“And pull myself together?”
“Yeah,” he said, and for once she didn’t fight. “That would be a good idea.”
Reluctantly, Val closed her eyes and sank back into the downy depths of her pillow. She let the darkness close in on her, willing the horrible images of Cammie dying from her brain.
She felt a thump as Bo jumped onto the bed and nuzzled close beside her, as if to give her comfort. Absently, tears burning behind her eyelids, she patted his head, soothing both herself and the dog.
Don’t fall apart! You can’t! Not now. You owe it to Cammie to be strong, to find her killer.
Surely, if she just thought long and hard, she could figure this out; she knew she could. But there was so much. Beyond who had killed her and Sister Asteria, why had Camille been looking into her own adoption? And who was the father of her child if not Father Frank O’Toole? Why did she, Valerie, feel like everywhere she went, someone was watching? Why was Cammie found in a bridal dress? What was it Sister Charity was hiding at St. Marguerite’s? What were the meaning of the notes scribbled in Cammie’s all-too-graphic diary?
And Lord, oh, Lord, what was she going to do about Slade?
“I can’t do this,” she said into the darkness. “I have to get up and do something.”
“We will.” Slade’s voice was close. Now he was probably seated in the only other chair in the room, the one near the foot of the bed.
“No,” she said, unable to fight the need for action. “We need to do it right now.” She had the feeling that time was slipping away from her, that any second that wasn’t used to try and find Camille’s killer was a second wasted.
She threw off the covers, grabbed the sheet to cover her nakedness, though he’d seen her thousands of times before, then swung off the bed. He was seated in the chair with his heels propped on the end of the mattress, his legs blocking her path. He looked up at her. “You’re sure about this?”
She nodded. “Ab-so-frickin’-lutely. It’s time to stop being a wimp and get something done. Whoever’s doing this is really ticking me off.”
He grinned, offering up that untrustworthy slash of white. She thought he might try to stop her, but he nodded and swung his feet to the floor.
“I’m with you,” he said, and her heart nearly broke.
“The date—it’ll have to wait.”
“I know.”
“You want to give me some privacy?” She was still clutching the damned sheet over her chest.
“No.” His grin stretched and was absolutely wicked. She arched an eyebrow and he said on a sigh, “But, being the gentleman I am, I will.”
“Another bad line, Houston.”
He chuckled, and, standing, he whistled to the dog. “Come on, Bo, the lady wants to be alone.” He walked through the door and called over his shoulder, “We’ll check the perimeter, but I’m sure whoever was inside is long gone.”
“No doubt.” As she heard him leave, she dressed—underwear, bra, T-shirt, and jeans. She scraped her hair back but didn’t bother with any makeup other than a slash of lip gloss, then walked into the living area again.
There was the damned BlackBerry, right where she’d dropped it. She was careful as she picked it up, using a plastic bag as she stared again at the short video of her sister’s death.
“You sick son of a bitch,” she muttered, then hit the keys to play another one. Her heart dropped as she recognized Sister Asteria, in a bridal gown, a rosary over her throat, gasping for breath, tears rolling down her face as she, too, died before the camera.
What kind of psychopath were they dealing with?
Valerie’s hands were shaking. She could barely touch the buttons for another video, and this one was blank, a black screen, but there was a voice, a harsh, hissing whisper, the same one that haunted her dreams.
Her scalp prickled and her mouth turned to sand as she listened.
“You’re on the lissssst,” the horrid voice intoned smugly. “There is no esssscape.”
Valerie had no doubt the message was meant for her.
CHAPTER 41
Of course he found nothing.
Slade walked around the grounds of the Briarstone bed-and-breakfast and discovered nothing more dangerous than a possum, nine or ten babies on her back, lumbering toward the chokecherry and milkweed that grew in profusion near the picket fence.
Whoever had left the damned BlackBerry had disappeared like a wraith, leaving no footprint or any disturbance that Slade could see. Nor was there any scent that caused Bo to go out of his mind with barking.
