"Because there was over a year where they didn"t see each other at all."
Bentz wasn"t sure how much to buy, but the woman had enough facts to make her story believable. He just couldn"t separate fact from fiction. She seemed truly rueful, her face tortured, the cross dangling from her neck testament to her faith. And yet...
"So, who was the father?"
"I don"t know."
"Renner?"
"What?" She"d been staring at her ring finger, but her gaze swept up quickly, offense evident on her face. "The doctor? No."
"What about Dr. Simon h.e.l.ler?"
"Oh, no...I mean, I don"t know. There was talk that he, um, was caught with a patient, but nothing ever bore out. But I really don"t know whom it could have been. All I know is that the baby was stillborn. A boy. Faith named him Adam."
"Dead?" Bentz said, surprised.
"Yes."
"You saw him? This male child?"
She nodded gravely. "He wasn"t breathing, and...and Faith was beside herself. The doctor sedated her, and then they shuffled me out of the room."
Bentz eyed the woman, watching as she avoided his eyes. Telling the truth? Maybe...just not all of it. And if what she was saying was true, then Eve Renner was not Faith Chastain"s missing child. The acid in his stomach started to roil. He"d chosen to meet with her instead of joining Montoya at Eve Renner"s house because he"d thought maybe they were going to catch a break with Ellen Chaney. Now he wasn"t so sure.
"What happened to the baby?"
"I told you. He died."
"I mean the body."
"Buried in the cemetery. A grave with a blank headstone, as if he hadn"t even existed. The only reason they marked it at all was for Faith, so she would have a place to go to visit. We were all sworn to secrecy."
"You and the doctor?" he surmised.
"As well as Faith, Sister Rebecca, and Father Paul."
"Sister Rebecca Renault?" he asked, noting the connection. "The Reverend Mother at Our Lady of Virtues?"
Ellen nodded and bit her lower lip. "I read about what happened to her. I wonder if she might still be alive if only I"d come forward earlier."
"What about this Father Paul? Is he still alive?"
"I don"t know."
"How old is he?"
"Um, he was in his late fifties, I"d guess, at that time."
"What was his last name?"
"Oh...Gosh...I...can"t remember.... A simple name, I think. There were a lot of priests who pa.s.sed through, you know, and stayed for a few months or a year before they were a.s.signed somewhere else, but Father Paul, he was there a long while." She ma.s.saged her temple, trying to think, like someone rubbing a lamp and hoping for a genie to appear. "It was a common name, I think. Like Smith or Johnson or Brown....I really can"t remember." She paused, lost in thought.
Bentz was trying to add her information into the total puzzle. Face grim, he didn"t immediately ask another question, and after a silent stretch, Ellen reached for her purse.
"Well, I hope that helps you. I don"t think there"s anything else I can tell you," she said.
"Just a minute, Mrs. Chaney." He looked through the pages of notes he"d taken over the course of the past few days. He"d seen the name Paul somewhere. Running a finger down one page, he located one of the names he"d found in Faith Chastain"s file. "How about Father Paul Swanson?"
She hesitated, her hand in midair over her purse. "That"s it, I think."
He made a mental note to find the priest with all the secrets. "Can you think back to the people who were employed by the hospital at the time of the birth of Faith"s child? Anyone who was a patient? It could help."
"It"s been nearly thirty years."
"I know," he said, offering a tight smile. He felt the clock ticking. He was running extremely late. Montoya was going to be really p.i.s.sed. "Here"s a partial list. Maybe these names will help jog your memory." He slid three pages across the desk. On it were the names of the patients whose files Eve claimed to have seen in the attic cabinet. Bentz had added a few more himself, names taken from the notes in Faith Chastain"s folder, including Dr. Terrence Renner and Simon h.e.l.ler, as well as others he hadn"t recognized, such as Father Paul Swanson.
Ellen Chaney dutifully picked up the papers and skimmed the first page. "Oh. Enid Walcott. She was a sweet little woman, such a sad case, too nervous to sit and eat or do anything, and she was allergic to so many of the meds. Oh, and Neva. She was so lost, in her own world. A severely autistic child." She flipped over to the second page and stopped short, her expression turning to shock. "Oh no...Dear Lord..." She looked up sharply and dropped the paper onto his desk.
"What?"
