Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (40 page)

“Shit,” Montoya whispered. “Dr. Sam’s assistant.”

A rock settled in the pit of Bentz’s stomach. “According to Dorothy Hodges, Melanie Davis got pissed and quit the show today. Didn’t show up for work.”

Montoya’s jaw tightened. “Maybe because she couldn’t.”

“Maybe.” Bentz whipped out his cell phone, called the dispatcher and ordered a unit sent to Melanie Davis’s home. “I want the officers to call me back as soon as they locate her,” he said. “Page me.” He clicked off, then gazed at the recorder still sitting on the tiny shelf in the phone booth. “Let’s see if John left us a message.”

Careful not to wipe any prints off the recorder, Bentz pressed the play button with one of his keys. The tape started instantly and over the commotion outside the booth a woman’s breathy voice was audible from the single speaker on the tiny machine.

“This is Annie and I’d like to speak to Dr. Sam about my ex-mother-in-law. I was hoping she could help.”
Then a long pause and finally, in a higher-pitched voice,
“Annie,”
and a pause.
“Don’t you remember me?”

“He did tape her,” Montoya said, as another pause ensued.

“I called you before…. “Thursday’s my birthday. I would be twenty-five.”

“Son of a bitch,” Montoya muttered as they listened to all of the tape, hoping that at the end of the short one-sided conversation they would hear more and clear up the woman’s identity, but the rest of the tape was blank. “Do you think that Melanie was involved, that she’s the person on the tape, that she screened her own damned call?” Montoya asked, pulling at his goatee.

“It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? Someone was working on the inside, unlocked the door for the cake to be delivered, gave out the private number.” Bentz ached for a smoke. “Why aren’t they calling me back?”

“You think she’s dead.”

Bentz nodded curtly. “There’s a damned good chance.”

“Shit.” Montoya glared through the smudged glass of the phone booth to the street and the dented minivan. “So you think John left all this stuff here and when he was running away he got hit?” Montoya asked.

“Do you?”

“It looks that way.” He frowned. “So what’s going down, Bentz?”

“Nothin’ good, Reuben. Nothin’ good.” Bentz’s pager went off. “Have this booth gone over with a fine-toothed comb,” he said, “and have crews sweep the street—look for anything out of the ordinary.” He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket, dialed the number on his pager’s display and took the message.

It was short and simple. Bentz’s jaw grew tight. His gut twisted. He hung up and swore, then met the questions in his partner’s eyes. “Melanie Davis is dead. Strangled. Odd ligature around her neck. Probably a rosary.”

Chapter Thirty-six

Sam stroked Charon’s black coat as she sat in the deck chair and twilight darkened the sky. So it was over. Finally. But the effects would last forever. So many people she knew were dead, the last being Melanie Davis…the woman the police decided had posed as Annie. The story was still fragmented, but it seemed that Melanie had been dating Kent Seger—he’d been the new boyfriend, “the one” she’d told Sam about.

“It makes you wonder,” she said to the cat. Kent was still barely alive, under police guard at the hospital, and the press was everywhere, trying to get a story. Sam had taken her own phone off the hook and refused to answer her door. She needed time to pull herself together, to sort things out, to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

If Kent survived, maybe they’d learn the answers and he’d go to prison forever; if he died, the world was probably better off. Sam had never really believed in the death penalty but when she thought of the women he’d killed, starting with his own sister and unborn baby, she decided he deserved whatever fate God or the courts meted out. It was lucky that he’d been caught, but the drugs in his system, a combination of angel dust and crack, had made him hallucinate and reel into the path of an oncoming car after getting off the phone with Sam.

Which was odd. He didn’t sound out of control when he’d called. But then he hadn’t said much.

She stretched the muscles in the back of her neck and watched a butterfly flit over the grass near the water.

So what about you, Sam? What’re you going to do?

Maybe she should take the job in LA.
“How about that,” she said to Charon, who arched his back under her fingers. “You could be a Hollywood cat.”

She would be closer to her father—away from all the pain here. Through it all, she hadn’t heard from Peter. She’d half expected to get a call from him when the news had broken, but there had been no messages either here or with her dad. Some things just didn’t change.

Could you possibly leave Ty?

Her heart filled at the thought of him. Shading her eyes with her hand, she stared out at the lake and saw his boat, the
Bright Angel,
skimming across the water. She should have gone with him, she supposed, but she needed a little time alone, to think, and he’d just decided to pick up Sasquatch from his house and bring him back by boat. They planned to cook dinner together, right after she took a shower. She smiled a little as she saw Ty’s dog sitting nose to the wind on the deck.

It had only been eighteen hours since she’d signed off the air last night, and in that time her life had changed.

Melanie was dead.

Like Leanne.

Like Annie.

Like all the others who had the misfortune to run into Kent Seger.

Her heart ached for the ambitious girl who had, the police suspected, gone along with Kent in the hopes of somehow snagging Sam’s job. Melanie had always been too ambitious, and in the end it had cost her. She stood and waved and Ty, from the helm, waved back. Had it only been a few weeks since she’d thought she’d spied the
Bright Angel
bobbing on the night-darkened waves, a dark stranger at her helm?

