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They walked into the room where the woman, a petite blonde with bandages at her throat and bruises on her face, lay in the hospital bed. She stared at them with wide, frightened eyes.
When they introduced themselves, she looked away. “I don’t have anything to say,” she said, her voice a rasp.
“What’s your name?” Bentz asked.
Nothing. But she knotted the edge of her bedsheet in one hand.
Montoya asked, “Are you Stacy Parker?”
She closed her eyes for a second. “Oh, God.”
Bentz said, “We’re trying to help find the man who did this to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.” Her eyes had opened again, but she avoided Bentz’s gaze to stare through a single window that looked over the parking lot.
“We need to find him,” Bentz persisted, his tone even. “We think he’s killed two other women, maybe more, and we need your help. Before he hurts anyone else.”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard, but Montoya noticed her worrying her lower lip. Indecisive. “Was your attacker a priest?”
She swallowed, then made a face as if the action pained her. With difficulty, she cleared her throat. “I don’t want my family to find out,” she said. “My mom and dad in Wyoming. They don’t need to know.”
“We won’t inform them,” Bentz said. “But I can’t vouch for the media.”
“Oh, Lord.” Again she bit her lip and her fingers were working the edge of the sheet like crazy. “The man, he was dressed like a priest,” she finally admitted. “I’m not Catholic, but he wasn’t a man of God. No way.” Her eyes slid away. “It was a disguise or a fetish or whatever.”
Bentz asked, “Did he ask you to call in toMidnight Confessionsand talk to Dr. Sam?”
“I only spoke with the person who answered,” she said. “Then I handed the phone to him and he did the rest.” She swallowed and looked about to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said in a barely audible whisper.
“Tell us what happened,” Montoya suggested, and after a moment’s hesitation, the dam broke. She explained about him calling and setting up a meeting, then how she got into his car. When asked how he got her phone number, she didn’t know, but figured he found it on the Internet.
“Common knowledge.” With a shrug, she continued how she’d met him in the French Quarter just off Bourbon Street, how he’d taken her to a parking lot behind a warehouse to make the call, then driven her across the river to a parking spot near the bayou and forced her to walk to the dock where he put a noose in the form of a rosary over her head and the struggle ensued. “. . . I wounded him, I know I did,” she said a little more emphatically. “I kicked and scratched, broke a nail even, but if those fishermen hadn’t come along . . . I don’t think I’d be here. They, um, they saved my life.”
“Is this the man?” Bentz asked, and handed her a composite picture of the man who claimed to be Father John way back when.
She studied the photo carefully. “I don’t know. It was dark. He wore sunglasses and when I knocked them off, there was all the blood and I was just trying to get away. I never got a real good look at him, but yeah, it could be.”
They asked a few more questions and found out she didn’t know any of the other victims, had never met Helene Laroche or Teri Marie Gaines. For the first time since they’d stepped into the room, Stacy looked Bentz straight in the eye. “Get him,” she said. “Please get him.”
“We will,” Bentz assured her.
“Good. Because the man is evil. I’m telling you: evil.”
CHAPTER 31
“Think of it as an opportunity,” Zera said when Kristi finally reached her late in the afternoon. “I know, I know, I should have contacted you first.”
“Damn right you should have.” Kristi reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of vitamin water.
“I tried.”
“You did?”
“Once,” Zera said, sounding hassled. “Check your voice mail. It’s not like you’ve been all that easy to reach lately. And when I couldn’t get through, I just went for it. I’ve worked with that producer before and there’s nothing wrong with getting your name out there again, you know, in anticipation of the new book and to promote the old onesandthe TV shows.”
“The new book—?” She cracked open the bottle. “Oh, on the Rosary Killer,” she said, remembering.
“Right. You were going to send me something. An idea?”
