Malice

CHAPTER 37

The Blue Burro was hopping, the dinner crowd spilling into the bar where colorful piñatas and fake parrots hung from open beams painted in bold primary colors. Dressed in dark slacks and white shirts with bandannas at their necks, the waitstaff bustled through the connecting rooms, skirting around each other and patrons. They carried trays laden with food or opened up portable serving tables to prepare homemade guacamole. Every so often they stopped serving to assemble, plunk a huge Mexican hat on a customer’s head, and sing a special Mexican birthday song.

The place was festive and fun and brimming with customers.

Montoya suspected the police had been here searching for Fernando, so he decided to tread carefully, try to blend in. He pocketed his wedding band and took a seat at the bar, grabbing one of the few open stools next to the doors swinging into the kitchen. He ordered a scotch from a bartender who looked as if she could barely be twenty-one herself.

Lively Mexican music could barely be heard over the hum of conversation and clink of glasses, but Montoya listened intently, trying to hear something that might help him learn more about Fernando Valdez, his sister, the silver Impala, or the woman who had last driven it. Slowly, he sipped his drink, his gaze wandering to the mirror mounted over the bar so that he could unobtrusively watch the action behind him.

For a while inane chatter floated past him. But as he was close to finishing his drink, he heard Fernando’s name come up in bits of conversation floating through the swinging doors from the kitchen.

Something about him not calling in and a waitress complaining about being forced to stay through the crush of dinner to cover his shift. Though she liked the money, she was really inconvenienced and pissed as hell that he, of all people, would make her work a double, which was a real pain in the ass with the baby and all. She’d had to call her mother to bail her out and babysit the kid. Or something close. It was hard to tell, and Montoya only heard parts of the conversation: her side because her voice was so shrill.

Trying not to appear interested, Montoya watched from the corner of his eye. The door to the kitchen swung open again, and Montoya caught a glimpse of the girl with a round face and tight lips. Her near-black hair was streaked with contrasting stripes of platinum and pulled tightly away from her face to a tight knot at her crown. She was seething, and Fernando seemed to be the cause of her exasperation.

“Ouch,” he said to the bartender when the door swung closed again and the girl’s voice still shrilled from the kitchen. “Someone’s not happy.”

“Never. Acacia’s never happy.” She gave him a smile as she filled glasses with ice.

“Not with Fernando,” he said.

She quit scooping and studied him. “You know him?”

He shook his head. “Not that well. I took a couple of classes at the J.C., business classes at night, for my job. Insurance adjustor. Fernando was in one. He mentioned he worked here.”

“He won’t much longer if he doesn’t show up,” she said, shaking her head as she pushed the scoop through the ice and drizzled cubes into glasses set on the counter below the bar. “He’s a player. A ladies’ man. Acacia doesn’t like it. Wants him to settle down.”

“With her?”

The barkeep threw him a look that told him his question was asinine. “Of course with her. He’s the father of her child.”

“Is he? Didn’t tell me about a kid.”

“Figures. Acacia, she claims they were together a couple of years back. They hooked up at a company party and she got knocked up.” She glanced at Montoya. “The kid looks just like him. Fernando isn’t arguing about it, he’s just not stepping up.”

A new wrinkle, Montoya thought, as a slightly flustered waitress hurried to the bar and rattled off her order. “Can you hurry that? I forgot to turn it in and the women at table six are getting pissed.”

“Got it.” The bartender nodded and started mixing drinks, first for the waitress, then for a party of four at the far end of the bar.

Montoya decided he’d probably gotten all the information he could from her and he didn’t want to tip her off by talking too much about a guy he “barely knew.”

The door to the kitchen was pushed open by the same harried waitress and Montoya caught sight of Acacia stepping out a rear door.

Quickly, he paid for his drink, left a generous tip, then wandered outside to the cool night, a breeze blowing across the parking lot. Montoya waited for a rush of traffic to clear, then crossed the street to a convenience store. He bought a pack of Camels and returned to the restaurant.

Hoping to catch Acacia on her break, he headed toward the back of the building, where he caught sight of the small crowd of cooks and waiters clustered under an awning near the delivery door of the Blue Burro. Montoya unwrapped his pack and placed an unlit filter tip in his mouth. He patted his pockets, pretending to be looking for a light as he approached the group of half a dozen workers who were smoking and laughing, telling jokes, and ribbing each other.

Acacia stood among the group, just finishing her cigarette. Under the security light she looked more angry than ever, frowning as she took a final drag.