She shivered and ran her hand through her hair. "I probably shouldn"t say anything, but this person..." She pointed a long finger at the name of Ronnie Le Mars. "I"ve never in all my life met anyone I thought was born evil. I mean, I believe in Christ our Savior and redemption through prayer and that everyone can be saved, but...but that one, Ronnie, he"d sooner take a knife to your throat than look you in the eye."
"Whose blood was that?" Eve whispered once they were driving away from the house. "All over the bed. Whose blood was it?"
"I don"t know." Cole squinted into the night. They"d loaded up his Jeep with the cat, some sleeping bags and pillows, and their personal belongings and left the police still finishing up. Though there was no body, no obvious homicide, the fact that there was so much blood in her room, and the sick message incriminating Cole, had left the police certain that this newest incident was linked to the crime scene at Our Lady of Virtues. They were treating her house as part of the overall homicide investigation.
"He wouldn"t have collected blood from Sister Vivian and then poured it over the doll and the bed, would he?" she asked, the idea so repulsive she could scarcely voice it.
"I don"t know what he"d be capable of."
She glanced out the window, tried to gain strength in the lights of the city.
From the backseat, trapped in his carrier, Samson started howling.
"Wherever you"re taking us, you"d better get there fast, before Samson drives us both crazy."
"It"s not far," he said, and to Eve"s surprise he didn"t drive her to the little camelback bungalow where he"d picked up his clothes hours earlier. However, the apartment he ushered her into wasn"t an improvement. If possible, he"d found a worse place, a one-room fleabag of a studio apartment, with no furniture, that seemed to trap all the heat of the day within its thin walls.
"What is this?" she asked as he threw the sleeping bags on the floor.
"I think of it as a safe house."
"Hmmm..." She looked around the room. "All it needs is a ten-gallon bucket of Lysol, some paint, new carpeting, appliances, and, oh yeah, furniture. Maybe a few throw pillows and pictures. Then it would be cozy."
He lifted a dark eyebrow. "Would you rather be back at your house?"
An image of the bloodied doll and bed flashed through her mind. "You have a point. This is just as good as a five-star hotel." She set the cat carrier on the floor and opened the gate. Samson immediately streaked out and began exploring the room. "I guess we"re lucky. We brought our own furry, four-legged pest control with us."
Cole walked to the window, left it shuttered but flipped a switch on the air-conditioning unit. It rattled to life; she hoped it would bring down the temperature and create some air movement. "The good news about this place is that no one knows about it."
"Except the landlord."
"Petrusky won"t say anything," Cole told her. "He"s got too much to lose."
"Ahhh. A client."
He shot her another look then organized the sleeping bags and pillows on the floor. She didn"t want to think about what kind of creatures might have crawled across the stained carpet, nor who might have lived here before Cole took up residence.
"Now, Ms. Renner, if you can find a way to keep your hands off me, we could work."
"Meaning?"
"We need to find out who"s behind all this, and I"ve decided to treat it like a case. Whenever I had to defend someone against the police department, I made it my business to know as much as they did."
"Oh yeah?"
He smiled. "There"s always someone willing to talk. For a price."
"That"s the most jaded piece of cynicism I"ve heard yet. Even from you."
He let the jab slide. "But it"s true."
"Wait. Are you telling me you have a leak in the department?" she asked, astounded.
"Not just a leak, lady," he a.s.sured her, reaching into a cupboard and coming up with two legal pads and a box of pens. "A G.o.dd.a.m.ned reservoir."
She was skeptical as she settled onto the makeshift bed and opened the box of Sharpies. "Why haven"t you used this untapped reservoir before?"
He sat down beside her and took up a pen. "I have, but I had to be careful. I was a suspect. I was followed, dogged, tailed, whatever you want to call it. Maybe I was paranoid, but I was certain my phones were tapped, and I didn"t even trust my cell phone. I couldn"t risk getting any of my sources into major trouble, so I"ve laid low."
"And now?"
"Montoya and Bentz would love to nail my a.s.s, but neither one of them is a moron, and now it"s blatantly evident I"m not behind any of the murders. Including Roy"s."
She was about to ask who this source was, but mention of Roy"s name brought her up short. She felt a click inside her head, truly felt it, as if something had just unlocked in her brain.
