Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) (9 page)

“That you know of,” she said, then added, “or until now. Sometimes a killer’s MO changes due to outside influences.”

Unlikely.
The homicides had been ritualistic, the victims left naked, a sexual element to them. And yet . . . Bentz shifted the pages and read the next reports. As he scanned the information, the knot in his gut twisted. According to what was written, Beau January of Dallas, Texas, and his twin sister, Belle, had vanished. Beau, who lived in east Dallas, hadn’t shown up for work about a month before his twenty-first birthday. After his family had no luck locating him, his twin sister, Belle, had gone looking for him nearly three weeks later and never returned. “Beau January went missing the middle of April and his twin sister the first week in May?” he said aloud, scanning the reports, then their pictures. “Their twenty-first birthday was May tenth.”

“That’s right.”

His jaw tightened. “And the LAPD knows about these?”

“They do now. I faxed over the information to Detective Hayes last week, once I found out about it.”

“Wait. You live here, right?” he asked, and she nodded. “So if you didn’t have proof when you went to LA, why did you go?”

Her gaze flickered and he wondered if she was going to lie to him. “I was out there visiting relatives. Including Donovan Caldwell,” she admitted. Then quickly added, “The point is, 21 is still at large. He didn’t just land in Louisiana, Detective. He came here with the express intent of flaunting the fact that he’s smarter than the first detective in the case against him.”

“You think you can see inside the mind of a serial killer?” he asked.

“Maybe.” She was suddenly defensive, her patience obviously wearing thin.

“Why’s that?”

“I’m a psychologist.”

Holy Mother Mary.
A shrink. Just what he needed. “
Criminal
psychologist?”

“Crime isn’t my speciality, but I’ve taken classes—”

“Perfect.” A shrink, but also a
student
of criminal psychology? And related to Donovan Caldwell? This was going nowhere and fast.

As if reading his mind, she said, “My credentials aren’t important. If I’m right, it means that the 21 Killer is still out there and he’s got Zoe and Chloe Denning and we have to find them. ASAP. I need your help, Detective.”

He felt the chill of déjà vu run through his bones. Hadn’t another woman, one he thought might be a lunatic, come raging into this very office years ago? Swearing she could “see” the crimes of a killer, she’d ranted in front of his desk. Hadn’t he scoffed at her, written her off as a nut job, and then eventually become swayed that she knew something? That woman, Olivia Benchet, was now his wife.

“Unfortunately, Ms. Hayward, if you’re right, those girls are most likely already dead,” he said, deciding that there was no way to sugarcoat the truth. “According to you, the exact time each twin turned twenty-one has already past.”

She winced as if in pain.

“21 is precise. So let’s hope you’re wrong.”

A knot appeared in her jaw and her fingers stretched and curled on the arms of the chair. “All the more reason not to waste any time.” Frustration yanked her eyebrows together and she appeared to lose what little control she’d had. “The way I see it, Detective Bentz, a homicidal maniac is walking around free because your partner and Bledsoe arrested the wrong man and trumped up their case against him. Not only is the wrong man serving time in a hellhole of a prison, but the real killer is at large.” She was angry now, at the end of her rope, and she wasn’t holding back. “Any other victims who die at his hand, including Garrett and Gavin Reeves, Beau and Belle January, and now probably Chloe and Zoe Denning, will be dead due to police negligence. I was hoping you would be different from the other detectives I talked to, that you might actually give a damn since you’re some sort of hero cop around here.”

“I’m no hero—”

“I’ve read about the cases you’ve solved, how you’ve put your life on the line, nearly got killed a while back. But maybe they’ve got it all wrong about you here in New Orleans. Maybe that bad shooting, the incident in LA that has been conveniently swept under the rug, is what you’re really made of.” Her color was high now, her ire palpable. “I was hoping that you would actually give a damn about the 21 Killer, the fact that the wrong man is in prison and that twins have been kidnapped. I thought you would care, Detective, but I guess I was wrong!”

“Hey,” Montoya said, suddenly filling the doorway and taking in the scene. “Is there a problem here?”

Bentz scowled as he glanced at his partner. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Then do something!” Brianna said.

“Whoa!” Montoya was inside Bentz’s small office in an instant. He was bristling, his shoulder muscles bunching under his shirt.

