Malice (24 page)

“I can’t believe this,” she said, obviously upset. “I mean, Mom’s not alive. You know that, right? We went through all this. I thought you were just tripping on the meds. Come on! If she were alive, she would have contacted us, or at least me. And if you think you’re seeing her ghost…I guess I can get that,” she grudgingly admitted. “It’s not like you, but I’ve seen things I can’t explain. I still see images of people in black-and-white and then they die. That’s pretty damned eerie. And Olivia, she saw through the eyes of a killer, so…just because you saw Mom or thought you saw her, doesn’t mean she’s alive.” She took in a deep breath and he imagined her pushing the hair from her eyes. “I can’t believe this.”

“I’m just sorting it out. Obviously someone wants me here in L.A. Whoever it is lured me in.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to unravel.”

“Well, I don’t like it.”

He snorted. “That makes two of us.”

“You’re not like the Lone Ranger, are you? Tell me there are people helping you.”

He’d never felt so alone in his life, but he wouldn’t admit that. He’d already burdened her with enough difficult information. To worry her further wasn’t necessary. “Yep. Montoya in New Orleans and I’ve still got a few friends in LAPD.” He sat on the edge of the bed, ignoring the television and the fact that he was beginning to hate this place. The four walls of the little motel room were closing in on him and he missed his daughter. Missed his wife.

“Who? Who are your friends there?” she demanded, because she’d been old enough to remember when they’d lived in Los Angeles. She knew her father did not leave on good terms by any stretch of the imagination.

“Jonas Hayes, to start with. You remember him?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s got my back.”

“I don’t know if I believe you. I assume Olivia knows all this.”

He squeezed the back of his neck. “Uh-huh.”

“So the daughter is the last to know.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I would,” she said, steamed.

She was really pissed off. Nothing Bentz could do about it now.

“Is that why you called?” Kristi demanded. “Something about this case?”

He felt the anger radiating through the connection. “I thought you might remember if your mom ever mentioned a woman by the name of Ramona Salazar?”

“Ramona who? Salazar?” she repeated. “No. No Ramonas.”

“What about Phyllis?”

“Just the astrologer.”

“You knew about her?” Bentz’s muscles stiffened.

“Sure. I even called her once for a reading, but Mom hit the roof, thought you wouldn’t approve, so I never got the reading and Mom told me to keep it on the down low, that it was ‘just our little secret’ or some other melodramatic phrase. You know how she was.”

Apparently not.

“Jeez, I’d nearly forgotten all about her.”

Bentz mentally kicked himself. Of course Kristi would know things about Jennifer that he didn’t. Montoya had already mentioned a woman named Phyllis Terrapin. “So, how into this astrologer was she?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Just something Mom did. Like her hair and her nails. I only saw her a couple of times when Mom had picked me up.” Kristi laughed. “I called her ‘the Turtle’ behind her back because of her name and she kinda looked like one, short neck, big glasses. Mom didn’t think it was funny, which I thought was weird. She usually had a pretty wicked sense of humor, but not when I teased her about the whole astrology thing.”

“Of course she didn’t,” he said. How many other secrets had mother and daughter shared, secrets he’d been totally oblivious to?

They talked for a while longer, but Kristi had nothing more to add about Phyllis “the Turtle” or anything else he’d been investigating out here. “I’ll call you in a few days,” he promised, and they hung up. “Phyllis the Turtle,” he muttered under his breath. Probably nothing, but he’d check her out.

He stood, stretched out his back, and noticed the remains of his Californian wrap drying out on the desk. He scooped the wilting lettuce and soggy tomatoes into the white sack, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it into the trash. Then he settled into his desk chair again, placing the laptop on his thighs and turning so that his heels were propped on the bed. This way he could catch the latest TV news and scores as he did his thousandth Internet search.

He’d just typed in Phyllis’s name when his cell phone rang again.

