Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  “Detective,” she called, waving frantically, her cheeks flushed. “Please wait!”

  Bentz rolled down the window as she approached. “I’m so glad I caught up with you,” she said, breathing hard. From the corner of his eye, Bentz saw the camera crew hustling toward the cruiser.

  “Get rid of them,” he told one of the deputies who had followed Sister Odine to his car. With a nod, the deputy turned toward the news crew and ran interference.

  Sister Odine said in a rush, “I just received a call from Sister Jeannette, the Mother Superior at All Saints.” Bentz felt his back muscles tighten at the mention of the college Kristi had attended, where once she’d faced unspeakable terror. “She asked me if I’d heard from Sister Vivian…Vivian Harmon, who is part of their order?”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s missing.”

  “For how long?” Bentz asked.

  “Reverend Mother didn’t say, but…” Sister Odine nodded, her head bobbing rapidly. “Her room is empty, and they found a rosary and prayer book in the garden. The Reverend Mother recognized them as both belonging to Sister Viv.”

  Bentz’s gut twisted. He knew the campus well and was all too familiar with the dark terror associated with it. “Did the Reverend Mother call the police?”

  “Not yet. They searched the grounds and thought maybe Sister Vivian had gone visiting and neglected to tell anyone, but that’s unlike her.” Sister Odine’s face crumpled a little. “Someone from the college staff told one of the nuns about what happened here, about Sister Rebecca…Oh dear.” Tears filled her eyes again. “Anyway…now the Mother Superior is worried that something…something horrible might have happened to Sister Vivian too.”

  Bentz wanted to reassure the nun, to tell her that Sister Vivian probably was taking a break from the order, that she was second-guessing her vows, that she would show up sometime soon, but he suspected that would be a crock. “Have her call nine-one-one, explain what’s going on, and tell her that Detectives Montoya and Bentz will be out to talk to her in a few hours. In the meantime we’ll call the Baton Rouge P.D.”

  “Thank you,” she said fervently, far more relieved than she should have been as she made the sign of the cross over her chest. “Bless you, Detectives,” she murmured as she bustled off.

  Bentz turned the car around and headed down the drive where parked cruisers, vans, and trucks crowded the lane, scarcely allowing access between the tall live oaks and spreading magnolias.

  “Hey,” Montoya said as they fought through what appeared to be an ever-growing crowd. “Isn’t that your kid?” He pointed a finger at the window and the slim girl in a Florida Marlins baseball cap. Again she turned away from the road, engaging another person in the crowd.

  Bentz’s lips tightened. Theirs had always been a difficult relationship, one that had probably been exacerbated by the lies he’d had to tell her while she was growing up. It had to have been tough on her when she’d finally realized the truth: Bentz wasn’t her biological father. Yeah, well, that had been a helluva mess, and in the end, he’d been the one who had stuck by her, especially after Jennifer’s death, then during those rough teenage years.

  She hadn’t had it easy, but that didn’t give her the green light to put herself in danger. The fact of the matter was that he couldn’t have loved her more had she been his natural child. End of story.

  “What’s she doing here?” Montoya was frowning darkly, his gaze following Kristi in the sideview mirror as they rolled down the length of the lane.

  Bentz grunted. He knew damned well what she was thinking. Not that he’d confide it to anyone, much less Montoya.

  A true-crime writer!

  Of all the idiotic, half-assed ideas!

  Why in God’s name would she want to make herself more of a target than she already was as a homicide detective’s child?

  He didn’t have time for it right now, but he planned to engage in another attitude-adjustment talk with her ASAP.

  Montoya wisely let the matter drop. “What did Eve Renner want?”

  “Us to meet with her. At the hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “The one next door.”

  “Our Lady of Virtues? Why?” Montoya asked.

  “She said she was there and found Faith Chastain’s file. She wants to give it to us, but there’s more. She hung up before she explained.” Bentz reached the winding road, saw there was no traffic, gunned the engine.

