Lisa Jackson's Bentz And Montoya Bundle Part 250

d.a.m.n it, could the b.i.t.c.h just show up?

I called her, left a message from Petrocelli's phone...

The cell phone jangles.

Finally!

I answer quickly, forcing the name off my lips. "Officer Petrocelli."

"Hi, this is Olivia Bentz. I think you tried to call me. My husband said you were going to pick me up at the airport, somewhere in Baggage Claim?" She sounds harried and tired.

Perfect.

My own tight nerves relax a bit. "That's right," I say.

"I'm here near the United carousel." Then I spy her approaching the area. Wearing sungla.s.ses, her hair pulled away from her face, she's carrying a purse and pulling a single overnight bag.

She packed light.

Smart girl.

We both smile and hang up our respective phones.

"Olivia Bentz?" I call out as I flag her down. "How was your flight?"

She shrugs. "Delayed."

"I'm Sherry, a friend of Jonas Hayes. He asked me to pick you up."

"So I heard."

She eyes my uniform and I say, "You know I'm with the LAPD. Right?" She nods politely when I flip open Petrocelli's wallet with her badge. With my wig, I look enough like Sherry to satisfy her.

"I appreciate the lift, Officer Petrocelli," she says. So well-mannered and polite.

"Call me Sherry. The car's right outside," I tell her, and we walk through the doors to the parking area where the police cruiser awaits. I open the back door.

"You can put your things back here," I say, and she does, even her purse, which, I a.s.sume holds her phone. While she moves toward the front seat I spy her phone in a pocket of her purse. I remove my hat, and while I'm stowing it on the backseat I pick up her cell phone, click it to off, then tuck it back into the purse as I straighten. She's already slipping into the pa.s.senger seat.

Perfect.

Unafraid, she doesn't hesitate for a second and I feel a sense of well-being. How long I've waited for just this moment. But I can't get too c.o.c.ky. Not yet. I've got a narrow window of time, so I hurry to the driver's side. The sooner I drive away from the airport with all its d.a.m.ned security cameras and wannabe cops, the better. I can't foul up now. Not when I'm so close, so d.a.m.ned close.

"How far is it to the Center?" she asks as she straps on her seat belt and I climb behind the wheel.

"Not far." I flash her a warm smile. "It's after rush hour, so it shouldn't take long. Half an hour at most."

"Good."

"Ever been to L.A. before?" I ask.

"Once, a long time ago. In my early twenties. I lived in Arizona-Tucson-for a while. While I was there I drove to San Diego a couple of times, and once I made it to Los Angeles. As I said, it's been a while."

Perfect. So she won't have any real sense of direction. Because she's not going anywhere near Parker Center.

She just doesn't know it yet.

How long had they been in this sterile interrogation room? Bentz s.h.i.+fted in the wooden chair, thinking it had been an eternity since he'd talked to Olivia on the phone.

The coffee in front of him had gone cold, but Bentz wasn't interested. Hayes, who'd been conducting the interview, had stepped out to see if Olivia had arrived. Bentz imagined her sitting in the squad room, waiting patiently. It wasn't fair to drag her into this, but he was glad she had come. Couldn't wait to see her. Touch her.

Bentz stood up and stretched, sick of the small, airless interrogation room. So typical; there was at least one in every precinct. A camera mounted high in the corner near the ceiling had recorded the entire conversation. Bentz could have asked for a lawyer or kept his mouth shut, but he had nothing to hide.

He knew it.

He sensed Hayes knew it. His account of the events at Devil's Caldron had been confirmed by Travis and his girlfriend. This was an exercise in futility, but one that ensured Hayes didn't make any mistakes.

He glanced at his reflection on the wall. G.o.d only knew who was standing behind the two-way mirror. Andrew Bledsoe and Riva Martinez were probably there, waiting for him to slip up and make a mistake. Maybe the DA was there, along with other detectives. h.e.l.l, maybe even Dawn Rankin was watching.

It was ridiculous, but Bentz understood procedure. Rake Rick Bentz over the coals. Prove that he's a good cop gone bad, someone insane enough to show up in Los Angeles and start killing people who had known his ex-wife.

Even though he'd talked things through with Hayes earlier, this was official, "for the record." So he'd suffered through the questions about his marriage to Jennifer, her betrayal, the divorce, the fact that while they'd been living together a second time, trying to see if it would work, she'd cheated on him all over again. And around that time, the accident that had taken her life. He understood that it was necessary to rehash this dark period in his life, though that hadn't made it any easier.

Then Hayes had segued to Jennifer the ghost, and Bentz had recalled how he'd seen her in his hospital room back in Louisiana. How he'd determined that the woman "haunting" him was actually a real flesh-and-blood imposter, one he'd stupidly driven along the coast. They'd stopped at Devil's Caldron, the park overlooking the sea, where she'd made the tragic leap into the ocean that had killed her.

