Lisa Jackson - Malice

Once she got down there, there was no escape. No exit. She would be trapped and he would haul her ass into the nearest police station.

Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled down, following until she was nearly out of sight. “What the hell is your game?” he wondered aloud, his jaw tight.

He caught a glimpse of her approaching one of the lower switchbacks on the trail. The precipice at that turn was so dangerous that a platform had been constructed, complete with safety railing. From that point tourists were able to look down to a spectacular view of the roiling sea in the cove known as Devil’s Caldron.

He was gaining again.

Saw her reach the platform.

Panting, pushing himself, he hurried faster.

Ahead of him, she paused, waiting at the platform. For a second he thought she was waiting for him. Then, to his horror, she swung one leg over the railing.

Oh, God, what was she thinking?

But he knew.

Holy Christ, he knew.

“No!”

His heart clutched as she climbed onto the railing and perched on the edge, high above Devil’s Caldron.

Oh, no. Please. He skidded to a halt, watching in horror. “Don’t!”

She looked over her shoulder and blew him a kiss. Then she turned back to the ocean and lifted her arms over her head, poised like a ballerina. A moment later she jumped, her body a tiny needle of a woman soaring down past the cliffs. Bentz forced himself to watch as she disappeared from view and fell into the roiling furious tide far, far below.

It was like watching Jennifer die all over again. Bentz stared into the churning waters, feeling sick as he clutched the railing. His heart was pounding, his mind screaming. Why had she jumped? Why?

His gaze scraped every inch of the shoreline and water, trying to locate a trace of her-a scrap of pink or white bobbing on the angry swirling surf so far below.

No. For the love of God…

“Hey!” he heard from somewhere, as if through a long tunnel. “Hey!”

Blinking, trying to focus, he turned and saw someone running down the hillside. No, two people. A long-haired boy in his twenties and a leggy girl chasing after him.

“I saw her jump. Jesus Christ, she jumped!” the boy said, his face red from the run, his eyes round with fear. “Is she okay?”

“She couldn’t be,” his companion said. “I mean, it’s got to be fifty feet.”

“More. Maybe seventy-five!” The kid was emphatic and ran to the railing, even if he was a poor judge of height. Then he noticed Bentz’s gun. “Oh, whoa…” He stopped abruptly, raising his hands. “Easy, man.”

“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?