Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  “No! Wait! Rick—”

  The train thundered ever closer, the tracks quaking. She stumbled, barely able to right herself.

  A horrific whistle shrieked while brakes squealed. The sound of metal screeching against metal was deafening, the smell of burning diesel acrid in her nostrils.

  Steam swirled all around her.

  Help me! Help my baby!

  But her prayer fell on deaf ears as steam and shrill noise reverberated through the tunnel.

  “No!” she yelled, startling herself awake.

  Her heart was pounding, her body drenched in sweat, the sheets of her bed twisted. Dear God. It was a dream. Only a flippin’ dream. Taking in deep breaths, she glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. Still a few hours before she had to get up and dressed for a day at the shop.

  She sat upright, pushed her hair from her eyes, and realized her fingers were trembling, the residual effect from the nightmare.

  From his dog bed on the floor, Hairy S lifted his scruffy head. His ears pricked forward and his little tail beat against his bed hopefully. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Come on, jump up!”

  He didn’t need a second more of encouragement. The dog hopped from his bed, made a running leap, and landed near Olivia’s pillows. After washing her face enthusiastically, he burrowed under the covers and she stretched out again. With one hand she scratched Hairy behind his ears. His warm body curled close to hers.

  A far cry from her husband’s embrace, but it would have to do for now. Her husband. What the hell was he doing in L.A.? Chasing after a ghost, or a dream? She tried not to think that he was still harboring feelings for his dead ex-wife, but she knew better. His guilt, she thought, was swallowing him whole and someone was preying upon him.

  Who?

  The same nagging question that had been with her since he’d shown her the mutilated death certificate kept poking at her brain relentlessly. It’s not that she didn’t believe in ghosts; she just wasn’t certain. She’d had her fair share of dealing with unexplained, if not paranormal, activity. Hadn’t she, herself, seen through the eyes of a twisted, sadistic serial killer?

  Oh, for some of that insight now.

  She glanced at the clock. It was only one-twenty in the morning in L.A. Was Bentz still awake? Was he thinking about her? Chasing down a dream? She touched her still-flat abdomen and wondered if she and Bentz and the baby would ever have a normal life.

  Yeah, well, what’s that? You knew what you signed up for when you married a workaholic.

  Sighing, she closed her eyes, determined to relax and find sleep again. She was just starting to doze when the phone rang. Smiling, she said to the dog. “I guess he can’t sleep, either.”

  She picked up the receiver and said, “Hey,” a smile audible in her voice.

  “Do you know what your husband’s doing in California?” a woman’s hoarse voice whispered.

  “What?” Olivia was suddenly wide awake, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling in fear. “Who is this?”

  “He’s looking for her. And do you know why? She’s his true love, not you. Jennifer. He’s never forgotten her.”

  “Who is this?” she demanded again.

  But the phone went dead.

  “Bitch!” Olivia hissed into the receiver. Of course Bentz was in L.A. She knew that. She also knew that he was looking for Jennifer or a woman who was impersonating his ex-wife. She looked at caller ID; the display flashed UNKNOWN CALLER. “Great.” No name. No number. No area code. No way to figure out who had called her. It’s no one, just a crank call, someone who knows Bentz went to L.A. to determine what happened to Jennifer.

  But there weren’t many people who knew that fact. At least not here in New Orleans. Only Montoya and herself. So the call must’ve come from somewhere else, and she’d bet her life savings that it had originated in Southern California.

  Bentz, it seemed, was rattling a cage or two. Which was what he’d hoped to do.

  As she set the phone onto the nightstand, she thought about calling her husband and explaining what had happened, but decided to let it go.

  For tonight.

  Instead, she tossed back the covers and padded to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water and drank it down. She stared out the window over the sink to the backyard, watching the play of moonlight through the cypress trees.

  Afterward, she set her glass in the sink and double-checked that all the doors were locked and the windows latched.

  Only then, did she return to bed.

  She glanced at the digital read out one last time and decided that in five hours she’d call her husband and find out what the hell was going on.

  Bentz stayed up listening to news reports, soaking up any information he could find on the Internet. Why the hell had the Twenty-one killer or some damned copycat decided to strike again, after all these years? It was too late to call Olivia, so he spent several restless hours thinking about the case surrounding Delta and Diana Caldwell’s murder. It had been a travesty, a horror for the shell-shocked, grief-ridden parents and older brother, another D name…Donny or Danny, no. Donovan! That was it. The girls’ brother had been eight years older and at the time of the tragedy had been forced to hold his shattered family together. Apparently it was an effort destined to fail, as years later Bentz had learned through the grapevine that the kid’s parents had divorced.

  When Bentz closed his eyes he could still see how the victims had been posed: naked, facing each other, bound in a red ribbon that reminded him of blood. Bentz had nearly thrown up at first look.

  Whenever he thought back on the Caldwell murders he worried that he hadn’t given the investigation 100 percent of his focus. He had worked the case as best he could, considering his own mental state, but it wasn’t enough. Bledsoe was right. Bentz had left Trinidad holding the bag. And now, it seemed, two other girls had lost their lives to the same maniac.

