Devious - Lisa Jackson [107]
“This is a damned nightmare,” Bentz said under his breath as they walked away from the spot where the ME was quickly examining Asteria’s body before stuffing it into a body bag and hauling it away.
Giving the crime scene a wide berth, Lynn Zaroster approached. She flashed Montoya a humorless smile. They’d been partnered up recently, while Bentz had been on leave recuperating from the injury that had nearly cost him his job as well as his life. Once Bentz was reinstated, Zaroster had been partnered with Brinkman, whom she detested. Zaroster was the one person in the department who wanted Bentz to retire so she could partner up with Montoya again.
Now she said, “The press is wanting answers. Pronto. They’re talking serial.”
“Already? Jesus.” Bentz shook his head.
“A little premature to label the killer as a serial,” Bentz said, but Montoya didn’t agree. Just because the texts suggested at least three vics with a cooling-off period between the murders didn’t make it so. Who really knew the mind of a true psychopath? They couldn’t be pigeonholed. Two nuns killed in the same method screamed serial to him, either the start of a rampage or, maybe, the killer had struck before.
“Brenda Convoy is pretty persistent,” Zaroster said, surveying the scene and frowning, her face illuminated by a few flashes from cameras and the pale, watery light from a shrouded moon. Montoya frowned. He’d never liked the pushy reporter with WKAM, but then he wasn’t too close to anyone in the press.
“I told her to wait for a statement from the PIO,” Zaroster said, “and she looked like she wanted to spit little green apples.”
“That’s shit little green apples,” Brinkman said, correcting her.
Zaroster’s jaw clenched.
Brinkman didn’t notice. “And that’s just too damned bad. Even Convoy knows she can’t get anything without talking to Sinclaire.” Tina Sinclaire was the latest in a string of public information officers with the department.
“What’ve ya got?” Montoya asked.
“So far nothing.” Even Brinkman looked perturbed, some of his smirk having disappeared. “This is a bad one,” he admitted.
“Hey, do you mind?” Bonita Washington, the head crime scene investigator, demanded. “We got a scene to work.” She was big and black and didn’t take lip from anyone. Her hair was scraped away from a face shiny with perspiration, and she was carrying a clipboard in one hand and a small toolbox in the other.
“Sooorry,” Brinkman said with a condescending sneer, his attitude clearly back in place. “We were just trying to do our job.”
“So do it already,” Washington said, her green eyes snapping, “and let me do mine.” She turned away to confer with Santiago as the photographer snapped pictures, flashes pulsing eerily, lights splaying for milliseconds on the crypts and statues of the graveyard.
Brinkman pulled a face. “Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“I heard that, Brinkman, and yeah, I don’t like being jerked out of the house in the middle of the night.” Washington eased her way closer to the statue under which Asteria had been found.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the Lone Ranger, here,” Brinkman muttered. When he elicited no response, he gave up trying to needle her and turned his attention back to the case.
“So what’s the deal? Again the same nun finds the body?” Brinkman asked Montoya as he nervously searched his pockets for a crumpled pack of Marlboros. Deftly, he shook out a cigarette and jabbed the filter tip between his lips as they walked through the cemetery with its sun-bleached tombs rising from the ground. Here in New Orleans, the dead were buried aboveground, as most of the city was at sea level or lower. No one wanted dead grandma coming back to visit in case of a flood that could wash away the ground and cause previously subterranean caskets to float away from their final resting places. “What’s up with that, the same person finding the corpse before it’s even gotten cold?” The unlit cigarette bobbed as he spoke.
“Don’t know yet,” Montoya said. “I’ll find out. I’m questioning Sister Lucia first.