Malice

by Lisa Jackson

  “I’m a cop,” Bentz said, digging out his badge and flipping it open. Something he’d done hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but today it felt awkward, surreal, as if he were watching himself. “Rick Bentz. New Orleans Police Department.” His own voice sounded disembodied. He kept looking down at the surf. Surely she would surface. She had to. But his gaze scoured the raging tide, rocky shoals, and sweep of beach.

  Nothing.

  The boy said, “Oh, so…like you were chasing her. She was a criminal?” Obviously the kid wasn’t buying it.

  “From New Orleans?” his girlfriend said as she stepped behind her boyfriend and peeked coyly around his shoulder.

  If you only knew, Bentz thought wearily and reached for his cell, his gaze still on the ocean. Where the hell are you? Come on! Silently he willed her to surface, to live, this woman he’d already buried.

  “No service down here, dude,” the kid said eyeing Bentz’s cell. “You have to go up top to connect to a tower.”

  Bentz nodded, but he couldn’t drag his eyes from the sea and the surging waves pounding the shore, sending up clouds of spray. Holy God.

  There was no sign of anyone in the surf.

  Once again, like the night in Santa Monica, “Jennifer” had disappeared. “Damn it all,” he muttered between clenched teeth, then turned to the boy and girl and tried to concentrate.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the kid.

  “Travis.”

  “Good. Here, Travis, take the phone, climb up to the top, and call 9-1- 1.” He slapped his cell phone into the kid’s hand. “Tell them what happened, that a woman jumped into Devil’s Caldron, then if they want to keep you on the line, stay. If not, hang up and speed-dial number 9. It’ll connect you to Detective Jonas Hayes, a friend of mine and a detective for the LAPD. Tell him what happened here and that I won’t be making it to Point Fermin. Tell him we need a search-and-rescue team. ASAP!”

  Travis nodded, obviously relieved to have something to do, any thing to help.

  “But where are you going?” the girlfriend asked Bentz.

  He nodded toward the swirling sea below. He knew it would be fruitless, but he had to try and find her. She couldn’t have just vanished. No way!

  Montoya’s diligence was finally rewarded.

  He’d spent so much time on the Internet and phone to California that his shoulders ached from inactivity. But it had paid off. He glanced to the window and saw that it was dark, most of the detectives from the day shift long gone.

  But the long tedious hours had been worth it, he thought now, twisting the kinks from his neck.

  Earlier, through the California DMV, he’d located several Yolanda Salazars who resided in Encino.

  He’d weeded through them and zeroed in on the woman he was looking for. Just like Carlos had told him on the phone, Yolanda was married to his cousin’s boy, Sebastian. He’d pulled all the records he could on her, found her to be clean, a student at a junior college, studying accounting while she paid the bills as a hairdresser.

  But the bit of information on Yolanda that caught Montoya’s attention was her maiden name. According to her marriage license she was born Yolanda Filipa Valdez.

  Valdez? His heart skipped a beat as he made the connections. He leaned back in his chair and clicked the pen he was holding as a copy of her California driver’s license appeared on the screen.

  A pretty woman. Thirty-two, according to the driver’s license. A model citizen.

  Nothing to make her suspicious whatsoever.

  Aside from not registering her car, which wasn’t that big of a deal. But there was another piece to the puzzle, a factor that made the lack of registration more interesting.

  Yolanda just happened to be the older sister of Mario Valdez, the boy Bentz accidentally shot while he was still working for the Los Angeles Police Department.

  Montoya clicked his pen again, put in another unanswered call to Bentz and Jonas Hayes, the one detective Bentz felt was on his side in L.A.

  Montoya considered flying out to the West Coast to help, then discarded the idea. Bentz was a grown man, able to handle his own problems, even if people were dropping like flies around him. He’d figure it out.

  If he needed help, he’d call. Right?