Several publishers had shown some interest in Ty’s story, and his agent was shopping the idea around. There was talk of an auction.

A lot had happened in the span of eighteen hours.

Carrying Charon, Sam walked into the house, locked the door from habit, and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, leaving the door ajar so that the cat could go in and out rather than cry and paw at the door. A pair of Ty’s slacks were slung over the end of the bed. He hadn’t moved out yet, and Sam wasn’t sure she wanted him to. They were good together, she told herself as she stripped out of her sundress and underwear, made her way to the bathroom and turned on the shower’s spray. Through a window she’d cracked to let out steam, she heard the familiar sound of Hannibal barking—ever ready to start a ruckus—ever vigilant for squirrels or all manner of other critters. She flipped on the radio to WSLJ and heard the rough sound of Ramblin’ Rob’s voice as he told the audience that he was going to check the library and come back with a Patsy Cline hit. The first caller to name the year the song was popular would receive a WSLJ mug.

Sam wrapped a towel over her head, then stepped under the pulsing spray. Closing her eyes, tried to chase the demons away. How could she have not known that Melanie was jealous of her? How had she worked with the girl night after night and even trusted her to watch her house and cat…and David? His betrayal was worse. He’d planned to use the situation with “John,” hoping to force her back into his arms. She’d even gotten a call from her ex—Jeremy Leeds, Ph.D., telling her he was sorry for what she was going through.

She doubted Jeremy had ever been sorry in his life.

She lathered her body, hearing Patsy Cline’s clear melancholy voice over the spray. But the worst was Kent Seger, a man obsessed with his sister and then Samantha. He blamed Sam for taking Annie’s life, but had actually killed his sister, making it look like a suicide, because he was jealous of Ryan Zimmerman, a boy he didn’t know was his half brother.

Sick, it was all sick.

Rinsing, she thought of Estelle, found yesterday morning facedown in her pool, unable to face another scandal. Her first husband, Annie’s father Wally, had been shocked when Ty had called him. He blamed himself.

A lot of people around here were taking long guilt trips these day.

Twisting off the spigots, she heard the back door open. Ty must’ve docked. She whipped the towel off her head and stepped into her robe. “I haven’t started dinner yet, so pour yourself a drink,” she yelled down the stairs as she cinched the belt and glanced out the window where, on the horizon, she saw the familiar masts and sails of the
Bright Angel.

But that was impossible. Why would the sloop be in the water when she was certain she’d heard a door open? A
locked
door open. The hairs lifted on the back of her neck. “Ty?” she called, and told herself she was being a fool. Kent Seger was in the hospital, barely clinging to his life. Her brother and Ryan Zimmerman had been cleared of any crimes. And besides,
no one
was in the house but her.

Then she heard the footsteps. Heavy and quick, mounting the stairs. Oh, God. Her heart pounded. Panic rose in her throat. She glanced through the window, saw the sailboat heading inland, Ty at the helm, Sasquatch at his side. Hissing, Charon streaked through the open bedroom door and slunk under the bed.

Sam searched the room wildly for a weapon—the window. If she could just flag Ty down. She flung the sash open and heard the door creak.

“You bitch!”

John’s voice. No!

“Ty!” she screamed, then turned as the intruder reached her—a tall man in dark glasses and a cold, angry leer.

“Who are you?”

“Your worst nightmare,” he said, and she noticed a handkerchief in his hand.

A sickly smell surrounded him. “Get out!” she yelled, her blood cold as ice. She searched wildly for a weapon and saw the lamp. Before she could grab it, he was on her. Holding her fast, trying to force the horrid gag to her face.

She kicked, clawed and screamed, fought like a tiger, but he was so big that he wrapped an arm around her and pushed the cloth into her face. She couldn’t breathe, the smell, that horrid smell of ether, filled her nostrils and burned down her throat. Her eyes watered, she coughed, couldn’t breathe.

The smell was overpowering.

She tried to scream but dragged in more of the drug. Blackness pulled at the edges of her consciousness. She clawed at his face and he laughed. The darkness came and went. Her arms and legs were so heavy, she couldn’t keep her eyes open and the fight left her.

She saw his smile and from the corner of her eye the twinkle of light, blood-red light cast by a string of beads.

“We’ve got the wrong guy!” Bentz stared at the medical chart hanging from the end of Kent Seger’s bed, then swore a blue streak. A uniformed guard was posted at the door of this private room, plainclothes officers situated at other points in the hospital, but it didn’t matter. The guy in the bed with all the tubes and wires poking in and out of his damned body wasn’t Kent Seger.

“The wrong guy?” Montoya was eating from a bag of chips he’d bought at a machine in the cafeteria.

“Look at his blood type.”

“But—”

“I don’t know who the hell he is but the guy’s not Kent Seger and he’s not John. It was a setup.” Bentz was running out of the room. “Stay put,” he told the guard. “Don’t let anyone in or out. Not even a doctor.”

