Devious - Lisa Jackson [142]
They asked more questions, checked the grounds, talked to Valerie Houston’s business partner, Freya Martin, and five groggy guests. A married couple from Maine were in their seventies, and the wife claimed she never heard anything but her husband’s snoring as he had dozed off. Three women from Oregon, all in their late forties, were on a “girl-cation away from the husbands and boyfriends” and hadn’t noticed. Freya had heard the dog bark, but that was it. No sound of footsteps, revving engine, screaming . . . no one looking out the window and seeing someone dash across the lawn.
All in all a bust, Montoya thought as he returned to the Crown Vic. Over the echo of his own promise to “nail the bastard” who had killed Camille Renard rattling through his brain, he heard the eerie peal of distant bells, the midnight chimes tremulously counting off the hours.
CHAPTER 42
Like the calm before the storm, for the next few days, things were quiet. Too quiet, Montoya thought as he jogged through the streets at dawn. His legs were beginning to cramp, evidence that he’d pushed aside his exercise regimen in the last two weeks. The five miles he usually jogged seemed longer today, his breathing more difficult, though Hershey ran along beside him effortlessly.
Montoya, to keep up with the dog, would have to give up even his occasional smoke. Besides, Abby was on to him, not saying a word, just giving him the evil eye and wrinkling her nose when he came in from his “walk” and probably reeking of smoke. Normally she would tell him exactly what she thought, but when he was eyeball deep in a case, she usually gave him a little leeway. And he took advantage of it.
“The price of being a hotshot detective’s wife,” she’d tease. Although, since the birth of Benjamin, she’d been a little more cutting with her remarks, more fearful for his life. “It’s not just you and me, anymore, Detective,” she’d remind him.
As if he didn’t know.
He rounded a corner, running through the Quarter, the chocolate lab beginning to lag a bit as they passed the buildings with their wide second-story balconies decorated in intricate patterns of wrought iron. Steam seemed to escape from the manholes, and he passed few people at the street, saw only a smattering of lamplights in the windows of the apartments over the storefronts at street level.
He pushed it, kicking up his pace a bit.
Reaching the river, he ran on the sidewalk flanking the water and took in deep breaths of the air, which was thick with the scent of the Mississippi. A flock of pelicans rose before him as his feet slapped the ground, and Hershey, though he looked longingly at the birds, didn’t stray.
“Good boy,” Montoya said with more than a little effort as he turned his mind to the case and the fact that the killer, thankfully, hadn’t struck again.
At least not that anyone knew about.
The Feds were sniffing around, the task force pulled together, the press demanding answers, and everyone in the department on edge, expecting yet another homicide, another novitiate found with her throat garroted, or another prostitute strangled with a rosary, raped and left with a defaced C-note.
Yet, so far, there had been no reports of any such thing. Bentz had questioned Dr. Sam, the psychologist with the radio program Midnight Confessions on WSLJ, the target of Father John during his original rampage a few years back. She’d sworn that she’d had no out-of-the-ordinary calls or requests to the station, which was saying something, because Montoya thought anyone who picked up a phone and called a psychologist who was on the airwaves had a serious screw loose. Who in his right mind would talk about the most intimate of problems while all of New Orleans could listen in? Then again, weren’t there a plethora of shows like Jerry Springer or even Judge Judy where people came forward with their most private matters?
“I don’t get it,” he admitted to Hershey as the dog loped at the end of his leash.
Montoya jogged through the dawn