Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (182 page)

“My momma told me, son…”

Jay angled his Toyota onto the crumbling driveway of the house on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, a tiny two-bedroom bungalow that had belonged to his aunt.

“…don’t ever play with guns….”

He clicked off the radio and cut the engine. The cottage was now in the process of being sold by his ever-battling cousins, Janice and Leah, as part of Aunt Colleen’s estate. The sisters, who rarely saw eye-to-eye on anything, had agreed to let him stay at the property while it was being marketed, as long as he did some minor repairs that Janice’s do-nothing wanna-be rock star husband couldn’t get around to making.

Frowning, Jay grabbed his duffel bag and notebook computer as he hopped to the ground. He let the dog outside, waited as Bruno sniffed, then lifted his leg on one of the live oaks in the front yard, before locking the Toyota. Turning his collar against the rain, he hurried up the weed-strewn brick path to the front porch, where a light glowed against the coming night. The dog was right on his heels, as he had been for the six years that Jay had owned him, the only pup in a litter of six who hadn’t been adopted. His brother had owned the bitch, a purebred bloodhound who, after going into heat, hadn’t waited for the purebred of choice. She’d dug out of her kennel and taken up with the friendly mutt a quarter of a mile away whose owner hadn’t seen fit to have him neutered. The result was a litter of pups not worth a whole helluva lot, but who’d turned out to be pretty damned good dogs.

Especially Bruno of the keen nose and bad eyes. Jay bent down, petted his dog, and was rewarded with a friendly head butt against his hand. “Come on, let’s go look at the damage.”

“Folsom Prison Blues” replayed through his mind as he unlocked the door and shouldered it open.

The house smelled musty. Unused. The air inside dead. He cracked two windows despite the rain. He’d spent the last three weekends here, repainting the bedrooms, regrouting tile in the kitchen and single bath, and scraping off what appeared to be years of dirt on the back porch where an ancient washing machine had become the home to a nest of hornets. The rusted washer along with its legion of dead wasps was now gone, terra cotta pots of trailing plants in its stead on the newly painted floorboards.

But he was far from finished. It would take months to get the house into shape. He dropped his bags in the small bedroom, then walked to the kitchen, where an ancient refrigerator was wheezing on cracked linoleum he had yet to replace. Inside the fridge, along with some cheese that had dried and cracked, he discovered a six pack of Lone Star that was only one bottle shy, and grabbed a long neck. It was strange, he thought, how Baton Rouge, of all places, had become his haven away from New Orleans, the city where he’d worked and grown up.

Had it been the aftermath of Katrina that had drawn the lifeblood from him? The crime lab on Tulane Avenue had been destroyed by the storm and the work the lab did scattered to different parishes and private agencies as well as to the Louisiana State Police crime lab in Baton Rouge. Sometimes they worked in FEMA trailers. It had been a nightmare—the extra hours, the frustration of evidence that had been collected, only to end up being compromised. And then there was the volunteer time spent helping with victims of the storm, as well as the cleanup after the floodwaters receded. He doubted few people on the police force hadn’t thought about quitting, and a lot had, leaving the force understaffed in a time when it needed more dedicated officers, not less.

Not that Jay blamed anyone for leaving. Not only were they helping victims of the hurricane, many officers, too, were dealing with the loss of their own homes and loved ones.

He, too, needed a change. It wasn’t just the horrendous hours he’d worked. Witnessing the horror of the hurricane and watching the city struggle to recover while the Feds pointed fingers at each other was bad enough. But then knowing that so much evidence, painfully collected over the years, had literally been washed away—that had settled on him like a weight. So much waste. So much to do to bring things back.

At thirty, he was already jaded.

And something—some last piece of tragedy—had sent him on this journey away from New Orleans.

Had it been the looters—those who were desperate or criminal enough to take advantage of the tragedy?

The victims trapped in their own homes, or nursing homes?

The lack of a quick response by the federal government?

The near-death of a city he loved?

Or was it the fact that his own home had been totaled by the screaming wind and flood that had torn his rented cottage from its foundation, ruining nearly everything he’d owned?

