Devious - Lisa Jackson [85]
But there was an oddity, too. The ME had discovered scars on Camille’s back, tiny lines crisscrossing her shoulders and lower, mostly healed, certainly not part of the attack that killed her.
He frowned, made a note, and kept reading.
As he perused the report, ugly memories assailed him, gruesome images from another case where victims were killed in a like manner. He typed the name of that killer into his computer, just as his partner paused in the doorway.
“Father John,” Bentz said, eyeing the screen.
Montoya froze at the mention of a serial killer who had terrorized the city years before. “He’s dead. You took care of that. Remember?”
He pointed to the computer monitor where a picture of the first victim of the serial killer, known as Father John, appeared. Cherie Bellechamps, a local prostitute, had had the misfortune of meeting the twisted psycho masquerading as a priest, only to come to a horrifying, grisly end.
“Maybe.”
“Holy Christ, Father John has to be dead.” Montoya thought of the madman, a tall, good-looking man with a sordid penchant for killing. Bentz had shot him dead in the swamp. Right?
“Same weapon.” Bentz had come to the same conclusion as Montoya: Camille Renard had been killed with a rosary used as a garrote.
“Jesus, don’t even go there.” Montoya didn’t like the dread crawling through him. “It’s been years. What, ten? Twelve?”
“About that.” Bentz’s brow furrowed.
“But Father John killed prostitutes, or people he thought were whores.” Montoya was still shaking his head.
“Maybe a nun who got herself pregnant qualifies.”
“He’s dead, man!” Montoya thought Bentz was definitely barking up the wrong tree.
“Never found his body.”
“Well, shit, so what? It was the goddamned swamp. You nailed him!” Montoya felt his blood pressure rise. He wanted that son of a bitch dead. Forever. “Besides, in this case, the MO is way different. The killer didn’t leave any C-notes with Ben Franklin’s eyes blacked out sitting around, the way that other sick bastard did. Nobody’s complained about a priest running around in sunglasses. And the biggy—Camille Renard wasn’t raped. No sign of sexual trauma, according to the autopsy report. Father John got off on raping his victims as well as killing them.”
“You’re right,” Bentz said, “but still—”
“I’m tellin’ ya, this isn’t the work of a serial killer,” Montoya said. “This murder”—he tapped Camille Renard’s autopsy report with one finger—“it’s personal. The killer knew her.”
Bentz tugged at his tie. From his pinched eyes and washed-out face, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, which was probably right on. Bentz’s infant daughter was colicky, kept Bentz and his wife, Olivia, up at all hours. “Just a thought.”
“Yeah, well, a bad one,” Montoya said. To prove his point, he opened the computer image of Camille Renard as she’d been found in the yellowed wedding dress, lying near the base of the altar. Then he put the two photos side by side, Camille beside the battered body of Cherie Bellechamps spread-eagle on the dingy sheets of a cheap motel room bed. There were other photographs as well, and he clicked through them, searching for any link to the other victims of Father John, a nutcase if ever there was one.
“I hope he’s dead,” Bentz said fervently, then, dragging his gaze from the computer screen, added, “I’ve got one lead. Found the wireless service Camille Renard used and got the records for her BlackBerry. The cell phone company sent them over this morning.”
That was a start. “You have a chance to go through them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And?”
Bentz laid the list of telephone numbers on Montoya’s desk. “Most are what we expected—calls to her sister and to O’Toole, of course. To the orphanage, where she worked, and even a call here”—he pointed to one number in the list—“to the parish.” He slid his finger lower,