“Hey, do you mind?” Bonita Washington, the head crime scene investigator, demanded. “We got a scene to work.” She was big and black and didn’t take lip from anyone. Her hair was scraped away from a face shiny with perspiration, and she was carrying a clipboard in one hand and a small toolbox in the other.

“Sooorry,” Brinkman said with a condescending sneer, his attitude clearly back in place. “We were just trying to do our job.”

“So do it already,” Washington said, her green eyes snapping, “and let me do mine.” She turned away to confer with Santiago as the photographer snapped pictures, flashes pulsing eerily, lights splaying for milliseconds on the crypts and statues of the graveyard.

Brinkman pulled a face. “Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“I heard that, Brinkman, and yeah, I don’t like being jerked out of the house in the middle of the night.” Washington eased her way closer to the statue under which Asteria had been found.

“Yeah, well, you’re not the Lone Ranger, here,” Brinkman muttered. When he elicited no response, he gave up trying to needle her and turned his attention back to the case.

“So what’s the deal? Again the same nun finds the body?” Brinkman asked Montoya as he nervously searched his pockets for a crumpled pack of Marlboros. Deftly, he shook out a cigarette and jabbed the filter tip between his lips as they walked through the cemetery with its sun-bleached tombs rising from the ground. Here in New Orleans, the dead were buried aboveground, as most of the city was at sea level or lower. No one wanted dead grandma coming back to visit in case of a flood that could wash away the ground and cause previously subterranean caskets to float away from their final resting places. “What’s up with that, the same person finding the corpse before it’s even gotten cold?” The unlit cigarette bobbed as he spoke.

“Don’t know yet,” Montoya said. “I’ll find out. I’m questioning Sister Lucia first.”

“Seems like she knows more than she’s saying.”

They reached the gate to the cemetery and walked through. Brinkman snapped his lighter open and paused to light up, the scent of burning tobacco tantalizing, the red tip of his cigarette burning like a tiny beacon in the night.

“What about the priest?” Brinkman asked.

“I’ve got him. As soon as his lawyer shows up,” Bentz said.

Brinkman let out a plume of smoke. “You been to the vic’s room?”

“Not yet. Zaroster’s got it.”

“I’ll go with her,” Brinkman said. “That way the mother superior won’t give herself a coronary to think a man’s alone in the bedrooms of the sacred virgins.” He turned away, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake.

“Insufferable,” Bentz said as they headed inside.