by Lisa Jackson
Olivia listened for a few minutes, but as she stared through the windshield, she thought of Bernadette’s message that Reggie Benchet wanted to see her.
Why would her father want to connect now, after all these years of no contact? Why? She drove in silence, by rote, maneuvering her Ranger off the freeway. Rain began to fall, the drops flashing in the glare of her headlights. She barely remembered her father; didn’t want to start a relationship now. Lost in thought, she drove down the winding country road and stopped only to pick up the mail at the end of the lane. What would she say if Reggie Benchet called her? What was there to say? As she drove on, her truck’s headlights flashed against the stark trunks of the giant cypress and oaks surrounding the cabin, and as the truck crossed the small bridge to her grandmother’s cottage, she caught her first glimpse of the little house she’d called home all of her growing-up years. A home devoid of a father, and often as not a mother.
But she’d had Grannie. And God, how she missed that little scrap of a woman.
She parked, picked up the strewn groceries, and tossed them into the paper bag with her mail. As she walked to the front door, she could hear Hairy S barking his fool head off. Tonight she didn’t care that he was acting like an idiot as she unlocked the door and made her way inside.
She was still caught up in the events of the past couple of days. Rapid-fire thoughts burst through her mind. Images of the blackened shell of a house where the girl was killed, of a priest with a long sword, of Father James stretching upward on the ladder, of her mother’s bruised face. And then there was the kiss she’d shared with Bentz in this very house, a long, passionate kiss that had touched her heart as well as curled her toes.
Dear God, she was a hopeless romantic. He was a cop, for crying out loud, a homicide dick who looked at her as some kind of freak.
She set the mail on the dining room table, then greeted Hairy S properly, petting him and scratching him behind his ears as he twirled in frantic little circles at her feet. “Need to go out?” she asked as she hung up her coat. The dog yipped. She opened the French doors off the small kitchen. Barking madly, he raced outside, across the porch and into the shadows, hot on the trail of a squirrel or possum or heaven-only-knew-what-other swamp critter. “Avoid the gators, would you?” she called after him, then winked at Chia. “He’s an idiot, isn’t he?”
The parrot squawked and hopped from one perch to the next in her tall cage. Her eyes dilated and retracted above the bright band of red and gold over her beak.
“We women, we’re a whole lot smarter,” Olivia said as Chia made a cooing sound, ruffled her feathers, and showed off her black tongue. “A whole lot.”
Yeah, right. Then why the confusion over the men in your life?
Rather than listen to the nag in her head, Olivia played her telephone messages. The first was from the contractor she’d contacted about the alarm, promising to be out and give her a bid in an installation the Monday after Thanksgiving. The second was Sarah again.
“Olivia. When you have a minute, would you give me a call? I, um, I still haven’t heard from Leo and I know it’s only been a couple of days since I talked to you … He’s probably okay, but damn it, I found a woman’s earring in my bed … can you believe that, in my bed? Crap. What a jerk! You’re right about him … I know it, I know it, I know it.” Olivia’s heart sank. She heard the pain in Sarah’s voice. The humiliation. “Well, um, just call me when you get a chance, okay?”
After Sarah’s call, there was a long hesitation on the phone, as if whoever had called didn’t know what to say, but then he eventually hung up. It was odd, she thought and replayed it again … was there music in the background … a song she recognized? Yeah … something from her past, a Springsteen song … then she recognized it. Tunnel of Love. Ted’s favorite.
“Damn,” she said, her skin crawling. Could her ex-fiancé have really tracked her down? She thought of him, how angry he’d been with her, how he’d followed her to Tucson only to finally give up. After she’d threatened him with a restraining order.
She ignored the call and went on to the next, a message from Dr. Leeds’s secretary asking for a date when she could meet with him again. The last call was from Detective Bentz asking her to call him at the station in the morning. His message was all business, but she smiled at the sound of his voice and pushed aside the eerie feeling that the earlier unspoken message had left. “Silly girl,” she told herself and called the station only to be told that he was gone. She considered trying to locate him at home or his cell, then thought better of it. She glanced at the clock. It was too late to catch anyone at the University, so decided to phone the psychology department in the morning, and rang up Sarah in Tucson, only to hear Sarah’s answering machine pick up. Olivia left a message, hung up the cordless phone, and in the porch light, saw the dog jumping crazily at the back door. “I’m coming,” she said, reaching for the door handle and letting him inside. “Hungry?”
