Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) (7 page)

“Yeah, that’s it,” Bentz said sarcastically, then reached for his shoulder harness and sidearm. “I thought I’d run out to his place on the bayou. See if there’s any indication that he’s moved back in.”

“You think there’s a chance?”

“Probably not. But, you know. No stone unturned.” He slid the harness into place. “You comin’?”

“Why not? I’m in.”

No surprise there. Montoya was always “in.” Though he’d mellowed a bit over the years, settled down, married, even had a kid, Reuben Montoya would always be the same cocky kid Bentz had been partnered with for years. Montoya still sported a goatee, diamond stud earring, and black leather jacket despite the thick New Orleans heat. No strands of gray had yet dared invade his black hair, and his body was fit and toned due to regular gym workouts and a regimen of running the city streets late at night. But maybe, just maybe with the reintroduction of one of the worst criminals in New Orleans history, even Montoya might start to age.

Together they walked down the stairs and out of the building where the Louisiana heat hit them full force. As it was late June, the temperature was hovering near ninety. Only the barest of breezes rustled through the leaves of the live oaks planted near the parking lot.

“I’ll drive,” Montoya said, as if he’d ever missed a chance to sit behind the wheel, foot to the floor, fishtailing around corners.

Bentz didn’t argue. It was useless. Together they crossed the parking lot. “I’ve already called for a boat to meet us at the old pier near the spot where Father John camped out. You remember where it is?”

“Like it was yesterday.” Montoya’s face was grim, his voice low as he slid into the driver’s seat of his Mustang.

Bentz took the passenger seat. Before he could pull the door shut, Montoya fired up the engine and threw the car into Reverse.

“I can’t believe that bastard is still alive,” Montoya said as he wheeled out of the parking lot.

Bentz clicked on his seat belt and cracked his window as Montoya merged into traffic. “If I hadn’t seen his face, I wouldn’t have bought it either.”

“But there he was, big as fuckin’ life.”

“Yep. Not a copycat. Not this time.” Bentz glowered out the window and slipped a pair of shades over his eyes. So far, the headache that had been his companion all morning hadn’t abated. Last night, his one beer had slid into two, then three, and so on until the six-pack he’d picked up at the local convenience store had been downed, full bottles replaced with empties. Reaching into his pocket, he found a travel-sized bottle of ibuprofen, tapped out two capsules, and tossed them back. Dry.

“Feelin’ rough?” Montoya asked as he drove out of the city, leaving the sluggish Mississippi and the skyline behind. He, too, had slid a pair of sunglasses over the bridge of his nose, but Bentz figured the colored lenses were more for effect than to cut the glare—all part of the Detective Reuben Montoya too-cool-for-school image.

“I’m okay,” Bentz said, and thankfully his partner didn’t press the issue. Bentz had been sober going on twenty years. Aside from a couple of slips, one of which had been last night, the worst yet, he hadn’t even been tempted. He decided to clamp down on himself. Just because a serial killer that he’d thought he’d taken care of had returned was no reason to start sliding. If anything, he needed to be smarter than ever, at the top of his game. Booze, even light beer, was out.

“Give any more thought to turning in your resignation?”

“Not much.”

“Good.”

Bentz could retire. Between his years with the LAPD and his time here in New Orleans, he’d be okay financially. But he wasn’t old enough to completely throw in the towel, and he felt younger than his age. He watched the city disappear through the passenger window. From time to time he’d considered leaving the force. He’d suffered through some near-fatal injuries and put himself and his family at risk, which wasn’t good. And now he was the father of an infant.

Olivia was all for him quitting; she claimed it would give them more time together with the baby. But his grown daughter Kristi thought the idea preposterous. “Oh, yeah? And what would you do?” she’d asked, her eyes twinkling. “Stay at home and play pat-a-cake with Ginny all day?
That
I’d love to see.” She had chuckled at the mental image before adding, “You know you’d go out of your friggin’ mind within a week. Right? You’re a cop’s cop, Dad. You live to be a detective, and don’t argue with me,” she’d warned, wagging a finger at him. “You know it. You love the chase and live for the arrest, sending all those bad boys up the river. Otherwise you would have given up before.” She’d held his gaze. “You fought hard to win back your badge after the Valdez incident.”

“Not an ‘incident,’ Kristi,” he’d reminded her. “I killed a kid.”

“Who you thought was aiming a gun at your partner.”

“Nonetheless—”

“Nonetheless nothing. You didn’t quit then and you’re not quitting now. Face it, Dad, you’d curl up and die reading
Pat the Bunny
and
Goodnight Moon
for the ten thousandth time. Give it a rest.” She’d flashed him that incredible smile, the one that reminded him of his first wife. “You can retire when you’re old. I mean
really
old.”

He’d let the subject drop. Until now, when Montoya brought it up again.