"Well, tomorrow morning we should have some answers about your ghost. Or at least, your ex-wife," Hayes had said. The detective had cut through bureaucratic red tape and arranged for the exhumation of Jennifer's body, scheduled for the next morning. A step in the right direction.

Bentz was questioned about Shana McIntyre and Lorraine Newell. Hayes brought up the Caldwell twins, asked what he knew about the double homicide so similar to the Springer twins' case. "We've been through this before," Bentz had said, knowing that Olivia was waiting for him. He was tired, hungry and could offer them nothing more than the truth.

"Look, I can say all this a million ways," he'd said, "but it won't change what happened. I had nothing to do with Shana's murder or Lorraine's, and I don't have a clue what happened to those twins. It sounds like the Twenty-one or a copycat. That they were killed after I returned to Los Angeles...I agree, there seems to be a connection. Am I a catalyst? I hope to h.e.l.l not, but I don't know. It would be quite a coincidence, and I don't have a lot of faith in those."

Bentz looked up as the door opened and Hayes stepped in. "Is she out there?" Bentz asked.

"Not yet," Hayes said.

An icy dread chilled Bentz. "What do you mean? They should be here by now. Would you give me my d.a.m.ned cell phone back?"

"Procedure, man." Hayes held up his hands defensively. "You'll get it back just as soon as we're done here. Martinez is tracking down Petrocelli right now." Across the table, his tie loosened, Hayes looked as bone weary as Bentz felt. "I just need to get a few more things on the record."

Bentz raked one hand through his hair. "And that would be?"

"At Devil's Caldron today, did the victim know you were armed?"

"She saw my gun. Made some comment about it earlier in the car."

"So you were chasing her with a gun."

"Yeah, but I didn't take it out of my holster. She knew I wouldn't fire at her."

"How would she know that?"

Good question. "Because she knows me. She knows things about me only Jennifer knew." His guts ground as he admitted, "It seems like every time I learned something I didn't know about Jennifer from one of her friends, that friend ended up dead. Almost...I know this sounds crazy, but it's almost as if they were expendable and had served their purpose." He looked at Hayes and shook his head. "It's pretty d.a.m.ned freaky. Like she was one step ahead of me. She seemed to figure out my next move before I even made it. d.a.m.n it, Hayes, she knew knew I'd be at the airport." And as he said the words, a new horror crawled through him. "Oh, G.o.d," he whispered, "Olivia." I'd be at the airport." And as he said the words, a new horror crawled through him. "Oh, G.o.d," he whispered, "Olivia."

"What?"

His mind was racing ahead, fueled by adrenaline and stark, gut-churning terror. If "Jennifer" knew his whereabouts, would she have been tracking Olivia's, too? "My wife. I told you about the menacing calls she's been getting. What if this psycho's after her, too?"

"But Jennifer or whoever she is, is dead now, right? You witnessed her jump into the sea."

"I know." But he couldn't shake the feeling of dread that clung to him.

"We've been over this," Hayes reminded him. "Petrocelli met her at the airport."

"Then where the h.e.l.l are they?" He couldn't help the terror pulsing through his veins, pounding in his ears. He glanced at his watch. "They should be here by now."

"Maybe Olivia decided to check into a hotel? Get settled in somewhere instead of waiting around here."

"No way." Olivia had been as desperate to see him as he was to see her. He'd heard it in her voice.

Hayes sat back in the chair and slung his loose tie over one shoulder. "Look, you saw this Jennifer jump off the cliffs into Devil's Caldron, right? So your wife is safe."

Bentz wasn't certain. Nothing made sense anymore. Everything he believed in had gone sideways or turned upside down. He rubbed a hand over the stubble covering his jaw and tried to think clearly. Logically. Find the nugget of truth woven into so many lies. "Let's just get this interview over."

"We're done here." Hayes rose, straightening his tie. "But I'll need you to ID the woman we found at Devil's Caldron. The morgue isn't far." He opened the door and nodded toward the squad room. "Martinez will help you get your vouchered possessions, and then we can go."

While Hayes went over to his desk, Riva Martinez led Bentz down the hall to the property desk.

"Hey, my wife didn't show up yet, did she?" Bentz asked her, trying to keep a cordial tone. "Olivia Bentz?"

"Not yet. I called Petrocelli's cell, but she didn't pick up." Riva Martinez smiled at the property clerk, then started filling out the paperwork. As she handed him his gun, the look she sent Bentz could have cut through granite.

Bentz slung the holster over one shoulder, wondering what he ever did to p.i.s.s off Riva Martinez. Maybe it was just the fact that her caseload had doubled since he'd returned to L.A.