  He stared at the picture of Yolanda Valdez Salazar. “What’s your deal?” he asked the image. Did she look enough like Bentz’s wife to fake him out? Had she been involved with the deaths of Shana McIntyre and Lorraine Newell? He clicked his pen again and eyed the screen. And what about those twins who were killed? Was she the mastermind behind the double homicide that looked, on the surface, identical to the murders twelve years earlier? She would have been around twenty when Mario was killed, and the same age when the first double homicide was committed. Younger than her victims.

  “Nah,” he said aloud, leaning even further back in his chair and frowning. That didn’t add up.

  The picture on the screen just stared at him blankly. A killer? The mastermind behind the entire Jennifer Bentz haunting?

  If so, she would have had to have made a trip or two to New Orleans to “appear.” He figured he’d help the L.A. cops out and check her credit card statements, find out if she’d taken a trip to the Big Easy any time in the last year. And then he’d e-mail all the information he’d gathered about the woman to Detective Jonas Hayes of the Los Angeles Police Department.

  He smiled, imagining that he was tugging on her string a bit, unraveling her master game. “It’s over,” he told the image on the computer monitor. “You screwed with the wrong guy.”

  “So what the hell happened here?” Hayes demanded over the rush of the surf and wind and the steady whomp, whomp, whomp of the Coast Guard helicopter hovering high overhead.

  “I wish I knew.” Bentz felt numb inside, disbelieving. They stood on the sand, the afternoon sun warm and bright as a crowd of rescue workers scoured the roiling waters of Devil’s Caldron. The California Highway Patrol was coordinating the search with the Coast Guard.

  “But you’re saying that this woman jumped into the water from up there?” Hayes pointed at the platform some forty feet above the water swirling in the cove.

  “Yes.” Bentz eyed the decking with its railing from below, seeing the posts and beams that supported the platform as it jutted over the cove.

  “No one could have survived that.”

  A muscle in Bentz’s jaw worked. He wanted to protest, to think that the woman was alive, that her leap into the churning waters wouldn’t have taken her life.

  He’d already explained his conversation with her, but of course he would have to make a formal statement to that effect. Hayes had asked him the reasoning behind the aborted drive to Point Fermin. He’d questioned how Bentz had been fool enough to get into the car with her.

  A good question.

  Bentz had thought about everything that had happened in the last few hours, turning the events over and over again in his mind. But he had no answers as to why the woman had finally let him approach her, only to elude him here. For the past two hours he’d scoured the rocky shoals, beach, and tidewaters hoping against hope that the woman who’d sworn she was Jennifer had survived the horrifying descent to the cove. But so far no one had found any sign of her.

  “So where’s the body?” Hayes was saying, staring out to sea. “Shit, we’ll have to send divers down if the Coast Guard doesn’t come up with anything. If they can even get down there. Shit.”

  Bentz reached down and cupped a handful of sand, thinking that she could not have disappeared without a trace, without leaving behind a patch of clothing, a trace of hair or skin. How was it that this woman defied all laws of forensic science?

  “Nothing more we can do,” Hayes said, shaking his head. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

  As they headed to the trail, Hayes couldn’t help lecturing Bentz. “So you get into a car with her. Taking a little afternoon drive? God almighty, Bentz. I guess we’re lucky she didn’t take you over that cl
iff with her. But I don’t get this woman trailing you, then disappearing. And why is it that this ghost of yours is so hell-bent into diving into water?”

  “She’s not a ghost,” Bentz said as they started up the steep incline to the parking lot. “And I don’t know.” He was hobbling as he climbed the path, his knee and thigh on fire. No doubt he’d reinjured himself.

  “When we get to the top, I’ll need your weapon,” Hayes said. “Just to make sure it wasn’t fired.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Just the same.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the parking lot. Bentz was sweating, his leg throbbing. He eyed the silver car that Jennifer had driven, the one “Jennifer” had said was a gift. Everything about her story was all smoke and mirrors, nothing being what it seemed. The police had already roped the vehicle off, a tow truck on its way to take the Chevy to the police garage where it would be examined thoroughly.

