“What is this?” she asks in the barest of whispers. The album got to her. Finally. “Where did you get it?”
“Just something to think about,” I say.
“Why?”
“So you can see for yourself that the man you married was obsessed with his first wife. I think everyone should have a little clarity; a little understanding before they die.” I smile again. “It’s only a matter of time, you know.”
And then, while she’s still stunned, I reach into my athletic bag again and retrieve my digital camera. Aiming and shooting quickly, I catch her horrified expression.
The picture is perfect.
“Your husband? He’s going to love this shot,” I assure her, as I look at the picture I’ve captured. “Just love it.” Then, feeling victorious, I pack up my things and hurry up the stairs.
Let her think about her bleak future.
The woman was mad, Olivia thought. Cold, calculating, and mad as a hatter.
And obsessed with Bentz.
As Olivia stood imprisoned in the cage, gently rocking with the boat, fear slithered through her like a nest of tiny worms. She stared at the photo album left only a few feet from her cell. Opened to the page with the twenty-odd-year-old Christmas picture, the leather-bound volume was thick. Its plastic-coated pages had been filled with snapshots and clippings and cards, the work of an obsessed, sick mind.
Why?
Who was she?
Why was she so intent on Bentz?
Not that it mattered; the important thing was that Olivia had to escape. And soon. How, she didn’t know, but she had to find a way because she was certain that she was scheduled to die.
She just didn’t know when.
She noticed something else on the pages. Red smudges like…drops of blood? Crimson drips staining the photographs and smeared over the plastic. Oh, God. Whose blood? This maniac who held her? Or someone else’s?
Jennifer’s.
This woman is consumed with her.
No way! Jennifer was long dead.
Olivia was suddenly and violently nauseous. In an instant, she knew she was going to throw up. She scrambled across her cell and barely made it to the bucket before she retched though there was little in her stomach but acid and bile.
Again!
Her insides protested and she felt weak.
It couldn’t be morning sickness. Not like this.
No, she was certain, this had nothing to do with her pregnancy. She was reacting to the horror that had become her life.
CHAPTER 34
Bentz felt as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He’d spent most of the night trying to find a clue as to what had happened to Olivia. Where she was. If she were still alive.
He’d pulled up Olivia’s cell phone records online and seen that the last call she’d taken was right after he’d spoken with her after she’d landed at the airport. No doubt the brief call was from Sherry Petrocelli’s number. He’d dialed that number just in case he was wrong, but a taped recording threw him into Petrocelli’s voice mail.
According to phone records, after the call from Petrocelli, Olivia hadn’t spoken to anyone; there were only short, one-minute calls from a couple of numbers: his and Hayes’s. “Shit,” he’d said, frustrated as hell. He’d called Hayes, given him the info, then reminded the detective that there was a G.P.S. locator in his wife’s phone.
Bentz had gotten nowhere with the cell phone company on that one; Hayes would have to use his police department influence to pry out any information he could from them.
After digging through the cell phone info, Bentz had been up most of the night on the computer, searching for anything he could find on Yolanda Salazar and Fernando Valdez. He studied the DMV photo of Fernando that Montoya had sent, wondering what the kid was up to. Most of the information Yolanda and Sebastian Salazar had given them the night before had checked out, including the name of the restaurant where her brother worked. Sebastian had told Hayes that Fernando worked the afternoon shift at the Blue Burro, and Bentz intended to pay the guy a visit later in the day. Bentz was tired of playing by the rules; he just wanted answers and he wanted them fast.
Before it was too late. If it’s not already, his mind mocked now as it had all night. In the morning, he tried to wash away the grit from his eyes and wake up his tired muscles by showering and shaving. Then he walked outside to an overcast L.A. day. It was only seven-thirty in the morning and already a thick layer of smog accompanied an unlikely chill in the air, a surprising drop in temperature. He paused at the office door and looked down the length of the porch toward the doorway of the room he’d called home for the better part of a week. In the parking lot, the blue Pontiac was missing; Spike and his owner had probably moved out. A beat-up red pickup was parked in the Pontiac’s spot.
Time marched on.
Things changed.
And Olivia was missing.
Anger mixed with fear, twisting his guts. She had to be safe; had to.
He ducked into the So-Cals’ office for a cup of coffee, then, cup in hand, walked onto the porch to make some calls. Sipping coffee that settled badly in his stomach, he phoned Montoya, who, too, had worked most of the night and had dug up some more information on the Valdez family. Apparently Fernando was a theater major, interested in writing plays, while his sister Yolanda was studying accounting. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Except for the damned car. The one that Jennifer had been driving. He hung up, not knowing much more than he had last night.
Nothing made any sense. Nothing. In a haze of misery Bentz walked to his new rental car, a white Honda hatchback. He stopped at a mini-mart and bought two doughnuts that he ate on the way to the cemetery. He couldn’t remember his last meal, but decided it had to be better than this breakfast.
The backhoe was already at work, men with shovels waiting for the big machine to do its job before they handled the final excavation by hand. Workers stood talking together in the rising fog, laughing, leaning on their shovels, telling jokes, and smoking, while Bentz felt his world collapsing around him.
As the huge machine scooped up dry earth, Bentz flashed back to the day of the funeral, when he had stood next to his grief-stricken daughter and watched as Jennifer’s coffin had been lowered into the ground. The people who had come were a blur now, but he remembered Shana and Tally. Fortuna had attended, as had Jennifer’s stepsister Lorraine, along with other family and friends. Bentz’s brother had presided over the ceremony, looking stricken and ashen. As he’d mumbled prayers, a bank of thick clouds had rolled in, blocking the sun. James had loved Jennifer, he’d said, but, though only a few mourners had known the truth, he’d loved her in ways unbefitting a man of the cloth. His vows of celibacy had choked him far more than his clerical collar ever had. Bentz had clutched Kristi’s hand and locked gazes with Alan Gray, the man Jennifer had nearly married before she’d fallen in love with Bentz and become the wife of a cop. At the burial Alan had stood back from the crowd, a millionaire who really didn’t belong. His expression had been bland and void of emotion, as if he were playing poker in a high-stakes game in Vegas. Bentz had looked away and Gray had left before the final prayer had been intoned. Bentz had thought Gray’s appearance had been odd at the time, but he had forgotten that detail.
Now, watching the back hoe extract soil from his wife’s grave was surreal, the low-laying fog making it more so. Bentz believed with all his heart that the decaying body inside the coffin belonged to his wife.
Who else?
And yet he was jittery. Tense. Expecting the worst. He began to sweat despite the cool temperature. The men with shovels were just getting to work when Hayes arrived in a tan suit that looked as pressed and crisp as if it had just come from the dry cleaners. Dark shirt and matching tie finished the outfit and complemented the polish on his shoes. Always a dandy.