Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) (6 page)

“It’s normal to want to protect your child, no matter what the age.”

“Really? Because their father never seemed protective.” Selma shook her head, her graying ponytail brushing the back of her shoulders. “He certainly gives them their freedom, but then he’s pretty preoccupied with his new family.” She said it bitterly, referring to the fact that Carson now had two sons, one four, the other less than a year. Brianna knew the history; she had heard it often enough in their group sessions.

“Have you gone to the police?”

“I called the Baton Rouge Police Department before I came here. But they weren’t all that interested. Because it hasn’t been that long and, you know, the girls
had
been out celebrating.”

“Have you talked to Carson?”

“Their father doesn’t communicate with me.” She closed her eyes for a second and sighed. “But I had to get in touch with him. I mean, what if the girls had gone there? So I texted his sister and she was going to call him. But have I heard back? No. No surprise there. He’ll probably think . . . oh, that it was some kind of ploy for me to, I don’t know, gain his sympathy or attention, but that’s just nuts. Hopefully Bette can get through to him.” She lifted her cup to her lips, then set it down before taking a sip. “Of course, I’ve contacted everyone I could think of. I left messages for the dean of students at the college. I spoke with the resident director at their dorm, Harmony Hall.”

“They’re still in a dorm?” At twenty-one, the twins had to have been older than most of the students residing in campus housing.

“Yeah, I know, most kids move to an apartment after their first year, and believe me the girls lobbied long and hard for their own place. They called living on campus ‘archaic,’ and—what was the term Zoe used?—uh, Machiavellian. But it’s the one thing their father insisted upon. If he was going to pay any part of their schooling, then the deal was that they had to stay in a dorm or a co-op or some other type of campus-run housing and go to school in the summer to make sure they graduated on time. I went along with it. Carson hasn’t been exactly generous with his daughters, you know, and he owes them at least part of their education. Besides that, I thought it would be safer.” Her lip trembled at the irony of it. “Turns out I was wrong. There is no safer.”

Despite the morning sunlight beginning to stream through the windows, a pall had settled over the house.

“What about boyfriends?” The Denning girls were beautiful and smart, and they’d always been socially active in high school.

“Oh, I tried the old boyfriends. Left messages and texts, none of them have gotten back to me yet.”

“That’s not surprising, considering that it was the middle of the night.”

“But neither of the girls is dating anyone that I know of right now. Chloe just broke up with Tommy Something-Or-Other.” Selma paused. “Wait, his name was Tommy Jones, like the singer my mother had a crush on, like, a hundred years ago. Chloe went with him for nearly a year, I think, but a while back she called it off.” Selma’s eyes darkened. “She didn’t tell me why. Didn’t want to. Accused me of ‘prying,’” she said, making air quotes with her fingers. “She also pointed out that her love life was really none of my business.”

“What about Zoe?”

Selma shook her head. “Nothing serious since her sophomore year when Zach broke up with her. Zachary Armstrong. He was her high-school boyfriend. It was a big deal at the time. Zach and Zoe, the two Zs. But the breakup hit her pretty hard. Took her a while to come to terms with the fact that he’s a jerk. Lately she seemed to have gotten over him.”

“Maybe there was someone who wasn’t a serious boyfriend?” Brianna sat on the other stool at the counter. “A new guy.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “The girls were shutting me out, growing up, so I wouldn’t be the first on their lists to tell about a new relationship.” Blinking against tears, she gripped her cup and finally took a swig. “I’m trying to reconstruct what happened, but it’s all a haze. Their two best friends say that Zoe and Chloe had dinner with them around seven, then planned to meet at a bar down on Decatur, the Hootin’ Owl, later, but my girls never showed. So the friends weren’t all that worried. They thought they’d hook up again back in Baton Rouge at that bar near campus. The Watering Hole. Their friends closed the place down, but my girls never showed.” She glanced up at Brianna, her expression somber. “The twins would never have done this intentionally.”

“And when was the last time anyone heard from either girl?”

“Around eight forty-five, when Zoe texted her friend that she’d see her at the Hootin’ Owl.” She swiped at her tears. “That would indicate that they stopped partying before nine p.m. I don’t believe that. Do you?”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” Brianna admitted as dread replaced the hope in her heart.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s got all the ingredients for disaster, especially if the 21 Killer is out there, like you said.”

Brianna did not want to admit that her friend was making perfect sense. “Maybe they’ll turn up,” she said.

