Malice

CHAPTER 11

“Bentz is back in town?” Russ Trinidad frowned into his drink, swirling the scotch and studying it as if it held the keys to the universe.

Hayes had asked Trinidad to meet him after work for a drink, which was unusual in and of itself. So Trinidad’s normally suspicious nature was on high alert. “What the hell is he doing back here?”

“It’s about his ex-wife.”

“Jennifer?” Trinidad snorted as water ran through bamboo stalks in a small waterfall near the entrance and soft Japanese music played in the background. “Piece of work, that one. Though I never really knew her.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Hayes said.

At six feet, Trinidad was shorter than Hayes, but kept up a military physique. In Trinidad’s world black was beautiful and bald was sexy as any head of messy hair. They were seated in a corner booth in a bar in Little Tokyo, not too far from Parker Center, the building housing the Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD, yet far enough away not to be a cop hangout. Trinidad was into his second glass of scotch while Hayes worked his way through his first sake.

Hayes had decided to confide in Trinidad, Bentz’s ex-partner, because the near-retiring detective was one of Bentz’s few allies in the department. However at this point Bentz had been gone so long, even Trinidad was iffy.

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Trinidad took a sip from his drink, saw a fleck of something foreign floating in the scotch, and flicked it out with a practiced finger. He drank again, didn’t bother complaining to the waitress. “Fill me in on our old friend Bentz.”

Hayes did.

Told him about meeting with the former LAPD detective the night before, about the photos Bentz had received showing his dead wife out and about in L.A.

“So he thinks his ex-wife might still be alive?” Trinidad said, frowning and finishing his drink. “He IDed her.”

“Yeah, but she was real busted up.”

“You’re buying into it?” Trinidad’s eyebrows rose. “Sounds like bullshit to me.”

“I’m not buying into anything, but I checked. The only person to request a death certificate on her was Bentz himself. No one else bothered.” Unsettled, Hayes twisted his cup in his palms. “I mean it’s possible he’s gone off his nut. The guy nearly died in a freak accident. In a coma for a while.”

“And comes out of it only to be visited by his long-deceased ex-wife,” Trinidad scoffed. “How nice.”

“Or nuts.” Hayes took a swallow of the sake and watched a young Asian couple enter and take seats at the bar. “He gave me a copy of the envelope and death certificate that were sent to him. He’s having ’em checked for fingerprints and to see if there’s any DNA on the seal of the envelope through the New Orleans PD.”

“So you’re not stickin’ your neck out for him, are you? Nothing you can do unless you’ve got the originals and even if he gave them to you, I’d say you’d be making a mistake getting involved with this.”

“No problem since he didn’t. But I thought you were supposed to be his friend.”

Trinidad lifted a shoulder. “Friends don’t help friends become paranoid.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Rick Bentz is a loose cannon. Nearly lost it when he killed the Valdez kid, and, hey, that’s understandable. But afterward, he never pulled himself together. I thought maybe he’d got a handle on everything when he settled in with the New Orleans PD. Rumor has it he’s some kind of hero, solving difficult homicides. But, I’m telling you, there was a time he was this close”-he held up his thumb and forefinger so that they nearly touched-“to snapping. Looks like he finally did. My advice, even though you don’t want it: You’d be smart to avoid whatever it is he’s peddling.”

“Haven’t done anything yet.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the ‘yet’ part that’s the problem, isn’t it?” The edges of Trinidad’s mouth tightened.

At the bar, the Asian girl laughed as she ordered her drink and her boyfriend rubbed the back of her neck gently, but firmly, never letting up. Hayes bet he was already getting a hard-on. Young love. He’d been there a couple of times.

Trinidad patted the pocket of his shirt and found his cigarettes. He took one out, fingered it, and signaled for the waitress, not bothering to fight Hayes for the tab. Together they walked into the early evening light where the hazy sunset was reflected on the glass wall of a new condominium building. Farther down the street, the domed tower of the Cathedral of St. Vibiana was visible, its ornate Spanish architecture a contrast to the geometric skyline of downtown Los Angeles.