Bentz lifted a hand to silently calm his partner. “I’ve got this.”

“I hope so, because I expect you”—she jabbed a finger in his direction—“you and every man on the force here and in Baton Rouge to find Zoe and Chloe Denning before it’s too late!” She flung a business card onto the desk, hooked the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and then motioned to the papers still in his hands. “Those are your copies.” She turned, giving Montoya the once-over as he stepped out of the way. “I’ve got my own. If you need to get in touch with me, my cell’s listed on my card.” With that she left, striding out of his office as quickly as she’d stepped inside moments before.

As Olivia had years ago. Olivia, too, had been spouting outrageous ideas as well, theories he’d disputed but had proved true. On first meeting Olivia Benchet, he’d thought her a bona-fide nut job and tried to dismiss her. So, who was to say that Brianna Hayward was wrong? Hell, was it possible the LAPD had made a mistake? That the 21 Killer was still at large? And here, in New Orleans. Nah, that was crazy. Right? The evidence, though circumstantial, had been sufficient to sway a jury to convict the brother of Delta and Diana Caldwell for their murders.

His jaw slid to the side and he didn’t like where his thoughts were carrying him.

“What the hell was that all about?” Montoya craned his neck to peer out the doorway and watch her leave.

Bentz reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a near-empty bottle of antacids with his free hand. “Something I’ve got to look into.” He popped the pills, jammed the cap back onto the bottle, and pushed back his chair. As he stood, he stole a glance at his computer screen and noted the leering image of Father John freeze-framed in the security video from the prison.

Great, he thought.

It looked like two of his most difficult cases, both of which he’d thought were closed and nailed shut, had suddenly reopened to converge at this point in time.

What were the chances?

And why had the 21 Killer or a copycat struck right here in Louisiana? “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Montoya asked.

Bentz grabbed his jacket from the hall tree in the corner. “Probably on our next wild-goose chase.”

Zoe opened a bleary eye.

Where was she and why was she so damned wet?
Oh, crap!
She was only partially wet. The other part of her was covered in mud. Half of her body was in the water, half out on the riverbank. Her arms still hugged the branch that had carried her to this spot, where she must have gotten hung up as the tree limb locked with other snags protruding into the river. Water lapped at her legs. The water, along with the dappled shade provided by the tangled tree limbs, had probably saved her skin from burning in the intense sunlight.

She tried to think past the ache in her forehead. She noticed that the sun was lying low and figured that she’d lain here, from the early morning hours of last night until now when it seemed to be late afternoon. Her thoughts went to Chloe and her heart cracked. Surely she’d gotten away from the madman. Surely she was somewhere safe and alerted the cops. This very minute there were probably hordes of police and volunteers, along with Zoe’s own family and friends, looking for her.

Zoe raised her head.

Pain exploded behind her eyes.

“Ouch! Crap!” Slowly lowering her head, she let out her breath. Geez, that hurt. Even staring upward burned her eyes. Her bare skin was red; though painful as it might be, a sunburn was the least of her problems. As far as she knew the sicko was still after her. After them.

Oh, God, she hoped not. She hoped that psycho was dead.

Nonetheless, she couldn’t just lie here, exposed to the elements, waiting for that creep show to appear. If he wasn’t dead or incapacitated, he’d be looking for her, and he would realize that she had drifted downstream.

Dear God, he could be nearby for all she knew.

Paddling a canoe. Driving a motorboat or hiking through the swampy forest.

“Damn it all to hell.” She watched as several pelicans drifted on the air currents high above, beaks long and wings wide against a sky where clouds moved slowly . . . Or was it her head swimming? She tried to roll over and felt a shaft of pain sear through her ankle. Oh, God, she couldn’t move. She was stuck in this muddy shoreline of twisted tree roots and weeds, a veritable haven for alligators and snakes and God knew what other slithery, dangerous creatures.

But the gators and cottonmouths, copperheads and rattlers were far less dangerous than the beast who had captured Chloe and her just hours before midnight. Had it been yesterday? Or the day before? Surely she had only been “out” for less than a day. Right?

Did it matter?

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it had been forever since she’d eaten, and her bladder suggested she might want to find a place to relieve herself.

“Great,” she muttered.

