by Lisa Jackson
Bentz leaned on the wall near the stairs and watched as the door to the classroom opened and closed, slamming behind each group of would-be playwrights as they hurried inside.
The purple haze of dusk deepened into night.
No Fernando.
Come on, you bastard. Show the hell up.
But the noise of footsteps and conversation faded as the stream of students dribbled to nothing. Bentz checked his watch. Ten after seven. No one had entered the room for over five minutes.
It appeared that Fernando was a no-show. Again.
“Damn it.” Bentz drained the dregs from his bottle, watched a moth beat itself against the globe light and was about to toss his empty sixteen-ouncer into the trash when he spotted someone running through the mist. A man, he thought. The guy hurried past the gym and cut across a wide expanse of grass.
Bentz froze. Squinted into the night.
As the runner drew closer, Bentz recognized Fernando Valdez. The little prick was actually showing up.
Gotcha, Bentz thought, his pulse elevating. Finally. A break! Every muscle tense, his gaze glued on the kid, Bentz slid silently to a place beneath the stairs. Peering through the steps he fought to hold himself in check. He had to wait until the kid was close enough to nail. He couldn’t risk scaring the little creep off.
Fernando was breathing hard, running as if the devil himself were chasing him, sweating as if he’d been running for a while.
He was close now.
Just a little bit further.
Fingering his badge, Bentz waited for just the right moment.
Fernando reached the staircase.
Now!
Bentz sprang from under the steps. Holding up his badge, he blocking the kid’s path. “Fernando Valdez? Freeze. Police!”
“Shit!” Fernando started to turn, but Bentz was ready and grabbed him by the forearm. Hard enough to make Fernando cry out. “Ouch! Hey! Let go of me!”
“I wouldn’t resist, if I were you,” Bentz warned him, his leg acting up. Not now! His knee couldn’t give out now. “You’ve got no priors, a clean record. You might even have a future if you cooperate now and give up your girlfriend.”
“What? You’re crazy! Let go of me!” Fernando yanked hard on his arm, but Bentz held on tight.
“Look, you’re going to tell me who, what, when, and where, everything you know about this freaky scam involving the Impala and the woman who is pretending to be my ex-wife. Who’s behind it. Where the hell the girl who’s pretending to be Jennifer is and most importantly where my wife is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
“Give it up, Valdez, it’s over.”
Recognition finally registered in the kid’s eyes.
“I mean it.”
“You?” he said, his lips curling in revulsion as he finally put two and two together, putting Bentz’s face to his name. “I should trust you? The pig who killed my brother?”
“You’d better, or I’ll haul your ass into jail so fast your head’ll spin.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Fine. We’ll do this at the station.” Bentz started marching him to the parking lot, figuring he could get some assistance from the guard in the booth there.
As they moved away from Sydney Hall the kid tried to worm away, pulling with such force that Bentz had to will his leg not to buckle as he yanked back.
“Look, don’t think you’re going to get out of this,” Bentz growled. “I’m not messing around.”
“Leave me alone, you prick!”
“Can’t do it.”
“What the hell do you want from me?” The boy’s face was set. Hard. Dusk shadowed the sharp angles of his jaw.
“I already told you, just the truth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, right.” With his free hand, Bentz pulled out his cell phone and pressed the speed dial button for Hayes. It rang. Once. Twice. “Come on, come on!” Three times. “Hell.”
For once the detective picked up. “Hayes.”
“It’s Bentz. I’ve got Fernando Valdez.” They were still marching toward the gym. A few passing students eyed them curiously, but no one stopped to ask what was up.
“What?” Hayes asked. “You found him?”
“At Whitaker College.” He glanced at Fernando. “Seems he didn’t want to miss his seven o’clock.”
Fernando gave a tug and Bentz reciprocated, his fingers digging deep into muscles and tendons.
“Shit, man!” the kid whispered, but he quit trying to break free.
“I’m already on my way,” Hayes said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”
“Just get here,” Bentz said. “I’m armed, but I don’t want to have to hurt him.”
Bentz felt the younger man tense, heard him swear under his breath in Spanish. The kid was finally scared, too.
“Meet us at the west parking lot,” Bentz said. “Near the guard booth.”
“Got it.”
Bentz ended the call. As he tucked his phone back onto his belt, the kid tried once more to break away, and Bentz felt the strain on his sore leg. He growled, wincing. Strain caused beads of sweat to form on his brow.
“I didn’t break any laws,” Valdez insisted. The curl of his lip suggested he was glad to cause Bentz some pain.
“I can’t help you until you help me,” Bentz said. “If you’ve got a brain in your head, you’ll start talking about the girl you loaned your car to. The one you set up to pretend to be my wife.”
“You’re crazy. Loco. I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about!” Fernando insisted, but there was a hint of fear in his dark eyes, a second of hesitation, as if he, too, felt the night and justice closing in.
“It’ll go a whole lot easier if you give it up before you’re arrested.”
“Arrested? Are you out of your mind?”
