T
he call came in not long after midnight.
Montoya groaned as he rolled across the bed and answered his cell. While his wife, Abby, burrowed under the blankets, he kept his voice down and slid out of bed as he had a hundred times before. He was a detective with the New Orleans Police Department. Odd hours and late-night calls were part of his job.
“What now?” Abby asked, her voice muffled before she tossed the blankets off and shoved a tangle of hair from her eyes as he hung up.
“Dead woman. A nun. Possible homicide.”
Abby pushed herself upright, propped her back against the pillows, and clicked on the light. “A nun?”
“According to the officer who responded to a nine-one-one call.” He slid into a pair of battered jeans that he’d tossed over the foot of the bed, then found a clean T-shirt in the closet and pulled it over his head.
“Why would anyone kill a nun?” She scraped her hair back from her face, but wild curls sprang loose.
“Don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.” He flashed his wife a humorless grin and thought back to another time when a nun had been killed—that one being his own aunt. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Yeah, right.” She didn’t smile as she tugged at her hair. “Just be careful.”
“Always am.” He started for the door.
“Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, angling her chin toward him, practically begging for a kiss.
“Oh, yeah!” He walked to the closet, found the locked box holding his sidearm, and retrieved his weapon. After strapping on his shoulder holster, he slid his arms through his leather jacket and started for the door.
“You can be a miserable SOB when you want to be,” she charged.
“I
always
want to be.”
“I know.” But her eyes twinkled and the reddish blond curls that framed her face were sexy as hell. “You’re a father now, so . . . don’t take any unnecessary risks, okay? I want Benjamin to know his daddy.”
He snapped his Glock into place, then crossed the room and pushed her back onto the mattress. “So do I.” He stretched his body over hers and kissed her hard, his tongue probing her mouth, his hands splayed wide across her backside. “Wait for me,” he whispered against her ear.
“Not on your life, Detective,” she said, but there was a smile in her voice, and he had to keep his thoughts on the coming investigation to control the tightness in his groin and the rock-hard response she always elicited from him. One interested arch of her eyebrows could cause a reaction deep inside of him. Man, did he have it bad.
“Pussy-whipped,” his brother, Cruz, had commented on more than one occasion.
In this case, Cruz was right.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be ready.”
“Oh, God, save it, Montoya,” she countered, and cocooned herself in the blankets again, covering her auburn curls with a pillow. “And whatever you do, don’t wake Benjamin, okay? Otherwise I’ll have to kill you.” Again her voice was muffled, but he got the message. He had no intention of waking their three-month-old son.
Smiling as he left the room, Montoya nearly tripped over Hershey, their big lug of a chocolate lab who, always on guard near the bedroom door, scrambled to his big paws and stood, blocking the hallway, his tail thumping against an antique sideboard. As ever, Hershey was ready for anything, especially to take Montoya’s place in the bed.
“Forget it, okay? She needs her beauty sleep.”
“I heard that!” she said through the open door.
Hershey took her voice as an open invitation and galloped into the bedroom. A small dark shadow, the skittish cat, Ansel, leaped from the sideboard and followed the dog inside.
“Great.” Montoya was struggling with his shoes. He didn’t have time to call the dog back and figured Abby could deal with the animals. With bluish night-lights as his guide, he headed through his long, shotgun-style home, passing through the kitchen and living room to reach the front door. The night was muggy. Thick. The smell of the sluggish Mississippi hung heavy in the air. Rain was falling hard, running in the street as he jogged across his soggy yard to the driveway and slid onto the familiar leather seat of his Mustang. He closed the door, jammed his key into the ignition, and the engine roared to life.
Wondering what the hell had gone down at the conservative church, he hit the wipers, then gunned the engine. No siren. No lights. Just the windshield wipers slapping away the rain as the car’s radio played and the familiar voice of Dr. Sam, a late-night psychologist, wafted through the speakers. Frowning, he drove the familiar streets and recalled another case in which the host, Samantha Walker, was the intended victim. Fortunately, Dr. Sam was still around to help the people who called in to her show.