Memories of that night suddenly flooded her mind. She recalled making love to Cole, the fight, her race down the stairs as he, behind her, was pulling on his clothes. He"d tried to stop her, but she wouldn"t hear of it, and when she"d arrived at the cabin she found Roy already dead, blood everywhere, the horrid number written in blood on the wall and, in the gla.s.s, pointing a gun at her...no...not at her...but close, as if he were aiming above her shoulder...
She blinked, and the image became sharper. Clearer. More defined.
"Cole," she whispered now, aloud.
Her heart raced as pieces of her memory forged and melded only to shatter again. But she had a glimpse, a very real glimpse, of what had happened that night.
"What?" he asked, but she was lost to the memory.
It was Cole"s face showing in the darkness, the barrel of his gun steady. "Don"t!" she"d yelled. But the weapon fired, a white flash as gla.s.s shattered and searing pain had exploded in her shoulder and head.
"Eve!" he"d screamed. The world had spun crazily. She"d fallen, her eyes fixed on him, her mind screaming, NO, NO, NO! He was so close and yet so far away.... And the knife...There"d been a wicked knife. Blood dripping onto the floor. Cole had been carrying a knife.... No! The knife wasn"t in Cole"s hand.... Someone else"s. Whose? Whose?
The blackness had come at her from the outside in, eating at her consciousness. Within seconds she"d pa.s.sed out.
Now she stared at Cole with new eyes. Shaking, her guts clenching painfully, she saw that he knew. His blue eyes registered pain and regret. He knew. And he"d known all along. For the past three months, and yet he"d kept his secrets. Lied to protect himself.
"You were were there," she whispered in a low, rasping voice. "You lying son of a b.i.t.c.h, you were there!" there," she whispered in a low, rasping voice. "You lying son of a b.i.t.c.h, you were there!"
He didn"t argue. Didn"t have to.
"But we weren"t alone. There was someone else in the room. Roy"s killer." She swallowed hard, the events of the night coming into focus, sharpening, the fog dissipating. "You were trying to shoot him," she realized. "But you hit me. And then lied lied about it. Why, Cole? What is it you know? What are you hiding?" about it. Why, Cole? What is it you know? What are you hiding?"
CHAPTER 28.
Cole gazed at the woman he loved. It was time to give up the fight.
"I was there," he admitted for the first time to anyone. He hated the look of horrified betrayal on Eve"s face, but he pressed on. "There was just something wrong about everything that happened that night. I knew where you were going, and, because I"d lived in the area, I figured I could beat you and find out what Kajak wanted, what this "evidence" was. But Roy was already dead by the time I got there."
"You were there...ahead of me."
"I panicked. Okay, I admit it. I didn"t have my cell, couldn"t call the police, and then I saw you walking inside and I smelled a trap. I figured someone had coerced Roy into calling for you to come and meet him.
"Before I could call out to you, I saw him at the window. I fired, and you"re right, I accidentally hit you. You saw everything I did in a mirror, not the window."
"And you left me there," she whispered.
"No, I stayed with you. That"s why I didn"t catch the guy. I called nine-one-one from your phone and stuck it out until they got there, but then, yeah, I took off. As the officer came in through the front door, I slipped out the back. It was a lone trooper, and by the time he called for backup, I was outside. I waited until the ambulance got there a couple of minutes later. Then I took off."
"I could have died. I-who is he is he?"
"I didn"t get a good look. He was gone in an instant. I couldn"t leave you." He tried to touch her, but she recoiled.
"You could have sent the police after the killer!"
"It wasn"t going to work that way. They would never believe me. I was right there. I was jealous of Roy"s relationship with you. Motive and opportunity."
"You should have stayed," she said, hysteria edging her voice. "Let justice run its course."
"And tell the police about the missing "real" killer? The one I didn"t get a good look at? Like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive? The Fugitive? Always looking for the d.a.m.ned one-armed man." He grabbed her arm, and when she tried to pull away, he held on tighter. "Okay, maybe I should have stayed. Fought the charges like a man. Ignored the fact that the New Orleans PD had been gunning for me for years. But I thought I could figure it out for myself." Always looking for the d.a.m.ned one-armed man." He grabbed her arm, and when she tried to pull away, he held on tighter. "Okay, maybe I should have stayed. Fought the charges like a man. Ignored the fact that the New Orleans PD had been gunning for me for years. But I thought I could figure it out for myself."