Crime-scene techs were busy snapping pictures, dusting for prints, searching every inch of the one-room apartment for trace evidence. None of the others seemed to have the same physical reaction to death that had been with Bentz since he was a kid.

The head tech, Rosarita Gervais, was wearing gloves, her dark hair scraped away from her face. She was leaning over the table where, as Montoya had mentioned, the hundred-dollar bill with Franklin’s blackened eyes had been left. “Don’t be messin’ with my scene, Bentz,” she warned. “You know the drill. Washington will have my ass if you disturb anything.”

She was half-kidding. It was their routine. Broke the tension. But she wasn’t joking about Bonita Washington, the head of the Crime Scene Unit. A brassy African American woman whose IQ was rumored to be at genius level, Washington was tough as nails.

“Got it.” He gave Rosarita a nod but continued to stare at the odd C-note. He had always found the desecrated bills disturbing. Then again, what wasn’t disturbing about a serial killer who dressed as a man of God and killed his victims with a rosary?

“You really got yourself a sick one here,” she observed, then snorted. “Hell, they’re all twisted bastards.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he agreed. He spied O’Keefe, the cop who’d responded to the call, and turned his attention to the burly man rumored to be able to bench press 300 pounds. “Who’ve we got here?”

“Teri Marie Gaines.” A tough cop and a family man, O’Keefe only used his six foot four, 250-pound frame to his advantage if seriously provoked. “At least that’s who she was during the day. It’s the name on her driver’s license. She worked as a waitress at Sylvia Black’s down in the Jax Brewery,” he added, mentioning the huge old brewery that had been transformed into a shopping mall. “But at night,” O’Keefe continued, “she was Tiffany Elite.”

“The super tell you this?” Bentz asked, his stomach roiling as he viewed the victim more closely. With smooth mocha-colored skin, Teri Marie Gaines had dark, tightly curled hair with a few golden streaks. Spread-eagle upon the bed, she was half-dressed in a tiny skirt, a bra that barely held her breasts, and a sheer blouse that was open, draped over one shoulder. Around her neck, dark ligature marks were a combination of bruising and tiny abrasions; little cuts in a distinctive pattern that Bentz suspected came from a rosary made of sharpened beads linked with piano wire or something just as strong.

Father John.

No doubt about it.

His stomach did another roll.

“Yeah,” O’Keefe said, nodding. “The super, he knew what she was doing at night, and it was confirmed by the neighbor in 2-E.” O’Keefe checked his notes. “Frances Kowalski.”

“A customer?”