Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  “No!” Kristi cried as she dashed across the two lanes and the sidewalk before shooting through the main gate of the college. Damn, damn, damn! He couldn’t get away.

  Once past the tall columns, she ran to the edge of the live oaks skirting the brick wall and stopped short. Breathing hard, she scanned the tree-lined walkways and grassy spaces between the buildings, the very pathway she’d just raced across. Jay slowed to a stop beside her, breathing deeply, his eyes scanning the area. Lamps illuminated the pathways, but shadows and shrubbery flanked the old halls and newer buildings. The mist had begun to rise again and there were many murky hiding places. Groups of students as well as those walking alone were heading through the quad, scattered about the walkways and hurrying up the steps into the wide entrances. Kristi looked from the library to the student union but saw no one fleeing into the darkness.

  “On your right!” a woman’s voice yelled over the sound of changing gears as a bike whizzed past, the rider hunched over her handlebars.

  Bruno let out a low growl.

  Kristi’s heart sank as she studied the grounds.

  No one seemed out of place. She didn’t see a dark figure darting through the trees or dashing up the steps of one of the tall, vine-clad buildings that comprised the small campus of All Saints. “Damn…damn…damn!” Lurking in the distance, at the far end of the quad and tucked behind some willow trees was the massive dark structure of Wagner House. Lamplight from the lower floor was barely visible.

  “Did you see him?” Jay asked tensely. “What did he look like?”

  She was glad for his presence as he stood near her, his gaze scraping every visible inch of this section of the quad. “No…he was just a shadow in the window and the blur of a dark figure when I was closer.” She motioned toward Jay’s dog. “Can Bruno find him?” The dog, hearing his name, turned his eyes to Jay, waiting for direction. “Isn’t he part bloodhound?”

  “And part blind. But he has a great nose. Maybe if the guy left something at the scene, in your apartment, or something he might have dropped along the way, but Bruno’s not trained.” Jay eyed one knot of students then the next, studying anyone walking alone.

  It was useless.

  Kristi knew it.

  The intruder had vanished.

  At least for the moment.

  She let out a long sigh and tried to tamp down her anger; her frustration. “I guess we lost him.”

  “Looks like.” Eyebrows slammed together as he squinted at a trio of girls walking through the library doors. Jay asked, “So what happened? How’d he get in?”

  Kristi shook her head.

  He gave her a long look and said, “Okay. Let’s go see what he took.”

  “Oh, God…” She didn’t want to think that her computer might be missing, or any of her things. She had her wallet, her cell phone, and all of her ID, but everything else, including her meticulous notes on the abductions, her small amount of jewelry—thankfully mostly costume stuff—and pictures of her father as well as her mother…oh, God, if he took those…“I don’t want to think about it.” Jay would insist she call the police and then she would have to explain about Tara Atwater’s things—assuming they were still in the apartment—and her theory that something of value within them might connect her to the other missing girls, or their kidnapper.

  Then there was the issue of her father. Mentally she groaned. Despite the fact that she was an adult, there was just no way Rick Bentz wouldn’t learn about what she was doing. There would be hell to pay.

  Squaring her shoulders, Kristi walked back to her apartment with Jay and Bruno. She braced herself for the battle that was to come. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t taken on Rick Bentz in the past. She would just have to do it again. Sooner or later he’d figure out that he couldn’t tell her what to do, right?

  But he could sure make life damn miserable in the meantime.

  At her third-story unit, the door was shut, the dead bolt in place.

  “The intruder has a key?” Jay asked, as there was no way to unlock the door without one. “That narrows the field of suspects a bit.”

  “Quite a bit,” she said, thinking of Irene and Hiram Calloway, the only people beside herself who possessed a key. But why would either of them be nosing around her place?

  With emotions ranging from anger to dread, Kristi unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  “Stay,” Jay ordered Bruno; then to Kristi, “Don’t touch anything.”