“But—”

“Why the hell didn’t anyone check his blood type?” Bentz yanked his cell phone from his pocket and found the nearest exit. Montoya was only a step behind.

“So who is he?” Montoya asked as ran to his car and reached inside for his cell phone.

“It doesn’t matter. What does is that our boy is still on the loose.”

Bentz punched out the numbers for the dispatcher. “Call the Cambrai police. Send someone out to Samantha Leeds’s house on Lake View Drive, pronto.” He climbed behind the wheel.

“I’ll drive,” Montoya offered.

“No way. You’re too slow. Get in.”

Montoya hadn’t even strapped himself in when Bentz switched on the ignition and floored it, driving like holy hell through the parking lot and flipping on his siren as the cruiser bucked onto the street. He tossed Montoya the cell phone.

“Call Samantha Leeds. Tell her what’s up.”

While Montoya tried to get through, Bentz was on the police band, instructing other units on what was happening.

“No one answers,” Montoya said.

“Damn it all to hell. Then try Ty Wheeler…at home or on his cell. Call information, just get the hell through!”

He took a corner too fast and the tires squealed. The drive to Cambrai usually took twenty minutes. If he was lucky, he could make it in fifteen.

He only hoped he wasn’t too late.

Ty saw Sam in the window. She was waving. No…she flung the sash open and called to him. Then he saw the shadow—someone was in the bedroom with her. Someone dressed in black. Someone wearing dark sunglasses. She was struggling. Screaming. Being attacked right before his eyes. And he couldn’t reach her. Knowing he’d never make it in time, he lowered the sails, started the engine and pushed the throttle open full bore.

He stared at the window, caught only glimpses of a horror he’d thought was behind them and knew that the monster was loose. Somehow the animal had escaped, and he was killing Samantha right in front of Ty’s eyes.

“You won’t get away with it, you bastard,” Ty vowed, his hands gripping the wheel, the sloop cutting through the water. “I’ll kill you first.”

It was dark…so dark—she could tell even though her eyes were closed. And there were sounds…strange sounds…a deep rumbling hum. Her head pounded.

She wanted to fall back to sleep, but something forced her to inch open her eyelids. The darkness persisted. She felt motion and realized she was moving, but…Her head ached and she felt like she might throw up. Where was she? She tried to sit up and felt woozy. For a second she thought she might pass out again and then she started to remember. Flashes of bright images. She’d been in her bedroom and she’d been attacked by a man in dark glasses…oh, God…John, somehow he’d escaped.

She felt with her hands, took in deep lungfuls of air and smelled gasoline. She was riding in something, the trunk of a vehicle…no, there was too much room…she was in the bed of a pickup with one of those canopies over it, and John was driving, taking her somewhere…but where?

He slowed and her heart, already racing miles a minute, went into overtime. She didn’t doubt for a second that he was going to kill her. He just wanted to do it privately, so he could have more time. She thought of his victims, the torture they’d been through and knew she would endure the same hideous pain.

If she could only get her bearings, and think…this was a truck…there could be tools. He turned quickly and she slid to one side…rolling against the wheel well, banging her head again.
Think, Sam, think, where’s he taking you?
Somewhere remote. But he usually kills women in their rooms with a rosary…the police had finally made some of the details of the crimes public. She felt around, her fingers sliding over the bed of the truck until she came upon something…a toolbox. Could she be so lucky? She tried to open it, but it was locked.
Don’t panic, just think.
She tried to force the lid open, but it wouldn’t budge.

Tires crunched on gravel. The truck was barely moving now. The tire jack! Where was it? Could she pry it loose? She went over every inch of the bed and along the wheel wells. All she found was a fishing rod. Nothing heavy. Just bamboo. Locked in place along one side of the canopy. Damn!

The truck slid to a stop. She weighed her options. She could spring at him when he opened the back, but he’d probably be expecting that, no, it was better to play as if she was still unconscious and then if he tried to slip anything over her head, she’d react.

It was all she could do to lie still, to try and relax, to make it look like her muscles and bones had melted when she was really so tense she was having trouble breathing.

The engine died.

Oh, God, help me.

She heard the creak of the driver’s door open, then the sound of footsteps crunching gravel.

Stay calm.
She lay still, breathed slowly, closed her eyes but didn’t squeeze them, appeared to relax when all of her nerve endings were stretched taut.

The back of the truck opened, warm fetid air wafted in and the sounds of bullfrogs croaking and insects thrumming through the night met her ears.

Bayou country.
Oh, God they’d never be found.

“You awake yet?” he said in his seductive tone. “Dr. Sam? He wiggled her bare foot, a hot hand on her toes. She didn’t react. “Hell, wake up would ya?” His voice was more agitated. Still she didn’t stir. “You’d better not be playin’ possum.” He tickled the bottom of her foot and she forced herself to stay limp. “Come on.” He pulled her out of the back of the truck and she slumped against him, her legs dragging. It took all of her willpower not to kick him, but she let her toes scrape against the ground. He packed her across the gravel road for a few feet before the crunching beneath his feet changed to a hollow ring, like boots on bare wood.