Biting back a sob, Selma shook her head. “The thing I don’t understand is why he would strike here? I mean, he committed all those murders in Southern California, right? Why would he come here? Why New Orleans?”

“That’s a good question,” Brianna said, tamping down the rage she fought daily when she thought of 21. Rather than meet Selma’s gaze again, Brianna climbed from her stool and walked to the far counter. She placed her cup inside the microwave and punched in thirty seconds to reheat her coffee. As she counted down with the timer, a plan began to form in her brain. If Selma’s fears proved to be founded, it was time to get tough.
Really
tough.

Suddenly, the bad dreams and omens of the night melded into Selma’s frightening story of her missing girls to create a terrifying matrix. Twins, celebrating their twenty-first birthdays. Brianna’s hours of rationalization, all the suspicions she had dismissed as paranoia, now solidified into mind-numbing fear.

She could barely look at her friend.

Why New Orleans?
Selma had asked.

The answer was simple: Because of frickin’ Rick Bentz.

“You have to go to the police,” Brianna said. “I’ll come with you.”

C
HAPTER
6

“T
hat wasn’t the deal.” Jase Bridges stared his older brother down, but Prescott only shrugged as he stood in the living room of the old house where they’d grown up.

“The deal changed.”

“How?”

“Lena doesn’t like livin’ here,” Prescott said with a shrug. “Says there’s too many ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“Ghosts. Memories. Spirits. Whatever.” Prescott, an inch taller than Jase, was a bigger man all around. Thicker in the middle, wider shoulders, heavier face. His hair was near black where Jase’s was a lighter brown. Prescott had been a defensive tackle on the high-school football team, all-state with offers of full rides to several small colleges, while Jase, a running back three years later, hadn’t garnered the notice of college scouts. Now Prescott raked back his black hair and scowled through the window at the surrounding acres of what had once been a large sugar plantation. Over the centuries the farm had been cut into smaller plots, which most recently had been used to produce soybeans and raise cattle. Now the fields had gone fallow, the barns empty, the sheds filled with unused equipment that was rusting. Jase and his brother had inherited the place with the death of their uncle, who had never married or fathered children. The plan had been that Prescott, who had lived here with his family for five years, was to buy out Jase. Now, with payment finally due, the deal had just gone south.

Prescott placed a hand on Jase’s shoulder. “See, what’s happened is that Lena, she wants to live in town near the school so she can keep an eye on the kids and help out. And now that I’m selling insurance, I don’t have time to mess with this place. We need to move on. You understand about that, brother.” Then as if a sudden thought had struck him, he asked, “You run into Brianna since you’ve been back?”

The muscles in the back of Jase’s neck tightened, but he didn’t answer.

“She’s in town now, has a little place in the Garden District. Come home to roost, just like you.” He sent his brother a look only the two of them could understand. “From what I gather, she’s a psychologist now. Been back nearly a year. She has a practice and runs some kind of group for twins.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Come on, you’re the reporter. Figure it out.”

Jase waited.

Prescott shrugged. “Hell, I’m in insurance. Always pressured to get new clients, so I checked. Who knows, maybe she could use some term life?”

Jase let further conversation about Brianna Hayward slide, didn’t want to go there. “You’re already looking to move?” he asked, following his brother down a short, familiar hallway.

“It’s gone a little further than that.”

In the kitchen, where the old linoleum curled and the counters were scarred by decades of use, Lena was pouring cereal into bowls. Pale hair had been scraped into a loose bun on the top of her head, and she was wearing a T-shirt that hugged her large belly, a white skirt, and flip-flops that snapped as she moved briskly around the kitchen.

A short woman who had once boasted an hourglass figure, Lena was in her eighth month of pregnancy and appeared squat. She glanced over her shoulder at her brother-in-law. “Pres told you we’re moving, right?” she asked, slipping the tab on the top of the Cheerios box into its slot.

Jase nodded.

As if needing to explain, she said, “I can’t stay here. I just can’t. I won’t bring another child into the world to be brought up out here in the middle of nowhere.” She walked to the pantry, stuck the box into the cupboard, and yelled up the back stairs. “Kids! Come on! We’re gonna be late for VBS! Trinity? You hear me? Caleb, you come on down here! Pronto!”

Hearing the shuffle of feet on the floor above, Lena walked to the refrigerator where she pulled out a carton of milk and placed it, along with two spoons, on the small table pushed against the wall opposite the sink, the same spot where Jase and Prescott had sat during all of their years growing up on this farm.

