Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (153 page)

“If you’ll just step to one side, I’ll have one of the detectives come and speak with you.”

“The police came to my house to tell me. That’s why I’m here,” she insisted.

“Excuse me.” The officer spoke into the radio microphone attached to his uniform. Eve felt all the starch drain out of her and sank against the police cruiser and tried to pull herself together, but all the while images of her father flashed through her mind.

Dad! Oh Dad! I’m so sorry…so sorry.
Tears again filled her eyes as she remembered Terrence Renner as a young man, over two decades earlier, when she hadn’t yet entered kindergarten. She recalled how he’d tossed her into the air, only to catch her again, and how she’d she squealed in glee. “More, Daddy,” she’d cried, though her mother had been horrified at the game. “More, more, more!”

Another fleeting image, of her father as a doctor, the tails of his blindingly white lab coat catching in the breeze as he walked briskly across the tended lawns and gardens of Our Lady of Virtues campus. His professional smile had always been in place, though he’d rarely looked side to side at the patients who sat in the shade or pushed walkers or clustered in “outdoor group activities.” He’d been self-important then, a brilliant, educated man among the mentally incapacitated, the patients he’d tried to help.

She closed her eyes and turned her face to the night breeze. Another memory seared through her brain: she’d been older, maybe preteen, and her father had made a daily ritual of returning home to their house just off the campus of the hospital. Eve’s mother, lipstick bright, forever in jeans and a colorful T-shirt, had always had a pitcher of drinks waiting for him. Each night Terrence had set his briefcase in the front closet, deposited his keys in a dish on the table in the foyer, and brushed a kiss over his wife’s cheekbone. Even so, he was distracted, lines of worry creasing his high forehead, his gaze trained on the living room, where the sanctuary of the television and nightly news waited.

And then there was the most painful memory: Eve and her father standing at the cemetery in the hot sun on an August afternoon without a breath of breeze. Her brothers, red eyed and uncomfortable in their suits and ties, had been a few steps away, part of the family but not too close. Nana, draped in black, had been there as well, as Terrence stood staunchly in the blazing sun, his face pale, no tears visible as his wife was laid to rest.

Now, leaning against the police car, Eve tried to rally.

“I would like to see my father,” Eve repeated to the skinny officer with the big hat.

“Sorry, ma’am. I can’t let you. Crime scene.”

“I heard you the first time. I understand a crime has been committed.” Her head was thundering again, pounding mercilessly. “Can you please tell me what’s happened to my father?” When she realized the deputy wasn’t about to budge, she added, “Or…or can I talk to whoever’s in charge?”

“Detective Brounier’s on his way.”

“Brounier?” Eve turned toward the house and saw not one but three men, backlit by the lights of the house and flashlights, striding down the lane. She didn’t recognize the big, burly black man, but she knew the others.

Too well.

Her heart nosedived.

Detectives Bentz and Montoya.

More bad news.

Before they spoke, just as the threesome reached the barrier of yellow tape, she said to the approaching black man, “I’m Eve Renner. Dr. Renner’s daughter. I want to see him.”

“Detective Louis Brounier,” he said, extending a big hand, though he didn’t smile. He stared at her with surprisingly kind eyes. “You were alerted to the news about your father?”

“It’s a homicide?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t equivocate, and for that she was grateful. She nodded slowly several times. “I would…I would like to see him.”

“No, you don’t,” Montoya interjected.

Her temper snapped, white hot. “He’s my father, damn it.” Who was this guy to tell her what she did or didn’t want?

Bentz said, “We can’t let you do that. Not yet, anyway. In a few hours, after he’s been transported to the morgue, then we’ll need you to make an identification.”

Brounier said, “The sheriff’s department is going to work with the state police and the New Orleans Police Department. We just don’t have enough resources to handle something like this alone.” Eve knew there was more to it. Bentz and Montoya had been called in because her father’s death was similar to Roy’s. There was a connection. Sooner or later, the police would be knocking on Cole’s door again. And she was betting on sooner.