Then again, the old dog hadn’t seen the possum, so he couldn’t be counted on for too much help. “Come on, boy,” he said, and tried to stay calm.
No one had gotten hurt.
But the thought that someone had been prowling around the house while Valerie was inside alone bothered him, and despite all her tough, ex-cop act, he knew she was vulnerable. The creep had been inside!
What if, instead of slamming the screen door, the intruder had actually had a gun and fired? What if even now, Slade were in the emergency room of the local hospital, waiting at Valerie’s bedside, hoping she would survive the attack? What if the attack had been deadly, a bullet straight to the heart?
“Don’t go there,” he warned himself as he climbed the steps to the back porch and swept his gaze over the main house and outbuildings one last time.
By now it was really dark, only the gray-blue illumination of the solar lights casting their eerie glow over the grass and flowers, their blooms already closed for the night. A few cars rolled down the side street, and there were none parked that shouldn’t have been there.
Nonetheless, he was going to call Montoya.
Someone had wanted Camille’s diary.
Why?
And who?
He stopped at his pickup, unlocked the glove box, and pulled out his pistol, a thirty-eight. Not a lot of firepower, but enough to deter an assailant. Tucking the weapon into the back of his jeans, he returned to the house and hurried up the back steps.
Inside, he found Valerie waiting, the damned BlackBerry in a plastic bag. Her face was white as death, her eyes round with a quiet fear, her pointed chin set.
“What’ve you got?”
“A little present,” she said. “Left by our friend.”
“Our friend? Oh.” The intruder. “More than what we saw earlier?”
“Oh, yeah. Take a look.” She handed him the BlackBerry in its see-through skin.
He stared at the tiny screen, once more saw Cammie draw her last painful breath, her terrified gaze beseeching.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, sick inside all over again at the image.
“The show’s not over.” Val’s voice was devoid of any trace of humor.
A second video appeared on a small screen, the woman, he knew from the news reports, being Sister Asteria. This victim, too, a beautiful woman, battled for and lost her life. Her eyes were bulbous, her lips moving, blood oozing at her throat as she lay helplessly on the ground.
“Dear God,” he whispered, horrified. “Don’t tell me there’s more,” he said, watching as Val pressed another set of keys.
“Nope. This time it’s only audio.” She pushed the key for speaker, and he heard the voice, a harsh, rasping sound, obviously disguised. He couldn’t tell whether it was male of female; all he knew was that it was deadly.
“You’re on the list,” it said in a sickening hiss, then paused for effect before adding, “There is no escape.”
The hairs on the back of his neck lifted. Fear crystalized in his brain, while anger that anyone would threaten Val fired his blood. “This was meant for you.”
“Apparently.”
“We need to call Montoya.”
“Already left him a message,” she said, too calmly for his satisfaction.
Suddenly, this tiny little carriage house, the one he’d thought was so homey and cozy, smelling of Val’s perfume and potpourri, now felt like a death
trap, open to any twisted bastard who decided to take a potshot at her. A phone rang. Letting him hold the ziplock bag with the BlackBerry, she snagged her cell from the counter and looked at the caller ID.
“Montoya,” she said.
“Tell him to get the hell over here!”
She was nodding as she answered, and after a short conversation, she hung up. “He’s on his way.”
“Good. When he gets here, I’ll go get my things.”
“Your things?”
“Until whatever is happening is over, until the madman who’s doing this—and now targeting you—is dead or behind bars, preferably dead, I’m sticking to you like glue! Bo and I are moving in.”
“But—”
“No arguments, Val. I’ll camp out on the couch, but you’re too important for me to just sit by and let some maniac walk into your house whenever he wants! Holy Christ, no! We’ll change the locks on all the doors, even at the main house. Call Freya and tell her what’s going on. I’ll go double-check everything at the main house as soon as Montoya arrives. And when he gets here, we’re going to demand police protection.”