  “This just gets weirder and weirder,” Montoya said, flipping down the visor to shield his eyes. “I told you about the picture Abby took of the place.”

  “Any luck with that?”

  “The lab’s still working on it.”

  Bentz turned off the main road and angled the cruiser toward the hospital. A fox squirrel ran onto the road, changed its mind, and darted back to the ditch. Bentz tapped on the brakes. “Idiot,” he muttered at the long-disappeared rodent.

  Montoya said, “I hope to hell this isn’t a wild-goose chase.”

  Bentz found a pack of gum in his pocket and pulled out a stick as he watched an SUV from the sheriff’s office pull up behind them. “Only one way to find out.”

  Montoya and Bentz were waiting.

  Along with a deputy from the sheriff’s department.

  In front of the open gate to the hospital, the two detectives were leaning against the fender of a cruiser as Eve parked her Camry next to the cop’s car. The deputy in the SUV was on the phone but hung up when Eve rolled up.

  “This looks like it might turn out to be another gunfight at the O. K. Corral,” she murmured.

  “They’re just being cautious,” Cole assured her.

  “If you say so.”

  The deputy slid out of his SUV as Eve and Cole climbed from her Toyota. Both detectives visibly tensed, Montoya in black shirt, jeans, sunglasses, and his damned leather jacket, Bentz in T-shirt and faded jeans.

  Oh great, another pissing match. Just what she needed. Slinging one strap of her backpack over her shoulder, Eve locked her car. The deputy hung a few steps back, eyes on the road.

  “Wasn’t there a restraining order?” Montoya asked, white teeth flashing as he zeroed in on Cole.

  Eve held up one hand. “The restraining order was lifted.”

  Cole met his gaze squarely. “I’m escorting Ms. Renner.”

  A dark eyebrow cocked over the rims of Montoya’s shades. “You her attorney now?”

  One side of Cole’s mouth lifted in that self-deprecating grin Eve had found alternately irritating and endearing.

  “Last I heard, you were on the other side,” Montoya said, his gaze focused on Cole.

  “Water under the bridge, Detective,” Cole said with a shrug.

  “What about last night?” he asked, taking off his sunglasses so he could stare hard at Cole. “Where were you?”

  Cole’s smile widened. Dear God, he was enjoying this! At that moment, Eve wanted to strangle him, and Montoya for good measure. Before Cole could say more than she wanted, Eve said, “He was with me all night. We even spent some time at South General Hospital.” She held up her sling. “I fell here, on the third floor in front of Faith Chastain’s room.”

  “Here?” Montoya asked, but his eyes still challenged Cole.

  “Yes.”

  Bentz stepped between the two other men, and the deputy looked back as if waiting for the word to come and assist. “Okay, we’ve had our fun. Now let’s get down to it. So, where’s the file?” Eve retrieved the thick folder from her backpack and Bentz took it gingerly, his forehead etching with new lines as he read the file tab. “Anyone else touch this?”

  “Not since I found it yesterday. Just us. Both of us.”

  Annoyed, Montoya slipped on his shades and said, “That makes it easy. We’ve already got your prints on file.”

  Cole let that one slide while Bentz grabbed a flashlight and locked Faith Chastain’s file in his cruiser.

  Pocketing his keys, he asked, “So
how did you come to find it in the first place? Where was it?” He glanced at the hospital as if he anticipated the answer.

  She gestured toward the top floor as they crossed inside the grounds. “In the attic.”

  Montoya cocked his head. “Attic?”

  “There’s a small garret above the third floor. I used to play there as a kid. I came back yesterday because I felt compelled. Because of this whole ‘Faith-Chastain-might-be-your-mother thing.’ I needed to look around.”

  Bentz closed the gate behind them and locked it. “Make sure no one gets in,” he ordered the deputy, then caught up with Montoya, Cole, and Eve. It was late morning, closing in on noon, and the sun was intense. Even so, Eve felt chilled inside, knowing what they would find inside the huge edifice that had originally been an orphanage and later a full-fledged hospital before eventually ending up as an asylum. The grounds and building had always been owned by the Archdiocese, and now, in its decrepit state, the hospital was slated to be razed.

