Hours later, Montoya was at his desk, having reunited his brother with his bike. Cruz had brought up Lucia Costa again before starting the Harley, but Montoya hadn’t said much more, not wanting to compromise the investigation. It was dicey enough that he was investigating Camille Renard’s homicide. If the department wasn’t stretched thin, he was certain there would be talk of reassigning him.

For now, though, he was on the case.

But what were the odds, he wondered, that two of the women he and Cruz had dated in high school had ended up at St. Marguerite’s as nuns?

Long.

Very long.

Fewer and fewer young people entered the convents, seminaries, and monasteries around the country, and yet both Lucia and Camille had joined an order of nuns that was, even by convent standards, antiquated.

All afternoon outside the doorway to his office, phones jangled, keyboards clicked, and the hum of conversation was interspersed with an occasional burst of laughter. Although the air conditioner rumbled quietly, the temperature was well into the seventies, with heat from bodies, lights, and electronics at war with the cooling system.

At one point, Lynn Zaroster, one of the smarter junior detectives, had flown by his open door, footsteps full of spring, her mop of black curls bobbing with each stride. One hand held a cell phone to her ear; in the other, a bottle of Diet Coke sloshed with each step.

“I know, I know. Look, I don’t care what that lowlife son of a bitch claims,” she’d said into the phone. “I’m telling you his ass was Mirandized. That jackass was read his rights—by me—and he said he understood them. Talk to Deputy Mott. He heard it all.” She’d hurried down the hallway, her heels clicking until she was out of earshot.

But now things had quieted, only a few day-crew detectives still logging in hours.

Montoya pulled his concentration back to his own case. He tapped his pencil on the desktop beneath the glow of his computer screen, where photographs of the Camille Renard murder scene had been posted. Scrawled on a legal pad were his notes—questions that needed answers:

Who killed her? Who had motive and opportunity?

Who was the last person to see her prior to her death?

Why was she wearing a damned bridal dress?

What was the significance of the drops of blood around the neckline of the dress?

Why did he feel that he was being stonewalled by the mother superior and everyone else at St. Marguerite’s?

He had some vague theories, half-baked ideas, but nothing concrete other than the notion that Father Frank was the number-one suspect.

Frank O’Toole.