And how much of the disaster could he blame for his ill-fated romance with Gayle? Had the demise of their relationship been his fault? Hers? The situation?

He gave the dog fresh water in an old saucepan, then opened his beer. As he took a long swallow from the long neck, he stared through the grimy, rain-spattered window to the backyard. Through the panes he saw a bat swoop near the branches of a solitary magnolia tree. Dusk was falling rapidly, a reminder he had work to do.

Twisting his head, he heard his vertebrae crack and adjust as he walked to the second bedroom—still painted a nauseating shade of pink—where he’d set up a desk, lamp, and small file cabinet. A dog bed was in the corner and Bruno found an old half-chewed rawhide “bone” and started working on it. Jay took another swallow of his Lone Star, then set the beer down. He opened his notebook computer and set it on the chipped Formica desktop before hitting the power button. With a whirr, the PC started and images appeared. Seconds later he was on the Internet, eyeballing his e-mail.

Imbedded in the spam and mail from coworkers and friends was another note from Gayle. His gut clenched a bit as he opened the missive, read her quick little cheery e-note, and found no humor in the joke she’d forwarded to him. No big surprise. They’d agreed to be civil to each other, remain friends, but who was kidding whom? It wasn’t working. Their relationship was dead. Had been dying long before the storm hit.

He didn’t respond. It was as pointless as the diamond ring that sat in his bureau drawer in New Orleans. His lips twisted at that. He hadn’t had much luck in the ring department. Years before he’d given a “promise ring” to his high school sweetheart, and Kristi Bentz had promptly gotten involved with a TA when she’d gone off to school up here, at All Saints College. How about that for a bit of irony? Years later, when he’d finally offered a ring to Gayle, she’d accepted the diamond and begun to plan their life together—his life—to the point that he’d felt as if a noose had been draped over his neck. With each passing day the rope drew tighter until he hadn’t been able to breathe. His attitude had rankled Gayle, and she’d become all the more possessive. She’d called him at all hours of the night, had become jealous of his friends, his coworkers, even his damned career. And she’d never let him forget that he’d wanted to marry Kristi Bentz long before he’d met her. Gayle had been certain he’d never stopped pining for his high school sweetheart.

Which was just damned stupid.

So he’d asked for his ring back.

And had it hurled at his forehead, where it had cut his skin and left a small scar just over his left eyebrow, evidence of Gayle’s fury.

He figured he’d ducked a bigger missile when he’d called off the wedding.

So much for true love.

Grabbing the remote for the small television balanced upon the filing cabinet, he skimmed through his e-mail. Half listening to the news as he waited for a sports report and an update on the Saints, he’d started reading through a dozen other pieces of e-mail when he caught the end of a news report on the television.

“…missing from the campus of All Saints College since before Christmas, the coed was last seen here, in Cramer Hall, by her roommate on December eighteenth around four-thirty.”

Jay swung all of his attention to the screen, where a female reporter in a blue parka, battling wind and rain in a threatening sky, was staring into the camera. The report had been taped in front of the brick edifice of the dorm in which Kristi Bentz had lived years ago as a freshman. An image of Kristi as she was then, with her long, auburn hair, athletic body, and deep set, intelligent eyes, sizzled through his brain. He’d been stupid about her back then, certain she was “the one.” Of course since that time, he’d learned how wrong he’d been. Thankfully she’d broken it off, and he’d avoided a marriage that would’ve certainly ended up a trap for both of them. Talk about a screwed up family!

“…Since that day, a week before Christmas,” the reporter was saying, “no one has seen Rylee Ames alive.” A picture of the twenty-ish girl flashed onto the screen. With blue eyes, streaked, blond hair, and a bright smile, Rylee Ames looked like the quintessential “California girl,” a cheerleader type, though the reporter was saying that she’d attended high school in Tempe, Arizona, and Laredo, Texas.

“This is Belinda Del Rey, reporting for WMTA, in Baton Rouge.”

Rylee Ames.
The name sounded familiar.

