Lisa Jackson's Bentz And Montoya Bundle Part 185

Kristi didn't have much time, but on the bike she zipped across campus, cutting between pedestrians, joggers, and skateboarders to Wagner House. Today in the gloomy daylight the house appeared less sinister, the sharp peaked roof, beveled gla.s.s windows, gargoyle downspouts all just part of the architectural style of a bygone era.

Before leaving her apartment, Kristi had taken the time to pull up a list of students in the school, locating Marnie Gage on the roster. Marnie's picture had flashed onto the screen along with her short bio indicating that she had graduated from Grant High School in Portland, Oregon, and was an English major working on a minor in theater.

Again, the English Department, Kristi had thought. It didn't take a PhD to figure out that the girl probably was or had been in the same block of cla.s.ses as Kristi and the missing coeds were. Kristi was starting to believe the entire department was somehow involved in this underground vampire cult or whatever it was.

"That's ridiculous," she told herself.

But was it?

Her skin crawled, and she sensed again that someone was watching her. Someone hidden. Someone evil.

She felt a chill, a cold gust of wind brush against the back of her neck. As the clouds overhead threatened rain, she propped her bike against the wrought-iron fence and tried the gate. It was locked. Of course. No matter how hard she pushed on it, or fiddled with the clasp, it didn't budge, and the hours of operation posted on the gate indicated the museum wouldn't be open until two this afternoon. Supposedly the museum closed at five-thirty PM PM.

But it had opened last night.

Kristi had d.a.m.ned well been inside. Along with Marnie Gage and at least one other person, maybe more. Had they been in the bas.e.m.e.nt, down the locked staircase? Was it the meeting of the cult Lucretia had mentioned, then denied?

"Weird, weird, weird," she told herself. Staring through the wrought iron bars of the fence, she studied the old foundation but could only see the tops of bas.e.m.e.nt windows, dark and opaque. Probably used for storage. Not secret meetings where blood was let and vampires revered.

But the blond girl, Marnie Gage, had gone inside, and someone had been following her throughout the upstairs rooms. Could Marnie have doubled back and gotten behind her? But why? Was this place somehow connected to the missing girls, the d.a.m.ned cult that Lucretia now disavowed?

In that second she felt cold as death. Hadn't she seen Ariel hanging around here? Then Marnie? Both whose faces had turned the color of death. That left Lucretia. Kristi didn't know of any connection she had with the old house, but she was willing to bet her life that her ex-roommate was somehow involved with this old, dark edifice.

So how does Dad fit in?

Kristi curled her fingers around the bars of the fence. As far as she knew Rick Bentz had nothing to do with Wagner House or anything else concerning All Saints College. He'd solved a couple of crimes connected to the campus, and sure, his only daughter was enrolled here, again, but that was it. Her vision of his gray pallor didn't seem connected.

So, maybe her visions had nothing to do with premonitions of death, and everything to do with something wrong in her own mind, something that had just slipped out of gear after she'd been attacked.

So many questions.

And no answers.

"The museum is closed until later this afternoon."

She nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Two o'clock," Father Mathias said, glancing to the sky as the wind picked up. "Wagner House opens then."

"I know, but I have to get to work and I..." She thought fast. "Well, I think I lost my sungla.s.ses here. They're prescription."

"I'll check the lost and found." He unlocked the gate and as he did, the sleeve of his ca.s.sock fell away, exposing part of his arm and a bandage.

"What happened?" she asked automatically. He pulled back his keys and the sleeve covered his arm again.

"Nothing. An accident. From yard work," he said quickly. "Electric hedge clippers. Guess I'll wait for the gardener next time. Come back after two when the docent is here. If I find your gla.s.ses, or she does, you can pick them up then."

"But I need them for work. I'll come with you."

"Really, child," he said, "I can't allow it. Two o'clock isn't that far away. I'm just stopping by for a second myself." He slipped through the door and up the steps as the gate swung shut. On impulse she stopped it from latching with her foot and waited until Father Mathias disappeared within.

