Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (72 page)

“Let me guess. St. Catherine of Alexandria.”

“Yep.”

Bentz’s back teeth ground. “Hell.”

“Our man is one sick, sick bastard,” Montoya said over the hum of a vacuum that was being wielded by a member of the crime scene and was used to suck up and trap potential evidence. A photographer snapped still shots of the body and surrounding area from all angles. Another photographer used a video camera. Flashes of light strobed, offering glimpses of musty interior walls veined by black rivulets, stains from years of rainwater and filth seeping through the roof.

“Homey, huh?” Montoya mocked, his own gaze traveling over the scene. “You think he could pick anyplace more macabre?”

“Not if he tried, which, I think he does.”

Montoya was squatting now, staring at the plywood wheel. “Someone had to make this gizmo,” he said. “It’s nothing you can pick up at the local five-and-dime.”

“Or on ebay.”

“So either our killer has a workshop and a truck to haul this thing, or he built it here, or he bought it from someone who has a talent for creating instruments of torture.” Montoya leaned farther down and rotated his head, shining the beam of his flashlight on the underside of the wheel.

“I’m betting he built it here. It’s isolated. He cut some thick plywood, drilled a few holes, put in the biggest spikes he could find, and mounted the whole damned thing on a revolving turret of some kind.”

“It looks like an old wheel balancer, you know the kind they use in garages when they’re putting on tires.”

“So you just give it a push and it starts spinning.” Bentz joined Montoya as the younger cop illuminated the underpinnings, which included an axle screwed into a concrete block. Metal arms supported the blood-stained plywood. Bentz’s jaw tightened. “So he’s a handyman.”

“How do
you
know about this kind of thing?”

“Because I built one that was similar. Instead of spikes, mine had pegs and was used for a school carnival when Kristi was about ten. The kids spun the wheel to try and win some kind of cheap prize, you know whistles, balloons, toy trucks, and all that useless crap.”

“Like on The Price is Right.”

“Well, yeah, but it was called
The Wheel of Fortune. ”

“Vanna would be proud.”

“If you say so,” Bentz said, not cracking a smile. “But here we’ve got the goddamned Wheel of Pain.”

“Built by a handyman priest.”

“Who can get his hands on old garage parts as easily as saints’ medals.” Bentz straightened and noticed a large mirror hung on the far wall. The glass was smooth and unbroken, without much dust on the surface. Unlike every other surface in the room. Everything else was covered in a thick, grainy layer of grime. “What’s with this?” he asked, but as the words left his mouth, he knew. “Our boy likes to watch himself while he’s working.”

“Shit.” Montoya scoped out the scene. “You’re right. He’s a damned egomaniac.”

“Or
Narcissus.
Has it been dusted for prints?”

“Of course,” a woman officer said, her feathers ruffling a bit as if Bentz had indicated she and the rest of the team were lax. Wearing latex gloves, she was carefully going over every surface. “Everything has.” She muttered something under her breath about “big-city cops” and went about her business.

Bentz didn’t let her get to him. “Let’s try to find out who manufactured the mirror,” he said to Montoya. “Maybe we can come up with someone who purchased something like this in the last month or so—same with the parts on the wheel over there and with the medals. Some of the saints are pretty common, but where would a guy get a St. Catherine of Alexandria medal?”

“Over the Internet or in one of those stores that sells religious crap, probably.” Montoya rubbed his goatee. “And the wheel mount. Maybe a garage is missing one. But it looks old, not like the ones that are hooked to computers that they’ve got today.”

“Not every garage in Louisiana is computer friendly. Unless it’s been filed off, that piece of equipment should have some serial numbers we can trace.”

Bentz scanned the scene once more and noticed a thick pool of blood beneath the wheel, one where there was more blood splattered than around the rest of the perimeter. Obviously the victim had been at that spot in her rotation, right in front of the mirror, when the killer had sliced off her head. Just so the sick bastard could watch himself as he slashed down with his blade. He probably got off on the image.

Again Bentz felt the urge to toss his dinner, but swallowed hard. “Any sign of a weapon?”

“Not that we’ve found so far.” Montoya was still sweeping the mirror with the beam of his flashlight, its bright glare reflected harshly in the glass.

“You said there was another victim.”

“Oh, yeah …” Using the bright beam to point to a doorway, Montoya led Bentz through a short, dark hallway to another much smaller silo-like room, originally, Bentz guessed, used for storage.