Montoya said, “You called here earlier. For your dad.”

She nodded. “I got into town late, and I wanted to call him and let him know I was back. But I got his machine, and then my sister-in-law from Atlanta phoned me. A reporter friend of hers had called her and told her there was trouble at Dad’s house, a possible homicide.” Eve managed to keep her voice in check. She’d already decided not to mention Cole. Not yet. “Then the police came and alerted me, and then I drove straight here.”

“It would have been better if you’d stayed home and let us do our job,” Montoya said.

“I couldn’t,” Eve said simply.

Montoya eyed her. “What time did you call your father?”

“Two-thirty, three…Does it matter?” Eve felt herself begin to perspire. Cole had been with her when she’d made that call, and it felt as if the detective knew it.

“It couldn’t wait till morning?”

“I really wasn’t concerned about what time it was. I was too keyed up and worried to sleep.”

A moment passed when no one said anything. Eve broke the uncomfortable silence. “Do you have any idea who would do this? Or why?”

“We thought you might be able to come up with a list of his enemies,” Bentz suggested.

“Enemies? I…I have no idea. He was retired.” She flashed to Tracy Aliota’s parents and their accusations that her father had been responsible for their daughter’s death. “I’ll think about it,” she promised, suddenly so tired her bones ached. Her father was dead. There was nothing more she could do for him, and even if she did regret their recent estrangement, it was too late now to make amends. “I think I’d better call my brothers.”

“What about Cole Dennis? Has he contacted you?” Montoya asked, the diamond stud in his ear reflecting sharply in the strobing lights.

Eve nearly stopped breathing. “What?”

“He’s out of jail, you know.”

“Of course I do. It’s all over the news.”

“So did he call you?”

“I just got into town, Detective, and I have a restraining order against him, and let’s just say I’m not exactly his favorite person these days.”

“So he
didn’t
contact you?”

“He hasn’t called me, no. Not in a long, long while,” she said, wondering why she felt compelled to protect the man who she’d once thought had tried to kill her. She started for her car, but Montoya stepped in front of her.

“We have a few more questions.”

“Can they wait?” she asked. “Until tomorrow?”

“Yes, ma’am. Let us have someone drive you home,” Brounier offered.

“No. I’m fine.”

“Are you certain? Is there someone I can call?”

“No, thank you. I’ll be all right,” she said, hoping to appear more collected than she felt. Her head was throbbing, she was dead on her feet, but the last thing she wanted was to be cooped up in some vehicle with a cop. She had to be careful, sort things out.

“We’ll call you later,” Detective Bentz said, though Montoya studied her as if he didn’t trust anything about her.

Brounier nodded his agreement. “Thank you, Ms. Renner. Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” she whispered, walking quickly toward her car. She didn’t wait for anyone to change his mind. She just needed some time alone. To think. Tomorrow, after a night’s sleep, she would talk to the cops again, and when she did she’d show them the weird clippings about the mental hospital and admit that she thought she’d been followed. If they blew her off as a nutcase, so be it.

And will you tell them about Cole?

One of the news reporters looked her way. Oh God, she didn’t want to talk to anyone from the press. Not now. Probably not ever. Averting her face, Eve unlocked her car and quickly slid behind the wheel. Slamming the door closed, she prayed the reporter wouldn’t recognize her, wouldn’t put two and two together about Royal Kajak and her father.
And Cole. The reporters will make that connection too.

She rammed her key into the ignition.

Will you tell them? Will you?

She shook her head and bit her lip, wondering what it said about her that, against all reason, she was protecting Cole.

CHAPTER 11

“I
think I’m in trouble.” Cole held the grimy pay-phone receiver to his ear while drinking a brutally hot cup of coffee he’d gotten from an espresso hut on Decatur. He’d called Deeds collect. Thankfully his attorney had deigned to take the call.

“Already?” Deeds said, and Cole imagined him leaning back in his desk chair, looking through the panoramic windows of his corner office. “It’s barely eight in the morning. You haven’t been out of jail twenty-four hours. What took you so long?”

