Synopsis | Reviews | Excerpt
A terrifying memory is locked deep inside her. A killer wants to
keep it that way.
As a nine-year-old child, Eden Moran witnessed the murder of her
beloved teacher, Sister Beatrice. Her mind blocked the horrifying memory, and
now, seventeen years later, Eden still can’t recall what she saw that fateful
day at Albuquerque’s St. Patrick’s Church. The nun’s remains have been
unearthed at a local construction site, and Albuquerque police detective, Kevin
Dancer, starts pressuring Eden to search the shadows of her terror for clues.
Eden insists she didn’t see the killer that day. She can’t even
remember knowing Sister Beatrice. Regardless, Detective Dancer refuses to give
up on her. He’s not only hell-bent on solving the crime, he’s falling in love
with her. If her memories resurface, she’ll be in danger, and he wants to
protect her. The killer seems determined that she’ll take the memory to an
early grave.
Donnell Ann Bell is the recipient of numerous awards for
her fiction writing and the co-owner of Crimescenewriters, a Yahoo group for
mystery/suspense writers, which is 2,000 members strong. Donnell was raised in New Mexico’s Land of
Enchantment and today calls Colorado home. Visit her at www.donnellannbell.com
Coming soon!
Prologue
SISTER BEATRICE is
in seclusion, children. She leaves us tonight. Please respect her privacy and
keep her in your prayers.
Eden
Moran raced along the blacktop. Tears streaming and haunted by the principal’s
words, she gasped when she fell. She landed hard and split open her knee. She
wouldn’t cry out. At any time, Mrs. Trevino would discover she’d left the
playground.
Blood trickled, her knee stung, blond
hair escaped her braid. Eden jumped to her feet and continued to run. Up the
steps of St. Patrick’s, she pulled on the heavy church doors and found them
locked tight.
Please, please,
please. She
craned her neck.
The stained glass windows above the big
wooden doors were open. She might as well climb a mountain.
If Sister Beatrice was inside, she would
answer. Eden made a fist to pound then dropped it. If anyone else answered,
she’d be in trouble. Mrs. Trevino would send her to the principal. Her parents
would be furious.
It was a sin to disobey. But this
time...
Nuns left. Even the first graders
knew that. Still, to keep them prisoner? Not let them say goodbye? Her nose
ran, her leg ached. Eden would never give up. Sister Beatrice understood―she’d
saved Eden from the beak-nosed Sister Agnes, who called her a wild,
undisciplined prodigy. Whatever that was!
Men’s voices brought her back, and, for
once, Eden was relieved to be her third-grade size and not big like her older
sister Meghan. She squeezed into the cranny next to St. Patrick’s front doors.
The voices turned out to be the
school’s creepy, always-staring janitor and the old grump who took up the
collection. They moved beyond the church steps and rounded the building. Eden
sucked in a breath and trailed after them. She paused at St. Patrick’s side
entrance, tried the knob, felt it turn, and slipped quietly into the church.
Glad she’d worn sneakers instead of her
noisy Mary Janes, she crept along the hallway, inhaling the scent of candle wax
and lemon polish as she strode. She could only imagine the stream of Hail
Mary’s she’d be saying if her pastor found her inside the church. Worse, she
pictured how long she’d be grounded if he told her mother.
Mama adored Father Munroe.
Determined for neither to happen, Eden
hid between the wall and the marble pillar and dared a peek around the column.
That was strange.
A lady knelt in the second pew. She
looked like Sister Beatrice, but she wasn’t dressed like a nun. She wore her
dark hair back, but with her head bowed and her hands folded over her face,
Eden couldn’t be sure.
Then Father Munroe entered the sacristy
and Eden stopped breathing. She scrunched even farther behind the pillar, but
she needn’t have worried. The only thing he seemed to care about was the lady.
Crossing to where she knelt, he murmured, "Celeste.”
Eden squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, no. It
wasn’t Sister Beatrice. She’d broken the rules for nothing.
"Robert.” The visitor rose to her feet.
"I was told you were on a pastoral retreat.”
Was it?
"Forgive me, Celeste. I couldn’t stay
away. I had to see you.”
The woman he called Celeste picked up a
bag and tried to brush by him, but he blocked her exit.
"I catch my plane in a few hours. Won’t
you respect my wishes and leave me be?”
"I do respect you.” His soft words
carried throughout the empty church. "Celeste, I care for you deeply.”
Stretching as far as her arms would go
around the cool column, Eden strained to understand. Nuns and priests didn’t
talk like this. Yet, the more she listened, the more she was sure this was
Sister Beatrice. So why was he calling her Celeste? And what was he saying?
