Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (248 page)

“No, don’t!” she cried.

“Too late.”

Her lips twisted and she shook her head. “Who are you calling?”

“Who do you think?”

“The police.”

“Bingo!”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, right.” He put the phone to his ear and waited.

Hayes answered on the third ring. “Hayes.”

“It’s Bentz. I’ve got our girl.”

“What?” Hayes asked. “Who?”

“Jennifer. She and I are heading down the coast. To Point Fermin.”

“Why the hell are you going there?”

“Just meet us there.”

“Wait a second, what is this? What the hell’s going on?”

But Bentz clicked off and smiled coldly at the woman. “Better get your story straight,
Jennifer
. You’ve got a helluva lot of explaining to do.”

CHAPTER 28

“H
old on!” Hayes said, pressing on the earbud of his cell phone. He’d been on his way to interview Tally White when he’d caught the call. “Meet you at Point Fermin? You mean on the peninsula?” But Bentz had already hung up. Hayes tried to call him back, but the son of a bitch wouldn’t answer.

“Jerk!” Sometimes he wondered why he still had Bentz’s back. Bledsoe was right; the guy was a loose cannon.

Hayes made a quick U-turn and received a horn blast from a woman in a gold Mercedes, followed by a quick middle finger from a kid in baseball cap driving a lowrider pickup.

He threaded through traffic on his way to the 110 and San Pedro near Point Fermin, far to the south of the city.

What was Bentz up to, calling in with such disjointed information? Bentz thought he was with
Jennifer?
That was just plain nuts.

Which would be proved in just a few hours when her remains were exhumed.

But maybe Bentz hadn’t been able to say what he’d really meant, Hayes thought, running an amber light as he maneuvered his Toyota toward the freeway entrance. He called for backup, though he wasn’t sure it was necessary.

“Martinez,” she answered.

“Hey. I might need assistance. Not sure yet.” He filled her in and his partner let out a low whistle.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I’m starting to think that Bledsoe’s right. Bentz has gone loco.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. Just be ready for another wild goose chase.”

“Just the kind of thing I love.”

Olivia took her seat on the jet, tucked between a bulky man who spilled over into her space and a mother with a squirmy toddler on her lap. The little girl, a dark-haired cutie with big eyes and pigtails, stared at Olivia intently as the mother dug into the diaper bag tucked under the seat in front of them. The guy near the window gazed out the glass while baggage thumped and bumped as it was being loaded beneath them.

Olivia tried calling Bentz one last time, left a message that she was on her way to Los Angeles, and turned off her phone. No use worrying. So he wasn’t answering? So what? Nothing new there.

She’d left a message with the motel and with Jonas Hayes, the detective who was Bentz’s friend in LAPD. She’d even put in a call to Montoya to tell him what her plans were, just in case Bentz talked to him before Olivia landed on the West Coast. A few minutes later, the plane was pushed back from the terminal. The little girl beside her started to cry, and the big guy by the window held tight to his iPod so he could plug in the second it was allowed.

Olivia leaned back and closed her eyes, felt the little girl brush up against her. She smiled at the thought that in less than two years, she would be in the same position as the somewhat harried mom, searching for pacifiers and diapers, trying to keep the attention of an active pre-toddler.

A little girl?

A boy?

It didn’t matter.

In a few hours she’d see Bentz again and give him the news.

Smiling, she found she couldn’t wait.

Yes, he might be taken aback, even shocked, but he’d get over it. In the end he would love the idea. And yes, when she saw him he’d fill her in and bring her up to date on what had happened to his ex-wife. Olivia might feel a ridiculous pang of jealousy that he’d spent nearly a week of his life reliving his past with a woman he’d once loved passionately, but she would get over it.

At least they would finally be together again.

And then they waited.

While the big guy next to her sweated and the little girl fussed, the captain announced that there would be a delay. A mechanical difficulty needed to be addressed. Twenty minutes, or maybe a half an hour.

Olivia found her book and opened it. She was anxious, ready to get this trip behind her. Now that she’d decided to fly to Los Angeles to see her husband, she found waiting excruciating.