More slowly this time, she lifted her head and closed one eye as she suffered through the throbbing beneath her skull. Trying to ignore the worst headache of her life, she surveyed this bend in the river. Surely there would be fishing boats or pleasure craft passing? Even one of those jet boats that roared up and down the slow-moving river, bayou, and inlets.

She squinted, searching through the brush and trying to determine where she was and how she could get out of these swampy woods and back to civilization. She must’ve passed the spot where she’d seen lights in the night. Now there was no sign of civilization. She had to get moving, couldn’t hang around with the vague hope that someone other than the freak would find her. No, she had to find a road, steal a boat, locate someone in a farmhouse or a cabin, or flag someone fishing from a dock. Anyone who could help her.

As she attempted to move, pain splintered up her ankle. She lifted her head to survey the damage. Sure enough a baseball-sized knot, blue-green and bulging, appeared above her foot. Broken or sprained, it didn’t matter. She had to leave this spot. But as the sun lowered even farther to the west, she eased her throbbing head back down and closed her eyes.

Just for a second.

C
HAPTER
9

B
rianna figured she’d blown it.

Big-time.

Lost her cool as well as her perspective. And now, probably any chance for help.

The police department was teeming with people. Uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, clerical workers, suspects, or people like herself needing assistance jammed the place, inside and out. Conversation buzzed and echoed off the tall ceilings. Cell phones rang and the slightly musty smell of the old building couldn’t be hidden by the acrid odors of floor cleansers, perfume, and human sweat.

“Crap!” she whispered as she left Bentz’s office and squeezed past a hefty man who was heading in the opposite direction.

Angry with herself, Brianna still held on to the hope that the Denning twins were alive as she made her way through the homicide department. She’d come on too strong, had gotten Bentz’s back up, just as she’d warned herself she might. The trouble was, she thought as she hurried down the stairs, the heels of her boots ringing, she was too passionate about this case, too personally involved despite what she’d told Bentz.

Scared to death for Chloe and Zoe, she was heartsick and frustrated and wanted to scream and rail at the heavens. Instead, she’d taken out her anxiety on a detective who hadn’t investigated the 21 Killer for years. Still, she was certain 21 was here because of Bentz. Call it a hunch. Or an educated guess. It didn’t matter; Brianna was certain she was right. Hence her overreaction.

“Idiot,” she whispered under her breath, and was vaguely aware of other footsteps on the old steps behind her.

Telling herself she wasn’t going to let her own paranoia get the better of her, she wended her way down the battered old staircase where, suddenly, she was swimming against a tide of officers and visitors moving upward. Crowds had always bothered her, but she fought a surge of panic as she descended to the main floor. There she wended her way through a wide hallway to the front doors.

Outside she felt as if she could breathe again even though the sun was intense, heat still rising from the streets where late-afternoon shadows lengthened. She’d blown it with Bentz. She knew that and mentally kicked herself for the way she’d handled the meeting. Maybe she should have come to him first rather than head to Baton Rouge, but she’d thought she could gain more information at the college and offer it up, maybe set some wheels in motion. She’d thought she could help.

She’d been wrong.

“Fool,” she told herself as she walked along the sidewalk. Her meeting with Bentz had been a disaster.

A breath of wind chased through the magnolia trees, rustling the leaves and bringing with it the scent of the river, thick and musty, and reminding her that New Orleans wasn’t her native home. She, like so many others here, was a transplant.

She’d been born and raised in Bad Luck, Texas, until middle school, when her father had gotten a job at Tulane University and packed up his wife, twins, and family dog to move to New Orleans. Since that time she’d called Louisiana home. Now, of course, she felt as if she’d lived here forever.

She loved this town. But with each passing hour of not hearing from the Denning girls, Brianna was more and more certain the 21 Killer was right here in her backyard.

Her stomach squeezed at the thought as she jaywalked across the street. She’d found 21 terrifying as well as fascinating from a purely psychological point of view. What was his need to kill twins on their birthdays, the very date they became adults?

She couldn’t help but wonder if his journey to New Orleans had something to do with her rather than Bentz. After all, she’d started rattling the cages of the LAPD not long ago, when he was already on the move.

But she had been stirring up a hornet’s nest. He could have easily found out that she was fighting to get Donovan Caldwell released, that she was determined to see the real killer hunted down.

