Her husband’s father’s service weapon, he’d learned from Luke Gierman’s last radio broadcast.
Now, she was inside. He caught her image as he stared through her windows, where the warm patches of light were like beacons in the gathering twilight. She’d made herself a pot of coffee and was sipping from a cup as she moved from one room to the next, talking to her animals, turning on the television, working at the table where she’d laid out negatives and pictures. Though he’d barely heard the ringing of her phone, he’d watched as she’d picked up the kitchen extension and talked without a hint of a smile.
The conversation was probably about her dead husband.
Studying her, he wondered how she could have married a man as base as Gierman, a man who had publicly cheated on her and had belittled her on the air.
Mary did you a favor,
he thought, remembering the feel of the gun blast in the girl’s hand as she’d killed Gierman, who had been frantic, his eyes bulging in fear, his head shaking wildly as if in so doing he could stop the inevitable.
Gierman’s body had jerked when the gun had gone off. Instantly blood had begun to pump the life from him. Yes, Mary, the virgin, had done the world a favor in taking Gierman’s life. And then she’d made the ultimate sacrifice herself.
He felt a little buzz in his blood as he remembered the feeling of power, of justice, that had swept over him.
From his hiding spot he saw Abby throw out a hip and wrap one arm under her breasts as she cocked her head and held the phone against her ear. Curling, red-gold hair fell to her shoulders, not the dark mahogany color of Faith’s, but just as inviting. Hot. Fiery.
He swallowed hard as rain caught in his eyelashes and dripped down his nose.
She twisted her head, as if rotating the kinks from her neck, and his erection sprouted as he looked at the column of her throat, the circle of bones at its base.
He rubbed the tips of his gloved fingers together in anticipation and licked his lips, tasting his own sweat and the wash of rain water. God, she was beautiful. So much like Faith. For a second, he closed his eyes, let the ache within, the wanting control him; felt the rain, God’s tears wash over him, bless him on his mission.
I will not fail,
he silently vowed, then opened his eyes to look at her beautiful face, but she’d moved. She wasn’t framed in the living room window any longer.
Where was she?
Panic jetted through him as he checked every window…no sign of her. Had she decided to step outside? But he wasn’t ready. He reached into his pocket, felt the handle of the hunting knife and wondered if he’d have to use it.
Heart pumping, his fingers surrounding the hilt, he started to move.
Suddenly she appeared, walking toward the windows from an interior room near the central hallway. He relaxed a second. She was heading into the dining area, but she abruptly stopped, as if she’d heard something. She turned, her eyes staring straight at him. A frown pulled at the corners of her mouth. Her eyebrows drew together. She walked unerringly to the window and stared into the darkness.
He froze.
Caught his breath.
Ignored the thrum through his body as she squinted, gold eyes narrowing.
She was utterly beautiful. He watched as she bit the corner of her lip, her eyes trained on the very spot where he was hiding. Had he moved? Caught her attention somehow? Then maybe it was time…her time…
No, no! Stay with the plan! You’ve worked too many years to change things now. Do
NOT
follow your instincts…not yet.
But she was so like the other one; nearly a replica of Faith. He stared straight into her intense eyes, willing her to see him. Daring her.
Absently she scratched her nape and he studied the movement, thought of the soft skin at her hairline. He considered what she might taste like, what she would feel like, facedown, unaware until his weight pressed her deeper into the mattress…
She moved and his inward vision died. Now, she was walking the length of the house, talking to someone, heading toward the door that led to the little walkway separating the main house from her studio. As she passed the French doors, he understood. The damned dog was trotting eagerly beside her, nose upward as if the blasted animal were listening and understanding every word. In a few seconds she’d be at the back door and would probably let the fool dog out. The stupid beast would come barking and leaping after him.
He reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew the stolen cell phone, and knowing that he’d blocked caller ID from any transmission, hit speed dial. For her number. The number he’d programed in earlier after lifting the phone out of an unlocked car. He was already moving away from the house, cutting through the heavy cypress, pines, and underbrush, not checking to see if she was going to pick up.
One ring.
Sweating, he hurdled a small log in his path.
Two rings.