Traffic was sparse as he rolled through the wet, muggy night. Montoya arrived at St. Marguerite’s to find squad cars, lights flashing, parked at angles on the street. A fire truck dominated the circular drive, with an emergency unit idling under one of the massive live oaks surrounding the building.
Montoya double-parked and headed toward the cathedral, a looming edifice with spires, bell tower, and tracery windows reflecting the strobing red and blue lights of the parked vehicles. Gargoyles perched high on the gutters, dark, dragonlike sculptures eyeing the sacred grounds with malicious intent, their evil presence in stark contrast to the cross rising high over the highest church steeple.
He paused at the wide double doors, long enough to log into the crime scene and receive directions from one of the uniformed cops controlling the scene. Quickly, he made his way around the larger area of the cathedral proper to a side door and down a short hallway to the smaller chapel, which was tucked between the massive church and what appeared to be a garden.
He stepped inside, and a wave of nostalgia pushed him back to his youth, when his mother would take him and his siblings to Mass every Sunday. The smell of lingering incense and burning candles, their tiny flames offering a flickering, shadowed light, the hushed voices, the cavernous room with its narrow stained-glass windows.
He glanced up at the huge crucifix, and, more from habit than any lingering sense of conviction, Montoya sketched the sign of the cross over his chest.
Officers were talking in hushed tones to several people near the back of the chapel, but Montoya ignored them as he spied Rick Bentz, his partner for many of the years Montoya had been with the NOPD, standing near the altar.
Bentz was at least fifteen years older than Montoya, nearly another generation. Married to his second wife, he had a baby under a year old, and the lack of sleep showed in the lines on Bentz’s wide face and the flecks of gray in his hair. He still had a limp from a previous accident, but otherwise Bentz’s body was honed to that of a heavyweight boxer. Tonight Bentz wore jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket, and a dark expression, his gaze narrowed on the floor near the altar.
As Montoya hurried along a wide aisle, he saw the victim lying in front of the first row of pews. Her face was covered by an altar cloth, only tangles of dark hair showing on the stone floor. Her body seemed to be posed, arms folded over her chest, fingers twined in a wooden rosary. She was wearing a yellowed, nearly tattered wedding gown, her feet bare, a silver band around the ring finger of her left hand.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“One of the nuns here,” Bentz said. “Sister Camille.”
“Killed here? At the altar?”
Like a sacrificial lamb.
“Think so. There are some signs of a struggle, scrapes on her feet, a torn fingernail.” Bentz pointed to her right hand. “Hopefully she clawed her attacker and the son of a bitch’s skin is under her nails.”
Could they get so lucky as to have a sample of the killer’s DNA? Montoya doubted it.
“We haven’t found a secondary crime scene yet.” Bentz looked around the chapel, to the doors. “But, hell, this is a big place.”
And a helluva spot for a murder,
Montoya thought, eyeing the massive crucifix towering above the Communion table.
“The cathedral, convent, and grounds take up more than a city block,” Bentz said, still scowling.
“Gated, right? Locked.”
“Everything’s locked at night, even the main doors to the cathedral. Either he snuck in before lockdown or he’s a part of the community.”
Montoya frowned at the draped body. The woman was slim, her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers twined around a rosary. “We got pictures of this?”
“Yeah.”
Montoya yanked on a pair of latex gloves, bent down, and lifted the long, thin altar cloth to see the fixed, beautiful stare of the dead woman.
A woman he knew.
Intimately.
Son of a bitch.
Sucker punched, he drew in a sharp breath. Blood congealed in his body. For a second, he thought he might be sick.
“You said she was Sister Camille?”
“Yeah. That’s what the mother superior called her. Her legal name is—”
“Camille Renard.” Montoya squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Trying to gain some equilibrium. How had this happened? Why? Jesus, he didn’t even know she was in the city. He had to force his eyes open again. Cammie’s pale visage and glassy eyes met his. “Bloody damned hell,” he whispered between clenched teeth.
