Never Die Alone

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?”

“No, don’t think so.” He flashed a quick grin. “Mrs. Kowalski is a woman. In her late seventies or early eighties, I’d guess. A widow who apparently makes it her business to know what goes on in every unit in the building, night and day.”

Bentz knew the type.

“She, uh, she disapproved of Ms. Gaines’s nocturnal antics.”

“I bet.”

“Copycat?” Montoya asked.

Bentz thought of the security video from the prison. Father John had stared straight into the camera’s eye, not hiding his face or features, almost flaunting the fact that he was back.

Bentz shook his head. “Doubt it.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Bentz turned toward the medical examiner, a middle-aged man on his knees near the body. “Time of death?”

Wrinkles appeared over his prematurely balding pate as the examiner considered. “After midnight. One thirty to three, I’d say. Rigor’s still strong and body temp suggests that she’s been dead around eight, maybe nine hours. Give or take.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself. “That would be our window.”

“Defensive wounds?”

“Not really. We’ve got some bruising at her fingers and a couple of scrapes, two broken fingernails, probably from when she tried to pry the garrote from her neck.”

In his mind’s eye Bentz imagined her struggle: a small woman who had expected the john, then was surprised when the tall and strapping man had slipped the rosary around her neck and started pulling, cutting off her air as he twisted his glittery weapon more tightly. Hers would have been a fairly quick, if agonizing and terrifying death. All at the hands of a psycho who should, if Bentz’s aim had been true, already be dead. If Bentz’s bullet had only hit its mark all those years ago in the bayou, at least two dead women would still be alive today. A sense of guilt tried to sneak up at him, but he pushed it firmly away, kept it at bay. For now. “Thanks,” he said to the examiner.

“Hey! She have a kid?” Montoya stood on the opposite side of the bed from the ME, pointing to a silver picture frame positioned beneath a lamp with a beaded shade. A small boy smiled in the picture. Judging from his wide grin, which showed off gaps and permanent teeth just breaking the gum line, Bentz guessed the kid was around seven or eight.

Montoya frowned, his gaze sweeping the room. “No sign that he lived here. No toys or kids’ clothes or video games or books. Kids, they come with a lot of stuff.”

Bentz nodded, then asked O’Keefe, “The super still here? He might know.”

“Or maybe Frances Kowalski,” Montoya suggested.

“Yeah, I’ll talk to her, too.”

“The super’s name is Vincente. Vincente Espinosa.” O’Keefe nodded to the open doorway where a ski

“Got it.” Bentz called over his shoulder to Rosarita. “Send me the report.”

“Like you need to tell me,” she muttered, raising a gloved hand to wave him off. She sent him a look that silently suggested she might want to raise her middle finger, but didn’t. “Sheesh, Bentz. How long we worked together? Ten years? Fifteen?”

“Too long, Rosie. Too damned long.”

“Yeah, and I love you, too.”

As Bentz and Montoya stepped outside, Espinosa fluttered into motion. The super grabbed a rag from his back pocket and stepped back, trying to look busy, which was kind of tough when he’d probably been warned not to sweep or touch anything. Somewhere near sixty, his swarthy skin deeply lined, he wore a faded Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts. His hair was pulled back into a thin, graying ponytail that heightened his receding hairline.

“You the building supervisor? Mr. Espinosa?” Bentz showed his badge, introducing himself and Montoya.

“Yeah, that’s me. Folks call me Vincente.”

“You called 9-1-1?”

He nodded. “I already told the other cop.” Vincente’s eyes were black as obsidian as he squinted against the midday sun.

“So let’s go over it again. We want to hear everything you know about Miss Gaines.”

“It ain’t much.”

Bentz managed a smile. “Let’s start with when she moved in.”

“Three, maybe three and half years ago?” It was a question. “You’d have to ask the owner of the building for sure. Crescent City Developers. They’d have records.”

Bentz was making notes.

“She have a kid?” Montoya asked.

“Yeah, a boy. About nine or ten, I think.” So the picture was a couple years old. “But he was never here. Lives with his dad.”

“Do you know where we could find him?”

“Beats me,” Vincente said. “I didn’t really know her. We never talked much. I just know she had a kid. Lived with his old man, out of town. Don’t know where.”

Someone would have to call the ex and relay the bad news that his son’s mother was dead, the victim of a homicide. The kid had to be found.

“So you knew that she was turning tricks out of her apartment?”

“I didn’t know it. But, yeah, that was the word on the street. And with the hours she kept, the people going in and out . . .” He shrugged. “It seemed likely. But hey, she was a good tenant. Gave me no grief, and she had to do what she had to do, y’know?”

“You see anyone come into her apartment last night?” Bentz asked.

“Me?” Vincente shook his head, the ponytail whipping back and forth. “Nah, I’m in bed before the sun goes down. Watch a little TV, mainly sports. The Saints, they ain’t playin’ now, so I have to settle for baseball. I like the Rays, y’know. Tampa Bay?”

Bentz nodded, and Vincente went on to explain how he slept soundly and even with the window open he’d heard no struggle, no fight. He had only discovered the body, as he’d told O’Keefe and the 9-1-1 operator, when he’d been sweeping up and noticed Teri Gaines’s door cracked open.

The interview revealed few other details, so they moved on, up the stairs to apartment 2-E.

Frances Kowalski wasn’t a whole lot more informative, but the elderly woman in the second-floor apartment filled to the brim with religious artifacts and photos of a man Bentz assumed to be her late husband was certainly an eager witness. Whereas Espinosa had been guarded and a little reticent, Frances Kowalski was effusive to the point Bentz thought the older woman might be exaggerating, just to keep Montoya and him interested.

“About Ms. Gaines,” she’d said from behind owlish glasses, the tops of which brushed thick bangs of dyed red hair. “You know, I have a bird’s-eye view of her apartment. I see everything.” Her lips had pursed in a sanctimonious show of disgust. “And, I hate to judge, you know—”

Bentz thought the opposite was probably true. In his experience anyone who started with “I hate to” usually relished it. Whether it was “I hate to point out,” or “I hate to speak ill of the dead,” or in Frances Kowalski’s case, “I hate to judge,” it all boiled down to some kind of self-justification to spread a little gossip tinged with a bit of self-satisfaction. In some cases, he suspected that these people actually envied the person who broke the rules and walked on the wild side.

“But she had men coming and going all hours of the night.” Mrs. Kowalski’s eyebrows had arched pointedly over the top of the glasses. “They weren’t there selling vacuum cleaners or brushes, if you catch my drift.”

He caught it.

And it stunk.

The more Bentz had talked with the woman, the less he’d liked her. Her only pertinent information was that she had heard “something” and checked her window to witness a man “in black” entering Teri Gaines’s apartment. Her pale lips had pursed even more prudishly as she’d said, “I have no idea what she was doing down there.” A lie. “But it wasn’t good.”