The call went directly to voice mail and he explained what he was doing.
Then he hit the freeway heading south, weaving through taillights to move ahead, pushing the speed limit. The night was clear and somewhere above the lights of the city the stars shone. He saw the moon and the blink of airplanes cutting across the sky, but his mind was on the phone conversation with Lorraine.
Was it possible?
Was “Jennifer” showing herself? Or casing Lorraine’s house?
Or was Lorraine just freaking out?
Imagining things?
Like you? His mind teased while the speedometer inched past eighty.
As he maneuvered around a shiny red BMW another theory struck him. “Damn.” Shana was already dead. Could “Jennifer” be looking for her next victim? That thought hit him hard. Was the woman he’d been looking for a murderess? His stomach twisted into a painful knot and he stepped on it, flying past a semi hauling milk and smelling of diesel, just as an idiot on a motorcycle blew by him and the eighteen-wheeler as if they were standing still. The biker had to be doing a hundred, maybe more, cutting through traffic. Idiot!
Minutes ticked by and Bentz willed his cell phone to ring. He needed to talk to Hayes, or someone from the department, he thought just as he saw his exit ramp and some girl driving a Honda sped around him while texting. He barely noticed.
Bentz couldn’t take any chances with Lorraine’s life. There was no way of telling what this “Jennifer” was up to, but his gut told him it wasn’t good. As he neared his exit ramp, he slowed and put another message to Hayes’s voice mail, asking the L.A. detective to return the call immediately.
Bentz needed this confirmation. That he wasn’t going out of his mind. That he wasn’t conjuring up and fantasizing about a dead woman. Lorraine’s sighting of Jennifer could do just that. At least now, if nothing else, by the time he left Lorraine’s place tonight, the LAPD would know that Lorraine had been frightened, maybe even threatened by a woman who resembled Jennifer Bentz.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, easing down the ramp into a clog of traffic at the stop light. A small man wearing an overcoat, camouflage pants, and a hat with a long feather slowly pushed an overflowing grocery store cart across all the lanes of traffic while Bentz felt time slipping by. Precious time.
At last the man rolled past, the light changed, and the idling vehicles were able to move again. Bentz gunned it, his heart hammering crazily. Fueled at the prospect of coming face to face with Jennifer.
Lorraine Newell knew she was a dead woman.
Shaking, she watched as her assailant, the woman who had held the phone to her ear and a gun to her temple, hung up the phone in her living room. All the shades were drawn. They were alone. And she’d lied to Rick Bentz, begged him to come over. She should have warned him, told him the truth, but she’d been afraid, so damned afraid. Either way this witch was going to kill her.
Trembling inside, she looked at the woman holding the gun on her, the dark, deadly muzzle only inches from her forehead.
“He’s coming,” she whispered and thought she might pee all over herself. How had she been so foolish to open the door to this woman, to agree to let her use her phone? She was just being a Good Samaritan. She’d wanted to help. When she’d opened the door, handing her phone through the crack, the woman who had pleaded that she’d needed to call a tow truck and that her cell was out of batteries had turned into a demon. She’d slammed the door in Lorraine’s face, pulled a black gun from her jacket, and rammed the steely muzzle deep into Lorraine’s ribs.
Once in the house, she’d bound Lorraine’s hands behind her back, then held the phone to her ear and forced Lorraine to read from a careful script, only improvising when she had to.
And she had.
Oh, God forgive her, she would have done anything to save her life. But it was for nothing. She knew it now.
“You…you can leave me out of it,” she said, in a desperate plea, sweat running down her back, her insides quivering. “I won’t say anything to anyone. I promise. When Bentz gets here I’ll…I’ll tell him it was all part of a joke.”
“It is,” the woman said cryptically.
“Please.”
“Shut up!”
If only she could run. Could knock the gun away. But it was too late. She didn’t doubt for a second that this fiend would blow her to kingdom come.
Without a modicum of mercy her captor snatched the paper away-the script she’d forced Lorraine to read. Lorraine had searched the woman’s face for a shred of compassion, a crack in her icy veneer. But the woman’s expression was stone cold as she then prodded Lorraine forward, down a short hallway, and into the kitchen.
Where it was dark.
Oh, God.
There had to be a way to save herself. Had to!
“Move!” she ordered, the unforgiving nose of the pistol hard against Lorraine’s back.
Tears ran down Lorraine’s face. Her heart, beating so rapidly, so erratically, felt as if it would explode. She said a silent prayer, begging God for mercy.
“Please. Don’t do this,” she whispered, physically quaking with fear. She didn’t want to die. Not now. Not this way. She was too young, had too much to live for. “Please,” she begged, desperation cracking her voice. “I won’t tell a soul. I swear. You can trust me.”
“Shhhh. It’s going to be all right.” Slowly her attacker ran the cold muzzle of the pistol up Lorraine’s spine, from the small of her back to the base of her skull.
Where it stopped.
Oh, sweet Jesus!
In that horrifying second Lorraine knew it was over.
Nothing she could do or say would change this demented criminal’s mind.
She closed her eyes just as the gun blasted.
CHAPTER 24
Something was off.
Way out of kilter.
Bentz felt it in the air, in the silence of the night. When he pulled up in front of Lorraine’s home the street was empty-no silver Chevy prowling the neighborhood. A few lights glowed from the tri-level house, but the curtains were drawn. Hadn’t Lorraine said she’d seen Jennifer from her window? Worse yet, as he approached he noticed the front door was ajar.
Had she left it open for him?
No way. When he’d talked to her, Lorraine had been scared out of her mind. Every muscle in his body tensed. “Lorraine,” he called, slowly and silently withdrawing his weapon from his shoulder holster. “Lorraine? It’s Rick Bentz.”
Silence.
Carefully, sensing danger, he nudged the door further open with his weapon, and hearing no sound from within, slipped into the house. Lights were on in the living room, and he stiffened at a subtle movement across from him until he realized that it was his own reflection in the mirrored wall. The room was empty, a book facedown on the worn green sofa.
“Lorraine?” He listened but heard nothing.
Moving silently through the hallway toward the back of the house, Bentz passed an empty dining room with mail piled on the table. As he approached the darkened kitchen he smelled it.
The distinctive, metallic odor of blood.
His stomach dropped to the floor.
Bracing himself, he stepped into the kitchen doorway and caught a glimpse of feet, one slipper kicked off, poking out from behind a cabinet. He stepped closer. Her body lay facedown, blood matting the back of her head.
Lorraine.
Bile crawled up his throat. Bentz flicked on the light and quickly checked to make sure the room was empty before kneeling at her side. But he knew she was dead. He felt for a pulse.
Nothing.
“Holy Christ.” This was his fault. He knew it. “Son of a bitch.” Yanking his phone from his pocket, he dialed 9-1-1, identified himself, and gave the dispatcher the pertinent information.
Who had done this to Lorraine?
No doubt the same person who had offed Shana McIntyre. The connection was obvious: Rick Bentz.