  All for the best, she thought as they walked up the buckled, cracked concrete drive and past an overgrown lawn gone to seed. The drive curved around a once-grand fountain directly in front of the front doors. As a child Eve had been enchanted by the three winged angels spouting water to the heavens. Now the fountain was bone dry and still, the angel statues chipped and stained, Eve’s sense of wonder long dead.

  “So, how did you get in?” Bentz asked as they walked the perimeter of the building. Her footsteps were still visible in the grass and dirt, but as they rounded a far corner, she noticed that the fire escape that had been lowered the day before was now unreachable, its ladder tucked near the landing on the second floor.

  “This isn’t the way it was,” Eve said in surprise, explaining how she’d used the ladder to gain access to the building through a partially opened window.

  “The ladder was down. I used it too,” Cole continued as he stared upward to the window. “Now the window’s closed too. We didn’t shut it.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Absolutely.” Eve shaded her eyes as she looked upward at the red bricks and mortar. “Yesterday, when I was looking down from the attic through a hole in the floor, I saw a shadow in Faith’s room, one I couldn’t explain.”

  Montoya rubbed the back of his neck. “What hole? What shadow? I don’t get it.”

  “You will,” Cole said. “Let’s go inside.”

  They circled the building but found no other open windows. They stopped at the marble steps at the front of the building while Bentz found a key that unlocked the dead bolts on the main doors.

  He switched on his flashlight and Montoya and Eve followed suit with their own flashlights. Trepidation was Eve’s companion as she once again stepped into the decay and gloom that was the abandoned asylum. Immediately her skin crinkled, raising goose bumps though the temperature inside had to be nearly eighty. The policemen, too, became more somber as they shined their beams over the reception area and hallways.

  “Your father worked here,” Bentz stated. “Did he have an office?”

  She pointed in the general direction. “But there’s nothing in it. I looked yesterday.”

  “Show us.”

  Eve led them to the small area her father had used for his counseling sessions and paperwork. Bentz searched the room while Montoya swept the beam of his flashlight around the small maze of rooms. “He was in office number one?”

  “I think it was reserved for the chief psychiatrist.”

  She pointed out the other rooms: one for examinations, another for accounting, still another for the clergy, and then larger areas for the nursing and housekeeping staffs.

  “What about the basement?”

  “It was used for alternative treatments.”

  “Such as?”

  “There were operating rooms and padded cells and rooms where electroshock therapy was administered.” She met the questions in Bentz’s eyes. “Some treatments seem barbaric and demeaning now, but they were widely accepted when the hospital was open.” Eve heard a defensive note creep into her voice, but she didn’t like even the least little intimation that her father, as head of the hospital psychiatric staff for years, had done anything the least bit inappropriate.

  “You intimated there was something else,” Bentz said. “A reason we had to come here?”

  “In the attic,” Eve confirmed, leading the way. She couldn’t help glancing away as they passed the stained-glass window of the Madonna at the landing, an intricate piece of craftsmanship that for some reason had sustained no damage over the years.

  They trooped silently upward, the steps creaking under their weight. On the third floor they paused briefly at the open door to room 307, illuminating the hideous discoloration on the floor with the beams of their flashlights.

  Montoya took one look at the large bloodstain and said something harsh under his breath before turning to Eve. “So the attic? How do you get there?”

  “This way.” She showed them to the linen closet with its door hidden behind the chimney, unlocked the latch, explaining how she and Roy had played up in the attic as children, that they had a “fort” complete with books and toys.

  They climbed the attic stairs single file. At the top she paused, took a deep breath, then told them about the doll.

  Bentz couldn’t believe his ears. “You pulled me off a murder investigation to look at a mutilated doll?” he said in disbelief.

  “And Faith Chastain’s file. There are also other patient files in the cabinet up here. I thought they might have information useful in your investigation.”