  “I know.” If they had to call the police for the break-in, the crime scene couldn’t be disturbed.

  But the apartment was dark. Still. She hit the light switch and overhead illumination flooded the studio.

  Everything was just as she’d left it. Her computer was on the desk, her posters tacked to the wall, Tara’s things strewn on the tarp on the floor. All of her pictures were where she’d left them, nothing outwardly disturbed. And no lamps had been lit; the only illumination came from the light on the old stove, the one she used as a night-light, the one that had allowed her to see the intruder. It seemed that her small apartment was the same as when she’d left it.

  Except that someone had been inside. She’d seen him. The thought made her skin crawl. Who was it? What did he want?

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She stepped into the room and studied the contents more carefully. “Nothing’s disturbed.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I…yeah, I think so.” Her gaze scraped the mantel, bookcases, tables, and bed, before landing in the kitchen, which, dishes in the sink, was also exactly as she’d left it.

  “But someone was in here?” he asked.

  “Yes!…I think so.” She thought back. “Of course they were. I saw him in the stove light. When I got here, I heard him on the third landing of the staircase, then he descended a flight to the second floor where the porch runs across the face of the building to the stairs on the far end. I don’t know if he saw me or what, but he got scared and didn’t come down the only staircase leading from my door. Instead he took off on the second-level porch.” She walked to the sink, grabbed a cup from the counter, and drew some water from the tap. “Whoever it was had to be up here.” She took a long swallow of the tepid water.

  “But not necessarily inside.”

  “No, no, I’m sure I saw…” She was going to say she was certain that she’d seen someone inside her apartment, but was she? She looked through the window over the kitchen sink and stared into the night, but it was too dark to see the outline of Wagner House over the wall and through the trees. As there were no lights turned on in the upper floors of the manor house turned museum, she couldn’t decipher the building’s silhouette, let alone that third-story window where she had been standing when she’d seen someone in her unit.

  Wagner House was so far away.

  And it had been dark.

  For the first time since spying someone in the window, she doubted what she’d seen.

  “Well?”

  “I…I don’t know. I think someone was in here.”

  He glanced down at the tarp covering the floor and all of the items placed so carefully on the plastic surface. “What’s this?”

  “A long story,” she said, not certain she wanted to share it. Nervously, she grabbed a long-handled lighter and lit a few candles in the apartment. Then, deciding candle glow might be too intimate, she turned on all the table lamps.

  Jay whistled to the dog and made Bruno lie on the floor. Then he closed the door and sat, straddling one padded arm of the single chair in the room. “Well, Kris, you’re in luck. I just happen to have all night.”

  The crime lab techs had already arrived and Bonita Washington, one of the smartest women Bentz knew, was barking out orders, making certain no one disturbed “her” scene. “I mean it,” she was saying, “you all wear booties and you don’t touch anything or you don’t get it. That goes double for you,” she said, her green eyes narrowing on B
entz’s partner, Reuben Montoya. African American and proud of it, Washington was a few pounds overweight and all business. “You signed in?” she asked Bentz.

  He nodded as he followed her into the small frame house that had been recently renovated. Just inside the door, he stopped and looked around. Furniture had been kicked back, there were scuff marks on the floor, and in the living room a dark stain, most likely blood.

  “We checked,” Bonita said, nodding. “It’s blood all right.”

  “But no body?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  One of the criminalists was taking pictures, another dusting for fingerprints. The story was that the police had taken a call from Aldo “Big Al” Cordini, owner of one of the strip joints in the Quarter. One of his dancers, Karen Lee Williams aka Bodiluscious, hadn’t shown up for work for a couple of nights and he’d sent someone to her house to check on her. No one had answered the door and her car, which she’d told the owner of the club was inoperable, was still in her garage.

  The blood on the floor wasn’t enough to suspect a homicide but the fact that Karen Lee hadn’t shown up in any of the local hospitals or clinics added to the fear that she’d been killed. Or abducted, Bentz thought, his mind returning to the missing coeds at All Saints in Baton Rouge.

