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Or had the tall man with jet-black hair and swarthy complexion been someone else? Had her willing mind just leapt to the idea that Lucerno was lurking nearby? She’d never liked him, and when researching her story on Hamilton Cooke, she’d been put off by not only Cooke but Lucerno as well.
“Odd,” she thought aloud, then glanced in her rearview and hit the brakes as an elderly woman in a lavender pantsuit and pushing a walker appeared in the mirror’s reflection as she inched through the parking lot.
Kristi’s heart nearly stopped.
She’d been distracted and hadn’t noticed the woman.
“Pull yourself together,” she warned, and once again backed up, put the car into drive, and pulled out of the lot. She drove home barely noticing the traffic, nor the rain that was coming down faster and harder. Sliding a glance at the wet flyer, she thought maybe she’d attend the newcomers’ event.
She’d been idle too long and ennui didn’t suit her. If she wasn’t busy, she was antsy. Kristi hated to admit it, but her agent was right. She needed to work again. Now that she was healing physically and, she supposed, emotionally, it was time to get moving.
She wondered about Mandel Jarvis.
Had he really found God?
Did he truly believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ?
Was he a reformed sinner?
Or a clever scam artist?
If she were a betting woman—and she was—she’d put all her money on the latter.
* * *
“. . . so I’ll be home late,” Montoya said, his cell phone propped between his shoulder and jaw as he sat at his desk.
“How late?” Abby asked.
“Don’t know. Got to run down a few leads, but I’ll try to be there before the baby goes down.”
“Good.”
He heard the exasperation in her voice and the baby wailing in the background.
“He needs a father, Reuben.”
“He’s got one.” He hid his own irritation. “I’ll be there.”
“I’m holding you to it,” and then she cut the connection without her usual, “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” he said, as was his custom, then turned his attention back to his computer screen and notes. Since being called over to Kristi Bentz’s place, he’d spent most of the day double-checking alibis of the Bentz and McKnight family members, and all the alibis were solid. Even Jay’s cousin in Alabama, Greg McKnight, had his story backed up by “friends” at a bar on the outskirts of Mobile. Greg hadn’t attended Jay’s funeral and had nothing good to say about his “dick-wad” of a cousin and, Montoya noted, had a rap sheet, priors that included a few misdemeanors and one felony for assault out of a dispute with his neighbor. In the argument over tree debris, Greg had cut down the branch of a magnolia that had grown over the fence line, then when the neighbor objected, had taken off after him with a chain saw. In the ensuing wrestling match, he’d cut himself with the saw and ended up with fifteen stitches in his thigh, the neighbor only suffering a black eye, cut lip, and loss of a tree limb.
Greg had done six months in county and eventually moved. Montoya tapped his pencil on his desk and studied the mug shots and driver’s license photos of Greg McKnight, with his long face, scraggly blond hair, and slight sneer—none of which made him guilty. Though Montoya didn’t dismiss him as a suspect completely, he had to admit the chance of Greg McKnight driving down from Alabama, laying in wait for Kristi, then attacking her and killing his cousin on the streets of New Orleans was pretty slim. Jay wasn’t supposed to be on the street that night.
Montoya tore through Kristi and Jay’s life, turning it inside out, going through everything from their bank records, phone calls, and texts as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts, all the while searching for anyone who had made negative comments or reposts or tweets, someone whose anger made him or her stand out as a potential suspect.
While Bentz was half convinced the attack and murder had to be attributed to Father John, believing that psycho had somehow resurrected himself from the swamp and reappeared after years of being in hiding, Montoya wasn’t so sure. The MO of the attack on Kristi and Jay was all wrong. Father John wasn’t a knife-wielding psycho. His “work” had always been well thought out and ritualistic and had conveyed a weird, outré religious theme. The Rosary Killer had been intelligent and organized, not the type to send out dark greeting cards no matter how warped and deviant he was.
Where was the rosary? The hundred-dollar bills with Ben Franklin’s eyes darkened to black? And what was with the funereal greeting cards with their signature black roses? Was the ink blocking out Ben’s eyes on the C-note the same as used in the drawing of the roses on the dark greeting cards left at Kristi’s house? He wondered, made a note to check.
He reread the cards again—yes, they had religious overtones as the missives were warnings, Bible verses twisted into ominous threats.
No, Montoya didn’t think the attack on Kristi Bentz or her husband’s homicide was the work of Father John.
Then who?
Who, who, who?
