Cold Blooded (34 page)

Kristi had never been self-conscious about her body, had stripped and showered for her gym classes without any hangups, but Miss. Roberta

Pratt changed all that. The dyke made her nervous.

Crap. Everyone did these days.

And now Dad was gonna be late. He'd called her on her cell phone and made some excuse about a major break in a case, even offered to have someone pick her up.

As if!

The guy her father had in mind was probably a cop friend and would have rolled up in a department-issued cruiser.

Oh, yeah, that's the image she wanted to portray around campus! Sure, announce to the world that she was a cop's daughter!

She died a billion deaths just thinking about it. She'd told Bentz she'd wait. He'd promised he'd be only "a couple of hours" late. Whatever that meant. She'd lived with him too long to believe it.

She'd already decided she wasn't going to wait around forever. If her dad didn't show up in a reasonable time period, she'd give Brian another call. That thought made her smile. Taking a sharp left at the statue of St. Mary in the middle of the quad, she thought she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Someone else was running to get out of the rain.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw no one.

The campus was practically deserted.

Kind of creepy in the gloom.

Oh, get over it.

She took a shortcut through the library, taking the steps two at a time and shoving open the old glass doors. Normally packed, the library was now a ghost town with only a handful of students sitting at the old oaken tables or perusing the stacks. The lights were dimmed, it seemed, the entire building desolate.

She hurried outside and crossed the wet lawn to Cramer Hall. Again, she thought she heard someone behind her, another set of footsteps making a mad dash in the rain. Once more, she looked over her shoulder. This time she saw someone in the shadows, a tall man lagging behind. He seemed familiar, someone she should know, but it was too dark to make out his features and he disappeared through the dense curtain of rain--turning his face away as she looked in his direction.

For a heartbeat Kristi wondered if he'd been following her on purpose.

But that was ridiculous. Who would be chasing her in this downpour?

You're as paranoid as your old man! For God's sake, the guy behind you was just running like mad to get out of this miserable weather. There's nothing scary about that.

Get over yourself!

For a second she thought the guy might have been Brian-- his build was about right--but then why wouldn't Brian try to catch up with her? Why would he turn away and head into the shadows? No, that didn't make any sense.

And where was Brian anyway, she wondered, more than a little irritated.

Pushing open the door, she tried not to be angry. There was probably a perfectly good reason why he hadn't returned her phone calls.

"Jerk," she muttered under her breath.

Running up two flights of steps, she swabbed the rain from her face, then yanked her cell phone from her pocket.

She flipped it open. Nope. No one had called, not since her dad had phoned to tell her he was running late.

Great.

The door to her room was open and Lucretia was lying on her bottom bunk, flipping through a new copy of Modern Bride. Kristi recognized the magazine and wanted to puke.

All Lucretia ever did was study and dream of graduating so she could get married. Rather than make a nasty comment, Kristi bit her tongue and began peeling off her wet jacket and jeans. "Anyone call?" she asked, squeezing the water from her ponytail as she searched her microcloset for something dry to put on.

"Yeah. Jay." Lucretia was sipping a Diet Coke and munching on Cheetos as

she eyed a page displaying several different elaborately decorated cakes.

Kristi cringed.

"He wants to know when you're getting home." "You talked to him?" Kristi asked, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her skin was red from the cold, her hair starting to frizz.

"Why didn't you let him leave a message?

' ' didn't think, just picked up the phone without checking caller ID."

At Kristi's sour expression, Lucretia rolled her eyes. "Sorry. But he still thinks he's your boyfriend, you know. I didn't think it was that big of a deal." She lifted a dismissive shoulder as she crunched another Cheeto. "He wants you to call him back."

"I think I'll wait until I get home."

"Whatever." Disinterested, Lucretia licked the cheese from her lips.

"Anyone else?"

"Nope." Lucretia looked up with that smug expression that really got under Kristi's skin. "No one. Not even Brian."

Kristi didn't comment, but she couldn't wait to go home and get away from her holier-than-thou roommate. Lucretia didn't smoke, drink, do drugs, or even listen to any music other than some Christian station. Just dreamed of being a wife and mother. BO-ring. Checking her watch Kristi wondered when the hell her dad would show up.

