by Lisa Jackson
“They never saw it coming.”
Olivia wanted to throw up.
Stay cool. Use your wits.
“And they just got in the way.” She was assembling a camera and tripod, adjusting the legs, securing them with clamps she screwed into the floor and clipping all the pieces into place. Her nose wrinkled and she looked around. “God, it still smells down here. My father, he used to haul his dogs from port to port. Great Danes.”
“So you called me? You’re the one behind the phone calls, right?” Olivia asked, forcing the woman on topic, trying to learn more.
“My, God, you are just so sharp,” her captor mocked. “Your IQ must be in the stratosphere. Except you can’t be all that clever, can you, considering the circumstances? Here—” She bent down, flipped the photo album to a new page, one of Rick and Jennifer’s wedding, the bride in a white lacy dress and long train, the groom, so much younger than he was now, proud and handsome in a black tux. Again, there were blood drops on the plastic, drops that had been drizzled and smudged over their faces. “Here’s a good one.” She nudged the book forward with her toe and turned back to her camera.
Olivia’s skin crawled. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Setting up things so that you can pay.”
“Pay?”
“For your husband’s sins.”
“I don’t understand.”
The woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled smugly. “Of course you don’t.”
“Listen. Why don’t you just let me go?”
“Oh, right, after twelve years of planning, of waiting, of searching for just the right person to play the part of Jennifer, I should give it up. Because you think it would be a good idea?” She stared straight at Olivia, her eyes narrowed and cold as a demon’s touch. “You don’t get it, do you? I want Bentz to pay. To feel the pain that I felt. To know what it’s like to lose someone dear, to go forward each and every day of his life realizing that he not only let you die, but he destroyed his own life as well. To be alone, totally and infinitely alone.” She was working herself up, talking more loudly, more vehemently, more passionately, her face reddening, her fists clenching.
She had to visibly force her rage down, straighten her fingers. When she did, she spoke in a harsh whisper. “That man put me through hell, ‘Livvie,’ and now it’s his turn. Time for him to feel a little pain. To know what it’s like. He never knew that I killed Jennifer, didn’t so much as suspect. Some great detective he is! All his awards for acts of heroism? Ridiculous!” As if reading the shock registering on Olivia’s face, she let out a disgusted laugh. “That’s right. You didn’t know, did you? Jennifer is still rotting in her grave, at least she was until she was exhumed.
“It’s her all right, in the coffin. That sick, twisted bitch who had Bentz wrapped around her little finger. He loved her, you know. Was obsessed with that two-timing slut! It was sickening. Despite the fact that she cheated on him over and over again…fucking betrayed him, he loved her.” Still assembling the camera, she was shaking in rage. “Even after her affair with his half brother, a goddamned priest, the real father of his kid! Jesus H. Christ, he still came back for more. Talk about a masochist!”
This woman was really off her nut. Filled with hate and a craving for revenge.
“It’s all ancient history,” Olivia pointed out.
“Don’t you even want to know how I did it? How I took care of her?”
“Jennifer.”
“Of course, Jennifer! We’re not talking about the friggin’ queen, are we? It was so easy,” she bragged. “I doctored her pills, and her vodka. Waited. Then followed her as she drove and made certain she had an accident.” She paused, savoring the memory. “It was an impersonal attack, I know. The coward’s way out with the car, chasing her down, freaking her out. But it worked.”
“You really killed her.” Olivia wanted to hear the complete confession.
“Uh-uh-uh. She killed herself. Remember? And as for the suicide note, I didn’t even know about it. It was something she’d written a while before. Not very stable, our Jennifer. But Bentz…he just couldn’t get enough of her. Divorce wasn’t enough for him. He had to start up with her again. Some men just never learn.” She chuckled coldly. “But he will. Tonight.”
Sick inside, fear congealing her blood, Olivia could barely speak, but she forced the question over her lips. “What the hell did he do to you?”
