Malice

CHAPTER 18

“Hell, Bentz, I’ve got better things to do than babysit you.” Hayes was pissed and didn’t try for a second to hide his irritation. It had been Hayes’s idea to meet in the bar half a block away from the So-Cal Inn in Culver City.

Bentz stared sullenly over the bar into the huge mirror that reflected the entire length of the long, narrow establishment. The bar top was tile with pendant lights straight out of the sixties hanging over it. He asked, “How’s the Springer double homicide coming?”

“You know I can’t talk to you about it.” Hayes nursed a Manhattan while Bentz ignored his nonalcoholic beer. “But…we haven’t got any really good leads. Lots of bad ones.” He waved away the topic of the double homicide. “So you still think Jennifer is alive, haunting you? And she took a flying leap into Santa Monica Bay.”

“I don’t think it’s Jennifer, but I can’t be sure. Not unless there’s an exhumation. I’m going forward with it.”

“Whatever.” Hayes was still steamed, his forehead lined with wrinkles of worry, his lips pulled into a frown. “Your gun get wet?”

“Wasn’t wearing it. Locked in the glove box. But my cell phone’s deader than a doornail.” Bentz counted himself lucky that his pistol and the envelope with the photos and death certificate had been locked in the car, safe and dry. Even his cane had survived, but his jacket and good shoes were somewhere on the bottom of Santa Monica Bay. Now he was wearing his battered old Nikes.

He was also grateful that Jonas had smoothed things over with the cops. Although the search team had not found a body or evidence of a female swimmer, Jonas had been able to convince the Santa Monica Police that things were “cool.”

Even if he hadn’t believed it himself.

After a peripheral search of the area, the fire truck and ambulance had been sent off and the officers had taken Bentz’s statement without any citations being issued. Hayes had even given him the time to shower and change clothes at the motel before they’d met at this dive.

Now, though, Hayes was pissed. “Your obsession with your dead wife isn’t gonna be my problem, okay?”

“I get it.”

“And you can’t go callin’ me, pulling in favors if you’re gonna keep dragging the police into your own weird fantasies.” Bentz was about to protest, but Hayes held up a hand. “I know why you’re here, Bentz. Someone’s fuckin’ with you. But until some law has been broken in my jurisdiction-no, make that until some homicide has been committed in my jurisdiction, I don’t want to be involved.” He looked across the table, dark eyes deep with concern. “Sane people don’t go jumping off piers in the middle of the night. Or breaking into old inns and nosing around for ghosts. And they don’t chase after people getting onto a bus or driving down the freeway, regardless of how many crank calls they get in the middle of the night.

“As for looking up a dead ex-wife’s family and friends? Or calling old partners at the department who think you bagged out and left them holding the bag? That’s not investigation, Bentz. It’s masochism.”

Bentz couldn’t argue that point. Trinidad and Bledsoe had let him know what they thought of him when he’d called offering help.

Hayes, some of his anger spent, finished his Manhattan, draining the liquid slowly. He set his glass on the table and shook his head. “Take my advice, Bentz. Go back to New Orleans, to your wife. Remember her? The one who’s still alive? Do that and forget all this.”

If only I could, Bentz thought.

“Thanks for the drink.” Hayes left and Bentz took a long draw on his zero-alcohol beer.

Leaving L.A. wasn’t an option.

At least, not yet.

The shower feels good. Hot water streaming down my body as I think about what happened on the pier. I knew Bentz would take the bait, and it was heartwarming to watch him as he struggled to catch up with “Jennifer.”

“Fool,” I whisper. I scrub my hair, lather, and rinse it. Then once more I grin as I recall the tortured expression on his face.

Perfect!

I turn off the spray and wrap a towel around my body, all the while thinking of my next move. God, how I’d love to hurry things along. But I’ll be patient, I think, squeezing my hair with the cotton towel.

