“Nah. She’s been dead for a while. The neighbor, an old lady who lives down the hall, found her first and freaked out, fell down and started screaming, and the super, whom I’m making as her pimp, heard the screams, found the old lady and the vic, then made the call. When the officer who took the call arrived, he found our girl Gracie dead as a doornail. Now the ME’s on his way; another couple of uniforms are there already.”

And probably the press, Bentz thought.

“I’m in,” Montoya said, and Bentz was already reaching for his jacket and holster. It looked like the long day wasn’t going to end soon.

“Good.” Brinkman’s eyes narrowed and his lips thinned into that cat-who-ate-the-canary smile Bentz hated. “Cause here’s the kicker. The old lady? Turns out she’s a bit of a snoop, and guess who she saw leaving our dead girl’s apartment last night?”

“Who?” Montoya asked.

“A priest.”

“What?” Bentz froze.

“That’s right.” Brinkman was eating up Bentz’s surprise. “The old lady was definitely not minding her own business and was looking through her peephole, and she saw a guy she described as a young priest leaving the vic’s apartment around midnight.”

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 39

As the radio plays softly, I file the edges of the glass beads, carefully honing them to perfection, making certain each edge is as sharp as a razor, each facet able to slice through flesh cleanly.

At the thought of the tiny, glittering beads doing their deadly work, I smile. The rosary in my hands, strung together with heavy wire, seems to wink at me.

The swamp is still tonight, water lapping quietly, the smell thick with the odors of rotting vegetation and fish. Crickets are singing their nightly chorus, and a bullfrog supplies the bass notes.

The music, a tune from the eighties, stops and Dr. Sam’s voice fills the airways with her sick psychobabble as callers dial her up and ask inane questions about their relationships, or their children, or their dying parents.

Fools! Don’t they know she’s a fake? Can’t they tell all her pseudo-psychiatric advice is nothing but poison?

My blood boils within my veins, and I remember how close I once got to destroying her . . . and then I look up at the gator head mounted over my cot. It stares down at me, big eyes gleaming red as a demon’s, his wicked teeth exposed, reminding me of the dozens of stitches in my leg, the work of an incompetent veterinarian, and the pain I still feel. I’ve named him Ipana, a nod to my grandmother’s favorite brand of toothpaste.

“Nice try,” I say to the stuffed reptile, and hear Dr. Sam’s voice, smooth as silk, tell some poor girl to get out of an emotionally abusive relationship, to ditch her boyfriend of two years, the father of her infant son.