Trinidad lit up, drawing smoke deep into his lungs as they walked along the crowded sidewalk. “Bentz was a good cop. The Valdez thing really fucked him up.” Shaking his head, he added, “Then his wife messin’ around with his brother. Hell. Who wouldn’t go off the deep end?” They turned a corner to a spot on the street where Trinidad had wedged his Chevy Blazer. “But I’m about ready to retire.” He let out a cloud of smoke. “Looking up old records? Exhuming a body when everybody knows who’s in the casket? I don’t need this shit.”

“What if Jennifer Bentz didn’t die?”

“She did. We don’t need DNA to prove it. Her car. Her body identified by her husband. No other missing person who matches her description.”

“We don’t know that.”

“I’m just sayin’ that Bentz had a tendency to bend the rules until they broke, and I’m not that guy anymore. I’ve got less than a year until retirement. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

But his words didn’t match his expression as he tossed his cigarette onto the street and stomped on the smoldering butt with a little more force that was necessary. “Shit.” He looked up at the sky and shook his head. “Goddamned Bentz. Why the hell is he back now, seein’ ghosts, makin’ waves? That son of a bitch left me holding the bag, y’know. And other officers, too. Walked away from a couple of cases, some messy ones that never did get solved.”

Hayes remembered one high-profile case, a double-murder investigation that went stone cold when Jennifer Bentz’s accident derailed her ex-husband. The Caldwell twins…The killer had gotten away, leaving little evidence behind other than their mutilated bodies. At the time of the double homicide, Bentz had been a mess, a rabid drunk.

“Bentz would never ask you to do anything illegal,” Hayes said as Trinidad opened the door of his Blazer.

“Yeah, right.” He jabbed his key into the engine and looked up at Hayes. “You know the old saying: If you believe that, I’ve got some swampland I’d like to sell you in Florida.”

“It worked for Disney.”

Trinidad grinned, showing off a mouthful of big teeth. “You keep thinking that way. But be careful.”

“So, you’re not gonna help him.”

“Help him find his dead ex-wife who faked her suicide and killed some woman in a car wreck?”

“Yeah.”

Trinidad shook his head. “No way, man.” With a roar of the engine, he was off.

Hayes climbed into his SUV, twisted on the ignition, and gunned it just as his cell phone chirped. Roaring into a sea of traffic, he glanced at the display.

Riva Martinez’s name came onto the screen.

His partner.

“Hayes,” he said. “What’s up?”

“We’ve got a double. Two female bodies found in a storage unit in one of those facilities under the 110.” She gave him the cross street and address of an on-ramp to the Harbor Freeway-the 110-then added, “Looks like the vics are twins.”

“What? Wait a second.” His mind raced ahead and he told himself to slow down. He was making connections that didn’t exist. Seeing Bentz again had reminded him of the Caldwell case, the unsolved double murder that had occurred twelve years earlier.

“Got a problem?” Martinez asked.

“Twins?” Hayes spoke slowly as adrenaline rushed through his veins. “Identical?”

“I’d say so. We’ll know for sure soon. You’d better get down here.”

She hung up, leaving Hayes with an overwhelming sense of doom. He hit the gas.

Bentz had never solved the Caldwell murders. The killer of those twins had never been caught. Somehow he’d disappeared from the face of the earth, or at least left Southern California. Of course there had been hypotheses cast about. Some people thought that the guy was in prison, caught for some other crime, and had never been fingered for the Caldwell murders. Others believed that he’d died or moved on. There was speculation that the killer had just up and quit, but that didn’t come from cops. No one in the department really believed a sadistic murderer had just given up his avocation for fly-fishing or golf.

“Damn.” Ignoring the speed limit, Hayes set his lights on the dash and put in a quick call to Trinidad. His thoughts were dark and jumbled as he plunged through an intersection where the light was changing from amber to red.

How was it possible that within forty-eight hours of Rick Bentz returning to L.A., a killer had nearly duplicated the double murder that had led to the end of Bentz’s career?

Coincidence?

Or diabolically calculated?