“Not sure what I’m going to do.” He tapped a knuckle on the window and considered his future as they sped past a lowland farm.

“Well, let me know, would you?” Montoya gunned the car, speeding around a slow-moving hay truck with bales that looked as if they might topple at any second. “If you’re really going to quit, give me a heads-up, okay, so I can request a new partner. Damn, but I’d hate to get hooked up with Brinkman.”

Bentz didn’t blame Montoya. Brinkman was a pain in the ass and a know-it-all at that. A decent enough cop who had been with the department for years, Brinkman was a loudmouth who always knew the worst off-color jokes and never passed up a chance to put the screws to his fellow officers. Yeah, Brinkman had all the social skills of a water moccasin on a bad day. “You could request someone.”

“Sure.” Montoya squinted through the bug-spattered windshield. “Because you know if I ended up with Brinkman, I might just kill the son of a bitch.”

“You’d be doing the department a favor.”

“That I would.” Montoya laughed. “And end up in jail. Look, just stick around, Bentz. Come on, man, now you have a real reason to stay. Father John. We need to take him down. Whether you like it or not, the sick bastard just made our job a lot more interesting.”

Montoya made a grim point. Lately, things had been quiet. Aside from the usual domestic violence cases and gang-related or booze-fueled fights, the city had been calm. Not since a killer had stalked St. Marguerite’s Cathedral had there been any unusual homicide cases. Which had suited him just fine. Or so Bentz had told himself. But, as proven by Bentz’s obsession with the tape of Father John murdering the woman prisoner, Montoya was right. Bentz’s investigative juices were definitely flowing again.

How sick was that?

Frowning, he heard his partner swear as Montoya turned onto an overgrown lane leading to the remote bayou. Dry grass and weeds scraped the undercarriage of the low-slung car as Montoya followed the twin ruts that marked the old driveway.

By the time they reached the area of the bayou where Father John had once lived, the mosquitoes were out in full force and the midday heat shimmered in waves. Tall cypress trees gave a little shade, but the air was still and humid. Oppressive. Sweat collected around Bentz’s neck and he tugged at his collar as they walked down the overgrown path toward the water. The dilapidated dock listed to one side, its rotting boards bleached from the intense sun. The brackish water stretched wider here.

Squinting, Bentz stared across the expanse to the thicket of trees that used to shelter a cabin set upon pilings. A killer’s lair where, over the drone of insects and croak of bullfrogs, Father John had tuned into Dr. Sam’s show as he sharpened the stones of his rosary and plotted his next grisly crime. Years had passed, long years that had lulled Bentz into believing the killer who had cloaked himself as a man of God had died in this very swamp.

Bentz swiped at the sweat beading at the back of his neck and wondered if Father John’s cabin still existed.

Maybe Montoya was right about this after all.

Maybe this trip to the bayou was all a huge waste of time.

C
HAPTER
7

B
rianna pushed the speed limit. With Selma fighting tears and nearly collapsed against the passenger door, they tore up Highway 10.

Brianna’s Honda was fifteen years old, had nearly two hundred thousand miles on the odometer, and was in serious need of detailing, but it responded without complaint. The trip to All Saints should take a little over an hour and a half, but Brianna hoped to shave time off the length of the journey. Time was of the essence because the more Selma had talked about her daughters’ disappearance, the more Brianna feared that the 21 Killer was at large here in Louisiana.

She thought back over her recent trip to California, where she’d run into so many dead ends. The LAPD hadn’t been responsive, the officer who had arrested Donovan Caldwell for the crime having retired, and the DA who had prosecuted the case was no longer with the department. His replacement, a stern woman of around fifty, was not interested in anything about the case other than keeping the convicted man known as the 21 Killer behind bars. The LA bureaucracy saw Brianna as some relative of the convicted killer who wouldn’t accept the truth.

As if!

She slid a glance at Selma whose eyes were closed, her arms wrapped protectively around her thin body. Was it really possible? Could it be that Selma’s two precious daughters, on the cusp of becoming adults, had been kidnapped by 21?

If so, it was far too late.

The killer would have ended their lives precisely twenty-one years from the time Selma had brought them into the world.

Heart filled with dread, she drove into the city of Baton Rouge and turned onto the street that would lead into the center of All Saints’ campus. Brianna and Selma had decided that they needed to begin their search in the girls’ dormitory. Brianna tried to picture Chloe peering out from under the covers of her bed or Zoe answering the door, telling her mother to mind her own business. She hoped those images were not just a fantasy.

To that end, as the car nosed its way under the archway at the college’s southern border, Brianna sent up a small prayer for the Denning twins’ safety.

 

 

At the sound of an outboard engine, Bentz turned toward the water to watch as an aluminum craft appeared, rounding a bend in the bayou.