Oh, fuck, was she letting the damned dog out?
Three rings.
She wasn’t answering. Damn it, she was probably already at the door. He increased his speed.
Four rings.
Shit!
Click.
His heart nearly stopped.
“Hi, this is Abby. Leave a message.”
He slapped his phone shut, jammed it into his pocket, and silently raced through the dense foliage. He was swift, his body honed from exercise, but he didn’t want to blow his cover by allowing an idiot dog to find him. He’d parked the car over a mile away behind the shed of an abandoned sawmill.
Even in the gathering darkness he didn’t need a flashlight; he’d traveled this way many times. At the fence of the Pomeroy property, he slowed, carefully walking the perimeter, past a small utility gate far from the road. Breathing hard, he half expected Asa’s damned Rottweiler to charge at the fence.
Another stupid dog to deal with.
But there was no growling, no barking, no thundering paws, no snarling, drooling jaws snapping at him from behind the iron bars sealing off Pomeroy’s acres. He turned on the speed again, crossed the road, and slipped onto a deer trail that cut behind the old mill.
Minutes later he vaulted the rusted chain-link fence and landed behind the dilapidated drying shed where his truck was parked.
By the time he slid behind the steering wheel, he was soaked from running through the damp underbrush and his own sweat. His head was pounding, his breathing irregular, not from the run, but from the knowledge that he had come close to being discovered.
Not yet. Oh, no, not yet.
As he switched on the ignition, he let out his breath. Pulling out from behind the old drying shed, he flipped on his wipers to push aside the drops that had collected. He didn’t bother with headlights. Just in case anyone was nearby.
The truck bounced and jostled over the pitted road. He had to stop to open the gate, drive through, then stop and close the gate behind him again, securing the hiding place for another time. He even secured the damned thing with his own lock. He’d already dispensed with the original one by snipping it with bolt cutters a few weeks earlier.
Because this was the perfect location to hide his vehicle.
Once inside the King Cab again, he eased toward the main road and, seeing no car coming, eased onto the highway and turned on his headlights. His heart was still pounding out of control, his nerves stretched to the breaking point. He rolled a window down to help with the fog inside, then once he’d put a few miles between himself and Abby Chastain’s cottage, he switched on the radio and hit the button for WSLJ.
“…continuing our tribute to Luke Gierman tonight. All of us here at WSLJ, well, and I’m sure everyone in New Orleans, too, is outraged and saddened by what happened to Luke and we urge everyone who’s listening, if they know anything that might help the police solve this crime, to call in. We don’t have a lot of details as to exactly what happened yet, but it seems that the murder-suicide theory has been scrapped, and that the police believe the double murder was staged to make it appear as if the female victim, Courtney LaBelle, shot Luke then turned the gun on herself. Local, state, and federal authorities are now searching for the killer of both Luke Gierman and Courtney Mary LaBelle. The minute we get any more information about this sick crime, we’ll let you know, of course.
“Now, we’ve got several of his personal favorite shows and we’ll run them back to back with a half an hour between each one where you, the listeners, Luke’s fans, can call in with your comments, or if you’d rather, e-mail them to the station and we’ll read them on the air. The first show will be taken from last summer, right before the Fourth of July and it will be replayed at nine
P
.
M
….”
Satisfied, he snapped off the radio. The tribute to Gierman was pathetic, but it also kept the public aware of Gierman’s death and that was important. So the citizens of New Orleans were “outraged and saddened.” Good. It was time. Long past.
Tune in tomorrow,
he thought as he considered his next act of retribution, his next victims.
They were out there.
Just waiting for him.
M
ontoya locked the door to the dorm room, then he and Brinkman clomped down four flights to the main reception area of Cramer Hall. While Brinkman peeled off to go outside and light up, Montoya found the small office behind the bank of mailboxes where Dean Usher sat behind a wide oak desk. A heavyset girl with obviously dyed black hair and a bad complexion that was partially hidden by white, ghoulish makeup glowered from a side chair. She was wearing a long black dress, black lacy gloves without fingers, black boots, and a bad attitude as she sat cross-legged, one booted foot bouncing nervously.
