Malice

by Lisa Jackson

  But there weren’t many people who knew that fact. At least not here in New Orleans. Only Montoya and herself. So the call must’ve come from somewhere else, and she’d bet her life savings that it had originated in Southern California.

  Bentz, it seemed, was rattling a cage or two. Which was what he’d hoped to do.

  As she set the phone onto the nightstand, she thought about calling her husband and explaining what had happened, but decided to let it go.

  For tonight.

  Instead, she tossed back the covers and padded to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water and drank it down. She stared out the window over the sink to the backyard, watching the play of moonlight through the cypress trees.

  Afterward, she set her glass in the sink and double-checked that all the doors were locked and the windows latched.

  Only then, did she return to bed.

  She glanced at the digital read out one last time and decided that in five hours she’d call her husband and find out what the hell was going on.

  Bentz stayed up listening to news reports, soaking up any information he could find on the Internet. Why the hell had the Twenty-one killer or some damned copycat decided to strike again, after all these years? It was too late to call Olivia, so he spent several restless hours thinking about the case surrounding Delta and Diana Caldwell’s murder. It had been a travesty, a horror for the shell-shocked, grief-ridden parents and older brother, another D name…Donny or Danny, no. Donovan! That was it. The girls’ brother had been eight years older and at the time of the tragedy had been forced to hold his shattered family together. Apparently it was an effort destined to fail, as years later Bentz had learned through the grapevine that the kid’s parents had divorced.

  When Bentz closed his eyes he could still see how the victims had been posed: naked, facing each other, bound in a red ribbon that reminded him of blood. Bentz had nearly thrown up at first look.

  Whenever he thought back on the Caldwell murders he worried that he hadn’t given the investigation 100 percent of his focus. He had worked the case as best he could, considering his own mental state, but it wasn’t enough. Bledsoe was right. Bentz had left Trinidad holding the bag. And now, it seemed, two other girls had lost their lives to the same maniac.

  Maybe if he’d been more on his game with the Caldwell twins, the new double homicide wouldn’t have happened and two innocent girls would still be alive today.

  After a sleepless night Bentz decided to offer up his help on the new double homicide investigation. He knew he wouldn’t really be a part of the LAPD, but certainly he could help, “consult,” as it were, as he’d been the lead at one time in the Caldwell twins’ murder.

  He said as much when he called his old partner for information.

  “Shit, Bentz. You know I can’t talk about this,” Trinidad said. “As for the reasons you came back to L.A.-I heard some of it from Hayes-I can’t be a part of it. I got to think about my retirement. I can’t do anything to screw it up, and I’m not talking about the new murder case. Not with you. Not with my wife. Not with the press. Not with any-damned-body.”

  “I worked the first case.”

  “That’s assuming they’re related.”

  “They are.”

  “You know this because of a news bulletin, a thirty-second sound bite at eleven? Give it a rest, Bentz. I gotta be straight with you. No one here wants your help.”

  Bentz didn’t give up. Remembering the Caldwell twins’ tragedy spurred him into making another call. This time to Hayes.

  “I figured you’d call,” the detective said. “This is police business, Bentz. Got nothing to do with you. I’m already sticking my neck out for you as it is. So, don’t even ask. We’ll all be a lot better off.”

  Bentz hung up, but he wasn’t able to leave it alone. So he phoned Andrew Bledsoe.

  He wasn’t pleased to get a call.

  “Jesus, Bentz, you’ve got a lotta nerve calling here after how you left me and everyone in the damned department hangin’. Now, you want information? Are you out of your frickin’ mind? You know I can’t talk to you. Shit, didn’t you do enough damage back when you were on the force? You remember that time, don’t you? When it was legal for me to talk to you? I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it any more now. What is this? You calling me? Why? No one else will talk to you?” Bledsoe raged. “Shit, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t you? Don’t forget, dickhead, you almost got canned, so you can damned well read about this one in the papers like everybody else!”

  Bledsoe hung up, still muttering under his breath.

  Bentz hadn’t expected anyone to bend over backward for him. Nonetheless he was frustrated as hell that he wasn’t allowed any information about a double homicide that in all probability was linked to his last case with the department, the murder investigation he wasn’t able to solve.

  He was stewing about it when Olivia called. On her way into the shop late, she had decided to phone him around nine West Coast time. At first, his wife was evasive about the reason for the early morning call. But Bentz suspected something was up and said as much.

  “Can’t I just phone to say I miss you?” she asked.

  “Any time.” But it really wasn’t her style.

  “I’m just hoping that you’ll wrap this up soon. How’s it going?”

  “Not as fast as I’d hoped,” he admitted. He didn’t tell her about seeing Jennifer at the old inn; he didn’t want to discuss it with anyone until he knew what he was dealing with, had some concrete evidence that she’d been there. However, he did fill her in on the case of the murdered twins and how it seemed to mirror the last case he’d worked on in L.A. twelve years ago.

  “And you think because you returned to California this sicko is on the hunt again?” she asked, skeptically.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.

  “Does the LAPD want your help?”

  He laughed. “What do you think?”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse. They want me to get out of Dodge, I think.”