Caller ID showed that the phone was registered to L. Newell. Lorraine? Jennifer’s stepsister?

He answered before the damned thing rang twice. “Bentz.”

“Oh. Hi. It’s Lorraine.” She sounded tense. Breathless. What was this all about? “I…thought you should know…Oh, God…”

“What?” he asked, his senses on alert, an eerie feeling crawling along his skin.

“I saw her. I saw Jennifer.”

Bentz’s feet dropped to the floor. He slid his laptop onto the desk. “What?”

“I said I saw—”

“I know, but where? When?” He couldn’t believe it. His heart was thudding, adrenaline spurting through his veins, his hands clutching the phone as if it were a lifeline.

“Just a few minutes ago. Here. On my street. In Torrance,” she said, her voice quavering. She sounded scared as hell. “In…in a gray car.”

Really?
Bentz was already grabbing his keys and wallet with his free hand.

“I don’t think she expected me to be looking out the window.”

“Did she see you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Wait a minute. You saw a woman who looked like Jennifer in a gray car?” Again, he glanced through the blinds to the dark parking lot illuminated by the motel sign. Something felt wrong about this.

“Yes!”

“How could you see her?”

“Uh…the streetlight. The car stopped under the streetlight and she looked right at the house. Right at me.”

“Is she there now?”

“I don’t know. She drove past slowly, around the cul-de-sac, only three or four minutes ago. I’m frightened. She’s dead, Rick. She’s supposed to be dead.” Lorraine’s voice was hoarse with panic. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought I should call you.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour. Sit tight.”

He hung up and threw on his shoulder holster, new jacket, and shoes. His cell phone was just about out of juice, but he pocketed it along with his badge. Ignoring the ache in his leg Bentz flew out of the room and into the parking lot. Inside his car, he snapped on the ignition and drove out of the lot, squealing onto the street.

Someone else had seen Jennifer, or the woman who looked like her. Finally.

Once he was on the side street heading toward the 405, he phoned Jonas Hayes.

The call went directly to voice mail and he explained what he was doing.

Then he hit the freeway heading south, weaving through taillights to move ahead, pushing the speed limit. The night was clear and somewhere above the lights of the city the stars shone. He saw the moon and the blink of airplanes cutting across the sky, but his mind was on the phone conversation with Lorraine.

Was it possible?

Was “Jennifer” showing herself? Or casing Lorraine’s house?

Or was Lorraine just freaking out?

Imagining things?

Like you?
His mind teased while the speedometer inched past eighty.

As he maneuvered around a shiny red BMW another theory struck him. “Damn.” Shana was already dead. Could “Jennifer” be looking for her next victim? That thought hit him hard. Was the woman he’d been looking for a murderess? His stomach twisted into a painful knot and he stepped on it, flying past a semi hauling milk and smelling of diesel, just as an idiot on a motorcycle blew by him and the eighteen-wheeler as if they were standing still. The biker had to be doing a hundred, maybe more, cutting through traffic.
Idiot!

Minutes ticked by and Bentz willed his cell phone to ring. He needed to talk to Hayes, or someone from the department, he thought just as he saw his exit ramp and some girl driving a Honda sped around him while texting. He barely noticed.

Bentz couldn’t take any chances with Lorraine’s life. There was no way of telling what this “Jennifer” was up to, but his gut told him it wasn’t good. As he neared his exit ramp, he slowed and put another message to Hayes’s voice mail, asking the L.A. detective to return the call immediately.

Bentz needed this confirmation. That he wasn’t going out of his mind. That he wasn’t conjuring up and fantasizing about a dead woman. Lorraine’s sighting of Jennifer could do just that. At least now, if nothing else, by the time he left Lorraine’s place tonight, the LAPD would know that Lorraine had been frightened, maybe even threatened by a woman who resembled Jennifer Bentz.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, easing down the ramp into a clog of traffic at the stop light. A small man wearing an overcoat, camouflage pants, and a hat with a long feather slowly pushed an overflowing grocery store cart across all the lanes of traffic while Bentz felt time slipping by. Precious time.

