Devious - Lisa Jackson [126]
He walked into his office where the AC was struggling and tossed his jacket over his coat rack before sitting in his desk chair. What he’d learned today was that both Sister’s Camille and Asteria had been adopted out of St. Elsinore’s. As had Sister Charity and quite a few of the novices and nuns at the convent.
An important connection?
Maybe.
Then there was Camille’s room and the mattress. Nothing else had been found, just the single envelope slipped into the stuffing. A note never sent to her lover.
Frank O’Toole?
Or someone else?
He slid his holster and sidearm off his shoulder and hung them on the back of his chair. The fact that he’d worn his weapon at all through the hallowed hallways and offices of two churches and convents told him just how nuts this case had become.
And what about the missing dresses? His gut told him that was not good. Not good at all.
Hell.
Sister Charity had provided names of the nuns who had been orphaned and left in the care of St. Elsinore’s orphanage:
Sister Asteria McClellan
Sister Camille Renard
Sister Dorothy Reece
Sister Maura Voile
Sister Irene Shikov
Sister Devota Arness
Sister Zita Williams
Sister Louise Cortez
Sister Angela Peterson
Sister Edwina Karpovich
So different. Their only links being St. Marguerite’s and St. Elsinore’s. Most of them were from the Gulf states, but not all, and certainly they were not all in love with Father Frank O’Toole.
Maybe he was jumping to conclusions.
Maybe St. Elsinore’s orphanage had nothing to do with the murders.
Maybe involvement with Frank O’Toole was just coincidence, actually. As far as he could tell, Sister Camille had been the only victim who had consummated an affair with the priest. Sister Lea De Luca and Sister Asteria had only had fantasies about the man. Perhaps flirtations. There was no proof that they’d actually had sex with him.
Yet, the guy just wasn’t the kind of man who should be wearing a priest’s alb.
And who would be that right individual?
Remember your brother? James? Not exactly a shining example of a man who took an oath of celibacy and held tight to it.
Disturbed, his thoughts traveling along dark roads he’d rather avoid, Bentz made some calls, checked his e-mail, read over the final autopsy report on Camille Renard and her unborn child. She’d died by asphyxia due to strangulation, and the deepest abrasions and contusions on her neck were in a singular pattern that Bentz had seen before: a rosary, the beads sharp, the wire holding the strands strong enough to resist any attempts by the victim to break it.
There were scratch marks on her neck where she’d tried to yank the garrote off her neck, abrasions made by her own fingernails in the wild attempt to free herself.
His stomach soured at the thought of her frantic, terrified, and ultimately doomed struggle as she gasped for air, kicked at her attacker, her eyes bulging.
“Who did this to you?” he asked as the air conditioner wheezed. Through the window, he heard a semi’s engine growl as the big truck rumbled down the street. He would have bet his pension on Father O’Toole, the lothario disguised as a priest.
However, the blood tests of Camille’s fetus cleared him as the father.
But not necessarily of the murders, he reminded himself as his cell phone jangled. The caller ID indicated it was his daughter.
“Hey,” he said, cradling his cell between his shoulder and ear.
“Hey back atcha,” Kristi said, and her voice was a little weak, muffled by the sound of air movement, as if she were driving and trying to speak over her obstinate headset. “I just thought I’d call and offer a little moral support.”
“Really?” he asked, unable to mask his doubt. Kristi had just finished her first true-crime book. It hadn’t been picked up yet but was being looked at by several agents, one of whom had suggested Rick Bentz, as the homicide cop who had helped solve the case