Malice (16 page)

Montoya didn’t know if that was good or bad.

“What we were able to determine was that the car the subject was getting into was a GM product, probably a Chevy Impala. You said you thought the shots were taken in California and that’s consistent with the vegetation, license plate numbers, and street signs. The one we saw was for Colorado Boulevard. I enlarged the photos so that I could read the headlines on the newspapers and then I double-checked. The
USA Today
and
L.A. Times
were dated two weeks ago on Thursday, and the headlines are consistent for that date. We tried to get a reflection of the photographer from some of the shots, but couldn’t get any images. I have a few partial license plates for cars parked in the area and I listed them along with make and model in case your shutterbug inadvertently caught his own car on film, assuming it wasn’t the Impala.

“As for the death certificate, no DNA was found on the envelope flap. We ran the fingerprints through the national database. No matches on AFIS. The red ink is consistent with ink found in a Write Plus pen, and they’re sold all over the country and into Canada, but are more popular in the western states. The document—the death certificate—is authentic and over ten years old; we can tell by the paper. That’s it.” Lee sounded almost apologetic. “I don’t know if that helps you or not.”

“You guys went above and beyond,” Montoya said. “This will definitely help.”

“Good. I’ve got the report. I can e-mail it to you or you can pick up a hard copy when you swing by to retrieve the original documents, since this isn’t an active investigation.”

“I’ll get them this afternoon,” Montoya promised and hung up. He’d done all he could for Bentz and his damned ghost hunt. Montoya would call and pass the information on. Then, maybe Bentz would wise up and come home to his real flesh-and-blood wife.

Time to give up looking for a woman who no longer existed.

L
orraine Newell lived in an aging tri-level home on a cul-de-sac in Torrance, south of the heart of L.A. The apricot-colored paint was blistering and peeling in the sun, and the lawn was patchy, the green grass bleached in spots where the sprinklers hadn’t quite reached. A far cry from the palace Lorraine, a would-be princess, had hoped for.

Although Bentz was fifteen minutes early, the minute he punched the doorbell the door flew open. It was as if Lorraine had been perched on the steps off the entryway, waiting for the sound of the melodic chimes to announce his arrival.

“Rick Bentz,” she said, shaking her head, dark hair brushing her chin. Jennifer’s stepsister hadn’t aged a day since he’d last seen her. Like minor royalty, she still carried herself imperiously despite the fact that she was barely five-five in heels. Lorraine had never liked him and had never made any bones about the fact. Today she didn’t bother with a fake smile or hug, which was fine by Bentz. No reason for pretense.

“You’re the last person I’d ever expect to show up here,” she said.

“Things change.”

“Do they?” She moved out of the doorway and led him into a living room that was straight out of the late eighties, when her husband Earl, a car dealer, had been alive. Bentz remembered the plaid chairs clustered around a long forest green couch, a marble-faced fireplace surrounded by a wall covered in mirrored panes that gave the room a weird funhouse feel. Fake plants gathered dust, the coffee table books of California and wines were the same ones he remembered from nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

“Sit,” she said, waving him into a chair while she took a seat on the arm of the couch. She was dressed in tight fitting jeans, a black tank top, and ballet slippers. Not exactly what Bentz would call business attire, appropriate for a dinner with a client, but then again he never had understood the studied casualness of Southern Californians.

Lorraine got right to the point. “What is this about Jennifer’s death?” Using finger quotes to emphasize her point, she said, “You know her
accident
never set well with me. And I never bought the whole suicide angle. You know that. She was a drama queen, but a car accident?” She shook her head. “Not Jen’s style. Pills, maybe…but I think even that is a stretch. Though she was a little self-destructive, I grant you, I couldn’t see her actually taking her own life.” She looked up at Bentz. “Jennifer was the sort of person who might have attempted suicide as an attempt to grab attention. But to actually drive into a tree? Let her body be thrown through glass? Mangle herself? No way. She didn’t have the guts for a stunt like that. She could have survived, been scarred, or crippled.” Lorraine shook her head emphatically as she folded her arms around her midriff. “Uh-uh.”

He showed her copies of the pictures, but held back on the death certificate.

“Oh dear God.” She was shaking her head as she eyed the photographs of her stepsister. “These…these really do look like Jen. I mean, yeah. But it has to be an imposter; someone who looks so much like her that one of your enemies, maybe someone you sent to prison, decided to play a practical joke on you.” She looked up. “Seems as if it worked.”

If you only knew.
He thought about the woman in his backyard, the dreams he’d had of Jennifer. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”

“A few pictures of a look-alike do not a case make. They wouldn’t bring you all this way.” She frowned. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Something that drove you to come back to California.”