At last the man rolled past, the light changed, and the idling vehicles were able to move again. Bentz gunned it, his heart hammering crazily. Fueled at the prospect of coming face to face with Jennifer.

Lorraine Newell knew she was a dead woman.

Shaking, she watched as her assailant, the woman who had held the phone to her ear and a gun to her temple, hung up the phone in her living room. All the shades were drawn. They were alone. And she’d lied to Rick Bentz, begged him to come over. She should have warned him, told him the truth, but she’d been afraid, so damned afraid. Either way this witch was going to kill her.

Trembling inside, she looked at the woman holding the gun on her, the dark, deadly muzzle only inches from her forehead.

“He’s coming,” she whispered and thought she might pee all over herself. How had she been so foolish to open the door to this woman, to agree to let her use her phone? She was just being a Good Samaritan. She’d wanted to help. When she’d opened the door, handing her phone through the crack, the woman who had pleaded that she’d needed to call a tow truck and that her cell was out of batteries had turned into a demon. She’d slammed the door in Lorraine’s face, pulled a black gun from her jacket, and rammed the steely muzzle deep into Lorraine’s ribs.

Once in the house, she’d bound Lorraine’s hands behind her back, then held the phone to her ear and forced Lorraine to read from a careful script, only improvising when she had to.

And she had.

Oh, God forgive her, she would have done anything to save her life. But it was for nothing. She knew it now.

“You…you can leave me out of it,” she said, in a desperate plea, sweat running down her back, her insides quivering. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I promise. When Bentz gets here I’ll…I’ll tell him it was all part of a joke.”

“It is,” the woman said cryptically.

“Please.”

“Shut up!”

If only she could run. Could knock the gun away. But it was too late. She didn’t doubt for a second that this fiend would blow her to kingdom come.

Without a modicum of mercy her captor snatched the paper away—the script she’d forced Lorraine to read. Lorraine had searched the woman’s face for a shred of compassion, a crack in her icy veneer. But the woman’s expression was stone cold as she then prodded Lorraine forward, down a short hallway, and into the kitchen.

Where it was dark.

Oh, God.

There had to be a way to save herself. Had to!

“Move!” she ordered, the unforgiving nose of the pistol hard against Lorraine’s back.

Tears ran down Lorraine’s face. Her heart, beating so rapidly, so erratically, felt as if it would explode. She said a silent prayer, begging God for mercy.

“Please. Don’t do this,” she whispered, physically quaking with fear. She didn’t want to die. Not now. Not this way. She was too young, had too much to live for. “Please,” she begged, desperation cracking her voice. “I won’t tell a soul. I swear. You can trust me.”

“Shhhh. It’s going to be all right.” Slowly her attacker ran the cold muzzle of the pistol up Lorraine’s spine, from the small of her back to the base of her skull.

Where it stopped.

Oh, sweet Jesus!

In that horrifying second Lorraine knew it was over.

Nothing she could do or say would change this demented criminal’s mind.

She closed her eyes just as the gun blasted.

S
omething was off.

Way out of kilter.

Bentz felt it in the air, in the silence of the night. When he pulled up in front of Lorraine’s home the street was empty—no silver Chevy prowling the neighborhood. A few lights glowed from the tri-level house, but the curtains were drawn. Hadn’t Lorraine said she’d seen Jennifer from her window? Worse yet, as he approached he noticed the front door was ajar.

Had she left it open for him?

No way. When he’d talked to her, Lorraine had been scared out of her mind. Every muscle in his body tensed. “Lorraine,” he called, slowly and silently withdrawing his weapon from his shoulder holster. “Lorraine? It’s Rick Bentz.”

Silence.

