Sacred Sins

hadn't been so sure this time, she decided. His mind was becoming a logjam of thoughts, memories, and voices. He must be terrified, she thought, and almost certainly physically ill by now.
    Her coat had been left open rather than neatly arranged. There wasn't enough of a breeze in the alley to have flapped it open. So he hadn't tidied it as he had the clothing of the others. Perhaps he hadn't been able to.
    Then she saw the lapel pin against the green wool, a gold heart with the name Anne scrolled inside. She had been Anne. A wave of pity washed over her, for Anne, and for the man who had been driven to kill her.
    Ben saw the way she studied the body, clinically, dispassionately, without revulsion. He'd wanted to shield her from the reality of death, but also wanted to press her face into it until she'd wept and run the other way.
    “If you've gotten yourself a good look, Dr. Court, why don't you back off and let us do our job?”
    She looked up at Ben, then rose slowly to her feet. “He's nearly finished. I don't think he's going to be able to take much more.”
    “Tell that to her.”
    “Kid puked all over the place,” Ed said lightly, and breathed through his mouth to try to combat the stench. With a pencil he flipped open the woman's wallet, which had spilled out of her purse. “Anne Reasoner,” he said, reading her driver's license. “Twenty-seven. Lives about a block up on M.”

    A block up, Tess thought. A block closer to her own apartment. She pressed her lips together and looked out of the alley until the fear passed. “It's a ritual,” she said clearly enough. “From everything I've read, ritual, rites, traditions, are an intricate part of the Catholic Church. He's performing his own ritual here, saving them then absolving them and leaving them with this.” She indicated the amice. “The symbol of that salvation and absolution. He folds the amice exactly the same way each time. He positions their bodies exactly the same way. But this time he didn't tidy her clothes.”
    “Playing detective?”
    Tess balled her hands in her pockets, fighting to overlook Ben's sarcasm. “This is devotion, blind devotion to the Church, obsession with ritual. But the handwriting shows that he's beginning to question what he's doing, what he's driven to do.”
    “That's fine.” Unreasonable anger rushed into him at her lack of emotional response. Ben turned his back to her and bent over the body. “Why don't you go out to the car and write that up? We'll be sure to pass on your professional opinion to her family.”
    He didn't see her face, the quick hurt then the slow anger that came into her eyes. But he heard her walk away.
    “Little rough on her, weren't you?”
    Ben didn't look at his partner either, but at the woman who had been Anne. She stared back at him. Serve and protect. No one had protected Anne Reasoner.
    “She doesn't belong here,” he murmured, and thought as much of Anne Reasoner as of Tess. He shook his head, still studying the almost saintlike pose of the body. “What was she doing in an alley in the middle of the night?” An alley that was close, too damn close, to Tess's apartment.
    “Maybe she wasn't.”
    Drawing his brows together, Ben lifted up one of her feet. She'd worn loafers. The kind that last through college, your first marriage and divorce. The leather fit her feet like gloves and was well polished. The back of the heel was freshly scraped and scarred.

    “So he killed her on the street and dragged her in.” Ben looked over at Ed as his partner crouched and examined the other shoe. “He strangled her out on the fucking street. We got streetlights about every ten god-damn feet in this neighborhood. We got black and whites cruising every thirty minutes, and he kills her on the street.” He looked at her hands. Her nails were medium length and well shaped. Only three of them were broken. The coral-colored polish was unchipped. “Doesn't look like she put up much of a fight.”

    T HE light was turning gray, a washed-out, milky gray that promised overcast skies and cold autumn rain. Dawn floated over the city without any beauty. Sunday morning. People were sleeping in. Hangovers were brewing. The first church services would begin soon with raw-eyed, weekend-dazed congregations.
    Tess leaned against the hood of Ben's car. The suede jacket wasn't warm enough in the chilled dawn, but she was too restless to get inside the car. She watched a round man with a medical bag and