Malice (6 page)

With each of his confessed sightings, Olivia became more and more serious. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, her gaze seeking his. “How? Why?”

He handed her the copies he’d kept and watched her face turn ashen. “I wish I knew the answer to that.”

“Jennifer’s dead.” She glanced up at him for confirmation.

“Yes.”

“There was a suicide note, you made the ID on the body.”

“I know.”

“Then…?”

“An imposter, probably.”

“Or…your imagination.”

“Don’t think so.” He tapped the pictures with a finger. “These are real.”

“Or someone faked them.”

“That’s possible.”

“Rick, she’s
not
alive!” She cleared her throat and leaned back in her chair. “Did you…have you told Kristi?”

“She was there when I woke up and she thought it was hallucinations from the drugs or aftereffects from the coma. Said it was all a ‘bad trip.’ I didn’t want to upset her, so I haven’t mentioned it again. Neither has she.”

But then his daughter was caught up in writing her book and planning her wedding. Kristi didn’t want to think that her father had lost his marbles. Because, even though now he was certain he was being tormented by an outside force, he also suspected deep inside that some of his visions of Jennifer had been conjured in his mind.

Maybe outside influences had tripped a latch in his brain and, though he was loath to admit it, he didn’t know what was real and what was a figment of his imagination.

“She hasn’t seen these?” Olivia motioned to the photos.

“No.”

Slowly letting out her breath, Olivia stared at the marred death certificate, then the pictures once more. Her eyebrows pulled together to form little lines in her forehead and her full lips twisted in revulsion. “This is really sick.”

“Can’t argue that.”

“Do you have any idea who sent these?” She held the photos and certificate up, then shook her head and handed everything back to Bentz.

“No. But Montoya’s having the lab check out the originals. Fingerprints, DNA, photo-altering—anything else the department can find out including what kind of red pen was used to write the question mark.” He tucked the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket just as the waiter delivered the first course.

“You think she’s alive?” Olivia asked.

“No.” He stirred his seafood stew and shook his head. “But I don’t think she’s a ghost, either.”

“Obviously. So…an imposter. Someone messing with you.” She nodded to herself, picking up her fork. “Who?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

Irritated, she stabbed bits of lettuce and shrimp onto her fork. “So you think there’s someone
here
in Louisiana pretending to be Jennifer, and she makes herself visible to only you. And you think she showed up at the hospital months ago, at the precise moment you woke up. Nonetheless, the pictures and death certificate were mailed from L.A.” Her eyes narrowed as she bit into her salad. “Is that about it?”

“Yeah. About.”

“So why go to all that trouble? Why not mail the package from here in New Orleans?”

“Jennifer died in Southern California.”

“If it was her in the van.”

“It was.”

“You say she hasn’t aged, right? But how close were you to her?”

Good point.
“Not close enough.”

“Hmm. And the photos, they make her look young, but again, they could’ve been doctored. Or her face superimposed over another woman’s body.”

“The answer is in L.A.”

“Although you saw her in Louisiana?”

“These shots were taken around L.A.”

“Maybe.”

The whole Photoshop thing again. “Her body is buried in California,” he said and watched her reaction.

“Jesus, are you thinking of exhuming her?” Revulsion showed on her face. “Because you
think
you saw her? Because you received some pictures and a marked-up death certificate with a postmark from the town where you lived. Isn’t that a little extreme? I mean, would anyone even order it?”

“I don’t know, but I think so.”

“So you’re thinking of going to California,” she guessed, shaking her head.

“Yeah. While I’m off duty.”

“So soon.”

He nodded. “Montoya will watch my back here, look after you.”

“You think I need looking after?”

“No. But…”

“But just in case I feel abandoned, he’s around. Right?” she mocked. “In the off chance that I feel you’re on a wild goose chase, or following a ghost or…I don’t know, dealing with all those old feelings you haven’t quite laid to rest, I can count on your partner, not you. Is that what you’re saying?”

He felt the muscles in his back tighten.

“I don’t need to be babysat or coddled, okay? I’ve lived in that house most of my life. A lot of it alone. I don’t need ‘looking after.’ Sometimes I wonder if you’ve lost your mind!”

That makes two of us.

“Maybe you should just let the cops handle this.”

“I’m a cop.”

“No, not this time.” She shook her head, golden strands of her hair catching in the candlelight. “This time I think you’re the victim.”

“Listen, Livvie—”

“To what? Some excuse to go chasing after a woman who’s dead? Some trumped-up rationale? This is a situation for the police,” she said, pointing to the death certificate and photographs of Jennifer. “And as for ‘seeing’ Jennifer, maybe you should take that up with your doctor or, heaven forbid, a shrink. These photos…they have to be fakes!”