Bothered, Jay quickly logged onto the college’s Web site and checked his class list, one that was updated as students added or dropped classes from their schedules. The first name on his roster was Ames, Rylee.

His cop radar was on full alert and he had to slow his mind from reeling onto one horrifying scenario after another. Rape, torture, murder—he’d seen so many violent crimes, but he tried not to leap to any conclusions, not yet. There was no evidence that she’d met with foul play, just that she was missing.

Kids her age dropped out, changed colleges, or took off on ski vacations or to rock concerts without telling anyone. For that matter she could have eloped.

But maybe not. He’d worked at the crime lab in New Orleans long enough to have a bad feeling about this student he’d never met. He took another swallow of beer and read lower on the roster.

Arnette, Jordan.

Bailey, Wister.

Braddock, Ira.

Bentz, Kristi.

Calloway, Hiram.

Crenshaw, Geoffrey.

Wait! What?

Bentz, Kristi?

His eyes narrowed on the screen, zeroing in on the familiar name that still had an impact that sent his blood pressure soaring.

No way! She was haunting his thoughts!

Kristi Bentz
couldn’t
be in his class!
Could not!
What kind of cruel twist of fate or irony would that be? But there her name was, big as life. He wasn’t foolish enough to think it might be another student with the same name. He had to face the fact that for three hours each week on Monday nights, he’d see her again.

Crap!

The rain pummeled the windows and he stared at the class roster as if mesmerized. Images of Kristi flitted through his mind: Long hair flying as she ran from him through a forest, the play of shadowy light catching her through the canopy of branches, her laughter infectious; emerging from a swimming pool, water dripping from her toned body, her smile triumphant if she’d won the meet, her frown deep and impenetrable if she’d lost; lying beneath him on a blanket in the back of his truck, moonlight shimmering against her perfect body.

“Stop it!” he said out loud, and Bruno, ever vigilant, was on his feet in an instant, barking gruffly. “No, boy, it’s…it’s nothing.” Jay promptly shut out the stupid, visceral images of his horny youth. He hadn’t seen Kristi in over five years and he figured she’d changed. And for all his romantic fantasies about her, there were other images that weren’t quite as nice. Kristi had a temper and a razor sharp tongue.

He’d figured long ago that he was well rid of her.

But the truth was, he’d read and heard about her brushes with death, about her dealings with madmen, about her long stint in the hospital recovering from the latest attack, and he’d felt bad, even going so far as to call a florist to send her flowers before changing his mind. Kristi was like a bad habit, one a man couldn’t quite shake. Jay was fine as long as he didn’t hear about her, read about her, or see her. All those old emotions were locked away under carefully guarded keys. He’d been interested in other women. He’d been engaged, hadn’t he? Still, having to see her on a weekly basis…

It would probably be good for him, he decided suddenly. “Character building” as his mother used to say whenever he was in trouble and had to pay the price of punishment, usually at the hands of his father.

“Hell,” he muttered under his breath as the truth of the matter sank in. His jaw slid to one side and for a second he let himself fantasize about teaching a class where Kristi was his student, where she would have to be under his scrutiny, his control. Jesus! What was he thinking? He’d decided long ago that never seeing her again was just fine. Now it looked like he’d be staring at her face for three hours once a week.

Draining his beer, he slammed the empty bottle onto his desk. He hadn’t altered his whole damned work schedule, started working ten-hour shifts, gone through the headache of changing his whole life only to have to see Kristi every week. His jaw clenched so hard it ached.

Maybe she’d drop his class. The second she realized he was stepping in for Dr. Monroe, Kristi would probably alter her schedule. No doubt she didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to deal with her. And the thought that he would be her teacher would probably really bug her. She’d resign from his class. Of course she would.

Good.

He read the rest of the class list of thirty-five students interested in criminology—make that thirty-four. His gaze drifted back to the first name on the list: Rylee Ames. Disturbed, Jay scratched at the stubble on his chin.

What the hell had happened to her?

