by Lisa Jackson
“I’ll see that she gets one.”
“That’ll just take more time. She’ll give me a copy anyway. I have to have a key to every apartment in this building. I might have to get into the unit, you know, if something goes wrong or you lose your key or—”
“I’m not going to lose my key.”
“It’s for your protection.”
“If you say so.” She wasn’t counting on it.
“Jeez, why are you being such a—” He bit off the epithet at the last moment.
Kristi’s temper flared. “I called you and it took you three days to respond. All the locks in the unit were broken or loose and I heard that one of the girls who went missing from the campus lived here, so really, I thought I’d better take the situation into my own hands.”
His mouth dropped. “Anyone ever tell you to lose the attitude?”
“Like they’ve told you?” she snapped back.
He actually blushed and she felt a jab of regret. The kid, though incompetent, seemed to be trying to do his job. Even though he was failing, she really didn’t want to tick him off.
“You don’t have to be so mean,” he mumbled.
Kristi inwardly sighed. “Okay, let’s start over. Everything’s cool here, okay? I fixed the locks. I’ll give your grandmother, Mrs. Calloway, a key and she can see that you have one, though, I assume that you won’t come barging in here unless you give me notice…I think that’s in the lease, too.” She slid the chain out of its latch and let the door open wider, then stepped onto the small porch. “I didn’t mean to get off on the wrong foot with you, Hiram. I’m just a little nervous, hearing that one of the missing girls lived here last term. Your grandmother didn’t mention it and it’s a little weird.” He stared at the floorboards of the landing. He didn’t look a day over seventeen. Hardly man enough to be a manager of any kind. “So, did you know her? Tara?”
“Not really. We talked. A little.” He lifted his eyes to meet the questions in Kristi’s gaze. “She was nice. Friendly.” He didn’t have to say “not like you” but the unspoken accusation was there in his dark, murky stare. His features stiffened almost imperceptibly, but enough so that Kristi noticed the tightening of his jaw, the nearly involuntary pinching of the corners of his mouth. In that instant Kristi knew she’d been fooled by his youthful appearance. There was something sinister smoldering in his night-dark eyes, something she didn’t like. This was no boy at all, but a man in a boy’s gawky body. She hadn’t noticed it through the peephole or in the slit of the door when the chain was engaged, but now, face to face with Hiram Calloway, she realized she was standing next to a complex and angry man.
She lifted her chin. “So, what do you think happened to her?”
He glanced over the railing toward the campus. “They say she ran away.”
Kristi said, “But no one really knows.”
“She did before.”
“Did she tell you about it?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “Nah. She kept to herself.”
“You said she was friendly. That you talked.”
A funny smile played upon those half-hidden lips. “Who knows what happened to her? One day she was here. The next, gone.”
“And that’s all you know?”
“I know that her old man is in prison somewhere and that she stiffed my grandmother.” He met her gaze deliberately. “Owed her back rent. Grandma says she’s a ‘flake’ and a ‘crook like her old man.’ Grandma figures she got what she deserved.”
“Got what she deserved,” Kristi repeated slowly, not liking the sound of that. Far away, laughter crackled through the night.
Hearing his words repeated made Hiram frown. “I’ll tell Irene you’ve got a key for her.” And with that he was gone, trudging down the steps and carrying his tools. Kristi stepped back into her apartment and slammed the door shut. She locked the dead bolt and chain and felt her skin crawl. Irene Calloway’s “good kid” of a grandson gave Kristi a major case of the creeps.
CHAPTER 4
BANG!
A sharp gun report blasted through the thick dark night, the smell of cordite overriding the earthy odor of the wet grass, the horrible crack reverberating through Kristi’s skull.
In horror, she watched as Rick Bentz went down, falling, falling, falling…near the thick stone wall surrounding All Saints College.
Blood flowed. His blood. All over the street. Staining the concrete. Spraying the grass. Running in the gutters. Draining from him.
