“Do I need an attorney?” Oscar Cantrell demanded. Face florid, unlit cigar clamped in his jaw, he strode out of the airport. He was mad as hell and belligerent as all get-out.
“You tell me,” Bentz suggested.
“You chargin’ me with something?” Cantrell, a short man with an oversized belly, straw hat, and narrow sideburns, sent Bentz a look guaranteed to wither a lesser man. Bentz didn’t give a damn. Let him stew. He’d met Cantrell at the gate, flashed his badge, and escorted the shorter man to his Jeep. “Nope. Just have some questions for you.”
“Hey, I’ve got my own car here.” Cantrell shifted his carry-on bag from one hand to the other. “I don’t need a ride.”
“Humor me. I’ll bring you back.”
“Son of a bitch,” Cantrell muttered, shifting his canyon bag from one hand to the other. But he didn’t argue. The road map of veins discoloring Cantrell’s cheeks and nose turned a brighter red as he reluctantly climbed into the backseat of the rig.
Bentz fired the engine and glanced into the rearview mirror. “Tell me about your ex-wife.”
“Which one?”
“Bernadette Dubois.”
Cantrell snorted and moved his cigar to the corner of his mouth. “Saint Bernadette,” he said and Bentz stiffened.
Saint Bernadette? “Is that a special name you have for her?”
“Yeah, right. You ever meet her?” Cantrell asked, and when Bentz shook his head, added, “Well, she’s bad news. Big time. A beautiful woman. Downright gorgeous and a manipulator. Always wants more than a man can give. The kind of woman that is nothing but trouble.” He threw himself back against the seat. “Sheeeeit, is she in some kind of trouble with the law?” he asked. “Is that what this is all about?”
“I just want to ask you some questions.”
“About what?”
“The fire at the rental property you manage over at Bayou St. John.”
“I figured.” Cantrell was looking out the window, chewing on his cigar, watching the scenery as Bentz headed into the city. “I didn’t know nothin’ about that. Nothin'. Ask my secretary. I’ve been out of town. With … with a friend. You can call her.”
“I will,” Bentz said, but figured Cantrell was leveling with him. Probably another dead end. “You know her kid?”
“The girl? Olivia? Yeah, I met her a time or two.” He took off his hat and swabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “Her other daughter died, y’know. I don’t think she ever got over it. Felt some kind of guilt. She was nappin’ when the kid fell into the pool. Drowned. Bernadette, she blamed the older kid, Olivia, for the baby’s death, but deep down I think she felt guilty. Hell, with that woman there was lots of guilt goin’ on.”
“Is that right?” Bentz hadn’t expected Cantrell to be so candid. Cantrell stuffed his hanky into his pocket. “How so? Why all the guilt?”
“Hell if I know. Her dad was dead, her mother half-crazy with all that talk about voodoo and crap. No wonder she was messed up. It probably started with the baby.”
“Olivia?”
“No.”
“Then the girl who drowned? Chandra?”
“For Christ’s sake, no,” Cantrell was irritated. “I’m talkin’ about the first baby.”
Bentz felt something snap in his brain. He glanced in the rearview mirror again.
“The first one?”
“Yeah, her son … I think it was supposed to be some big secret, but one night we were drinkin’ and she got drunk—more wasted than I’ve ever seen her. All of a sudden she starts yammerin’ about her son. She wouldn’t stop bellyachin’ about how she got herself in a family way and had to give up her baby. The old lady, Virginia, Bernadette’s mother, she wouldn’t have it no other way. She insisted upon it.”
“Who was the father?”
“Benchet, of course. That’s what all the fuss was about. The old lady had Reggie Benchet pegged. Knew he was no-account.” Cantrell’s lazy gaze met Bentz’s in the mirror. “Helluva thing. After that one night, she never brought it up again. Neither did I. Didn’t figure it was any of my business, but the thing is, I don’t think she ever told Reggie.”
“But she confided in you?” Bentz wasn’t buying it.
“The demon rum loosened her tongue. Man, that woman was on a supersonic guilt trip. If you ask me, that’s when it all started. Giving up that baby.”
“When what started?”