“I have a little time off.”

“Another department trying to get rid of dead wood?”

“It’s not just the photos, Lorraine. I think I’ve seen her.”

“Oh, Jesus.” She pressed a slender hand to her forehead. “This is really getting nuts. So, what? You want to know if
I’ve
come into contact with her? Maybe gone out for a drink? Had her over for dinner?”

He didn’t say anything; he often found it was best to let people rant and rave. He frequently learned more from silence than from a series of direct questions. “Well, you’ve really lost it this time. This is just plain nuts.” She paced over to the plate-glass window that dominated the living room. Outside, a hummingbird was flitting along the deep purple blooms of a climbing vine that wound its way to the eaves.

“You know, Rick,” she said. “You’ve lost it. Really. If Jennifer were really alive, I would know it. She would have contacted me. Where has she been hiding all these years? And if she wasn’t the woman in the car, who was? Why did
you
identify the wrong woman? Don’t tell me you were drunk.”

“Of course not! I thought…I still think she was behind the wheel.”

“But now you’re not sure? Because of photos of a woman who looks like her? Because you
think
you saw her?”

Bentz ignored the question. “What do you remember about the last time
you
saw her?”

“Oh, God, do you really want to go into all that?” she asked, retracting into her hard shell.

“Sure, Lorraine. Why mince words?”

Her lips pulled into a knot of dislike and her nostrils flared. “Okay, she did call me a few days before the accident. She was obviously troubled, maybe drunk, I don’t know. But not right. When I asked her what was wrong, she blamed you. Said you didn’t believe that she loved you, and it was eating away at her. I knew about the infidelity, of course, but for some reason she had it bad for you. Well…you,
and
the priest. Your half brother, was it?”

Bentz’s guts twisted, but he kept his expression bland. “Anything else?”

“Nothing that involves you. Sometime I think back and wish she’d stayed with Gray. If she would have stuck it out with Alan Gray, she’d still be alive today. Alive and rich. Instead…” She shrugged. “I told her she was making a mistake when she broke it off with Alan, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Getting to his feet, he tried not to wince, didn’t want to let on to Lorraine that he felt any pain whatsoever.

As she walked him to the door, she said, “You know, even if Jennifer is alive, why the hell are you doing this? Give it up, already. Let sleeping dogs, or dead ex-wives, lie. If you’re really bothered, you should leave it to the professionals. Tell the police what you know. Let them handle it. You’re married again. Go home. Pay attention to your new wife.” Lorraine opened the door and waited for him to walk onto the cracked cement porch. Spying a dying petunia blossom, she deadheaded the shriveling pink bloom and added, “Don’t make the same mistake twice. If you give your new wife some attention, maybe she won’t stray the way Jennifer did.”

Bentz ignored that last bit of advice. “If you think of anything else or hear from her—”

“For the love of God, Bentz, she’s dead.
D-E-A-D.
And I haven’t heard of anyone coming back since J.C. did it oh, what was it? A few thousand years ago!” She closed the door but before it latched tossed out, “Say hi to Crystal for me.”

He didn’t bother correcting her. Kristi had only vague memories of her mother’s stepsister. Not once since Jennifer’s death had Lorraine called or sent a card or tried to contact Kristi in any way. Bentz saw no reason to change that now.

He drove away from Torrance without much new information. Lorraine had been insufferable in the past and she hadn’t mellowed much with age, but the key question was, had she been honest with him?

He wasn’t sure. She, like Shana, had wanted to get her licks in and she had. But she certainly hadn’t seen Jennifer. He kept his eyes on the road as he headed north toward Culver City. Traffic on the freeway was moving at a good clip despite the yellow haze that had settled over the area. In the west, the orb of the sun glowed in the dingy smog. He cracked the window and fiddled with the air, still thinking about what Lorraine had told him, which was essentially, “Take your ball and go home.” But then, they’d never gotten along. And what were all the references to Alan Gray? He was someone Bentz hadn’t thought of for decades. But Lorraine hadn’t forgotten.

As he spied signs for his exit Bentz realized he was making great time. Just a few more miles. The phone rang as he was moving onto the ramp. Catching site of Montoya’s cell number, he answered. “Bentz.”

Montoya gave him a quick rundown of everything he knew, which wasn’t a lot. Except for the silver Chevy. An Impala, in fact. Just like the car that had caught his attention in the parking lot in San Juan Capistrano. He explained as much to Montoya. “So what I’m looking for is a six-or seven-year-old car, California plates, with an expired parking pass to a hospital.”

“You didn’t happen to get which hospital?”

