by T. R. Ragan
She followed the black sedan. The red light on the video assured her it was still recording. Her phone rang, lighting up the screen on her dashboard. It was Hayley.
No need to turn video off since it would not record sound. “Answer call.”
“Lizzy. It’s Hayley. Are you there?”
“I’m here. What do you need?”
“I thought we were going to have a meeting tonight?”
“We’ll have to move it to tomorrow night.”
“You’re not following Wayne Bennett on your own, are you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“The man is dangerous.”
“He’s no different than the others on our list.”
“Since the disappearance of Miriam Walters, we agreed that Wayne Bennett should be a two-man surveillance at all times.”
“Gotta go.”
She disconnected the call. It was growing dark now, but the traffic was light, making for an easy tail. A mile and a half later, he took a right onto a lonely-looking street. As Lizzy drove on past, she saw his brake lights flash halfway down the block. After pulling a quick U-turn, she eased to the curb at the intersection in time to see a garage door finish opening and Bennett pull the car inside. Lizzy watched the door clamp shut.
What the hell was going on? She’d been expecting Bennett to pull into an abandoned warehouse or a parking lot, but a house?
After walking up the block for the street number, she returned to her car and called the police. She reported suspicious activity at the address, then dialed Kitally’s number. She didn’t want to knock on the door and give herself up too early. What if Bennett was there to pick up another girl? But why would he have pulled his car inside the garage?
“What’s up?” Kitally asked.
“I need you to use the Realtor database and look up an address for me. I need to know who a certain house belongs to at 552 Indian Drive in West Sac.”
After Lizzy was put on hold, she rolled down her window to get a better look at the neighborhood. A dog barked in the distance. The row of houses on both sides of the street across from her looked the same, mostly one-story homes with small yards. Despite the zip-up hoodie she wore, shivers coursed up her arms. Thoughts of Jared drifted over her just as Kitally came back on the line, saving her from feeling the wave of darkness that came over her every time memories surfaced.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Kitally said. “Most of the houses in that area belong to the JR Millennial Company, owed by Wayne Bennett himself.”
“Interesting,” Lizzy said. “If you could find out how many homes he owns in the Sacramento area, that would be appreciated. Just give me the information when I see you next, OK?”
“Not a problem. Be careful.”
Lizzy disconnected the call. She focused her attention back on the house into which she’d seen Wayne Bennett disappear.
The lights were on. No cries for help. Nothing unusual. The police were notoriously slow. Nothing new there, either. More than anything, she wanted to knock down the door and catch him in the act. She considered doing a search around the perimeter of the house. In the end, if she really wanted to get this guy, she needed to be patient. She needed to do things by the book.
At least for now.
At last she was relieved to see the lights of a police cruiser headed her way. The cruiser turned down the street and pulled into the driveway of the address she’d given the dispatcher. Two cops exited the vehicle, went to the door, and knocked.
It was a long while before the door opened.
One of the officers tried to peek inside, but his partner put a hand in front of his chest to stop him. They were talking to whoever had answered the door. Even smiling.
What were they doing? “Go inside,” she muttered under her breath.
From the looks of it, they weren’t going to do anything at all.
She’d had enough. She turned off the video.
Fuck doing things the right way—staying low and keeping out of sight—all bullshit. She got out of her car, slammed the door shut, and marched down the middle of the street toward the house.
She joined the officers at the door.
Bennett looked disheveled. No jacket or tie. The top buttons of his shirt were undone, low enough to see a smattering of chest hair.
“Ma’am,” one of the officers said, “I’m going to have to ask you to back off.”
“Not until you enter the house and talk to the young woman inside. She’s underage, and I believe she was brought here under false pretenses.” Lizzy made a show of reading both men’s badges, setting name and numbers to memory.
The officer on her right looked uncomfortable. His partner, not so much.
“Officer Tagaleri,” she said. “If you leave here without questioning the woman inside, I will make it my business to report both of you to the chief of police.”
“Go back to your car, ma’am, and let us do our jobs.”
Before she could protest, he put a hand on his holster.
She looked from the officer to Wayne Bennett.
The man glared at her. His usually handsome face was pale and splotchy, his body stiff with ire. Recognition flickered in his eyes.
It was time to walk away.
Regaining control of her emotions, she turned around and headed back for her car, feeling three pairs of eyes on her back. Her mind was made up. If those officers left the premises without checking the house first, she would go in and take care of business herself.
She slowed her pace, took her time walking down the street and toward her car. She’d hoped Bennett wouldn’t recognize her as Stacey Whitmore’s camerawoman, but the undeniable glimmer she’d seen in his eyes before she’d walked away told her he knew exactly who she was.