It’s no big deal,
she told herself.
Not like an omen or anything. Relax. A few minutes won’t make any difference. You’ll be with Bentz soon.

And for that she could suffer the noise and discomfort of a few hours on a plane.

“How’s Kristi?” asked the woman who resembled Jennifer.

Leave my daughter alone,
Bentz wanted to snarl as his hands tightened on the steering wheel. The Chevy’s engine whined as the car sped up the sharp hills rimming the ocean. “I don’t think you should bring her up.”

“I miss her so—”

“Bull-fucking-shit!” he growled. His voice was low. A warning. “Don’t go there. Got it? Do
not
go there. As if you’re her long-lost mother.” He was beyond disgusted. “Just leave my daughter out of this, you goddamned imposter! Now, tell me why the hell you’ve been ‘haunting’ me; what’s the point? Who are you and what do you want?”

She wasn’t rattled in the least, no sweat on her forehead, no death grip on the arm rest. One side of her mouth lifted in that damnable Jennifer way and she cooed, “Oh, RJ, get over yourself.”

He was raging inside, his blood boiling. This fraud had promised him answers, and he was through waiting. “We’re done,” he said with a finality that must have finally gotten to her. “Hear me. This is over. Now.”

“Okay, okay…I get it. You want answers. Just…just pull over up here. There’s a place where you and I went down to the beach, up ahead at Devil’s Caldron. Remember.”

Jesus, God, how did she know that? He remembered the time, on their way to Point Fermin. Jennifer had teased him by touching him in the car. Hot and bothered, he’d pulled over.

Now this woman was sending him a coy look, as if she knew what he was thinking. Dear God, she was so damned much like Jennifer it chilled him to the marrow of his bones.

“There…” She pointed to the sign near the corner. Hands sweating on the wheel, heart thudding, he drove into the turnout perched high over the ocean.

Only one other car was in the lot, an empty white Datsun with a surfboard strapped to its roof. He pulled the Impala beside it, pushed the gear shift lever into park, and cut the engine.

Dust swirled over the hood of the car as, before she realized what he had planned, he reached down and scooped her bag from the floor beneath her.

“Hey!” she protested.

“Just checking your driver’s license, Jennifer.” He rifled through the purse, his hand closing over a slender wallet. Driven with urgency he flipped the wallet open, only to find it empty. No ID. Not even a credit card. “What the hell?”

She laughed. Raised a teasing eyebrow. “Come on, RJ. You of all people should know that a dead woman doesn’t carry identification.”

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, tossing the purse at her. Gritting his teeth, he leaned forward and flipped open the glove box at her knees. There had to be a registration for the car. Maybe she’d stashed her license there, too.

But the compartment was empty, skeletal metal and plastic lit by a small bulb.

“Give it up,” she advised. “You’ll never find what you’re looking for.” She laughed, deep and sexy and naughty. “You’ll never find it because you don’t want to face the truth. You don’t want to believe that I’m Jennifer.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.” He slammed the glove box closed. “And I don’t fall for cons.”

“You did twelve years ago.”

In the distance waves crashed, punctuating the sickening feeling in his gut.

“I staged my own death, RJ. I left the suicide note, the whole thing. My life was unraveling and I wanted…I needed a way out.”

Bentz couldn’t believe her. He
wouldn’t
believe her. “Then who was driving the car, huh?” he demanded. “Who was wearing your rings? Who am I going to find in
your
coffin? You mean to tell me you found another woman who looked like you, put her in your car, and made her crash?” He shook his head. “Your story is a tough sell.” He wasn’t buying a single word of her fairy tale.

“But I
am
Jennifer,” she said in that tone that sounded so like his ex-wife. “And I can prove it.”

“This is gonna be good,” Bentz said, shaking his head. “How?”

“You and I first made love on the beach in Santa Monica.”

He didn’t move as her words rolled over him.

“That’s why I jumped off there. I…I thought you’d get it. I know you probably thought it had something to do with James…but it was because of us.”

The temperature in the car seemed to heat ten degrees. No one knew about that first time, long before they were married.

“Face it, RJ,” she whispered. “I’m back.”

