God’s house. There are no locks on the doors.”
Now Val wondered about her sister’s insistence that there was freedom at St. Marguerite’s. It seemed unlikely since Camille herself had referred to the mother superior as “the warden.”
So the locks were all in the minds of those inside the cathedral and convent’s walls. Is that what Camille had inferred?
Valerie wasn’t convinced.
What was the often quoted line? She stood under the shower, and the old pipes moaned again as it came to her. “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage . . .”
As she rubbed the kinks from her neck, she thought of Camille’s diary, the graphic images of sex and submission. Was it possible that she’d confused her obedience to God with submission to men? Had sex and religion been all mixed up in her mind? Were sin and sex synonymous? No, that didn’t make any sense. But what did? Those cryptic notes to herself?
The heart shape with the single word
CALLED
inside?
And what about
TO BF 2 M&M
? To best friend two Em and Em. So why didn’t the message read 2 BF 2 M&M. Why was “to” not put in numerical form like the rest? And wasn’t it BFF? Best friends forever?
She didn’t really know the lingo.
The other message bothered her even more.
“C U N seven, seven, three four R M C V,” she said aloud, the water spraying around her. It meant nothing. Just weird letters put in front of letters. She repeated the message again as steam filled the room. Her mind kept turning the message over and over and . . . Wait! She repeated the scribbled note again. When she said the numbers aloud, she remembered something from her childhood, something from the orphanage at St. Elsinore’s. One little girl, the one who had barred Val from the slide—hadn’t her name been something like Darlene or Eileen?—had said slyly, “You know what seven-seven-three-four is, don’t you?” She looked sideways at her curly headed friend with the massive overbite. “It’s hell.”
The other girl had giggled wildy. “No.”
“Sure.” Glancing over her shoulder to make certain the old nun on the playground was looking the other way, the snotty girl had drawn the numbers with a stick. “Read them backward!”
Overbite had whooped, then placed her pudgy fingers over her mouth and curled her shoulders inward. “You’re right!” she’d whispered, reading the letters in the dust just as the nun, Sister Anne, the kind one on playground duty that day, had looked over.
Quickly, the snotty girl had scribbled through her naughty little note. “Seven-seven-three-four,” she’d said to Valerie, then run off, dropping her stick as the horrid loud bell had clanged that recess was over.
“Hell,” Val said now, and heard Bo give out a sharp, gruff bark. She barely noticed as she remembered the weird notations in the diary.
C U N hell, C V.
So . . . “See you in hell?” Was that what Camille meant? “See you in hell a hundred and five?” What did that mean? In a hundred and five years? No, that wasn’t right.
But it was close. . . . She just had to think hard. She took the loofah to her shoulders, sudsing up, rubbing hard against her skin. “What, Cammie? What were you—”
Bo barked again. More loudly.
And then . . .
Val stopped scrubbing, the loofah tight in her hand, water raining over her. Her ears strained over the sounds of rushing water and the gurgling drain.
Did she hear something?
Her wet skin crinkled.
Her muscles tightened.
Was the sound
inside
the house?
Her throat closed.
There it was again. A soft scrape. Footsteps?
Lather and warm water ran down her back, and she felt a needle of fear prick her brain.
It was probably Slade.
“Hey, I’ll be out in a sec!” she called.
But hadn’t he said to meet him in the foyer of the main house?
Creeaaak.
Definitely the floorboards groaning with someone’s weight.
“Hello?”
She waited, water dripping from her chin and elbows.
No answer.
Nothing.
Just the shower’s spray hitting her body and the tile walls.
She swallowed hard, listening.
Had she locked the back door?
Even latched the screen?
She couldn’t remember.
She rarely locked it during the day, running back and forth to the main house, but at night, throwing the dead bolt was usually automatic . . . except that she’d left Bo on the back porch. Oh, God!
She hadn’t even latched the bathroom door, probably even left it ajar.
Heart pounding, she reached for her towel, and through the frosted glass of the shower, she saw a movement—a shadow in the doorway. A figure in black, not unlike the demon of her dreams, the one with its tiny rodent teeth and malicious eyes.
What!
The hairs on her nape rose.
She shook her head to dispel the image and sucked in her breath, taking in moist, hot air. She wished to hell she had her sidearm. The steam in the room was so thick, but it was beginning to clear and . . .
She heard the shuffle of feet. Definitely feet running, hurrying away, a quick, disturbing gait scurrying through her small house.
Oh, no, you don’t, you bastard!
Throwing the towel around herself, she started to slide through the door.