The laughter and jokes dissipated as he moved closer.

“Can I bum a light?” Montoya asked in Spanish.

One of the cooks, a big guy with a thin moustache and dirty apron, nodded. “Why not?” Shrugging, he flipped a lighter through the air and Montoya caught it on the fly.

“Thanks, man.”

Acacia stubbed out her cigarette and seemed about to walk inside.

Montoya lit up and said, “Anyone seen Fernando?”

Everyone went stone silent.

“No?” Montoya frowned. “I heard he worked here and he owes me money. Thought I might collect.”

At first no one said a word; they’d all apparently heard the cops were searching for him. The big cook in the dirty apron looked as if he wanted to dart inside. He dumped his butt in the overflowing ash can.

“Something wrong?”

No one said anything until Acacia, unable to contain her irritation with the guy, shook her head. “He owes you money? Get in line.”

Montoya flipped the Bic back to the cook. “So he owes you, too?” he asked Acacia as the big guy slipped through the screen door to the kitchen, a shorter waiter on his heels.

“You wouldn’t believe.”

“Try me.” He offered her a cigarette from his pack.

She shrugged, then took one and lit up as a scruffy cat stole through the shadows, slinking under the Dumpster in the back alley.

“He owes me a life, okay? Oh, and his son. He owes his son a life, too.” She drew hard on the cigarette, then shot a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth.

“You have a boy together?”

“Mmm. Roberto…well, I call him Bobby, but Fernando, do you think he cares? Does he come and see his son? Pay me child support?” She sighed. “Not when he’s running around with that woman.”

Montoya didn’t say anything, just took a long drag on his cigarette and listened.

“She’s poisoned him, you know. Driving his car, meeting him at school. College. He was going there to better himself, become an accountant like his sister and then…then he met this…this actress and all of a sudden he wants to write plays!” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, her nostrils flared. “And what does he do for me? Dumps on me, that’s what. Doesn’t even take his own damned shift because he has to be with Jada.” Her lip curled in disgust and she flicked the rest of her cigarette onto the gravel. “You know, if it weren’t for Roberto, I swear, I’d kill that son of a bitch!”

Olivia heard the steady thump, thump from above.

Over the creaking and settling of everything inside her floating prison came the sound of footsteps.

Someone was on the boat.

She didn’t doubt for a second that it was her tormentor, so she didn’t cry out, didn’t want to risk the chance that the psycho would gag her again.

God, if she only had some kind of weapon.

The best she could do would be to fling her jug of water on the woman and soak her through the bars. But other than startle her or infuriate her, it would accomplish nothing.

Suddenly the lights snapped on and Olivia blinked hard, her eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness.

Her captor slowly descended the stairs, lugging a case with her. “So how’re we doing?” she asked with feigned cheer.

Olivia wanted to respond with “just peachy,” but thought better of it. Olivia reasoned that the best way to deal with the woman was to stand her ground. Not so easy when she was the one confined to this disgusting cage, but if Olivia could keep the woman talking, she could work toward extracting information while letting her abductor vent her frustrations.

If she could keep her cool. Reign in the terror that ate at her.

“So you ate, I see. Good, good. Necessary to keep your strength up.”

Olivia froze. Where was this going? The woman didn’t know about the baby, did she?

Of course not. No one knows. Not even your husband, and the way things are going, he may never know.

She closed her mind to that train of thought. She would find a way out of this damned boat. She had to. For the baby.

“So, hungry?” the woman asked as she pulled a plastic bag from her case. She tossed another wrapped sandwich and plastic bottle of soda into the cage.

Once again Olivia, wanted to slap her.

But she couldn’t.

Keep your cool. Keep her talking.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She smiled to herself, as if amused at playing the part of a smarmy seven-year-old.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I would. And that coy thing you’re doing? It’s not working.”

The woman’s lips twisted in a rare moment of fury. “Oh, I think it is. I’m the one outside the cage.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend…well, make that a close friend of your husband’s,” she said with a trace of bitterness.

“But you knew Jennifer.”

The woman’s eyes darkened.

Olivia had hit a nerve. Why? What was she to Jennifer?

“I really wasn’t too into that bitch,” her captor said as she smiled at a sudden thought, “but I’ve become, over the years, close with some of her friends. You know, the kind that just love to share secrets.”

