Devious

“Tomorrow. We’ll go out. Get a sitter for Ben.”

  “Oh, right, in the middle of the case.” She knew him better than that. For the first time that night, she actually smiled with some humor. “I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith—”

  “That’s me. Okay, let’s not fight. You’re forgiven,” she said, rolling off the bed. That was the great part about her; she never stayed mad for long. Oh, she could get white hot and fast, but it always dissipated quickly.

  Her feet hit the floor. “I guess this is where I play the part of the doting wife.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You take care of your son and I’ll heat up your dinner.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “You got that right. I don’t.” She stopped at the doorway, barefoot, one hand on the door, her gaze skewering his. “But I know you were out bustin’ crime, tryin’ to make the city safe, right? So I’m offering you an olive branch here, because I know I came off like a world-class bitch. You know I do understand that your work is important, that you’re trying like crazy to find out who killed that poor nun.”

  Folding her arms under her breasts, she leaned against the doorway with her shoulder and added, “Look, I know being a cop is in your blood, okay? But sometimes I can’t help myself. What you do scares me to death. There are nights when it’s really late and you’re not home, and I go quietly out of my mind. My imagination goes into overdrive. I get scared that something’s happened to you and I’ll never see you again and . . . and Ben won’t know his father and . . .” She met his gaze, her eyes filled with a quiet, dark fear. “I can’t help it, Reuben,” she admitted. “That thought scares the hell out of me.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The room was dark, just a hint of moonlight shafting through the tiniest of windows. The heat of the day had settled beneath the rafters, humid heat trapped in the small space.

  As a night bird cried, its call plaintive over the quietness of the city, Edwina let her nightdress fall into a puddle at her feet, then kicked off her underwear.

  She turned and stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror propped against the wall of the attic. She was naked, her skin white and bare, her body half in shadow, half catching the weak light of the moon. The crack in the mirror split the light and dark halves of her image imperfectly, reminding her that she was but a servant of God, that she was ultimately flawed—a sinner.

  Her pale braid fell over one shoulder, the end of the plait brushing the tip of her small breast. Her body was still muscular and athletic, her waist small, her shoulders wide, her hips slim. Her nipples were tiny and dark, one visible, the other hidden in shadow. Her nest of blond hair at the juncture of her legs, too, was cleaved in the mirror’s distorted image.

  Swallowing back any doubts, she reached forward, her fingers exploring the back side of the mirror, finding the nail protruding from the thick wooden frame surrounding the glass and the smooth leather crop that hung hidden there.

  Her fingers curled over the worn handle, pulling free the whip with its nine leather straps.

  She fell to her knees in front of the glass. She said a prayer under her breath, then lifted the wicked little whip high over her head, its nine tails with their hard little knots dangling high.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered, thinking of all her sins. So many. So deep. A lifetime of wickedness, until she had come here, until she had learned how to receive ultimate absolution.

  “You must overcome pain and fear,” she’d been told. “You must transcend the mortal and atone. . . .”

  As she had so many night before, she stared at herself in the mirror’s reflection, then cocked her wrist.

  “Welcome the pain, the remission of your sins.”

  She did. Bravely, she flicked her wrist.

  Snap!

  The whip flicked.

  SSSST! It hissed through the air.

  Slap!

  Like hornets stinging, the strips of leather bit.

  Sharp.

  Quick.

  She sucked in her breath.

  Didn’t flinch.

  Didn’t cry out.

  Didn’t dare close her eyes.

  Because she knew, deep in her soul, she was being observed, her actions noted.

  Who was watching?

  She didn’t know.

  One pair of eyes? Two? A dozen?

  She couldn’t begin to guess.

  It didn’t matter.

  She let her breath out and squared her shoulders.

  Then she raised the whip again and snapped her wrist.

  Its sharp hiss echoed through the room.

  It was far too late to call in favors tonight, Val thought, but come the morning, at the crack of dawn, she would be on the phone. What she couldn’t find out for herself on the Internet she’d have her expartner look into through police channels. One of his roommates from college had worked for the FBI for years, so there would be ways to find out their true identity. Find out who Mary and Michael Brown really were.