  His cell phone beeped, and he realized he had several messages. Mostly from Olivia, the last stating she was on a plane to Los Angeles. “Damn.”

  “Bad news?”

  “Olivia’s on her way. Her flight lands in a couple of hours. I need to pick her up at LAX.”

  “I don’t think that we’ll be done in a few hours,” Hayes said. “There’s a lot to go over. And I know she’s coming in. She called me, too, when she couldn’t get hold of you. We’re sending a cop to pick her up. She can meet you at the Center, if you want. Afterward, I’ll take you to rent a vehicle.”

  “Or she could rent one herself.”

  Hayes waved off the idea. “No, her pickup is all arranged. And I left her a message. You might want to call her and explain.”

  Bentz started to dial just as he heard shouts rising from the beach below. Turning, they saw the Coast Guard helicopter hovering over one spot in the ocean where a diver bobbed in the water. Bentz’s stomach turned over.

  Hayes’s gaze was fixed on the basket that was slowly being lowered from the chopper to the ocean’s surface. Squinting, his jaw tight, he stated the obvious: “Looks like they found Jennifer.”

  Sherry Petrocelli answered the phone and confirmed that she would pick up Rick Bentz’s wife from LAX. She was off duty, but hey, she owed Jonas Hayes a favor or two. Not that she gave a damn about Rick Bentz. She didn’t know the guy, but she’d heard the rumors, and now that he was back in Los Angeles, all hell seemed to be breaking loose.

  The truth of the matter was that she wanted to be transferred to RHD, and Jonas was her “in.” Her friend and fellow officer Paula Sweet had assured her that Jonas had the keys to the kingdom; he was well respected in that division, and his input and recommendation would help her land the transfer. She also knew Corrine O’Donnell, who was dating Jonas, and Corrine had agreed that Hayes could help. So if hauling Bentz’s wife around was a way to get closer to homicide, so be it.

  But first, she was going to dinner. Olivia Bentz’s plane was delayed, so Sherry figured it was fine to meet her friend at Bruno’s, an Italian spot in Marina del Rey, not too far from the airport.

  They split a fried calamari appetizer, then Sherry ordered spaghetti with clam sauce. Throughout the meal, she ducked outside to make a couple of phone calls, checking in with the sitter and tracking the progress of Olivia Bentz’s delayed flight. She didn’t even have a sip of wine, opting for sparkling water, just to make certain she didn’t mess up. If this was a step to improve her career, she was taking no chances.

  So it really pissed her off when she started to feel sick.

  Surely not the clam sauce or the fried squid. She’d never had a reaction to seafood in her life.

  But her stomach was acting up, her head a little light.

  “Wow,” she said. “I feel like crap.” She drank more of the sparkling water, hoping to settle her stomach.

  “Let’s get out of here,” her friend said, then tossed back the remains of her martini. “Come on. I’ll buy.” She flashed Sherry a smile and dropped some cash onto the table. “But next time, you’re on.”

  “Okay.” When Sherry stood up, her legs were wobbly, her head spinning. Almost as if she were drunk. Which was crazy. And then there was the stomachache. She walked out of the restaurant unaided, but when she reached her car, she knew she couldn’t get behind the wheel. “Oh, man, I can’t drive,” she said, pissed as hell.

  “I can take you home.”

  “But I’m supposed to be at the airport in less than an hour.”

  “You want me to do it?”

  “Oh, God, no.” They were outside and even the fresh air coming off the ocean didn’t help. That salty, fishy smell…If anything she felt more nauseated, her legs more unsteady.

  “How about if I drive you?” her friend offered.

  At first Sherry thought the whole idea was odd. “You would do that?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go in and get her.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  Sherry, sweating now, didn’t argue as she fell into the passenger seat. God, she felt awful. “Maybe you should just take me home.” She even thought about a hospital, but that seemed extreme.

  “I will, just as soon as we ferry Bentz’s wife around.” For the first time, Sherry noticed the sound of disgust in her friend’s voice as they pulled out of the parking lot and the first real doubts about her friend pricked at her consciousness.