“Olivia—”

“I hear what you’re telling me, Bentz. Word for word. But it’s what you’re
not
telling me that is drumming through my head, pounding in my brain, and ripping a damned hole in my heart.”

“Wait a second.”

“No, I’m not waiting. Not a second, not half a second. You’re going to hear me out. The way I see it, what’s going on here is that you’re hell-bent for leather to chase after your past. Face it. If we’ve had a problem in our marriage it’s been Jennifer. Kristi’s mother. A woman you divorced because she was cheating on you, then took back, even though she couldn’t be faithful. You’ve been fighting emotions that have been eating at you for over a decade: Guilt. Guilt that you’re alive and she’s not.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

“Nothing professional about it. Common sense.” She looked about to say something more, then pushed the rest of her salad aside. “Look, if you need to go, then go. Figure it out. Because, you know, I’ve tried to be supportive and understanding and upbeat, but this has been eating at you. So go. Find out what it is. That’s important, yeah, but what’s really important to me is that you deal with the past and put it away.”

He felt a tic near his temple. “If you don’t want me to go—”

“Oh, no, you don’t. Don’t you dare go there. This is your deal, not mine. You feel this is something you need to do, then do it.”

“I thought you wanted me to open up, to tell you what was bothering me.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, nodding, then waiting as their entrées were served. “I did want to know, but I thought it might happen a little earlier, you know, before you’d already mentally packed your bags to take off for La La Land.”

“I told you, if you don’t want me to go, just say the word.”

She hesitated, then leaned forward. “No, Rick. I want you to go. As happy as we’ve been, and we have been happy, there’s always been that little bit of doubt on my part. And guilt on yours. Look, if Jennifer were still alive we might not be together. So now we get to find out just how strong our marriage is.”

“I think it’s damned strong.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t commit to a child.”

“I have a child.” He was about to say more but saw by the darkening of her eyes that he’d wounded her. Instead he reached across the table to take her hand. “This just isn’t the time.”

She pulled her fingers from his. “But it is for me, Bentz,” she said, her jaw jutting a bit. “It’s really now or never.”

He considered giving in. After all, she’d make a wonderful mother, he knew that. And so what if he was so old he’d qualify for Social Security when the kid graduated from high school? People did it all the time. He slid his jaw to the side. “I’ll think about it.”

She grabbed her purse and pushed away from the table. “Then think fast.”

S
he should have told him.

She shouldn’t have chickened out.

Olivia stepped out of the shower and toweled off. Steam covered the window in the bathroom and she cracked it a bit, all the while second-guessing herself. Bentz had left earlier in the morning and even now was winging his way to Los Angeles.

She never should have let him go without mentioning the baby. But the thought of being
that
woman, a clinging female who would use any excuse, even her unborn child, to try to keep a man from doing what he wanted stuck in Olivia’s craw. She didn’t believe in reining in someone she loved. It just didn’t make sense. She wasn’t into using guilt to hang on to him, and he’d certainly made it clear how he felt about becoming a father again.

It wasn’t as if she’d intentionally gone behind his back and gotten pregnant. There’d been no trick involved; she simply wasn’t taking any measures to prevent pregnancy. He knew she wasn’t on the pill. Though Rick usually took care of birth control himself, there had been a few times he hadn’t bothered with a condom, several instances where passion had overruled sanity. And, Olivia thought, brushing her teeth and seeing her reflection in the foggy mirror, she was thrilled to have this new life inside her, having been worried that, given their ages, it might be difficult to conceive.

Nonetheless, she hadn’t used the baby as a means to stop him from going on his damned quest to L.A.

She spat, leaned her face under the faucet, rinsed her mouth, and straightened. The woman standing in the misty reflection stared back at her and silently accused her of being a coward. Guilty. But she’d kept mum for good reason. She had wanted to avoid a fight, and couldn’t bear to witness the disappointment—even resentment—in his eyes. She didn’t believe he’d suggest abortion, but she couldn’t begin to deal with the idea of terminating her pregnancy.

“And I thought you were a straight shooter,” she said aloud to her own watery image. “Aren’t you the one who never backs down? What the hell happened to you?”

She let her hands fall to her flat belly.

A baby…a life that right now was growing inside her.

And her husband didn’t even know she was pregnant. Didn’t want to know.

“Jerk,” she muttered under her breath. “Good riddance.” She pulled a comb through her hair, wrapped a towel around her body, then opened the door and nearly tripped over the dog. Hairy S had camped out in the hall in front of the bathroom. “Not smart,” she said to the dog and petted his furry head. “But don’t worry about it; there’s a lot of stupidity going around in this house these days. A lot. You’re not the Lone Ranger.”

Hairy thumped his tail against the floor, then followed her to the bedroom, where she dressed and tried not to think about the fact that her husband was nearly a continent away, chasing demons who had haunted him for twelve long years.

The flight was uneventful.

