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Bentz popped three antacids from a roll he kept in his pocket and scanned the thickets and underbrush surrounding the water. Brambles and vines grew thick and he spied a huge clump of vegetation that seemed out of place. “Take us down there,” he said to the officer at the rudder.
“You got it.” The deputy manning the boat eased them closer. “What is that?” Bentz said, motioning to the mass of weeds where several cypress rose, Spanish moss draping downward.
Montoya lifted the sunglasses from his eyes and squinted, focusing on the weedy thicket. “Vegeta—Maybe more. Christ, is that a chimney stack?” he asked.
“Or was,” Bentz said. “Let’s get more people down here.” As they drifted closer, he studied the swell of brush and dense foliage rising out of the swamp waters, a spongy island of wet earth.
“Let’s check it out.”
“Careful of gator nests,” the deputy warned as she guided the boat closer.
Montoya stepped out, his boots sinking deep, water lapping over the tops. Bentz joined him and together they pushed their way through the cattails, reeds, and water to dryer land.
“Dark as hell here,” Montoya said, and pulled a flashlight from his pocket. He trained the beam past the brambles, toward the smokestack. “Oh—here we go.” The beam cut between the vines and onto the remains of rotted wood siding, a splintered window frame, and what appeared to be the remains of a small shanty or cabin, all broken down, flattened by the weight of the foliage that had engulfed it. “You think she”—he hooked his thumb backward to the area where the body had been found—“belonged here? Lived here?”
“Don’t know.” But Bentz didn’t like it. He caught a glimpse of a yellow jacket nest partially visible in the wood, the wasps flying in and out and holes for other critters of the swamp, and . . . oh, shit . . . was that a hand? “I think we got another one,” he said as Montoya swept the beam of his flashlight onto a stack of broken-down boards. The remains of a human hand were visible, bones gray and partially covered in dirt, parts of some fingers missing, but definitely a human hand.
The flesh on the back of his spine crawled. “What the hell happened out here?” he said as a hawk flapped into the swamp and settled onto the branch of an overhanging cypress.
“Nothing good,” Montoya said as the beam of his light caught in the glitter of stones. Bloodred, they sparkled on a chain wound through what was left of the fingers, a muddy cross dangling from the thin links twined in the bones.
Bentz’s blood ran like ice water through his veins as he stared at the remains of the rosary.
“He was here,” he said to Montoya. “Father John. He was here.”
“Maybe. But these two. They’ve been dead a long time.”
“Doesn’t matter. We need to rope this off, it’s a crime scene.”
“It’s the damned bayou.”
“I don’t care, he was here,” Bentz said, and looked across the bayou, fifty feet or so, where Bobby-Dean and Clive’s boat idled. “Hey!” Bentz shouted. “You! Come over here!”
Bobby-Dean had the gall to point a thumb at his chest in awhome?gesture and Bentz waved him over. “Yeah, you! Both of you! Come on over here!” He ordered the deputy to find a way to rope off the area and to have the CSI team come and check out the swampy island and destroyed cabin. “No telling what else we’ll find in there,” he said, and the eerie feeling that had been with him earlier dissipated, was chased away by the stronger sensation that they were getting somewhere, that the hunt was on and this time, the fake priest was the prey.
Once Clive Jones’s boat had reached the island, he cut the engine. “What is it?” Bobby-Dean asked warily.
Bentz cut to the chase. “There’s another body here.”
“Oh, fuck, man.” Bobby-Dean ran a hand through his thin beard. “I knowed it.”
Montoya asked, “How did you know it?”
“When we found that body. I . . . I was afraid it was Maizie.”
“Who’s Maizie?” Montoya wanted to know, and Bentz waited.
Bobby-Dean glanced at Clive. The big man nodded, then looked away, swatted at some insect that was bothering him and, Bentz noted, had begun to sweat. He mopped his head and stared into the brambles covering the remains of the shack.
“Maizie Ledoux,” Bobby-Dean said. “Married to Willard.” He glanced at the island and Bentz got the feeling that the bony hand he’d seen belonged to Willard.
“They lived around here. Never stayed in one place long, near as I can tell, sold alligators and game and she . . . she dabbled.”
“Dabbled in what?” Bentz asked, and noticed that Clive’s face clouded over.
Bobby-Dean cleared his throat as a crow, high up in a cypress tree, let out a plaintive caw. “Well, I guess what you’d call it is the, um, dark arts.”
“Dark arts?”