Naked, I lean over and dry my hair with the blow dryer, its high-pitched hum drowning out the music I’ve had blasting for hours. A mixed set of sounds from the eighties-Journey, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, The Pointer Sisters, Madonna, and Michael Jackson-have been playing, the volume cranked up and the window cracked open. The neighbors must have heard my tunes, as well as anyone passing by. Anyone would swear that I was home all night. My car, parked outside, would only convince them further. Smart of me to leave my vehicle. I walked to the bus stop, then rode the bus as far as I could before switching to a cab that took me to Santa Monica.

I returned the same way.

My plan had been on hold until Bentz finally decided to return to Santa Monica, as I’d suspected he would. I had to wait for the right moment and thankfully tonight it happened. I smile thinking about how well I executed my scheme.

I waited, knowing he would eventually show up at the pier. I made certain everything was in place. I watched as he went into the restaurant. While he ate dinner I had just enough time to put my plan into action.

Sure enough, after dinner Bentz decided to stroll down the boardwalk. Leaning on his cane, no doubt remembering Jennifer.

I dangled the bait. He snapped at it. He chased after Jennifer like a wolf after a lamb. Only things didn’t turn out his way, now, did they?

I stretch, wipe off the glass, and then check out my reflection in the damp mirror. My head moves in time to the beat of a Fleetwood Mac song, one of Jennifer’s favorites.

Bentz would appreciate the irony, I think.

What an idiot.

Trying to resurrect a dream.

Feeding on his own damned guilt.

Serves him right.

“Just you wait, Ricky-Boy,” I say into the mirror. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Bentz slid closer to Olivia, pulling her close, feeling her naked body against him in their bed. “I love you,” he whispered, but she didn’t respond, didn’t open her eyes, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.

It was there again, that secret she kept, the one that forced her into silence.

But, with her eyes closed, she instinctively tilted her chin up and he couldn’t resist. Just being this close to her caused his blood to fire, his heart to pound. Desire made him hard. Hot and wanting, he kissed her with a passion that fired his blood and consumed him.

She responded. Moaned into his open mouth, her hands scraping away his clothes, her fingers running down his arms.

“I love you,” he said again and was met with silence once more. Though her body was trembling, her skin hot, her lips wet, she didn’t speak.

Beneath her passion he felt something more, something intense and longing but so distant. She was a million miles away.

He was losing her.

Somehow, despite their lovemaking, she was sliding way.

The smell of her filled his nostrils. He ran his tongue along her neck and lower still, tasting perfume and the salt of her body.

He kissed every inch of her, feeling her response, noticing her quiver. Inside he was burning, his cock already hard, so damned hard.

He told himself to take it slow, to pleasure her, but she was as frantic as he, her lips full and warm, her fingers insistent as she kneaded his muscles.

Skimming his thumbs over her ribs, he kissed the tips of her breasts, and then drank in a full view of her. She finally opened her eyes, the gold irises nearly invisible, her pupils black and round as they dilated.

He breathed across her abdomen, his head sliding down her body to the red lace of her panties-a tiny thong that barely covered any of her.

Her muscles had tightened. “You really can be a bastard,” she whispered and her voice was off…not quite right, even though she’d finally spoken. He caught the whiff of gardenias, the faintest scent in the air.

“Just for you,” he replied, his breath hot over her panties-that little bit of naughty lace. She writhed beneath him as he took the scrap of lace in his teeth and pulled it off.

“Really?” And her skin turned cold. “Seriously. Just for me?”

“Who else?” he asked, sliding up her body as her fingers dug deep into his head, adding a pinch of pain to the pleasure. God, he wanted her and she was quivering with her own desire, moving beneath him.

“Livvie,” he whispered and parted her legs with his knees.

In a breathless moment he thrust deep into her and lost himself, body and soul, in the magic of his wife. His blood was thundering in his ears and he breathed in short, fast gasps. Faster and faster he moved, but she was no longer responding and the flesh he’d felt cooling was now stone cold.