“Jesus!” he whispered as he spied the victim.

Chained to one chipped wall were the remains of a woman, no doubt the woman who had been sacrificed last summer on the feast day of St. Philomena, though her body was so decomposed no one would be able to visually ID her. What parts of her the rats and other scavengers hadn’t eaten or dragged away, the heat and maggots had taken care of. Bentz held a handkerchief to his face. This was the crypt Olivia had seen, the tomb.

Once again the victim’s head had been severed and it, like the head in the other room, rested atop a rusted bucket. A tiny chain with a medal dangling from what had been her neck glittered in the beam of the flashlight.

The cornerless room was just as Olivia had described, the writing on the wall in big block letters: LUMENA PAXTE CUM FI. Around the letters were the symbols that his brother had explained, the arrows, palm, lilies, anchor, fire, and a scourge.

“Peace be to you, Philomena,” Bentz muttered.

“Hardly,” Montoya said, scratching his goatee. “The letters are written in what looks like blood, rather than the red paint that was described in the book on saints that I read. My guess? The victim’s blood. If what Olivia Benchet says is true, that our man kept the victim here for a long period, then he had to cut her and get blood from her body in order to write his message and fill that.” He pointed to a small pottery vial left on the floor.

Bentz had to agree.

“And get this, the head’s been messed with.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been moved. We’re working on the theory that it fell or was dragged off the bucket, probably by some animal. There’s a disturbance in the dust on the table, some blood and hairs and pieces of dried flesh, but it looks like the head was returned to its original resting spot on the pail. Probably by the killer. He must’ve come back here to build his wheel or drag the latest victim here and checked on his earlier work.Then put things back the way he wanted them.”

“The way he wanted us to find them,” Bentz added.

“Exactly. This prick is proud of his work. Thinks he’s a damned artist.”

Bentz didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. It was as if the killer were mocking them, taunting them. “Hell.” He glanced around the room, searching for the mirror. It didn’t take long, but in this case he found not one, but five narrow full-length panels mounted on one curved wall. “Someone took his time. Look. The spaces between the mirrors are precise, the alignment perfect.”

“The guy wants things just so.”

“And to see himself in 3D.”

On the wall directly opposing the mirrors the victim’s chains had been bolted into a thick wooden post. “This is why Olivia only saw fragments,” Bentz said. “I thought it was because she was in and out of Louisiana, because she was so far away, but her images were split.”

“Because of the curvature of the wall. He couldn’t get a big panel that would fit.”

“Son of a bitch.” Bentz eyed the thin strips of reflective glass. “Let’s check with the manufacturer and distributor, then any outlet in the state or over the Internet. It would be odd for an individual to buy five identical mirrors. We’ll go back to summer. Before August eleventh. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he thought aloud, for the first time sensing there might be a way to track this guy down. “We’ll cross-check anyone who bought mirrors, saints’ medals, priest vestments, ski wear, tools, and weapons.”

“That’ll be easy,” Montoya remarked.

“Maybe easier than you think,” Bentz said as they made their way through the short hallway and larger room to the outside. The rain was sheeting, glistening in the beams of the klieg lights and headlights from the surrounding vehicles. “The FBI should be able to help.” He glanced at Montoya. “Where the hell are they?”

“On their way.”

Bentz strode to the cruiser where the kids who’d found the bodies and a woman pushing forty were huddled beneath a couple of umbrellas. In hooded sweatshirts, jeans, and hiking boots, the boys looked scared to death. “Kenny and Donny Sawtell,” Montoya introduced, “and their mother, Linda. This is Detective Bentz.” Montoya motioned to the older of the two brothers. “Why don’t you tell Detective Bentz what happened?”

The boys, around eleven and twelve, were white as sheets. They seemed as worried about talking to the cops as they were scared by the gruesome scenes they’d viewed. The older one, Kenny, did most of the talking, but Donny backed him up, for the most part nodding. The story was simple. The boys, who lived about three miles down the main road, had been out hunting behind their mother’s back. Packing twenty-twos and following Roscoe, the family’s dog, they’d tracked a deer through the woods to the old mill, where they’d ignored the “No Trespassing” sign and slipped through a hole in the fence. Roscoe had smelled something, so they’d broken into the building, thinking it would make a “cool” fort or hideout. Then they’d been scared out of their wits. They’d run home, told their mom, and Linda had called the local authorities.

