Cold Blooded (24 page)

Always with Kristi. On Christmas, sometimes Easter. Never in between and

sometimes he'd skipped a year. It all depended on how he felt about God at the time the holiday rolled around. He parked on the street and stared up at the tall spire of St. Luke's Church.

Illuminated by lights on the ground, the steeple rose into the night, seeming to knife into the clouds, unbent by the rain.

It was ironic, he thought, that James had ended up here.

What were the chances?

Unless James had requested the transfer.

Wouldn't that beat all? He'd wondered half a dozen times why his half-brother had transferred to the Big Easy.

Bentz pocketed his keys, didn't bother turning up his collar, and made a dash for the front doors. Someone had told him long ago that God was patient. He hoped to hell it was true.

The woman was a problem. A serious problem.

The Chosen One sensed her presence, knew that it was only a matter of time before she led the police closer to him.

He knew her name. Olivia Benchet ... a self-proclaimed psychic. As was her grandmother, a backwoods voodoo priestess. But then The Chosen One knew all about Virginia Dubois.

He'd done his research. It was necessary to understand one's enemies.

How else would one prevail?

Standing in the shower's hot spray, he sneered when he thought of the police. Simpletons. Idiots. With all of their sophisticated equipment and computer links, and manpower, they were still running around in circles. He'd listened to the press conference that was meant to warn the constituents of the city about a homicidal maniac; he'd heard that there was a task force in place and that more details would be released when they were available.

Which was a joke. The police didn't dare tip their hands and tell too much about what they'd found for fear of a copycat killer, or someone confessing to the crime who had no part of it.

So they were careful.

And stupid.

He held a razor and shaved himself carefully. First one thin blade, then another, and finally a third, so that there was no margin for error. The razors were sharp, honed with precision, and they gently caressed his skin, removed all trace of his hair. He worked his way downward from his hairline, slowly over his face, then his neck and chest and underarms, anywhere there was a hint of body hair. He was careful in that sensitive area surrounding his scrotum and took his time with his legs and feet, watching the dark stubble swirl down the drain in an eddy of lather.

He'd installed a full-length mirror next to the shower, and through the steamy glass doors, he saw his image--bare and clean, white skin red from the hot spray, nary a single hair visible, just rippling muscles beneath taut skin, compliments of a rowing machine, a cross-country ski machine, and weights that he used in his daily regimen. The hair on his head was wet and he considered removing it. He should shave it down to nothingness as one single strand left at a scene would undo him. But a significant change in his appearance would raise suspicion, and in truth, pride and vanity won out over caution. For now, the hair would stay.

He combed the wet strands from his face, slicking them to his head.

Someday, perhaps ... As he stepped out of the shower, he didn't towel off but let the cold air evaporate the moisture on his skin. He'd found his next victim. Oh, there were many to choose from; so many sinners, but this one, the redhead, would do nicely.

He'd been watching her for weeks, wondering if she was worthy of the sacrifice, and when he'd spoken to her, he'd known then. If she only knew how he was going to transform her soul. Barefooted, he crossed the smooth wood floor to his closet and reached inside for the medal, a very special medal suspended from a fine chain.

St. Catherine of Alexandria.

He felt his blood begin to heat at the thought of his mission. Tonight ... before midnight. He imagined her pleading for her life, praying and supplicating, crying and repenting, offering herself to him ... No matter what she bartered with, no matter how desperately she begged, her blood would flow.

He looped the chain over his wrist and glanced in the mirror again.

Tonight would be good. Yes. Another sacrifice.

But then he would have to reassess. Because the granddaughter of Virginia Dubois, daughter to the slut Bernadette, could ruin things for

him.

Unless she became one of the martyred.

He smiled at the thought. She had to die. She was a threat and he had personal reasons to end her life, reasons she couldn't yet fathom. There were others slated to be sacrificed first, of course, but ... his schedule could be rearranged to allow for this special rite.

Saint Olivia. It had a nice ring to it.

A very nice ring.