“Dad!” she screamed, her voice mute, her legs leaden, as she tried to run to him. “Dad, oh, God, oh, God….”
Lightning sizzled through the sky, striking a tree. A horrid rending noise keened through the night as the wood splintered and a heavy branch fell with a thud. The ground shook and she nearly fell.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
More shots! People were yelling, screaming through the hail of bullets. Someone was howling miserably as if he or she, too, had been hit.
But her father lay still, his color fading to black and white.
“Dad!” she screamed again.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Kristi sat bolt upright in her chair.
Oh, God, she’d been dreaming, the nightmare vivid and terrorizing. Her heart was thundering, fear and adrenaline screaming through her blood, sweat breaking out on her skin.
She jumped, then looked at the clock and realized she was hearing the sound of firecrackers. People were ringing in the new year. Muted laughter and shrieking reached her ears. Church bells on campus peeled and over the din she heard the sound of horrible yowling, the noise she’d attributed to someone injured in the attack.
“Dear God,” she whispered, her heart still thundering.
Still a little groggy, she pushed herself up from the chair. She’d been reading about a serial killer and the imagined images still danced inside her head as she shoved her hair from her eyes and then walked to the door of her studio. Only her desk light was on, and aside from the pool of light cast from the small lamp, the room was in shadows. Peeking through the peephole in the door, she saw nothing. Just the empty stair landing where the dim bulb in the ceiling offered a hazy blue glow. Still the crying continued. Leaving the chain locked, she slid the dead bolt out of place and opened the door a crack.
Instantly a skinny black cat shot inside.
“Whoa…!” Kristi watched as the half-starved creature scurried under the daybed, the bedskirt undulating in the cat’s wake. “Oh, come on, kitty…kitty…no…” Kristi followed the scrawny animal, then got down on her knees and peered under the skirt. Two yellow eyes, round with fear, stared back at her. Somehow the damned thing had wedged itself between the top mattress and the lower trundle in a space barely wide enough for Kristi’s hand. “Come on, kitty, you really can’t be here.” She tried to reach into the tight space but the cat hissed and flattened itself deeper in the crevice, its body pressed against the wall. “I mean it, come out.” Again, she was shown a curling pink tongue and needle-sharp fangs. “Great. Okay.”
Kristi pulled on the lower bunk and the cat dropped into the space between the mattress and wall. When she pushed the trundle back, she thought the cat would squirt out one end, but apparently the little thing found a hiding spot. No amount of moving the bed could dislodge the animal and Kristi wasn’t about to drag out the bed and slide into the tight space with a terrorized feline and its sharp claws.
“Please, cat…” Kristi sighed. She didn’t need this. Not tonight. Besides, there was some damned rule in clause five hundred and seventy-six or something about not having any pets on the premises. She was certain Hiram could recite it chapter and verse. “Come on…” she said, trying to sweet-talk the frightened feline.
No such luck.
“Kitty” wasn’t budging.
“Okay…how about this?” She scrounged in her cupboard, found a can of tuna, and opened it. Glancing over her shoulder, she expected to see a little nose or curious eyes or at least a blac
k paw peeking from beneath the daybed.
She was wrong.
She put a couple of forkfuls of tuna into a small dish and half filled another with water, then set them close enough to the bed to entice the cat, but far enough away that Kristi thought she could grab it by the back of its neck and haul it outside. But she’d have to be patient.
Not her long suit.
She set the dishes on the floor and backed up. Then waited, watching the digital clock on the microwave as the minutes dragged by as if they were hours and more revelry sounded outside: people yelling, horns honking, fireworks exploding, footsteps on the porches below. Laughter. Conversation.
Inside, the cat stayed put. Probably petrified with all the noise.
Perfect, Kristi thought, fighting a headache. She was bone tired. The minutes dragged by and she finally gave up. She couldn’t wait all night.
