“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 hell 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 piss 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 shift.”
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. “Damn it.” He dialed her. Got nowhere. “Come on, come on,” he whispered as uniformed cops and detectives passed 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.
“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 title, which isn’t a big deal, but the kicker is this: Her name is Yolanda Valdez 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 hell 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.
“Not yet.”
“I don’t like this,” Bentz said as he climbed into the passenger seat.
Hayes dialed his cell phone with one hand and started the engine with another. “Hey, Sherry. Hayes here. Just wondering what’s the holdup. Give a call. I’m on my cell.” Then he hung up. “I don’t know, man. She’s not answering.”
Bentz glared at him. “LAPD’s finest?”
“She’ll be here when we get back.”
“She’d better be. With my wife.” Bentz stared out the windshield as Jonas eased out of the parking lot and pulled into moving traffic. Olivia. Where the hell was she?