CHAPTER 2

“
…No loud music, no pets, no smoking, it’s all here in the lease,” Irene Calloway said, though she herself smelled suspiciously of cigarette smoke. In her early seventies with a few short wisps of gray hair poking from under a red beret, Irene was as thin as a rail beneath her faded baggy jeans and oversized T-shirt. Her jacket was a man’s flannel shirt and she peered at Kristi through thick glasses. She and Kristi were seated at a small scarred table in the furnished studio apartment on the third floor. The place had a bit of charm with its dormers, old fireplace, plank floors, and watery glass windows. It was cozy and quiet and Kristi couldn’t believe her luck in finding the place. Irene jabbed a long, gnarled finger at the fine print of the lease.

“I read it,” Kristi assured her, though the copy she’d been faxed had been blurry. Wasting no more time, she signed both sets of the six-month lease and handed one back to her new landlady.

“You’re not married?”

“No.”

“No kids?”

Kristi bristled as she shook her head. Irene’s questions were a little too personal.

“No boyfriend? The lease stipulates only one person up here.” She motioned to the small loft that had once been an attic, possibly servants’ quarters of the grand old house now chopped into apartments.

“What if I decide I need a roommate?” Kristi asked, though whoever that might be would be relegated to the tired-looking love seat or an air bed.

Irene’s lips thinned. “Lease would have to be rewritten. I’d want to run a security check on any prospective tenants and, of course, the rent would go up along with another security deposit. And no subletting. Got it?”

“So far, it’s just me,” Kristi said, somehow managing to hold her tongue. She needed this apartment. Housing was hard to find in the middle of the school year, especially any apartments close to campus. A stroke of luck helped her discover this loft on the Internet. It had been one of the only units she could afford within walking distance to school. As for a roommate, Kristi would rather fly solo, but finances might dictate trying to find someone to share the rent and utilities.

“Good. I’ve no use for nonsense.”

Kristi let that one slide. For now. But the older woman was beginning to bug her.

“You don’t have any other questions?” Irene asked as she folded her copy crisply with her fingernails and slid it into a side pocket of a hand-crocheted bag.

“Not yet. Maybe once I move in.”

Irene’s dark eyes narrowed behind her glasses as if she were really sizing Kristi up.

“If there are any problems, you can also call my grandson, Hiram. He’s in One-A.” She waved her fingers as she explained, “He’s kind of the manager on duty. Gets a break on his rent to fix things and take care of small problems.” The furrows over her eyebrows deepened. “Damned parents of his split up and forgot they had a couple of kids. Stupid.” She fished into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a business card with her name and phone number along with Hiram’s, then slid it across the table. “I told my son he was making a mistake taking up with that woman, but did he listen? Oh, no…Damn fool.”

As if realizing she was saying too much, Irene quickly added, “Hiram, he’s a good kid. Works hard. He’ll help you move in, if you want, does all the fix-up. Learned it from my husband, may he rest in peace.” Pushing to her feet, she added, “Oh, I’m having Hiram install new dead bolts on all the doors. And if you have any window latches that aren’t solid, he’ll take care of those, too. I suppose you’ve heard the latest?” Her gray eyebrows shot up over the tops of her rimless glasses and she scratched at her chin nervously, as if she were weighing what she was about to reveal. “Several students have disappeared here this school year. No bodies found, y’know, but the police seem to suspect foul play. If ya ask me, they’re all runaways.” She glanced away and muttered, “Happens all the time, but you can never be too careful.” She nodded, as if agreeing with herself, tucking her bag under her arm.

“I saw the news coverage.”

“Things were different when I grew up here,” Irene assured. “Most of the classes were taught by priests and nuns, and the college, it had a reputation, but now…ach!” She waved one hand into the air, as if brushing aside a bothersome mosquito. “Now it seems they hire all sorts…weirdos, if you ask me, anyone who has a damned degree. They teach classes about vampires and demons and all kinds of satanic things…religions of the world, not just Christianity, mind you, and…then there are those ridiculous morality plays! Like we’re still living in the Middle Ages. Oh, don’t get me going about that English Department. A nutcase is in charge of it, let me tell you. Natalie Croft has no business teaching a class, much less running a department.” She snorted as she opened the door. “Ever since Father Anthony—oh, excuse me, it’s ‘Father Tony’ because he’s so hip I guess, everyone’s best friend—ever since he took over from Father Stephen, all hell has broken out. Literally.”