“Ophelia, this is Detective Montoya.” Usher looked past him to the doorway, obviously expecting Brinkman to follow. “Detective Montoya, Ophelia Ketterling.”
“Just O,” the girl corrected without a hint of a smile. “I go by O.”
Montoya took the only remaining chair, near the girl. “Detective Brinkman will be here in a second,” he explained. “But we should get started. I’ll be recording this interview. That okay with you?”
A lift of one shoulder. As if she just didn’t give a damn and was waiting for the ordeal to be over. “Whatever.”
“Good.” He set the pocket recorder on the corner of the big desk.
Dean Usher eyed the tiny machine with its slow-moving tape as if it were a rabid dog, but she didn’t argue. “Both detectives are with the New Orleans Police Department and want to ask you some questions about Courtney.”
“You mean ‘Mary,’ don’t you?” the girl shot back, coming to life a bit. “She was pretty insistent about her name.”
The dean’s irritation was visible in the tightening of the corners of her mouth. “Just answer the questions.”
“What are they?” Looking past layers of mascara, she managed to appear bored to tears.
“First of all, was she dating anyone?”
Ophelia snorted derisively and folded her arms across her chest, thus increasing her cleavage. Which, he figured, was intentional. Montoya had seen dozens of kids with the same kind of attitude as this girl, so hung up on being “bad” and “different” he could read her like a book. “No one, okay?”
“No boyfriend?”
She rolled her expressive eyes, as if she thought him a thickheaded idiot. “Not unless you count Jesus.”
“Ophelia!” The dean came unglued. “This is an interview, you’re being recorded.”
“Well, it’s true. It’s all she ever talked about. God, Jesus, and the damned Holy Spirit. She was a freak. Went on and on about promising herself to God and being married to Him and how she couldn’t wait to join an order of nuns, that she was just in college to appease her parents.”
“How’d that sit with you?”
“How do you think?” she said and Montoya noticed a small red stone pierced into one nostril as well as a necklace that was really a long leather cord that encircled her neck. Hanging from the thin, twisted strap was a tiny glass vial that was dark from the liquid inside.
Using the exposed fingers of one gloved hand, she plucked up the end of the necklace and held the small bottle to the light. “Are you looking at this? Wanna know what it is?” She lifted one dark eyebrow in a vampish, sexy come-on. “It’s blood, okay.”
“That’s enough!” the dean said, reaching for the recorder. “Let’s turn this off, at least for the moment.”
Ophelia actually smiled, her glistening purple-colored lips stretching. “Don’t turn it off. I want to get this over with, and for the record, we’re on the record, right, isn’t that what the recorder is all about? This is not only blood.” She wiggled the tiny little jar with its dark liquid contents splashing against the glass. “It’s human.”
At that point Brinkman, reeking of smoke, walked in, glanced around, and took up his vigil by the door.
Ophelia was in full shock mode now. Montoya waited, showed no emotion, let her run her game.
“Of course it’s not human blood,” the dean said, but her own face had whitened and one of her hands had curled into an anxious fist. “We have rules about these kind of things.”
“No, you don’t. It’s
my
blood and I can carry it around however I want whether it’s in my body, or in a test tube or in this.” She wiggled the leather strands. “It’s rare blood, too,” Ophelia added proudly. “AB negative.”
Brinkman cleared his throat. Looked uncomfortable as hell.
“About your roommate,” Montoya said, refusing to be derailed. The shock show was over as far as he was concerned. “Can you tell me the last time you saw Courtney LaBelle?”
Ophelia didn’t bother correcting him on the victim’s name this time. “Okay, on the day she was killed, nothing big was happening. I saw her getting ready to go to the library like she always does…did. She had her backpack with her and had changed into her jogging clothes, the ones she always wore when she was going to study and then run afterward.”
“She seemed normal?”
“Oh, whoa. No way. She
never
seemed normal to me,” Ophelia said, twisting the vial in her fingers. “She was at least ten beads shy of a full rosary, to put it in her vernacular. But if you mean did she seem any different than usual? No. She was the same. Weird and holy as shit as ever.”
“Ophelia,” the dean warned.
“It’s O, remember?”