Chapter Twenty-one.

"There's someone to see you ... a police officer," Wanda, the church secretary, said as she tapped on the door to the office while simultaneously pushing it open.

Father James Mcclaren looked over the tops of his reading glasses and read the curiosity in the uplift of Wanda's white eyebrows. Thin and wrinkled with eyes that appeared owlish behind her glasses, she licked her lips nervously.

"His name is ... what?" She turned and James heard a deep voice that he recognized instantly. "Oh yes ... Detective Richard Bentz," she said, looking at Father Mcclaren again.

James's chest tightened. The soft classical music he'd been listening to seemed to fade. What would bring his half-brother here? Only the direst of circumstances. Kristi.

James's mouth went dry. "Send him in," he said, turning away from his computer screen. Next week's sermon would have to wait.

As Wanda stepped aside to let Bentz enter, James steeled himself. Any conversation with Bentz turned into a confrontation.

"Father," Bentz said with a nod and James, standing, forced a smile.

"Thank you, Wanda," James said, slanting a glance at the woman still hovering in the doorway. She got the hint and slipped outside. The door shut with a soft thud. James extended his hand across the desk. He relaxed a little. If something was seriously wrong with Kristi, it would have been evident in the lines on Bentz's face. As it was his halfbrother looked worried, but not filled with despair or grief.

"Long time, no see. How're ya, Rick?"

Bentz took his hand in a bear-like clasp that was as brief as it was strong. "Okay." He settled into one of the visitor's chairs and James remembered how much, as a boy, he'd looked up to his older brother. How close they'd been. As children, Rick had always been there for him.

While growing up, Bentz had shown him how to throw a baseball, shoot a twenty-two and sneak booze from the old man's liquor cabinet.

Rick had scoffed at James's piety, and once taken on Freddy Mason when Freddy and some friends had picked a fight with James in the school yard, calling him a sissy and a "Mama's boy." Rick had knocked Freddy flat, then, when the older boys had left with their tails tucked between their collective legs, Rick had turned on his half brother and kicked James's butt from one side of Orange County to the other. He'd told James that Freddy had been right.

James was a "Mama's boy" and all that candy-assed stuff about God and Church had to be hidden away or he'd get into big trouble. It was time for James to fight his own battles.

The next week James had asked Rick to show him how to box and in the next year, after growing six inches and putting on thirty pounds, James had been able to stand up for himself. They'd been tight way back when and James had always felt awe for his stronger half brother; a kid who' had grown up not knowing his own father, a policeman shot in the line of duty.

Even so, eventually James and Rick had taken far different paths and eventually James had betrayed his older brother.

And he'd been paying for it ever since.

Now, he dropped into his worn desk chair.

"How ' you?" Rick asked without so much as a smile, as if he didn't really give a damn. "You okay these days?"

"Can't complain." Drawing in a tight breath James asked a question that had

been on his mind for months. "How's Kristi?"

"Fine."

"In school?"

"Yeah." Bentz's eyes dared him to go further.

He took the challenge. "Up at All Saints?"

"That's right."

"Shedoin' okay?" "As I said, "." "Coming home for Thanksgiving?" James asked, eager for any little tidbit of information about the daughter who had believed he was her uncle until a few months ago.

"Yeah." A muscle worked in the side of Bentz's face as if he, too, were remembering the scene after he'd handed Kristi the condemning letter, then left a message on James's answering machine explaining that he'd finally told her the truth. James had hoped for some kind of bonding, a healing, and he'd been sorely disappointed. Kristi had summarily rejected him, and told him to

"Fuck off" when he'd called.

The short, furious, one-sided conversation still rang in his ears.

"Don't you ever call me, okay? You're a god damned hypocrite and I don't want you praying for me, either, just leave me the hell alone!" she'd cried and slammed down the phone. He had prayed for her. Hours. Hoping she would see him. Speak with him, let him explain ... If she only knew how much he loved her, had loved her mother ... maybe more than God.