Carefully, sensing danger, he nudged the door further open with his weapon, and hearing no sound from within, slipped into the house. Lights were on in the living room, and he stiffened at a subtle movement across from him until he realized that it was his own reflection in the mirrored wall. The room was empty, a book facedown on the worn green sofa.

“Lorraine?” He listened but heard nothing.

Moving silently through the hallway toward the back of the house, Bentz passed an empty dining room with mail piled on the table. As he approached the darkened kitchen he smelled it.

The distinctive, metallic odor of blood.

His stomach dropped to the floor.

Bracing himself, he stepped into the kitchen doorway and caught a glimpse of feet, one slipper kicked off, poking out from behind a cabinet. He stepped closer. Her body lay facedown, blood matting the back of her head.

Lorraine.

Bile crawled up his throat. Bentz flicked on the light and quickly checked to make sure the room was empty before kneeling at her side. But he knew she was dead. He felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

“Holy Christ.” This was his fault. He knew it. “Son of a bitch.” Yanking his phone from his pocket, he dialed 9-1-1, identified himself, and gave the dispatcher the pertinent information.

Who had done this to Lorraine?

No doubt the same person who had offed Shana McIntyre. The connection was obvious: Rick Bentz.

And Bentz knew he was the cause. The catalyst. “Jennifer” had shown herself to Lorraine, knowing full well that Lorraine would phone him. Then, after Lorraine had reported the sighting, “Jennifer” had killed her with flawless dispatch. Even now she could be watching, enjoying the show.

Twisted bitch.

Though he sensed that the house was empty, the murderer long gone, he couldn’t be certain. He hung up and checked the rest of the house. Moving carefully, trying not to touch anything or disturb any fingerprints or evidence the killer may have left behind, he searched closets and did a perfunctory check of the back deck, but the perp had fled the scene. Of course. Bentz put in another call to Hayes and left his third message within an hour, then returned to the living room. A loud, unworldly screech reverberated through the room.

Bentz ducked behind the hallway wall, then peered out in time to see a gray cat streak from the back of the couch and bolt behind a plaid upholstered chair. From behind the worn cushions it hissed, glaring at him with glittering gold eyes.

Bentz’s skyrocketing pulse slowed a bit. He’d forgotten Lorraine had always kept cats, having seen no evidence of the animal when he’d visited.

Shaking inside, craving a cigarette, he waited outside on the porch near a grapefruit tree. His leg throbbed and he tried to maintain calm by focusing on the sounds of the night. Over the buzz of insects and the barking of a dog a few streets over, the wails of sirens split the night air. Good. He shoved his hair away from his face, noticing a nervous neighbor peeking out at him through blinds.

The show’s about to begin,
he thought while a jogger ran past the entrance to the cul-de-sac. His eyes followed the movement. The runner was a slim woman—or was it a man?—in a baseball cap and dark clothes. No reflective gear. She glanced toward him, but she was too far away to see her features.

Yet, there was something about her that seemed familiar.

What?
The thought stopped him cold.
Familiar? Are you out of your mind? You can’t even make out the runner’s gender. Get a grip, Bentz, and figure this thing out before another one of the people you interviewed winds up dead. Think, for God’s sake. You’re going to have to answer a lot of questions.

As he watched, she turned down a side street. Maybe she’d seen a silver car cruising the neighborhood. “Hey!” he called after her, but she was too far away. He’d never catch her on foot, and he couldn’t leave in the car. Not after calling the cops, who, by the sound of screaming sirens, would arrive within the next thirty seconds.

Forget the runner for now.

Bentz turned off the voice in his head and, still longing for a cigarette or a stiff drink or both, walked toward the curb.

Why had Lorraine phoned him?

Had she really seen Jennifer?

Or was it all a ruse?

He stared down the dark street where the runner had disappeared just as flashing lights strobed the night and a police cruiser screamed around the corner.

Who had killed Lorraine?

Jennifer?