“You really don’t know?” She paused, thought for a second. “He left me. Not once, but twice, for the same bitch that kept breaking his heart.” She looked toward the wall, but seemed to focus on the middle distance, to a place only she could see. “I loved him, I took him back, I trusted him, believed in him…” Her voice faced and tears welled in her eyes. “And he left me. Alone. And after Jennifer died, the son of a bitch poured himself into a bottle. Would he let me help him? Hell, no!” She sniffed loudly, straightened her shoulders. “That coward left L.A., went to New Orleans, and found you.” She was shaking her head. “He never looked back. And you, the wife who should know all his secrets, you don’t even know who I am, do you?”
That was the truth. Olivia couldn’t place her.
The spurned lover said ruefully, “Maybe it’s best this way. You don’t need to know,” she said. “But Bentz. He will. He’ll get it and he’ll live with it for the rest of his life.”
Olivia stared at the camera and felt a wave of nausea. Oh, God, she was going to be sick. From the pregnancy? From fear? “What are you planning to do?” she asked in a voice that she didn’t recognize as her own.
“What does it look like? I’m going to film. Well, it’s not really film, all digital, but I’m going to make a movie of you.”
Olivia flashed to all the prisoners of wars she’d seen with the enemy, forced to say things they didn’t mean, beliefs they’d never held, at the point of a gun or risk of being beheaded. She started to shake inside and had to talk herself down. Think rationally. Nothing had happened yet.
“It’s for posterity.” Satisfied that the camera and tripod were secure, the woman checked the viewfinder, and squinting, angled the lens to her satisfaction. “There we go, now we can begin.” She flipped a switch and turned the camera on, then she stood in front of the cage, just out of Olivia’s reach, but in front of the camera’s eye.
“Hi, RJ,” she said, without any of the breathy tone she’d used in her phone calls. “I hope you find this, along with the boat and your wife.”
What? Oh God, no!
“You should,” she continued. “The camera’s not only waterproof, it’s meant to film underwater. As you can see, I captured Olivia…She’s been my guest here on the Merry Anne for over a day now and I was hoping she and I could hang out a little longer, but…gee, I think I’d better not waste any more time and the truth of the matter is, she bores me.” She looked at Olivia. “Say ‘hi’ to Ricky, Livvie. Wave. Show him that you’re fine. So far.”
Olivia didn’t move. Not only was she scared to death but she wouldn’t give this lunatic the satisfaction.
“Oops, seems like Livvie is in a bad mood. Maybe she’ll talk when I leave. You’ll have quite a bit of time alone while I sail out into open water.
“I could kill her as easily as I did the others. My good friends Shana and Lorraine and Fortuna. I did miss Tally, but you know, sometimes you just can’t win ’em all, and I do have Livvie, now, don’t I? They helped me, those friends of Jennifer’s. They helped me learn so much about you, RJ, about Jennifer and your life together. Poor Jennifer. She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Told her friends every detail, from what you did together over the weekend to where you first made love. And her friends, they remembered.”
Olivia was dying inside, feeling the betrayal, knowing this psycho set them up to be used, then murdered.
“So you killed them?” Olivia said as the boat rocked slowly, creaking a bit with the motion of the water.
“Of course!” She shot Olivia an irritated gl
ance that suggested Olivia was a moron. Or worse. “For a shrink, you sure have trouble connecting the dots. I had no choice but to kill those women. They might have put two and two together and ruined everything. And this way, the police department had to look at your husband again as the doer.”
“So you murdered five people, three of Jennifer’s friends and those twin girls.”
“Please!” She turned then, her face florid. “I did not have anything to do with that. That idiotic Twenty-one killer, he killed those twins. A repeat of the killings all those years ago, the Caldwell girls. That sick son of a bitch picked one helluva time to resurface,” she said, visibly shaking. “I can’t believe you would even suggest I would be a part of that! He’s a serial killer; gets his rocks off by killing innocents.”
“Not like you,” Olivia said, trying to keep her voice cool and calm.
“This is all part of a plan. It’s all about Bentz understanding.”