  Since her truce with Slade a few hours before, she’d been digging for information on the Internet, but every search produced no results. Then, because she couldn’t completely ignore her obligations as Freya’s partner and owner of the inn, she’d forced herself to attack the bills, paying the most pressing, then updating the calendar on Briarstone’s Web site.

  Here, in the office of her little cottage, she took care of the business end of running the bed-and-breakfast. When she wasn’t helping Freya with the guests, she checked the reservations, maintained the Web site, paid the bills, kept up the calendar of local events and sites of interest, and corresponded with other bed-and-breakfasts in the area.

  The wireless system in the cottage was accessible from the rooms in the main house, so guests could use their own laptops. However, the inn did not provide computers or a business center, and the only televisions were in Freya’s suite and here, in Val’s bedroom. Freya’s vision for the bed-and-breakfast included keeping Briarstone as authentic to the period in which it was built as possible without sacrificing a few modern conveniences, like individual bathrooms and electricity. In general, they tried to keep electronics to a minimum.

  Fortunately, tonight, her computer had only lost its connection a couple of times, far better than usual. Val closed her laptop and stepped out to the porch, where the moist air smelled of river and night. Clouds blocked out the moon and stars again, a storm brewing. Leaning against the railing, she glanced over to the main house, where Slade had been helping Freya clear a backed-up drain in the kitchen that had required not only emptying the P-trap but also renting a snake and unclogging the pipes.

  He’d also managed to replace some broken face plates on electrical outlets and fix a temperamental light in the foyer. In so doing, he’d ingratiated himself to Freya.

  “Handy as well as handsome,” Freya, pushing a vacuum cleaner into a nearby closet, had remarked when Val had stopped in during a break from her research.

  Wanting to avoid any further conversation about her soon-to-be ex, Val had ducked into the kitchen, which was filled with the odors of cinnamon, bacon, and apples for the next morning’s bread pudding.

  But there’d been no escaping Freya. Wiping her hands on a towel, she’d returned to the kitchen to peer into the oven. “Yeah, I understand why you’re set on ditching him,” Freya had said.

  “Don’t start with me.” Val hadn’t been in the mood.

  “Ouch! Touchy, aren’t we?”

  “Ouch! Nosy, aren’t we?”

  Freya had laughed and held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Okay. I get it. Talking about Slade is off-limits. I remember the agreement.”

  “Good.” Val had walked into the laundry room, taken the last of the towels from the dryer, and folded them before retreating to her cottage again.

  Now Val walked to a corner of the porch that allowed her to look up at the uppermost floor of the house. Lights still bur
ned bright in the room Slade was renting.

  She’d told him to get out of town, and he hadn’t listened. In fact, he’d seemed all the more insistent upon staying. She should have been angry that he was still here.

  Instead, stupid as it was, she felt safer, more secure.

  But then, she decided as the first drops of rain plopped against the porch’s roof, she’d always been an idiot where men were concerned.

  The news reports have it wrong.

  All wrong.

  Of course.

  Then again, why would I expect anything more?

  With only candlelight illuminating my small, hidden room, I watch an ancient television. It’s disturbing, really, that the reporters are so incompetent.

  As bad as the police.

  At the thought of the detectives assigned to the case, my stomach turns. Reuben Montoya and his partner Rick Bentz. Suspicious men with narrowed eyes and pointed questions. Men without faith. I turn away from the screen so that I only hear the report of what happened to Sister Camille: the unfortunate victim of some sadistic killer.

  That makes me smile to myself, and I send up a quick prayer of thanks to the Father for granting me a superior intelligence.

  If they only knew.

  Facing the TV, I glare at the reporter’s plastic face.

  “Come on,” I whisper between my teeth, desperate to see the images, to hear the reports. I have no patience for the sad tone of the reporter’s words as she aggrandizes the deceased.

  Camille the beautiful.

  Camille the liar.

  Camille the condemned.

