by Lisa Jackson
Montoya didn’t bother sitting, just stood near the filing cabinet.
“What is it you want to know?” Eve asked as Bentz pulled out a small pocket recorder, shuffled some papers out of the way, and set the machine on the cleared desk blotter that had seen better days. Rings from ancient coffee cups were visible as he pushed the record button then identified everyone in the room, noting the date, time, and place of the interview.
“Okay, for the record, tell us what you know about the night your father died.”
She did, explaining about driving to New Orleans from Atlanta, the panicked calls from Anna Maria, and her own attempt to reach her father. For now she left out any mention of Cole or the fact that she thought she was being followed. Montoya leaned against the file cabinet and didn’t say a word, content, it seemed, to let Bentz ask the questions. It took nearly an hour, and finally, just when she thought they were about finished, Montoya pushed himself away from the cabinet and took up a spot in front of Bentz’s desk. “Okay, Ms. Renner, so here’s the thing. Your story hangs together except for one thing. We’ve listened to your father’s answering machine and are in the process of getting his phone records. Your call came into his house before the call from your sister-in-law. I’ve made a duplicate from the answering machine we found at the scene.” He pulled a small tape recorder/player from his pocket and hit the play button.
Eve tried to remain calm, but her fingers curled of their own accord as she heard her panicked voice.
“Dad? This is Eve. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I thought you’d want to know that…that I’m back in town…. I, um, should have called earlier. Call me back.”
“That call, the one you just heard, came in at two fifty-one. Then later, at three oh-two, we get this…”
“Dad? This is Anna Maria…. I’ve, uh, I’ve got this friend who works for the paper. He called and said there might be some trouble at your place.…Kyle’s not home right now, but you can probably reach him on his cell….. Just let me know that everything’s fine.”
“See the problem?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You knew something was wrong before your sister-in-law called.”
The detectives were silent, still staring at her. “I just wanted to talk to him.” She wasn’t going to tell them she’d learned about her father’s death from Cole. Not yet.
“The other problem we have is that someone, a man, called in the murder.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know, but we’re going to compare the 911 tape to other voices we’ve got on record. We thought maybe you might know.”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know. But…do you think the man who called was the person who killed my father?”
“Could be. Or a witness.” Montoya folded his arms over his chest, his black leather jacket creaking with the movement. “We just have a lot of leads to follow.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that might help us?” Bentz asked.
“Maybe.”
The cops waited.
“I think I’m being stalked. Someone’s following me, calling me at all kinds of weird hours, and leaving me the same message.”
“Which is?”
“‘He’s free.’ The voice is male, I think, low and rough, as if he’s whispering to disguise it, and I have no idea who it could be.”
“He’s referring to Cole Dennis? Or someone else?”
“Cole, I think. The calls started about the time he was released.”
Bentz’s expression darkened.
Montoya shot him a look that Eve couldn’t decipher.
She reached for her purse and pulled out the manila envelope she’d tucked inside. “I don’t know if this is connected or what it means, but there have been some strange things happening to me too. I think I was followed from Atlanta, and someone put these in my car.”
Using a handkerchief, Montoya picked up the envelope then slowly spilled its contents onto the desk near Bentz’s recorder. The jagged-edged clippings, looking like snowflakes from a kindergartener’s art project, scattered over the ink blotter. “What is this all about?”
“I don’t know. My dad was the chief psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Hospital for some time, and that woman, Faith Chastain, was one of his patients, I think.”
Montoya’s head snapped up. “Faith Chastain?”
“All of the articles are about her, not just the hospital. I’m sure there have been dozens of stories written about the hospital itself, or the staff, or its closing, or whatever, but these stories are all about Faith Chastain. You two are mentioned too, in a couple of them…. Oh, there’s one.” She pointed to one of the clippings in which both detectives were quoted.
“You don’t know where these came from or why?” Montoya demanded tersely.
Eve shook her head. “Someone broke into my car and left them in the glove box, but as to why, I don’t have a clue.”
If possible, Montoya grew even more serious. Patiently he asked her to go over her story a couple of times. She explained about the dark pickup but could provide them no concrete information, no license number, not even the make or model of the truck, just that it was full-sized, very dark blue or black, and that the windows were tinted. “If I were to guess, I’d say it was a domestic pickup, but I really can’t be sure.”
“But you think it’s in New Orleans.”
“I think, but I can’t be certain. I thought someone was following me earlier today, but I could be wrong.”
“Can we keep these?” Bentz asked, motioning toward but not touching the clippings.
“Sure.”
“Has anyone else touched them?”
She thought of Cole and how he’d read the articles, nearly picked one up, but hadn’t when she’d told him not to. “Not since I received them.”
“Have you shown them to anyone else?”
“No, Detective. I just received them yesterday.” Oh, how easy it would be for them to catch her in another lie. All they had to do was talk to Mrs. Endicott, who no doubt had heard enough of her conversation with Cole while he’d been on the porch to point the police in the right direction.
“Can you tell me about your relationship with your father?” Montoya asked as the tape continued to record and Bentz took a few notes on a small spiral pad.