  “Are you considering it?”

  “Well, yeah, I’m thinking about it, being as you miss me so badly.”

  “Hey. Don’t put this on me. You’re on some kind of mission out there, so you stick it out until you’ve done whatever it is you have to do. I’m fine here. I’m not going to have it on my head that you returned for me and left unfinished business. Uh-uh. No way.”

  “I’ll wrap it up as soon as I can,” he promised. And then they hung up and he was left with the feeling that Olivia was holding out on him. He sensed that something more was going on and with all that was happening here in L.A., he was concerned. New Orleans was nearly two thousand miles away, but he’d seen “Jennifer” in Louisiana more than once, and the death certificate had been sent to the NOPD, so whoever was behind this knew him inside out and probably realized that he was married.

  Although Bentz knew he was the primary target of this head game, whatever it was, the easiest way to hurt him was through those he loved, which only added to the worry gnawing a deep hole in his gut.

  Like it or not, he had the feeling that Olivia or Kristi could be at risk.

  By noon he’d drunk several cups of the coffee brewed in the motel’s office and bought a copy of every paper he could find in the boxes on the street. He had spent hours reading news accounts of the double homicide and had learned the names of the victims and some of the details of the crime. Of course some information was missing, kept under wraps by the LAPD so that they could flush out the true killer when the time came. Sick as it was, attention-seekers looking for their fifteen minutes of fame sometimes claimed responsibility for vile acts. They lived off the attention, the media frenzy, or were deranged enough to believe they had actually performed the crime, no matter how horrendous. A double homicide of this nature got a lot of press and therefore attracted a lot of false claims.

  It was all a pain in the ass.<
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  Montoya had spent his morning finishing the paperwork on a homicide. The night before there had been a knifing at the waterfront just off the river walk, not far from the New Orleans Convention Center. The victim had died, but with the help of witnesses the killer had been apprehended. Montoya was finishing the crime report when Ralph Lee called from the lab. Despite being ankle-deep in forensic evidence attached to real cases, Lee had taken the time to examine and test the death certificates and pictures that had been sent to Bentz.

  “There’s not a lot you can work with,” he said as Montoya leaned back in his chair, stretching out his neck and shoulder muscles. “It looks like the photographs haven’t been tampered with. I haven’t been able to see any evidence of alteration.”

  Montoya didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  “What we were able to determine was that the car the subject was getting into was a GM product, probably a Chevy Impala. You said you thought the shots were taken in California and that’s consistent with the vegetation, license plate numbers, and street signs. The one we saw was for Colorado Boulevard. I enlarged the photos so that I could read the headlines on the newspapers and then I double-checked. The USA Today and L.A. Times were dated two weeks ago on Thursday, and the headlines are consistent for that date. We tried to get a reflection of the photographer from some of the shots, but couldn’t get any images. I have a few partial license plates for cars parked in the area and I listed them along with make and model in case your shutterbug inadvertently caught his own car on film, assuming it wasn’t the Impala.

  “As for the death certificate, no DNA was found on the envelope flap. We ran the fingerprints through the national database. No matches on AFIS. The red ink is consistent with ink found in a Write Plus pen, and they’re sold all over the country and into Canada, but are more popular in the western states. The document-the death certificate-is authentic and over ten years old; we can tell by the paper. That’s it.” Lee sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t know if that helps you or not.”

  “You guys went above and beyond,” Montoya said. “This will definitely help.”

  “Good. I’ve got the report. I can e-mail it to you or you can pick up a hard copy when you swing by to retrieve the original documents, since this isn’t an active investigation.”

  “I’ll get them this afternoon,” Montoya promised and hung up. He’d done all he could for Bentz and his damned ghost hunt. Montoya would call and pass the information on. Then, maybe Bentz would wise up and come home to his real flesh-and-blood wife.

  Time to give up looking for a woman who no longer existed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Lorraine Newell lived in an aging tri-level home on a cul-de-sac in Torrance, south of the heart of L.A. The apricot-colored paint was blistering and peeling in the sun, and the lawn was patchy, the green grass bleached in spots where the sprinklers hadn’t quite reached. A far cry from the palace Lorraine, a would-be princess, had hoped for.

  Although Bentz was fifteen minutes early, the minute he punched the doorbell the door flew open. It was as if Lorraine had been perched on the steps off the entryway, waiting for the sound of the melodic chimes to announce his arrival.

  “Rick Bentz,” she said, shaking her head, dark hair brushing her chin. Jennifer’s stepsister hadn’t aged a day since he’d last seen her. Like minor royalty, she still carried herself imperiously despite the fact that she was barely five-five in heels. Lorraine had never liked him and had never made any bones about the fact. Today she didn’t bother with a fake smile or hug, which was fine by Bentz. No reason for pretense.

  “You’re the last person I’d ever expect to show up here,” she said.

  “Things change.”

