Devious by Lisa Jackson Page B

heart, all remnants of denial seeping from her. Tears stung her eyes and her insides trembled. For a second she thought she might be sick.
    â€œSon of a bitch,” Slade muttered. His ghostly reflection appeared in the glass, his determined, unshaven jaw, blade-thin lips, narrowed eyes overlapping the stronger image of her dead sister.
    How ironic was it that Slade was here, his image superimposed over Cammie’s dead, draped body?
    After all they had been through. All the lies. The accusations. The heartache. Val couldn’t help but wonder if Slade felt a smidgeon of guilt for Cammie’s death.
    He should.
    As Val did. They were both integral in the contribution to her downward spiral.
    â€œI should have done something,” she whispered.
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œProtected her.”
    â€œImpossible.” Slade nodded toward the attendant, and the sheet was pulled back over Cammie’s face. He shepherded Val away from the window and through a door to where the two detectives waited.
    How many times had she, in her years as a cop, been in their position, waiting to question the loved ones, trying to root out information while the family was torn by grief?
    â€œWe can talk to you here, or if you’d prefer, down at the station,” Bentz said.
    â€œHere’s fine.” Val found some grit.
    â€œOkay, there’s a room, just down the hall.” Bentz led them along a carpeted hallway to a small room with three chairs and a dying potted palm positioned near the window, a place where doctors spoke with patients or loved ones. Outside, the sky was now a sea of gray, threatening rain.
    Bentz motioned them into chairs, took one himself, and waited as Montoya closed the door behind him and stood near the ill-fated tree.
    â€œSo let’s get started. Tell us what you know about the affair between Father O’Toole and your sister.”
    â€œI wish I could,” Valerie said. “But I don’t know all that much.” She told the detectives how Camille had met with her nearly a month earlier and explained her situation, that she was pregnant, that the father was a priest, and that she was considering leaving the convent.
    â€œBut she didn’t,” Montoya prodded.
    â€œNo, not by the time . . .” She cleared her throat and told herself to “tough up” as their father had always advised whenever either of his daughters came to him with a problem. “Not by the time she’d died. She sent me an e-mail, though. It was short and said that she couldn’t take it anymore, whatever that meant, and that she was leaving the order and that I know why. I guess she was talking about the pregnancy.”
    â€œWhen did you receive it?”
    â€œLast night. Late. I was worried about her and . . .” And you should have gone and visited her. Maybe you could have saved her. The recriminations rolled through her mind even though she knew better. She’d been a cop, been in Bentz’s and Montoya’s shoes, showed family members their dead loved ones, questioned them about everyone they knew. So she tried like crazy to push her guilt aside and help the cops. She told them everything she knew, from the time that she and Camille were adopted by their mother and father, through the trials and trauma of high school. She had known of Frank O’Toole’s reputation, and she recalled that Camille had dated Reuben Montoya. She admitted that she and Camille had been estranged in recent years, that part of the alienation had been her marriage to Slade, a man Camille had shown interest in.
    She also reminded them of the other nun who had been involved with O’Toole, though she still wasn’t certain of her name or what became of her or really if she had existed anywhere but in Camille’s jealous mind.
    â€œSo . . .” Bentz switched his attention to Slade as rain began to tick against the window. “You were the last man she was