“Prescott said the place has too many ghosts for you,” Jase said.

Lena shot her husband a glance, then automatically rubbed the cross that hung from a chain at her neck. “Shhh!” she warned as her children thundered down the staircase and clambered into the room.

“Uncle Jase!” Trinity’s brown eyes lit up when she saw him. She raced across the room, blond hair flying, and flung herself into his arms. “I didn’t know you were here!”

“I snuck in,” he teased, juggling her onto a hip.

A moment later, her younger brother barreled into the room with a squeal of delight. “Hey!” Caleb cried, shooting across the floor to jump up.

Jase caught his nephew with his free arm. “Hey yourself, little man.” Jase had never considered himself much of a kid person, but when his niece was born seven years earlier, all that changed.

Lena scowled. “Hay is for horses, and we don’t have a lot of time to mess around here,” she advised her brother-in-law and sent him a don’t-mess-with-me stare. Then she glared at the children. “Kids, hurry up. Eat your breakfast. Miss Suzy won’t like it if we’re late, and Reverend Tim has a special treat for you all.”

“I
hate
Bible school,” Caleb complained, and his sister’s eyes rounded.

“Don’t you say that!” Lena hissed, looking over her shoulder as if she expected Satan himself to appear. “You love Vacation Bible School, you know you do. Now, come on, get your things.”

Rolling her eyes, Trinity slid out of Jase’s arms. “Okay,” she said on a sigh that would have made a petulant teen proud, then climbed into her seat.

Caleb, too, wriggled to the floor before scraping his chair back as his mother poured milk over his cereal, then handed the carton to Trinity. As the kids dug in, Lena motioned to her husband that he was in charge before walking into the front hallway. With a hook of one finger, she indicated silently that she wanted Jase to follow.

Out in the hall, Lena pulled her daughter’s pink jacket from the hall tree as if by rote. Then, glancing outside to what promised to be a scorcher of a day, she replaced the small Windbreaker on a hook.

“Listen, Jase,” she said, her voice low. “I know you expected us to buy you out, but we just can’t. Okay?” Her eyebrows launched upward, but she didn’t wait for his response. “It’s too isolated out here for the kids and for me. They run me ragged. Have no boundaries. No friends. And with a new baby on the way, I can’t stand another minute here.” Frowning, she swept a glance around the entry with its massive but marred staircase, high ceilings, dark walls, and ancient windows, some of which were cracked and needed to be replaced. “We can’t afford to fix this place up. It would cost a fortune. All the wiring and plumbing needs to be replaced, and don’t get me started on the roof. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to mess with it. Too much time. Too much money. Too many headaches. I want new. Clean. Bright. Light. Close in.”

“I thought you wanted the kids to grow up in the country.”

“Well, I was wrong, okay? I changed my mind.” She crossed her arms over her ample belly and glared up at him. “We’ve already found a place in town that isn’t haunted by . . . well, you know.” She gave him a knowing look.

“No,” he said, wondering just how much his brother had confided in his wife of eight years. “Haunted by what?”

Lena’s blue eyes narrowed. She looked about to say something, but pressed her lips together firmly instead. “Everything,” she said evasively, throwing her arms wide. “This place, it just won’t work for us. I want to be close to the church.” As if to close the conversation, she rounded up two backpacks, one pink, the other blue, and hauled them back to the kitchen.

Jase followed.

Trinity was dutifully carrying her near-empty bowl to the sink. Caleb, not quite finished, lifted his dish to his face and started drinking the remains of his milk.

“Caleb Prescott Bridges!” Lena snapped. “What do you think you’re doing?” She shot a disgusted glance at her husband. “Did you see this? Did you? Do you let your son eat like a pig at slop time?”

Prescott snorted. “Honey, it doesn’t matter if—”

“It does matter, Pres. Of course it matters. That’s the problem. Out here you let these kids do whatever they please. No restrictions. I’ve had it.” She whipped Caleb’s bowl from his hands and tossed it into the sink where it clattered against a stack of dirty dishes.

Trinity jumped and Caleb, rather than incur any more of his mother’s wrath, slithered from his chair.

“Get in the car. Both of you!” Lena ordered, and her kids scurried out of the kitchen and out the back door leading to the garage. With a finger pointed at her husband, she said, “Deal with him!” Then pointed at Jase. “I’m losing it.” Snagging her purse from the counter near the microwave, she hurried out the same way her children had taken and let the screen door bang loudly behind her.