  Maybe if he’d been more on his game with the Caldwell twins, the new double homicide wouldn’t have happened and two innocent girls would still be alive today.

  After a sleepless night Bentz decided to offer up his help on the new double homicide investigation. He knew he wouldn’t really be a part of the LAPD, but certainly he could help, “consult,” as it were, as he’d been the lead at one time in the Caldwell twins’ murder.

  He said as much when he called his old partner for information.

  “Shit, Bentz. You know I can’t talk about this,” Trinidad said. “As for the reasons you came back to L.A.—I heard some of it from Hayes—I can’t be a part of it. I got to think about my retirement. I can’t do anything to screw it up, and I’m not talking about the new murder case. Not with you. Not with my wife. Not with the press. Not with any-damned-body.”

  “I worked the first case.”

  “That’s assuming they’re related.”

  “They are.”

  “You know this because of a news bulletin, a thirty-second sound bite at eleven? Give it a rest, Bentz. I gotta be straight with you. No one here wants your help.”

  Bentz didn’t give up. Remembering the Caldwell twins’ tragedy spurred him into making another call. This time to Hayes.

  “I figured you’d call,” the detective said. “This is police business, Bentz. Got nothing to do with you. I’m already sticking my neck out for you as it is. So, don’t even ask. We’ll all be a lot better off.”

  Bentz hung up, but he wasn’t able to leave it alone. So he phoned Andrew Bledsoe.

  He wasn’t pleased to get a call.

  “Jesus, Bentz, you’ve got a lotta nerve calling here after how you left me and everyone in the damned department hangin’. Now, you want information? Are you out of your frickin’ mind? You know I can’t talk to you. Shit, didn’t you do enough damage back when you were on the force? You remember that time, don’t you? When it was legal for me to talk to you? I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it any more now. What is this? You calling me? Why? No one else will talk to you?
” Bledsoe raged. “Shit, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t you? Don’t forget, dickhead, you almost got canned, so you can damned well read about this one in the papers like everybody else!”

  Bledsoe hung up, still muttering under his breath.

  Bentz hadn’t expected anyone to bend over backward for him. Nonetheless he was frustrated as hell that he wasn’t allowed any information about a double homicide that in all probability was linked to his last case with the department, the murder investigation he wasn’t able to solve.

  He was stewing about it when Olivia called. On her way into the shop late, she had decided to phone him around nine West Coast time. At first, his wife was evasive about the reason for the early morning call. But Bentz suspected something was up and said as much.

  “Can’t I just phone to say I miss you?” she asked.

  “Any time.” But it really wasn’t her style.

  “I’m just hoping that you’ll wrap this up soon. How’s it going?”

  “Not as fast as I’d hoped,” he admitted. He didn’t tell her about seeing Jennifer at the old inn; he didn’t want to discuss it with anyone until he knew what he was dealing with, had some concrete evidence that she’d been there. However, he did fill her in on the case of the murdered twins and how it seemed to mirror the last case he’d worked on in L.A. twelve years ago.

  “And you think because you returned to California this sicko is on the hunt again?” she asked, skeptically.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.

  “Does the LAPD want your help?”

  He laughed. “What do you think?”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse. They want me to get out of Dodge, I think.”

  “Are you considering it?”

  “Well, yeah, I’m thinking about it, being as you miss me so badly.”

  “Hey. Don’t put this on me. You’re on some kind of mission out there, so you stick it out until you’ve done whatever it is you have to do. I’m fine here. I’m not going to have it on my head that you returned for me and left unfinished business. Uh-uh. No way.”

  “I’ll wrap it up as soon as I can,” he promised. And then they hung up and he was left with the feeling that Olivia was holding out on him. He sensed that something more was going on and with all that was happening here in L.A., he was concerned. New Orleans was nearly two thousand miles away, but he’d seen “Jennifer” in Louisiana more than once, and the death certificate had been sent to the NOPD, so whoever was behind this knew him inside out and probably realized that he was married.

  Although Bentz knew he was the primary target of this head game, whatever it was, the easiest way to hurt him was through those he loved, which only added to the worry gnawing a deep hole in his gut.

  Like it or not, he had the feeling that Olivia or Kristi could be at risk.

  By noon he’d drunk several cups of the coffee brewed in the motel’s office and bought a copy of every paper he could find in the boxes on the street. He had spent hours reading news accounts of the double homicide and had learned the names of the victims and some of the details of the crime. Of course some information was missing, kept under wraps by the LAPD so that they could flush out the true killer when the time came. Sick as it was, attention-seekers looking for their fifteen minutes of fame sometimes claimed responsibility for vile acts. They lived off the attention, the media frenzy, or were deranged enough to believe they had actually performed the crime, no matter how horrendous. A double homicide of this nature got a lot of press and therefore attracted a lot of false claims.

  It was all a pain in the ass.

  Montoya had spent his morning finishing the paperwork on a homicide. The night before there had been a knifing at the waterfront just off the river walk, not far from the New Orleans Convention Center. The victim had died, but with the help of witnesses the killer had been apprehended. Montoya was finishing the crime report when Ralph Lee called from the lab. Despite being ankle-deep in forensic evidence attached to real cases, Lee had taken the time to examine and test the death certificates and pictures that had been sent to Bentz.