Hairy S danced at his dish. She poured some fresh kiblets into his bowl, then unpacked her groceries and threw a frozen dinner into the microwave.
“Turkey à l’ orange,” she said to the dog. “Only six grams of fat.” Hairy, nose buried deep in his dish, made no indication he’d heard a word. What a day, she thought, as the microwave dinged and she gingerly took off the plastic wrap as orange-smelling steam wafted up. A can of diet cola and her meal was complete. She glanced at the photo of herself and Grannie Gin, the one she’d pointed out to Bentz. She’d been so carefree then, hadn’t really needed a father. She hadn’t yet been to school, hadn’t suffered the embarrassment of not knowing him, hadn’t borne the indignity of learning, compliments of Connie Earnhardt, that he was in prison in Mississippi.
Olivia had only vague images of the sperm donor and those, she was certain, were due to the few old snapshots she’d seen of a man in a sailor’s uniform, a handsome, athletic man who had swept Bernadette Dubois off her seventeen-year-old feet. It had been a whirlwind romance and the details were sketchy. Virginia Dubois hadn’t approved and Olivia, barely in high school, had caught snatches of conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear. While lingering at the foot of the stairs, her ears straining, her fingers curled over the railing, she’d listened over the thudding of her heart.
“He left you, don’t you remember that?” Grannie Gin had demanded while frying bacon. The hickory-smoked scent wafted through the dining room as the strips sizzled noisily in the pan. “And you were pregnant.”
“He didn’t know …” Bernadette had protested, sobbing. “I didn’t tell him.”
“And that was a good thing. The truth came out early enough. I said it then and I’ll say it now, Reginald Benchet is no-count and never will be.” Grannie Gin had sighed heavily. “You’ve got one child left, Bernadette,” Grannie had said and added a handful of onions into the hot grease. Though Olivia couldn’t see what was happening, she smelled the onions, had witnessed the ritual dozens of times. The slices hit the pan with a grease-splattering hiss. “You’d best tend to Livvie. Forget Reggie. He was bad from the day he was born. Branded by the devil, I tell ya. I knew his mother and his grandmother. Both loose women with the morals of alley cats and his daddy … pure evil.”
“You don’t know anything of the sort,” Bernadette had argued, then blew her nose.
“I do. I’ve seen what that man can do.”
“How … oh, for the love of God, don’t tell me you had one of your visions about him.” There was a break in the conversation when all Olivia had heard was the sputter of the grease cooking and a woodpecker tapping on some part of the house. She’d bit her lower lip and watched the lace curtains in the dining room flutter with a breeze. “That’s it, isn’t it?” Bernadette had accused. “You think you’ve seen something when really you’ve just dreamt it up. That’s crazy talk and we both know it. And it’s bad for Livvie. You’re filling her head with all this nonsense and now she’s started mumbling about seein’ things … like she saw her sister die
before Chandra drowned. That’s your fault, you know.”
“The child might have the gift.”
“The gift, the gift, forget the damned gift. It doesn’t exist and I’m sick to death of hearing about it. And let’s face it. Livvie claimed she’d seen Chandra die because she killed her.”
“Hush! That’s nonsense.”
“It is not. They were fighting, weren’t they? Livvie was older. Bigger. She pushed Chandra back in the wading pool and … and … my baby drowned. Right out there,” she’d said, her voice elevating an octave. Olivia, tears filling her eyes, had known her mother was pointing a long, accusing finger past the back porch to the yard. Even a few years later, the scene was as fresh as it had been on the day when the “accident” had happened and she could still see Chandra’s face beneath the water. Grass and dead yellow jackets and crickets had floated on the surface and Chandra’s wide blue eyes stared upward past the scum. She’d fallen into the pool, hitting her head and Olivia hadn’t been able to save her.