Only when he heard the car’s engine cough to life did Prescott speak. “She’s always a little nuts when she’s pregnant.”

“A little?”

“She’s got her eye on a house not far from the Garden District,” he said, walking to the sink and staring out the window. Through the dusty glass both men watched the silver Ford disappear down the drive. “A bungalow,” Pres continued. “Three bedrooms. Big yard. Space for a garden. One block from the church. Actually, we put an offer in and the people accepted, so it’s ours as long as the bank approves.”

“Will they?”

“Should. But we’ll have to sell my interest in this place.” He shoved his hands down the front pockets of his khakis. “We’re moving out.” A beat. “And moving on.”

“What’s that mean?”

Prescott turned and faced his brother. His tanned hands gripped the sides of the counter on either side of him and he suddenly looked older than his thirty-eight years. “Maybe we both should sell this place, Jase. Just cuz it’s been in the family a few generations, so what? We don’t need it. Hell, you were going to sell to me anyway.”

“Because you have kids.”

“So what’s the difference if I sell to someone else? Either way, you’re out.”

Prescott had a point, but it didn’t sit well with Jase. They both knew it. Because of the ghosts.

“Or,” Prescott said, as if the thought had just crossed his mind. “You could buy me out. I’d give you a deal, and we wouldn’t have the Realtor’s cut. Clean and simple.”

There it was. The reason Prescott had asked him to stop by so early in the morning. It was so like his brother to beat around the bush, hint, and sneak up on a topic rather than say what he wanted outright. In this case, Jase suspected it was because of Lena.

“This is just the opposite from what we agreed.” And Jase had ambitions associated with his job; he didn’t need a ranch to distract him from his goal. Already he had his application in at the police department.

Prescott lifted a shoulder. “Got to keep the peace, y’know? Besides, things change.”

“Do they?” Jase wasn’t so sure as he walked outside to the back porch and stared across the rolling acres to a rise. Past the drying grass and a few sunbaked outbuildings, a tall oak rose in the distance. Less than a hundred yards beyond the tree’s spreading branches was the property line and the slow-moving river.

Images seared through his brain: scenes from his youth, like photographs in an album shuffled quickly past, and he shut his mind to that part of his life, a past long buried that he’d tried like hell to forget.

He heard the porch boards creak as his brother came out to join him.

“In a way, Lena’s right, you know,” Prescott said, following Jase’s gaze down toward the river. “There are just too many damned ghosts here, y’know?”

Jase did know. Though he’d never admit it to anyone.

 

 

“I’ll beef up the patrols on your street,” Bentz said as he cradled his cell phone to his ear and rolled his chair closer to the desk. Immune to the noise of the other detectives and staff, he focused on the voice on the phone and the image of the killer on his computer screen. Obsessed with the footage, he watched the video of Father John for at least the twentieth time, but this morning, instead of beer, he was downing his third cup of coffee and hoping the caffeine would stave off the headache that throbbed near his temples.

All the while, the station had come to life around him. Phones jangled, voices buzzed, and footsteps shuffled amid the rows of desks. Somewhere a printer chugged out pages over the constant rumble of the air-conditioning unit forcing cool air through the vents. Still, the rooms were warm. Barely ten in the morning and already the heat of the day was permeating the windows and walls of the old building.

“Thanks,” Samantha Wheeler said from the other end of the telephone connection.

“I listened to your show last night.”

“Then you know that he didn’t call in. Maybe he’s not interested in me any longer.”

I wouldn’t bet on it.
The killer had blamed Dr. Sam and her advice for causing the death of someone dear to him years before. He had targeted Dr. Sam, plotting out his revenge step by step, taunting the radio psychologist, teasing her and ultimately nearly killing her. The fact that he’d been thwarted should have only intensified his rage.

Unless he’d fixated on someone else.

“Don’t worry, Detective,” Samantha said. “I’m pretty sure I would recognize his voice. It made an impression.”

She seemed certain, but it had been years since Father John had called into her talk show and stalked her as steadily as a hunter searching out prey. Now, as Bentz ended the call, reminding her to be careful, he couldn’t shake the bad feeling. Still holding his cell phone, he stared at the screen of his computer where the frozen image of Father John leered up at him.

“I thought that bastard was gator bait,” Montoya said, eyeing the monitor as he cruised into Bentz’s office.

“So did I.”

“Maybe he tasted so bad the gator spat him out.”