Bang!
She ducked automatically, expecting the bullet to whiz past her head, and nearly slid into the pedestal sink in the corner. But no bullet bored into the wall or shattered the mirror as she cowered near the toilet.
Heart thudding, she eased toward the door. In here she was trapped. No other exit than the door. The tiny window over the toilet was far too small to slide through. Crouching, she pushed open the door just as she suddenly realized what she’d heard wasn’t the crack of a gun but the hard clap of the screen door slapping against its frame.
“Damn!”
Clutching the towel between her breasts, she hurried into the living room where the gloom of the evening had settled, darkness gathering in the corners.
The room was empty.
Quickly, leaving a trail of wet footprints across the wood floor, she walked through the kitchen to the back door where the screen was now closed and the yard empty, a few lights glowing near the pathway leading to the main house. She stepped out onto the porch and looked around, but she saw no one, just darkness gathering over the city.
Had her imagination, and the conjuring up of a nightmare, gotten the better of her?
Or had someone really been inside, peering through the crack of the bathroom door that she’d left ajar?
She saw Bo, sniffing the grass, getting ready to find the perfect spot to relieve himself, and wondered if he’d barked at the neighbor’s cat or a squirrel, or . . .
Or what?
Why would someone be snooping around the house?
“Come on, boy,” she said when he was finished watering Freya’s favorite clump of daylilies. Tongue lolling, he trotted to the porch and climbed up the steps. “You really should find a better place,” she reprimanded as she patted his head. “Or Freya might cut off your backyard privileges.”
He barked once, a deep rumbling sound, while his tail swept the floorboards of the porch. This bark was different than it had been earlier, and wanting more attention, he shoved his head against her thigh.
“Well, come on in!” Getting goose bumps where her skin was still wet, she let the dog into the kitchen, latched the screen, then retraced her steps, pausing in the living room where Camille’s things were still where she’d left them. A quick look convinced her that Cammie’s memorabilia hadn’t been disturbed.
What the hell had just happened?
Who, if anyone, had been inside?
Why did she feel violated, spied upon?
She glanced toward the window. For a split second, she saw the demon who appeared in her nightmares, the black beast with its tiny, sharp teeth, always ready to pounce.
“Don’t be silly,” she told herself, but double-checked the locks before she made her way to the bedroom to get dressed.
Her cell phone rang again.
She found it on the desk and clicked the TALK button before the third ring.
Once again, no one was there.
“
D
on’t freak out. It’s spaghetti sauce,” one of the uniformed cops explained to Montoya as he, Bentz, and Brinkman signed into the crime scene and noticed the sticky red stains sliding down the wall just inside Grace Blanc’s bedroom door.
The living room was small, not a lot in it. Furniture that had been modern and cool in the seventies now looked tired and worn, a couple of metal tables surrounding a low, green couch and a garage-sale rocker in the corner.
“Good thing,” Brinkman joked with an ugly laugh as he surveyed the oozing red stain. “I was beginning to think it was really bad-smelling, maybe bloody brains or something.”
“Nice,” Bonita Washington, the crime scene team leader, remarked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What are you, in the fourth grade or something? Grow up, Brinkman.”
“Just trying to lighten things up.”
“Oh, sure.” She was having none of his lip. Then again, she didn’t take crap from anyone. “You know, Brinkman, you might try to show some sensitivity for a change.” She was all business as usual.
“Look, it’s tight in here. See what you have to see and leave the rest to us. Okay? The sooner the body is removed, the better for everyone.”
Click!
Eve Marsolet was snapping off photos.
Another guy from the crime lab was dusting for prints, another measuring stains.
They picked their way to a bedroom where all of the action had taken place.
Someone from the ME’s office was already examining the body of the victim—a redhead who lay on her mussed bed, as if she were staring up at the ceiling. Had she been alive. Half dressed, her face contorted in horror and pain, a bloody ring around her neck, scratch marks on her throat where she’d tried to tear off the garrote.
Montoya imagined her last minutes and looked away. Helluva thing. Maybe Abby was right; maybe it was about time he retired.
The room smelled of vanilla and garlic and death—a bad combination, one that had Bentz looking green around the gills. Then again, tough a cop as he was, Bentz always fought nausea at a homicide. He tried to hide it, but Montoya had caught the guy puking just outside a crime scene more than once.
“Time of death?” Montoya asked as the examiner took the body’s temperature.
Frowning thoughtfully, the assistant ME studied his thermometer. “I figure she died sometime around midnight, maybe one o’clock this morning.” He nodded to himself, as if silently confirming what he’d come up with. “Amount of rigor concurs.”