“Whoa! Hey, slow down,” she said. “I don’t think I need that. If the guy wanted to kill me, he could have easily. I was in the shower, for God’s sake. I saw him and he probably saw me, but there was no attack.”
“Yet.”
“He just wants to terrorize me, and yeah, he has.” She was nodding, twirling her cell phone in her fingers nervously.
“He didn’t just terrorize two other women.”
“Who were nuns at St. Marguerite’s.” Slade could tell by the way her eyebrows puckered together that she was thinking. Hard. Piecing it all together. “The killer just knows I’m nosing around, and he wants me to back off.”
“The threat was pretty damned specific.” Slade wasn’t going to take any chances. “He wants to terrorize you, yeah, maybe convince you to stay out of it, but now that you’ve seen Cammie’s diary, been poking around St. Marguerite’s and St. Elsinore’s, he’s out for blood.”
“What the hell is it he wanted from the diary?”
“Who knows?” Slade’s mind was racing over the pages filled with sexual adventures written in a flowing hand—all true? Or were there fantasies involved? They may never know, but they were important to someone. “Maybe the police have found something,” he said.
He saw her shudder, knew she didn’t like anyone, even detectives from the Robbery/Homicide Division of the police department, prying into Camille’s personal life. “I hope.”
“And maybe,” he pushed, “we should just leave the investigation to the police. That’s their job; we could be getting in the way.”
“No way.” She leveled her gaze at him. Stepped closer. “It’s not that I don’t trust the police. For God’s sake, I was a cop. But I know how thin a department can be stretched, how many man-hours it takes to work a crime like this. I believe they’re throwing all their muscle into Camille’s murder and that they’ll probably be creating a task force, getting help from the FBI, and that’s all well and good. But this is Cammie we’re talking about, my only sister.” She was now facing him, her bare toe pressed against the tip of his cowboy boot. “I’m not backing off, Slade.” Her eyes were earnest, the pupils large. “And you know it. You know me. So don’t waste your breath.”
Her gaze held his, and in that instant, all he could think about was kissing her, dragging her into his arms, pressing the length of her to him, and making love to her until dawn. Only afterward, when the ghosts of the night, the phantoms that haunted them, receded into the shadows and the light of the new day streamed through the windows to warm their naked, sweat-soaked bodies, would he release her. But that, of course, was impossible.
“Okay,” he agreed with more than a little reservation—oh, hell, he didn’t want her getting hurt or putting herself in danger. “But the deal is I’m staying. Right here!” He pointed to the floor. “With you! Until I know you’re safe.”
For once, thank God, she didn’t argue.
He considered that a minor miracle.
The call came on Montoya’s cell phone just as they were wrapping things up at Grace Blanc’s apartment.
“Let’s roll,” he said to Bentz after giving him a quick rundown of what he knew, that Valerie Houston’s house had been burglarized. They jogged across the parking lot of Grace Blanc’s building to the cruiser they’d taken from the station. Bentz, despite his age and extra pounds, kept up with him, and they climbed inside the Crown Vic, Montoya at the wheel.
Traffic was thinning, but still he darted around slower vehicles.
“Our guy’s busy,” Bentz said.
“Working overtime, it seems.” He cut in front of a low-rider pickup, then headed toward St. Charles, where the dark street cast an eerie glow under streetlamps, the leaves of the large trees lining the avenue seeming to glisten. A solitary streetcar passed, traveling in the opposite direction, few passengers inside.
Straight out of a horror movie.
On either side of the broad avenue divided by the streetcar line were expansive mansions, as architecturally diverse as the city itself, but all grand and huge, with cultured grounds and many with wrought-iron fences.
Definitely how the other half lived.
“So what do a prostitute and two nuns have in common?” Bentz thought aloud as he stared out the window.
“That sounds like the start of a really bad joke.” Montoya scowled as he took the final corner too fast and saw Briarstone House lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree on the left. “The obvious answer is they all knew a priest who was very bad news.”
