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“I haven’t gotten around to it yet.” Kristi eyed the clutter in her office, the open notebooks, glowing computer, and tossed into the mix, copies of the books she’d written and given to Montoya.
“Well, for crying out loud, don’t take forever. We have to strike while the iron’s hot.”
“And you’re turning this conversation around, getting away from the point.”
“Okay, I hear you. No more interviews without your permission first.”
“Absolutely. I thought that was understood. The way we do things.”
“Got it.”
“And don’t ever get my friend to coerce me.”
“Hey, wait! That’s not the way it went down. She contacted me.”
Kristi believed it. “Okay. Just check with me in the future.”
“Promise,” her agent said. “And you get me that outline.”
“Fine,” Kristi agreed. “Later.” She cut the connection and decided that Zera was right, she did need a new project. And wasn’t Jay’s murder the most important story to follow, the mystery to solve? Wasn’t making Jay’s killer face justice of prime importance? Instead of being mad at Bella and Zera for forcing the issue, she should thank them because now she had a path forward.
You bet she’d write the story of the Rosary Killer, right after she made him pay for murdering her husband.
She picked up the book about Father John and skimmed some of the pages. It was true that everything was pointing to him as the killer, that he’d survived being shot in the bayou and had waited until just the right time to strike again.
Leaning back in her chair, she saw Lenore leap just before the kitten landed on her lap. “Hey there, little one,” she said, as Lenore climbed to her shoulder to settle and purr into Kristi’s ear. “I love you, too,” Kristi said, petting her tiny head before flipping open the book to its middle and finding a black and white shot of the man who had pretended to be a priest. He was about the right height and build of the man who had attacked her and killed Jay, but something was off about that. Why would he wait so long to return? Was he injured? Out of the country? Surely if he’d been incarcerated, her father would have known of it, so why now? And why come after her?
Because of the book? She ruffled through the pages. That didn’t seem right; the book and the tie-in TV movie had been years before.
But the movie’s being replayed. Over and over again. On cable. On the Internet. Streaming.
Was the attack generated because she’d immortalized his sins in her book or possibly because her father had thwarted him from his original purpose, hunted him down, exposed him and, everyone had thought, killed him in the bayou? Then why attack Kristi? Why not go after Bentz himself?
Did he think killing Kristi would emotionally wound her father and that would be his supreme triumph?
Implausible. She stroked the kitten as she thought.
Then there was the MO. All wrong. The attacker in the wet poncho might not have been dressed as a priest at all.
But neither was Father John.
It didn’t seem right.
Didn’t fit.
Three other books were on the desk. Her gaze landed onAmerican Icon/American Killer.
Mandel Jarvis.
As Lenore stretched, then moved from her shoulder to the desk, Kristi thought of the football player turned preacher and remembered how he’d threatened her, then she remembered seeing him in the church with his family surrounding him. Had he really found God? Would he risk the good life he’d created to stalk Kristi and kill her? Why?
She drummed her fingers on the edge of the desk and the kitten batted at them. Kristi, lost in thought, barely noticed. Mandel Jarvis throwing everything away to hunt Kristi down didn’t seem right either. Not at this moment in time. She remembered thinking someone had been waiting by her house the other night, how Dave had bristled at a figure in the alley.
Mandel?
Was that his style to go lurking in the shadows?
He’d killed one person—well, that anyone knew about—he wasn’t a serial killer, so why go after Kristi now?