Even so . . . you don’t fit his victim profile. You are
not
the reason Zoe and Chloe are missing.

So she was back to her theory that Rick Bentz was the audience the killer was playing to. But even that theory was a stretch. Why not stay in LA and stick it in the police department’s face that he’d gotten away, that they’d imprisoned the wrong man?

After her meeting with Bentz she wondered if she, in her freaked-out, impetuous state, had come to the wrong conclusion. Hopefully. Then there was a chance the Denning girls were alive.

As she rounded a corner, she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and checked her messages. Nothing. Selma had promised she’d call or text the moment she heard anything, so no news wasn’t such good news, contrary to the old saying.

So now what? Deep in thought, she slid her phone into her bag and found her sunglasses. The sun was low in the sky now, afternoon slipping into evening, the glare still bright, so she slipped the pair of retro Ray-Bans over the bridge of her nose. Calmer now, she contemplated her next move as she headed toward her car parked one street over.

“Brianna!” a male voice called.

Tensing, she hazarded a quick glance over her shoulder to spy a tall, rangy man striding her way, his hand raised to flag her down. “Brianna! Wait up!” Something about his face was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. He moved fast, closing the distance. Brown hair, straight and thick. A strong jaw. A jagged scar visible near his right temple.

Oh. Dear. God. In an instant, she recognized him.

Her heart beat a quick double-time and she chided herself for her reaction. The man jaywalking, avoiding traffic, was none other than Jason “Jase” Bridges, her first real high-school crush. Though, of course, she hoped desperately that he didn’t know that.

“Jase?” she said, forcing her overactive pulse to slow as a full image of him as a rebellious teenager came to mind. Three years older than her, nearly out of high school when she’d entered, he’d been a hellion her mother had constantly warned her to avoid.

“He’s no good, you know,” Ellen Hayward had told her twin daughters on more than one occasion. “He’s like his father, who, I hate to say, drinks way too much. It’s no wonder Edward’s wife ran off and left him with the boys.” In the kitchen of their home off Royal Street, Mom had carefully cut biscuits from the thick dough she’d flattened over their grandmother’s wooden cutting board. Pausing, she’d straightened, the flour-dusted cutter in one hand, poised over the dough. “Oh, my.” She’d shaken her head and pursed her lips. “I hate to say it, girls, but those Bridges boys? Big trouble.” She set down the cutter and fingered the cross dangling from a gold chain on her neck. “Lord have mercy on their souls.”

“‘Lord have mercy’ is right,” Arianna, the bolder of the twins, had said. She’d sent her sister an amused glance as she’d stage-whispered, “Jase is hot!” Her eyes, the same golden brown as her sister’s, had sparkled with mischief.

“Oh, for the love of Saint Peter,” their mother had admonished. “Girls!” She’d raised her eyes to the ceiling, as if seeing past the plaster and molding she could view heaven. “Why did you give me girls?”

The twins had giggled at their mother’s discomfiture, because truth be told, what would Ellen Mae Allemande Hayward have done with boys? Dealing with all that energy and testosterone? Oh, sure. Hunting, fishing, boxing, and football were
not
on their mother’s top one thousand things to do. Nope, Ellen wasn’t exactly the den mother or football mom type. She was lucky she had girls. Brianna’s tendency toward being a tomboy was worrisome enough for their mother. As it was, the girls kept her on her knees and praying throughout the week. With boys, she would’ve had permanent scars on her patellas.

So, of course, Ellen’s warnings had gone unheeded and added gasoline to the fire of Brianna’s interest. Now, though, she pushed aside thoughts of her mother, their tidy home not far from the university, and her own fascination with the wild teenager who had grown to become this man striding toward her.

“Jase Bridges,” she said, feeling her shoulders straighten a tad.

“So you do remember.” His smile stretched.

“Yeah, of course.” As traffic passed, she hoped that she hid any indication of her fascination with him way back when. The rebellious kid who had flagrantly disrespected authority was almost gone. Almost. From first glance Jase appeared to have straightened up from the tattered, I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass eighteen-year-old. But something told her that the same rebel lurked beneath the façade of slacks and white dress shirt with its sleeves rolled up, a bit of a tattoo showing above the bend of his elbow. A rattler, she recalled, coiled around his biceps.

“I overheard your conversation with Detective Bentz.”

