No!
A whistle blasted, shrieking so loudly she thought her eardrums would shatter.
No! Oh, God, no!
“Rick! Help!” she cried as the end of the tunnel seemed to shrink, becoming smaller and farther away.
Her heart drummed and her legs were heavy, so heavy.
“Bentz!” she tried to scream, but her throat was strangled, her voice a whisper.
He turned back toward her for a second and she saw his badge, catching in the bright sunlight. “I can’t,” he said as the day turned to night and suddenly he wasn’t alone. A woman was with him, a beautiful woman with long dark hair and crimson lips. She took his hand, linked her fingers through his, and smiled with malice and glee as she pulled him away.
“No! Wait! Rick-”
The train thundered ever closer, the tracks quaking. She stumbled, barely able to right herself.
A horrific whistle shrieked while brakes squealed. The sound of metal screeching against metal was deafening, the smell of burning diesel acrid in her nostrils.
Steam swirled all around her.
Help me! Help my baby!
But her prayer fell on deaf ears as steam and shrill noise reverberated through the tunnel.
“No!” she yelled, startling herself awake.
Her heart was pounding, her body drenched in sweat, the sheets of her bed twisted. Dear God. It was a dream. Only a flippin’ dream. Taking in deep breaths, she glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. Still a few hours before she had to get up and dressed for a day at the shop.
She sat upright, pushed her hair from her eyes, and realized her fingers were trembling, the residual effect from the nightmare.
From his dog bed on the floor, Hairy S lifted his scruffy head. His ears pricked forward and his little tail beat against his bed hopefully. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Come on, jump up!”
He didn’t need a second more of encouragement. The dog hopped from his bed, made a running leap, and landed near Olivia’s pillows. After washing her face enthusiastically, he burrowed under the covers and she stretched out again. With one hand she scratched Hairy behind his ears. His warm body curled close to hers.
A far cry from her husband’s embrace, but it would have to do for now. Her husband. What the hell was he doing in L.A.? Chasing after a ghost, or a dream? She tried not to think that he was still harboring feelings for his dead ex-wife, but she knew better. His guilt, she thought, was swallowing him whole and someone was preying upon him.
Who?
The same nagging question that had been with her since he’d shown her the mutilated death certificate kept poking at her brain relentlessly. It’s not that she didn’t believe in ghosts; she just wasn’t certain. She’d had her fair share of dealing with unexplained, if not paranormal, activity. Hadn’t she, herself, seen through the eyes of a twisted, sadistic serial killer?
Oh, for some of that insight now.
She glanced at the clock. It was only one-twenty in the morning in L.A. Was Bentz still awake? Was he thinking about her? Chasing down a dream? She touched her still-flat abdomen and wondered if she and Bentz and the baby would ever have a normal life.
Yeah, well, what’s that? You knew what you signed up for when you married a workaholic.
Sighing, she closed her eyes, determined to relax and find sleep again. She was just starting to doze when the phone rang. Smiling, she said to the dog. “I guess he can’t sleep, either.”
She picked up the receiver and said, “Hey,” a smile audible in her voice.
“Do you know what your husband’s doing in California?” a woman’s hoarse voice whispered.
“What?” Olivia was suddenly wide awake, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling in fear. “Who is this?”
“He’s looking for her. And do you know why? She’s his true love, not you. Jennifer. He’s never forgotten her.”
“Who is this?” she demanded again.
But the phone went dead.
“Bitch!” Olivia hissed into the receiver. Of course Bentz was in L.A. She knew that. She also knew that he was looking for Jennifer or a woman who was impersonating his ex-wife. She looked at caller ID; the display flashed UNKNOWN CALLER. “Great.” No name. No number. No area code. No way to figure out who had called her. It’s no one, just a crank call, someone who knows Bentz went to L.A. to determine what happened to Jennifer.
But there weren’t many people who knew that fact. At least not here in New Orleans. Only Montoya and herself. So the call must’ve come from somewhere else, and she’d bet her life savings that it had originated in Southern California.
Bentz, it seemed, was rattling a cage or two. Which was what he’d hoped to do.
As she set the phone onto the nightstand, she thought about calling her husband and explaining what had happened, but decided to let it go.
For tonight.
Instead, she tossed back the covers and padded to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water and drank it down. She stared out the window over the sink to the backyard, watching the play of moonlight through the cypress trees.
Afterward, she set her glass in the sink and double-checked that all the doors were locked and the windows latched.
Only then, did she return to bed.
She glanced at the digital read out one last time and decided that in five hours she’d call her husband and find out what the hell was going on.
Bentz stayed up listening to news reports, soaking up any information he could find on the Internet. Why the hell had the Twenty-one killer or some damned copycat decided to strike again, after all these years? It was too late to call Olivia, so he spent several restless hours thinking about the case surrounding Delta and Diana Caldwell’s murder. It had been a travesty, a horror for the shell-shocked, grief-ridden parents and older brother, another D name…Donny or Danny, no. Donovan! That was it. The girls’ brother had been eight years older and at the time of the tragedy had been forced to hold his shattered family together. Apparently it was an effort destined to fail, as years later Bentz had learned through the grapevine that the kid’s parents had divorced.
When Bentz closed his eyes he could still see how the victims had been posed: naked, facing each other, bound in a red ribbon that reminded him of blood. Bentz had nearly thrown up at first look.
Whenever he thought back on the Caldwell murders he worried that he hadn’t given the investigation 100 percent of his focus. He had worked the case as best he could, considering his own mental state, but it wasn’t enough. Bledsoe was right. Bentz had left Trinidad holding the bag. And now, it seemed, two other girls had lost their lives to the same maniac.
Maybe if he’d been more on his game with the Caldwell twins, the new double homicide wouldn’t have happened and two innocent girls would still be alive today.
After a sleepless night Bentz decided to offer up his help on the new double homicide investigation. He knew he wouldn’t really be a part of the LAPD, but certainly he could help, “consult,” as it were, as he’d been the lead at one time in the Caldwell twins’ murder.
He said as much when he called his old partner for information.
“Shit, Bentz. You know I can’t talk about this,” Trinidad said. “As for the reasons you came back to L.A.-I heard some of it from Hayes-I can’t be a part of it. I got to think about my retirement. I can’t do anything to screw it up, and I’m not talking about the new murder case. Not with you. Not with my wife. Not with the press. Not with any-damned-body.”
“I worked the first case.”
“That’s assuming they’re related.”
“They are.”
“You know this because of a news bulletin, a thirty-second sound bite at eleven? Give it a rest, Bentz. I gotta be straight with you. No one here wants your help.”