  Not that whatever happened to Karen Lee had anything to do with the missing girls—there was nothing to link them—but because of his daughter, his mind naturally went there. The coeds at All Saints had disappeared without a trace. Karen Lee obviously went down fighting.

  They looked over the scene and started talking to the few neighbors who had returned to their homes in this storm-devastated part of the city. No one had seen anything unusual. All Montoya and Bentz learned was that Karen Lee was a single mom with a kid tucked away with Karen’s mother somewhere in west Texas. The child, a daughter, was nine or ten, or thereabouts, and named Darcy. No one knew of any friends or family nearby, any boyfriends past or present. No one knew what had happened to the kid’s father, as Karen Lee had never talked about him.

  “So we’ve got a big zero,” Montoya said as they returned to Bentz’s car. “Not even a body.”

  “Maybe she’s alive.”

  Montoya snorted, climbed into the passenger side, and shook his head. “I wouldn’t bet on it. She might not have been dead when the bastard hauled her out of here, but I’m thinking he’s killed her by now.”

  “We could get lucky,” Bentz said as he started the car and rolled into traffic. They’d drive down to the club, figure out who had seen Karen last, and find out who’d been in the bar that night. Chances were that her killer had been watching and waiting, maybe followed her home.

  “Luck’s for fools,” Montoya said, and reached for his nonexistent pack of cigarettes before he remembered he’d given up the habit.

  “Like I said, we could get lucky.”

  Jay leaned forward in his chair and said, “So what you’re telling me is that you broke the law by opening the storage unit, then compromised evidence in a potential abduction or murder case, then trespassed in the Wagner House chasing after some ‘blonde’ that you thought might be part of this vampire cult. Then, though you didn’t find the blonde, you heard voices and then looked out the window, saw someone in your apartment, and came streaking back to confront him.” Jay’s disapproval wasn’t hard to miss.

  “Someone was here,” Kristi insisted. “And so what if I was breaking a law or two? I’m trying to find out what happened to those girls, damn it. And come on, Jay. You’re not entirely innocent, are you? You dug through government records, right?” Kristi was having none of this blame-game BS. She was seated in her desk chair and rubbing the tension from the back of her neck.

  “I didn’t put my life in jeopardy.”

  “Just your career. Okay, Jay, let’s just get down to it. Someone was in my apartment and I want to know who. And why.” She glanced at the computer where she, while explaining everything to Jay, had logged on to a couple of chat rooms. A few familiar names had come and gone. Deathmaster7 was cruising the rooms and JustO had lurked for a while but hadn’t joined any conversations.

  “Who do you think would break in?” He checked the window she’d left open for the cat, but that would require roof access.

  She’d told him that Hiram and Irene were the only ones who possessed keys, so she shrugged and said, “Who else could it be but Hiram and Irene?”

  “We’ll start with them. Meanwhile, I’m staying here.” His long legs were stretched in front of him, Bruno lying on the rug wedged between the daybed and the chair.

  “I don’t think that’s such a hot idea.”

  “Gonna kick me out?” he asked, a dark eyebrow cocking, damned near daring her to try.

  “Jay—”

  “That’s Professor McKnight to you.” She gave him a look that caused him to smile. “Kris, I’m not budging, so let’s find some place that delivers all-night Thai or Chinese or Italian food, then call it a night. Either that, or you can come back to my aunt’s house that I’m renovating and we can share a sleeping bag.”

  She stared at him incredulously. “Are you joking?”

  “You think someone broke in to your apartment,” he reminded her, reaching for his cell phone. “So what is it going to be? Pad Thai? General Tsao’s chicken? Mushroom and sausage pizza?”

  “I can’t do mushrooms.”

  One side of his mouth lifted. “I know.”