Lips compressed, Irene shook her head as she stepped over the threshold onto the porch with its poor lighting. “How’s that for progress? Morality plays, for crying out loud? Vampires? It’s like All Saints stepped back into the Dark Ages!” She grabbed hold of the railing and headed down the stairs.

Open-minded, Irene Calloway was not. Kristi neglected to mention that some of the classes the old woman had disdained were already on her schedule.

Locking the door after her new landlady, Kristi checked all the windows, including the large one in the bedroom leading to an ancient, rusted fire escape.

The latch on every window in the small apartment was broken. Kristi figured she wouldn’t mention the lack of security to her father. Immediately, as she headed down the exterior staircase for her things, she called Hiram’s cell. Irene’s grandson didn’t answer, but Kristi left a message and her phone number, then began hauling her few belongings to her new home, a crow’s nest overlooking the stone fence surrounding All Saints College.

Seated at her desk at the Baton Rouge Police Department, Detective Portia Laurent stared at the pictures of the four coeds missing from All Saints College. None of the girls had resurfaced. Just disappeared, not only from Louisiana, but, it seemed, the face of the earth.

As computer keyboards clicked, printers hummed, and an old clock ticked off the final days of the year, Portia eyed the pictures for what seemed to be the millionth time. They were all so young. Smiling girls with fresh faces, intelligence and hope shining from their eyes.

Or were their expressions masks?

Behind those practiced smiles was there something darker lurking?

The girls had been troubled, that much had been ascertained. So they’d been written off. No one, not the other members of the police department, not the administration of the college, not even the missing girls’ families seemed to think that any serious foul play was involved. Nope. These smiling once-upon-a-time students were just runaways, headstrong wild girls who had, for one reason or another, decided to take a hike and not reappear.

Had they been into drugs?

Prostitution?

Or were they just tired of school?

Had they connected with a boyfriend who had whisked them away?

Had they decided to hitchhike around the country?

Had they wanted a quickie vacation and never returned?

The answers and opinions varied, but Portia seemed to be the only person on the planet who cared. She’d taken copies of these girls’ campus ID pictures and pinned them to the bulletin board of her cubicle. The originals were in the general file of all the recent missing persons, but these were different; these photos connected every girl who had attended All Saints College, disappeared, then left no trail. No credit cards had been used, no checks cashed, no ATMs accessed. Their cell phone usages had stopped on the evenings they’d gone missing, but not one of them had turned up in a local hospital. None of them had bought a bus or plane ticket, nor had there been activity on their MySpace pages.

Portia stared at their pictures and wondered what the hell had happened to them. Deep inside, she believed them all dead, but she hoped against hope that her jaded cop instincts were wrong.

None of the girls had owned a vehicle, and none had called the state of Louisiana home until they’d enrolled at the small private school. The last persons known to have seen each of them hadn’t noticed anything strange, nor could they give the police even the tiniest hint of what each girl had in mind, where she could have gone, whom she might have seen.

It was frustrating as hell.

Portia reached into her purse for her pack of cigarettes, then reminded herself that she’d quit. Three months, four days, and five hours ago—not that she was counting. She grabbed a piece of nicotine gum and found little satisfaction in chewing as she gazed from one picture to the next.

The first victim, missing nearly a year since last January, was an African-American student, Dionne Harmon, with dark skin, high cheekbones, a beautiful, toothy grin, and a tattoo that said “LOVE” entwined with hummingbirds and flowers low on her back. She hailed from New York City. Her parents had never married and were now both deceased, the mother from cancer, the father in an industrial accident. Her only sibling, a brother by the name of Desmond, already had three kids of his own, had skipped on his child support, and when Portia had tried to reach him he’d told her he wasn’t interested in “what had happened to the ‘ho.’”