The last twenty-four hours had proved fruitless for Bentz. One dead end after another. He’d driven to Santa Monica again, parked, and walked the length of the boardwalk. At the end of the pier he stared out to sea and imagined Jennifer here. With him. With James. By herself.

He’d even driven by some of the places he and Jennifer had frequented when she’d been alive. A burger joint where they’d shared baskets of fries not far from West Los Angeles College. A bar on Sepulveda where she’d introduced him to martinis. A romantic Italian restaurant where they’d sat next to each other in a dark booth, Jennifer’s hand on his thigh. Ernesto’s was no longer. The building itself had gone through many transformations and now was a Thai place that specialized in “to go” orders. Out of some twisted sense of irony, he bought a bowl of gai yang that was heavy on the garlic.

He’d cruised past the pay phone on Wilshire knowing nothing would come of it and had even driven to the spot where he’d last seen the woman who looked like Jennifer waiting for the bus on Figueroa. He’d spent two hours at the stop, arriving an hour before the time he’d seen her the day before, and leaving an hour afterward. To no end. No woman in a lemon-colored sundress. No Jennifer. And though he’d determined the route that particular bus took each afternoon, it didn’t cast any light on his investigation.

He’d grabbed a pizza to go, brought it back to his motel room, and ate a couple of slices as he went over his notes, focusing on the information he’d gathered from Shana McIntyre. She’d given up more than he’d expected, but still, he didn’t get the sense that Jennifer had been in touch with her.

He’d tracked down the bus driver on the route where he’d seen Jennifer. The driver, a woman in her late forties with spiky gray hair and a bored attitude, didn’t remember a woman who looked like Jennifer in a yellow dress. She hadn’t been certain, of course, but she knew that the woman in the photos was not a regular bus rider on her route.

Another dead end.

He was racking up more than his fair share.

Bentz had placed calls to the others on his list but didn’t reach anyone, and he didn’t leave messages. He wondered about the rest of Jennifer’s friends. Would they be any more help than Shana had been?

And what about Alan Gray? Where had that rich prick landed? The Internet told him little, but piecing together information from several magazine and newspaper articles, it seemed Gray had a place in Palm Desert and played a helluva lot of golf. Good golf, judging by scores from some recent amateur tournaments.

He’d phoned and left a message for Hayes, but Jonas hadn’t returned the favor; probably didn’t know anything. But then, who did, he wondered as the air conditioner blew the blackout drapes around. They were open, the blinds cracked to allow sharp lines of sunlight through the dusty window.

Nothing made any sense, Bentz thought, glancing through the window to watch a curvy woman in her mid-thirties adjust the sun shade over the dash of her ancient Cadillac. Satisfied that the unfolded sun protector was in perfect position, she grabbed a huge purse from the passenger seat, slung the strap over her shoulder, then locked the Caddy. Looking over her shoulder, she hurried through the breezeway to an interior unit that faced the pool.

He wondered about the other occupants of the shabby motel. Every guest here had his or her secret, furtive truths to keep hidden within the identical units with worn carpeting, toilets that needed their handles jiggled, and mini-refrigerators that would barely hold a six-pack.

Snapping the blinds shut, Bentz tried to concentrate.

All in all, the day had been a dark walk down memory lane, which hadn’t helped him determine whether or not Jennifer was alive or dead.

As he finished his third piece of pepperoni and olives, he wondered why the hell he’d ever come to L.A. Maybe everyone else was right. Maybe he was chasing after a ghost. Maybe whoever was behind the pictures and death certificate was just getting his or her jollies, knowing that Jennifer had been haunting him ever since he’d woken from the coma. Maybe now that perv was just trying to use that information to push him over the edge. To make sure he was really going out of his friggin’ mind.

But who would have known that he’d seen the ghostly image of his wife upon waking? Just Kristi and a couple of nurses. Unless they’d said anything to someone who wanted to get at Bentz, nothing would have come of it.

“Hell.” He closed the pizza box, wiped his fingers, and speed-dialed his wife, the woman he loved. The one waiting for him in their home outside New Orleans. The one who was trying her damnedest to trust him.

