Devious - Lisa Jackson [167]
“So what have we got?” Bentz asked as he and Montoya picked up ribs from a takeout place a few blocks from the station, then found a park bench where they could talk, pick at the bones, watch the storm roll in, and generally work out the day.
“You mean besides diddly-squat?” Montoya’s mood hadn’t improved much. Talking for hours with nuns who they were getting to know well enough to send Christmas cards to, being stonewalled by the priests, and trying to get a bead on the reverend mother had been draining for them both, Bentz knew, and Montoya, always more volatile, a “young buck,” wasn’t taking it well. Though he’d mellowed a little over the years—marrying Abby and becoming a father had helped—he was still explosive and impulsive. Working with Reuben Montoya was always a challenge and always exciting. Bentz bent rules; Montoya broke them.
They picked at their ribs, the sauce tangy and gooey, and watched ducks floating on a pond where the water was turning a worrisome shade of gray, reflecting the clouds rolling in. A woman was feeding them, and they were gathering around her, quacking and demanding bits of bread.
On the far side of the pond, a woman was trying to walk a black dachshund. He was straining on his leash, barking insanely first at the ducks and then at a squirrel that scurried up the bark of an oak tree.
“Stop it! Charlie! Come on,” the scrawny woman on the other end of the red tether commanded.
Charlie paid no attention, as disinterested in what she was saying as a teenage boy with a new video game.
“Why did Sister Lucia take off when she did? Why last night?” Bentz thought aloud.
“Maybe she knew that something was happening with Louise Cortez; she was the first one to find both the other bodies.”
“You think she was involved?” Bentz asked.
“With the murders?” Montoya sucked on a rib but shook his head. “No way. But she could have seen something that put her at risk. Cruz says she’s got some kind of ESP going on.” Montoya rotated his hand and shook his head, as if he didn’t really understand the phenomenon, but Bentz did, at least partially; his wife, Olivia, was either blessed or cursed with her own little bit of woo-woo, though it seemed to have died or gone dormant for a while. He hoped to hell it stayed that way.
Using a plastic fork, he dug into his coleslaw, barely tasting the tang of spices or the sweetness of the honey in its dressing.
“Sister Louise, the nun who’s missing, she was an orphan at St. Elsinore’s. Adopted out to a couple in Maine, but she came back.”
“Sister Charity searches for them,” Montoya said. During the interview process, Sister Devota Arness had let it slip that the reverend mother was in constant contact with all the women who had at one time or another been orphaned and stayed at St. Elsinore’s.
“But Lucia Costa had family.”
“So if the connection between the victims was living at St. Elsinore’s, then she would be safe.”
Bentz finished his coleslaw and wadded the waxed paper that his ribs had been wrapped in. “Lucia Costa probably didn’t know that; hell, we just came up with it. All she sees is fellow sisters being killed.” He tossed the wadded paper into the trash.
“We know that Camille Renard was involved with Father O’Toole. But the others weren’t.” That lead, the one that kept nagging at him, was going nowhere, he thought, like the squirrel he was watching, the one who had taunted Charlie the dachshund. It was now scampering from one tree to the next, only to be dissatisfied and hurry, tail puffed and flicking, across the lawn again.
“Except for the missing nun. Sister Lea,” Montoya said, biting into his corn bread, then brushing the crumbs from his goatee. He scowled, not liking his train of thought.
“Right.” But it wasn’t enough. The connection to Father Frank O’Toole wasn’t strong enough. Even if he had been involved with Lea and Camille, what about Asteria, Lucia, and Louise?
His thoughts in a tangle, Bentz finished his lunch, draining his Diet Coke and tossing all the remains into a trash can while he considered the fruitless morning. Uniformed