  They headed not in the direction of the airport, but north, away from the city.

  “Hey what are you doing?” she demanded and caught an icy glare. Oh God, this is a setup! Sherry fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone, but it was too late. She couldn’t think fast enough to get it; her reactions were already off. “You,” she said sluggishly, her tongue thick. “You slipped me a mickey…” Oh, shit. The interior of the car spun.

  “More than one, Sherry,” her friend said with a calm, nearly serene smile. Her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white as twilight fell and the dark night rushed past.

  In that second Sherry Petrocelli felt a chill as cold as an Arctic wind blow through her soul. Her gun was locked securely in a safe at home, but even if it had been with her, she wouldn’t have been able to reach for it, to fire. She was too far gone, her reactions all off.

  If there were a way to stop this madness, she would. But it was too late.

  Scared out of her mind, with no way out, she thought of her seven-year-old son, Hank, and her husband, Jerry, a goofball she’d loved for fifteen of her thirty-two years. Jerry and Sherry; they’d thought their rhyming names were so funny, so corny. Who would take care of them if she were gone? Who would raise her boy? Love silly Jerry?

  “Please,” she said, suddenly desperate, but it was far too late. Her mind was swimming away from reality.

  “Please, what?” asked her friend, and the woman had the audacity to laugh at her. “Good night, Sherry,” she said, sounding so pleased.

  Sherry felt a tear slide down her cheek. Oh, Jerry, I’m sooo sorry.

  In the next second, Sherry Petrocelli’s heart quit beating.

  CHAPTER 30

  Once the jet touched down at LAX, Olivia couldn’t get off the plane fast enough. The flight had been delayed by nearly two hours, making everyone onboard nervous while they repaired some kind of temperature gauge. Then the ride had been bumpy and loud. As the minutes had ticked away, she’d experienced a steadily increasing feeling of dread.

  What if Bentz had already left Los Angeles?

  What if he’d connected with this person posing as Jennifer?

  What if another friend of his ex-wife’s had been killed?

  She pulled her carry-on from the overhead bin and shuffled her way behind the mother and toddler along the narrow aisle of the 737. Things didn’t move much faster along the jetway, but by the time she reached the gate she’d dug out her cell phone, turned it on, and was listening to a bevy of me
ssages, one of which was from Bentz. He was the most recent caller and his message confirmed Hayes’s offer of a ride to the police station, telling her to look for an officer who would be waiting for her with a sign at baggage claim.

  A little odd, she thought, trying not to press the panic button. No one had told her why she was being escorted by an officer rather than renting a car or taking a taxi herself. Or, since Bentz knew her flight number and arrival time, why wasn’t he picking her up himself? Why meet at the police station?

  Because there’s trouble. Serious trouble.

  She tried Bentz’s cell and wanted to scream in frustration when he didn’t pick up. Then she dialed Hayes’s phone and again was sent directly to voice mail.

  So much for the convenience of cell phones, of always being in touch. She slammed hers back into her purse and pulled her roller bag behind her as she followed the signs to baggage claim. Something felt off about this and if she hadn’t heard her husband’s request herself, she would have rented a car.

  And gone where? He already checked out of the So-Cal Inn, right? You probably would have met him at the station anyway. Just be thankful that he’s still in L.A. You’ll see him soon. Less than an hour, probably.

  Good!

  Her cell phone rang and she saw it was Bentz’s number. Thank God! “Hi.”

  “God, it’s good to hear your voice. I was worried.”

  Her heart squeezed. “Yeah, I know.” She felt tears against the back of her eyes and ridiculously her throat thickened. “The, uh, the flight was delayed, a mechanical problem that took a couple of hours to fix. But I finally made it.”

  “Good.”

  She could barely hear him with the sounds of the airport filling her ears, announcements for flights over the loudspeakers, the squeak of wheels on roller bags, and the excited hum of conversation as throngs of people moved through the wide concourse.