  “Do they?” She moved out of the doorway and led him into a living room that was straight out of the late eighties, when her husband Earl, a car dealer, had been alive. Bentz remembered the plaid chairs clustered around a long forest green couch, a marble-faced fireplace surrounded by a wall covered in mirrored panes that gave the room a weird funhouse feel. Fake plants gathered dust, the coffee table books of California and wines were the same ones he remembered from nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

  “Sit,” she said, waving him into a chair while she took a seat on the arm of the couch. She was dressed in tight fitting jeans, a black tank top, and ballet slippers. Not exactly what Bentz would call business attire, appropriate for a dinner with a client, but then again he never had understood the studied casualness of Southern Californians.

  Lorraine got right to the point. “What is this about Jennifer’s death?” Using finger quotes to emphasize her point, she said, “You know her accident never set well with me. And I never bought the whole suicide angle. You know that. She was a drama queen, but a car accident?” She shook her head. “Not Jen’s style. Pills, maybe…but I think even that is a stretch. Though she was a little self-destructive, I grant you, I couldn’t see her actually taking her own life.” She looked up at Bentz. “Jennifer was the sort of person who might have attempted suicide as an attempt to grab attention. But to actually drive into a tree? Let her body be thrown through glass? Mangle herself? No way. She didn’t have the guts for a stunt like that. She could have survived, been scarred, or crippled.” Lorraine shook her head emphatically as she folded her arms around her midriff. “Uh-uh.”

  He showed her copies of the pictures, but held back on the death certificate.

  “Oh dear God.” She was shaking her head as she eyed the photographs of her stepsister. “These…these really do look like Jen. I mean, yeah. But it has to be an imposter; someone who looks so much like her that one of your enemies, maybe someone you sent to prison, decided to play a practical joke on you.” She looked up. “Seems as if it worked.”

  If you only knew. He thought about the woman in his backyard, the dreams he’d had of Jennifer. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”

  “A few pictures of a look-alike do not a case make. They wouldn’t bring you all this way.” She frowned. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something that drove you to come back to California.”

  “I have a little time off.”

  “Another department trying to get rid of dead wood?”

  “It’s not just the photos, Lorraine. I think I’ve seen her.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” She pressed a slender hand to her forehead. “This is really getting nuts. So, what? You want to know if I’ve come into contact with her? Maybe gone out for a drink? Had her over for dinner?”

  He didn’t say anything; he often found it was best to let people rant and rave. He frequently learned more from silence than from a series of direct questions. “Well, you’ve really lost it this time. This is just plain nuts.” She paced over to the plate-glass window that dominated the living room. Outside, a hummingbird was flitting along the deep purple blooms of a climbing vine that wound its way to the eaves.

  “You know, Rick,” she said. “You’ve lost it. Really. If Jennifer were really alive, I would know it. She would have contacted me. Where has she been hiding all these years? And if she wasn’t the woman in the car, who was? Why did you identify the wrong woman? Don’t tell me you were drunk.”

  “Of course not! I thought…I still think she was behind the wheel.”

  “But now you’re not sure? Because of photos of a woman who looks like her? Because you think you saw her?”

  Bentz ignored the question. “What do you remember about the last time you saw her?”

  “Oh, God, do you really want to go into all that?” she asked, retracting into her hard shell.

  “Sure, Lorraine. Why mince words?”

  Her lips pulled into a knot of dislike and her nostrils flared. “Okay, she did call me a few days before the accident. She was obviously troubled, maybe drunk, I don’t know. But not right. When I asked her what was wrong, she blamed you. Said you didn’t believe that she loved you, and it was eating away at her. I knew about the infidelity, of course, but for some reason she
had it bad for you. Well…you, and the priest. Your half brother, was it?”

  Bentz’s guts twisted, but he kept his expression bland. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing that involves you. Sometime I think back and wish she’d stayed with Gray. If she would have stuck it out with Alan Gray, she’d still be alive today. Alive and rich. Instead…” She shrugged. “I told her she was making a mistake when she broke it off with Alan, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Getting to his feet, he tried not to wince, didn’t want to let on to Lorraine that he felt any pain whatsoever.

  As she walked him to the door, she said, “You know, even if Jennifer is alive, why the hell are you doing this? Give it up, already. Let sleeping dogs, or dead ex-wives, lie. If you’re really bothered, you should leave it to the professionals. Tell the police what you know. Let them handle it. You’re married again. Go home. Pay attention to your new wife.” Lorraine opened the door and waited for him to walk onto the cracked cement porch. Spying a dying petunia blossom, she deadheaded the shriveling pink bloom and added, “Don’t make the same mistake twice. If you give your new wife some attention, maybe she won’t stray the way Jennifer did.”

  Bentz ignored that last bit of advice. “If you think of anything else or hear from her-”

  “For the love of God, Bentz, she’s dead. D-E-A-D. And I haven’t heard of anyone coming back since J.C. did it oh, what was it? A few thousand years ago!” She closed the door but before it latched tossed out, “Say hi to Crystal for me.”

  He didn’t bother correcting her. Kristi had only vague memories of her mother’s stepsister. Not once since Jennifer’s death had Lorraine called or sent a card or tried to contact Kristi in any way. Bentz saw no reason to change that now.

  He drove away from Torrance without much new information. Lorraine had been insufferable in the past and she hadn’t mellowed much with age, but the key question was, had she been honest with him?