Barely thirty and blessed with the body of a dancer, Santiago was a striking woman, the kind that made men watch as she walked past. Her eyes were sharp, her brown hair streaked a vibrant shade of red, her stride confident. Montoya suspected she was a wild woman after hours, but when she was working, she was all business.

“Got anything?” Montoya asked as Bentz, a couple of steps behind Santiago, wedged himself into the doorway.

“Only the basics. I already had the photos of the scene and victim e-mailed to both of you, but I thought you might want some stills, so I’ve printed them out.” She opened the manila envelope she was carrying. “Once I get more test results, I’ll send them, too. Preliminarily, it looks like there was only one crime scene, no blood or evidence of a struggle anywhere else within the convent that we found so far, and we know she went to her room around eleven.”

“Nothing was found in the room?” Montoya asked.

Bentz shook his head. “Nothing that shouldn’t be there, at least not that I could see. There wasn’t much there, since she had only a few possessions. A few street clothes folded in a small bureau, personal items, and her shoes placed side by side on the floor of a postage-stamped-sized closet where her habits were hung. All very precise.”

“Her pajamas?”

“Nightgown. Folded on a shelf in the closet.”

Santiago added, “I had Marsolet get some photos of her room, too.” She spread some of the snapshots out on his desk. The pictures were clear and sharp, an austere room contrasting to Camille’s elaborately adorned corpse.

Montoya stared at the bloodstains on the neckline of the wedding dress—perfect, round droplets. “He wants us to concentrate on the blood,” he said, pointing to the neckline. “It’s there for a purpose.”

“A message?” Bentz wasn’t completely convinced.

“Yeah, or a distraction.” Montoya eyed the unique pattern. Was the killer taunting them with a hidden message, teasing them with a clue, or trying to muddy the waters and make them look in the opposite direction? Montoya heard another set of footsteps before Brinkman, still reeking from his last cigarette and carrying a paper cup of coffee, poked his head into the office.

“That’s some case you caught last night.” Brinkman had been with the department for years. His houndstooth jacket was a size too small, his balding, freckled pate rimmed by hair a tad too long, but he was a smart cop. Determined. Decorated. As he himself had said often enough, he knew his shit. “You guys know your vic was knocked up, right?” His eyebrows jiggled up and down suggestively.

“We heard,” Bentz said.