“You know her?”
“Knew her. A long time ago.” A flash of memory, one he’d rather forget, sliced through his brain. Camille Renard. So full of life. So fun-loving. So . . . capricious. The most unlikely woman he’d ever know to take the vows to become a nun. “I went to high school with Camille Renard.”
“Oh, shi—for the love of God.” Bentz’s eyes darkened with concern. “Just don’t tell me you dated her.”
Montoya felt his jaw set even harder. “Okay, I won’t.”
“But you did.”
“In high school.”
Just long enough for him to get laid and for her to lose her virginity.
S
ister Maura slid between the sheets of her single bed and set her glasses on the tiny side table, nearly knocking over the stack of books she had positioned under the wall sconce. Her mattress, as stiff and old as the hills, creaked with her weight. She fingered her prayer book, the one she kept under the bedclothes, nestled close to her thigh, but she didn’t close her eyes.
Through the small window, lights were flashing blue and red, strobing from the police cruisers parked outside and washing against the wall by the door. The white walls were now tinged with pulsing colors, the small crucifix mounted over the door in stark relief.
Her heart seemed to beat in counterpoint to the flashing lights.
Good.
She smiled in the darkness, her fingers ruffling the worn pages of the prayer book, but she didn’t pray, didn’t offer up one psalm or hymn. Not now; not when there was so much going on, so much excitement.
Muted voices whispered along the ancient corridors and under her door.
She was excited and couldn’t help herself.
Telling herself to stay in bed, to feign sleep, or if someone had seen her, say that she’d been in the restroom, she fought the urge to get up again. She could even say it was her period that had caused her to wake; no one would know.
Or would they?
She sometimes wondered if the reverend mother, that old hag straight out of the Middle Ages, kept track of all the girls’ menstrual cycles. It wouldn’t surprise Maura. After all, this place was rigid with a capital
R
, and Sister Charity was tied to her regimen as if it were truly God’s word.
Seriously?
God cared about what time a person got up in the morning? Ate breakfast? Fasted? Maura didn’t buy it. Nor did she believe that he cared what kind of books she read, or how she dressed, or if she cleaned her chamber spotlessly. She just didn’t see God as a time keeper or a jailor.
But the reverend mother did.
It was just such a pain.
But not for Maura; not forever.
Saint Marguerite’s was just a dark stepping stone to her goal, one she would soon pass. She just had to be patient and pretend obedience for a little while longer.
Angrily she tossed back the stiff white sheets. She flipped her unruly braid over her shoulder and slid out of the bed. The floor was cool and smooth against her soles. With a glance at the unlocked door, Maura tiptoed to the window to look outside. Her room had a corner window, and if she stood on tiptoe, she could look over the roof of the cloister into the garden in one direction and, if she craned her neck, to the side of the convent and over the thick walls to the street where she saw a news van rolling down the street, its headlights reflecting on the wet pavement.
She smiled in the darkness as the bells began to toll again.
Maybe now the sins of St. Marguerite’s would be exposed.
Montoya’s throat tightened as he stared at Camille Renard’s bloodless face. Still beautiful, even in death, her skin was smooth, unmarred, her big eyes staring upward and fixed, seeing nothing. Never again.
His insides churned and his jaw hardened as he thought of how he’d known her in high school.
Vibrant.
Flirty.
Smart.
And hot as hell.
“Damn it,” he whispered under his breath. What happened here?
He tried to focus, to stay in the here and now, to ignore the images of Camille as a teenager that ran through his brain.
“Hey!” Bentz was staring at him. “You okay?”
“Fine,” he lied. “What the hell happened here?” He let his gaze fall from her face, to the bloodstained neckline of the tattered gown. Deep crimson drops in a jewel-like pattern.
“Don’t know yet,” Bentz said, his eyes still hard and assessing. “Look, Montoya, if you knew her, you shouldn’t be involved in this investigation.”