Olivia didn’t answer and he didn’t bother leaving a message. What would he say? That he loved her? She knew it already. That he missed her? Then why wasn’t he on the next plane back to Louisiana? That he didn’t know what the hell he was doing in L.A.? Then why was he still here?

He thought of his conversation with Shana. Tomorrow Tally White would be working at the middle school where she was a teacher. As for Lorraine, Jennifer’s stepsister, he hadn’t connected with her, either. There were other friends and acquaintances as well, of course, but Shana, Tally, and Lorraine were at the top of his list as confidantes of his ex-wife. Women who might just know what had happened to her. Not to mention Fortuna Esperanzo, Jennifer’s friend at the gallery.

Of course he would have loved to have talked to Father James about her-James, his own damned brother-but that was impossible. There would be no rising from the dead for James; Father James would not be pulling a Lazarus. Bentz was sure the priest was dead, the victim of a serial killer, and nearly certain he was rotting in hell.

With Jennifer?

That was a question he couldn’t answer.

His heartburn was acting up. He fished a half-used roll of Tums out of his pocket, popped a couple, and found the keys to his rental car.

He frowned at his cane propped against the wall, snatched the stick along with his jacket, and walked outside into the lingering heat of the day. After locking the unit he crossed the cement walkway to his Ford and passed the old man next door who was walking his dog. Spike looked up at Bentz, only to return to sniffing the potholes of the parking lot, either looking for discarded bits of food or a place to defecate. Bentz nodded at the man, then climbed into his rental.

He’d spent enough hours in the So-Cal motel with its four dingy walls closing in on him.

He twisted on the ignition, cranked up the air, and hit the gas. It was time to drive down to San Juan Capistrano. If he was lucky, he’d make it and still have a couple of hours before night fell.

Hayes squealed to a stop under the overpass of the Harbor Freeway. Roadblocks had been set up, changing the traffic pattern around the storage units. Flashing lights strobed the street and the sooty cement pilings holding up the cavernous structure of concrete and steel.

Onlookers, some with cell phones taking pictures, had gathered around the storage facility tucked beneath the on-ramp to the 110. Two officers directed traffic, waving vehicles into the open lane as gawking drivers slowed, threatening to create major congestion. Other uniformed cops guarded the entrance to the storage units strung with yellow crime-scene tape. Orange traffic cones and barricades effectively forced the curious out.

Still, people gathered as vehicles rushed overhead, tires singing, engines rumbling, causing a deafening noise. A KMOL news van emblazoned in blue and sporting several satellite dishes was parked half a block up, two wheels over the curb to allow other cars to pass. The slim blond reporter Joanna Quince and a stocky cameraman lugging a shoulder cam headed toward the underpass. A helicopter for another local television station hovered overhead, the whir of its rotors silenced by the din of the freeway.

Hayes double-parked near the crime scene van and wended his way through the police cars, passing the SID van. The investigators from the Scientific Investigative Division were already at work. They’d search for footprints, handprints, hairs, or any kind of trace evidence that might provide clues to the identity of the killer. Photographs were being snapped, a videographer was filming, measurements taken. Hayes looked upward, searching for a security camera, but the one that was mounted over the units was obviously broken, the camera hanging at an awkward position from a rusted pole.

So much for any film of the storage units.

Martinez, a petite woman with fiery red hair and a razor-sharp tongue, stood at the door of Unit 8 and waved Hayes inside.

“Take a look,” she said with the hint of a Hispanic accent. “But I gotta warn ya, it’s not pretty.”

Hayes braced himself, keeping his eyes away from the victims for a moment. He focused on the dusty cement floor, the jars of nails, and a broken lawn chair that had been pushed into the corner of the unit. After all this time, he still wasn’t comfortable around dead bodies. The scent and look of death bothered him, got under his skin, cut into his brain, lingering there for days. He usually managed to hide it.

Not tonight.

Looking down at the defiled bodies of twin girls who seemed barely out of their teens, he couldn’t mask the raw pain that cut him to the quick.