Montoya asked, “What time did she leave that day?”
Ophelia dropped the vial and shifted in the chair. Her cleavage disappeared. “I’m not sure, but it was after dinner, if that’s what you call the food they serve in the dorm.” She shuddered and pulled a face.
“So it was night?”
“Yeah. Dark. Like…seven, seven-thirty, in there somewhere.”
“What time did she usually come back?”
“Before midnight, I guess,” she said, then looked out the window, where the reflection of her pale face was visible.
“Do you know if she met anyone?”
Ophelia shook her head, wound a finger in a strand of her straight black hair. “I don’t know. Don’t think so. She was like a loner. I told you. Extremely odd. Ultrareligious. A real nut case.”
“She must’ve had friends.”
Ophelia shrugged. “Maybe through the church. I don’t really know. There’s a youth group and then she knew someone, a nun, I think, in an order somewhere…hell, what was her name? Melinda or Margaret, maybe. No…”
“Maria?” Montoya asked and a feeling of dread settled deep in his gut.
“Yeah! That was it.”
“From Our Lady of Virtues?” He felt cold inside, cold as death.
“Could be. Yeah, maybe.” She chewed on a small black fingernail, then sighed and trained her eyes on Montoya again. “I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, y’know. I can’t remember.”
“And as far as you know, she wasn’t dating anyone special,” Montoya asked.
Ophelia let out a puff of exasperation. “I think we covered that. She was married to God, remember? No dates with mortal males. I guess that was out. It wasn’t an open marriage.”
Ignoring the comments, Montoya pressed on, “Did she wear a ring?”
“Oh, yeah. Always. The virgin ring.”
“What?”
“That’s what I call it. It’s what some kids do who are really into the God-thing. They get a ring, or someone important gives it to them, like, I dunno, a parent or something, and they, the girl, she, like promises not to do the wild thing, you know. Have sex? It’s like some kind of a covenant between the girl who gets the ring and God. She swears to remain a virgin until she gets married, or…maybe forever in Mary’s case, you know, since she was married to God and all.” Ophelia rolled both palms toward the ceiling. “What’s that all about? Virginity forever? Give me a break.” She shook her head as if ridding it of obscene ideas. “See what I mean? Mary was really, really fuck…messed up.”
“Did she ever mention Luke Gierman?” Montoya asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Ophelia said dismissively. “Once, maybe, twice when she’d overheard part of his show and was”—she held up her hands and made air quotes with her fingers—“‘shocked’, by what he said. Jesus, wasn’t that the whole point?”
Montoya felt a little jolt of electricity, that bit of adrenalin rush he always experienced when he hit on the first glimmerings of a connection. “Did she know him?”
“Nah. I don’t think so.”
“She ever call his program?”
Ophelia opened her mouth to answer, then closed it quickly and thought for a second. “I was gonna say ‘no’ for sure, but I don’t know. She never said she called and I never heard her phone in. She wasn’t like that. Didn’t have the balls. Was kinda mousy. But hey, stranger things have happened. She could have phoned, I guess. I just never heard about it.”
“But she did talk about him?”
“Not really. Oh, wait, no…she maybe said something to me once, maybe twice. About him needing to find Jesus. But then, she thought everyone did, including me, so I didn’t really think too much about it.”
“But you don’t know if she ever talked to him about it,” Brinkman clarified and O shook her head.
“Let’s back up a second,” Montoya suggested. “Courtney, Mary, did go out with friends, though? She did things, had a social life?”
“I guess, if you could call it that. But it wasn’t the normal stuff. She didn’t hang out at the local pub or go to concerts or games or anything like that.”
“Isn’t she too young for the pub?” Brinkman asked and Dean Usher tensed another notch.
Ophelia sent Brinkman an exasperated, don’t-play-dumb, we-both-know-about-fake-IDs look. “She usually went to the library after we ate, then she’d jog back, change clothes, and go to the chapel for an hour or two to pray or whatever it was she did there.”
“The chapel on campus?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think she got that far that night,” Ophelia said, her foot no longer bouncing. “She didn’t come back to change like she always does and she wouldn’t have gone to the chapel in her running gear.”