  “There’s not a lot you can work with,” he said as Montoya leaned back in his chair, stretching out his neck and shoulder muscles. “It looks like the photographs haven’t been tampered with. I haven’t been able to see any evidence of alteration.”

  Montoya didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  “What we were able to determine was that the car the subject was getting into was a GM product, probably a Chevy Impala. You said you thought the shots were taken in California and that’s consistent with the vegetation, license plate numbers, and street signs. The one we saw was for Colorado Boulevard. I enlarged the photos so that I could read the headlines on the newspapers and then I double-checked. The USA Today and L.A. Times were dated two weeks ago on Thursday, and the headlines are consistent for that date. We tried to get a reflection of the photographer from some of the shots, but couldn’t get any images. I have a few partial license plates for cars parked in the area and I listed them along with make and model in case your shutterbug inadvertently caught his own car on film, assuming it wasn’t the Impala.

  “As for the death certificate, no DNA was found on the envelope flap. We ran the fingerprints through the national database. No matches on AFIS. The red ink is consistent with ink found in a Write Plus pen, and they’re sold all over the country and into Canada, but are more popular in the western states. The document—the death certificate—is authentic and over ten years old; we can tell by the paper. That’s it.” Lee sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t know if that helps you or not.”

  “You guys went above and beyond,” Montoya said. “This will definitely help.”

  “Good. I’ve got the report. I can e-mail it to you or you can pick up a hard copy when you swing by to retrieve the original documents, since this isn’t an active investigation.”

  “I’ll get them this afternoon,” Montoya promised and hung up. He’d done all he could for Bentz and his damned ghost hunt. Montoya would call and pass the information on. Then, maybe Bentz would wise up and come home to his real flesh-and-blood wife.

  Time to give up looking for a woman who no longer existed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Lorraine Newell lived in an aging tri-level home on a cul-de-sac in Torrance, south of the heart of L.A. The apricot-colored paint was blistering and peeling in the sun, and the lawn was patchy, the green grass bleached in spots where the sprinklers hadn’t quite reached. A far cry from the palace Lorraine, a would-be princess, had hoped for.

  Although Bentz was fifteen minutes early, the minute he punched the doorbell the door flew open. It was as if Lorraine had been perched on the steps off the entryway, waiting for the sound of the melodic chimes to announce his arrival.

  “Rick Bentz,” she said, shaking her head, dark hair brushing her chin. Jennifer’s stepsister hadn’t aged a day since he’d last seen her. Like minor royalty, she still carried herself imperiously despite the fact that she was barely five-five in heels. Lorraine had never liked him and had never made any bones about the fact. Today she didn’t bother with a fake smile or hug, which was fine by Bentz. No reason for pretense.

  “You’re the last person I’d ever expect to show up here,” she said.

  “Things change.”

  “Do they?” She moved out of the doorway and led him into a living room that was straight out of the late eighties, when her husband Earl, a car dealer, had been alive. Bentz remembered the plaid chairs clustered around a long forest green couch, a marble-faced fireplace surrounded by a wall covered in mirrored panes that gave the room a weird funhouse feel. Fake plants gathered dust, the coffee table books of California and wines were the same ones he remembered from nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

  “Sit,” she said, waving him into a chair while she took a seat on the arm of the couch. She was dressed in tight fitting jeans, a black tank top, and ballet slip
pers. Not exactly what Bentz would call business attire, appropriate for a dinner with a client, but then again he never had understood the studied casualness of Southern Californians.

  Lorraine got right to the point. “What is this about Jennifer’s death?” Using finger quotes to emphasize her point, she said, “You know her accident never set well with me. And I never bought the whole suicide angle. You know that. She was a drama queen, but a car accident?” She shook her head. “Not Jen’s style. Pills, maybe…but I think even that is a stretch. Though she was a little self-destructive, I grant you, I couldn’t see her actually taking her own life.” She looked up at Bentz. “Jennifer was the sort of person who might have attempted suicide as an attempt to grab attention. But to actually drive into a tree? Let her body be thrown through glass? Mangle herself? No way. She didn’t have the guts for a stunt like that. She could have survived, been scarred, or crippled.” Lorraine shook her head emphatically as she folded her arms around her midriff. “Uh-uh.”

  He showed her copies of the pictures, but held back on the death certificate.

  “Oh dear God.” She was shaking her head as she eyed the photographs of her stepsister. “These…these really do look like Jen. I mean, yeah. But it has to be an imposter; someone who looks so much like her that one of your enemies, maybe someone you sent to prison, decided to play a practical joke on you.” She looked up. “Seems as if it worked.”

  If you only knew. He thought about the woman in his backyard, the dreams he’d had of Jennifer. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”

  “A few pictures of a look-alike do not a case make. They wouldn’t bring you all this way.” She frowned. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something that drove you to come back to California.”

  “I have a little time off.”

  “Another department trying to get rid of dead wood?”