When she reached her car, she opened the door and climbed in behind the wheel and turned the video on. Within minutes, a crying young woman, ushered by one of the officers, was helped into the backseat of the police car.
Lizzy took a breath and waited for the officers to drive away.
The girl was safe for now.
But Bennett knew what she was up to, which meant things were about to get ugly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The first thing Claire Kerley saw when she walked into her bedroom was the crayon marks scrawled across her bedroom walls. Walls she had spent an entire weekend painting herself. She dropped her backpack on the floor.
She could hear her little brother and sister fighting in the other room, arguing over who got the front seat on the way to the grocery store with Mom.
Before she could close her door, her older brother, Cameron, walked in and took a seat on the corner of her bed.
He was eighteen going on thirty. Their mother had remarried and had two more kids, another boy and girl. Judging by the way they argued, they would grow up to be just like her and Cameron.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Are you kidding me? Look around. Those little monsters take my things and write on my walls. And that man Mom married took away my phone and car for a week. That’s just plain cruel.”
“They found a bag of weed in your room, and it didn’t help that you called Mom a bitch. The punishment was justified.”
“Did you come in here just to remind me of what a horrible person I am?”
“No, I came in here to tell you about something I saw at school today. You’re not going to like it, but I didn’t want you to hear from anyone else.”
“What is it? Are you and Megan breaking up?”
“No, we’re fine. This is about you,” he said, “not me.”
Downstairs, Mom yelled goodbye, and the house fell silent. Claire waited for her brother to say whatever it was he had on his mind, but he seemed hesit
ant. “You’re driving me crazy, Cameron. Out with it.”
“It’s about Luke. After practice, I saw him making out with Jasmine Perkins behind the gym.”
“That’s a lie.”
He shook his head. “They were going at it pretty hot and heavy.”
“Luke despises that girl. God, this is a new low. You’ve never liked Luke. You’re just jealous because he’s the quarterback and you’re a lineman.”
He sighed. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but if my character is going to be called into question, I guess I don’t have a choice.” He fiddled with his smartphone and then positioned it so they could watch the video together.
Her stomach roiled. It was true. Luke and Jasmine were all over each other.
Claire dug around in her backpack until she remembered she no longer had a phone. She hated her stepdad, Dave . . . hated her whole damn family. She had to get out of here before she suffocated.
Cameron followed her down the carpeted stairs. “Where are you going?”
“Out. I just need some time alone, OK?”
“I guess, but you better get back before Dave gets home.”
“I’m tired of Dave telling me what to do. He’s not our dad.”
“Dad didn’t just leave Mom, you know,” Cameron said to her back. “He left all of us, Claire, and never looked back. You need to get over it. You need to stop being angry at the world because of Dad. Stop acting like a spoiled brat and grow up.”
Claire walked out of the house and slammed the door behind her. More than anything, she wished she could move far away and never talk to any of them ever again. By the time she got to the end of her street, she was shivering from the cold. What an idiot she was . . . leaving the house without a jacket. Stupid.
She looked over her shoulder. She wasn’t about to go home while Cameron was there. He would just laugh, rub it in her face that she couldn’t stay away for more than five minutes. So she kept on walking. She rubbed her arms as she went, thinking about how unfair life could be.
As he drove along, he found himself thinking about the David Ligare exhibit that would soon be showing at the Crocker Art Museum. One of a handful invited to attend a private preview of nearly eighty works, he’d been so caught up in throwing the police off his trail, he’d forgotten about the impending event until this very moment. Ligare’s works were poetic. He created order in a chaotic world.
Right now, though, he needed to take care of business, finish what he’d started. The media was finally getting fired up. In today’s paper, one journalist warned the people of Sacramento to be alert. After finding a body near the American River and then the woman in the elevator, reporters took it upon themselves to give credit to the Sacramento Strangler.
Hmm. Maybe they were finally catching on. He would love to be a fly on the wall at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sometimes the media could be downright clever. For instance, dubbing Albert Fish the “Werewolf of Wysteria” because of the rumors that he lusted for blood under a full moon sounded as if a little thought actually went into naming the killer. But the Sacramento Strangler? If memory served, he wasn’t the first person in the area to strangle a few people to death.
The Sacramento Strangler, he repeated in his mind. Bah. Boring. Bland. For now, he had to let the nickname go. He had more important things to worry about.
He was on a mission.
Today he had something special planned. This would be his first kidnapping.
Disguised with a beard, hat, and sunglasses, he drove on the back streets, making his way toward Watt Avenue, where he planned to find, at the very least, a prostitute or a homeless person. He had a room readied back home. The last owners had gone to a lot of trouble to build a wine cellar. Narrow stairs led deep underground into a dark, windowless room. The perfect setup for what he had planned.
His victim, a female—age didn’t really matter—would be bound and tied. Perhaps he could make videotaped messages to send to the media.