Cole was in no mood for wisecracks. “Terrence Renner’s dead.”

Silence.

“It’s all over the news.”

“What happened?” Deeds bit out.

“He was murdered. Throat slit. Just like Roy Kajak.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes. Turn on the television. Renner’s homicide is nearly identical to the Kajak murder. The only difference that I know is that the numbers scribbled in blood on the wall and tattooed onto his forehead were different: 101 instead of 212.”

“All of this information was on the news?” Deeds asked.

“Probably not all of it. Some was held back.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I was there. Renner called me.”

“Damn it, Cole! I knew it! You can’t keep your nose clean for a day!”

“I told you I thought I was in trouble.”

“Trouble is a traffic ticket. This isn’t trouble. It’s a fucking catastrophe!” He paused to draw in a deep breath then continued his rant. “What the hell were you thinking?” He swore again, calling Cole every name in the book before he somehow managed to calm down. “Okay, okay. Let me get this straight.
You
witnessed the crime?”

“No.” Cole sipped the hot coffee from his paper cup and kept staring through the smudged glass of the booth, watching people pass by. Some were walking to the bus stop one block away, others whipping by on bicycles, still others strolling or out for a morning jog. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him. A police cruiser stopped at a nearby light but rolled past the booth without either of the officers inside even glancing in his direction.

“I got to the scene just afterward, I think.” Talking quietly and rapidly, he sketched most of the details of the events of the night before, only omitting the part about locating his stash of money, stealing Renner’s things, and visiting Eve. Those details could come out later.

Maybe.

Deeds listened.

Cole knew the legal wheels were whirling at light speed in his attorney’s mind as Deeds tried to come up with a good “spin” on the unwelcome news of his client’s escapades. As Cole concluded, Deeds said, “Just tell me you didn’t call Eve.”

“I didn’t call Eve.” That, at least, was the truth. He didn’t know how much he could confide in his lawyer, and as for Eve, oh hell, he didn’t know what to think about that himself. He hadn’t intended to meet her last night, but in truth, had he known she was back in town, he might have made a beeline for her door anyway. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you later, and we’ll meet.”

“I’m booked until six. Got a squash match after that, but I’ll change it. Come in then.”

“No, let’s meet somewhere else.”

A beat.

“Okay. Your place?”

“How about O’Callahan’s, on Magazine, a block or two off of Julia?”

Deeds said, “I’ll be there around six-thirty. Don’t, and I mean do
not,
do anything stupid in the meantime.”

“Right. Oh, and Sam, don’t call me. I had to ditch the phone.”

“Son of a bitch, Cole, what’s got into you?”

“I don’t want to be traced. If you don’t show up at O’Callahan’s, I’ll call you.

“Jesus H. Christ, what the hell have you done this time?”

Oh man, if you only knew.
“I’ll explain when I see you,” Cole lied then hung up and started walking.

Don’t do anything stupid.
What Deeds really meant was don’t contact Eve. Deeds didn’t yet know that Eve was in town and that Cole had already found her.

Taking another scalding sip of coffee, Cole kept walking, over the slight rise that separated the city streets from the waterfront. He needed time to think, to clear his head.

Except his damned thoughts kept tumbling back to Eve. Dressed in a soft robe, her eyes glimmering with tears and emotion, her lips compressed angrily, and her hands pointing a revolver straight at him, she’d been ultimately desirable. He should have been scared, angry, but there was something about that woman that just got to him. Even though she’d obviously been with another man, cheated on him, and despite her admitted memory loss would have willingly testified against him, he still found her the most intriguing woman he’d ever met.

So much for thinking rationally.

He strode toward the Riverwalk Marketplace, watching the sluggish water of the Mississippi roll past. A barge was heading upstream, and a bit of wind, blowing across the water, brought the dank scent of the river to his nostrils.

Who had killed Terrence Renner?

The same psycho who had slit Roy Kajak’s throat?