“You’ve been here before?” Bentz asked and both boys shook their heads vigorously. Despite the umbrella and hoods, rain dripped down their noses.

“We never crossed the road before,” Kenny asserted and Donny nodded his agreement. “Not up here anyways….”

“Never poked around the old mill?”

“No, sir.”

“So you’ve never seen anyone else around here, cars or trucks, maybe ones you don’t recognize, or maybe some you did?” Again, in unison, the boys shook their heads. Bentz lifted his eyebrows. “What about you?” he asked the mother.

“Never. I rarely come down this way. It’s not on any of the routes I take to work or to the boys’ school.” Her hair was beginning to frizz in the rain and she had an arm around each of her son’s shoulders. As if she were afraid he was going to haul them both into jail for trespassing. “I’m usually going east or south. Not north. And even if I take the main road, I don’t go by here.”

Bentz believed her. The turnoff to the mill had to be a quarter-mile off a country road that angled away from the main highway. The mill was so far off the beaten track, probably no one but the old-timers in the local populace knew about it.

Except the killer. Somehow he’d found the Old Kayler Place and used it twice for his grisly work.

“Is there anything else you need?” Mrs. Sawtell asked. “The boys’ pa will be home anytime and I’ve got to get supper on. He’ll want to talk to Kenny and Donny about taking the dog and the guns out.” She sent each of her sons a stern look and her fingers tightened over their shoulders.

“No, thanks, that’ll do.” He dug into his wallet and withdrew a card. “If you think of anything else”—he swept a finger from one kid to the other—“call me.”

“We will,” Linda promised and hustled her boys through the mud to a pickup truck parked just outside the gate.

“So what do you think?” Montoya asked.

“The kids are telling the truth. They were scared to death.”

“I’ll check on the owner of the place, and the Sheriff’s Department is already contacting the neighbors. If anyone’s seen anything, we’ll know about it.”

“But when?” Bentz wondered aloud.

“You think he’s escalating.”

“Yeah,” Bentz said, glaring at the fortress-like mill. “I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“I’m tellin’ you I don’t know anything’ about a baby boy bein’ adopted out.” Ramsey John Dodd was adamantshears and began cutting out.

“My grandmother never mentioned it?” Olivia demanded, stretching the cord of the phone so she could fill Hairy S’s water dish. She wouldn’t put it past the slime-ball lawyer to lie through his teeth.

“Not to me.”

“I realize you’re too young to have been involved,” Olivia said as she turned on a faucet, “but I thought she might have said something about the baby or given you the name of a lawyer she used before she hired you.”

“I don’t know if she had one.” Ramsey John’s voice was smooth as oil. “But tell you what, I’ll go over all my files and see if there’s anything in ‘em.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Olivia said and imagined the attorney leaning back in his battered chair, the heels of his shoes resting on the desk in his hole-in-the-wall of an office. “Thanks, R.J.” She twisted off the tap.

“Anytime. No problem at all.” He hung up and Olivia set Hairy’
s dish on the floor. Just because you have a brother doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the killer. Bentz just has a theory that the murderer had to be someone close to you—someone related—but it’s only a theory.

She rubbed the kinks out of her neck.

Then again, it could be true.

She’d gotten nowhere on her quest to find out if her brother was alive

So who would Grannie confide in? If not a lawyer, then who? A sister? They were all dead. Olivia drummed her fingers on the countertop. Bernadette claimed she had no idea what had happened to her son. Reggie supposedly didn’t know he existed. Yet … that was wrong … hadn’t he mentioned that she was the only one left, that he’d lost all the others? Did he know what had happened to the baby? Would she have to swallow her pride and talk to the sperm donor again?

From her conversation with her mother, Olivia was certain there were no public records of the birth; no hospital records, but it was the only lead she had.

So you’d better call Bentz. He’s a cop. He can get the information faster than you.

She reached for the phone again but pride kept her from lifting the receiver. It had only been hours ago, in this very kitchen, where he’d rejected her. One night of lovemaking … a wistful smile tugged at her lips when she thought of lying in his arms, the warmth and security she’d so fleetingly felt as he’d held her close and she’d heard the steady sound of his breathing and the strong beat of his heart.

Well, that was over. He’d made it clear.