“Enough!” Grannie said harshly. “It was an accident. You remember that.”
“And you blame me. Because I was asleep. God, Mama, don’t you think I know that you’ve blamed me? I see it every time I look into your eyes.”
“You weren’t just asleep. You were passed out. Olivia tried to wake you … Oh, well… what’s the use? It’s over and done. Just don’t blame Livvie, whatever you do. And if she claims she has the sight, then I believe her.”
“She just says it to please you. It’s crazy talk and I don’t want her to hear any more about it, do you hear me?” Bernadette insisted. “Do you know how awful it was growing up being called the daughter of the crazy woman? Do you? The kid whose mother could tell the future for a lousy two bucks? People think you’re a lunatic, and I don’t want my daughter exposed to it. You quit fillin’ her head with all these foolish notions, y’hear.”
“Then you start actin’ like a mother. Take care of her. Quit runnin’ around with every man who looks your way.”
“I’m not gonna listen to any more of this.”
“And keep your pants up and your legs crossed.”
“Mama!”
There was a pause. Olivia’s fingers had ached from clutching the banister so hard. “Just protect Olivia,” Grannie had said as the scrape of her cooking fork sounded against the cast-iron pan. “Keep her away from Reggie. Don’t let him come ‘round here.”
“He won’t. We’re divorced.”
“And you’re engaged to another man; you’d best not forget it.” Olivia imagined her grandmother pointing the blackened tines of her bone-handled fork at her daughter. “I’ll do what I think is best for Livvie. Until you prove that you’re a decent mother.”
Silently swiping at her tears with the back of her hand, Olivia had crept up the stairs and buried herself deep in the covers of her bed.
She’d never seen her father after that. Nor much of Bernadette after she’d remarried.
So why the visit today, she wondered now.
After cleaning the few dishes, she whistled to Hairy S and headed up the stairs to the second bedroom, the one she’d slept in growing up. The single bed with its saggy mattress was still in place, tucked under the sloped ceiling, and the fold-out couch her mother used when she stayed was on the opposite side of the room. A bureau with a round mirror stood between the hallway door and the closet and a desk was pushed beneath the single window near a bookcase. It was the desk she’d used growing up, and with the addition of a file cabinet, it now was home to her laptop computer and printer.
She sat at the computer and intended to study; she had two classes in the morning, the last until after Thanksgiving, but as she pulled one of her textbooks from the small bookcase, she felt a chill, deep in the marrow of her bones, the same horrid coldness she’d experienced the night the girl had died. And the other night.
Oh, God, was he doing it again? So soon? She swallowed back her fear and glanced out the window to the dark night. A tiny sliver of moon, visible through the leafless branches of the trees, hung low in the sky. Maybe she was mistaken … she didn’t actually “see” anything, no, this was just a feeling, a dark sensation that crawled across her skin. Movement. That was it. She felt him. He was moving.
And hunting again.
The darkness closed in on him and like a creature of the night, his senses became sharper. Keener. The Chosen One heard his own heartbeat, smelled the scents of perfume and stale smoke lingering in the damp air, felt the sharp pang of blood lust coursing through his veins.
Find her. Take her … it’s time.
Running on silent footsteps he loped across the wet grass of the campus and heard the strains of jazz emanating from an open window in one of the dorms. Knots of students tarried together and the sweet smell of marijuana settled in the dark alleys. He rounded a corner to a more secluded part of the campus, a back alley that was sometimes used by students rushing into the city.
He felt inside his pocket, assured himself that his weapon was at his fingertips and a smile slid over his mouth. A stun gun. Silent. Quick. But not deadly. So perfect for abduction. He knew she should be coming this way. Had overheard her conversation in class.
But the killing couldn’t be here … no … He needed privacy, time to create the ritual. His mouth went dry at the thought and his crotch tightened, a hard-on swelling even as he ran. Just the thought of it … watching her beg for mercy, pleading with him when he knew that her fate was sealed.
He saw her in the distance.
Alone.
Head bent against the rain and wind.