He ignored Bentz’s suggestion. For now, he was on the case. Until he heard from the captain or the DA or someone higher up than his partner, he wasn’t budging. “It’s hard for me to think of her as a nun.” He raked unsteady fingers through his hair.
“You hear what I said?”
“Yeah, yeah, but I’m not going to do anything to compromise the case.” Montoya’s gaze was trained on Cammie’s still form, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d known her assailant. Had she seen the attack coming? Or had her killer been a stranger?
It wasn’t the first time he’d been at a crime scene where a member of the convent had been killed; his aunt had suffered and died at the hands of a maniac during an earlier case Montoya had investigated, the very case in which he’d met his wife.
A cold finger of déjà vu slid down his spine. He glanced at Bentz, who scowled darkly, the way he always did when he was lost in thought.
The church bells tolled.
One in the morning.
Montoya crouched beside the victim and stared at her still-beautiful face, then glanced at the bloodied lace of her gown. “What’s with the wedding dress?”
“Don’t know yet.”
He motioned to the tiny drops of red that discolored the neckline of the old lace.
“The vic’s blood? He took the time to drop her blood on the dress?”
“My guess,” Bentz said.
“What kind of freak are we dealing with?”
“Sick. Twisted.” Bentz’s eyes looked tired, the crow’s-feet near his eyes pronounced. “Aren’t they all?”
“Yeah.”
“Looks like our guy made some kind of necklace with her blood.”
“Or his,” Montoya thought aloud as his gaze ran over the tattered folds of the gown.
“Nah. We couldn’t get that lucky that he left anything.”
“She raped?”
“Don’t know yet.” Bentz frowned. “I think most nuns who haven’t been married are virgins.”
Montoya’s guts tightened. He closed his mind to the memory of he and Camille on the short sofa in her parents’ home when they were away, wouldn’t think of her beautiful breasts, firm, with dark, aroused nipples. He studied the yellowed gauze of the wedding dress and shook his head. “So where are her other clothes, the ones she was wearing before she put on this dress?” He frowned. “Or did the killer dress her after the attack?”
“Doesn’t look like it was done after she was dead. As for her clothes, I’ve got a couple of guys looking. Best guess is that she would have been in her nightgown. The convent’s schedule is pretty strict. Lights-out and in bed at ten. We’re not sure on time of death, but the body was discovered around midnight. The woman who found her heard the parish church bells striking off the hours.”
Montoya glanced beyond the pews at the small group of witnesses gathered near the back of the chapel. The priest and one nun were fully dressed, while a younger woman shivered beneath an oversized cape. Her hair was wet, and her eyes had that hollow, glazed look of a person in shock. Something about her was vaguely familiar, and Montoya felt his nerves tighten with dread.
What the hell was this?
“The younger one, Sister Lucia, is the one who found the vic. Claimed she heard ‘something,’ but it was nothing she could really explain. The upshot was she got out of bed to check and found Sister Camille.”
Sister Lucia.
Sister Camille.
Son of a bitch, this is getting worse and worse.
He didn’t say it; instead he pointed out the obvious. “The older nun’s wearing a habit.”
Bentz nodded. “Not the most progressive parish.”
Montoya, still crouched, took a last look at the victim. Around Camille’s long, pale neck were a series of contusions and deep bruises, as if she’d been garrotted. Unbidden came the memory of nuzzling that neck, kissing the hollow behind her ear. His stomach knotted.
What kind of monster had done this?
And why? Who had Camille pissed off? Or had she been a random target?
Straightening, he shifted his attention back to the tight group of people sequestered behind the last pew. A uniformed cop was talking to the older woman in the nun’s habit as Sister Lucia listened in, huddled under the cloak. The sixtyish priest with thinning gray hair and rimless glasses had a rumpled look, and even in the dim light, wrinkles were visible upon his high forehead.
“So Sister Lucia found the body. That must’ve been a shock.” Montoya studied the shivering girl, a waif with a pale face and wet ringlets. Yep, he recognized her, too. Lucia Costa. This was damned surreal. The knot in his gut tightened.