Once, after dozing, Bentz thought he smelled gardenias. He took a long look around the cabin of the 727, eyeing all the passengers, half expecting Jennifer to be calmly seated near the window, reading a book. She would, of course, upon feeling his gaze upon her, look up and smile with that sexy little grin that had always gotten to him. Without saying a word she would tell him that she knew he’d follow her.

It didn’t happen.

No one on the plane remotely resembled his first wife…
ex
-wife he reminded himself.
Ex.
They had been divorced, though living together, at the time of her death. But those arrangements had been about to end. Because she hadn’t been able to give up her lover.

The plane touched down at LAX with a soft bump as the back wheels hit the tarmac, then even less of a jar as the wheel under the nose of the plane found the pavement. As the 727 taxied to the gate, most of the passengers were already turning on cell phones, unbuckling their seat belts, and shifting the luggage at their feet. After spending the entire trip with her nose in a book, the woman in the seat next to Bentz swung a purse the size of Guatemala onto her lap and scrounged for her cell frantically. Touchdown propelled her into frenzied mode and she hastily dug through her huge purse. Bentz barely avoided being knocked over by the bag as he pulled his computer from beneath the seat in front of him and she located her phone and clicked it on, immediately making a call.

He couldn’t help but overhear her conversation, a one-sided affair in which she was trashing her ex’s latest girlfriend.

Fortunately, the plane emptied fairly quickly.

On the way to baggage claim Bentz called Olivia and left a message that he’d landed safely. He found his one bag, then rented a small SUV with a G.P.S. already installed. He’d done it all without using his cane and, though his hip ached, he ignored the pain and threw the damned walking stick that he’d brought along into the backseat.

As he exited the rental lot in the Ford Escape, he slipped a pair of sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose. The scenery was familiar, the tightness in his chest new. Years ago he’d left L.A. with a bad taste in his mouth; now all those old feelings came back at him in a rush. Guilt over Jennifer’s suicide, remorse over the death of a twelve-year-old kid with a toy pistol, gnawing frustration that he would have been able to solve the Caldwell twins’ double homicide if he’d been at the top of his game, and the fog of too many numbing shots of whiskey.

He’d been a mess. Jack Daniel’s had become his best friend and that friendship had damaged every other relationship. It had also compromised his job performance and his ability to see clearly.

Though officially he’d quit the LAPD, the pressure to resign had been palpable, the tension in the department thicker than the smog that blanketed the city. Even his remaining friends, the few coworkers who “had his back,” had been relieved to see him leave. His departure had been better for all concerned. Especially him.

Except that he’d left some unfinished business behind.

It had been years since he’d been in Southern California, and though the area had changed, the royal palm trees and space-age arches of the Encounters restaurant at LAX were reminders of a time he’d tried hard to forget.

As he maneuvered onto the freeway he couldn’t see the surrounding hills through the layer of smog that hovered over the area. He fiddled with the air conditioning to combat the rising temperature as buildings rose ghostlike through the shimmering heat waves. By instinct he headed toward his old neighborhood, which wasn’t too far from Culver City.

The area had changed a little. The shrubs and trees were larger, the neighborhood as a whole seeming to have gone a little downhill, evidenced by the cracked sidewalks and wrought-iron bars on some windows.

His old house looked pretty much the same. Sometime in the past twelve years, it had been painted a dove gray, but now was in dire need of another coat. The garage door was blistered and didn’t quite close, the yard overgrown and dry. Weeds turned brown in the sun-bleached bark chips near the tired front porch. A
FOR RENT
sign was wedged into the grass, but it too was fading beneath the intense California sun.

Leaving his cane in the rental, Bentz walked around the house and peered through the dirty windows to spy dusty floors and dingy walls, some the same color they had been a dozen years earlier. Stepping backward and shading his eyes, he gazed up to the window and was bombarded by memories of images within his former bedroom, the scene he’d walked into more than a decade ago. Twisted sheets of the unmade bed and slivers of broken glass spattered beneath the gaping hole where a mirror once hung. In his mind he retraced the path to the spare bedroom on the second floor, the guest room Jennifer had used as her office. He remembered that it had taken a while to find the note that she’d left, not in an obvious location on a table or a counter, but tucked away in her desk drawer, written to Kristi and signed in Jennifer’s flowing hand.

He’d always wondered about that.

The suicide note to their daughter that had been tucked away in the pages of the latest self-help book Jennifer had been reading.
The Power of Me,
or something just as self-centered.

All the advice in the world hadn’t helped his screwed-up ex-wife.

But she hadn’t left the note out in the open.

As if she’d had second thoughts.

Or was waiting. Hadn’t yet made a final decision.

