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“Oh, yeah.” She was nodding, the back of her head rubbing against the headboard as the cobwebs cleared in her mind. “You told me about that.”
“So I gotta go.” He was stepping into his running shoes.
“When will you be back? Oh, never mind. Sorry, I remember.” She slid down the headboard and plumped a pillow. “You don’t know.”
“That’s right.”
“Keep me informed. Text me.”
“Will do.” He didn’t even bother kissing her, was out the door, calling over his shoulder to have her reset the alarm, as he stepped into the garage and climbed into his Jeep. That son of a bitch was alive. All these years. But Bentz had known it. Deep down he’d never been satisfied that Father John’s body had never been recovered. That whole eaten-by-alligators theory had never really stuck with him. And the second he’d stepped into Teri Marie Gaines’s apartment, seeing her dead body with the telltale pattern of tiny cuts around her neck where a rosary had been used as a garrote, he’d been convinced.
Montoya and all the other doubters could just eat crow.
As the garage door rolled up, he told his Bluetooth to call Montoya, but before the call connected, his partner was calling him. As Bentz connected, still backing out of the drive, Montoya said, “I heard.”
“You were listening?”
“Of course. I’m on my way to the radio station.”
“Meet you there.”
Speeding through the near-empty streets, Bentz wondered where the psycho was hiding. Somewhere near Our Lady of the Grove, he thought. Despite what Father Anthony had told him, Bentz had done a quick Internet search of the parish, seen pictures of the priests who had been associated with the parish over the years, none of whom was close to looking like the Rosary Killer. He’d even gone so far as to use the computer to age old pictures of the psycho, but still none of the priests came close to height, weight, or age of the murderer who had supposedly died in the bayou.
Though New Orleans was rumored to be always awake and had more than its share of night people who thrived on the music and bars of the French Quarter, tonight was quieter than usual. The denizens who normally spent the early morning hours drinking and laughing, dancing and exploring the darker corners of Bourbon Street seemed to have decided to stay home or had gone somewhere else. Tonight things seemed quieter. Calmer.
Traffic was light and he pulled into an empty spot near the warehouse where the radio station was located. A patrol car, lights flashing, was parked near the entrance, the cop within Kate Donahue, barely more than a rookie, who had already secured the building, though if past experience proved true, Father John was not inside. “We’re clear,” Donahue said as Bentz made his way to the booth where Samantha Leeds Wheeler, aka Dr. Sam, was still seated at her desk.
“You were right,” she said, ashen faced, eyes round with fear, fingers rubbing together anxiously. “He’s back.” She was nodding to herself, staring at a computer screen where a display of all the callers into the program—their names and numbers and reason for their call—was visible. “I’d know that voice anywhere,” she said in a whisper. “He’s definitely back, and he hasn’t forgotten.” Then she looked directly into Bentz’s eyes. “And neither have I.”
* * *
“Okay, I did it,” the whore said, and he could tell that she was nervous. Twitchy. In her sky-high stilettos, short skirt, tight low-cut T shirt, and jewelry—too much costume jewelry from her bangly bracelets, huge hoop earrings dangling from her earlobes, and ultra-wide beaded choker. Faux pearls, he guessed.
Cheap.
Like her.
“Is there anything else you want, Father?” She asked the question tentatively, obviously worried after she’d called the radio station to get through. She’d connected to WKAM and then he’d taken the phone and left his message with Dr. Sam from the car parked here, in the dark alley, the engine of the old Impala running.
He couldn’t tell if she was just the nervous type. She had eyed his cassock and dark glasses warily when she’d gotten into his car at that fleabag of a motel, seemed uneasy about having sex with a man of the cloth. Or maybe it was worse. There was more than a small chance that she’d heard on the news or through the whore grapevine that the Rosary Killer had returned. She was too young to have heard of Father John, been a grade school kid when he’d become famous and supposedly died in the swamp. Yet she was nervous to be with him, definitely nervous. She might be new to the business, surely didn’t have any of the hard edges he’d associated with prostitutes.
Good.
All the better.
“Yes,” he said in a well-modulated voice. “There is definitely more I want, but not here.” He put the old car into drive, eased out of the back alley behind the boarded over shrimp-processing factory that had been out of business for years. They were close to the river, here in an industrial district that would probably soon be gentrified like so much of the city. But for now, the streets were empty, a few old warehouses shoulder to shoulder, the girders of a new building knifing upward, like some giant erector set, all illuminated by old streetlamps that hummed and spread pools of dim light on the scattering of vehicles parked on the uneven pavement of the street.
“Where?” she asked tremulously. “Where do you want to go?”
“Don’t you have a place?”
“N-no.” She was shaking her head, her small face shadowy in the faltering light from the dash. “My roommate . . . no.”
She was lying, of course, and her fingers moved toward the door handle.
“Why don’t we call it a night,” she said uneasily. “The call was a freebie. Just let me off at the corner.” She pointed toward the intersection.
“Not yet,” he said, and saw the terror mounting in her eyes as he tromped down on the accelerator, the old Impala taking off like a shot.
