Devious by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

speculatively.
    “Beats me.” Scowling, stepping away from the body, he asked, “Who was the first officer to arrive?”
    “Amos took the call,” Bentz said.
    Montoya spotted the officer talking to the shivering girl. New to the force, Joe Amos was a six-foot black man with a wide girth and mocha-colored skin accentuated by a shotgun blast of darker freckles across his face. Montoya walked in front of the first pew to a pillar where Amos was listening to Sister Lucia.
    “. . . and so Father Paul and Father Frank and I ran back here, to the chapel and—” she was saying, but her gaze strayed to Montoya and her chain of thought was interrupted. “And . . . Oh, dear God.” Her eyes rounded and she took a step back.
    “And what?” Amos asked.
    Lucia blinked, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “You’re Cruz’s brother,” she whispered, appearing as if she might faint.
    “That’s right.”
    Even more lines of worry showed between her eyebrows. “Raymond or . . .”
    “Reuben. I’m with the local police department now. Detective.”
    Amos pinned Montoya with a glare. “You two know each other?”
    Montoya shook his head. “Went to the same high school. Years ago. She dated my brother.”
    “You look a lot like him,” Lucia said, fingers pulling the cape closer around her body. “Like Cruz.”
    “So I’ve heard.” Montoya couldn’t deny the obvious, having heard it for years—the family resemblance ran strong.
    Amos held up a hand. “Okay, so let’s get back to your statement. Let’s see, you ‘heard something,’ you said. What was it?”
    “I . . . I don’t know.” She swallowed hard. “Something sharp. It woke me and I felt troubled, like I needed to pray.”
    “A scream?” Montoya asked. “Or a call for help?”
    “No . . . nothing I can really identify.”
    Really?
    “But you left your room?” Amos pressed.
    “Yes, as I said, I was upset, like I’d had a horrible dream that I can’t remember. I knew I wouldn’t go back to sleep, so I thought I’d go pray in the chapel. It’s calming sometimes.” Lucia looked frightened and small, as if she wanted to disappear into the shadows.
    Amos glanced down at notes he’d scribbled in a nearly illegible hand. “So then you find the body, see someone leaving, call for help, meet up with Sister Charity, go to the office, make the call to nine-one-one, then run back to the chapel after waking the priests. Oh, only Father Paul. Father Frank was already up. Right?”
    “Yes,” she said, nodding slowly.
    To get her story straight or because she was trying to remember?
    Amos scratched his chin. “What happened then?”
    “Oh!” Lucia dragged her gaze away from Montoya. “Then . . . we, um, waited. Father Paul checked Sister Camille’s pulse again. Then we all prayed for her.” Lucia’s voice grew husky, her nose reddened, and tears filled her eyes. “Then . . . then . . . a few minutes later, I heard sirens and you arrived.” She took in a long breath, pulled the cape even tighter around her, and clammed up.
    “You found the body?” Montoya asked.
    “I just told him all about it,” she said, looking toward Amos.
    Montoya wasn’t going to be put off. “So bring me up to speed.”
    She seemed to withdraw, as if her body were shrinking for a second. Then she gathered her breath and explained her version of the events of the night yet again. After the mother superior had answered her cries for help, she’d called the police, run into Father Frank in the cloister, awoke a sleeping Father Paul, and had returned to the chapel with the two priests.
    “But you said something about seeing someone leaving the chapel when you arrived,” Amos interjected.
    “I . . . I think so.”
    Montoya asked, “You’re not sure?”
    “No . . . sometimes I kind of sleepwalk, so . . . it can be kind of”—she lifted a small shoulder—“blurry, I guess.”
    “Wait a second. Sleepwalking?” Montoya said. “You didn’t say that