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“And from that you figured she was attacked by Father John.”
“Two guys found her in the swamp. Saw what looked like a priest who got away.”
“A priest?”
“They said a guy in black robes, but they didn’t go after him. They were more concerned with the victim. One stayed with her, the other boated up to a spot in the bayou where he could get cell phone service and called nine-one-one.”
“You talked to them?”
“Not yet. I got all this from the deputy who secured the location.”
“But you’re sure this was Father John?” Montoya asked, wishing he had a cigarette. “MO doesn’t jibe.”
“She’s got a ring of cuts around her neck and sharp red beads caught in her hair.” Bentz held Montoya’s gaze. “It’s him.”
“What’s she say?”
“Nothing. Remember, she was pretty out of it. Not talking.” Bentz glanced up at the stucco building. “This could take a while. Why don’t we go talk to the fishermen who brought her in? They’re waiting at the station.”
“Good. I’ll drive.”
Bentz climbed into the Mustang and Montoya made short work of the drive. The station was still quiet as there were nearly two hours before the shift changed. Even the construction workers hadn’t shown up yet.
The two men, Robert “Bobby-Dean” Clements and Clive Jones, were waiting in an interrogation room with a deputy who had taken their statements. Bentz and Montoya sat down. “We’ve got it from here,” Bentz told the deputy, who left the written statements. He turned his attention to the two fishermen. “I’m Detective Bentz, this is Detective Montoya. We’d like you to go over the story once again, if you don’t mind, and we’ll have a few more questions.”
Both men nodded. They obviously weren’t happy about it. Bobby-Dean, the scrawny one with a bad case of acne beneath a scraggly beard, was antsy, barely able to sit still. He was wearing cut-off overalls and a Saints’ cap rammed over dirty blond hair and kept glancing nervously at his fishing partner.
Jones was a bear of a man, as black as his friend was white. He sported a cleaved eyebrow, a nose that had been broken once or twice, and a deep, baritone voice. His eyes were gold and intelligent, his gaze direct as he explained that they’d been out checking their crawfish traps and heard “a scuffling,” then witnessed what they thought was a man in a black robe.
“Looked like a priest, y’know,” Bobby-Dean interjected. He kept taking off his hat and wadding it between his gnarled fingers before setting it back on his head and starting the process all over again.
They both agreed upon what they’d seen, could not ID the attacker, swore they thought he’d killed the woman, and hadn’t given chase. “I wish to high heaven I had,” Bobby-Dean insisted. “Shit, I had my daddy’s Winchester. Coulda wounded him good.”
“Or blown him to bits,” Jones disagreed, scowling at his friend and giving a quick shake of his head as if to shut Bobby-Dean up, then adding, “We just wanted to get the woman to a hospital.”
Montoya asked, “Did she say anything to you?”
“Nothing’ much.” Again Jones shook his head. “Nothing that made any sense.”
“She was scared. Freaked the fuck out,” Bobby-Dean added.
“Anyone live around there? In that part of the swamp?”
Jones shrugged. “Not many. There’s a cabin here or there, but they’re pretty much all abandoned.”
“Rotted away,” Bobby-Dean said, removing his cap again and wringing it in his hands.
They asked a few more questions, got no more answers that helped out, then, while Jones and Bobby-Dean waited, checked with the hospital. The victim, Jane Doe as she was still not identified, hadn’t been given a room yet and the doctor wasn’t allowing anyone to see her nor the cops to question her.
“I’m treating her as a patient, not as a suspect, not as a victim,” Dr. Williams said, and she was as intractable as she’d been when Bentz had met her in the ER over an hour earlier. A tall, all-business black woman in scrubs, her irritation visible in the tight line of her lips, she’d stared straight into Bentz’s eyes and told him in no uncertain terms that he was to leave her patient alone until she determined it was safe for the Jane Doe to be interviewed, “and not a second before,” she’d warned him in the waiting room of the ER while a nurse was with the victim. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a patient who needs my attention,” and she swept through a wide set of double doors, her lab coat billowing behind her as she’d left Bentz to call Montoya and meet him in the adjoining parking lot.
So here they were.
The station was slowly coming to life, cops and members of the construction crew arriving, footsteps and voices audible, the smell of coffee wafting in.
Once the interview with the fishermen was over, they asked Clements and Jones to show them the place where they’d witnessed the crime. The fishermen, though not eager, agreed and led Montoya’s Mustang in their beat-up Ford Ranger, a pickup with more than its share of dents.
On the road Montoya told Bentz about his doubts.