  Kristi felt a traitorous glow of warmth that he remembered her aversion to mushrooms, which ticked her off to no end. “I guess…pizza…”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He got up from the chair. “Figure it out while I go get your bike.”

  “My—bike?”

  “Your dad asked me to bring it up. Knew you needed it and didn’t want to show up here and be accused of invading your privacy or being overly protective or whatever. It’s none of my business what goes on between you two, but, yeah, I did bring the bike. It could get stolen in the truck. I’ll bring it inside.”

  “Great.” Kristi’s tone reflected her ambivalence.

  “How about a combination, sans mushrooms?” Jay was already messing around with his cell phone, searching for a restaurant. As he headed outside, she could hear him ordering. A few moments later he returned with the bike. He slammed the door behind him, and Houdini, who had been hiding beneath the bed, finally made himself known by growling low at Bruno. The dog, still coiled into a sleeping position, barely raised his head.

  “Another voice heard from,” Jay remarked as he propped the bike against the wall near the bathroom door.

  Houdini wasn’t finished. Hissing, showing off his teeth, his back arching, he suddenly shot across the room, a black streak hurtling himself onto the daybed. Then he sprang to the mantel and from there picked his way to the bookcase.

  “Is that cat always in a bad mood?” Jay asked.

  “Yes.”

  Bruno couldn’t have cared less. He let out a sigh and let his chin fall into his outstretched front legs.

  Houdini suddenly scurried across the shelf, sending a picture of Kristi tumbling to the floor, where the frame shattered and the glass broke. Frightened out of his mind, he sprang from the shelf, flew across the floor, hopped effortlessly onto the counter, slipped through the partially open window, and was gone.

  “Friendly,” Jay observed dryly.

  “He’s getting better.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He is.” She picked up the broken pieces and tried to prop them up on the shelf, which was several feet above her head.

  “Let me help you.”

  “I can get it.”

  “If you had a ladder.” He was already walking up behind her, plucking the picture from her fingers, placing it on the shelf.

  Kristi was determined to ignore the length of his body, pressing up against her back, the smell of him—a little cologne, a little musk—mingling in the air. He was just too damned cl
ose.

  Jay hesitated a bit too long for comfort and she thought he was feeling it, too, that hint of electricity in the air between them, the awareness of the opposite sex in such close proximity. She wondered if he, like she, was thinking how she’d broken up with him, thought him too young, too familiar, too hometown while now…Oh, Lord, she was not going to remember how he’d once made her feel, how she’d looked forward to kissing him, to touching him, to feeling his weight atop her….

  He pressed closer and she noticed the wall of his chest against her back, the stretch of his arm over her head.

  “What’s this?” he asked and broke the spell.

  “What?”

  He was fingering the shelf of the bookcase, which was higher than his head. “I don’t know…wait…hell…here, take this.” Standing on his toes, he placed the picture into her hand again and, as if he had been totally unaware of the charged air between them, said, “Move to the side.” As she got out of his way, he reached upward as high as he could.

  “What is it?”

  “I think there’s something up here, like a little niche in the back of the bookcase where it meets the shelf. I think there’s something in it….” He was straining. “Now, if I can just get my finger in there…. What the hell?” He pulled his hand back and rocked back on his feet. From his fingers dangled an intricate gold chain. Hanging from the chain was a small glass vial filled with dark reddish liquid. It glittered and swung in the soft light.

  “Oh, God,” Kristi said, her stomach turning. She knew without a doubt that she was staring at an ampoule of Tara Atwater’s blood.

  Vlad slipped through the long hallway, the tunnel that connected the abandoned basement lab to another building, another forgotten chamber deep in the heart of the campus, a room few knew of. This secret place was carved out of the ground by Ludwig Wagner centuries before as a place for his own private trysts. Marble lined the walls of the subterranean spa, where warm water was piped from an underground spring to the massive tub in the center of the room. Candles had been lit. There was no electricity down here.