Lisa Jackson's Bentz And Montoya Bundle Part 155

"You could-"

"Look, Dad, I don't want to hear it," Kristi interrupted as she tossed her purse onto the pa.s.senger seat next to three bags of books, DVDs, and CDs. "You've known I was going back to school for months, so there's no reason for a big scene now. It's over. I'm an adult and I'm going to Baton Rouge, to my old alma mater, All Saints College. It's not at the ends of the earth. We're less than a couple of hours away."

"It's not the distance."

"I need need to do this." She glanced toward Olivia, whose wild blond hair was backlit by the colored lights from the Christmas tree, the small cottage seeming warm and cozy in the coming storm. But it wasn't Kristi's home. It never had been. Olivia was her stepmother and though they got along, there still wasn't a tight family bond between them. Maybe there never would be. This was her father's life now and it really didn't have much to do with her. to do this." She glanced toward Olivia, whose wild blond hair was backlit by the colored lights from the Christmas tree, the small cottage seeming warm and cozy in the coming storm. But it wasn't Kristi's home. It never had been. Olivia was her stepmother and though they got along, there still wasn't a tight family bond between them. Maybe there never would be. This was her father's life now and it really didn't have much to do with her.

"There's been trouble up there. Some coeds missing."

"You've already been checking?" she demanded, incensed.

"I just read about some missing girls."

"You mean runaways?"

"I mean missing."

"Don't worry!" she snapped. She, too, had heard that a few girls had disappeared unexpectedly from the campus, though no foul play had been established. "Girls leave college and their parents all the time."

"Do they?" he asked.

A blast of cold wind cut across the bayou, pus.h.i.+ng around a few wet leaves and cutting through Kristi's hooded sweats.h.i.+rt. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was gray and overcast, puddles scattered across the cracked concrete.

"It's not that I don't think you should go back to school," Bentz said, leaning one hip against the wheel well of her Honda and, today, looking the picture of health-his skin ruddy, his hair dark with only a few glints of gray. "But this whole idea of being a crime writer?"

She held up a hand, then adjusted some of the items in the back of the car, mas.h.i.+ng them down so that she would be able to see out her rearview mirror. "I know where you stand. You don't want me to write about any of the cases you worked on. Don't worry. I won't tread on any hallowed ground."

"That's not it and you know it," he said. A bit of anger flashed in his deep-set eyes.

Fine. Let him be mad. She was irritated as well. In the last few weeks they'd really gotten on each other's nerves.

"I'm worried about your safety."

"Well, don't be, okay?"

"Cut the att.i.tude. It's not like you haven't already been a target." He met her eyes, and she knew he was reliving every terrifying second of her kidnapping and attack.

"I'm fine." She softened a bit. Though he was a pain in the a.s.s often enough, he was a good guy. She knew it. He was just worried about her. As always. But she didn't need it.

With an effort she tamped down her impatience, as Hairy S., her stepmother's sc.r.a.p of a mutt, streaked out the front door and chased a squirrel into a pine tree. In a flash of red and gray, the squirrel scrambled up the pine's rough bole to perch high upon a branch that shook as the squirrel peered down, taunting and scolding the frustrated terrier mix. Hairy S. dug at the trunk with his paws as he whined and circled the tree.

"Shh...you'll get him next time," Kristi said, scooping up the mutt. Wet paws scrabbled across her sweats.h.i.+rt and she received a wet swipe of Hairy's tongue over her cheek. "I'll miss you," she told the dog, who was wriggling to get back to the ground and his rodent chasing. She placed him on the gra.s.s, wincing a little from some lingering pain in her neck.

"Hairy! Come here!" Olivia ordered from the porch, but the intent dog ignored her.

Bentz said, "You're not completely healed."

Kristi sighed loudly. "Look, Dad, all my varied and specialized docs said I was fine. Better than ever, right? Funny what a little time in a hospital, some physical therapy, a few sessions with a shrink, and then nearly a year of intense personal training can do."

He snorted. As if to add credence to his worry, a crow flapped its way toward them to land upon the bare branches of a magnolia tree. It let out a lonely, mocking caw.

"You were pretty freaked when you woke up in the hospital," he reminded her.

"That's ancient history, for G.o.d's sake." And it was true. Since her stay in ICU, the whole world had changed. Hurricane Katrina had ripped apart New Orleans, then torn through the entire Gulf Coast. The devastation, despair, and destruction lingered. Though Katrina had raged across the Gulf over a year earlier, the aftermath of Katrina's fury was evidenced everywhere and would be for years, probably decades. There was talk that New Orleans might never be the same. Kristi didn't want to think about that.