“Fine. Have it your way.” Already in her PJs, she closed the door, locked it, double-checked the latches on the windows, and crawled into the daybed. It creaked beneath her weight and she thought for certain she’d hear the cat slink from beneath the mattress, but not a chance. There were noises outside. Music and laughter filtering up through the floor. Mai Kwan’s group back from the Watering Hole, no doubt, but her new houseguest didn’t so much as stick his nose out from under the bed.
It appeared that the black cat she’d already decided to call Houdini had settled in for the night.
“It’s midnight. Come on, celebrate!” Olivia insisted, and offered Bentz a glass of nonalcoholic champagne. “It’s going to be a better year.”
“Doesn’t it have to be?” He pushed away from the desk in their cottage in Cambrai. Ever since the roads had been repaired from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he and Olivia, along with her scruffy dog and noisy bird, had lived out here. Kristi, too, off and on, had stayed in the spare bedroom upstairs in this cottage Olivia had inherited from her grandmother. Kristi, though, had always been restless in this little cabin on the bayou. Moreover, she’d never really felt comfortable with him and his new wife. For years it had been just the two of them, and though she gave lip service to “liking” Olivia and “loving” the idea that he wasn’t alone any longer, that he’d finally gotten over Kristi’s mother, that he was living his own life, there was a part of her that still hadn’t accepted it all. None of this had escaped his ultraperceptive wife, though Livvie held her tongue on the matter. Smart woman. And goddamned beautiful.
Since living out here they both had to commute to the city, but it was worth it, he decided, once he’d gotten used to living next door to gators and egrets and possum. The distance from the city gave both he and Olivia some peace of mind, a little time away from the chaos that had been New Orleans.
Olivia still owned her shop, the Third Eye, just off Jackson Square, where she sold trinkets, artifacts, and new age stuff to tourists. The store had been spared any serious damage, but the square itself had changed and the tourist business had been slow to return. The tarot readers and human statues, even many of the musicians, had left in the storm’s aftermath, as their homes had been destroyed and even now, things were slow.
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Bentz,” she teased, and he grudgingly took the drink and touched the rim of his glass to hers. “Happy New Year.” Her eyes, the color of aged whiskey, gleamed and wild blond curls surrounded her face. She’d aged some in the years since they’d married, but the lines near the corners of her eyes didn’t detract from her beauty; in fact, she insisted they gave her character. But there was a sadness to her, too. They’d never been able to conceive and now Bentz wasn’t really interested. Kristi was in her late twenties and starting over again seemed unnecessary, maybe even foolhardy. Jesus, he’d be in his sixties when the kid finished high school. That didn’t seem right.
Except Olivia wanted a child.
And she would make a damned fine mother.
“I’m not a pessimist,” he corrected as Hairy S. trotted into the room and hopped onto Bentz’s La-Z-Boy to peer at them through the bush of his eyebrows. “I’m a realist.”
“And a glass-is-half-empty-kind-of-guy.”
He took a swallow of his tasteless fizzy fruit juice and held it to the light. “Well, I’m right. It is half empty.”
“And you’re worried sick about Kristi.”
“I didn’t think it showed.”
“You’ve been a wreck ever since she left.” Olivia sat across his lap, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and touched her forehead to his. “She’s going to be all right. She’s a big girl.”
“Who was almost killed…had to have her heart started twice. Almost legally dead.”
“Almost,” Olivia stressed. “She survived. She’s tough.”
He rotated the kinks from his neck and drank in the scent of her as Hairy whined from the nearby recliner as if he wanted to join them in the oversized chair. “I just worry she’s not tough enough.”
“You’re her dad. She’s tough enough.” She took a long swallow from her glass, then twirled the stem. “Wanna fool around?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. You play the big, tough detective and I’ll be—”
“The weirdo who can read a killer’s mind?”
“I was going to say a weak little woman.”
He was taking another drink and nearly choked. “That’ll be the day.” But he kissed her and felt the warmth of her lips mold over his intimately. Familiarly. Old lovers who still had heat.
His cell phone vibrated loudly, quivering across the desk.
“Damn,” Olivia whispered.