“Nice,” Portia remembered aloud, recalling the phone conversation. None of Dionne’s friends could explain what had happened to her, but the last person to admit seeing her, one of her professors, Dr. Grotto, had at least seemed concerned. Grotto’s specialty was teaching classes on vampirism, sometimes using a Y in the spelling—like
vampyrism—
which was a little odd, though people could become intrigued and inspired by the strangest things sometimes. In his midthirties, Grotto was sexier than any college professor had the right to be. The old Hollywood description of “tall, dark, and handsome” fit him to a T, and he certainly was far more interesting than any of the old dusty profs who had been her teachers in her two years at All Saints over a decade earlier.

The other missing girls were Caucasian, though they, too, had disjointed, uninterested families who had written them off as irresponsible runaways, “always in trouble.”

How odd they had all ended up at All Saints and subsequently disappeared within eighteen months.

Coincidence? Portia didn’t think so.

The media had finally noticed and was adding some pressure. The public was now nervous, the police department receiving more calls.

Since Dionne had disappeared over a year ago, Tara Atwater and Monique DesCartes had also vanished, Monique in May, Tara in October, and now Rylee Ames. All of them took some of the same classes, primarily in the English Department, including the class on vampyrism taught by Dr. Dominic Grotto.

Slap!

A file landed atop her photos.

“Hey!” Detective Del Vernon said, resting a hip on her desk. “Still caught up in the missing girls?”

Here we go again,
Portia thought on an inward sigh, expecting a lecture from the ex-military man turned detective. Vernon had the “three-B-thing” going for him: bald, black, and beautiful. Though he was in his forties, he’d never lost his U.S. Marine-honed build. His shoulders were wide and straight, his waist trim, and according to Stephanie, one of the secretaries for the department, his butt was “tight enough to hold in his bad-ass attitude.” And she was right. Vernon had a great body. Portia tried not to notice.

“What’s this?” she asked, picking up the file and flipping it open to a crime scene report and the picture of a dead woman.

“Jane Doe…throat slashed, from the Memphis PD. Looks like it could be the same guy who killed the woman we found last week near River Road.”

“Beth Staples.”

“I want you to check it out.”

“You got it,” she said, and waited for him to remind her that the girls missing from All Saints weren’t known to be victims of homicide and therefore not their concern.

Yet.

But he didn’t. Instead Vernon’s cell phone rang and he thumped his fingers onto her desk before walking back through the maze of cubicles. “Vernon,” he said crisply, crossing the threshold to his private office and kicking the glass door shut behind him.

Portia picked up the Jane Doe file, turning her attention away from the pictures of the coeds. There was a chance that she was wrong, a chance that the missing coeds were, indeed, still alive, just teenage runaways rebelling and getting into trouble.

But she wasn’t laying odds on it.

Two days after Kristi moved in, she landed a job as a waitress at a diner three blocks from campus. She wasn’t going to get rich making minimum wage and tips, but she would have some flexibility with her shifts, which was exactly what she’d wanted. Waiting tables wasn’t glamorous work, but it beat the hell out of working for Gulf Auto and Life Insurance Company, where she’d spent too many hours to count in the past few years. Besides, she hadn’t given up her dream of writing true crime. She figured with the right story, she could become the next Ann Rule.

Or a close facsimile thereof.

Twilight had settled as she crossed campus, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her head hunched into her shoulders as the first drops of rain began to spatter the ground on this, the day before New Year’s Eve. A gust of winter wind stole through the quad, rattling the branches of the oak and pine trees before brushing the back of her neck with a frosty kiss. She shivered, surprised at the drop in temperature. She was tired from the move and her legs felt leaden as she angled past Cramer Hall, where she’d lived her freshman year of college nearly ten years earlier. It hadn’t changed much, certainly not as much as she had, she thought ruefully.

Her breath fogged in front of her, and from the corner of her eye she thought she saw a movement, something dark and shadowy, in the thick hedge near the library. Gaslights glowed blue, casting watery light, and though she squinted, she saw no one. Just her overactive imagination.