When he looked down at her, she’d changed, her features having morphed into Jennifer. White skin, dark hair, the scrap of a red thong now a tattered bloody dress.

“I love you,” Jennifer said, but her mouth didn’t move. She smelled of brackish water and death. Her glassy eyes shifted to zero in on him.

His skin goose-pimpled and his blood ran cold as the sea. He tried to roll off her, but her hands came up and held him tight. Held him in place like a vise.

“It’s your fault, RJ,” she said with lips that didn’t move. “Yours!”

Bentz bucked, trying to break her hold as his eyes flew open.

He was in the bed at the motel.

Alone.

No Olivia. No Jennifer.

Just his guilt. His damned guilt.

Letting out a long breath, he realized he was saturated in cold sweat. The dream had been so real. So evocative and terrifying. He wanted to call Olivia but glanced at the clock. 12:47. Nearly 3 A.M. in Louisiana. He would wait.

Climbing out of bed, he walked to the window and opened the blinds to look at the night-washed parking lot.

It was empty aside from the usual vehicles.

Quiet.

Still unnerved, he went into the bathroom and threw water over his face. Telling himself he’d been through a lot worse in his life than bad dreams, he popped a couple of ibuprofen for the pain in his leg before returning to bed. He clicked on the television and searched for any inane show to occupy his mind. But he didn’t believe for an instant that some late-night talk show host would dispel the dream.

He figured nothing would.

He’d just have to live with it.

The next morning, after a fitful night, Bentz found a place where he could replace his cell phone on his current plan. He was the first customer to enter the strip mall for the day and he looked like hell. But he ended up with a new phone.

Two doors down there was a casual-wear store, so he picked up a new pair of khakis and a cheap sports jacket.

He’d have to wait on shoes.

He returned to the motel, showered, shaved, called and left a message for Olivia, then spent the next few hours spinning his wheels, thinking, and reentering numbers into the new cell. He pieced together the events of the last few days and wondered how the woman-“Jennifer”-had known where he would be. As far as he could tell, his room wasn’t bugged. He didn’t find any listening devices tucked into hidden niches. Not that it mattered. To his recollection he hadn’t mentioned his plans while talking on the phone here. He did a second peripheral check of the rental car and couldn’t find any tracking device in the undercarriage or wheel wells.

But somehow, “Jennifer” had known where he was going, where he had been.

How?

And why was she doing this?

In the motel room with the television tuned to an all-news channel, the blinds open so that he didn’t feel completely cut off from the world, he sipped his tepid coffee, his mind turning back to the night before. What the hell had happened on the pier? She’d been there. He’d seen her, but Hayes had said that the cops had questioned the people on the pier, the old man who’d been smoking a cigar and the kids who had been so into each other. When Hayes had asked about the runner, he hadn’t been found and no one remembered him.

Bentz made a note of it, though most likely the missing jogger wasn’t any big deal.

Great.

Using his laptop computer he Googled images of the Santa Monica pier and found the webcam, a camera that photographed the entrance to the pier every four seconds. Maybe he could get photos of the pier from last night, as well as from traffic cams. Though he was no longer a cop in L.A., he still had a badge and some pull. He was certain he could talk his way into getting the information.

By eleven he’d talked to the security company that ran the camera on the pier and been promised that they would review the images from the night before. Afterward Bentz had made his way through a pot of coffee while searching the Internet for a hospital or clinic that might have issued the outdated parking pass he’d noticed on the gray Chevy. Then he used his new phone to leave messages with Fortuna Esperanzo and Tally White, two of Jennifer’s close friends who hadn’t bothered calling him back.

Tally was a schoolteacher and Fortuna still worked in an art gallery in Venice. Neither woman was a fan of his.

A motorcycle backfired on the street. Through the thin motel walls Benz heard Spike get off a round of quick, sharp barks before he was shushed by his owner. Bentz stretched, felt his spine pop, then stood and tested his leg.

