“It’s easy. Aim. Pull the trigger.”
“After I load it and flip off the safety.”
“You lied; you do know how.”
“But-”
“Humor me. Just until I get home, okay?”
“And when will that be?”
“Soon,” he vowed, conviction ringing in his voice.
“Okay. Good. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I know.” He hesitated a second. “Be safe, Livvie. I love you.”
A pang of emotion tightened in her chest. Stupid tears again stung her eyes. “Love you, too. You be careful.”
She hung up and stared at the ceiling. Maybe she should have begged him to give up his damned quest and come home. Not that he could now, with those women he’d talked to now murder victims. Unfortunately, he needed to stay there. She wanted him to finish whatever it was that had drawn him to L.A. Then he could come home for good and she’d tell him about the baby. Not before. She knew that if she had mentioned her pregnancy he would have been on the next plane home. If that were the case, he would always regret that he hadn’t been able to find out what the hell had happened to Jennifer.
She switched off the light.
Olivia wanted this murderous, heart-wrenching rampage over. Forever. Never did she want Bentz to have regrets, to think he’d abandoned someone who needed him, to wonder if he’d left a part of him, his heart and dreams, in sunny California.
She needed all of him, or none of him. She wasn’t willing to settle for second best to his ex-wife.
Jennifer.
“Damn you,” Olivia whispered to the empty, dark room. How the hell did Bentz’s ex-wife figure into all of this?
She rolled over and stared through the window to the inky Louisiana night.
Bentz needed to finish this. Put Jennifer’s damned ghost to rest.
Before anyone else died.
Before Olivia lost him forever.
CHAPTER 25
“I already told all this to the Torrance police,” Bentz said as he drove Hayes back to Parker Center, where Hayes had left his SUV.
It was pushing 3 A.M. Bentz, tired as hell, drove along Sepulveda, then eased onto the 110 heading north. Despite the late hour the freeway was still busy, red taillights glowing on the gently sloping lanes ahead.
Hayes had come with Riva Martinez, who had joked that Hayes picked the absolute worst time to turn his cell phone off. “Better late than never,” Bentz had told the LAPD detectives, grateful that they’d responded at all. If they hadn’t shown up, Bentz would probably still be at the Torrance Police Station, shifting uncomfortably on the wooden chair in that damned interrogation room.
At least they hadn’t cuffed him. After handing over his gun to the first-responding officers, Bentz had been detained at the crime scene, where he watched as the cops had put up barriers, roped off Lorraine’s home, and interviewed the neighbors who had drifted onto the sidewalks.
Once the neighbors had emerged, the cul-de-sac’s glum mood had taken on a surreal note, a carnival atmosphere colorful enough to rival the amusements on the Santa Monica Pier. Gathered under a streetlight, decked in bathrobes and sweat suits, flip-flops, and fluffy slippers, residents gossiped among themselves. Smoking and shaking their heads, they eyed the emergency vehicles with wry speculation and offered to give statements to the cops.
Bentz had overheard many of their comments about Lorraine.
“A lovely woman,” an elderly woman had intoned.
“A good neighbor,” a man who lived next door had said. The Owl, Bentz dubbed him, with his round glasses, a thin beard, and a dour expression. “I just can’t believe that someone broke into her home. This is a nice neighborhood. Safe.” The Owl paused as the gurney and body bag rolled past. “I mean, it always has been.”
Another woman had put in her two cents’ worth. “Don’t know a lot about her. I think she was married once.” With a cloud of white hair and a matching bathrobe, she’d introduced herself as Gilda Mills, had lived in the neighborhood twenty-seven years. Nervously, she’d stared at Lorraine’s home as if it were the den of the devil. “But I’m not sure.” Gilda’s bony fingers were forever at the side of her mouth as she said, “No kids, at least none that she ever spoke of. She had a half sister. No, I think it was a stepsister who died. Committed suicide or something…oh, dear, I really can’t remember.” She had taken two steps away from the curb, seemingly afraid that whatever evil lurked within might ooze over the lawn and onto the toes of her pink slippers.
Bentz had inwardly groaned when the news van had arrived. Fortunately Hayes and Martinez had pulled onto the cul-de-sac a few seconds later. A lanky twenty-something reporter for the television station had taken notice, smelling a story as he recognized the cops from L.A. outside their regular jurisdiction. Watching as the reporter tried and failed to get a statement from Hayes, Bentz had realized he was just too damned tired and shell-shocked to find it amusing.
Soon thereafter Bentz had been escorted to the station in Torrance, where he’d spent three hours answering questions and waiting in the interrogation room. The lieutenant had explained that they needed to do a quick background check on Bentz, verify that he was an officer in good standing with NOPD and that he had permission to carry a firearm. Although the cops had treated him with respect and professionalism, Bentz had not liked spending time in the perp’s seat. Not even for one minute.
Hours later, the lieutenant finally had told Bentz he was free to go. About damned time, Bentz had thought as he holstered his firearm and signed the receipt for his possessions. By the time Bentz had climbed behind the wheel with Hayes in the passenger seat, it was after 2 A.M.
“Just humor me by going over it one more time,” Hayes said, bringing Bentz back to the here and now as they sped along the freeway in the darkness. Bentz had cracked the windows so that the night air rushed in, cool and bracing. Something to keep him awake. “Tell me what happened tonight. Start with the facts. Then your take on it.”
“First I got a call from Lorraine Newell, Jennifer’s stepsister.” Bentz was sick to death of going over the same information, but now that Hayes was ready to listen to him he would churn through it one more time. One more round to enlist Hayes’s help.
Staring through the bug-spattered windshield, Bentz recounted the night blow by blow, from the minute he got Lorraine’s call to the nightmare of finding her body on the kitchen floor. He even added in the fact that Olivia had been the victim of harassing phone calls since he’d traveled to the West Coast. “It’s a female caller and she refers to me,” Bentz said. “Calls me RJ just like Jennifer did. It’s meant to spook Olivia.”
“Does it?”
“Not much. Mainly pisses her off.”
“Sounds like your kind of woman.”
“She is,” Bentz agreed. “But it worries me. I’m going to call Montoya and have him keep an eye on her until I get home.”
“She probably won’t like having a keeper.”
“Doesn’t matter.” It was the best he could do for now, though it didn’t seem like enough. He’d never forgive himself if Olivia got dragged into this mess. He couldn’t have his wife in danger. Spying the sign for his exit, Bentz pulled into the right lane.
“You saw a jogger.” Hayes stared out the window to the lights of downtown Los Angeles, where skyscrapers rose into the blue-black sky. “Same guy you saw the night you jumped off the pier?”
“One was a man; the other a woman.”
“You sure? You said they were both slim and athletic. Both wore baseball caps, no hair showing.”
That much was true. And he had questioned the gender both nights. “Could go either way, I guess.”
“I got the tapes from the Santa Monica Pier webcam.”
Bentz, easing down the ramp, slid Hayes a glance. “You got them? And I didn’t? When I was the one who requested them?”