“The question is, then,” Bentz said as Montoya wheeled into the drive, stopping the Crown Vic a few inches from the bumper of an old, beatup pickup, “who’s the priest?”
“Yeah, that is the question.” Montoya cut the engine and thought of the possibilities: Father Frank O’Toole, the priest who admitted to an affair with Sister Camille but who was not the baby’s father, according to the blood work; Father Paul Neland, the older, tight-lipped priest at St. Marguerite’s; the missing Father Thomas at St. Elsinore’s; or someone else? What about Father John, the would-be priest who seemed to have risen from the dead to kill yet another prostitute? He was a possibility. But what did he have to do with the deaths at St. Marguerite’s? He’d always gone after redheads. And then there was the missing nun, Lea De Luca. So far, the SFPO hadn’t found hide nor habit of her.
He felt like he should be able to pull some mental strings and figure out what the connection was. The orphanage? The religious order? What?
He stepped out of the car and was halfway up the walk when he was greeted by Valerie Houston’s husband, the guy who just happened to have shown up on the night his sister-in-law and would-be lover had been slain.
Coincidence?
Or not?
“Glad you’re here,” the husband said, shaking hands with Bentz, then Montoya. A tall, raw-boned man, he looked worried as hell. “I think my wife told you what happened. Come on inside.”
“Inside” meant inside of the smaller cottage on the property, a building that, because of its tall, narrow build, looked to have once been the carriage house to the main mansion. Valerie Houston was inside, standing in the kitchen, a big dog at her feet. The hound’s eyes followed Montoya and Bentz, and his tail, which had been sweeping the floor, became motionless.
And the husband was packing heat, carrying a weapon in the waistband of his pants.
“You licensed for that?” Montoya asked, motioning toward the gun.
Houston nodded and Montoya didn’t ask to see the paperwork; he’d check himself. Later.
“Here’s the BlackBerry,” Valerie said without so much as a greeting. She’d caught the exchange between Montoya and her husband.
The device was wrapped in a plastic bag that she pushed across the counter. “I don’t know if it’s Camille’s. I assume that it is and that the killer stole it from her on th
e night she died, then used it whenever he needed it. And, yes, I did touch it before I realized what it was.” She met Montoya’s gaze. “I looked through it, too, because I couldn’t help myself.”
Bentz got out his notebook, Montoya his digital voice recorder. “Let’s go through this again,” Bentz said. “What happened earlier?”
She launched into her tale of the break-in, if you could even call it as such. Neither of her doors had been locked when she’d thought she’d seen the intruder and had heard what she’d first thought was a gunshot.
They asked questions and she answered; the husband backed her up. They admitted that the scattered items in the living room belonged to Camille, the contents of boxes they’d found in the garage; then they played the first video on the BlackBerry, and every muscle in Montoya’s body tightened as he watched Camille Renard, dressed in the tired bridal gown, struggle for her dying breaths. Panic rounded her beautiful eyes as they bulged and she finally, painfully, let go of life.
Fury invaded his bloodstream. What kind of sicko would kill someone and film it? A poor man’s snuff film. Of a nun.
“Jesus,” he muttered as the next video played.
His guts twisted as he watched Sister Asteria in another bridal gown, the darkness of the cemetery and whitewashed tombs surrounding her as she seemed to beg for her life as she was being garroted, blood circling her throat, the dress not yet decorated with its drops of blood. That must’ve been done afterward, after the video session was finished.
For a second, after the video was over, he couldn’t speak, could barely think. The ticking of a nearby clock seemed to echo through his brain.
He thought of Grace Blanc, displayed on her bed, half dressed, her throat bruised and bloodied from a garrote. He glanced at Bentz, whose color had drained from his face.
“You said there was an audio message.”
“Yeah,” the husband said, his eyes dark, his eyebrows slammed together in worry.
Through the plastic, Valerie pressed another button, and soon a voice was hissing through the room. “You’re on the list.” The words were drawn out. Then there was a pause and the rest of the message: “There is no escape.”