“But you killed innocents as well.”
“Shana McIntyre? Innocent? Never. Jennifer’s friends, they had to die. It’s different.”
“Dead is dead.”
“This is revenge. The Twenty-one, he’s just a sicko. He deserves to die.”
“You’re as sick as he is.”
For that she caught a malicious glare. “You stupid, stupid bitch. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You just don’t get it, do you?” She took in a big calming breath, her hands clenching and un clenching into fists as if she might fly into a rage at any second.
Which would be fine. Olivia would rather take her chances in a one-on-one fight than be trapped in this god-awful, foul-smelling cage.
“This isn’t about the Twenty-one, you idiot! Not tonight. This is about you,” she said, then looked into the camera. “And you, RJ. This—” She swept her arm in a gesture that indicated the hold with its cage. “This is the final act. It ends tonight. All the charades, all the pretending, all the years of waiting. All the time of being alone.” Her voice quivered a bit: “It’s finally going to be over. And do you know how?” She gloated into the camera. “Well, let me tell you.” Her smile widened. “I’m going to sink this boat. Tonight.”
“What?” Olivia gasped. A new terror crushed the breath in her lungs. Oh, dear God, she couldn’t be serious. But she knew in her heart that this woman, this killer with her vendetta against Bentz, was just demented enough to pull it off. “No,” she whispered, her insides turning to water. “Please, please, no.”
“Oh, yeah, I think so. The Merry Anne is sailing for the last time. With you on it.” Turning to face the tripod again, she added to Bentz, “I’m going to make sure this boat sinks slowly, and the camera will be trained on your wife, so that you can watch as the hold slowly but surely fills, water inching upward. Olivia, she’ll be cold at first, shivering and knowing that there is no escape, but she’ll try to find a way out, be desperate to save herself. You’ll see her panic and scream and cry, see each detail of her torturous, pathetic struggle as she gasps and chokes for air, treads water, forcing her lips and nose above the rising water, as she takes her last, dying breath and accepts her fate. You’ll witness the terror in her eyes, Bentz, and know that her fate was in your hands.”
“No! Oh, please.” Olivia was frantic. She had to stop this woman. “You can’t do this,” she said without thinking. “I’m…I’m pregnant.” Surely this sicko wouldn’t knowingly take the life of an unborn child.
“Impossible.” But she was shaken. “Bentz is sterile.”
“I’m not kidding! I’m going to have a baby! Another innocent life. You don’t want to be responsible for something like that.” It took all of Olivia’s strength to steel herself and not reveal that she was crumbling inside. “You don’t want to be a serial killer, right? A lunatic like the Twenty-one killer. You said that yourself. You’re different!” She was trying to find any way to reason with the killer.
“A baby?” she said, almost to herself, disbelieving. “Bentz’s? No…but…”
“It’s true!” Maybe she was making headway, appealing to this woman’s warped sense of values. “Please, really, you don’t want to hurt an unborn child.”
Still blindsided, the woman narrowed her eyes on Olivia. “What a sick, pathetic lie. You are not pregnant!”
Olivia moved closer. “I am. I’m going to have a baby!”
Her captor waved wildly in the air to dismiss the thought, but her equilibrium was shaken, her voice tinged with a new anger. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if by some miracle you are with child, well, all the better. Bentz can watch you and the baby die, all in living color. Hear that, ‘RJ’? Her death, and this fictitious baby’s, will be on tape and you can relieve her agony and fear and desperation over and over again. This is just so perfect. Worth every minute of the damned wait.”
“No! Listen, I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this, but please, don’t,” Olivia said, screaming inside, but trying to keep her voice level. She saw that pleading for her life only fed into this maniac’s ego; she had to try a different tack, a diversion. “Tell me what your problem is with Bentz. Maybe I can talk to him—”
“Talk to him? Haven’t you been listening to me?” The woman clapped her hands over her ears, as if she needed to hold on so her head would not burst. “Don’t you get it?”