She grabbed a broom from the closet and began sweeping the floor. The phone rang and she managed to answer it and balance the receiver between her shoulder and ear as she brushed empty shells from beneath Chia’s cage.

“It’s Bentz.” Cold. Professional. Her heart did a quick little flip before she set the broom aside. From the background noise, the hum of an engine, and the crackle of the police band radio, she guessed he was on his cell phone. “I thought you’d like to know that we found the victims.”

Oh, God.
“So soon? Wait, victims? Plural?” More than one woman had been killed?

“Jane Does. But just as you described them,” he admitted, his voice a little less harsh. “One chained to the wall with the symbols around her, the other strapped to the wheel you described.”

“And both …”

“Yeah. Beheaded.”

Her stomach retched and she shot to the sink, thinking she would throw up. She should have felt a little sense of validation, that she’d been right and proved the skeptics wrong. Instead she just felt horror. Blind, mind-numbing horror.

“Both victims were in the same place,” he explained.

Her chest tightened as she remembered the women and their pain. As she kicked out a kitchen chair and dropped into it, Bentz gave her a summarized and, she suspected, sanitized version of what he’d found.

“But it was just as you described. Right on the money. Except that the crypt was really an old storage silo.”

Tears threatened. She felt weak. Helpless. All too clearly she remembered her visions, recalled the moments the women were slain. And she could do nothing but watch in horror. Her hands shook as she held the phone. Her right was still bandaged. Her mirror upstairs shattered.

“We’ll get him, Liv—Olivia,” Bentz said more kindly and her heart twisted.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

How many more would she see tortured and killed? The tears began to flow, running down her cheeks and chin to fall to the table. “Listen. I know this is rough—”

She blinked hard. No one could understand. No one.

“—In the meantime, the department’s authorized around-the-clock security for you.” She swallowed hard, brushed aside her tears with the back of a hand. “Did Ole Olsen’s crew come over?”

“Yes.” She nodded, glancing around the kitchen, though she knew he couldn’t see her. From her perch Chia set out a high-pitched whistle. Olivia forced a smile she didn’t feel. “That wasn’t part of the system, just Chia’s comment, but believe me, I’ve literally got more bells and whistles than I know what to do with. I think I need a degree in electrical engineering just to lock this place down.”

“Just make sure you use it.”

“I will … if I can ever figure it out.”
Buck up, Olivia. Sitting around crying won’t help the victims and it certainly won’t help you.

“You’re a smart woman. You’ll do fine,” he said, but she found little warmth in his compliment. Women were dying and she could do nothing. Nothing.

“Olivia? Are you all right?”

She gritted her teeth. “No, I’m not. I feel responsible for this somehow.”

“It’s not your—”

“I know that, okay! But it’s hard.” She tried vainly to pull herself together. “Look, I was about to call you. You asked if I had any siblings and I said ‘no’ but that was before I looked into my family Bible and discovered I have a brother.”

“I know.”

She froze. “
You
know?”

“I heard that your mother had a son before she was married to your father. She gave him up. Private adoption. So far, no record of it.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” she asked, her temper instantly igniting. Maybe she didn’t know Bentz at all. She’d accepted the fact that they couldn’t be lovers. She had come to the painful conclusion that Bentz was breaking off their short-lived relationship not only because he was adhering to his sense of professionalism but also because he was just plain incapable of allowing a woman to get too close. No doubt about it, he’d been burned and burned badly. Nonetheless, he should have had the decency to tell her about her brother. “Didn’t you think I’d want to know about this?”

“That’s one of the reasons I called. I just found out this afternoon before I got called to the scene. This was my first chance to get hold of you.”

Mentally, she counted to ten. Tried to calm down. It didn’t work. “How did you find out?”

“From one of your mother’s exes. Oscar Cantrell.”

“The one who owns Benchmark Realty.”

“That’s him. Bernadette drank a little too much one night and spilled the beans. I need to talk to her.”

“You’ll be wasting your time.” Olivia leaned a hip against the table and stared outside to the verandah. A crow was hopping along the rail. “I’ve already spoken to her about my brother. She either doesn’t know or won’t say who adopted him. I don’t know if she went through an attorney or if my grandmother handled it herself.”

“The department is already searching the county and state records,” Bentz said. “As well as hospitals and clinics.”