“After Sister Lucia yelled for help,” Bentz said, “the mother superior, Sister Charity—that’s the older woman—she responded.” Bentz hitched his chin toward the bigger nun, a mound of black fabric accented by white coif secured by a wimple. “Charity Varisco.” Again Bentz double-checked the notes on his small pad. “She heard Sister Lucia screaming and came running. When she got here, she tried to revive the victim and sent the younger one to call the police and get the parish priest.”
“Who put the altar cloth over the vic?”
“The reverend mother,” Bentz said, and when Montoya opened his mouth to protest any alteration of the crime scene, he held up a hand. “I know, I know. Already discussed. She claims she didn’t think about contaminating or altering the crime scene. She just wanted to be respectful of the vic.”
Montoya cast another glance at the woman in question. Tall and big-boned, mouth set, eyes glaring at the police. “What’s the reverend mother’s relationship to the victim?”
“Just what it seems. She met Sister Camille two years ago when Camille entered the convent.”
“What about the priest?”
“
Priests,
plural. The older one’s Father Paul Neland. He’s the senior priest and lives here on the grounds in an apartment next to the younger one—Father Francis O’Toole.”
Montoya’s head snapped up at the name. “Father O’Toole? Frank—where is he?”
“Already separated out for his statement. Doing the same with the rest of them.”
Two officers were, in fact, starting to force the tight little knot apart. Sister Lucia looked at him pleadingly, then hurried off while the mother superior was ushered in a different direction.
Montoya felt a headache starting to throb at the base of his skull. Too many familiar faces here. First Camille, then Lucia, and now Frank O’Toole? What were the chances of that? “What do you know about the priests?”
“The older guy, Father Paul Neland, has been here about ten years, second only to the mother superior, who’s been in charge for nearly twenty years. Before that, she and Neland worked in the same parish once before, up north—Boston, I think. O’Toole’s the short-timer. Less than five years.”
“I need to speak to him. Frank O’Toole,” Montoya said.
Bentz let out a long whistle and stared at his partner, as if reading Montoya’s mind. “Oh, Christ, Montoya. Don’t tell me you know him, too?”
“Oh, yeah,” Montoya admitted, not liking the turn of his thoughts. “I know him.”
Sitting cross-legged on her rumpled bed, Valerie tried to turn on her stubborn computer one last time. “Come on, come on,” she ordered the struggling laptop. It made grinding noises that caused her to wince as she waited for the screen to flicker to life.
It was nearly one-thirty in the morning. The rain had stopped, and moonlight filtering through high clouds cast an eerie glow on the damp bushes outside her window.
Her body was tired, but her mind was still spinning. Wired. She wanted to check her e-mail one last time before shutting off the lights and hoping sleep would come. Though it probably wouldn’t. Wretched insomnia. Ever since she was a teenager, sleep eluded her if she was troubled. She’d tried everything from sleeping pills to working out to the point of exhaustion, but nothing seemed to allow her sleep for more than a night or two.
It’s the divorce.
And your worries about Cammie.
As she waited for the screen to flicker on, she caught a glimpse of the single picture of Slade she’d kept, one of him riding his favorite horse, a rangy gray gelding named Stormy, their scruffy hound dog Bo trailing behind. Silhouetted against a sun that bled purple and orange along the ridge, Slade Houston looked every bit the part of a lonesome Texas cowboy. She’d taken the picture herself and had decided to keep it to remember her marriage. While she’d burned the rest—snapshots and professional photographs taken at their small wedding—she hadn’t been able to destroy this one. She’d told herself it was because it was the only picture she had of Bo.
But deep down, she knew better.
“Masochist,” she muttered, reaching out and slapping the photograph facedown onto the stack of bills that reminded her of the rocky financial condition of the bed-and-breakfast. She didn’t want to think about her sorry bank account right now, no more than she wanted to consider her disintegrated marriage. She glanced again at the facedown picture frame. Tomorrow she’d toss the photo into the trash.