Olivia sensed that her captor was at a meltdown point, but she re fused to cower. She kept her gaze trained on her would-be killer. “Don’t do this,” she said evenly. “Please. Don’t—”
“Enough!” Her round eyes blazed with renewed fury. “You can blabber and beg all you want, but I’m not falling for it. Got that? It’s over. You’re going to die, ‘Livvie,’ and you’re going to die tonight.”
Jaw set, seething, but in control again, she double-checked the camera, then hurried up the stairs.
This time, she left the lights on.
Now the camera caught Olivia’s every move.
Staying perfectly still she heard noises above and then the sound of a big engine roaring to life. The floor below her shifted as the boat began to move.
“Oh God,” she whispered, spurred into motion. She paced the perimeter of the cage, checking and rechecking each bar, knowing they were sturdy. Immoveable.
No way out.
Her blood congealed as she considered her fate: Doomed to die at the hands of this twisted, deranged maniac, her baby never having a chance at life.
Olivia’s throat grew thick with regret.
She would drown on camera.
Her death recorded for posterity.
To be used to torture Rick Bentz for the rest of his life.
She knew it.
The maniac knew it.
And soon, unless some miracle occurred, it would be over.
Then Bentz would know it, too.
CHAPTER 38
Bentz drove back to the So-Cal wired on caffeine, adrenaline, and just plain lack of sleep. And overriding all that sick energy was fear for Olivia. He was scared to death. The minutes were ticking by and he knew nothing more than he had earlier tonight.
Fernando Valdez had stonewalled them.
Bentz had stood on the other side of the glass ready to tear his hair out as the kid was interrogated for three hours. Hayes and Martinez went after him with questions peppered with some indication of the trouble he might be in, but Fernando responded by slouching in the chair, folding his arms, closing up.
“Who was this woman you loaned your sister’s car to? The silver Impala?” Martinez asked.
“Just…someone I know. A girl at school.”
“You got a name?”
“Jada. I don’t know her last name.”
That sent Bentz flying into the squad room, asking Bledsoe—who, unfortunately, was the only detective available—to run a search on a female, first name Jada, with a criminal record. Back in the interrogation room, Martinez was playing the good cop.
“Nice of you to help her out when she’s low on cash and
everything,” she said. “Sounds like you’re a good friend. But did you know that Jada has been linked to several murders?”
Unbroken, sullenly Fernando shook his head.
“Did you help her kill some of those people?” Martinez asked. Her dark eyes softened. “Maybe you didn’t realize it. Maybe you just gave her a ride somewhere, not knowing what she was doing.” She shrugged. “As far as you know, you’re just helping out a friend.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t kill anyone.”
Finally a response.
“Come on, Fernando,” Hayes nudged. “We’ve got your fingerprints now.” The kid had tightened up earlier when Hayes printed him. “I’m sure they’ll match up with prints found in the Impala. Maybe even with prints found at some of the crime scenes.”
“No! I swear.” Fernando turned his body away from them, refolding his arms across his chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No one is saying you did, Fernando,” Martinez said in a soothing voice. “Your sister, your professors…everyone says you’re a good kid. That’s why I was thinking you might help us. We need help finding someone. A woman named Olivia Bentz. Blond hair, dark eyes. Did you ever meet her, Fernando?”
Bentz had watched through the one-way mirror and felt his life unraveling while the kid shook his head no.
“Olivia Bentz is missing,” Hayes said, “and we have reason to believe your friend Jada is involved in her kidnapping. What can you tell us about that?”
“Nothing!” Valdez insisted.
Frustrated, Bentz had wanted to smash his fist through the glass and curl his fingers around the kid’s throat to shake the truth from him. Since Fernando hadn’t lawyered up, the detectives continued questioning him, and Bentz stayed for every second of the tedious process.
Bledsoe checked on the name Jada, but hadn’t found any females with that name who had been booked in the past eighteen months. Another dead end. Bledsoe would get Jada’s photo ID and records from the college in the morning, but he couldn’t work on that until the college’s administrative offices opened.