Bentz knew in his gut that Lorraine’s murder had everything to do with the death of Shana McIntyre. Both women were dead because of their relationship to his ex-wife. Both women were dead because of him. Because they’d spoken to him. Guilt squeezed the breath from his lungs. If he hadn’t called them, hadn’t shown up on their doorsteps, would Shana and Lorraine be alive today?

Bentz rose as the police car screeched to a stop at the curb. Two Torrance police officers exploded from their vehicle and wheeled toward him.

“You Bentz?” the driver asked, a young buck with his weapon drawn. His lips were tight, his eyes narrowed, suspicion giving him an edgy appearance.

“Yeah. I’m a cop. New Orleans PD. My firearm is in my shoulder holster. Badge in my wallet.”

“What happened here?” the second cop asked, a woman as in tense as her partner, her gun pointed dead center at Bentz’s chest.

“Shooting. Looks like a homicide.” The words rolled off his tongue, business as usual. So cold and routine, Bentz thought. But you knew her. You knew this woman. “She called me…was scared by some thing she saw. I came right over, found her dead.”

“The vic inside?”

“Yeah. In the kitchen. Back of the house. It’s clear, aside from a cat.”

“I’m on it,” the woman cop said as the wail of another siren cut through the night. She took off for the house.

Across the cul-de-sac a neighbor, a fat man in a tight sweatsuit, drifted onto his front porch, to eye what was happening while the male cop still kept his weapon at ready.

“Don’t move,” the first cop ordered Bentz. The muzzle of his pistol didn’t waver. “’Til we sort this all out, I don’t want you to friggin’ breathe.”

Olivia clicked off the television, stretched on the parlor sofa, and whistled to the dog. She’d stayed up later than usual, watching the end of a sappy movie she’d seen twenty years earlier.

Upstairs she changed into her nightgown, noting in the bathroom mirror that her body showed no signs of pregnancy. She was just turning down the bed, wishing Bentz were home, when the phone rang. “Speak of the devil,” she said to Hairy S, who was poised to jump onto the mattress. “Only someone on the West Coast would call after midnight. Right?”

But caller ID told her it was a restricted call and her insides tensed a bit as she said, “Hello?”

For a second no one responded, and Olivia felt that same drip of fear that was always with her when Bentz was on a dangerous case. “Hello?”

“He’s getting himself into trouble,” a woman’s voice rasped in her ear.

Olivia’s scalp prickled. For a second she couldn’t speak.

“People are dying,” the voice informed her.

“Excuse me? What?” Her heart was suddenly racing, her palms damp. She knew this was the same crank caller who had phoned a few days earlier. The woman intent on rattling her.

“There’s been another murder.” The voice was little more than a hiss.

“No!” Her stomach hit the floor. Rick? Had something happened to Rick? For the love of God, what was this woman saying? No, no…of course the caller had to be talking about Shana McIntyre. Right? “Who is this?” Olivia demanded, some of her fear bleeding into anger.

“Take a wild guess,” the sandpapery voice suggested. “Or ask RJ. He’ll know.”

“Ask whom?”

She heard a hollow, sultry laugh.

Jennifer. Bentz’s first love.

“Why are you doing this?”

Click.

The phone went dead in her hand. Olivia felt herself shaking inside, not from fear, but from rage, white hot and seething. A fury so deep it nearly blinded her. To think that someone would dare mess with her husband, then try to intimidate her in her own home. “You sicko,” she hissed, wishing she could confront the bitch, then slammed down the receiver.

Incensed, she wanted to punch out Rick’s number, then thought better of it. Whoever had called her expected her to go crying to
RJ,
as Jennifer used to call him. The caller wanted Olivia to play the role of the frightened little female.

No way.

Olivia wasn’t going to give the bitch the satisfaction.

For now she’d sit tight. But in the morning she would dial her own phone company and see if they could give her any information about this pathetic call. Until then, if the coward called back, Olivia was ready to tear into her.

“Get over it,” she muttered, either to herself or her tormentor, she didn’t know which.