It had to be…So what did the numbers mean? 212? 101? Were they clues to the killer’s identity or a part of the homicidal maniac’s sick sense of justice?

Why, on the very day he was released, had the killer found his next victim?

Maybe it isn’t about you. Maybe the killing resumed because Eve returned to New Orleans. Or maybe because of some incident entirely unrelated.

A coincidence.

Oh yeah, like he believed that for even an instant.

Watching a teenager throw a Frisbee to some kind of mixed-breed shepherd wearing a red bandana, Cole downed the rest of his coffee, crumpled the cup, then tossed it into a trash receptacle. He had too much to do to spend time thinking in circles. He headed to the spot he’d parked his Jeep.

In the early morning hours, after leaving Eve’s house, Cole had headed back to his place, changed into clean clothes, then driven across town to a laundromat where he’d bleached the hell out of the blood-stained T-shirt and jeans before drying them and dropping them off at a depository for the Salvation Army. He was back home by six, slept three hours, showered in the thin spray of his bathroom, then walked to get his coffee and make the call. Fortunately, the caffeine was doing its job, jolting his system awake. He had a lot of things to do today, the first of which was to buy one of those prepaid, nearly impossible to trace cell phones that, he suspected, were popular with the drug-dealing crowd. Once he’d purchased a new phone, he’d make a few calls and see if he could connect with one of his former clients, a low-life slumlord who might just be able to help him out.

In the meantime he was going to go against his attorney’s advice and his own better judgment.

Because he couldn’t leave well enough—or Eve Renner—alone.

It was nearly ten when Eve finally forced herself out of bed. Somehow, despite the confrontation with Cole, the drive to her father’s house, the further phone calls to Anna Maria and her brother Van’s answering machine, she’d slept.

Like a log.

Now, though, she was sluggish, and the events of the past twenty-four hours bogged her down. Scrounging in the freezer, she discovered a bag of opened beans, which she ground, and started the coffeemaker. As she let Samson outside, Mr. Coffee began to gurgle and scent the room with the rich, warm aroma of some dark blend called Mississippi Mud. She didn’t remember buying the coffee, but that was pretty much standard these days. Her memory, though recovering, just wasn’t reliable.

She walked through the shower. Then, with a towel cinched around her body, swiped at the steamy mirror and nearly cringed at her reflection. Her long hair was cut short and highlighted, compliments of Anna Maria the hairdresser. The “style,” if you could call it that, was spiky and uneven due to the large spot over one temple that had been shaved for her surgery. Her hair would grow out, and, for the moment, she decided to “go with” the new “do.” It wasn’t all that bad, and a hairstyle was the least of her problems.

The face beneath her shaggy bangs was a concern, however; she looked as if she’d aged ten years in the past three months. Her skin was pale, her eyes without their usual sparkle, her cheekbones pronounced with the loss of nearly ten pounds. She hadn’t been heavy to start with, and losing the weight hadn’t aided in her attempts to appear healthy and athletic.

“In time,” her physical therapist had told her, “you’ll be a hundred percent, but it will take awhile.” So maybe the eighty-five percent motion in her shoulder would improve. She ran a toothbrush around her teeth, added a little lip gloss and minimal mascara, and called it good.

Who really cared anyway?

When she stepped into the jeans she found in her drawer, they hung lower on her hips than she remembered. The sweater she tossed over her head draped loosely but was comfy, so she went with it. As for the headache that had followed her around all day yesterday, it had abated a bit, and, despite the grief she bore for her father, she felt as if she could tackle the day.

She slid into her favorite pair of slip-ons and clattered down the wooden steps just as the phone jangled. Racing to the kitchen, she snagged the receiver before it rang for the third time. “Hello?”

“Eve Renner?”

She braced herself at the sound of the unfamiliar male voice. “Yes,” she responded cautiously.

“This is Miles Weston with WKMF.”

Her heart sank. She recognized the name.

“I’d like to talk to you about your father’s death.”

“No comment,” she said.