“The craziness … it runs in the family, y’know.” He yanked his cigar from his mouth and punctuated the air with it. “The old woman had it and passed it right down the line. Virginia to Bernadette to Olivia … all beautiful women, all not quite right, a little off, sexy as hell, lookers, I tell you, and charming, in a way, but … Not your normal woman, if you know what I mean.”
Unfortunately Bentz did. He only had to think of last night to remind himself.
Olivia worked a few hours at the Third Eye in the morning, then met Ole Olsen and his crew back at her cabin.
Holed up in the second bedroom, she tried to study while the workmen traipsed through her house, running wire, barking orders, turning off the electricity for a while, and then testing alarm bells. She sat on the daybed flipping the pages of research books, occasionally being interrupted by someone tapping on the closed door, then sticking his head inside to ask a question or two. Her concentration was shot. Not that it wouldn’t have been anyway. The night with Bentz seemed now surreal, their fight this morning just another disjointed piece in the jigsaw puzzle that was her life.
Once the electricity was flowing again, she forgot her thesis for a while and logged on to the Internet, where she spent two or three hours researching the lives and deaths of some of the saints. She’d wanted to tell Bentz he was barking up the wrong tree, but as she read about the saints he’d mentioned and remembered the women who had been killed, she was certain there was a link.
But what? Why these saints and why was she involved?
By the time most of the work crew had left, it was nearly dark and she was equipped with a basic security system that would activate whenever it was engaged and a door or window was opened. “So you’re saying that I’ll never be able to sleep with the windows ajar?” she asked Olsen, a tall, Nordic-looking man with a broad face and a shock of short white hair.
“Oh, yeah, you can turn off certain areas of the house, but I wouldn’t recommend it. See here—” He showed her the control panel, and explained about motion detectors and alarms and lag time between setting the thing and activation starting.
“So … when the motion detector is on, the dog’s got to be locked in another room.”
“Unless you want this to happen.” With a press of the button, he activated the alarm and a series of ear-splitting shrieks began blasting through the house. Hairy S whined. Olivia learned very quickly how to shut it off.
“Sometimes I hate high-tech,” she grumbled.
“Me, too.” Olsen grinned and showed off one gold-capped tooth. “But then I remember it’s my bread and butter. I shouldn’t complain too much.” He left her with his business card, a thick instruction and warranty booklet, and a surprisingly small invoice, which he explained was compliments of Detective Bentz. “We go back a few years,” he explained. “Helped my kid when she was messed up with drugs. Now, you call me if anything goes wrong, y’hear?” he’d said as he’d ambled out to his truck. “Anything ?-tall. Bentz said to take care of you and I aim to please.”
“I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it,” she assured him and waved before walking into her newly protected house. She wondered what Grannie Gin would have thought.
Probably that she was foolish. She could almost feel Grannie Gin rolling over in her grave and muttering, “Lawsy-Moley, what’s got into you payin’ for all those fancy bells and whistles. Trust in the Lord, Livvie, and learn how to use a shotgun. That’s all the protection anyone needs.”
“Not true, Grannie,” Olivia whispered as she sat at the kitchen table and thumbed through the instruction booklet. “Not true ?-tall.” The dog whined and she scratched his ears, then, unable to get past page seven of the booklet, she left it on the table and started for the living room. From the corner of her eye she saw Hairy leap into the chair she’d recently vacated, steal the pamphlet, and hightail it into the laundry room.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she warned, chasing after the dog and wrestling the booklet away before he could bury it in his blankets with his other treasures. “I might need this.” She tucked the pamphlet into a kitchen cupboard and started through the archway to the living room.
As she did. she felt it—a shifting in atmosphere.
Like a cold, brittle wind.
“No,” she said, her heart drumming. He couldn’t be at it again. Not after last night. A cold needle of fear pierced her brain. Glancing in the mirror mounted over the bookcase, she half-expected to see the priest’s masked face again, to stare into his cruel blue eyes, but only her own reflection stared back at her, a pale, wild-haired woman who appeared as world-weary as she felt. It was a haunted look. Tortured.