To cool off, she headed downstairs and double-checked all the locks on the doors and windows. A little obsessive, but it helped her feel safe. Reassured that everything was in order, she climbed the steep steps back to her room, the bedroom she shared with Rick.

She hated to do it, but for the first time in a long, long while, Olivia shut her bedroom window. Somehow it felt like giving in and that really pissed her off, but she flipped the latch, wanting to play it safe. No longer was there a cooling breeze off the bayou slipping into the room, no rustle of the cottonwood leaves, no scent of magnolia drifting inside. Nor could she hear the soothing sounds of chirping crickets and croaking frogs.

Irritated that she had to change her routine for some whacko, she slid between the sheets and patted the mattress. Hairy S didn’t need a second invitation. He hopped onto the bed and burrowed deep under the covers to lie unperturbed next to Olivia. “Good boy,” she said absently as she scratched his furry little head. He let out a soft grunt of pleasure, but Olivia didn’t even smile. She was too aggravated, too frustrated. She thought again of flying to California to tell Bentz about her pregnancy.

She was tired of this separation.

Sick of the secrets.

Maybe she should leave tomorrow. Or at least in the next few days…

Plumping her pillow, she decided that first thing in the morning she’d go online and buy herself a damned airline ticket. She’d fly to L.A. and reconnect with her husband. Whether he wanted to or not.

That was what marriage was all about, wasn’t it? Connection. Communication. Trust. Oh, God…she was losing him; she could feel it in the emptiness of their dark bedroom.

But not without a fight, damn it. She wasn’t going to give up on him.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep, and was about to drop off when the phone blasted again.

“Son of a…”

Before the second ring, she steeled herself for another creepy onslaught and yanked the phone from its cradle. “Now what?” she snapped.

“And I love you, too,” Bentz said.

Her heart softened instantly and her throat grew thick at the sound of his deep voice. God, she missed him. “Hey,” she whispered, tears burning her eyes. Good Lord, she was acting crazy. Tears? It had to be her hormones, right? But it was just so damned good to hear his voice. Clearing her throat and pushing herself to a sitting position, she asked, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing good.”

Her heart turned to stone.

“I’m at the Torrance Police Department.”

“Torrance?”

“Yeah. I thought you should know. Hear it from me.”

“Hear what?” she asked, suddenly frightened.

“Oh, Jesus, Livvie, it’s a mess,” he said and she heard the weariness in his voice. “I got a call from Lorraine, Jennifer’s stepsister, saying she’d spotted Jennifer outside her house. I drove down there and when I got to the house, Lorraine was dead. Homicide.”

“Oh dear God,” Olivia whispered, holding the phone against her head in one hand, twisting the covers with her other. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t! “Jennifer?” she asked, but felt the truth hit her deep inside. Jennifer Bentz, real or imagined, ghost or person, was behind the carnage.

“Who knows?” He explained the events of the night while Olivia, feeling cold as death inside, listened, trying to concentrate while feeling as if a vise were tightening around her chest. Though she no longer had visions of murders from the victim’s eyes, she still felt the mind-numbing dread run through her as she thought of the dead women and the torture they’d gone through.

Bentz was saying that his friend Jonas Hayes had driven down from L.A. He’d been sympathetic when Bentz had complained about having his firearm confiscated and being forced to endure questioning in the interrogation room. For the first time in his life, Bentz had been questioned on the other side of the mirrored window.

The Torrance police had believed his story, though there were still a lot of questions in the air because Bentz had visited both Shana and Lorraine in the past week and since then both women had been murdered. Bentz was, without too many doubts, under suspicion.

Olivia felt sick inside.

“…it took hours,” he said, his voice tense with a hardly-restrained anger, “to explain about the whole Jennifer-thing and how someone wanted me in the L.A. area, the murderer most likely, so he could start his rampage. The long and the short of it is, I’m being used as the excuse, or even motive, for the killer to strike.”