His fingers surrounded his little weapon as he crept through the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment. He licked his lips and reminded himself to be patient. He couldn’t make a mistake. Not tonight.
Not ever.
After all, he had a pact with God.
She looked up as he approached. Smiled in recognition. Started to speak as he pulled the gun from his pocket and shot. She gasped. Her purse dropped to the ground. He grabbed it and caught her before she fell. Her hood slid off and her black hair framed her ghost-white face. “What—?” she whispered hoarsely. “No-” She could barely catch her breath.
He grinned as he swept her easily into his arms and carried her to his older car. “Be quiet, Catherine,” he whispered, “or I’ll have to punish you again.”
“No—I’m not—”
He set her down and gave her another long, hard jolt. She cried out, but he picked her up again. “I mean it. Behave.” She was whimpering now. Scared. Would probably piss all over his trunk.
He opened the latch and the lid sprang open. She was fighting him with what little strength she had and it only served to make him harder. He thought that just this once he could allow himself the pleasure of her, but knew that God would disapprove.
He had to remember his mission.
“Don’t,” she cried and he zapped her one final time, lusting after her as her body convulsed, showing off her white neck. She would make the perfect sacrifice. He slammed down the lid of the trunk.
God would be pleased.
“Hey, man, don’t you ever go home?” Montoya asked, slipping his arms through the sleeves of his black leather jacket as he passed by Bentz’s office. “It’s Sunday night.”
“Don’t you?” Rick leaned back in his desk chair and it creaked in protest. He had the window cracked open. The sounds of the city, horns blaring, voices filtering skyward and a mournful tune from a saxophone slipped inside.
Montoya flashed his knock-'em-dead smile and strolled into the room. He set a hip on the corner of Rick’s desk. “Not unless I have to. I’m a player.”
“You’d like to think so.”
“Hey, I know it.”
Cocky son of a bitch. Make that young, cocky son of a bitch. He’d learn. Montoya was a good cop, but he was still green enough to think that he could change the world, that what he did mattered, that justice would always be served. He was clev
er enough, downright smart. The problem was Montoya still had more balls than brains. “If you say so. I thought you had a steady these days.”
“I do,” Montoya said with a grin. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t look, does it?” He glanced at his watch. “Why don’t you call it a night? I’ll buy you a beer. Even the alcohol free shit, though I don’t know why you bother.”
“And make you keep the ladies waiting?” Bentz arched a knowing eyebrow. “I’ll take a rain check.”
Montoya clucked his tongue as he headed for the stairs. “You’re missin’ out,” he called over his shoulder as he disappeared.
“So be it.” Rick glanced at the computer screen glowing on his desk. He had several cases he was working on, one where a battered woman had grabbed her husband’s hunting rifle and opened up on him rather than subject herself to another beating and another arson case where one of the owners died in the blaze. Then there was the knifing, a fight between gang members that left one dead, the other barely hanging on.
But Bentz had put those cases out of his mind for the moment. Because as he’d skimmed the evidence report on the Jane Doe in the fire one more time, something had clicked. A sharp little spark in his brain. He remembered what it was that had been nagging at him.
The saint’s medals.
This wasn’t the first homicide scene where a chain with a medal had been left. There had been two others that he remembered, perhaps more that he didn’t yet know about. He typed in a case file on his keyboard and within seconds crime scene photos of the recent victim flickered on the monitor. His jaw tightened as he stared at the nude body of a woman not much older than his own daughter. The victim had been found in her apartment in the Garden District. Her date of death July twenty-second. Her name had been Catherine Adams, if you went by the DMV or Social Security Administration, but she’d also been known as Cassie Alexa or Princess Alexandra. It all depended if you knew her as a pretty, part-time student at Tulane, or a sexy exotic dancer down on Bourbon Street, or as a hooker. No matter what the name, she’d been murdered. Strangled. And posed. Lying facedown on an area rug, her arms stretched outward, her head placed near a wall that was decorated with a picture of Christ, her toes pointed to an opposing wall where a portrait of Martin Luther King hung. Her head had been shaved, a skein of her own hair wound through her fingers, her mocha-colored naked body reeking of patchouli.