Bentz parked on the outside of the gate. As he climbed out of his Jeep, he flashed his badge at a deputy from the Sheriff's Department who was standing guard. Beyond the sagging old fence was an abandoned grist

mill.

Montoya had been talking to other officers. He broke away from the cluster standing in the rain, and waved Bentz in.

"What've we got?" Bentz asked.

' ' Jane Does. Both dead." Montoya was sucking hard on a cigarette. His jacket was shiny with rainwater, his features stretched taut in the gathering darkness. Twilight had descended rapidly in this farming community an hour out of the city. The rain didn't let up, just kept pummeling the ground and running off the bill of Bentz's Saints' cap.

"I got a call from a friend of mine in the Sheriff's Department and drove over," Montoya said, "A couple of kids found the bodies." He motioned to two boys huddled with an officer and an older woman.

"What were they doin' here?"

"Hunting', though that was behind their mother's back."

Montoya blew out a stream of smoke. "They got more than they bargained for."

Bentz glared at the mill. The building looked like something straight out of an old horror flick. The windows were boarded over, the cement walls blacked with age. Vines and brambles crawled toward the roof while moss dripped over what remained of the eaves. Part of an old mill wheel sat unmoving in a stream that angled into the darkness.

"Who's the owner?" Bentz asked.

"We're still digging, but the sheriff thinks the mill's owner lives out of state."

"He got a name?"

"We're still checking. Locals refer to this place as

"The Old Kayler Place.' Someone named Kayler with roots in the Civil War

owned the land a hundred and fifty years ago.

The name stuck. The mill came along later but hasn't been operational for a generation or two, probably closed up around World War II sometime. The nearest neighbors are half a mile away."

"Convenient."
' ' not as dangerous as the shotgun house off of Esplanade."
"Or an apartment in the Garden District."
Bentz swept his gaze over the exterior again. The place was already

crawling with law enforcement personnel. Klieg lights trained bluish

illumination on the crumbling walls.
Beams from hand-held flashlights bobbed and cut through the shadows as
officers, searching every inch of wet, soggy ground, moved slowly
through the tall grass, scrub oaks, and brush.

"Did you question the kids?" Bentz asked, sending a glance at the boys.
"Yeah. They don't know much."
"I'll want to talk to them once I've gone inside." Bentz looked back at

the mill. Yellow tape surrounded the building.
"The scene's been preserved?"
"Best as they could."
"No ID on the victims." It wasn't a question.
"Never that easy," Montoya said. "At least not with this killer. We'll

take prints and pictures, blood, and we've always got dental records."
Bentz hiked his collar against the rain. "Let's see what's inside."
"It ain't pretty." Montoya ground out his smoke, picked up the butt, and

stuffed it in his pocket Bentz braced himself as he walked past two detectives who were searching the muddy lane for tire tracks. Another was sweeping the area with a harsh, intense light.

"You're pretty sure it's our guy?" Bentz asked.

"No doubt." They walked through a sagging doorway

and the stench of death hit Bentz as hard as a fist to the gut.

Fetid and rank, the smell was overlaid by another strong odor, the metallic scent of fresh blood.

Inside, rats scurried out of their path and Bentz clenched his teeth as he got his first view of the scene. His stomach tried to revolt, just as it always did. He fought the urge to vomit and forced himself to study the area.

In the center of a large room the murder had taken place.

A woman's nude, decapitated body was still strapped to a grotesque, spiked wheel. Blood covered the dirty floor and atop a long workbench, posed upon an overturned, rusted bucket, was her head. Her eyes were closed, a piece of bloody hair missing. "Jesus," Bentz whispered as he spied a chain encircling the stump that had once been her neck.

The thin chain draped over the pail. A medal dangled from the fragile links.

"Let me guess. St. Catherine of Alexandria."

"Yep."

Bentz's back teeth ground. "Hell."