“No. But there was a symbol on it…” What the hell was that image? He couldn’t remember. Just flat out couldn’t remember.

“I saw on the news that there’s another double homicide. Twins,” Montoya said. “Same doer?”

“Looks like.” Bentz’s hand clenched hard over the wheel, so tightly his knuckles blanched as a black BMW crawled up his ass. Montoya knew the story behind the Caldwell twins’ murders twelve years earlier. Bentz had confided in him long ago.

“Copycat?”

“Not buying it.” Bentz switched lanes to the exit ramp, sliding in behind an old pickup filled with gardening tools. He let the bastard in the black BMW fly by. The car had to be pushing ninety.

Another car was in its wake. Keeping up.

A streak of silver.

Bentz saw the taillights and recognized an older model Chevy Impala. A dark-haired woman was behind the wheel…a sticker on the windshield.

Holy crap!

Jennifer!

He dropped the phone. “Son of a bitch.” Signaling as a red Volkswagen beetle’s blinker started, indicating the driver wanted to edge toward the exit ramp, Bentz gunned his engine. With inches to spare, he swerved out of the lane marked exit only and accelerated.

“Come on, come on,” he urged his rental. The silver car, a quarter of a mile ahead, was darting between lanes.

Could it be?

No way.

Jaw set, he drove as fast as he dared, cutting through cars and trucks and vans, keeping the silver car in his sights. As if the driver knew she was being followed, she began even more evasive moves, slipping between cars, passing on the left or right. She didn’t seem to care, just as long as she was putting distance and vehicles between her car and his.

But Bentz bore down on her, gaining ground.

Suddenly, she cut to the right, skidding and nearly missing the Sunset Boulevard exit. Brake lights flashed. Horns blasted.

The Impala disappeared down the ramp. Jaw set, Bentz tried to follow, cutting over to the right, but a minivan blocked his way. A woman wearing a cell phone headset, oblivious to everything around her, drove her minivan right on the bumper of a lumbering flatbed that was taking the off-ramp. There was no time to speed around both vehicles, so Bentz was stuck.

He slammed a fist into the steering wheel.

God, what he wouldn’t do for lights and a siren right now!

To make the exit, he was forced to slow down and drop behind the minivan. Once off the freeway, he had to stop for a red light that the Chevy slipped through on amber and red. While Bentz gripped his steering wheel in frustration, Minivan Mom sat gabbing into the mouthpiece of her phone.

Bentz looked down the road and saw the Impala speed under an other yellow light. He’d never catch her.

So close, but so far away…

California plates…He squinted. The last two numbers looked like 66, but he couldn’t make out the rest.

By the time the light changed and Bentz was able to pass the boxy minivan, the silver car was gone, out of sight.

Adrenaline racing, nerves stretched to the breaking point, Bentz prowled the area. As he waited at a red light, his cell phone rang.

“What the hell happened to you?” Montoya demanded and Bentz explained.

“You think you saw the same woman on the freeway? Come on. What’re the chances of that?”

“She knew I was at Lorraine Newell’s.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. She probably followed me. Second guessed what I would do.”

“L.A.’s a big city. Lots of dark-haired women. It wasn’t Jennifer or the woman who looks like her.”

“I’m telling you—”

“What? You’re telling me what? That in a city of millions of people you just ran across the one you were looking for on the freeway? You’re talking needle in a haystack.”

“It was the same car, damn it. And a dark-haired woman driving, but no, I didn’t see her face. I did catch a glimpse of that parking pass. It had a cross on it, like the hospital was affiliated with some Christian church.”

“If you say so.”

“The license plate ended in 66, but I didn’t catch any of the other letters or numbers.”

“You’re sure that wasn’t 666?”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

“That’s the problem, Bentz. This whole thing is some lame-ass joke this woman is pulling on you. When are you going to wise up and get back here? Look, I got work to do here. Real work. Call me when you come to your senses.” Montoya hung up, leaving Bentz to cruise the side streets for nearly an hour.

He checked parking lots and streets and traffic, searching out the silver Chevy. There were lots of silver or gray cars, all catching light in the sunny, hazy day, but none of them were the Impala.

Giving up, he stayed off the freeway to wend his way back to Culver City through Westwood and Beverly Hills. He was nearly back at the inn when his phone rang again. This time no caller was listed.

“Bentz,” he said.

“Catch me if you can, RJ,” a breathy female voice whispered.

His heart leapt to his throat. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“Oh, I think you know.” She laughed, a deep, naughty chuckle that caused his blood to run cold. “You just have trouble believing what is right in front of your face. I’m back RJ, and the good news is that you still want me.”