“What?” With a click her seat belt was unhooked and she leaned over, her lips hesitating for just a second, hovering, until she kissed him. Filled with ardor and the desire of youth, she grabbed his head and held him fast.

Images blazed inside him. Wild. Erotic. Sexy. In his mind’s eye he flashed on Jennifer’s naughty smile, her smooth, fiery skin, the curve of her neck. With the memories came the pain, reminiscences of the nasty way she cut him down, her secret, haughty way of diminishing him, the way she’d so brazenly taken lovers…

God, he’d loved her.

And he’d hated her.

But this woman wasn’t Jennifer.

With that realization his erotic fantasies turned hollow and cold.

What was he thinking? Who was this fake?

In a split second he thought of Olivia, the woman who fired his blood and interlaced his dreams. It was Olivia’s face he saw in his mind, an image of blond curls, sexy pink lips, whiskey-colored eyes that could gaze deep into his soul. A simple brush of her finger against his nape could make him hard and wanting.

Disgusted, he pushed the imposter away.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Everything.”

She smiled then. “You are so right.”

With a click, her door popped open and she was outside in a heartbeat.

“Hell,” Bentz growled, unbuckling his seat belt. After fumbling with the handle he threw the door open and burst out of the car.

“Wait!” he yelled.

But she was already running toward the brush, disappearing down a path.

“Shit!” He took off after her, his leg throbbing as the soles of his shoes slid over the sandy pavement.

“Wait!”

Damn it all to hell!
He ran after her as she disappeared over the edge of the cliff, her feet kicking up dust.

“Son of a bitch!” Bentz was on her heels, but slipped at the first turn, his new shoes giving him no traction on the steep gravel and dirt trail cut into the hillside.

He caught himself, but felt something pop in his bad knee. Pain exploded up his leg.

Great.

He kept running, agony searing his muscles.

Gritting his teeth, he pursued her, wincing and limping and cursing as he half ran, half slid down the path with its sharp switchbacks.

Somehow, he kept her head in his sights, her coppery hair glinting in the sunlight.

“Stop!” he yelled into the wind, but she ignored his order and continued to descend the hillside, down the treacherous trail.

Cursing himself for being a dozen kinds of fool, he followed. Bentz knew he was losing ground, but he would catch her on the beach. The strip of sand at the base of the cliff was a small crescent, one end cut off by the point where tidal waters swirled and crashed, the other end a wall of rock leading up to the cliff. The only land access to the beach was via this slippery path.

Once she got down there, there was no escape. No exit. She would be trapped and he would haul her ass into the nearest police station.

Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled down, following until she was nearly out of sight. “What the hell is your game?” he wondered aloud, his jaw tight.

He caught a glimpse of her approaching one of the lower switchbacks on the trail. The precipice at that turn was so dangerous that a platform had been constructed, complete with safety railing. From that point tourists were able to look down to a spectacular view of the roiling sea in the cove known as Devil’s Caldron.

He was gaining again.

Saw her reach the platform.

Panting, pushing himself, he hurried faster.

Ahead of him, she paused, waiting at the platform. For a second he thought she was waiting for him. Then, to his horror, she swung one leg over the railing.

Oh, God, what was she thinking?

But he knew.

Holy Christ, he knew.

“No!”

His heart clutched as she climbed onto the railing and perched on the edge, high above Devil’s Caldron.

Oh, no. Please.
He skidded to a halt, watching in horror. “Don’t!”

She looked over her shoulder and blew him a kiss. Then she turned back to the ocean and lifted her arms over her head, poised like a ballerina. A moment later she jumped, her body a tiny needle of a woman soaring down past the cliffs. Bentz forced himself to watch as she disappeared from view and fell into the roiling furious tide far, far below.

CHAPTER 29

I
t was like watching Jennifer die all over again. Bentz stared into the churning waters, feeling sick as he clutched the railing. His heart was pounding, his mind screaming. Why had she jumped? Why?

His gaze scraped every inch of the shoreline and water, trying to locate a trace of her—a scrap of pink or white bobbing on the angry swirling surf so far below.