“That’s about the time Mrs. Snoop saw the priest leave,” Brinkman observed.
To the room in general, Montoya said, “Be sure to bag her hands.”
“Yeah, like we wouldn’t.” Lowering the clipboard onto which she’d been scribbling notes, Washington cast an irritated look his way. “Do your job, Detective. I’ll do mine.”
Brinkman’s eyebrows bucked upward. “Ouch,” he mouthed.
Montoya didn’t give a damn. He just wanted to see what was under the vic’s nails.
Bentz was quiet, and Montoya figured he was just battling the urge to purge when his partner said, “Look at this.” He was in the living room, and his face was white as death, his jaw so tight the bone was bulging.
On the table in front of him was a radio and a hundred-dollar bill, the eyes of Ben Franklin blackened by a felt pen.
“Oh, hell and she’s—”
“A red-haired prostitute. Check the station on the radio.”
Montoya knew, deep in his gut, that the digital readout would be the numbers for WSLJ.
“Dr. Sam still does her radio show, doesn’t she? You know, the one where she gives out advice in the middle of the night?” Bentz asked.
“
Midnight Confessions.
Yeah, Abby listens to it sometimes when she’s up feeding the baby.”
Samantha Leeds Wheeler was still on the air, still giving out advice despite the fact that she’d been the target of the insidious killer the police and press had dubbed Father John. A killer who raped and murdered his red-haired victims while listening to her show. He’d always left a hundred-dollar bill with the eyes of Ben Franklin blackened.
Montoya’s gut clenched, and he felt that spooky sensation, a premonition that things were going to get worse before they got better. “Someone better call the radio station and talk to Dr. Sam, see if she’s been getting any strange calls.”
“I’m on my way,” Bentz said, his jaw still set. It had been his shot that had nailed Father John, his bullet that had sent the guy into the depths of the swamp to become, they’d all hoped, gator food.
Since his body had never been recovered and it had been years since his last rampage, they’d all thought—police, press, and populace—that Father John, the serial killer who dressed as a priest to gain his victims’ trust, had died in the brackish waters of the bayou.
Now, it seemed, they’d been wrong.
“Call Dr. Sam? What the fuck for?” Brinkman asked, always a little slow on the uptake; then, as if the light were slowly dawning, he muttered, “Holy shit!” when he spied the defaced C-note on the table and put two and two together. Shaking his bald pate, he added, “Well, ladies and gentleman, it looks like he’s baaaaack.”
“Or someone who knows his MO well enough to be a convincing copycat,” Montoya said, though some of the details of the original crimes the cops had kept from the press. This guy, whoever he was, was informed.
“Five to one it’s Father John,” Brinkman said, biting his lower lip and narrowing his eyes on the defaced hundred-dollar bill.
No one took him up on the bet.
Val had nearly convinced herself that her mind had been playing tricks on her.
Nearly.
But the tight muscles at her nape and the goose pimples running up the back of her arms told her otherwise. Who would trespass in her house? And why?
It had to do with Camille’s death.
In all the time she’d lived here in the carriage house, there had been no intruder, and now, with Camille dead only a few days, someone had intentionally crept inside.
Why?
“Val?”
She nearly jumped out of her skin.
Whirling, almost losing the damned towel as she spun toward the screen door, she spied Slade, freshly showered on the other side of the mesh. Bo was on his feet, tail wagging slowly, nose pressed against the mesh. “Oh, God . . . It’s late. I’m not ready.”
He slid a glance down her body, her fingers coiled in the rough terry cloth that swathed little more than her torso. “You look great to me.”
“Thanks.” Some of her fears dissipated. It was still somewhat light out, warm . . .
She felt his gaze lingering at the cleft of her breasts where her fist was clenched, white knuckled, over the towel.
“Are you gonna let me in or what?” He lifted an eyebrow, and she let out a long sigh.
“Or what,” she said, automatically joking with him as she had in the past, though she wasn’t in the mood for any kind of humor. Her nerves were still strung tight, the cottage seeming to have its own electrical current running through it. She walked swiftly, her bare feet slapping through the puddled footsteps still on the kitchen floor. “Sorry,” she said as she reached the door and flipped open the latch.
“Something wrong?”
“I . . .” Was there? Really? Or was it her imagination? The old demon of her dreams returning to haunt her? “I don’t know . . .”
“What?”