"You have no right to feel that way. Ihad no right.”
"That may be true, but God forgive me,
I don’t regret it. Think of the children, they love you. As for us, I always
thought...” He reached for her.
She backed away.
"All right,” he said stiffly. "I can
see that you’ve made up your mind. If it’s what you want, what happened between
us will never happen again. You have my word.”
"Your word?” She laughed, which
confused Eden even more, because the lady wasn’t happy. "After I put my life
back together, I may become a lay teacher. But to belong to a religious order?
Honestly, Robert, how can I preach chastity and abstinence when I can’t
honor my vows?”
"Only one man was perfect, Celeste.”
"Don’t you dare preach to me.” She
raised her voice in an angry whisper. "I have to know. How many women did you
seduce before me?”
The priest’s normally kind face
darkened. "I won’t dignify that with an answer.”
"And I won’t shame myself by standing
in your presence any longer. I may be a sinner, Robert, but you are a
predator.” She dashed by him into the aisle.
He followed and forced her to face him.
"What’s gotten into you? Why would you call me that?”
"Let go of me, Father Munroe.”
"Not until you listen to reason.”
They’d gone beyond the pillar, so Eden
snuck beyond it to see. It was Sister Beatrice. What’s more, she was
afraid. Trembling, Eden wanted to help her, but what could a little girl do?
She opened her mouth to beg them to
stop. She was a second too late.
Sister Beatrice shoved him. Father
Munroe staggered, but then he recovered and went toward her again. With his
back was to Eden, she wasn’t clear what happened next. All she knew was the
thud that came afterward felt like a blow to her heart.
Eden froze as still as the column
beside her.
Father Munroe dropped to his knees.
"Celeste?” His voice sounded strange and high pitched as he cradled her in his
arms. "Oh, dear God, no! Celeste, wake up...”
The noonday Angelus drowned out his
wails.
Shocked back to the moment, Eden
covered her ears. Toll after toll, the bells rang, misting like candle smoke
into angry, gnarled fingers. Only they weren’t pointing at Father. They
swooshed down from the steeple and took aim at Eden.
Booming and hissing, they hounded her
footsteps as she fought to get out of the evil place. You disobeyed. You
shouldn’t be here... never would’ve
happened... you left the
playground...
That’s where they found her, flying
high in a swing. When no one could coax her down, Mrs. Trevino yanked the chain
and brought Eden to a wobbly stop. Puzzled by her teacher’s red-faced glare,
Eden shoved her unraveled braid from her eyes and glanced around for the other
children. Finding them gone, she shrank back in the swing.
As grownups surrounded her, asking
their very weird questions, Eden wanted to answer them. Truly. But she simply
had no idea how she’d ripped a hole in her uniform, gashed her knee, or lost
track of her classmates. So, grasping the chain, she looked up at them and told
them the truth. She couldn’t recall.
Chapter One
Seventeen years later
KEVIN DANCER negotiated the Northeast
Heights construction site, stepping over rocks, scrap metal and two-by-fours.
He paused as a man wearing a hard hat approached. The construction worker’s
frown appeared cemented on his face, and Kevin suspected the bronzed,
cinderblock type was the welcoming committee.
"You with the cops?” the workman asked.
Albuquerque’s finest hadn’t made him a
detective for nothing. He flashed his badge. "Kevin Dancer, APD.”
"Walt Jackson, KLJ’s area
superintendent.” He looked Kevin up and down. "You don’t look Indian.”
Kevin squinted behind his Ray-Bans. The
super probably had formed that opinion from Kevin’s sandy blond hair. He’d
gotten the comment a few times since leaving Ohio, graduating from NMSU, and
then deciding to stay. The Land of Enchantment was steeped in culture and
tradition, among them its Native American dancers. "Could be,” he said, "but
I’m told Dancer’s English. You got something to show me?”
"Yeah.” The shorter man grimaced.
"C’mon, we’ll make a stop by the trailer.”
Ignoring the workers milling about on
the trailer steps, Jackson grabbed a hard hat marked visitor and
commanded Kevin to put it on. The superintendent, it appeared, was used to
giving orders.
Wordlessly, Kevin obliged. After all,
he was a quid pro quo kind of guy. If nothing came of the sighting, it
didn’t do to shove his weight around too soon.