Olivia’s stomach dropped. “You pumped them for information and then you killed them?” Of course she’d suspected this evil maniac was behind Shana and Lorraine’s deaths but saying it aloud in the gently swaying hold of a boat, confirming what she’d surmised, observing this woman’s smug self-satisfaction made it all the more real. More terrifying.

“They never saw it coming.”

Olivia wanted to throw up.

Stay cool. Use your wits.

“And they just got in the way.” She was assembling a camera and tripod, adjusting the legs, securing them with clamps she screwed into the floor and clipping all the pieces into place. Her nose wrinkled and she looked around. “God, it still smells down here. My father, he used to haul his dogs from port to port. Great Danes.”

“So you called me? You’re the one behind the phone calls, right?” Olivia asked, forcing the woman on topic, trying to learn more.

“My, God, you are just so sharp,” her captor mocked. “Your IQ must be in the stratosphere. Except you can’t be all that clever, can you, considering the circumstances? Here-” She bent down, flipped the photo album to a new page, one of Rick and Jennifer’s wedding, the bride in a white lacy dress and long train, the groom, so much younger than he was now, proud and handsome in a black tux. Again, there were blood drops on the plastic, drops that had been drizzled and smudged over their faces. “Here’s a good one.” She nudged the book forward with her toe and turned back to her camera.

Olivia’s skin crawled. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Setting up things so that you can pay.”

“Pay?”

“For your husband’s sins.”

“I don’t understand.”

The woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled smugly. “Of course you don’t.”

“Listen. Why don’t you just let me go?”

“Oh, right, after twelve years of planning, of waiting, of searching for just the right person to play the part of Jennifer, I should give it up. Because you think it would be a good idea?” She stared straight at Olivia, her eyes narrowed and cold as a demon’s touch. “You don’t get it, do you? I want Bentz to pay. To feel the pain that I felt. To know what it’s like to lose someone dear, to go forward each and every day of his life realizing that he not only let you die, but he destroyed his own life as well. To be alone, totally and infinitely alone.” She was working herself up, talking more loudly, more vehemently, more passionately, her face reddening, her fists clenching.

She had to visibly force her rage down, straighten her fingers. When she did, she spoke in a harsh whisper. “That man put me through hell, ‘Livvie,’ and now it’s his turn. Time for him to feel a little pain. To know what it’s like. He never knew that I killed Jennifer, didn’t so much as suspect. Some great detective he is! All his awards for acts of heroism? Ridiculous!” As if reading the shock registering on Olivia’s face, she let out a disgusted laugh. “That’s right. You didn’t know, did you? Jennifer is still rotting in her grave, at least she was until she was exhumed.

“It’s her all right, in the coffin. That sick, twisted bitch who had Bentz wrapped around her little finger. He loved her, you know. Was obsessed with that two-timing slut! It was sickening. Despite the fact that she cheated on him over and over again…fucking betrayed him, he loved her.” Still assembling the camera, she was shaking in rage. “Even after her affair with his half brother, a goddamned priest, the real father of his kid! Jesus H. Christ, he still came back for more. Talk about a masochist!”

This woman was really off her nut. Filled with hate and a craving for revenge.

“It’s all ancient history,” Olivia pointed out.

“Don’t you even want to know how I did it? How I took care of her?”

“Jennifer.”

“Of course, Jennifer! We’re not talking about the friggin’ queen, are we? It was so easy,” she bragged. “I doctored her pills, and her vodka. Waited. Then followed her as she drove and made certain she had an accident.” She paused, savoring the memory. “It was an impersonal attack, I know. The coward’s way out with the car, chasing her down, freaking her out. But it worked.”

“You really killed her.” Olivia wanted to hear the complete confession.

“Uh-uh-uh. She killed herself. Remember? And as for the suicide note, I didn’t even know about it. It was something she’d written a while before. Not very stable, our Jennifer. But Bentz…he just couldn’t get enough of her. Divorce wasn’t enough for him. He had to start up with her again. Some men just never learn.” She chuckled coldly. “But he will. Tonight.”

Sick inside, fear congealing her blood, Olivia could barely speak, but she forced the question over her lips. “What the hell did he do to you?”

“You really don’t know?” She paused, thought for a second. “He left me. Not once, but twice, for the same bitch that kept breaking his heart.” She looked toward the wall, but seemed to focus on the middle distance, to a place only she could see. “I loved him, I took him back, I trusted him, believed in him…” Her voice faced and tears welled in her eyes. “And he left me. Alone. And after Jennifer died, the son of a bitch poured himself into a bottle. Would he let me help him? Hell, no!” She sniffed loudly, straightened her shoulders. “That coward left L.A., went to New Orleans, and found you.” She was shaking her head. “He never looked back. And you, the wife who should know all his secrets, you don’t even know who I am, do you?”

