Devious - Lisa Jackson [125]
The case was getting to him. Someone was getting off on killing nuns, for God’s sake . . . nuns! Why?
The evidence was all over the place, too. Sexy, sadistic diaries, self-flagellation, orphaned girls who eventually joined the order, priests who were all too absent and one who would have been better suited as a gigolo. Then there was the secretive mother superior and one of the nuns disappearing in San Francisco. Two convents were involved so far; he wondered how far the horror would run. Were St. Marguerite’s and St. Elsinore’s the only two involved, or were they just the tip of a very heinous and far-reaching iceberg? Would the Catholic Church take another hit?
He didn’t like the odds against it, and that worried him. Though not particularly religious, at least not in the traditional, organized manner, Bentz believed in God and he trusted that most churches and the people within them—clergy and parishioners—were good souls with all the right intentions.
But this case, and his job in general—where he saw the ugly underbelly of society and was faced with the utter depravity, evil, and psychoses of sadistic criminals on a daily basis—made him sometimes second guess the goodness of the Almighty.
His wife and two daughters, one a headstrong twentysomething, the other not yet crawling, always brought him back to center, to believing in good and, in so doing, squared him up with the Man/ Woman/Being Upstairs.
“More company,” Montoya muttered, and reached for his pack of recently purchased Marlboros. He nodded toward the street where, just across from the parking lot, a news van with the WSLJ insignia emblazoned across its white sides was parked.
“Great.”
“Leave ’em to Sinclaire.”
“Ya got that right.”
They climbed out of the vehicle, and Montoya paused to light up.
“Abby know you’re smoking again?”
“I’m not,” Montoya said, “but, yeah, that woman’s got the nose of a bloodhound. Soon as this case wraps, I’m done with these cancer sticks.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously!”
Bentz sent his partner a we’ve-all-been-there-before look and rubbed the back of his neck as he walked up the steps of the station. Montoya took two more long drags, then crushed his cigarette into the canister of sand near the entrance.
It was late, just in time for shift change.
Cops in uniforms and plainclothes coming and going, voices buzzing, heels clicking, laughter ripping through the hallways as Bentz shouldered open the door.
Bentz made eye contact with a few people he knew, even threw out a rare smile when he spied Vera, from Missing Persons, hurrying in the opposite direction.
He was still thinking about his day. He and Montoya had spent a lot of hours being stonewalled by the priests at St. Marguerite’s and not getting much further with the staff at St. Elsinore’s, which, really, was another jurisdiction, not that it mattered much. The crusty old reverend mother, Sister Georgia—though outwardly much more modern and, well, maybe not exactly “hip” but appearing more worldly than Sister Charity—wasn’t going to give them any more information than she had to. Mentioning that Sister Camille’s sexually graphic diary had been found at St. Elsinore’s had only made her more tight-lipped and stiff. Sure, she wore no habit, but in her slacks, blouse with its big bow of a collar, and more fashionable glasses, she was just as rigid as Sister Charity.
Great.
They’d gotten nowhere.
The priests had been no better. Father Paul had been nervous to the point of chewing on the corner of his lips and fingering the folds of his cassock. Father Frank wouldn’t speak without a lawyer, so that interview had been postponed, and Father Thomas of St. Elsinore’s had been conveniently indisposed. Again.
Bentz was beginning to think that Thomas