Bentz sent his partner a we’ve-all-been-there-before look and rubbed the back of his neck as he walked up the steps of the station. Montoya took two more long drags, then crushed his cigarette into the canister of sand near the entrance.

It was late, just in time for shift change.

Cops in uniforms and plainclothes coming and going, voices buzzing, heels clicking, laughter ripping through the hallways as Bentz shouldered open the door.

Bentz made eye contact with a few people he knew, even threw out a rare smile when he spied Vera, from Missing Persons, hurrying in the opposite direction.

He was still thinking about his day. He and Montoya had spent a lot of hours being stonewalled by the priests at St. Marguerite’s and not getting much further with the staff at St. Elsinore’s, which, really, was another jurisdiction, not that it mattered much. The crusty old reverend mother, Sister Georgia—though outwardly much more modern and, well, maybe not exactly “hip” but appearing more worldly than Sister Charity—wasn’t going to give them any more information than she had to. Mentioning that Sister Camille’s sexually graphic diary had been found at St. Elsinore’s had only made her more tight-lipped and stiff. Sure, she wore no habit, but in her slacks, blouse with its big bow of a collar, and more fashionable glasses, she was just as rigid as Sister Charity.

Great.

They’d gotten nowhere.

The priests had been no better. Father Paul had been nervous to the point of chewing on the corner of his lips and fingering the folds of his cassock. Father Frank wouldn’t speak without a lawyer, so that interview had been postponed, and Father Thomas of St. Elsinore’s had been conveniently indisposed. Again.

Bentz was beginning to think that Thomas Blaine was little more than a figment of Sister Georgia’s imagination, her “beard” for lack of a better word. She, at least to Bentz, appeared to be running the show at the deteriorating parish.

He walked into his office where the AC was struggling and tossed his jacket over his coat rack before sitting in his desk chair. What he’d learned today was that both Sister’s Camille and Asteria had been adopted out of St. Elsinore’s. As had Sister Charity and quite a few of the novices and nuns at the convent.

An important connection?

Maybe.

Then there was Camille’s room and the mattress. Nothing else had been found, just the single envelope slipped into the stuffing. A note never sent to her lover.

Frank O’Toole?

Or someone else?

He slid his holster and sidearm off his shoulder and hung them on the back of his chair. The fact that he’d worn his weapon at all through the hallowed hallways and offices of two churches and convents told him just how nuts this case had become.