“You tell me.” They reached the edge of the parking lot. From here he couldn’t see the campus security guard who had been patrolling the area on foot earlier. Where are they when you need them? Bentz wondered, scanning the parking lot as he warned Fernando, “You’ve got about three minutes to talk before Detective Hayes shows up,” Bentz said, wishing he could squeeze the words out of this kid. The truth…the answers…the location where he’d find Olivia. “If I were you, I’d want to go on record as being cooperative. Right now the LAPD wants you behind bars.”
“Let them arrest me,” Fernando said. “I got nothin’ to hide.” He glowered at Bentz with a dark gaze of pure hatred. “But you…look at you, sweating like the pig that you are. I hope whatever you’re going through, it stings like a bitch.”
Bentz didn’t release his hold on Valdez to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The Jennifer imposter had escaped him, but he was not going to let this one go. “Cut the theatrics, kid. You don’t have a chance of seeing sunlight from outside a prison wall if you don’t start talking. Tell me where your girlfriend is, and where are you holding my wife. You’ve been working with her from the start, right? Are you the runner? Do you take care of the dirty work?”
“Again, you’re talking crazy!”
“If I’m crazy, why are you the one going down for kidnapping?” Bentz said, thinking of Olivia trapped somewhere in a prison. His grip on the boy tightened. “Kidnapping…and just maybe a few counts of murder.”
CHAPTER 37
The Blue Burro was hopping, the dinner crowd spilling into the bar where colorful piñatas and fake parrots hung from open beams painted in bold primary colors. Dressed in dark slacks and white shirts with bandannas at their necks, the waitstaff bustled through the connecting rooms, skirting around each other and patrons. They carried trays laden with food or opened up portable serving tables to prepare homemade guacamole. Every so often they stopped serving to assemble, plunk a huge Mexican hat on a customer’s head, and sing a special Mexican birthday song.
The place was festive and fu
n and brimming with customers.
Montoya suspected the police had been here searching for Fernando, so he decided to tread carefully, try to blend in. He pocketed his wedding band and took a seat at the bar, grabbing one of the few open stools next to the doors swinging into the kitchen. He ordered a scotch from a bartender who looked as if she could barely be twenty-one herself.
Lively Mexican music could barely be heard over the hum of conversation and clink of glasses, but Montoya listened intently, trying to hear something that might help him learn more about Fernando Valdez, his sister, the silver Impala, or the woman who had last driven it. Slowly, he sipped his drink, his gaze wandering to the mirror mounted over the bar so that he could unobtrusively watch the action behind him.
For a while inane chatter floated past him. But as he was close to finishing his drink, he heard Fernando’s name come up in bits of conversation floating through the swinging doors from the kitchen.
Something about him not calling in and a waitress complaining about being forced to stay through the crush of dinner to cover his shift. Though she liked the money, she was really inconvenienced and pissed as hell that he, of all people, would make her work a double, which was a real pain in the ass with the baby and all. She’d had to call her mother to bail her out and babysit the kid. Or something close. It was hard to tell, and Montoya only heard parts of the conversation: her side because her voice was so shrill.
Trying not to appear interested, Montoya watched from the corner of his eye. The door to the kitchen swung open again, and Montoya caught a glimpse of the girl with a round face and tight lips. Her near-black hair was streaked with contrasting stripes of platinum and pulled tightly away from her face to a tight knot at her crown. She was seething, and Fernando seemed to be the cause of her exasperation.
“Ouch,” he said to the bartender when the door swung closed again and the girl’s voice still shrilled from the kitchen. “Someone’s not happy.”
“Never. Acacia’s never happy.” She gave him a smile as she filled glasses with ice.
“Not with Fernando,” he said.
She quit scooping and studied him. “You know him?”
He shook his head. “Not that well. I took a couple of classes at the J.C., business classes at night, for my job. Insurance adjustor. Fernando was in one. He mentioned he worked here.”
“He won’t much longer if he doesn’t show up,” she said, shaking her head as she pushed the scoop through the ice and drizzled cubes into glasses set on the counter below the bar. “He’s a player. A ladies’ man. Acacia doesn’t like it. Wants him to settle down.”
“With her?”
The barkeep threw him a look that told him his question was asinine. “Of course with her. He’s the father of her child.”
“Is he? Didn’t tell me about a kid.”
“Figures. Acacia, she claims they were together a couple of years back. They hooked up at a company party and she got knocked up.” She glanced at Montoya. “The kid looks just like him. Fernando isn’t arguing about it, he’s just not stepping up.”
A new wrinkle, Montoya thought, as a slightly flustered waitress hurried to the bar and rattled off her order. “Can you hurry that? I forgot to turn it in and the women at table six are getting pissed.”
“Got it.” The bartender nodded and started mixing drinks, first for the waitress, then for a party of four at the far end of the bar.
Montoya decided he’d probably gotten all the information he could from her and he didn’t want to tip her off by talking too much about a guy he “barely knew.”
The door to the kitchen was pushed open by the same harried waitress and Montoya caught sight of Acacia stepping out a rear door.
Quickly, he paid for his drink, left a generous tip, then wandered outside to the cool night, a breeze blowing across the parking lot. Montoya waited for a rush of traffic to clear, then crossed the street to a convenience store. He bought a pack of Camels and returned to the restaurant.