“It seems kind of silly now, but . . . I think someone might have come in while I was taking a shower, although that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I think I saw someone and heard him, but . . .” She threw up her free hand. “Oh, I don’t really know. I’ve been jumpy lately.”
“We all have.” Slade walked into the kitchen, and as he slid onto a bar stool, he said, “Tell me.”
She did. Wrapped in the damned towel, she told him what she’d felt, what she’d heard, and finally ended with “But who knows? It could have been the wind, I suppose, catching the door.”
“And the footsteps?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. My imagination, I guess. Just like the shadow passing by the door. Bo had barked, but it wasn’t really a warning.... Oh, hell, I don’t really know,” Val admitted, frustrated. She thought about telling him of the dream that kept her up at night, of the nightmare with the horrid demon dressed in black and chasing her down rainy alleys and slick, humid streets, holding its glinting chain and whispering, “Husssssh.” Hissing like a snake.
But she didn’t.
In the light of day, the nightmare sounded silly, a terrifying dream that had no bearing on anything and only made her question her sanity. She, who had once been so strong. Fearless. A woman who had worked her way up the ranks to become a detective with the sheriff’s department, a spot once reserved for good old boys. She’d made it!
And now . . . now she was shivering in the heat of the night, and Slade, damn him, reached around and placed an arm over her bare shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re here.” She trembled again; this time it had nothing to do with the cold. The strength of Slade’s arm around her, so familiar yet so foreign, so wanted and so unwanted, caused the trembling deep inside.
“We?” she managed.
“Bo and me.”
“What would I do without the two of you?” she mocked, and he let out a huff.
“I don’t know, woman,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Right.”
He slapped her on the rump, his hand connecting with her towel. “I hate to say this, but get dressed.” His lips curved into that irreverent smile she’d hated because it was so damned irresistible. “Bo and I are going to check out the grounds, run the perimeter, find out if we see any evidence of an intruder.”
Or a ghost,
she thought, for that’s the sensation that had slid through her—that something unworldly had crossed the threshold to her home, intent on doing harm.
She quivered inside again and glanced over at the desk, where her notes were spread and the copies of Cammie’s diary . . . “Oh, no!”
“What?”
But she was already moving to the small nook where her desk was tucked. Across the surface, phone bills, receipts, unopened mail, and reservation slips were stacked in neat piles. The flyer for this weekend’s auction at St. Elsinore’s was still pushed into the pages of the paperback she’d been reading, but that was it.
What was very obviously missing were the copied pages of Cammie’s diary.
The scrawled, lined pages describing Cammie’s most intimate and darkly sexual thoughts were gone. With a sickening thought, she wondered what would happen if someone from the press got Cammie’s notes and printed them in one of the tabloids:
CONFESSIONS OF A MURDERED NUN
, with Cammie’s photograph, one of her in a dark habit with a solemn, reverent expression.
“Oh Lord.” Her eyes scoured the desk and floor, everywhere nearby, though she’d remembered leaving them on her desk. The spot was empty. “Damn it all to hell,” she muttered under her breath; then Slade walked to the desk, asking questions, and she noticed the small black device tucked into the corner of the bookcase near the desk. In the very spot she placed her coffee cup when she was working. “What in the world?”
“What?” Slade asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Barely visible, the thin electronic device was positioned in front of a picture of Cammie, taken during her senior year of high school.
Valerie felt a chill as cold as a Canadian winter.
Slade was next to her in an instant. “What is it?” he asked, his voice laden with worry as she picked it up. “A cell?”
“Uh-huh. A BlackBerry,” she said, and knowing she shouldn’t, she clicked it on. “I think it might be Camille’s.”
Within seconds, the small screen glowed and a picture appeared.
An image of Cammie in the throes of death.
“Nooooo! Holy Christ!” Valerie let out a disbelieving scream as she recognized the image.
Her blood turned to ice, and she dropped the phone as if she’d been burned. “Oh, God, no,” she squeaked as the phone hit the top of the desk, faceup, and she found herself watching a three- or four-second video of her sister, taken just moments before her death.
Cammie stared into the camera, her eyes round with a sheer, horrid terror, her lips blue, her skin white. She gasped, unable to speak, blood oozing from her throat where the garrote, what looked to be a dark-beaded rosary, was cutting off her breath, her very life.
The towel slipped to the floor as Val’s knees gave way, and she started to crumple, would have fallen to the floor except that Slade grabbed her. His strong arm surrounded her waist, and he drew her naked body close, drawing her to her feet, not allowing her to fall.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered against her ear, his hands tangling in her hair.