Leaving a small wake, the boat sidled up to the old pier. Ray Calloway, a barrel-chested African American who was manning the tiller, cut the engine. With a nod at Bentz, he found a rope and looped it over a post sticking up from the dismal dock.

“Ray,” Bentz said, stepping aboard the gently rocking boat. “Thanks for coming.”

“Any time, any time. You know it. Good ta see ya, Bentz.” The boat’s owner was an ex-cop who spent his days fishing these bayous. “No trouble at all,” he said as Montoya took a seat on the bench already occupied by Bentz. “Been too long.”

“That it has.” Bentz made quick introductions, then Calloway unhitched the boat, started the engine, and guided the craft across the murky water. Bentz didn’t like the feel of the area where alligators slid slowly through the swamp and water moccasins made their home.

“I hate this place,” Montoya admitted.

“The bayou?”

“No,
this
place.” He motioned to the shadowy thicket where Father John had resided during his reign of terror. His eyes darkened to nearly black. “Evil lived here.”

Bentz said, “A long time ago.”

“Doesn’t matter. I figure it still exists.”

Calloway nodded, his bald head speckled with sweat as he guided the boat’s bow between trees rising out of the water. “The spirit stays, you know. It lingers, even after the perp is gone. Y’know, like a bad smell.”

Bentz didn’t buy into Ray’s theory of lingering evil, but he couldn’t deny the sudden coolness at the back of his neck, like the breath of a demon prickling the hairs at the base of his scalp. The chill was at odds with the heat of the day. He told himself it was all his imagination. Montoya wasn’t right. Evil may have existed in this bayou where a musty smell rose from rotting vegetation, but no malingering spirits lurked in the deepening umbra.

The dinghy slipped farther into the woods, where shafts of light glinted through the branches overhead, sparkling the water. An ibis, disturbed by the watercraft, took off. White wings stretched, the bird disappeared in the higher branches.

“Here we go,” Calloway said, cutting the engine. Sure enough, the remains of a cabin came into view in the nest of foliage. Rotting on its pilings, the wooden structure sagged. Its roof had collapsed, and some of the floorboards of the porch surrounding the structure were missing.

“No one living in this mess,” Montoya observed; he seemed relieved.

“Yeah, I figured.” Bentz squinted at the dilapidated building. “This would have been way too easy, and nothing about Father John ever was.” He thought back to the time when the serial killer had been terrorizing the city. Long before Hurricane Katrina had meted out her punishment, Father John had stalked the streets of New Orleans, choosing his victims and leaving them with a necklace of bruises around their throats and a mutilated hundred-dollar bill nearby. A fake priest, serial killer, fan of Dr. Sam’s radio program. Yeah, he was a sick bastard all right.

And now he was back.

From the looks of it vandals had found the cabin. Luminescent paint had been scrawled over the remaining boards, a sleeping bag with its stuffing spilling out hung over what was left of the railing near the stairs, and beer cans and wrappers were visible. A wasp’s nest hung from a low branch, slim black insects crawling on its papery shell. Mosquitoes and dragonflies buzzed near the watercraft.

Montoya gave a wasp a swat as it hovered near his head. “Jesus, I
hate
the swamp.”

“Bayou,” Calloway corrected.

“All the same.” Montoya swore, slapping at his neck. “Shit, that fucker nailed me.” Sure enough, a red welt showed just above his collar. “God
damn
it!”

Over the idling of the boat, Calloway said, “Should never swat at ’em.”

“Yeah, right.” Montoya’s lips were pressed tight.

“I think we’ve seen enough,” Bentz said.

“Not much to see.” Giving out a raspy chuckle, Calloway jammed a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and circled his small craft around the cabin. He didn’t bother lighting his Pall Mall, but headed to the opposite shore where Montoya’s Mustang was waiting.

Bentz was sweating heavily as he climbed out of the boat one step behind his partner. He paused on the dock. “Thanks,” he said to Calloway.

“Any time.” The ex-cop flicked his lighter to the end of his cigarette. “Seriously, Bentz, you should come back. And next time, not on business. Spend the day out here. You could catch yourself and the missus a mess o’ catfish.”

“She’d love that,” Bentz said with more than a trace of irony as he pictured Olivia cleaning a bunch of fat fish at the kitchen sink. She’d done it all her life, of course, growing up with Granny Gin, but still she wasn’t fond of gutting and filleting the whiskered bottom-feeders.

“I’ll bet she would.” Chuckling again, Calloway eased his boat into the bayou. Cigarette clamped firmly between his teeth, hand on the tiller, he sped through the murky water to disappear around the bayou’s bend.

“Now what?” Montoya asked, rubbing the red mark on his neck as he and Bentz made their way along the overgrown path to the car.