No. For the love of God…

“Hey!” he heard from somewhere, as if through a long tunnel. “Hey!”

Blinking, trying to focus, he turned and saw someone running down the hillside. No, two people. A long-haired boy in his twenties and a leggy girl chasing after him.

“I saw her jump. Jesus Christ, she jumped!” the boy said, his face red from the run, his eyes round with fear. “Is she okay?”

“She couldn’t be,” his companion said. “I mean, it’s got to be fifty feet.”

“More. Maybe seventy-five!” The kid was emphatic and ran to the railing, even if he was a poor judge of height. Then he noticed Bentz’s gun. “Oh, whoa…” He stopped abruptly, raising his hands. “Easy, man.”

“I’m a cop,” Bentz said, digging out his badge and flipping it open. Something he’d done hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but today it felt awkward, surreal, as if he were watching himself. “Rick Bentz. New Orleans Police Department.” His own voice sounded disembodied. He kept looking down at the surf. Surely she would surface. She had to. But his gaze scoured the raging tide, rocky shoals, and sweep of beach.

Nothing.

The boy said, “Oh, so…like you were chasing her. She was a criminal?” Obviously the kid wasn’t buying it.

“From New Orleans?” his girlfriend said as she stepped behind her boyfriend and peeked coyly around his shoulder.

If you only knew,
Bentz thought wearily and reached for his cell, his gaze still on the ocean.
Where the hell are you? Come on!
Silently he willed her to surface, to live, this woman he’d already buried.

“No service down here, dude,” the kid said eyeing Bentz’s cell. “You have to go up top to connect to a tower.”

Bentz nodded, but he couldn’t drag his eyes from the sea and the surging waves pounding the shore, sending up clouds of spray. Holy God.

There was no sign of anyone in the surf.

Once again, like the night in Santa Monica, “Jennifer” had disappeared. “Damn it all,” he muttered between clenched teeth, then turned to the boy and girl and tried to concentrate.

“What’s your name?” he asked the kid.

“Travis.”

“Good. Here, Travis, take the phone, climb up to the top, and call 9-1-1.” He slapped his cell phone into the kid’s hand. “Tell them what happened, that a woman jumped into Devil’s Caldron, then if they want to keep you on the line, stay. If not, hang up and speed-dial number 9. It’ll connect you to Detective Jonas Hayes, a friend of mine and a detective for the LAPD. Tell him what happened here and that I won’t be making it to Point Fermin. Tell him we need a search-and-rescue team. ASAP!”

Travis nodded, obviously relieved to have something to do, any thing to help.

“But where are you going?” the girlfriend asked Bentz.

He nodded toward the swirling sea below. He knew it would be fruitless, but he had to try and find her. She couldn’t have just vanished. No way!

Montoya’s diligence was finally rewarded.

He’d spent so much time on the Internet and phone to California that his shoulders ached from inactivity. But it had paid off. He glanced to the window and saw that it was dark, most of the detectives from the day shift long gone.

But the long tedious hours had been worth it, he thought now, twisting the kinks from his neck.

Earlier, through the California DMV, he’d located several Yolanda Salazars who resided in Encino.

He’d weeded through them and zeroed in on the woman he was looking for. Just like Carlos had told him on the phone, Yolanda was married to his cousin’s boy, Sebastian. He’d pulled all the records he could on her, found her to be clean, a student at a junior college, studying accounting while she paid the bills as a hairdresser.

But the bit of information on Yolanda that caught Montoya’s attention was her maiden name. According to her marriage license she was born Yolanda Filipa Valdez.

Valdez?
His heart skipped a beat as he made the connections. He leaned back in his chair and clicked the pen he was holding as a copy of her California driver’s license appeared on the screen.

A pretty woman. Thirty-two, according to the driver’s license. A model citizen.

Nothing to make her suspicious whatsoever.

Aside from not registering her car, which wasn’t that big of a deal. But there was another piece to the puzzle, a factor that made the lack of registration more interesting.

Yolanda just happened to be the older sister of Mario Valdez, the boy Bentz accidentally shot while he was still working for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Montoya clicked his pen again, put in another unanswered call to Bentz and Jonas Hayes, the one detective Bentz felt was on his side in L.A.

