It was a long while before the door opened.
One of the officers tried to peek inside, but his partner put a hand in front of his chest to stop him. They were talking to whoever had answered the door. Even smiling.
What were they doing? “Go inside,” she muttered under her breath.
From the looks of it, they weren’t going to do anything at all.
She’d had enough. She turned off the video.
Fuck doing things the right way—staying low and keeping out of sight—all bullshit. She got out of her car, slammed the door shut, and marched down the middle of the street toward the house.
She joined the officers at the door.
Bennett looked disheveled. No jacket or tie. The top buttons of his shirt were undone, low enough to see a smattering of chest hair.
“Ma’am,” one of the officers said, “I’m going to have to ask you to back off.”
“Not until you enter the house and talk to the young woman inside. She’s underage, and I believe she was brought here under false pretenses.” Lizzy made a show of reading both men’s badges, setting name and numbers to memory.
The officer on her right looked uncomfortable. His partner, not so much.
“Officer Tagaleri,” she said. “If you leave here without questioning the woman inside, I will make it my business to report both of you to the chief of police.”
“Go back to your car, ma’am, and let us do our jobs.”
Before she could protest, he put a hand on his holster.
She looked from the officer to Wayne Bennett.
The man glared at her. His usually handsome face was pale and splotchy, his body stiff with ire. Recognition flickered in his eyes.
It was time to walk away.
Regaining control of her emotions, she turned around and headed back for her car, feeling three pairs of eyes on her back. Her mind was made up. If those officers left the premises without checking the house first, she would go in and take care of business herself.
She slowed her pace, took her time walking down the street and toward her car. She’d hoped Bennett wouldn’t recognize her as Stacey Whitmore’s camerawoman, but the undeniable glimmer she’d seen in his eyes before she’d walked away told her he knew exactly who she was.
When she reached her car, she opened the door and climbed in behind the wheel and turned the video on. Within minutes, a crying young woman, ushered by one of the officers, was helped into the backseat of the police car.
Lizzy took a breath and waited for the officers to drive away.
The girl was safe for now.
But Bennett knew what she was up to, which meant things were about to get ugly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The first thing Claire Kerley saw when she walked into her bedroom was the crayon marks scrawled across her bedroom walls. Walls she had spent an entire weekend painting herself. She dropped her backpack on the floor.
She could hear her little brother and sister fighting in the other room, arguing over who got the front seat on the way to the grocery store with Mom.
Before she could close her door, her older brother, Cameron, walked in and took a seat on the corner of her bed.
He was eighteen going on thirty. Their mother had remarried and had two more kids, another boy and girl. Judging by the way they argued, they would grow up to be just like her and Cameron.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Are you kidding me? Look around. Those little monsters take my things and write on my walls. And that man Mom married took away my phone and car for a week. That’s just plain cruel.”
“They found a bag of weed in your room, and it didn’t help that you called Mom a bitch. The punishment was justified.”
“Did you come in here just to remind me of what a horrible person I am?”
“No, I came in here to tell you about something I saw at school today. You’re not going to like it, but I didn’t want you to hear from anyone else.”
“What is it? Are you and Megan breaking up?”
“No, we’re fine. This is about you,” he said, “not me.”
Downstairs, Mom yelled goodbye, and the house fell silent. Claire waited for her brother to say whatever it was he had on his mind, but he seemed hesitant. “You’re driving me crazy, Cameron. Out with it.”
“It’s about Luke. After practice, I saw him making out with Jasmine Perkins behind the gym.”
“That’s a lie.”
He shook his head. “They were going at it pretty hot and heavy.”
“Luke despises that girl. God, this is a new low. You’ve never liked Luke. You’re just jealous because he’s the quarterback and you’re a lineman.”
He sighed. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but if my character is going to be called into question, I guess I don’t have a choice.” He fiddled with his smartphone and then positioned it so they could watch the video together.
Her stomach roiled. It was true. Luke and Jasmine were all over each other.
Claire dug around in her backpack until she remembered she no longer had a phone. She hated her stepdad, Dave . . . hated her whole damn family. She had to get out of here before she suffocated.
Cameron followed her down the carpeted stairs. “Where are you going?”
“Out. I just need some time alone, OK?”
“I guess, but you better get back before Dave gets home.”
“I’m tired of Dave telling me what to do. He’s not our dad.”
“Dad didn’t just leave Mom, you know,” Cameron said to her back. “He left all of us, Claire, and never looked back. You need to get over it. You need to stop being angry at the world because of Dad. Stop acting like a spoiled brat and grow up.”
Claire walked out of the house and slammed the door behind her. More than anything, she wished she could move far away and never talk to any of them ever again. By the time she got to the end of her street, she was shivering from the cold. What an idiot she was . . . leaving the house without a jacket. Stupid.
She looked over her shoulder. She wasn’t about to go home while Cameron was there. He would just laugh, rub it in her face that she couldn’t stay away for more than five minutes. So she kept on walking. She rubbed her arms as she went, thinking about how unfair life could be.
As he drove along, he found himself thinking about the David Ligare exhibit that would soon be showing at the Crocker Art Museum. One of a handful invited to attend a private preview of nearly eighty works, he’d been so caught up in throwing the police off his trail, he’d forgotten about the impending event until this very moment. Ligare’s works were poetic. He created order in a chaotic world.
Right now, though, he needed to take care of business, finish what he’d started. The media was finally getting fired up. In today’s paper, one journalist warned the people of Sacramento to be alert. After finding a body near the American River and then the woman in the elevator, reporters took it upon themselves to give credit to the Sacramento Strangler.
Hmm. Maybe they were finally catching on. He would love to be a fly on the wall at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sometimes the media could be downright clever. For instance, dubbing Albert Fish the “Werewolf of Wysteria” because of the rumors that he lusted for blood under a full moon sounded as if a little thought actually went into naming the killer. But the Sacramento Strangler? If memory served, he wasn’t the first person in the area to strangle a few people to death.
The Sacramento Strangler, he repeated in his mind. Bah. Boring. Bland. For now, he had to let the nickname go. He had more important things to worry about.