Her father, of course, was overworked. Okay, she got that. The entire police force had been stretched to the breaking point, as had the city itself and the beleaguered and scattered citizens, some of whom had been sent to far points across the country and just weren't returning. Who could blame them, with the hospitals, city services, and transportation a mess? Sure there was revitalization, but it was uneven and slow to come. Luckily the French Quarter, which had survived virtually unscathed, was still so uniquely Old New Orleans that tourists were again venturing into that part of the city.

Kristi had spent the past six months volunteering at one of the local hospitals, helping her father at the station, spending weekends in city cleanup, but now, she figured-and her shrink insisted-that she needed to get on with her life. Slowly, but surely, New Orleans was returning. And it was time for her to start thinking about the rest of her own life and what she wanted to do.

Detective Bentz, as usual, disagreed. After the hurricane Rick Bentz had fallen back into his overly protective parental role in a big way. Kristi was way over it. It wasn't as if she was a child, or even a teenager any longer. She was an adult, for crying out loud!

She slammed the back of her hatchback shut. It didn't catch, so she readjusted her favorite pillow, reading lamp, and the hand-pieced quilt her great-aunt had left her, then tried again. This time the latch clicked into place. "I gotta go." She checked her watch. "I told the landlady that I'd take possession today. I'll call when I get there and give you a complete report. Love ya."

He seemed about to argue, then said gruffly, "Me, too, kiddo."

She hugged him, felt the crush of his embrace, and was surprised to find she was fighting sudden tears as she pulled away from him. How ridiculous! She blew Olivia a kiss, then climbed behind the wheel. With a snap of her wrist the little car's engine sparked to life and Kristi, her throat thick, backed out of the long, narrow driveway through the trees.

At the country road, she reversed onto the wet pavement. She caught another glimpse of her father, arm raised as he waved good-bye. Letting out a long breath, she felt suddenly free. She was finally leaving. At long last, on her own again. But as she rammed her car into drive, the sky darkened, and in the side view mirror she captured a glimpse of Rick Bentz's image.

Once more all the color had drained from him and he appeared a ghost, in tones of black, white, and gray. Her breath caught. She could run as far away as possible, but she'd never escape the specter of her father's death.

In her heart she knew.

It was certain.

And, it would be soon.

Listening to an old Johnny Cash ballad, Jay McKnight stared through the winds.h.i.+eld of his pickup as the wipers slapped the drizzling rain from the gla.s.s. Cruising at fifty-five miles an hour through the storm with his half-blind hound dog seated in the pa.s.senger seat, he wondered if he was losing his mind.

Why else would he agree to take over a night cla.s.s for a friend of a friend who was on sabbatical? What did he owe Dr. Althea Monroe? Nothing. He'd barely met the woman.

Maybe you're doing it for your sanity. You d.a.m.ned sure needed a change. And anyway, how bad could one term of teaching eager young minds about forensics and criminology be?

s.h.i.+fting down, he guided his truck off the main drag and angled along the familiar side streets, where rain fell through the naked branches of the trees and the streetlights were just beginning to glow. Water hissed beneath his tires and few pedestrians braved the storm. Jay had cracked the window and Bruno, a pitbull-lab-bloodhound mix, kept his big nose pressed to that thin sliver of fresh air.

Cash's voice reverberated through the Toyota's cab as Jay slowed for the city limits of Baton Rouge.

"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 b.i.t.c.h, 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 h.e.l.luva lot, but who'd turned out to be pretty d.a.m.ned good dogs.

Especially Bruno of the keen nose and bad eyes. Jay bent down, petted his dog, and was rewarded with a friendly head b.u.t.t 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 sc.r.a.ping off what appeared to be years of dirt on the back porch where an ancient was.h.i.+ng 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sing day the rope drew tighter until he hadn't been able to breathe. His att.i.tude 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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned 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. The name sounded familiar.

Bothered, Jay quickly logged onto the college's Web site and checked his cla.s.s list, one that was updated as students added or dropped cla.s.ses 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 couldn't be in his cla.s.s! be in his cla.s.s! Could not! 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. 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.

c.r.a.p!

The rain pummeled the windows and he stared at the cla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 h.o.r.n.y 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.