Montoya considered flying out to the West Coast to help, then discarded the idea. Bentz was a grown man, able to handle his own problems, even if people were dropping like flies around him. He’d figure it out.

If he needed help, he’d call. Right?

He stared at the picture of Yolanda Valdez Salazar. “What’s your deal?” he asked the image. Did she look enough like Bentz’s wife to fake him out? Had she been involved with the deaths of Shana McIntyre and Lorraine Newell? He clicked his pen again and eyed the screen. And what about those twins who were killed? Was she the mastermind behind the double homicide that looked, on the surface, identical to the murders twelve years earlier? She would have been around twenty when Mario was killed, and the same age when the first double homicide was committed.
Younger
than her victims.

“Nah,” he said aloud, leaning even further back in his chair and frowning. That didn’t add up.

The picture on the screen just stared at him blankly. A killer? The mastermind behind the entire Jennifer Bentz haunting?

If so, she would have had to have made a trip or two to New Orleans to “appear.” He figured he’d help the L.A. cops out and check her credit card statements, find out if she’d taken a trip to the Big Easy any time in the last year. And then he’d e-mail all the information he’d gathered about the woman to Detective Jonas Hayes of the Los Angeles Police Department.

He smiled, imagining that he was tugging on her string a bit, unraveling her master game. “It’s over,” he told the image on the computer monitor. “You screwed with the wrong guy.”

“So what the hell happened here?” Hayes demanded over the rush of the surf and wind and the steady whomp, whomp, whomp of the Coast Guard helicopter hovering high overhead.

“I wish I knew.” Bentz felt numb inside, disbelieving. They stood on the sand, the afternoon sun warm and bright as a crowd of rescue workers scoured the roiling waters of Devil’s Caldron. The California Highway Patrol was coordinating the search with the Coast Guard.

“But you’re saying that this woman jumped into the water from up there?” Hayes pointed at the platform some forty feet above the water swirling in the cove.

“Yes.” Bentz eyed the decking with its railing from below, seeing the posts and beams that supported the platform as it jutted over the cove.

“No one could have survived that.”

A muscle in Bentz’s jaw worked. He wanted to protest, to think that the woman was alive, that her leap into the churning waters wouldn’t have taken her life.

He’d already explained his conversation with her, but of course he would have to make a formal statement to that effect. Hayes had asked him the reasoning behind the aborted drive to Point Fermin. He’d questioned how Bentz had been fool enough to get into the car with her.

A good question.

Bentz had thought about everything that had happened in the last few hours, turning the events over and over again in his mind. But he had no answers as to why the woman had finally let him approach her, only to elude him here. For the past two hours he’d scoured the rocky shoals, beach, and tidewaters hoping against hope that the woman who’d sworn she was Jennifer had survived the horrifying descent to the cove. But so far no one had found any sign of her.

“So where’s the body?” Hayes was saying, staring out to sea. “Shit, we’ll have to send divers down if the Coast Guard doesn’t come up with anything.
If
they can even get down there. Shit.”

Bentz reached down and cupped a handful of sand, thinking that she could not have disappeared without a trace, without leaving behind a patch of clothing, a trace of hair or skin. How was it that this woman defied all laws of forensic science?

“Nothing more we can do,” Hayes said, shaking his head. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

As they headed to the trail, Hayes couldn’t help lecturing Bentz. “So you get into a car with her. Taking a little afternoon drive? God almighty, Bentz. I guess we’re lucky she didn’t take you over that cliff with her. But I don’t get this woman trailing you, then disappearing. And why is it that this ghost of yours is so hell-bent into diving into water?”

“She’s not a ghost,” Bentz said as they started up the steep incline to the parking lot. “And I don’t know.” He was hobbling as he climbed the path, his knee and thigh on fire. No doubt he’d reinjured himself.

“When we get to the top, I’ll need your weapon,” Hayes said. “Just to make sure it wasn’t fired.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Just the same.”

“Yeah, I know.”