“I don’t think Bernadette went to a hospital,” Olivia said. “My grandmother did a lot of things in her life. One of them was priding herself in being a midwife though she wasn’t licensed.”

“So you don’t think your mother even went to a doctor for prenatal care?”

“That’s very, very doubtful.”

“I’ve got to go. Someone’s paging me,” Bentz said. “But you take care of yourself. If you see anything or feel that you’re in any kind of danger, call me.”

“I will,” she promised, “but just nail this guy, okay?”

“I’m workin’ on it.”

“Make it soon, Bentz. Make it soon.”

Kristi was pissed. She flopped herself into the passenger side of her father’s Jeep and folded her arms across her chest. “Three hours,” she said as he started the car. “I waited three damned hours!”

“I called,” Bentz pointed out. “Told you I got held up.”

She glared out the window and wished her dad were anything but a homicide dick. She hated his profession. Being a cop’s kid sucked.

He pulled out of the lot next to Cramer Hall. There wasn’t much traffic on campus; most of the kids had left earlier. “I offered to have someone pick you up.”

“I could have found a ride,” she grumbled. “If you were too busy—”

“It was important.”

“It’s always important,” she threw back at him. God, why hadn’t she stayed at school? Right now she and Brian could be drinking beer, pretending to study, and kissing in his room… instead she was stuck the next five days hanging out in her dad’s apartment, dodging calls from Jay and wishing she were back at All Saints. While some kids were pathetically homesick by this time of year, Kristi was already wishing she wasn’t going home to that cracker box of an apartment that Rick swore he’d someday move from. Fat chance. He loved it there and now that she was gone … she felt a jab of guilt. He was paying for her school. Big bucks. On his salary he couldn’t afford anything else while she was in college. But she was still mad. Real mad.

Slumping down in the passenger seat, she scowled out the window. “Mom was never late picking me up,” she said and, from the corner of her eye, noticed Bentz’s mouth tighten. Just as she knew it would. Rarely did she pull out the “Mom” weapon, only when she was really, really ticked off. Today qualified, so she opened the mental drawer and found the long blade that she knew cut straight to her father’s heart. She decided to give it one little twist. “I hate it that you’re a cop. Mom did, too.”

“She knew I was going to join the force when she married me.” He switched on the wipers.

“But
I
didn’t have a choice.”

“None of us get to choose our parents,” he said through lips that barely moved, then slanted a glance at her as he wended his way through the narrow campus streets. “You just got lucky.”

Was he kidding? No. There wasn’t even a hint of amusement on his face. That was the problem. “Detective” Rick Bentz was always so damned serious. Could barely crack a smile; not that she’d given him any reason to lately. There had been a time when he’d been more easygoing, but that had been long ago. She felt a little bad about the way she’d treated him. Some of her anger had dissipated once she’d gotten her little digs in and she knew he was trying to be a great dad and repair some of the damage between them.

“Jay called. I think he wants you to come to his house for Thanksgiving.”

She blew out her breath. “Jay and I are breaking up.”

“Oh?” He slowed for a stop sign. “Does he know it yet?”

The ring in her pocket seemed suddenly as big as a tire from one of those monster trucks. “I was waiting to tell him in person.”

“Good idea.” He frowned, as if he’d been through something similar. Oh, yeah, right. No way. Not the man married to his job. “You might want to let him down slowly.”

Now her father was giving her advice on her love life. What a laugh! “Who are you? Dear Abby or Dr. Sam?”

One side of his lip twisted upward. “Jay’s an okay guy.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t like anyone you date.”

“Don’t I know it,” she grumbled and considered telling him about Brian but he’d just get on her case about not breaking up with Jay first and he wouldn’t like it that she was seeing a guy who was around thirty. No way. Bentz would have a fit. Probably have Brian checked out through the department’s computers or, worse yet, meet him and give him the third-degree. No thank you. Time to change the subject. “So you’re working on that serial killer case, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it as bad as the last one?”

“They’re all bad,” he said and drove past the campus gates, where the traffic increased, the headlights and streetlights chasing away the gloom. “But yes, I think this is worse than the Rosary Killer.”

“Why?”

He hesitated.

“God, Dad, you can trust me.”

“It’s just closer to home. Some of the girls killed have been college coeds.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She’d known that would freak him out. “I heard some of the kids talking and the school made an announcement. We’re supposed to be extra careful.”