The reporter continued, “The police are listing it as a homicide.”

She hung up. Her anonymity had been short lived. Last night she hadn’t been recognized, but today the press was already putting two and two together, having figured out she’d returned to New Orleans. She was Eve Renner, the woman whose lover had been accused of murdering Roy Kajak in a bizarre homicide, and now she was also Eve Renner, the daughter of Terrence Renner, who’d been killed in like fashion.

And Cole Dennis, blast his hide, was a free man.

At least temporarily.

The phone rang again. She saw it was the same number as before, so she let the answering machine take the call. The last thing she needed to deal with today was the damned media. She’d had enough to last her a lifetime.

And she wasn’t ready to deal with her father’s murder.

Not yet.

The coffee, despite its enticing smell, was a little bitter without any cream, but she sipped it as she read over the articles about Faith Chastain and Our Lady of Virtues again. They seemed less sinister in the morning light, almost childish with their perfectly cut notched edges. Why the pinking shears? Why sent to her? Why, why, why?

She sat at the table and read each clipping carefully. Faith Chastain. She fingered a grainy picture of a beautiful woman with a haunted expression. Had Eve seen her before? She checked the articles closely and determined that Faith Chastain had been in and out of Our Lady of Virtues but that she’d stayed for an extended length of time when Eve was young,…She’d been killed twenty years earlier, about the time Eve was fifteen…not long before Eve’s own mother’s death.

Moving the clippings around, Eve tried to put them in some sort of order, and as she did her thoughts returned to Our Lady of Virtues. The hospital was a creepy and fascinating place for a curious child. Though she’d been warned time and time again about keeping to the main hallways or her father’s office on the first floor, she had, over the years, explored all of the old brick asylum, from the basement with its cool tile walls and shining equipment to the dusty attic where unused and broken furniture and records had been kept. She’d loved to sneak into that forgotten space under the rafters.

Our Lady of Virtues was where she’d first met Roy…. They were both around ten at the time and up to no good. Roy was the son of the caretaker, and they’d instantly connected, two normal kids in a bizarre world of insanity, delusion, and pain. For the most part, they’d played outside, off the grounds of the hospital, in the surrounding woods and fields, but when the weather was bad, they spent time inside the campus of Our Lady of Virtues. Though both the convent and hospital were deemed off limits, they ignored the rules as much as possible.

It had been a game to them both, slipping through the quiet hallways, up the service stairs, and avoiding the ever-rustling skirts and stern glances of Sister Rebecca. How many times had Eve hidden in the laundry cupboard, peering out, seeing the dangling cross from the heavy belt rosary Sister Rebecca wore around her waist? Or viewed the crisp uniform and pinched lips of the nurse, a slim blond woman who seemed to do her job with long-suffering efficiency? What was her name? Nurse…Suzanne…That was it; there had been an old song by the same name, one she’d heard on her mother’s tape player. Roy had always whistled it under his breath, singing only, “You want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind…but you know that she’s half crazy…”

They’d thought they were so funny, so clever, so sly as they’d filched cookies and apples from the kitchen then sneaked them upstairs to the attic to build their own hiding space with the old furniture, drapes, and broken equipment.

She remembered the gloomy day that Roy had led her to the attic and then, making her promise not to tell on pain of death, showed her a series of holes in the floor where light from the rooms below filtered upward. “Spy holes,” he had told her, and they’d spent many afternoons looking through them into the patient rooms and hallways below.

Eve had felt a little guilty about it, uncomfortable that she was peering into another person’s privacy, but it hadn’t stopped her.

Had one of the people she’d observed secretly been Faith Chastain? What was the reason so many articles about this woman had been forced upon her?

Now, as morning sun filtered through the dirty windows and slats of the blinds, she had no answers, just the same feeling of unease that had chased after her so many years ago.

Her stomach rumbled from lack of food. She made a quick mental note to pick up a few essentials before she returned, then scooped up the newspaper articles and slid them into the envelope in which she’d received them.