It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the parking lot. Bentz was sweating, his leg throbbing. He eyed the silver car that Jennifer had driven, the one “Jennifer” had said was a gift. Everything about her story was all smoke and mirrors, nothing being what it seemed. The police had already roped the vehicle off, a tow truck on its way to take the Chevy to the police garage where it would be examined thoroughly.

His cell phone beeped, and he realized he had several messages. Mostly from Olivia, the last stating she was on a plane to Los Angeles. “Damn.”

“Bad news?”

“Olivia’s on her way. Her flight lands in a couple of hours. I need to pick her up at LAX.”

“I don’t think that we’ll be done in a few hours,” Hayes said. “There’s a lot to go over. And I know she’s coming in. She called me, too, when she couldn’t get hold of you. We’re sending a cop to pick her up. She can meet you at the Center, if you want. Afterward, I’ll take you to rent a vehicle.”

“Or she could rent one herself.”

Hayes waved off the idea. “No, her pickup is all arranged. And I left her a message. You might want to call her and explain.”

Bentz started to dial just as he heard shouts rising from the beach below. Turning, they saw the Coast Guard helicopter hovering over one spot in the ocean where a diver bobbed in the water. Bentz’s stomach turned over.

Hayes’s gaze was fixed on the basket that was slowly being lowered from the chopper to the ocean’s surface. Squinting, his jaw tight, he stated the obvious: “Looks like they found Jennifer.”

Sherry Petrocelli answered the phone and confirmed that she would pick up Rick Bentz’s wife from LAX. She was off duty, but hey, she owed Jonas Hayes a favor or two. Not that she gave a damn about Rick Bentz. She didn’t know the guy, but she’d heard the rumors, and now that he was back in Los Angeles, all hell seemed to be breaking loose.

The truth of the matter was that she wanted to be transferred to RHD, and Jonas was her “in.” Her friend and fellow officer Paula Sweet had assured her that Jonas had the keys to the kingdom; he was well respected in that division, and his input and recommendation would help her land the transfer. She also knew Corrine O’Donnell, who was dating Jonas, and Corrine had agreed that Hayes could help. So if hauling Bentz’s wife around was a way to get closer to homicide, so be it.

But first, she was going to dinner. Olivia Bentz’s plane was delayed, so Sherry figured it was fine to meet her friend at Bruno’s, an Italian spot in Marina del Rey, not too far from the airport.

They split a fried calamari appetizer, then Sherry ordered spaghetti with clam sauce. Throughout the meal, she ducked outside to make a couple of phone calls, checking in with the sitter and tracking the progress of Olivia Bentz’s delayed flight. She didn’t even have a sip of wine, opting for sparkling water, just to make certain she didn’t mess up. If this was a step to improve her career, she was taking no chances.

So it really pissed her off when she started to feel sick.

Surely not the clam sauce or the fried squid. She’d never had a reaction to seafood in her life.

But her stomach was acting up, her head a little light.

“Wow,” she said. “I feel like crap.” She drank more of the sparkling water, hoping to settle her stomach.

“Let’s get out of here,” her friend said, then tossed back the remains of her martini. “Come on. I’ll buy.” She flashed Sherry a smile and dropped some cash onto the table. “But next time, you’re on.”

“Okay.” When Sherry stood up, her legs were wobbly, her head spinning. Almost as if she were drunk. Which was crazy. And then there was the stomachache. She walked out of the restaurant unaided, but when she reached her car, she knew she couldn’t get behind the wheel. “Oh, man, I can’t drive,” she said, pissed as hell.

“I can take you home.”

“But I’m supposed to be at the airport in less than an hour.”

“You want me to do it?”

“Oh, God, no.” They were outside and even the fresh air coming off the ocean didn’t help. That salty, fishy smell…If anything she felt more nauseated, her legs more unsteady.

“How about if I drive you?” her friend offered.

At first Sherry thought the whole idea was odd. “You would do that?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go in and get her.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

Sherry, sweating now, didn’t argue as she fell into the passenger seat. God, she felt awful. “Maybe you should just take me home.” She even thought about a hospital, but that seemed extreme.