He picked up the phone and glanced at the LCD. “Montoya,” he said. “No rest for the wicked.”
“I’ll hold you to that when you get home,” she said as he grinned and placed the cell to his ear. “Bentz.”
“Happy New Year,” Montoya said.
“Back atcha.” It sounded as if Montoya was already driving, speeding through the city streets.
“We’ve got a DB down by the waterfront. Looks like a party gone bad. Not far from the casino. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“I’m on my way,” Bentz said, and felt a jab of regret when he saw the disappointment in Olivia’s eyes. He hung up and started to explain but she placed a finger over his lips.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said. “Wake me.”
“You got it.”
He found his jacket, keys, wallet, and badge, then, making sure Hairy S. stayed inside, walked outside to his truck, an ancient Jeep that he kept threatening to trade in. So far he hadn’t had the heart, nor the time. Climbing behind the wheel, he heard the familiar creak of the worn leather seats as he jammed the SUV into reverse, backing around Olivia’s sedan. Ramming the Jeep into first, he managed to find a pack of gum and unwrap a piece of Juicy Fruit as he nosed his rig down the long lane and across a small bridge. Popping the stick of gum into his mouth, he slowed as he turned onto the two-lane road toward the city, then hit the gas. Olivia was right, he supposed, he had been out of sorts. Worried. He had his reasons and they all centered around his kid. The boles of cypress, palmetto, and live oak trees caught in the splash of his headlights while he thought about Kristi.
Headstrong and beautiful as Jennifer, her mother, Kristi had been described as “a handful,” “stubborn,” “independent to a fault,” and a “firecracker” by her teachers both in LA where he and Jennifer had lived, and here in New Orleans. She’d certainly given him more than his share of gray hairs, but he figured that was all part of the parenting process and it would end once she’d grown up and settled down with her own family. Only, so far, that hadn’t happened.
He took a corner a little too fast and his tires skidded just a bit. A raccoon, startled by the car, waddled quickly into the undergrowth flanking the highway.
Kristi seemed as far from getting married as ever and if she was dating anyone, she studiously kept that info to herself. In high school she’d gone with Jay McKnight, even received a “promise ri
ng” from him, whatever the hell that meant—some kind of preengagement token.
Bentz snorted, listening as the police band crackled, the dispatcher sending units to differing areas of the city. Kristi had claimed she’d “outgrown” Jay and broken up with him when she’d attended All Saints the first time around. She’d found an older guy at the school, a TA by the name of Brian Thomas who’d been a zero, a real loser, in Bentz’s admittedly jaded opinion. Well, that had ended badly, too.
Gunning the engine, he accelerated onto the freeway and melded with the sparse traffic, most vehicles driving ten miles over the speed limit toward Crescent City.
Now, Jay McKnight had finished college and a master’s program. He was working for the New Orleans Police Department in the crime lab and Bentz would defy his daughter to think of Jay as “boring” or “homegrown” any longer. A little turn of the screw was that Jay was going to teach a night class up at All Saints. Maybe Kristi would run into him.
And maybe he could be convinced to check in on Bentz’s daughter….
He inwardly groaned. He didn’t like going behind Kristi’s back, but wasn’t above it, not if it meant her safety. He’d nearly lost her twice already in her twenty-seven years; he couldn’t face it again. Until the Baton Rouge Police figured out what was happening with the missing coeds, Bentz was going to be proactive.
Easing off the freeway, he headed for the waterfront. In the moonlight, the decimated parts of town looked eerie and foreboding, abandoned cars, destroyed houses, streets that were still impassable…. This part of New Orleans was hardest hit when the levees gave way and Bentz wondered if it could ever be rebuilt. Even Montoya and his new wife, Abby, had had to abandon their project of renovating their home in the city, two shotgun row houses that they had been converting into one larger home. The house, which had survived over two hundred years, had been in its final phase of reconstruction when the wind and floodwaters of Katrina swept through, destroying the once venerable property. Montoya, pissed as hell, was commuting from Abby’s cottage outside the city.