No. Too dicey.
He wasn’t sure how long he would keep her. Maybe just a day or two. He’d figure it all out as he went along.
He knew it was risky, bringing one of his victims to his house, but that was the whole point. He’d forgotten how thrilling it could be to pursue something new and exciting. He would get to know his victim before he took her life. He’d never known any of his victims before killing them. Just thinking about it gave him a thrill, a sensory delight.
He inhaled. Life had become too predictable. Taking a chance, going in pursuit of such an experience, was downright intoxicating. He’d all but forgotten his need for high-level stimulation. Some people needed gambling, sex, or drugs to achieve such a mental rush. He just needed this.
With his gaze focused on the road ahead of him, he could hardly believe what he was seeing. Would you look at that? A young girl. A hitchhiker, of all things. “Fate is a fickle fellow,” he said with a laugh as he passed the girl before slowing and pulling off the road.
In his rearview mirror, he watched her run to catch up to him. She reminded him of sunshine and innocence. The girl didn’t bother leaning forward and looking through the passenger window to see who was driving. She just climbed right in and said, “Thanks,” in a breathless voice. “I was beginning to wonder if anyone would ever pick me up.”
“Not a problem,” he said as he made quick work of merging back onto the road. “Where are you off to?”
She flipped her shiny blonde hair to one side, then looked at him with bright-green eyes. “I just need to get away.”
“Anywhere?” he asked.
She flung a hand through the air, as though literally throwing caution to the wind. “I’ll go wherever you’re going.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely.” She looked him over. “You look pretty harmless to me.”
That particular comment elicited a grin.
Her laughter sounded like tiny twinkling bells.
“It’ll be dark out soon,” he told her. “Perhaps you should let me drive you home.” He would do no such thing, of course, but he figured it would put her at ease if she thought he was a straitlaced, worried old man.
“No way!” was her immediate response. “My family is nuts. I can’t take it any longer.”
“I only had a sister, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Did she die?”
He nodded. “She drowned at a very young age.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“My mom remarried,” she told him. “My stepdad is a dick. I have a younger brother and sister who scribble on my walls and make a mess of my things. My older brother can’t seem to mind his own business. He thinks he’s my father. Like I really need another one of those. And that’s not the worst of it,” she said with a sigh. “My boyfriend, Luke, is a two-timing asshole.”
Cry me a river.
“Do you have any weed? I’m dying to get high.” She adjusted herself in the passenger seat, sat up taller. He could feel her looking at him. “How old are you?”
“None of your business,” he said. “Open the middle console. You’ll find a plastic bag inside.”
She did as he said. Picking up a clear baggie filled with yellow pills, she smiled and said, “Well, well, what do we have here?”
“They’re called magic,” he said, his voice lined with an air of grandiosity, although really, the yellow tablets were nothing more than sleeping pills. “They’re new, a party drug. And they’re spectacular.”
“Like ecstasy?”
“Even better. A bit of magic will take you on a trip you won’t want to come back from.”
“You don’t look like the druggie type.”
He shrugged.
She examined one of the pills. “How many should I take?”
>
“Two or three should do the trick. If you reach around to the back, you’ll find a water bottle.”
She did as he said and then unscrewed the top of the water bottle and took a sip. “After I take these, do you think you could drive me to my boyfriend’s house?”
“The two-timing asshole?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said with that twinkling laugh of hers, “that’s the one.” She popped the pills into her mouth and chased them down with water. Then she put the bag back where she’d found it. “There. I took three. Luke lives at 8815 La Casa, not too far from here.”
“We’re about ten minutes from La Casa,” he said. “That’s a nice area.”
“Yeah. His parents are loaded.”
She was doing it again—staring at him. He didn’t like it.
He spared her a glance, surprised by the way her smile lit up his insides. She wasn’t quite so annoying, after all. Her skin was flawless. If he could capture even a small fraction of her innocence on canvas, he would be a happy man.
“You’re a pretty cool dude,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I want to be flying like a kite when I talk to Luke. I’m going to march right up to him and tell him exactly what I think of him.”
Keeping his eyes on the road, he made sure to go the speed limit. He didn’t need unwanted attention from other motorists.
There was something so refreshing about the girl. She was fearless. He felt sort of bad she wouldn’t ever get the chance to tell her dickish boyfriend what she thought of him. It would have been an interesting scene to witness.
“After I talk to Luke, do you think you could take me home?”
“Change of heart?”
“No,” she said with an exaggerated shiver. “I really do hate them all, but I don’t want my mom to worry. She freaks out easily—you know what I mean?”
Yes. He knew exactly what she meant. The thought of her mother freaking out sent a shudder through his body—the good kind. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “After you talk to Luke, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”