Hoping to catch Acacia on her break, he headed toward the back of the building, where he caught sight of the small crowd of cooks and waiters clustered under an awning near the delivery door of the Blue Burro. Montoya unwrapped his pack and placed an unlit filter tip in his mouth. He patted his pockets, pretending to be looking for a light as he approached the group of half a dozen workers who were smoking and laughing, telling jokes, and ribbing each other.
Acacia stood among the group, just finishing her cigarette. Under the security light she looked more angry than ever, frowning as she took a final drag.
The laughter and jokes dissipated as he moved closer.
“Can I bum a light?” Montoya asked in Spanish.
One of the cooks, a big guy with a thin moustache and dirty apron, nodded. “Why not?” Shrugging, he flipped a lighter through the air and Montoya caught it on the fly.
“Thanks, man.”
Acacia stubbed out her cigarette and seemed about to walk inside.
Montoya lit up and said, “Anyone seen Fernando?”
Everyone went stone silent.
“No?” Montoya frowned. “I heard he worked here and he owes me money. Thought I might collect.”
At first no one said a word; they’d all apparently heard the cops were searching for him. The big cook in the dirty apron looked as if he wanted to dart inside. He dumped his butt in the overflowing ash can.
“Something wrong?”
No one said anything until Acacia, unable to contain her irritation with the guy, shook her head. “He owes you money? Get in line.”
Montoya flipped the Bic back to the cook. “So he owes you, too?” he asked Acacia as the big guy slipped through the screen door to the kitchen, a shorter waiter on his heels.
“You wouldn’t believe.”
“Try me.” He offered her a cigarette from his pack.
She shrugged, then took one and lit up as a scruffy cat stole through the shadows, slinking under the Dumpster in the back alley.
“He owes me a life, okay? Oh, and his son. He owes his son a life, too.” She drew hard on the cigarette, then shot a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth.
“You have a boy together?”
“Mmm. Roberto…well, I call him Bobby, but Fernando, do you think he cares? Does he come and see his son? Pay me child support?” She sighed. “Not when he’s running around with that woman.”
Montoya didn’t say anything, just took a long drag on his cigarette and listened.
“She’s poisoned him, you know. Driving his car, meeting him at school. College. He was going there to better himself, become an accountant like his sister and then…then he met this…this actress and all of a sudden he wants to write plays!” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, her nostrils flared. “And what does he do for me? Dumps on me, that’s what. Doesn’t even take his own damned shift because he has to be with Jada.” Her lip curled in disgust and she flicked the rest of her cigarette onto the gravel. “You know, if it weren’t for Roberto, I swear, I’d kill that son of a bitch!”
Olivia heard the steady thump, thump from above.
Over the creaking and settling of everything inside her floating prison came the sound of footsteps.
Someone was on the boat.
She didn’t doubt for a second that it was her tormentor, so she didn’t cry out, didn’t want to risk the chance that the psycho would gag her again.
God, if she only had some kind of weapon.
The best she could do would be to fling her jug of water on the woman and soak her through the bars. But other than startle her or infuriate her, it would accomplish nothing.
Suddenly the lights snapped on and Olivia blinked hard, her eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness.
Her captor slowly descended the stairs, lugging a case with her. “So how’re we doing?” she asked with feigned cheer.
Olivia wanted to respond with “just peachy,” but thought better of it. Olivia reasoned that the best way to deal with the woman was to st
and her ground. Not so easy when she was the one confined to this disgusting cage, but if Olivia could keep the woman talking, she could work toward extracting information while letting her abductor vent her frustrations.
If she could keep her cool. Reign in the terror that ate at her.
“So you ate, I see. Good, good. Necessary to keep your strength up.”
Olivia froze. Where was this going? The woman didn’t know about the baby, did she?
Of course not. No one knows. Not even your husband, and the way things are going, he may never know.
She closed her mind to that train of thought. She would find a way out of this damned boat. She had to. For the baby.
“So, hungry?” the woman asked as she pulled a plastic bag from her case. She tossed another wrapped sandwich and plastic bottle of soda into the cage.
Once again Olivia, wanted to slap her.
But she couldn’t.
Keep your cool. Keep her talking.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She smiled to herself, as if amused at playing the part of a smarmy seven-year-old.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I would. And that coy thing you’re doing? It’s not working.”
The woman’s lips twisted in a rare moment of fury. “Oh, I think it is. I’m the one outside the cage.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend…well, make that a close friend of your husband’s,” she said with a trace of bitterness.
“But you knew Jennifer.”
The woman’s eyes darkened.
Olivia had hit a nerve. Why? What was she to Jennifer?
“I really wasn’t too into that bitch,” her captor said as she smiled at a sudden thought, “but I’ve become, over the years, close with some of her friends. You know, the kind that just love to share secrets.”
Olivia’s stomach dropped. “You pumped them for information and then you killed them?” Of course she’d suspected this evil maniac was behind Shana and Lorraine’s deaths but saying it aloud in the gently swaying hold of a boat, confirming what she’d surmised, observing this woman’s smug self-satisfaction made it all the more real. More terrifying.