"They should be here by now," he said, concern mounting. "It's not that far."

With a shrug, she handed him the bin containing his cell phone, wallet, house keys. "Probably traffic. Last week there was an accident on the 405, made me forty minutes late for my s.h.i.+ft."

She nodded toward the paperwork. "Sign here to verify that you got everything back." After he signed, she gave him a copy of the receipt, then turned and walked briskly down the corridor.

Bentz watched her leave, the bad feeling in his gut worsening as she disappeared behind a tall rubber tree. Something was wrong.

As he headed back to the squad room, Bentz powered up his phone. No messages from Olivia. "d.a.m.n it." He dialed her. Got nowhere. "Come on, come on," he whispered as uniformed cops and detectives pa.s.sed by. His call went to Olivia's voice mail box and he asked her to call him ASAP, then hung up.

This wasn't like her.

Relax. She's with a cop. Who knows what's holding them up? Maybe a problem with her luggage, or they stopped to get something to eat. Maybe her cell phone battery is dead... But he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. He speed-dialed Montoya, who picked up before the second ring. But he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. He speed-dialed Montoya, who picked up before the second ring.

"Montoya."

"Got your call," Bentz said.

"Yeah, I just talked to Hayes. I sent him information on the owner of the Chevy, Yolanda Salazar. A relative sold it to her for cash. She never changed the t.i.tle, which isn't a big deal, but the kicker is this: Her name is Yolanda Valdez Valdez Salazar. She's the older sister of Mario." Salazar. She's the older sister of Mario."

"What? Are you kidding me? Mario Valdez's sister," Bentz repeated, stunned. But he knew from the tone of Montoya's voice this was no joke. In a second he was back in the dark alley, a person aiming a gun at Trinidad...

A silver glint of moonlight on the black gun barrel.

Panic tearing through his heart.

"Police. Drop it!" he yelled in warning.

But in the next instant, the gun didn't fall away.

He's going to shoot! He's going to shoot Trinidad!

As the realization throbbed in his brain, Bentz pulled the trigger.

And the gunman went down...

Now, a dozen years later, that fatal moment was still emblazoned in Bentz's memory. The rush of relief that he'd saved his partner's life had quickly given way to horror when he saw that the gunman was just a kid, a boy with a toy pistol. It was a nightmare Bentz would never be able to put completely behind him. "Sweet Jesus," Bentz said, half to Montoya, half to himself.

"She lives in Encino," Montoya went on. "I e-mailed and faxed all the info to Jonas Hayes. It should be there by now."

"Good. Thanks."

Yolanda Valdez. He clicked off, saw that Hayes was still on the phone. Pacing the corridor, he tried to remember the older sister. There had been three kids in the family, right? Mario was the youngest and Yolanda quite a bit older, maybe twenty when the accident had occurred. And there had been a brother, too...what the h.e.l.l was his name? Franco? Or Frederico? Or...no, wait...Fernando, that was it. But he didn't remember Yolanda looking like Jennifer...no, this wasn't making any sense. He clicked off, saw that Hayes was still on the phone. Pacing the corridor, he tried to remember the older sister. There had been three kids in the family, right? Mario was the youngest and Yolanda quite a bit older, maybe twenty when the accident had occurred. And there had been a brother, too...what the h.e.l.l was his name? Franco? Or Frederico? Or...no, wait...Fernando, that was it. But he didn't remember Yolanda looking like Jennifer...no, this wasn't making any sense.

Salazar? That didn't sound right. Hadn't she already been married? And the name had been different. He tried to come up with it, but her surname eluded him. Now she was Salazar? He rolled that around in his mind, tried to make some connections. Something didn't make sense.

He called Montoya back. When his partner answered, Bentz told him his concern. "I think she was married to someone else. Not Salazar. I think the name was Anglo...something like Johns, no that's not right. Can you double-check?"

"You got it, but everything I found only mentioned her maiden name, Valdez, and Salazar. But I'll dig further."

"Thanks."

Bentz hung up, disturbed.

He stepped around two cops talking in the hallway, then found Hayes at his desk, papers spread around him. Montoya's e-mail had gotten through. "Take a look." Hayes showed Bentz the driver's license photo of Yolanda Salazar. "You think that she's your Jennifer?"

"Not on a dare." Bentz rubbed the stubble on his jaw as he shook his head. "I don't know how this woman is connected to the Jennifer who's been trailing me."

"We'll have to dig deeper, but right now they're waiting for us over at the morgue." He motioned to the papers. "Bring those with you. We need to get over and ID our jumper."

Bentz tried to read the information Montoya had sent as he followed Hayes to the parking lot, where security lamps were already raining down soft blue light. "Anyone hear from Petrocelli?" Bentz asked as they reached Hayes's 4Runner.