As soon as she heard the door of the mansion close behind him, she swept into the fenced yard and walked quickly around the perimeter of the house. What she expected to find, she didn't know, but she peered through the bas.e.m.e.nt windows just the same, spying nothing in the darkness, feeling like a fool.

At the back porch, she considered walking up the steps and trying the door when she heard a voice inside. A woman's voice. "I told you to take care of it," she said. "Don't make it my problem!"

The other voice was muted, farther away. Male.

Father Mathias Glanzer's?

Or someone else's?

Kristi strained to listen as the first drops of rain started to fall, but she couldn't hear what the man was saying, only the woman's sharp, quick response. "The whole thing backfired, I know, but you should be able to handle it. The sooner the better. Before the police get involved. Do you know what would happen then? Do Do you?" you?"

Again the male voice.

Arguing?

Explaining?

Coming up with excuses?

Kristi's heart was pounding, her nerves strung tight. She was about to risk it and climb up the steps when she felt it again-that eerie sensation that she was being watched. Slowly she dragged her gaze up the side of the building, past the kitchen and second floor to a window high above, shadowed by heavy eaves. Her blood ran cold as she saw a face...a girl's face...white as death, taut with fear.

Ariel O'Toole?

Or someone else. The image was too blurry.

Kristi blinked and she was gone, the window empty.

CHAPTER 20.

"Sunday morning, not even noon, and how did I know that you'd be here?" Del Vernon asked as, holding a manila envelope, he rested a hip against Portia Laurent's desk at the station.

"Are you insinuating I don't have a life?"

He lifted a shoulder. "Nah. Just that you're a workaholic."

"It takes one to know one." She leaned back in her chair and stared up at him. Lord, he was a handsome man. Eyes as dark as midnight, long straight nose, a shaved head that seemed flawless, and a mouthful of white straight teeth.

"Possibly."

"So what brings you in here? It is is Sunday morning." Sunday morning."

"Thought you might want to see this." He handed her the envelope. "I think you might just have your body."

"My body?"

"Well, part of one anyway."

She opened the flap and slid out an eight-by-ten photograph. "Sweet Jesus," she said as she stared at the picture of what appeared to be a slightly decomposed arm. Female arm. Left hand. Polished fingernails.

"Where did you find this?"

"In the stomach of an illegally caught alligator. We're lucky the hunter, a yahoo named Boomer Moss, had the smarts to turn it in. We're searching that part of the swamp where the gator was caught, but don't have a whole lot of expectations. The animal could have moved from one spot to the next, the body drifted down there.... From the looks of it, we're guessing the arm was in the water less than a week, but the ME isn't certain, at least not yet."

Portia was rapidly getting up to speed. She'd come into the department on a Sunday to catch up on paperwork, which she instantly shelved. "So you think it's one of the girls from All Saints? That our perp captures them, keeps them alive, then finally kills them and gets rid of the bodies," she said, feeling vindicated, excited, and sick inside all at once. She, too, had held out hope that the girls had run off, left town, hoping to disappear, but as she stared at the picture of the severed arm, she knew better. She could only pray that if the scenario she'd just outlined was the truth, some of the missing coeds were still alive.

Tortured, maybe.

Traumatized, certainly.

But alive.

Del frowned, his jaw set and hard. "We don't have many answers yet. There's a chance this doesn't belong to any of the girls from All Saints."

She snorted. Her gut told her this belonged to Tara, Monique, or Rylee. The only missing coed excluded was Dionne, because of her race. The arm in the photo belonged to a white girl. A girl who liked plum-colored fingernail polish.

"If he doesn't keep them alive, then why wouldn't the arm show more signs of decomposure?"

"Don't know, but it doesn't look like he cut the limbs. It's ripped and bitten, consistent with the alligator's jaw."

Her stomach clenched. None of the scenes running through her mind were good.

"The ME thinks the gator did it. But there wasn't any more of the body in his digestive system. We checked."