  Did “Sister Camille” understand about conviction?

  No.

  Did she take her vows seriously?

  Of course not.

  At last the newscast shows a picture of Camille in her full habit, appearing pious, a rosary draped through her fingers.

  Such incredible blasphemy.

  Watching those angelic images of her upon the screen, I can barely tolerate the perfidy. And yet the wanting stays with me, and I remember her body against mine, the torturous but sweet warmth of her whisper against my ear, the sly smile and bright bit of wickedness in her gaze.

  Oh . . . to touch her again.

  To lay with her in sin . . .

  I close my eyes. Feel her breath upon my face. The back of my throat turns to dust with the wanting. “Camille,” I whisper, and my fists curl in frustration. I consider self-flagellation—the smooth whip with its sharp bite—but not tonight. There is no time.

  For now the wanting is enough of a punishment.

  But there will be more.

  A reckoning.

  As my eyelids open, I see the fuzzy screen again.

  The report of her death makes my insides churn. I could throw up at all the accolades bestowed upon Camille, as if she were truly holy, on her way to canonization—a saint.

  Which is the ultimate profanity.

  She was as far from saintly as Jezebel.

  And just as tempting.

  Her smiling, beatific visage is such a sham. I can’t stand the ignominy any longer. Angrily, I turn off the television.

  “Rot in hell,” I whisper as the image fades to black.

  But Camille’s face stays with me, haunts me as I blow out the candle. A pain as hot as the fires of Hades tears through my soul.

  Then I hear her laughter, as surely as if she were still at my side.

  My stomach curdles as I walk out of the room, and in a vain effort to keep her ghost from chasing after me, I lock the door.

  CHAPTER 26

  Gracie Blanc needed cash. She was late on her rent again, and that creep of an apartment manager Harold Horwood, who had the balls to call himself McHorny, like a character on a popular television show—oh, sure—was pressuring her, offering to be her pimp for special privileges. “You’re a whore, and I’ve got a woody. Get it? Horwood?” he’d said, thinking he was super clever.

  Gross.

  He wasn’t even bad-looking, with his straight, near-black hair and ever-tanned complexion, but his attitude made her stomach churn. She needed to get another place.

  All his attempts to enter pimpdom were a waste of time. Grace was independent. She didn’t need some man “managing” her career, as McHorny had put it so often. As if turning tricks was her lifelong ambition.

  She needed a new place to live and a new job. The trouble was her current apartment was cheap, and she was good at what she did; she just couldn’t make the same amount of money tending bar or pouring coffee at an all-night diner.

  She walked along Bourbon Street, the lights flickering, the crowd jostling her in her platform shoes and shorts. Here, she didn’t get a second look, nearly blending in with the crowd that filled the street, so she turned toward the river and walked a few blocks away, where there was less noise, fewer people, and the cops didn’t patrol as often.

  Here, cars could actually pass and identities were hidden in the shadows.

  She paused under a streetlamp, lit a cigarette, and made her way to her favorite corner. Sometimes she had to share the territory, which was all right; she felt safer just knowing another working girl would notice her. And she had her cell phone if anything got a little too kinky or rough.

  The night was warm but thick, the rain threatening to start in earnest. Even so, because she was desperate and couldn’t go back to her apartment without some cash, she let her jacket slide off her shoulder.

  In a tube top and black leather skirt, she knew she looked her best. She kept herself in shape, her waist small, her ass a “bubble butt” that wasn’t too large, just big enough to attract attention. Her hair was still thick and lustrous, falling nearly to her waist in loose red curls. The johns loved her hair. Oh, they were into her breasts, too, but it was her fiery, tousled hair that really caught their attention.

  Go figure.

  She leaned up against a light post and took a deep drag on her cigarette as a few cars rolled slowly past. She gave each one an interested eye, but no one stopped and no windows were down. It wasn’t worthwhile to call out.

  A bunch of teenage boys drove by. Their car, a black Lexus two-door, throbbed with music, the bass heavy even through the closed windows. On the second pass, they stopped and a cloud of marijuana smoke drifted out as the driver’s window was eased down.