“You keep tabs on her?” Brinkman asked.
Another bored glance his way. “No way. After the first week of school, I didn’t ask her anything. She had a way of twisting everything and I mean
every
thing to God. It didn’t matter if I was studying or on the phone or going to the shower, she was right there, always with a cheery face and a suggestion that I find Jesus. You know, I was raised Catholic, went to St. Theresa’s in Santa Lucia. That’s in California, by the way.”
“I thought you were from Lafayette,” Montoya said.
“I mean when I was younger. My dad was transferred to Lafayette during my junior year. It was a real pisser.
“Anyway, all that Catholic school, and I never had to go and beat the bushes to find someone to convert. Most of the kids I went to school with at St. Theresa’s were cool about it; kept all the God-stuff to themselves. No way were they out on some kind of mission to save the world. But Mary, she’s like one of those born-agains. Avid. Rabid. All of the above. So, no, I did
not
keep tabs on her. In fact, I tried to avoid her. She was a real freak-out. I’d already put in a request for a new roommate.”
Montoya glanced at Dean Usher, who nodded.
“Let me get this straight,” Brinkman said, folding his arms over his chest. “
She
freaked
you
out?”
O nodded. “Amen and end of story.”
They questioned her a little more, then, after securing the file from Dean Usher of all of Courtney’s classes, they visited the chapel and met with Dr. Starr, a man in his early thirties. Fit and lean, Starr blinked as if his contacts were ill-fitting. He showed them into his tiny office, a room barely larger than a closet, which was situated on the second floor in one of the massive stone and brick buildings that surrounded the quad. There were two padded folding chairs on one side of his chipped wooden desk and on the other, a rolling executive-type chair upholstered in oxblood leather. “Please, have a seat,” he suggested after introductions were made. His desk was huge, but neat, as if he spent his days patting the piles of essays and phone messages into precise stacks. The bookcase behind him was carefully arranged, not one bound volume out of place, and Montoya, though he didn’t say it, thought the room looked as if it were more for show than work. At the station, Montoya’s own desk was organized, but functioning, and always changing with the reports, files, and messages that landed in his in basket. Bentz’s was cluttered, in an order only he could decipher, and Brinkman’s was a pigsty, with seven or eight coffee cups in the litter of reports, newspapers, messages, and jumbles of pens.
But this guy’s…it just looked too perfect.
“I know this is about Mary,” Starr said as he snapped on a desk lamp that glowed in soft gold tones. Montoya made a note that he was familiar enough to call her by the name she preferred. “What a tragedy. It’s shocked the faculty and student body, I assure you.”
“How well did you know her?” Brinkman asked, getting right to the point.
“Enough to see that she was a talented writer. Her essays were insightful, her observations in class, deep, though theologically narrow.” He smiled and slid a glance at his watch.
“Small class?” Montoya asked. “Enough that in the first few weeks of school you know all of your students?”
“This one was,” he said patiently. “And yes…eight in the morning isn’t a popular time for most students. The class is only twenty-six.” He blinked. Frowned. “Or was.”
Brinkman said, “We were told you had Luke Gierman come and speak to the class.”
“Luke Gierman, yes, I know, the shock jock who was killed. His body was found with Mary’s. I saw it on the news.” Some of Starr’s cool facade slipped and Montoya thought a few beads of sweat showed at his hairline. “I asked Gierman to speak to PC 101 because—”
“PC 101?” Brinkman asked. “As in Politically Correct?”
“Personal Communications,” Starr explained, a slight edge to his voice. “I thought the kids would like him and that it would shake up the system here a little. The only time he could make it was the eight o’clock, so we set it up.” Starr glanced away, looked through the tiny window in his office. “Of course, I had no idea what would happen.”
“Of course,” Brinkman said, and Starr looked up at him sharply.
“I assure you, all I did was invite a speaker from a radio station.” He rearranged his pens around the ink blotter covering the wood desk. “You know, I would appreciate your keeping my name out of this investigation as much as possible…I’m fairly new here and though I wanted to, you know, create some interest by bringing a radio personality to the classroom, I…I, well…I don’t need this kind of trouble.”