“It was pretty good when I was a child, but then, as I hit adolescence, we grew apart. We, uh, we weren’t that close in the last few months. Not quite estranged, but…but just not as close as we once were.”
“Because of the Kajak murder?”
“No—it was before that.”
“Because of your relationship with Cole Dennis?”
“No, not really.”
“Not really?”
“Dad and I really drifted apart after he was accused of being responsible for the suicide of one of his patients.”
She didn’t elaborate, and Montoya asked suddenly, “Your mother’s deceased?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Heart failure. When I was sixteen, about fifteen years ago. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just filling in case history. You have a brother living in Atlanta and one in…?”
“Phoenix…well, Mesa, really. But I think they’re currently both in New Orleans. Van, he’s…well, the middle child, the younger of the two. He just called me and said he’s here for a convention of spa dealers, and he told me Kyle was on his way here, though I haven’t talked to him.”
“Will they be staying with you?”
“I doubt it. Van didn’t say anything about it, and Kyle doesn’t like to spend the night at other people’s homes. He’d rather live in a hotel. He doesn’t like to play by anyone else’s house rules.”
“Is that so?” Bentz asked.
Eve shrugged. “It’s not like we were all one big happy family, okay? My dad adopted Kyle and Van when he married my mom. The boys were half grown when my parents adopted
me.”
Montoya’s eyes turned dark as night. “So Terrence Renner isn’t your biological father?”
“Right.”
“Who is?” Bentz asked, leaning forward, his pencil unmoving.
“I don’t know either of my biological parents. I asked a few times, got no answers, was told mine was a closed adoption, which I guess means my birth parents don’t want to hear from me.” Eve’s mouth twisted. “It was a private thing, arranged by an attorney, and, well, Mom died before I got any real information from her, and Dad was always so vague. I always figured I’d try to locate my biological parents someday. What’s the worst that could happen? I’d get a door slammed in my face?” She sighed. “I never got around to it.”
Montoya scratched at his goatee as Bentz said, “We’ll need the phone numbers of your brothers.”
She gave them Kyle’s house number in Atlanta, then said, “Just a sec” as she found her cell phone in her purse. Scrolling down the menu on the phone, she found the cell numbers for Kyle, Anna Maria, and Van. “I don’t have Van’s home number anymore. He moved to Mesa not long before I was injured, and I always just call his cell and leave messages.”
“That’s all right.” Bentz was writing on his notepad. “What about enemies? Did your father have anyone who would want to harm him?”
In her mind’s eye she saw Tracy Aliota’s grieving parents and brother as they’d sat in the courtroom, hearing the verdict of “not guilty” ringing to the rafters. They’d fallen apart, Tracy’s mother, Leona, nearly crumpling. If not for her husband’s strong arm, she might have fallen to the floor. Tracy’s older brother, J. D., had been red faced and seething, his eyes burning with the certainty that a dark injustice had been done. “I suppose,” she said, giving the detectives a quick review of the Aliotas’ grievances. “They were probably not the only patients who were unhappy, though none that I know of had gone so far as to sue him. But he did deal with people who were mentally ill.”
“Psychotics?”
She nodded.
“What about personally?” Montoya asked.
She thought hard. “My brothers’ father—their biological father, Ed Stern—didn’t like him much. Blamed him for the divorce, as I understand it, but he ducked out of the picture early. When the boys were very young, he gave up all parental rights. I’ve never met him, and as far as I know, my brothers haven’t seen him since he took off.”
Bentz was still taking notes.
“Anyone else?”
She shook her head. “I think my father got into some legal thing about use of an access road that cut across the farm…with the neighbor, Hugh Something-or-other…. Hugh…Hugh Capp, I think, but I only heard Dad say something about it a couple of times, and that was five or six years ago. As far as I know they resolved whatever it was.”
“What about professionally? Any enemies?” Bentz asked.
“I really don’t know.”
“Or patients or staff at Our Lady of Virtues—that’s the last hospital where he was on staff. Afterward, while he was in private practice, he worked alone, right? And was just associated with a small, private hospital”—Bentz flipped back a few pages in his notebook—“St. Andrews, not far from Slidell.”
“That’s right,” she said, remembering the small hospital across Lake Pontchartrain.
“Do you know anyone who held a grudge against your father at either of the hospitals?”
“No. You’d have to ask someone who worked there,” she said, feeling her headache toying with the edges of her brain again. “There must be records.”
The detectives asked a few more questions before the interview wound down, and by that time Eve’s headache was back in full force. Montoya escorted her through the department and down the stairs. When she was outside again, she finally felt like she could breathe.
Clouds had gathered in the sky, and shadows had lengthened over the city. The air was thick. Muggy. It pressed her clothes against her skin.
She walked to her Camry and looked over her shoulder. Once again she experienced the eerie feeling that someone was watching her, someone inherently evil. Unease crawled up her neck, breathing on her scalp, and she turned to slowly search the sidewalks and streets.