  She sauntered up to the driver’s door. A pimply faced kid who didn’t look old enough to have a license, his hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles showed white, could barely look at her.

  There were four other boys crammed into the car.

  “How much?” the driver asked nervously, and the kid in the passenger seat had the brains to turn down the rap music.

  She eyed the group, thought of her younger brother in Duluth. He was older than these punks, but not by much. “Five hundred a piece,” she said, because she had her standards. Underage horny boys, especially a pack of them, were off-limits. Big trouble.

  “What?” In the lamplight, the driver looked like he’d just peed himself.

  “Fuck! No way!” an African American dude in the backseat called. “That’s highway robbery, man.”

  “Going rate.”

  “Like hell.”

  “That’s the going part of it. You’d better get going.”

  “That bitch tryin’ to rip us off!” said another kid, one in the shadows of the backseat, his face hidden.

  She wasn’t into playing games.

  “Gang bangs aren’t free,” she said.

  “You ain’t seen what I got, baby,” No-Face purred. As if he were God’s gift.

  The rain was coming down hard now, so she said, “So let me show you all what I got, okay?”

  “Yeah, baby,” the guy in the passenger seat said.

  Gross.

  She whipped out her cell phone. “If you don’t want me to call my pimp, then you’d better get yourselves out of here. You know he’s pretty badass.”

  “We . . . we got fifty bucks,”
one kid offered up. Jesus, had his voice even changed? “Don’t that buy a blow job? It’s my bro Jesse’s birthday.”

  “Happy birthday, Jesse,” she said. “How old are you?”

  A kid with red hair pressed his face to the window of the backseat.

  “He’s eighteen,” No-Face insisted.

  She almost laughed. Jesse couldn’t have been more than fourteen, fifteen tops. The fun was over. She threw her cigarette onto the street, mashed it out with the toe of her platform, then dialed a fake number into the phone. When a male voice answered, thank God, she said, “Yeah, Big Len, I got me a little problem down here . . . Yeah, my usual corner. Some punk kids are hassling me . . . Yeah, bring Ralph along. And make it quick.”

  “She’s just fuckin’ with us, man.” No-Face again. The wise one.

  “I wish she was fuckin’ us,” the black dude said. “Check out her ass.”

  Gracie glanced down the street, as if expecting someone. That did it for the driver. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “I’m outta here. My dad will kill me if I get into any trouble with his car.”

  “What a pussy!” No-Face wasn’t impressed, but the driver hit the gas, tearing out and nearly running a stoplight.

  She was about to give up when a silver sedan, one that had driven around the block a couple of times, showed up again. This was it, her last chance. The rain was playing hell with her hair and makeup.

  The car eased up to the corner, and a guy with dark glasses rolled down his window. No marijuana. No group of testosterone-driven teenagers. No rap music, just the quiet banter of a radio talk show.

  “You lookin’ for a good time?”

  “Always.” His smile was enigmatic.

  “It’ll cost ya,” she said, but he was nodding; he knew the drill. He didn’t even flinch when she upped her standard fee twenty bucks.

  Man, the rain was really coming down now. His windshield wipers slapped it wildly off the glass.

  “It has to be my place,” she was saying.

  “Of course. I’ll drive.”

  She hurried around the back of the car and slid into the passenger seat. It smelled clean, no lingering smoke, so she didn’t light up, just rattled off the address as he, dressed all in black, his jacket zipped to his neck, drove calmly, not talking. The swish of the wipers and hiss of the tires over the wet pavement underscored the drone of the radio. He drove the speed limit—no hurry—and they arrived at the old apartment building where she resided. Her two rooms were on the first floor, near the back entrance. She dashed through the rain with him on her heels, and though she thought it odd that he didn’t remove his sunglasses, Gracie was used to all kinds of freaks, some of whom didn’t even want sex; they just wanted to talk or watch her fondle herself, or . . . well, whatever. If she’d learned anything in this business, it was that she couldn’t guess what made a john tick.