Lisa Jackson - Malice

“She lives in Encino,” Montoya went on. “I e-mailed and faxed all the info to Jonas Hayes. It should be there by now.”

“Good. Thanks.”

Yolanda Valdez. He clicked off, saw that Hayes was still on the phone. Pacing the corridor, he tried to remember the older sister. There had been three kids in the family, right? Mario was the youngest and Yolanda quite a bit older, maybe twenty when the accident had occurred. And there had been a brother, too…what the hell was his name? Franco? Or Frederico? Or…no, wait…Fernando, that was it. But he didn’t remember Yolanda looking like Jennifer…no, this wasn’t making any sense.

Salazar? That didn’t sound right. Hadn’t she already been married? And the name had been different. He tried to come up with it, but her surname eluded him. Now she was Salazar? He rolled that around in his mind, tried to make some connections. Something didn’t make sense.

He called Montoya back. When his partner answered, Bentz told him his concern. “I think she was married to someone else. Not Salazar. I think the name was Anglo…something like Johns, no that’s not right. Can you double-check?”

“You got it, but everything I found only mentioned her maiden name, Valdez, and Salazar. But I’ll dig further.”

“Thanks.”

Bentz hung up, disturbed.

He stepped around two cops talking in the hallway, then found Hayes at his desk, papers spread around him. Montoya’s e-mail had gotten through. “Take a look.” Hayes showed Bentz the driver’s license photo of Yolanda Salazar. “You think that she’s your Jennifer?”

“Not on a dare.” Bentz rubbed the stubble on his jaw as he shook his head. “I don’t know how this woman is connected to the Jennifer who’s been trailing me.”

“We’ll have to dig deeper, but right now they’re waiting for us over at the morgue.” He motioned to the papers. “Bring those with you. We need to get over and ID our jumper.”

Bentz tried to read the information Montoya had sent as he followed Hayes to the parking lot, where security lamps were already raining down soft blue light. “Anyone hear from Petrocelli?” Bentz asked as they reached Hayes’s 4Runner.

“Not yet.”

“I don’t like this,” Bentz said as he climbed into the passenger seat.

Hayes dialed his cell phone with one hand and started the engine with another. “Hey, Sherry. Hayes here. Just wondering what’s the holdup. Give a call. I’m on my cell.” Then he hung up. “I don’t know, man. She’s not answering.”

Bentz glared at him. “LAPD’s finest?”

“She’ll be here when we get back.”

“She’d better be. With my wife.” Bentz stared out the windshield as Jonas eased out of the parking lot and pulled into moving traffic. Olivia. Where the hell was she?

Safe. With a trusted police officer. Relax.

He tried her number again, but the call went straight to voice mail. Damn it, Olivia, where are you?

A slow groaning terror thrummed through his bloodstream and it was all he could do to stay calm.

At the morgue, while Jonas Hayes had the coroner set up the body for viewing, Bentz paced, steeling himself. He’d never gotten comfortable around corpses, always felt a little nauseated when faced with death, a character flaw he’d attempted to hide from his peers. If other cops had gotten wind of it, he would have suffered years of razzing. Still, he’d been through this procedure enough to know how it went. Right now one of the attendants was wheeling a sheet-draped gurney into the viewing area, checking the toe tag to make sure they had the right Jane Doe.

“You ready?” Jonas asked.

Bentz steadied himself. “Yeah.” It was a lie, of course. The last time he’d seen Jennifer she’d been so vibrant; naughty and teasing and running like a gazelle. So alive. And in a few short hours she’d been reduced to a draped, dead body on a cold slab.

“I don’t know her name, you know,” he reminded Hayes.

“Doesn’t matter. Just let me know if this is the same woman.”

Bentz nodded and Hayes motioned for the attendant to pull the sheet away.

Slowly the woman’s face was uncovered. She lay staring upward, unmoving, her skin cast in a bluish hue.

Bentz felt bile climb up his throat as he gaped in disbelief.

Jennifer wasn’t on the slab.

Instead he found himself staring into the decidedly dead face of Fortuna Esperanzo.

“It’s not Jennifer,” Bentz said, forcing the words out, his fear and confusion mounting. What the hell was this? Fortuna? Dead? Oh, hell!

Hayes’s head snapped around as he stared at Bentz. “What?”

“It’s not the woman I was chasing. This is Fortuna Esperanzo. Jennifer worked with her in an art gallery in Venice.”

“This woman?” Hayes pointed at the body. “Esperanzo?”

“Yes!” Bentz leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for a second, only to open them again and still find himself in the middle of this nightmare.

Hayes rubbed his forehead, frustration and exhaustion evident. “No wonder I couldn’t reach her.”

“Are you certain this is the woman they fished out of the ocean?” Bentz asked.

“Yep. She still smells of salt water,” the attendant said. “Don’t know how she died yet. Not until the autopsy.”

Frustrated, Bentz shoved a hand through his hair. “What was she wearing?” He looked at the attendant. “You have the clothes?”

“I think…let’s see.” She checked a clipboard. “T-shirt, size small, sleeveless. Pink. Shorts. Size two. White. White panties, and a nude colored bra. Thirty-two B. No shoes. No jewelry.”

“Son of a bitch,” Bentz said.

“What?”

“The outfit. Exactly what the woman I was chasing had on. I mean, I don’t know about the underclothes, but she definitely had on a pink sleeveless tee and white shorts. Someone knew. The killer. He or she knew.”

“You don’t think Jennifer’s the killer?”

“How could she be?”

“Who else?”

“Damned if I know.” As a wave of sickness roiled inside him, Bentz turned away. “Let’s go talk to Yolanda Salazar and see what she knows. Maybe she can make the connection between Fortuna Esperanzo and the woman who jumped off the cliff.” He was already walking toward the exit, a deep soul-numbing fear holding him in its icy grasp. Olivia, oh for the love of God, where was she? God help him if she was dead. To Hayes he said, “But first, we need to stop at the Center and find my wife.”

As I stand on deck of my boat with my precious cargo below, I can’t help the tremor of excitement that skims through my blood. So far, so good. Everything is going perfectly.

No thanks to that Olivia.

When we drove away from the airport, “Livvie” was checking out the road signs, a cause for some worry. What if she was more familiar with the city than she’d let on? She pressed me to do this sooner than later. I just couldn’t take a chance that she would get wise and ask to make a call. I needed to have the element of surprise on my side.

As soon as the airport was in the distance, I slowed for an amber light and sneezed. “Oh, Jeez, could you get me a tissue?” I asked her as the light turned red and I braked to a stop. “There in the box?”

“Sure.” She opened the glove box and began searching through the maps and napkins stuffed in there, not realizing that I had pulled out my trusty little Pomeroy Taser 2550. I had bought it on Craig’s List, under an assumed name, of course. “Oh, here we go,” she said as I hit the automatic door locks.

I struck quickly, placing the electrodes against her neck and pulling the trigger. Her mouth was open, her eyes bulging. Then her body reacted and she lost control of her appendages. Her breathing went wild, her eyes round in horror.