Lisa Jackson - Malice

Jonas Hayes had known everything Bentz was doing, had insisted they play it by the book. The wail of sirens split the night air, reverberating through the parking garage, snapping Bentz back to the moment. The LAPD was on its way. “You’d better not be bullshitting me,” he warned Jada.

“I just want to get paid.” She eyed him expectantly.

Montoya sent her a look of pure disgust. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t bet on it. I want to be Brad Pitt, you know, but sometimes things don’t work out the way we plan.”

Her lip curled. “Yeah, well, too bad about the Brad Pitt thing,” she said and Bentz could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. “And by the way, I want my lawyer. I’m not saying another word until we have some kind of deal.”

Martinez stopped by Hayes’s desk and handed him blowups of the picture of Olivia. “This is the hard copy of what they came up with in the lab.”

Technicians in the lab had analyzed the shot, which they’d enlarged and enhanced in an attempt to bring out every detail of the picture, even images that were hidden.

“They sent it to you via e-mail, too.”

“Got it,” Hayes said, bone tired. He compared the images, on the screen, on paper.

“It’s a boat, obviously,” Martinez said. Sliding her finger a bit, she touched the corner of the picture over Olivia’s head. “These puffy things stuffed in here? Life jackets. And take a look at those curved lines on the walls. Seems to be painted with stripes.” She pointed to a detail in another blowup. “They make that out to be the handle of an oar.”

“A boat. So she’s being held on the water somewhere?” Jonas touched the knot of his tie, thinking about that. “So in a marina probably? Or private boat slip? Or…even dry-docked?” He eyed each shot, looking for more details.

“Or out to sea.”

“Damn.” Something about the blowup nagged at him, tugged at his mind.

“We might have to coordinate a search effort with the Coast Guard.” Martinez brought him back to reality as she tapped another shot. “There’s an image that isn’t visible to the naked eye in this one. The lab thinks it’s a script, probably the name of the vessel on a life preserver. It ends in n, n, e. ”

Hayes closed his eyes for a second, then looked again. She was right. The image resembled a life preserver. With the letters n, n, e stenciled on faintly.

The end of a boat’s name?

He blinked again, feeling a sense of dread crashing over him as he studied the original photo. It couldn’t be.

No way.

No fuckin’ way.

But the boat looked so damned familiar.

He’d seen those preservers, those oars. His insides turned to ice…no, it couldn’t be…but the proof was right in front of his eyes. Those letters on the life preserver, they were the last letters of the Merry Anne , the boat he and Corrine had used a couple of times…

Panic swept through him as his mind turned back to all the cancelled dates, the cell phone calls from God-only-knew where, the hot sex that never really became warm affection, the understanding of his job and the questions about his cases, and her keen interest in his work.

“It is a boat,” he said finally and the realization cut to his very soul. How could he have been so stupid? So blind? “It’s the Merry Anne. It was named after Corrine O’Donnell’s mother, Merry, by her father.”

“Corrine?” Martinez repeated, looking at him as if he’d gone around the bend. “But, she-”

“Is my girlfriend. I know.” Bile crawled up his throat, bitter with betrayal.

“I was going to say she’s a cop.”

“Which makes it worse, because she’s our killer, Martinez, and she’s got Olivia Bentz held captive in the hold of the goddamned Merry Anne.” His eyes held hers for a second before he picked up the phone. “I’ll call the marina, make sure the boat is still in her slip.”

“And if it isn’t?”

He didn’t want to think about that, how far Corrine, an excellent sailor, could be out to sea. “Then we’ll call the Coast Guard.”

“The way I figure it, you’ve got two choices,” Montoya said as he followed the flashing lights of the police cruiser hauling Jada Hollister to Parker Center. “One, you can tell Hayes straight out that his girlfriend is a freakin’ killer. Or two, you do an end run around him and tell someone else in the squad about it, just in case Hayes is involved.”

Bentz tapped his finger on the window ledge of Montoya’s rented Mustang. “My gut tells me Hayes isn’t in on it. How could he be? With all the hours he put in with me trying to crack this case? A guy can’t be two places at once.”

“So go with your gut.” Montoya nodded as he took a corner a little too fast and the tires chirped. He slowed for a second, then punched it again as he hit the freeway. “It’s worked for you so far. But we’ve got to cut through the crap fast and get to this Corrine. If she’s the one who’s got Olivia, we need to find her now.”

Bentz nodded, unable to clear the image of his wife, peering through the bars of her prison, from his mind. All because of him.

Hang on, he willed her. Just keep it together. We’ll be there soon.

“What really gets my goat is thinking that another cop is behind all this,” Montoya said, staring ahead to the dark road. “Someone from the inside. That’ll be a black eye on the department.”

Another cop. That burned Bentz the most. A woman he’d once cared about, made love to. Corrine. She was behind all the death and destruction. She’d kidnapped Olivia and was planning no doubt to kill her, if she hadn’t already.

To hell with playing by the book.

They planned to follow the squad car to Parker Center, blow the whistle on this cop gone bad, and enlist every hand they could to help them find Corrine O’Donnell.

“We’ll get her,” Montoya said, his face grim in the lights of the dash. “We’ll find Olivia and we’ll nail O’Donnell’s hide to the wall.”

No backing off.

No excuses.

No leniency if she pulled the “I’m a cop” card, or looked at him piteously.

And if Hayes was involved, then he’d go down, too.

A muscle worked in Bentz’s jaw. He just kept tapping his finger, his gaze straight ahead as they flew down the freeway.

His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the caller ID-Jonas Hayes. “Hayes,” he said to Montoya, bracing himself for a bevy of lies. If that son of a bitch was involved in the least…

Beside him Montoya glowered, his hands holding the wheel in a death grip.

He cleared his throat. “Bentz.”

“Look, man, I know where Olivia is,” Hayes said, his voice quiet and restrained, as if he were seething with a slow, black fury that was eating him from the inside out.

“Where?” Bentz was wary, slid a glance at Montoya.

“Olivia’s being held on a boat. We got that much from the lab and…oh, hell, there’s more to it than that,” he said tightly. “I recognize the boat from some of the equipment hanging on the walls.”

“You do.”

“It’s the Merry Anne …That’s merry as in Merry Christmas, A-N-N-E. Corrine’s old man owned it. She inherited the boat.”

“O’Donnell?” Bentz asked carefully, though he knew the truth. He had to hear Hayes’s theory word for word so there would be no mistake. “Corrine O’Donnell’s holding Olivia captive on a boat somewhere?”

“Shit, Bentz, I can’t believe it myself but…goddamn it, she’s played me for a fool. Anyway, I’m on my way to the marina now, but it sounds like she’s a step ahead of us. According to the security at the Marina del Rey docks and the harbor patrol, the Merry Anne isn’t in her berth.”