Lisa Jackson - Malice

A far cry from her husband’s embrace, but it would have to do for now. Her husband. What the hell was he doing in L.A.? Chasing after a ghost, or a dream? She tried not to think that he was still harboring feelings for his dead ex-wife, but she knew better. His guilt, she thought, was swallowing him whole and someone was preying upon him.

Who?

The same nagging question that had been with her since he’d shown her the mutilated death certificate kept poking at her brain relentlessly. It’s not that she didn’t believe in ghosts; she just wasn’t certain. She’d had her fair share of dealing with unexplained, if not paranormal, activity. Hadn’t she, herself, seen through the eyes of a twisted, sadistic serial killer?

Oh, for some of that insight now.

She glanced at the clock. It was only one-twenty in the morning in L.A. Was Bentz still awake? Was he thinking about her? Chasing down a dream? She touched her still-flat abdomen and wondered if she and Bentz and the baby would ever have a normal life.

Yeah, well, what’s that? You knew what you signed up for when you married a workaholic.

Sighing, she closed her eyes, determined to relax and find sleep again. She was just starting to doze when the phone rang. Smiling, she said to the dog. “I guess he can’t sleep, either.”

She picked up the receiver and said, “Hey,” a smile audible in her voice.

“Do you know what your husband’s doing in California?” a woman’s hoarse voice whispered.

“What?” Olivia was suddenly wide awake, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling in fear. “Who is this?”

“He’s looking for her. And do you know why? She’s his true love, not you. Jennifer. He’s never forgotten her.”

“Who is this?” she demanded again.

But the phone went dead.

“Bitch!” Olivia hissed into the receiver. Of course Bentz was in L.A. She knew that. She also knew that he was looking for Jennifer or a woman who was impersonating his ex-wife. She looked at caller ID; the display flashed UNKNOWN CALLER. “Great.” No name. No number. No area code. No way to figure out who had called her. It’s no one, just a crank call, someone who knows Bentz went to L.A. to determine what happened to Jennifer.

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.