Picking up his keys, Bentz wondered how long the old guy next door was staying. He grabbed his damp wallet and slipped his sidearm into its shoulder holster beneath the cover of his new jacket. Then, because his leg was still aching, he snagged his cane from its spot by the door.

Outside, he felt the heat of the day though it was barely noon. He eyed the dusty parking lot, recognizing four cars other than his own that seemed to be regulars. Besides his rental and the older guy in the driving cap’s Pontiac, there was a bronze Buick parked at the far end of the lot. A white MINI Cooper was often gone all day, but returned every night. The older navy blue Jeep Cherokee never budged. The rest of the vehicles came and went, but these four always returned. Just like the damned swallows of San Juan Capistrano, he thought, remembering the legend and his own trip to the mission town. He’d already made note of the license plates and talked to Montoya about them. Since the woman impersonating Jennifer seemed to know his whereabouts, he wondered if she’d been following him from here each day. He was going to make certain that these cars were legit.

He also took a good long look at the area.

As far as he could see, no one was watching him. No one loitered. There was a gas station and convenience store next to another motel across the wide boulevard. A little farther down sat a three-story building that looked like it had shops on the street level and offices above. Then came the bar where he and Hayes had met last night.

But no silver Impala anywhere in sight.

Restless, itching for something to do after spending hours on his laptop at the battered desk in his motel room, Bentz walked to the car.

So Hayes thought he should pack it all in and return to New Orleans.

No damned way. Someone was baiting him, impersonating his dead wife, and following him.

He intended to find out who.

With the help of Montoya and his cell phone company, he tried to track down the owner of the phone who had called him, the woman impersonating Jennifer. It appeared to be one of those untraceable prepaid phones that criminals were so fond of.

So he was left to his own devices and hungry as hell. He bought a few newspapers, then stopped at a local diner that served breakfast all day. Over the clatter of silverware, sizzle of the fryer, and buzz of conversation, Patsy Cline was singing “Crazy.”

Perfect, Bentz thought as he used his cane to help lower himself into a booth with a table straight out of the fifties: Slick green plastic top rimmed with chrome, matching napkin holder, and bottles of ketchup and mustard at the ready. He scanned a faded menu, ordered from a tall woman with a pile of red hair adding three inches to her height, then spread the newspapers on the table.

While reading the most recent accounts of the Springer girls’ murders he dived into his “All-American-All-Day-Breaker” which consisted of two eggs, five sausage links, a heap of hash browns, and a mountain of toast. His coffee cup was never empty, though he had to ask for ice water.

The food was substantial and filling, if not gourmet.

Once he’d forked up the last bit of potatoes, he flipped the newspaper closed and caught a glimpse of an ad that stopped him short. It was for a thrift shop, a Catholic thrift shop, and the symbol in the corner of the page, a cross with the letter A attached, was sickeningly familiar.

It was the same symbol from the sticker on the Impala he’d seen at San Juan Capistrano. A symbol for St. Augustine’s.

He stared at the information for a second, then asked the waitress if they offered wi-fi service here. She looked at him as if he were nuts, so he paid quickly, then drove to a nearby coffee shop where he knew there was free Internet access.

After ordering another cup of coffee he really didn’t need, he sat in a worn couch and fired up his laptop.

Over the sounds of soft jazz, grinding coffee, and the hiss of the steamer, he connected to the Internet where he searched for any mention of St. Augustine’s hospital or clinic in the L.A. area. For the first time since coming to L.A., he felt a ray of hope that he might have a way to discover who was tormenting him.

He found a parish in West L.A. on Figueroa Street, a school in Culver City, and several other institutions, but no hospital or clinic.

The fact that one of the schools was on Figueroa and the other in Culver City bothered him. Jennifer had lived with him in Culver City and supposedly, according to her friend Shana McIntyre, had met with James in a little motel somewhere near the USC campus on Figueroa St. It was the same major street where he’d thought he’d seen her at the bus stop.