"Our man is one sick, sick bastard," Montoya said over the hum of a vacuum that was being wielded by a member of the crime scene and was used to suck up and trap potential evidence. A photographer snapped still shots of the body and surrounding area from all angles. Another photographer used a video camera. Flashes of light strobed, offering glimpses of musty interior walls veined by black rivulets, stains from years of rainwater and filth seeping through the roof.

' ', huh?" Montoya mocked, his own gaze traveling over the scene. "You think he could pick anyplace more macabre?"

"Not if he tried, which, I think he does."

Montoya was squatting now, staring at the plywood wheel.

"Someone had to make this gizmo," he said. "It's nothing you can pick up at the local five-and-dime."

"Oronebay."

"So either our killer has a workshop and a truck to haul this thing, or he built it here, or he bought it from someone who has a talent for creating instruments of torture." Montoya leaned farther down and rotated his head, shining the beam of his flashlight on the underside of the wheel.

"I'm betting he built it here. It's isolated. He cut some thick plywood, drilled a few holes, put in the biggest spikes he could find, and mounted the whole damned thing on a revolving turret of some kind."

"It looks like an old wheel balancer, you know the kind they use in garages when they're putting on tires."

"So you just give it a push and it starts spinning." Bentz joined Montoya as the younger cop illuminated the underpinnings, which included an axle screwed into a concrete block.

Metal arms supported the blood-stained plywood. Bentz's jaw tightened.

"So he's a handyman."

"How do you know about this kind of thing?"

"Because I built one that was similar. Instead of spikes, mine had pegs and was used for a school carnival when Kristi was about ten. The kids spun the wheel to try and winsome kind of cheap prize, you know whistles, balloons, toy trucks, and all that useless crap."

"Like on The Price is Right."

"Well, yeah, but it was called The Wheel of Fortune."

"Vanna would be proud." "If you say so," Bentz said, not cracking a

smile. "But here we've got the god damned Wheel of Pain."

"Built by a handyman priest."

"Who can get his hands on old garage parts as easily as saints' medals."

Bentz straightened and noticed a large mirror hung on the far wall. The glass was smooth and unbroken, without much dust on the surface. Unlike every other surface in the room. Everything else was covered in a thick, grainy layer of grime. "What's with this?" he asked, but as the words left his mouth, he knew. "Our boy likes to watch himself while he's working."

"Shit." Montoya scoped out the scene. "You're right.

He's a damned egomaniac."

"Or Narcissus. Has it been dusted for prints?" "Of course," a woman officer said, her feathers ruffling a bit as if Bentz had indicated she and the rest of the team were lax. Wearing latex gloves, she was carefully going over every surface. "Everything has." She muttered something under her breath about "big-city cops" and went about her Bentz didn't let her get to him.

"Let's try to find out who manufactured the mirror," he said to Montoya.

"Maybe we can come up with someone who purchased something like this i n the last month or so--same with the parts on the wheel over there and with the medals. Some of the saints are pretty common, but where would a guy get a St. Catherine of Alexandria medal?"

"Over the Internet or in one of those stores that sells religious crap, probably." Montoya rubbed his goatee.' ' the wheel mount. Maybe a garage is missing one. But it looks old, not like the ones that are hooked to computers that they've got today."

"Not every garage in Louisiana is computer friendly.

Unless it's been filed off, that piece of equipment should have some serial numbers we can trace."

Bentz scanned the scene once more and noticed a thick pool of blood beneath the wheel, one where there was more blood splattered than around the rest of the perimeter. Obviously the victim had been at that spot in her rotation, right in front of the mirror, when the killer had sliced off her head. Just so the sick bastard could watch himself as he slashed down with his blade. He probably got off on the image.

Again Bentz felt the urge to toss his dinner, but swallowed hard. "Any sign of a weapon?"

"Not that we've found so far." Montoya was still sweeping the mirror with the beam of his flashlight, its bright glare reflected harshly in the glass.

"You said there was another victim."

"Oh, yeah ... " Using the bright beam to point to a doorway, Montoya led Bentz through a short, dark hallway to another much smaller silo-like room, originally, Bentz guessed, used for storage.