A woman pushed a stroller. Two teenagers were walking, holding hands and almost yelling at each other, each plugged into an iPod. An elderly man was walking his little dog, a terrier of some kind, and several people waited for a city bus. One guy in a silver sedan was studying a map and scowling as if he were horribly lost. A couple of twenty-something kids with spiked hair were skateboarding recklessly through the crowds, and a panhandler claiming to be a homeless vet was waiting for someone to drop money into his open guitar case as he strummed a tune from the eighties.
She saw no one hiding malevolently in the umbra of an awning, no one smoking a cigarette in a large, dark pickup with tinted windows, no one paying her the least bit of attention. The street preacher was still in full force, handing out literature, still pleading with anyone who would listen to accept Jesus as his or her savior.
But no luminous eyes stared at her from the shadowy alleyways, and the only dark truck that passed by had a sign advertising a florist’s shop and was driven by a girl who looked barely sixteen.
It’s all in your mind, she told herself but couldn’t shake the feeling that someone nearby was observing her every move.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bentz said when Montoya returned. “That Eve Renner is Faith Chastain’s missing daughter. But you’re jumping the gun. Just because she’s about the right age, was adopted, and someone stuffed a bunch of articles about the hospital and Faith Chastain in her car doesn’t mean she’s the missing kid.”
“It’s something to check out.”
“Agreed.” Bentz tapped the eraser end of his pencil on the desk.
“We could tell her about it. Ask for a DNA sample.”
Bentz glanced out the window at the pigeons that had taken roost. “It isn’t really a police matter,” he said. “Not a crime if a woman has a baby and doesn’t tell anyone.”
“What about a woman who has a tattoo hidden in her hairline? A tattoo she probably got while she was a patient, for crying out loud?”
“Again, no crime that we know of. And the woman’s dead. We know how she died and how she was abused. The tattoo happened more than twenty years ago. And we don’t even know if it was forced upon her.”
“A tattoo on her head, a head that had to be shaved…You think she wanted it?”
“She wasn’t exactly stable.”
“Oh come on. The woman was brutalized. We know that.” Bentz scowled but couldn’t argue. They’d found proof that Faith had endured unspeakable crimes while a patient at the hospital.
“I know, but face it, this is a personal issue with you. Any crime that was committed is long over.”
“Then what the hell are these all about?” Montoya pointed to the clippings littering Bentz’s desk. “Don’t you think it’s strange—one helluva coincidence—that someone wants Eve Renner to know about Faith Chastain at the same time people who know Eve are being slaughtered?”
“Damned strange.” Bentz glowered at the newspaper clippings. All neatly clipped, with jagged, precise edges. All about Faith Chastain. Could it be that easy? That Faith Chastain’s unknown child had just waltzed into the department carrying evidence linking her to the dead woman? Who would know about the adoption? Why bring it to the fore now, after thirty years? And how would Eve, being Faith’s daughter, have anything to do with the murders?
Roy Kajak spent time at Our Lady of Virtues, not only as the son of one of the caretakers, but later, as a patient.
Terrence Renner was the head psychiatrist at the mental hospital before it closed.
Faith Chastain died at the old asylum.
Once again there were homicides and a mystery linked to the once-grand brick buildings now in decay.
“You’re the one who doesn’t believe in coincidence,
” Montoya reminded him.
“So what do you want to do?”
“Check it out. If Eve agrees. DNA test. Compare it to Abby’s. If Eve is Faith’s daughter, she should have enough matching markers to Abby.”
“Don’t need Abby’s. We’ve got Faith’s DNA on file, the lab took it when her body was exhumed. All we need is Eve’s, if she goes for it,” Bentz said. “She may not want to help us.”
Montoya snorted. “She’s holding back.” He reached into his shirt pocket for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes then stuffed both fists into the pockets of his leather jacket.
“I think so too.”
“Remember, she’s still recovering from her attack, still has memory problems.” Montoya made the statement as if he didn’t believe it. “If you ask me, she’s a nutcase.”
“No argument there, but even so, someone’s playing a head game with her.” He reached into the drawer of his desk, found a bottle of antacids, and tossed a couple into his mouth. He wouldn’t necessarily think the two incidents were related; a woman getting weird notes and two murders, but they all revolved around Eve Renner.
Why?
And how the hell was Faith Chastain, a woman dead over twenty years, the mother of Montoya’s fiancée, involved?
Montoya was restless, pacing in front of the desk, nervously rubbing the diamond stud in one ear. “Remember last fall and the siege at the old hospital, when we nailed the son of a bitch who was terrorizing Abby?”
Bentz knew where this was going. In the last case involving Our Lady of Virtues, the killer had warned Montoya, No matter what else happens, tonight is just the beginning.
Over half a year had slipped by. Montoya had started to believe that the killer had been rambling, shouting a dire prophecy that was little more than a bluff, but now he wasn’t so certain.
Because of these clippings with their saw-toothed edges, left in Eve Renner’s car. If they could believe her story.
“Let’s not jump the gun,” Bentz said. “We’ll send these down to the lab, have them fingerprinted and checked for any kind of trace, and go from there.”