Possible? Had he seen her? He clicked his pen, wondering.

There were too many connections. Too many coincidences. Too many possibilities.

Doggedly he kept at it, searching the Internet until he came to the mention of St. Augustine’s Hospital, which had closed five years earlier. Bingo! He stared at the information for a second, then jotted down the address, and was out the door.

He had several stops on his agenda. First, he planned to drive to the old hospital, just to get a closer look. Then he would try to catch Fortuna Esperanzo at work in the gallery in Venice. Afterward he planned on heading to Hoover Middle School, where Tally White was a teacher. He remembered Tally had befriended Jennifer when her daughter Melody had been in the same first-grade class as Kristi.

He punched in the address, headed for the freeway, and barely moved. The 10 was jammed in the middle of the day, but he kept at it, inching past an accident, then picking up speed.

As he headed east he checked his mirrors, on the lookout for a tail, watching to see if he was being followed, particularly by a silver Chevy.

Using his cell, cognizant that he might get pulled over as he wasn’t using a hands-free device, he left a message with Montoya, asking him to look up more on St. Augustine’s Hospital and see if there was some way he could get personnel records from the archdiocese or whatever institution or attorneys or board oversaw the hiring or firing of the staff. There had to be records somewhere. True, there would be a lot of staff to sift through, but only for a couple of years. He explained that the Impala was seven or eight years old and the hospital was closed five years earlier, so even if the car was bought new, the window of time when the sticker could have been issued was relatively short.

A plus.

He also left the license plate numbers and hoped that somehow there would be a match. If Montoya used the police department’s computers, databases, and DMV records, they might be able to find some shred of evidence to help him sort out the mystery.

Bentz knew he didn’t have a lot to go on, but he figured it was a start. Tedious work, but a slight inroad. His cell rang. Bentz saw it was Montoya and grinned.

“Got an answer for me already?”

“Up yours, Bentz. It’s not like I don’t have a job to do here.”

“Just see what you can do.”

“Great. Anything else?” he mocked.

“Not yet.” No reason to tell him about last night’s leap into Santa Monica Bay. Yet.

“Well, just let me know because it’s my mission in life to be your bitch.”

“Fulfilling, isn’t it?”

“You owe me, man.”

“Always have, Montoya.” He hung up just before taking his exit off the freeway, then wound his way around the surface streets to the site of the old hospital.

It wasn’t a large piece of property. The crumbling stucco building that had once housed St. Augustine’s Hospital was now surrounded by mesh fencing and warning signs that trespassers would be prosecuted “to the full extent of the law.”

Fine.

Ignoring the warnings, Bentz climbed over a gate and jumped onto the packed dirt inside the enclosure. Pain jolted his hip as he landed, reminding him that he still wasn’t a hundred percent. But he kept on, making his way toward the abandoned hospital.

The stucco exterior was just a shell. Limping a bit, he walked around the rubble and ducked into a gaping doorway. Inside, the building was skeletal, torn down to the studs. Tired floorboards creaked beneath his sneakers, and he saw evidence of bats in the rafters. Some of the old plumbing was intact, rusted pipes running up and down between aging two-by-fours and beams. Whoever had started this renovation had stopped suddenly. Because of the failure of the economy?

Outside again, he paused by a huge sign that faced the road and advertised a strip mall that was to be built. But the intended date for opening had already passed and it was obvious whoever was backing the project had pulled out. So here sat the remnants of St. Augustine’s Hospital, a sad ruin of a building.

Using his cell phone, he took a few photos of the sign, of the crumbling building and the surrounding area. He saved them, then text-messaged them to Montoya.

He wished he could bring Hayes in on this. It would make a lot more sense to work with the cops in California rather than depend upon Montoya in New Orleans. But he just couldn’t count on the LAPD.

Yet.

Slipping his phone into his pocket, he returned to his car, his leg aching as he slid inside and pulled away from the desolate construction site.