“Hey, no.” Tony shook his head as if a police station was the very bowels of hell. “The cops? Nuh-uh.”
“He’ll be there if you need him,” Rebecca said firmly.
“No, Mom. I didn’t see nothing, not really. I’m not even sure about the runner. She was crossing the street…I mean, I don’t think she came to the door.”
“But you don’t know.”
He shook his head, bit his lower lip.
“Tony has a tendency to watch TV or play video games when he’s supposed to be working.” Then as if realizing he was underage, she amended, “I give him his allowance if he watches the desk for me.”
Tony’s employment or lack thereof wasn’t any of Bentz’s concern. Not now. Though he was still reeling from the photo of Olivia, he now felt a grain of hope. A drop of adrenaline coursed through his blood. Here, finally, was something solid to go on. “Do you have a security tape?” Bentz asked and Rebecca nodded. “Of the parking lot and front door?”
“Sure, and of the lobby, too. Our security equipment is pretty cheap, but you’re welcome to a copy of the videotape.”
“Right now, can you play it back? So we can watch it?” he asked, suddenly on fire.
“Yeah, sure.” Rebecca was on board.
“I’ll need a copy for the police.”
“No problem.” She gave Tony instructions to watch the front desk and led Bentz to a small area with a TV monitor and tape machine. As Rebecca said, the security system was hardly state of the art, but Bentz didn’t care. He just wanted something, anything, that would help him find Olivia.
Rebecca sat at the tiny desk, pushed a few buttons, and rewound the black-and-white tape. Images reversed quickly on the monitor, people walking and running jerkily backward, cars in reverse. “There,” she said as a jogger appeared. She rewound the tape until the runner was caught in the camera’s eye.
Just as Tony had suspected, the jogger cut across the parking lot, slid the envelope from inside a jacket, and dropped it by the door.
But watching her on tape, Bentz didn’t think it was the woman who pretended to be Jennifer. He wasn’t even certain it was a woman, but it seemed that way. Her clothes were bulky, hiding her shape, but there was something about the chin and neck, no Adam’s apple visible, not a hint of peach fuzz or beard shadow, although it was hard to be sure considering the indistinct quality of the moving image.
Nonetheless, it was something.
“Ever seen this person before?” he asked Rebecca.
“I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell with the baseball cap and dark glasses.”
“Tony!” Bentz called and the boy, looking bored as hell, returned. “You were right. This is the person you saw, right?”
“Yeah.” He lifted his shoulder again, as if it were his signature move. “I guess.”
“Did you notice anything else about the runner? Color of clothes or hair or car nearby?”
“Nah, but that’s the person. See there? She’s dropping the package.”
“She?”
“Yeah, I think. Hey, I don’t know, man.”
“Tony,” Rebecca said sharply. “This isn’t just Mr. Bentz. He’s a detective with the New Orleans Police Department and his wife is missing. Kidnapped. There’s a good chance this jogger,” she pointed to the monster, “is involved, so please think. Think real hard.”
“I am!” he said, throwing up his hands. “Holy crap, Mom, don’t you ever listen to me? Didn’t I tell you that was everything I knew? And there…there she is on the tape. I didn’t see any more than that.” He eyed Bentz suspiciously, as if he expected to be busted at any second.
“What about the color of her clothes?”
“Nah…” He snapped his fingers. “But I think I thought she was a woman because of her shoes. They…they don’t look like a guy’s.”
Bentz glanced back at the screen and saw a glimpse of a running shoe, not one he would necessarily describe as being made for a woman, but definitely small. A woman’s foot. Or that of a very small man. “Thanks, Tony.”
“Hey, no prob.” The kid shrugged and retreated through the doorway, trying to put as much distance between himself and the cop as possible.
Bentz turned to Rebecca. “You said you can make me a tape?”
“Yeah. No prob,” she said, mocking her son.
Rebecca copied the tape quickly and handed it to him. “Good luck,” she said. “I hope you find her. Soon.”
“You and me both.” Bentz hurried back to his car and didn’t add what they both were thinking: Find her before it’s too late.
“I checked the roster of recent parolees with a history of violent crimes. Looking for suspects who might fit the profile of the Twenty-one killer,” Bledsoe said as he approached Hayes’s desk.
Hayes leaned back in his chair. Martinez perched on the edge of his desk. They were waiting for a call from Doug O’Leary, the forensic dentist who’d been called in to compare Jennifer Bentz’s dental records with the body that had been buried in her coffin.
Bledsoe continued, “These are the guys that have been locked up since the Caldwell twins were killed and before the Springer twins became homicide victims. There are only three who even remotely meet the profile.
“There’s Freddy Baxter. He got out last January, had pled down to Man-One for running over his girlfriend with his car. But he has an alibi, solid. Was with his brother in Vegas when the Springer girls were abducted.” Bledsoe was holding up three fingers on his right hand, his thumb holding his pinkie down. With the dismissal of Baxter as a suspect, the ring finger went down.
“Then we’ve got Mickey Eldridge, cut up his old lady during a fight and was released in December, just in time for Christmas. But that wife, who almost died because of his butcher job on her, swears he’s changed, found religion or some such lame excuse, and she was at his side on the night in question.” Bledsoe’s index finger curled into his fist, leaving his middle one poking straight to the heavens.
“Our last nut job with enough balls and rage to do the job is George St. Arnaux. He’s my personal favorite. Remember him? The whacko who systematically cut off his victims fingers and toes. How the hell did he get out, I ask ya? Because some legal eagle swears she found an eyewitness who claims the killer was a white guy, not a black, so our friend George was released, though the taxpayers are going to be paying for a new trial, I’ll bet. But George, he was with the lawyer, or so she claims. I think there’s something going on there, ya know what I mean?”
“Not everyone’s mind is in the gutter like yours,” Martinez said. “You already said she’s his lawyer.”
“And she’s boinking him, let me tell you.” His voice lowered, “Some women get off on all that crazy, dangerous stuff, know what I mean?”
“Boinking? Grow up, would ya? We’re not in the seventh grade.” Martinez was not one to hide her feelings. “And your point was…?”
“Yeah, right.” Bledsoe put his hand down and sent her a scowl meant to cut her to the quick, but she held her ground. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t intimidate her. “Anyway, I’ve got no parolee in the state of California I can hang this on. Shit.”
Hayes felt the weight of the investigation. It had been too many days since the coeds had been found dead. The trail was getting cold, not that it had been hot or even warm to begin with. The Springer twins’ murders had moved from page one to further back in the paper, but the killer was still out there. Justice was a long way from being served.
Bledsoe wasn’t finished. “I talked to everyone who knew the Springer twins, retraced their steps. We had officers questioning all the neighbors, friends, relatives. We tried to establish some kind of connection between them and the Caldwell twins, but came up with nada.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “Which brings me back to our ‘friend.’” He made air quotes with his fingers. “And I use the term loosely when I call him a detective. This can’t be random.”