Hairy S whined, but he didn’t run to the door or the window as he usually did if he heard something outside. Instead he cowered near her, shivering, as if he sensed some evil presence here, within the core of the house.
“Sssh. You’re all right,” she said, picking him up and holding him close. “We’re safe.” But he trembled in her arms and scrambled to get down. She set him on the floor and he ran, toenails clicking on the hardwood, to stand in the archway to the kitchen, turn around, and stare back at her. “Hairy, you’re fine.”
He whined plaintively.
“Oh, you can be such a goose sometimes,” she said, but couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong. And not just in her visions, but here in her home. She thought of Grannie Gin’s words, her faith in God. Grannie’s religion had been skewed a bit, a blend of healthy Roman Catholicism flavored with a sprinkling of voodoo. But harmless. Grannie had found solace in the Bible. This Bible that sat on the top shelf of the short bookcase. The thick, leather-bound volume that had been in the family for ages and rested beneath the antique oval mirror.
Hairy barked and backed up.
“Stop it.”
But he wouldn’t quit and was barking madly as she opened the Bible. It fell open to the Twenty-third Psalm. Grannie’s favorite. Olivia read the familiar passage, and remembered Grannie whispering it to her at night when she tucked her into bed:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Olivia blinked back tears as she thought of her grandmother and how the old woman had pushed Olivia’s hair out of her face as she’d whispered the words. Funny, she’d never read this Bible herself; it had been solely Grannie’s domain.
Hairy growled. Obviously the passage wasn’t calming him down. “Heretic,” Olivia teased and set the Bible down, but the front flap sprung open to a page where generations of Duboises had taken the time to record every birth, marriage, and death in the family for the past hundred and twenty years. Grannie Gin had been as careful as her mother-in-law and the woman before her.
Olivia traced her finger down the page, saw where her mother had been born and the mention of three other children Grannie had birthed only to bury as none of the others had lived over a week.
Bernadette had been the exception—strong where all of Grannie’s other children had been born weak.
Beneath her mother’s name were the listing of her marriages and the children Bernadette had brought into the world.
Olivia stopped short.
Her index finger was poised over the page. There she was, listed by her birth date. Chandra’s short life had been recorded as well. But the entry above her name was the one that stopped her cold.
Baby boy. No name. Listed as Bernadette’s son, the father being Reggie Benchet. If it was correct, this nameless brother was barely a year older than Olivia.
A brother? She’d had a brother? What had happened to him?
Her head pounded. She searched the notes, thinking she missed something important, but there wasn’t a record of the child’s death. It couldn’t be. She’d never heard his name; he was never mentioned.
As if he had never existed.
Was it a mistake, a nameless baby written in the wrong spot? But no … the listing was in her grandmother’s hand. Grannie wouldn’t have made that kind of error.
So if he hadn’t died, where was he?
She felt that chill run through her blood again, and when she glanced into the mirror, she saw the hint of something beneath her own reflection, a shifting shape with no real form.
She dropped the Bible. Backed up. Nearly tripped over her own feet.
Her heart was a terrified tattoo, her hands sweating.
Deep in the reflection she caught a glimpse of something rare. Something deadly. Something evil.
She backed up and told herself that she was letting her imagination run wild, that she was allowing the dog’s weird behavior to put her on edge. But the hairs on the back of her arms had lifted and her heart was jack-hammering. Get a grip, Olivia! You saw nothing, NOTHING. You ‘re letting your imagination run away with you.
Taking several deep breaths, she hurried to the phone, found her address book in the top drawer, and ran her finger down a page where numbers had been erased and crossed out. Finally, she located Bernadette’s number.
She dialed quickly, tried to fight the rising tide of panic that was overtaking her. Bentz had said there had to be a connection between her and the killer. Something in her genes … could it be? Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
The phone rang. Once, twice, three times.
“Answer, damn it!”
After the fourth ring, voice mail picked up and she was instructed to leave a message.
What could she say? “Bernadette … this is Olivia. Would you please call me when you—”
“Livvie?” her mother’s voice cut in and Olivia’s knees threatened to give way. She braced herself against the counter. “What a surprise.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“As long as it’s not a lecture about my husband. I was considering leaving him, but Jeb and I we’re trying to work things out.”