That was the truth. Olivia couldn’t place her.

The spurned lover said ruefully, “Maybe it’s best this way. You don’t need to know,” she said. “But Bentz. He will. He’ll get it and he’ll live with it for the rest of his life.”

Olivia stared at the camera and felt a wave of nausea. Oh, God, she was going to be sick. From the pregnancy? From fear? “What are you planning to do?” she asked in a voice that she didn’t recognize as her own.

“What does it look like? I’m going to film. Well, it’s not really film, all digital, but I’m going to make a movie of you.”

Olivia flashed to all the prisoners of wars she’d seen with the enemy, forced to say things they didn’t mean, beliefs they’d never held, at the point of a gun or risk of being beheaded. She started to shake inside and had to talk herself down. Think rationally. Nothing had happened yet.

“It’s for posterity.” Satisfied that the camera and tripod were secure, the woman checked the viewfinder, and squinting, angled the lens to her satisfaction. “There we go, now we can begin.” She flipped a switch and turned the camera on, then she stood in front of the cage, just out of Olivia’s reach, but in front of the camera’s eye.

“Hi, RJ,” she said, without any of the breathy tone she’d used in her phone calls. “I hope you find this, along with the boat and your wife.”

What? Oh God, no!

“You should,” she continued. “The camera’s not only waterproof, it’s meant to film underwater. As you can see, I captured Olivia…She’s been my guest here on the Merry Anne for over a day now and I was hoping she and I could hang out a little longer, but…gee, I think I’d better not waste any more time and the truth of the matter is, she bores me.” She looked at Olivia. “Say ‘hi’ to Ricky, Livvie. Wave. Show him that you’re fine. So far.”

Olivia didn’t move. Not only was she scared to death but she wouldn’t give this lunatic the satisfaction.

“Oops, seems like Livvie is in a bad mood. Maybe she’ll talk when I leave. You’ll have quite a bit of time alone while I sail out into open water.

“I could kill her as easily as I did the others. My good friends Shana and Lorraine and Fortuna. I did miss Tally, but you know, sometimes you just can’t win ’em all, and I do have Livvie, now, don’t I? They helped me, those friends of Jennifer’s. They helped me learn so much about you, RJ, about Jennifer and your life together. Poor Jennifer. She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Told her friends every detail, from what you did together over the weekend to where you first made love. And her friends, they remembered.”

Olivia was dying inside, feeling the betrayal, knowing this psycho set them up to be used, then murdered.

“So you killed them?” Olivia said as the boat rocked slowly, creaking a bit with the motion of the water.

“Of course!” She shot Olivia an irritated glance that suggested Olivia was a moron. Or worse. “For a shrink, you sure have trouble connecting the dots. I had no choice but to kill those women. They might have put two and two together and ruined everything. And this way, the police department had to look at your husband again as the doer.”

“So you murdered five people, three of Jennifer’s friends and those twin girls.”

“Please!” She turned then, her face florid. “I did not have anything to do with that. That idiotic Twenty-one killer, he killed those twins. A repeat of the killings all those years ago, the Caldwell girls. That sick son of a bitch picked one helluva time to resurface,” she said, visibly shaking. “I can’t believe you would even suggest I would be a part of that! He’s a serial killer; gets his rocks off by killing innocents.”

“Not like you,” Olivia said, trying to keep her voice cool and calm.

“This is all part of a plan. It’s all about Bentz understanding.”

“But you killed innocents as well.”

“Shana McIntyre? Innocent? Never. Jennifer’s friends, they had to die. It’s different.”

“Dead is dead.”

“This is revenge. The Twenty-one, he’s just a sicko. He deserves to die.”

“You’re as sick as he is.”

For that she caught a malicious glare. “You stupid, stupid bitch. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You just don’t get it, do you?” She took in a big calming breath, her hands clenching and un clenching into fists as if she might fly into a rage at any second.

Which would be fine. Olivia would rather take her chances in a one-on-one fight than be trapped in this god-awful, foul-smelling cage.

