Devious - Lisa Jackson [32]
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said quickly.
A cloud crawled over the face of the sun, casting an eerie gloom over the garden.
“Of course I do, Lucia.” With his free hand, he touched her shoulder, the warmth of his fingertips seeping through the dark fabric of her habit. His dark eyes searched hers in a way she found far too uncomfortable.
Lucia shrank inside. She didn’t want to feel his touch, nor did she have any desire to be confessor to his penance. It was his role to hear confession, not hers. The crow, bolder now, landed on the gutter over the kitchen.
An omen.
Lucia felt a chill, as if the Devil himself were watching her.
“You have to believe me,” he said, his voice a strangled whisper. “I didn’t kill Sister Camille. I . . . I would never do that.” He closed his eyes for a second, and a breath of wind toyed with the strands of hair falling free of Lucia’s braid. “God forgive me, Lucia,” he said, blinking as if battling tears. “I loved her.”
CHAPTER 12
Valerie had made the mistake of letting Slade drive to the morgue. His truck had been parked in front of her Subaru, and he’d insisted on being a part of this madness. After leaving Bo with a bewildered Freya, they’d taken the old Ford to the hospital.
Slade had followed the police car, and Valerie, lost in thoughts of Cammie, had barely registered the familiar scents of dust and leather inside the pickup. She’d kicked aside a tool belt that had been tossed onto the floor and stared out the passenger window, her reflection pale and wan in the glass smudged with nose and paw prints.
She hardly remembered the traffic or the drive through New Orleans, though she did hear the sound of church bells as she stepped out of the truck, their somber tolling emanating from St. Marguerite’s Cathedral not a mile away.
The sun was playing hide-and-seek. Clouds were collecting, moving over the city again, shadowing New Orleans like a pall. Valerie shivered as they reached the back door to the hospital and stepped inside, where voices were hushed and footsteps were softened by a gray, industrial carpet.
In silence, she and Slade followed the two detectives down a staircase to the lowest level of the hospital. Val’s stomach clenched as they made their way along a short hallway and through double doors.
Inside, the morgue was cold.
Even though she stood behind a thick glass window, Valerie felt the chill of the area beyond the pane. She braced herself but couldn’t help listening to that disbelieving voice in her head: There’s been a mistake, a misidentification. Cammie is not dead. She can’t be. Not beautiful, bright, high-spirited Camille. No way!
When the attendant slipped the sheet off Cammie’s face, Val’s knees nearly buckled. Cammie’s perfect face, bluish in death, looked upward.
Val let out a squeak of protest.
Slade’s strong arm was instantly around her waist, holding her up as she stared at the woman on the slab, her only sibling, so young . . .
“Oh, God,” Val whispered. The truth was a razor through her heart, all remnants of denial seeping from her. Tears stung her eyes and her insides trembled. For a second she thought she might be sick.
“Son of a bitch,” Slade muttered. His ghostly reflection appeared in the glass, his determined, unshaven jaw, blade-thin lips, narrowed eyes overlapping the stronger image of her dead sister.
How ironic was it that Slade was here, his image superimposed over Cammie’s dead, draped body?
After all they had been through. All the lies. The accusations. The heartache. Val couldn’t help but wonder if Slade felt a smidgeon of guilt for Cammie’s death.
He should.
As Val did. They were both integral in the contribution to her downward spiral.
“I should have done something,” she whispered.
“Like what?”
“Protected her.”
“Impossible.” Slade nodded toward the attendant, and the