“Are you era—” Olivia bit her tongue and slowly counted to ten. “You know how I feel about that,” she said, “but it’s not why I called.”
There was a long, strained pause and Olivia wondered how she could ask the next question, how she could accuse her mother of harboring a lie for over thirty years.
“I was going through the Bible,” she said, “you know the one. It belonged to Grannie.”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the weirdest thing. I never knew there was a page dedicated to all the births and marriages and deaths in the family.” Was it her imagination or had she heard Bernadette’s swift intake of breath?
“Is there?”
There was just no way to sugar-coat her question. “I noticed that Chandra and I were listed as your children, but we weren’t the only ones. There was a mention of another child. A boy. Not named and born about a year before I was. My older brother.”
No response.
“Mom?”
A pause and then a long sigh. “Livvie, this is none of your business.”
“I had a brother and no one told me and it’s none of my business?” she repeated, aghast. “Of course it’s my business.”
“What does it matter now?”
“Bernadette … he’s my brother. Is he still alive?”
Nothing.
“Is he?” Olivia demanded again, blood thundering in her head, her fingers clenched over the receiver so tightly they ached.
“I … I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“For the love of God, Bernadette! Where is he? What the hell happened? Who is he?”
“I said I don’t know,” Bernadette snapped, then lowered her voice. “I was young, barely out of high school. Not married … back then it was not so accepted to have a child out of wedlock. Not like today. I had to tell my mother and she … she arranged a private adoption. I don’t know his name, what happened to him. Nothing.”
“But—” Olivia leaned against the wall. Her head was spinning with the lie. How many more were there?
“As far as I’m concerned, that baby never existed,” Bernadette insisted but her voice shook with emotion. “I don’t expect you to understand, Livvie, but I damn well expect you not to judge.”
Olivia gasped. “I didn’t mean … I just want to know the truth.”
“The truth’s very simple and pretty common. I got pregnant while I was still in high school and your father was … Well, he’d shipped out and I wasn’t married, so I gave my baby up and I really haven’t looked back. I didn’t want to. I suppose these days you would call it denial, but there it is.”
And it explained so much.
“The only people who knew were your grandmother and me. It was a private adoption. I don’t even know the attorney who handled it or the name of the family who adopted him. I didn’t want to know then and I don’t want to know now. I didn’t tell your father.”
“He’s not my father.”
“Now who’s in denial?” Bernadette threw out. “Leave it be, Olivia. So you have a brother somewhere, what do you care?”
“Aren’t you even curious about your son?”
“No, Livvie, I’m not. Now leave it alone.”
Olivia couldn’t. One way or another, she thought, hanging up, she’d find out who the hell her brother was. Even if he turned out to be a vicious killer.
Seated at his desk in the station, Bentz glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. He had just enough time to get to Baton Rouge and pick up Kristi. Aside from the suggestion that “Saint Bernadette” had adopted out a son sired by Reggie Benchet, Bentz had learned nothing from Oscar Cantrell. Whatever love the man had once felt for his ex-wife had been killed when Bernadette had started “fucking around” on him. “She was a real slut. Couldn’t keep a zipper up to save her life. ‘Course that’s what had attracted me to her in the first place, but I expect a wife to save it for her husband. Sheeiiit, she’s a piece of work, Bernadette is,” Cantrell had concluded.
Bentz figured there was more to the story, but so far hadn’t sorted it out. And now he was late. He threw on his jacket, slid his Glock into its holster, and wended his way through the desks scattered throughout the department.
“Bentz!” Penny, one of the receptionists yelled. “I’ve got Montoya on the line. He says its important.”
“Tell him to call me on the cell.” Bentz was already halfway down the stairs. By the time he’d reached his Jeep, his cell was ringing like crazy. “Bentz,” he said into the headset as he strapped on his seat belt.
“We found her.” Montoya’s voice was cold as death.
“Who?”
“St. Catherine of Alexandria.”
“What?” Hand over the steering wheel, Bentz froze. “What do you mean? Where?”
“That’s just the half of it,” Montoya said solemnly. “She isn’t alone.”