“A lifer and then some.” Hayes was nodding as the waitress, forcing a false smile, returned with Hayes’s drink and plastic-encased menus. She rattled off a couple of specials and was about to turn away when Bentz asked, “You still have the T-Bone and steak fries?”
Without an ounce of enthusiasm, she said, “It’s, like, been on the menu forever.”
“Thought so. I’ll take it. Medium rare. Blue cheese dressing on the salad.”
She didn’t bother writing it down, just looked at Hayes, who scanned the menu and folded it closed, ordering the barbecued pork chop special.
Once she’d disappeared again, he turned dark eyes on Bentz. “Okay, so what gives? What’s this ‘favor’ you want from me?”
“I want you to look at Jennifer’s death again.”
“Jennifer? As in your wife?”
“Ex-wife, but yeah.” Bentz settled back against the cushions and took a swallow from his bottle.
“That was twelve years ago, man. She died in a single-car accident. Probable suicide.” Again Hayes searched Bentz’s face with those black eyes. Cop’s eyes.
“That’s what we all thought at the time, but it’s a helluva way to kill yourself. Messy. Sometimes doesn’t get the job done right and you end up a vegetable, or taking someone else out with you, or spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair. Not a usual form of suicide. Why not just run the car in the garage or take pills? Slit your wrists in the tub? Hang yourself in the closet?”
“She was your wife. You tell me.”
Bentz was shaking his head. “Besides, she wouldn’t have wanted to mess herself up that way. Too vain.”
“She was killing herself, man. On pills and booze. Not thinkin’ right. She didn’t give a good goddamn about how she looked and she might have taken the car out cuz she didn’t want you or your kid to come home to it, y’know? Not a good thing for her daughter to find her dead.”
“She didn’t have to do it at home. There are other places. Motels.” He thought about the shabby condition of the So-Cal Inn, a perfect place for a suicide. Cheap. Private. Poolside view if you wanted it.
Hayes rotated his drink between his palms. “Okay, let’s cut the crap here. What’s going on?”
Bentz took another swallow of his beer, then reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a copy of the marred death certificate. Quickly he explained that it had been sent to the station, mailed from Culver City.
“So what?” Hayes said. “Someone messin’ with ya.”
Bentz nodded. “But it’s more than that.” He placed the photographs of Jennifer on the table. “I think someone is gaslighting me.”
“Oh, hell! These are Jennifer, right? And recent, I assume?”
“That’s what whoever sent them to me wants me to think.”
Hayes looked at him. “Dead ringer?”
“Perfect.”
“But…dead ringer from twelve years ago? No extra pounds, no more wrinkles.”
“You got it.”
“Son of a bitch.” Hayes stared at the pictures, then gave the death certificate a longer look, his eyes narrowing. At least he was listening now.
“Someone’s pretending to be Jennifer.”
“But why?” Hayes asked.
“Don’t know, but she’s not in this alone. Someone’s taking pictures.”
“So now it’s a conspiracy? To make you nuts.”
Bentz nodded.
“This is so far-fetched,” Hayes said, though his eyes strayed to the photographs again. “Man, oh, man. You and JFK? Okay, I’ll bite. Start from the beginning.”
Bentz filled him in. From waking up in the hospital, to see and smell and feel Jennifer in the room, to the sighting in his backyard. He left out the woman at the bus stop, worried that it was too vague, that she could have been anyone.
As he was wrapping it up, Hayes said, “And you think this person has been in New Orleans and L.A. She somehow knew the moment you would wake up from your coma…and then she hurried back to L.A. for a photo shoot around town?”
“No. If the dates on the photos are legit, she was back and forth between L.A. and New Orleans.”
“Then there should be plane tickets.”
“I’ve got someone looking into it; so far nothing.”
“Could’ve used an alias.”
“Jennifer Bentz is the alias,” he said, trying to convince himself. “I’ve got to find out who she really is and what she wants.”
“And you need my help.” Hayes was wary.
“Yeah.”
“How?”
Bentz brought up the call from the pay phone. “So what I’d like to see is photos from traffic cameras in the area, or security tapes from local businesses, or better yet, satellite images of the street.”
“You don’t want much, do you? As far as I can see, no crime has been committed.”
“Unless the woman in Jennifer’s grave isn’t her.”
“That’s a big leap.”
Bentz couldn’t argue the point, though he tried. The waitress returned and slid large platters onto the table. She warned them that the plates were “really hot,” asked them about refills and if they needed anything else.
“I’m good,” Bentz said and Hayes nodded, agreeing.
“Okay, just let me know if you change your mind.” With a quick turn, she moved toward a table where four women were being seated.
Once she was out of earshot, Hayes said, “So you want me to use the resources of the department to help you find whoever’s screwing with you.”
“You could work with Montoya, in New Orleans. As I said, he’s already started.”
“Right. We’ll form a joint task force to solve…oops, there’s been no crime.” Hayes stared at his pork chop, cornbread, and applesauce. “So basically you came to California because of a postmark and some photographs.”
“Seemed like the logical place to start.”
“As I said, someone’s just fuckin’ with you.”
“No doubt. But why?”
“You tell me.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Same old Hayes; the guy needed a firm push. “So the long and short of it is I need to know if Jennifer is in that casket.”
“What?” Hayes nearly dropped his fork.
“She was buried before we could do the DNA matching we do today,” Bentz said around a mouthful of steak. “All the testing was still in its infancy.”
“And you want her tested because you think what?” Jonas asked, his fork tines jabbed in Bentz’s direction. “That Jennifer might not be in there? That she might really be alive?”
“This is just a place to start.”
“Hell.”
“So you’ll get me the file on her suicide?”
“Remind me again why I would do this for you?”
“Because I saved your sorry black ass more than once in the past.” And it was true. When Hayes had been going through his divorce with his nutcase of a first wife, Alonda, Bentz had covered for him. The fact that his wife had left Hayes for another woman had really messed the guy up. Bentz figured adultery was adultery, no matter who you slept with, but Hayes, always a ladies’ man, had been devastated. He’d spent a couple of months partying until dawn, proving his manhood by picking up a lot of different women, and literally fucking up.
Fortunately he’d pulled himself together, but it had been touch and go for a while.
“Okay,” Hayes said reluctantly. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“And I might need a little help with the exhumation order.”
“Exhumation? Lord, this just keeps getting better and better,” Hayes complained, but he didn’t offer further argument as he finished his drink, ordered another, then cut into what had to be a cold piece of pork.
Snap!
Lucy Springer turned, eyeing the edge of the park as she hurried along the sidewalk to her apartment. She saw nothing alarming in the shadows, just an old man walking his dog about a block down the street. The dog, a skinny greyhound, it seemed, was relieving itself on a tree. But the night was thick and dark, the hint of fog rolling in, making everything in the bluish glow of streetlamps appear out of focus and ghostly.