When Jennifer had admitted that she was pregnant with his child, he'd offered to quit the priesthood, had been willing to take the heat of his brother's wrath, God's fury, even to accept the specter of being excommunicated, but she'd refused ... She couldn't accept the scandal, so they'd covered up the truth for a while. Now, he tapped his desk, feeling shame. Feeling that same familiar guilt.

Rick was still glaring at him. "I didn't come here to talk about her," he said tersely.

James nodded, trying to ignore that particular pang of emptiness whenever he thought about Kristi. "I know. And I guess I'm glad. I was afraid something was wrong with her when you showed up."

"This isn't about her."

"All right, but ... " He opened his hands and wondered how to ever bridge the gap between them. Through God, he'd told himself over and over, but for some reason the Father hadn't seen fit to mend their small family. And that, too, was James's fault. For he'd never forgotten Jennifer and years after Kristi was born, he and the mother of his child had sinned again. He cleared his throat. "I was worried ... You know, she won't respond to my letters or my email."

"Then leave it be, James," Bentz said, his lips compressed.

"But--" "I said ' it'; if she wants to contact you, she will.

Until then you just leave it alone."

"I've prayed and--"

Bentz snorted, the way of nonbelievers but even so, James felt no sense of superiority in his faith. It was prideful, of course, to feel that smugness. And a sin. Even those who desperately needed God's love sometimes rejected James's attempts to lead them to the Father. For those who couldn't find that faith, he felt despair, and, in some cases, unfortunately a sense of superiority. However not today. Not when it came to Kristi. James couldn't rely on his faith for he'd transgressed so badly, wounded his brother so bitterly, that God seemed to have shunned helping him. Rick Bentz had, at one time, been his role model, the older brother James had looked up to and emulated.

But that was before James had met Jennifer. And the weekend that had changed their lives forever.

God help him.

"I'm here on business," Bentz said, getting down to it as he leaned over the desk. "Here's the deal. We've got another sicko loose, a serial killer."

"I saw it on the news."

"Yeah, well, there are certain things I can't talk about, of course, things that we're keeping from the public, so 1 guess I'm here as a ... penitent or confessor or whatever it is the Church calls it these days."

He made a brushing motion with his hand, as if it was of no consequence.

"I just want to make sure that if I talk to you, it'll go no further, right? This is between you, me and God."

"If that's what you want."

"It is." Rick was dead-serious and James recognized the look. He'd seen it in the past. The grim, focused expression had always been a part of Bentz whether he donned it before a boxing match in high school or right before his fist had crashed into James's face and broken his nose. James hadn't seen it coming. But he hadn't known that Jennifer had confessed to Rick that she was carrying his half-brother's child.

That one blow had been symbolic of the rift that was to come. James had tried to reconnect with his half brother, to play the role of uncle to his own child, but Rick had only grudgingly allowed it, probably for the sole purpose of hiding the painful truth and to protect Kristi.

"Then, yes. You can trust that this will go no further."

Again the corners of Bentz's mouth tightened, but he didn't comment on trusting his half brother.' ' killer has struck three women that we know about, potentially more.

The women have a couple of things that link them, but one of the strongest is that I think they were all murdered on a Saint's feast day."

"What?" James didn't think he'd heard correctly.

"It seems they were killed on the feast day purposely.

There are clues to back this up." "Dear God," James whispered, sketching a quick sign of the cross over himself. "But if that were the case then there could be dozens ... or hundreds of victims." He pointed to the calendar hung over his desk. "Look at today.

It's the feast day of St. Catherine of Alexandria, the patron saint of maidens and philosophers and students and preachers." "Damn." Bentz glared at the calendar, then asked, "How did she die?"

"Horribly. Well, all the martyrs did ... Here ... " He swivelled in his chair and searched the bookcase behind him before he found the heavy book he wanted; one devoted entirely to the saints. What Bentz was speculating was heinous; crimes not only against the victims but the Church itself. To think someone would misconstrue the veneration of those canonized and twist it into murder was unthinkable.

Twisted and evil.