"So what finally convinced you that this arm belongs to one of the girls from All Saints?"

"Missing persons says no other white girl has been reported missing recently, at least not up here; New Orleans has a few. I've already checked with the local hospitals and no one's shown up missing an arm, from an accident with a hungry gator or otherwise. But here's something odd: the first thing the ME noticed was that there was no blood in the arm."

"Maybe it drained out when it was severed."

"Uh-uh. ME says the severing occurred post mortem."

"Drained in the gator's stomach? Degraded by the time in the water or with stomach acid?"

"The ME's double-checking," Del said, but he sounded doubtful.

"What about distinguis.h.i.+ng marks?" Portia said. "Monique had a broken finger, left index, an old softball injury. If the fingers are intact that should show, and Tara, I think, had an arm tattoo." Portia scooted her chair closer to the computer monitor and her fingers flew over the keyboard as she pulled up her files on the missing girls. A second later, she was reading the information she'd gathered on Tara At.w.a.ter. "Yeah, here it is, a broken heart, but d.a.m.n, the tattoo is on her right arm."

"What about the others?"

"I'm looking." Portia had already started searching all of the notes and doc.u.ments she'd collected. "You'd think there would be something," she said, anxious for a clue, any clue as to the girl's ident.i.ty. "I a.s.sume you've fingerprinted it." She hitched her chin toward the picture of the severed arm.

"Tried. But even if we get a decent print, there's a chance the girls weren't fingerprinted."

"A few of them had records, were busted for drugs.... Yeah, here we go...Dionne and Monique both were hauled in and charged after they were juveniles. Dionne has a love tattoo on her back with a hummingbird and flowers. Surely one of the girls had a distinguis.h.i.+ng mark on the left hand...." But there was nothing obvious in her data.

"I thought I told you to leave this case alone," Del Vernon said as she closed one of her files.

"It's a good thing for both of us I ignored you."

He actually flashed a smile. Del Vernon of the ever-grim, studious countenance and tight b.u.t.t, rained a quick but s.e.xy grin on her for a second. "It's never a good idea to ignore me. This time, you were right and I was wrong. You might want to mark this date with red letters because I seriously doubt it'll ever happen again."

Uh-huh, Portia thought, as she watched him saunter away.

Ariel? Was it really Ariel's face she'd seen, looking so scared. And what was she doing inside Wagner House?

Putting her own misgivings aside, Kristi hurried up the steps at the back of Wagner House and tried the door. It clicked open under her hand. It wasn't locked. Amazed, she stepped inside the darkened kitchen and her heart began to pound. She saw the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt and knew this was her chance. No one knew she was inside.

Yet.

Tiptoeing quietly to the bas.e.m.e.nt door, she reached for the k.n.o.b.

Too late. The door swung open in front of her. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back as Father Mathias stepped into the kitchen.

"Oh!" he whispered, startled. Then, focusing on Kristi, he scowled harshly. "You again. Didn't I just tell you the museum wasn't open?"

"Yes, but my gla.s.ses-"

"I've already looked in the lost and found. They weren't there." Obviously irritated, he closed the door tightly shut behind him. "Now, really, you have to leave."

"Father?" A female voice. The same voice she'd heard through the window. "What's going on?" Wrapped in a black coat trimmed in dark fur, a tall regal-looking woman strode swiftly into the kitchen. Deep-set eyes glared down an aquiline nose. "Who are you?" she asked, then before Kristi could answer, followed up with, "And what are you doing here?"

"She claims she lost her gla.s.ses on the last tour."

One of the woman's eyebrows lifted in superior disbelief. "When?"

Kristi had the lie ready. "Last weekend. I came by with friends."

"Really?" Her smirk revealed her skepticism. "Well, the staff will certainly look for them. Come back when the docent is on duty."

"I really need them for work." Kristi stood her ground. "Today."

"Yes, yes, so you said, but I told you the house is closed," Father Mathias insisted.