“How?”

“I was still hanging around after my interview with him.” He flashed that sardonic grin she remembered. “Yours sounded way more interesting than mine.”

“And you were there . . . Why?”

“Business.”

Huh. Who was this new, older, cleaned-up version of the irreverent kid she once knew? “You eavesdropped?”

A twitch of one corner of those blade-thin lips. “For once I didn’t have to.” He leaned a hip against the side of her Accord. “You were pretty loud.”

“I tend to get that way when I’m passionate about something.” She cringed a little, wondering how many others besides Bentz’s partner and Jason Bridges had heard her.

Again, the eyebrow. Cocked. Silently sarcastic. And irritating as hell.

“Is there something you wanted?” she asked, extracting her keys from her purse. “I don’t think you flagged me down just to catch up for old times’ sake or whatever.”

“I want to help.”

“With?”

“Finding 21.”

Her back muscles tightened. Though she’d take any help she could get in tracking down the 21 Killer, this, running into Jase at the station, having him hear her plea to Bentz, seemed off somehow.

“Why?” she asked.

“I’m a reporter.”

“Not a cop?”

“Not yet, though I do have my app in for the public information officer job that’s coming up.”

“So
almost
a cop.”

“More like
maybe-if-he-gets-lucky
a cop,” he admitted. He crossed his arms over his chest, the seams of his shirt pulling as he glanced back at the police station.

“Jase Bridges, lawman?”

“Yeah, hard to imagine. I know.” He snorted at the irony of it all, and she felt the corners of her mouth twitch, her first inclination to smile since she’d found Selma Denning on her porch early this morning.

“But still a reporter.”

“Probably always. No matter what the job description reads.”

Because she was fast running out of options, unable to galvanize Bentz, or the cops in LA or Baton Rouge into action, she was tempted to agree. Why not use this man who was willing to help?

Because deep down, she didn’t trust him. Didn’t trust her feelings for him and heard her mother’s warnings running through her mind. “He’s no good, girls. Not him, not his brother, and certainly not his father.”

So when had she ever listened to Ellen?

She unlocked her car but didn’t get in. “Then you know about 21.”

He gave a curt nod. “It made national news. A bizarre ritual killer usually does. And, of course, I was on the crime beat, so he intrigued me. I was in Savannah at the time, but I kept up.”

“He scared the hell out of me.”

“He scared a lot of people.”

“He still scares me.”

“You don’t think they”—he hitched his chin toward the police station—“got their man.”

“I’m sure of it,” she said, and her thoughts turned dark again. “At least ninety-nine percent. You eavesdropped on the conversation, so you know the details.”

“I heard part of it. Why don’t you fill me in?”

She studied him for a second, decided she had nothing to lose. “The long and the short of it is that I think 21 has come to New Orleans. Why? Probably to show off for Bentz, but who really knows? A couple of girls are missing and we . . . their mother and I, are worried sick that he may have targeted them.” Staring into his eyes, she felt the now-familiar lump form in her throat when she considered the fate of the Denning twins. “But I hope not. God, I hope this is all a mistake and that I’m just a paranoid conspiracy theory nut who’s got it all wrong.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.” Her cell phone rang and she fished it out of her purse to see Tanisha’s name and number appear on the screen, along with the time. “Look, I’ve got to run.” She let the call go to voice mail. “I’m late as it is.”

“Give me a call.” He pressed a business card into her palm before stepping away from her Accord and jogging across the street.

She watched him go, noticing that despite the khakis and pressed shirt, he still had the pace of an athlete, his hips moved fluidly, his stride long. “Get over it.”

She slid into the hot interior and fired the engine, then hit the A/C. It was giving her trouble, oftentimes blowing hot air, other times working, but she didn’t have the time to deal with it, so she took her chances and today, all day, it had complied. She caught another glimpse of Bridges as he disappeared around the corner of the police station and again felt that accelerated thump of her heartbeat.

“Schoolgirl crush,” she reminded herself as she glanced into her side-view mirror and nosed into traffic. She had twenty minutes to get across town where Tanisha would be waiting.

No doubt it would take her thirty.

 

 

“You could just call the Baton Rouge PD,” Montoya said as he followed Bentz through the station. “Wouldn’t that be a helluva lot easier?”