They had been laid out purposefully, bound and gagged, naked, curled into the fetal position. Bruises and ligature marks were visible on their necks. Facing each other, their eyes open under the glare of a single lightbulb, each girl stared sightlessly at her twin. Their skin was so pale it seemed blue. Each victim’s blond hair had been pulled away from her face and tied with a long red ribbon. The same ribbon bound them. Posed as they were, identical twins, they resembled two macabre wraiths gazing into a mirror.

Staged to look like they were still in the womb. Just like the Caldwell twins.

Hayes’s jaw tightened. “Any ID?”

“Yeah…their clothes and purses, even their jewelry and cell phones, all over there. Along with their birth certificates, times of birth highlighted in pink.” Martinez hitched her chin to a corner. There on the floor, the clothing and personal effects of the two girls sat in neatly folded stacks.

A tidy, fastidious crime scene, Hayes thought as he leaned over the folded clothes. This was all too familiar. On top of each pile was a copy of the birth certificates, the date and time of their births highlighted with pink marker. Probably the same pink ink that would be found on the girls’ bodies, Hayes suspected. Assuming, of course, this was the killer who’d torn through L.A. years ago.

“Lucille and Elaine Springer,” Martinez said. “I already called Missing Persons. They’re checking now.”

Jonas thought of his own kid. Twelve years old and going on thirty, as they said, but still an innocent. It would kill him to lose Maren, but to have someone intentionally take her life…Bile rose in his throat and he turned his attention away from his personal life to the situation at hand.

The photographs had been taken, body temperatures recorded; the victims were ready to be moved. But Jonas knew, with chilling certainty, what they would find when the bodies were rolled over onto their backs.

Oh, sweet mother.

“Remind you of anything?” a gravelly voice asked. Hayes looked over his shoulder to see Detective Andrew Bledsoe in the doorway.

Jonas straightened and nodded. “The Caldwell case.”

“And isn’t that a coincidence with our friend Bentz back in town?” Somehow Bledsoe managed a smug smile, as if the twin girls had never been more than corpses, just another case to solve.

Martinez scowled, her lips tight. She glared up at Bledsoe, her eyes dark with a seething rage. “Is there a reason you’re here?”

Though he was in his fifties, he was one of those guys who looked a decade younger. At five-ten and under two hundred pounds, Bledsoe cultivated a perpetual tan and kept his jet-black hair slicked back. His suits were usually tailor-made and his steely blue eyes didn’t miss much. He was a good cop. And a pain in the ass. “I was on my way back from a scene in Watts, heard it on the scanner.”

“Well, we’re busy here.” Martinez didn’t conceal her disdain for Bledsoe. The guy had always bugged her. Hayes knew it; everyone in the department did. Riva Martinez wasn’t one to hide her feelings.

Turning her back on Bledsoe, she knelt near one of the bodies while Hayes studied the other.

“Ligature marks around the neck,” Martinez noted, almost to herself, “and numbers and letters scrawled across each torso, just under their breasts.”

The message written heavily in neon pink on their torsos was clear. Each victim was marked with her time of birth twenty-one years ago, and her time of death this morning-which was exactly twenty-one-years later. To the minute. As if the killer found pleasure in snuffing out their lives the moment they became adults.

“Goddamn it.” Hayes felt cold inside despite the stifling, suffocating heat of the small enclosure. These girls had been born fourteen minutes apart, so they had died precisely fourteen minutes apart.

Hayes didn’t doubt that the younger of the two-Elaine, born at 1:01 AM-had witnessed the horror of Lucille being strangled at 12:47 AM. Probably strangled by the very ribbon that was now binding her hair, wrists, and ankles, as well as gagging her mouth. Hayes suspected that the ribbons in their hair would contain traces of skin from where the fabric had dug into the soft flesh of their throats. And he knew he would find other ligature marks on their necks. The victims were subdued by some kind of strap, then finally killed with a heavy ribbon woven with thin, sharp wire.

Each girl had lived exactly twenty-one years.

Just like the Caldwell twins, the last homicide Rick Bentz had worked here in L.A. That case had gone ice cold when he’d turned in his resignation.

Hayes hated to admit it, but this time Bledsoe had a point.

Why were these victims chosen to be killed now, only days after Rick Bentz had returned to Los Angeles?