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Bentz admitted as he slid into the passenger seat and rolled down the window. “But I will.” He’d already pulled the file on Father John from the Cold Case Archives and had made inquiries. It wasn’t as if the police department didn’t know his identity. Of course, they had a contact list of his friends and family. So far none of those who had known the killer had admitted to seeing the man who disguised himself as a priest and used a rosary as a murder weapon. Every contact had expressed surprise that Bentz was asking questions again; they insisted that Father John had to be dead.

Were they lying?

Time would tell.

“The bastard’s taunting us, you know.” Montoya fired the engine and hit the A/C, then backed onto the overgrown gravel road.

“Yep.”

“Daring us to catch him.” He found a wide spot where the grass was mashed down and turned around, the Mustang bouncing on the uneven ground.

“We will.”

“Not by doin’ what we just did. The boat ride out to the old lair? That’s what we professionals in the business call a wild-goose chase!”

“I just wanted to get the feel of him again.”

Montoya slid him a glance. “Feel of him?”

“Yeah.” Bentz couldn’t explain it, not even to his partner, but he had a strange connection with the killer.

“I’m tellin’ you that sumbitch is evil, that’s the
feel of him
he left me with. Shit.” He shot his partner a glance. “Here’s a news flash: Father John wasn’t there at his old cabin. Probably hasn’t been there in nearly a dozen years. So, again, I’m sayin’ a bust, and not in the good, we-got-your-asses prostitution or drug ring bust. I’m talking a bust like in Vegas when you lose everything and get your ass kicked out of a penthouse suite.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience.”

“Maybe.” Montoya rubbed at the welt on his neck, his lips tightening as he eased onto a county road and hit the gas.

“Nothing lost,” Bentz said, staring out the windshield.

“Just a couple hours of my life.” But Montoya was settling down, his volatile anger subsiding. “Hell, I can’t believe the psycho’s back. Why now? And why kill a nun?”

“Who was as bad as he is.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. It still gets my back up. She was unarmed, man. Trusting,” Montoya said as the car’s wheels hummed over the pavement. “I don’t go to mass anymore, and hardly ever pray, y’know, but hell, I was raised Catholic and I hate the fact that the twisted son of a bitch impersonated a priest. What kind of sick bastard does that?”

“He isn’t a man of God.”

“You got that right. Being a priest, a holy man, takes years of study and commitment and dedication and piety and honor, y’know, and a rosary. It’s holy. Sacred.” His hands tightened over the wheel. “It pisses me off.”

“Me too,” Bentz admitted, drumming his fingers against the passenger door. “Me too.”

She would never get the chance to escape again. Chloe knew it, as surely as she was locked in this windowless basement, alone and naked. At least she was no longer hog-tied. Instead, he’d bound her wrists in front of her and left her with a pail to pee in and a night-light that gave off a weird blue glow from a battery-powered disk on his worktable. He’d been bloody and covered in dirt, but had found some clothes, a plaid shirt and old jeans that he’d thrown on.

Then he’d taken off with the final words. “I’ll find her, you know. I’ll find that bitch and bring her back here. And then . . .”

He’d never finished his threat, leaving her to guess at his sick plans. He had climbed the ladder, hauled it up after him, and slammed the trapdoor closed behind him. She had heard his heavy tread cross the floor above, and then silence.

Chloe figured he hadn’t decided what to do with them now that his original plan had been thwarted. She didn’t know what kind of macabre rite he’d dreamed up, but it certainly would have involved pain and the twins’ eventual deaths.

So now she needed a plan.

Either he’d return and hurt her, or leave her in this miserable basement to die. Both scenarios were terrifying, so she had to find a way to free herself. That was what Zoe would do. She would find some way to either climb out of here or wait until the whack job returned and somehow get the drop on him. That would be harder than ever, now that Zoe had done it once.

And, she told herself, she wasn’t Zoe. She wasn’t brave or strong or athletic. She didn’t have Zoe’s fire and edge. She’d always been content to let her twin be the leader in their lives, but now, she had no one to rely on but herself.

Worse yet, Zoe was counting on her.

But it was an impossible situation.

She was trapped in this prison.

Blinking back tears, she curled into a fetal position on the cool stone floor and tried to calm her racing thoughts. She needed a plan. Something clever, like the thing Zoe had done. She tugged at the binding on her wrists, which was tighter this time. It was no use. Her twin would have to find a way to save them both.

 

 

Brianna paced to a window of the college’s admin building and stared out at the pathways cut through well-manicured lawns. The windows in the stone building were small, reminiscent of a medieval monastery, but they allowed her a sweeping view of the campus grounds. How she would have loved to recognize Zoe or Chloe among the handful of students and faculty crossing the campus, heading off to a dorm or summer session classes. Behind her, Selma sat silently. Waiting and waiting to meet with the dean of students. After a tough morning spent searching this campus, they were more frustrated than ever.