Lisa Jackson - Malice

Before it was too late. If it’s not already, his mind mocked now as it had all night. In the morning, he tried to wash away the grit from his eyes and wake up his tired muscles by showering and shaving. Then he walked outside to an overcast L.A. day. It was only seven-thirty in the morning and already a thick layer of smog accompanied an unlikely chill in the air, a surprising drop in temperature. He paused at the office door and looked down the length of the porch toward the doorway of the room he’d called home for the better part of a week. In the parking lot, the blue Pontiac was missing; Spike and his owner had probably moved out. A beat-up red pickup was parked in the Pontiac’s spot.

Time marched on.

Things changed.

And Olivia was missing.

Anger mixed with fear, twisting his guts. She had to be safe; had to.

He ducked into the So-Cals’ office for a cup of coffee, then, cup in hand, walked onto the porch to make some calls. Sipping coffee that settled badly in his stomach, he phoned Montoya, who, too, had worked most of the night and had dug up some more information on the Valdez family. Apparently Fernando was a theater major, interested in writing plays, while his sister Yolanda was studying accounting. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Except for the damned car. The one that Jennifer had been driving. He hung up, not knowing much more than he had last night.

Nothing made any sense. Nothing. In a haze of misery Bentz walked to his new rental car, a white Honda hatchback. He stopped at a mini-mart and bought two doughnuts that he ate on the way to the cemetery. He couldn’t remember his last meal, but decided it had to be better than this breakfast.

The backhoe was already at work, men with shovels waiting for the big machine to do its job before they handled the final excavation by hand. Workers stood talking together in the rising fog, laughing, leaning on their shovels, telling jokes, and smoking, while Bentz felt his world collapsing around him.

As the huge machine scooped up dry earth, Bentz flashed back to the day of the funeral, when he had stood next to his grief-stricken daughter and watched as Jennifer’s coffin had been lowered into the ground. The people who had come were a blur now, but he remembered Shana and Tally. Fortuna had attended, as had Jennifer’s stepsister Lorraine, along with other family and friends. Bentz’s brother had presided over the ceremony, looking stricken and ashen. As he’d mumbled prayers, a bank of thick clouds had rolled in, blocking the sun. James had loved Jennifer, he’d said, but, though only a few mourners had known the truth, he’d loved her in ways unbefitting a man of the cloth. His vows of celibacy had choked him far more than his clerical collar ever had. Bentz had clutched Kristi’s hand and locked gazes with Alan Gray, the man Jennifer had nearly married before she’d fallen in love with Bentz and become the wife of a cop. At the burial Alan had stood back from the crowd, a millionaire who really didn’t belong. His expression had been bland and void of emotion, as if he were playing poker in a high-stakes game in Vegas. Bentz had looked away and Gray had left before the final prayer had been intoned. Bentz had thought Gray’s appearance had been odd at the time, but he had forgotten that detail.

Now, watching the back hoe extract soil from his wife’s grave was surreal, the low-laying fog making it more so. Bentz believed with all his heart that the decaying body inside the coffin belonged to his wife.

Who else?

And yet he was jittery. Tense. Expecting the worst. He began to sweat despite the cool temperature. The men with shovels were just getting to work when Hayes arrived in a tan suit that looked as pressed and crisp as if it had just come from the dry cleaners. Dark shirt and matching tie finished the outfit and complemented the polish on his shoes. Always a dandy.

“No word from your wife?” Hayes asked.

“I was hoping you knew something.”

“Working on it.” Hayes touched the knot of his tie. “Tracked down the phone with the G.P.S.,” he said.

“What?”

“No, don’t get excited. Obviously the phone was dumped. We found it in the sand beneath the Santa Monica Pier.”

“Shit!”

“We’re checking with the webcam people again. So far nothing, but it’s still early.”

Santa Monica. Again. Bentz’s guts twisted because he knew why the phone had been left there. Because of Jennifer. Because that pier and town were so much a part of her life, their life together. Whoever had kidnapped her was pointing that out, rubbing salt in the wounds, laughing at him.

“Son of a bitch.” Bentz couldn’t stop the black fury that overtook him. “Jennifer,” he spat out. “She’s playing with me.”

“It’s not Jennifer,” Hayes said, hitching his chin toward the coffin.

“I know…you know what I mean. The woman I was with in the car. She looked a lot like Jennifer. A lot, but her voice was off and she was too young, and once I was that close, I knew she wasn’t my ex-wife. But damn it, she knew so much about Jennifer…about us.” His skin crawled at the memory of kissing her, of touching her. His stomach roiled at the thought of the taste of her and how he’d been duped. Furious with himself, he tried to focus, to move on, to think like a cop, not a husband. “Okay. So the phone’s a bust, what else are you doing?”

“Backtracking mostly. Talking to people at the airport who might have seen Olivia connect with Petrocelli at baggage claim. We’re checking security cameras at the airport and piecing together Sherry’s schedule yesterday.”

It’s not enough, Bentz thought. “Have you called the FBI?”

“The captain’s taking it up with-”

“It’s a kidnapping case, Hayes.”

“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours. Not that our Missing Persons Department plays by that rule.”

“I hope not. Jesus H. Christ! A police officer is dead. Along with a lot of other people. So, not only do we have kidnapping, we’ve got a serial killer on the loose. A cop-killer. I think the Feds should be involved.”

“They’re already checking into the Springer twins’ murder. We’re just not sure that all these incidents are connected,” Hayes admitted. “Bledsoe’s working that angle.”

“Great.” Bentz couldn’t stand to think that Olivia’s safety might hinge on Andrew Bledsoe’s investigative work. “What about Fernando Valdez? Have you talked to him?”

“Still trying to find him. He didn’t go back to the Salazars’ house last night. We watched.” He glanced at Bentz. “I talked to Jerry Petrocelli. He was devastated.”

“I bet,” he said, hoping to high heaven that he wouldn’t be the next husband to learn that his wife had been murdered by this whack job. Not if he could help it.

Bentz watched as the casket was carried to the van by six strong guys…so reminiscent of the burial when Jennifer was originally laid to rest. The dusty box was slid into the back of the vehicle. “At least now we’ll know if it’s Jennifer inside,” he said as the back doors of the van were slammed shut.

“It won’t take long,” Hayes said. “We’ve already received the records from her dentist. Got an expert who’s going to compare them to what we find in the skull.”

And then what? Bentz wondered. No other body had washed onto the beach, so they still didn’t know what had happened to the woman who’d teased him, lured him to the cliffs, and jumped into the sea. God, why would anyone do that? Who was this woman who looked so much like Jennifer? Why was she tormenting him? And what the hell had she done with Olivia?

As if reading his mind, Hayes said, “We’ll find her.” His cell phone chimed. “Later, Bentz.” He fished the phone out of his pocket and took the call as he walked back to his 4Runner and the vehicle carrying the casket took off. Bentz was left staring into the dry, empty hole where he’d thought he’d buried his first wife forever. Even in the hazy morning light, he felt a chill snake down his spine, as if someone were watching him, unseen eyes observing his every move. He looked up and turned, searching through the fog. A human form seemed to materialize, then fade, leaves and limbs of trees shivering. Was someone watching him from the shrubbery on the other side of the fence?