  “Legally they’re off-limits,” he reminded her. He was irritated. None of this was good. Why had he let himself believe this trip had some merit?

  “Where’s this doll?” Montoya asked.

  “Over in the corner by the window.” Ducking under the overhanging rafters, Eve steeled herself as she turned her flashlight toward the spot where yesterday she’d discovered the sleeping bag and doll.

  The beam crawled over the ancient floorboards, past an old bookshelf, to the sleeping bag.

  But the doll was gone.

  And in its place was the half-dressed, bloodied body of a nun.

  “My God,” Montoya breathed.

  Eve stared then let out a keening scream. “No. Oh please God, no!” she wailed, her voice hoarse with desperation as it rose to the rafters of the dusty attic.

  Cole was at her side in an instant, his arm around her, his gaze locked on the grisly, brutal scene before him. Clinging to him, Eve couldn’t quit staring at the horror of this dark attic. Where once there had been a hideously mutilated doll, there was now a real woman lying in the same position she’d found the Charlotte doll. Facedown, knife wounds on her body, her habit bunched up around her waist, her panties pulled down.

  Bentz and Montoya rushed to the woman then paused. Neither of them touched her, as she was clearly dead.

  “That bastard knew we were here,” Eve said shakily. “He was in Faith’s room, I know it…. And…and he called me, right before you showed up,” she said, pressing her cheek to Cole’s chest.

  “You got a call from him?” Montoya’s head snapped her way.

  “Yesterday, on my cell…yes.” She was trembling now, partly out of fury, partly out of sheer terror. “He was taunting me, letting me know that he was watching.” Her skin crawled to think he’d been so near.

  Her knees threatened to turn to mush, but Cole supported her, holding her tight.

  “That’s the way the doll was positioned yesterday,” Cole told Bentz. “Except that there were red slash marks in felt pen, just like the stab wounds on this woman’s body. And the number…four hundred and forty-four was marked across the doll’s belly. Eve’s name was scratched in capital letters a little bit lower, across the doll’s lower abdomen.”

  “Charlotte…my doll’s hat had been taken off, and her hair had been cut too,” Eve added, staring at the nun’s nicked and tufted head. Nearby, stained red
, lay her wimple, coif, and veil.

  Bentz leaned closer to the corpse, his eyes examining the body before he shot a look back at Montoya. “Call this in and tell the guy at the front gate to let no one inside except the police. Shit.” He rocked back on his heels, and his Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed hard. “Looks like we just found the missing nun.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Bentz stood outside the hospital, his stomach roiling, his thoughts black as night while the sweat rolled beneath the neck of his T-shirt. The sun was high in the sky, its heavy heat merciless, the humidity inching toward a hundred percent. A crime-scene crew had already started processing the scene, and yellow tape was strung around the hospital grounds.

  Again.

  Two nuns killed, their bodies tattooed and arranged in a posed position.

  A signature killer?

  Maybe, but some things didn’t make sense.

  Didn’t follow the rules.

  Serial killers usually stayed within the bounds of race. They usually chose a gender. There was usually time between the killings.

  Usually, usually, usually.

  “Our boy’s upping his game,” Montoya said as he lit the cigarette he’d bummed from one of the uniforms on the scene. “Escalating.” He inhaled deeply then breathed out, twin jets of smoke curling from his nostrils.

  “It’s more than the usual thing, not just some creep getting his rocks off by killing a random woman,” Bentz said. “This guy has specific victims.”

  “And he marks them with specific numbers. Tattoos them, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We need to check all the local dealers of tattooing supplies.”

  “Already done. Zaroster’s on it,” Montoya said, hazarding a glance to the roped-off area in front of the gates where Eve Renner in her arm sling and Cole Dennis stood next to her Camry.

  Bentz shielded his eyes. The press hadn’t been ten minutes behind Montoya’s call to the station, and all of the people who’d been fascinated with what had happened at the convent before were now parked outside the hospital. Sickos, every one of them.