“Don’t tell me, an old classmate of yours?” Bentz said as Montoya crouched beside the body and stared down at the cold form of Sister Asteria. In death, her skin had taken on a bluish tint, and her fixed gaze was as lifeless as all the tombs surrounding them in the graveyard.

“Funny,” Montoya snorted.

“Well?” So Bentz was half serious.

“No, Bentz,” he said as he straightened, relieved. “The first time I met her was during the interviews.” God, had that been only a couple of nights ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

“Good.”

More than good. Knowing so many people involved in a homicide was beyond surreal; it caused him to think that he might be the common denominator. But now, with Asteria McClellan’s death, that had changed.

“This is a damned nightmare,” Bentz said under his breath as they walked away from the spot where the ME was quickly examining Asteria’s body before stuffing it into a body bag and hauling it away.

Giving the crime scene a wide berth, Lynn Zaroster approached. She flashed Montoya a humorless smile. They’d been partnered up recently, while Bentz had been on leave recuperating from the injury that had nearly cost him his job as well as his life. Once Bentz was reinstated, Zaroster had been partnered with Brinkman, whom she detested. Zaroster was the one person in the department who wanted Bentz to retire so she could partner up with Montoya again.

Now she said, “The press is wanting answers. Pronto. They’re talking serial.”

“Already? Jesus.” Bentz shook his head.

“A little premature to label the killer as a serial,” Bentz said, but Montoya didn’t agree. Just because the texts suggested at least three vics with a cooling-off period between the murders didn’t make it so. Who really knew the mind of a true psychopath? They couldn’t be pigeonholed. Two nuns killed in the same method screamed serial to him, either the start of a rampage or, maybe, the killer had struck before.

“Brenda Convoy is pretty persistent,” Zaroster said, surveying the scene and frowning, her face illuminated by a few flashes from cameras and the pale, watery light from a shrouded moon. Montoya frowned. He’d never liked the pushy reporter with WKAM, but then he wasn’t too close to anyone in the press.

“I told her to wait for a statement from the PIO,” Zaroster said, “and she looked like she wanted to spit little green apples.”

“That’s shit little green apples,” Brinkman said, correcting her.

Zaroster’s jaw clenched.

Brinkman didn’t notice. “And that’s just too damned bad. Even Convoy knows she can’t get anything without talking to Sinclaire.” Tina Sinclaire was the latest in a string of public information officers with the department.

“What’ve ya got?” Montoya asked.

“So far nothing.” Even Brinkman looked perturbed, some of his smirk having disappeared. “This is a bad one,” he admitted.