Stepping back into the Albuquerque
scorcher, Jackson said, "This way. For your information, Detective, KLJ pulled
permits, went through every bureaucratic hoop to build here. The Northeast
Heights is in Albuquerque proper. We’re not on reservation land, and there’s
not a known Indian burial ground for thirty miles. I got a penny-pinching owner
breathing down my neck, and a timeline from hell. Now I got bones and the
shook-up operator who disturbed them.”
"Noted,” Kevin said. Several tribes
called New Mexico home, among them the Navajo, Apache and Ute. Given his
knowledge of the tribal leaders and the meticulous records they kept, he
doubted the construction workers had stumbled onto a burial site. He never said
never, however, or speculated in front of a witness. Never.
The man in charge led him to a huge
hole in the ground that had been dug for yet another shopping center to
accommodate the city’s half-million population. A sunning lizard appeared
annoyed at their approach. It scurried from a rock into the shade of the
landscape’s ever-present prickly pear cactus.
The air was so thick with desert heat
and kicked-up dust, Kevin tasted grit on his tongue. He literally saw waves of
vapor rising from the soil. Orange mesh enclosed the area. Whether the site
proved to be a crime scene or an undiscovered burial ground, if the bones
proved human, the mesh would soon have yellow tape for company.
Beyond the immediate site sat an
abandoned backhoe, and beside it a dump truck brimming with dirt. One worker
leaned against the truck’s grill, while another squatted next to the vehicle’s
tire and sketched the ground with a stick.
"Sammy, Ernesto,” Jackson called. "This
is Detective Dancer. He’s come to see what you’ve found.”
Kevin soon learned that Sammy, a
long-haired scrawny kid, was the driver of the dump truck. Ernesto, the man
doodling, was the operator of the tractor backhoe. Jackson explained that part
of Sammy’s responsibilities had been to secure the area from wandering
personnel and to make sure most of the dirt made it into the bed of the truck.
He also was the witness who saw the remains fall from the claws of the backhoe
and called a frantic stop to the digging.
Using the large tire for footing, Kevin
hoisted his frame over the edge and scanned the bed’s contents. Finding bones,
clothing or evidence intact now that digging had begun would prove a challenge.
He donned gloves from his back jean pocket, then stifled a groan when he
surveyed layer after layer of dirt.
He glanced down at the man scrawling in
the sand. "Got a shovel some place?”
Ernesto came to his feet and hurled the
stick away. "I’ll get you one. Just tell me it ain’t a kid.”
Kevin shared a sympathetic shake of his
head. "Can’t tell you anything right now.”
A few minutes later, shovel in hand, he
returned to the job. Carefully turning accessible areas, he eventually struck
something hard. He concentrated midway, siphoning the sandy mix to see what
he’d come up with. About two feet into the dirt, a grayish white appendage
appeared. Cops were taught the difference between animal and human remains, and
while he was no expert on the body as a whole, he recognized a human femur.
He continued searching the vicinity
with no luck, then moved to the rear quadrant of the truck. About two feet
down, he hit another solid object. He turned the shovel on its side and
uncovered what looked like a sternum. Traces of fabric were lodged in the
fragile ribcage. Drawing it closer, he saw that the tattered blue garment still
held the remnants of a silky sheen. Kevin’s pulse quickened along with his
hopes. If he had to make a guess, he’d say it came from a woman’s blouse. If
luck were on his side—a huge if—he might even stumble onto a tag or a
label, which could break the case wide open. It would not only tell them the
name of the manufacturer, it could lead right down to the store that had sold
it.
Even so, who knew how long these bones
had been in the ground? The fabric did provide one very important clue, though.
The ancients didn’t bury their dead in synthetic blends.
Securing his footing via the tire
again, he jumped down. He focused on the sweating, akimbo-armed superintendent,
who hadn’t appeared to so much as twitch while Kevin was digging. The super’s
mouth barely moved. "Well?”
Kevin removed the gloves and hard hat
and wiped his dripping brow. "I don’t think you’ve invaded any type of burial
ground.”
Jackson breathed a sigh of relief.
Unfortunately, it was premature.
"What I can tell you is you got
yourself a suspicious death.”
The super’s bronze face paled. "How
long before we know for sure?”
Kevin shook his head. "As long as it
takes.” He pulled out his cell and thumbed down the list of numbers until he
reached Ike Krowtow, the Bernalillo County medical examiner. He gave Ike his
location, then said, "You may want to call UNM in on this one. We’ll need a
forensic anthropologist.”
The superintendent flipped his own
phone open. "Close everything down and send everybody home.”
As Kevin went in search of nearby shade
and watched men walking away from their jobs, he derived little satisfaction in
knowing the super had given his last order for a while.