At the time he’d discovered the note he’d pushed aside the nagging questions and had rationalized that in her pursuit of death, as in so many facets of her life, Jennifer had done a lousy job. But now he had renewed doubts. What if Jennifer’s death hadn’t been suicide? What if she hadn’t been driving the car? What if the woman he’d identified as his wife and buried six feet under had been someone else?

Just who was decomposing in that grave?

His gut twisted at the thought and he didn’t let his mind wander too far down that dark, rocky path.

He returned to the Escape and drove nearly five miles to a cemetery, the spot where he’d thought Jennifer had been laid to rest. Parking in the shade of a live oak tree, he fished out his wallet and found a battered card for Detective Jonas Hayes of the LAPD. He’d carried the damned card around for twelve years and remembered the day Hayes had pressed the card into his palm. “Hey, if you ever need anything,” he’d said after the burial as clouds had rolled in and rain had started to fall. So long ago…and now Bentz wondered if Jennifer were truly entombed in the casket lying under the granite headstone.

He walked through the drying grass and found the plot, read the simple inscription, and felt a strange pang in his heart. Had he made a mistake? Did the corpse beneath his feet belong to someone else? He glared down at the grass, as if he could see through the sod and six feet of dry earth to the casket where a woman’s body had been decomposing for twelve long years.

A whisper of a breeze slid across the back of his neck and the scent of gardenias was suddenly heavy in the air. Did he hear someone whisper his name? He turned, expecting to see Jennifer beckoning with that come-hither naughty smile that had been her trademark. But she wasn’t leaning against one of the taller headstones, her auburn hair shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. Nor was she standing anywhere within the wrought-iron fencing surrounding the silent graveyard.

He was alone at his ex-wife’s final resting place. The cemetery was empty, not a soul besides himself visible. Some of the plots displayed fresh flowers. A few had been adorned with plastic bouquets and others were festooned with tiny American flags that had faded in the harsh sunlight. However, no other person, nor ghost for that matter, stood inside the ominous black wrought-iron fence.

Of course not.

She’s dead, Bentz. Dead. You know it. You identified her body with your own eyes, for Christ’s sake! And you don’t believe in ghosts. Try remembering that one, will ya?

He lingered a few more minutes, trying to piece together what was happening to him. He didn’t think he was cracking up, and he knew he didn’t believe in ghosts. Dead women did not just reappear.

So why come here, to the cemetery?

Without an answer he returned to the car, which was now sweltering from the sun. Leaving the driver’s door open, he sat behind the wheel and turned on the engine to get the A/C pumping. As the car cooled, he eyed Hayes’s business card. On one side was the official information for Detective Jonas Hayes of the LAPD; on the other was a phone number scratched hurriedly a long time ago.

Bentz punched the private number into his cell and was rewarded with a message from a lifeless voice that told him it was no longer in service. “Great.” Bentz flipped the card over and tried again, this time phoning the police department directly and asking for Detective Jonas Hayes.

Without too much fuss he was put through to Hayes’s voice mail. He left a message saying he was in town and wanted to meet. Afterward he called and left another message for Olivia. As he hung up he had the uncanny feeling that he was being watched, that hidden eyes were observing his every move. He scanned the cemetery as he drove off, checked his mirrors and saw no one tailing him, no one tracking his movements.

“You’re an idiot,” he told himself, then went in search of a cheap, clean motel.

Jonas Hayes swore under his breath. He was tired. Dead tired. He’d spent too many hours the previous day trying to hammer out details for the custody of Maren, his daughter, then hadn’t slept a wink before pulling a full shift. And now he had Rick Bentz calling him.

“Hell,” he muttered. There were a lot of reasons he didn’t want to return the call. He waited until his shift was over and he was in his car miles away from the department before he dialed the cell number Bentz had left.

On the third ring, Bentz answered. “Rick Bentz.”

“The death-defying Rick Bentz, who lives through a lightning strike?” he joked, though truth to tell there wasn’t anything remotely humorous about Bentz calling.

“Not exactly accurate, but close enough. Bad news travels fast.”

“Gossip has no bounds. These days with the Internet, cell phones with cameras, traffic lights with cameras, security cameras everywhere, you have no privacy. You can’t take a leak in New Orleans without someone putting it up on YouTube for all of us out here to view.”

“Is that right?” Bentz said. “Then how the hell don’t we get the suspects on film?”

“We do. A lot of times. At least the stupid ones. That is, when we get lucky.”

“So you got dinner plans? I’m in town and I’ll buy.”

Hayes saw it coming. Big as life. And he didn’t like it one bit. “Sounds like you need a favor.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybes about it. That’s why you rose from the dead, Bentz. Admit it.”

“We’ll talk about rising from the dead over steaks. How about Roy’s if it’s still around?”

Roy’s had once been a hip, happening place, an homage to the days of the great westerns. “It’s around and seedier than ever. But the food’s still good and happy hour drinks are five bucks.”