“This isn’t about the Twenty-one, you idiot! Not tonight. This is about you,” she said, then looked into the camera. “And you, RJ. This-” She swept her arm in a gesture that indicated the hold with its cage. “This is the final act. It ends tonight. All the charades, all the pretending, all the years of waiting. All the time of being alone.” Her voice quivered a bit: “It’s finally going to be over. And do you know how?” She gloated into the camera. “Well, let me tell you.” Her smile widened. “I’m going to sink this boat. Tonight.”

“What?” Olivia gasped. A new terror crushed the breath in her lungs. Oh, dear God, she couldn’t be serious. But she knew in her heart that this woman, this killer with her vendetta against Bentz, was just demented enough to pull it off. “No,” she whispered, her insides turning to water. “Please, please, no.”

“Oh, yeah, I think so. The Merry Anne is sailing for the last time. With you on it.” Turning to face the tripod again, she added to Bentz, “I’m going to make sure this boat sinks slowly, and the camera will be trained on your wife, so that you can watch as the hold slowly but surely fills, water inching upward. Olivia, she’ll be cold at first, shivering and knowing that there is no escape, but she’ll try to find a way out, be desperate to save herself. You’ll see her panic and scream and cry, see each detail of her torturous, pathetic struggle as she gasps and chokes for air, treads water, forcing her lips and nose above the rising water, as she takes her last, dying breath and accepts her fate. You’ll witness the terror in her eyes, Bentz, and know that her fate was in your hands.”

“No! Oh, please.” Olivia was frantic. She had to stop this woman. “You can’t do this,” she said without thinking. “I’m…I’m pregnant.” Surely this sicko wouldn’t knowingly take the life of an unborn child.

“Impossible.” But she was shaken. “Bentz is sterile.”

“I’m not kidding! I’m going to have a baby! Another innocent life. You don’t want to be responsible for something like that.” It took all of Olivia’s strength to steel herself and not reveal that she was crumbling inside. “You don’t want to be a serial killer, right? A lunatic like the Twenty-one killer. You said that yourself. You’re different!” She was trying to find any way to reason with the killer.

“A baby?” she said, almost to herself, disbelieving. “Bentz’s? No…but…”

“It’s true!” Maybe she was making headway, appealing to this woman’s warped sense of values. “Please, really, you don’t want to hurt an unborn child.”

Still blindsided, the woman narrowed her eyes on Olivia. “What a sick, pathetic lie. You are not pregnant!”

Olivia moved closer. “I am. I’m going to have a baby!”

Her captor waved wildly in the air to dismiss the thought, but her equilibrium was shaken, her voice tinged with a new anger. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if by some miracle you are with child, well, all the better. Bentz can watch you and the baby die, all in living color. Hear that, ‘RJ’? Her death, and this fictitious baby’s, will be on tape and you can relieve her agony and fear and desperation over and over again. This is just so perfect. Worth every minute of the damned wait.”

“No! Listen, I don’t know who you are or why you’re doing this, but please, don’t,” Olivia said, screaming inside, but trying to keep her voice level. She saw that pleading for her life only fed into this maniac’s ego; she had to try a different tack, a diversion. “Tell me what your problem is with Bentz. Maybe I can talk to him-”

“Talk to him? Haven’t you been listening to me?” The woman clapped her hands over her ears, as if she needed to hold on so her head would not burst. “Don’t you get it?”

Olivia sensed that her captor was at a meltdown point, but she re fused to cower. She kept her gaze trained on her would-be killer. “Don’t do this,” she said evenly. “Please. Don’t-”

“Enough!” Her round eyes blazed with renewed fury. “You can blabber and beg all you want, but I’m not falling for it. Got that? It’s over. You’re going to die, ‘Livvie,’ and you’re going to die tonight.”

Jaw set, seething, but in control again, she double-checked the camera, then hurried up the stairs.

This time, she left the lights on.

Now the camera caught Olivia’s every move.

Staying perfectly still she heard noises above and then the sound of a big engine roaring to life. The floor below her shifted as the boat began to move.

“Oh God,” she whispered, spurred into motion. She paced the perimeter of the cage, checking and rechecking each bar, knowing they were sturdy. Immoveable.

No way out.

Her blood congealed as she considered her fate: Doomed to die at the hands of this twisted, deranged maniac, her baby never having a chance at life.

Olivia’s throat grew thick with regret.

She would drown on camera.

Her death recorded for posterity.

To be used to torture Rick Bentz for the rest of his life.

She knew it.

The maniac knew it.

And soon, unless some miracle occurred, it would be over.

Then Bentz would know it, too.