d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l! He ran after her as she disappeared over the edge of the cliff, her feet kicking up dust. He ran after her as she disappeared over the edge of the cliff, her feet kicking up dust.
"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Bentz was on her heels, but slipped at the first turn, his new shoes giving him no traction on the steep gravel and dirt trail cut into the hillside.
He caught himself, but felt something pop in his bad knee. Pain exploded up his leg.
Great.
He kept running, agony searing his muscles.
Gritting his teeth, he pursued her, wincing and limping and cursing as he half ran, half slid down the path with its sharp switchbacks.
Somehow, he kept her head in his sights, her coppery hair glinting in the sunlight.
"Stop!" he yelled into the wind, but she ignored his order and continued to descend the hillside, down the treacherous trail.
Cursing himself for being a dozen kinds of fool, he followed. Bentz knew he was losing ground, but he would catch her on the beach. The strip of sand at the base of the cliff was a small crescent, one end cut off by the point where tidal waters swirled and crashed, the other end a wall of rock leading up to the cliff. The only land access to the beach was via this slippery path.
Once she got down there, there was no escape. No exit. She would be trapped and he would haul her a.s.s into the nearest police station.
Ignoring the pain in his leg, he scrambled down, following until she was nearly out of sight. "What the h.e.l.l is your game?" he wondered aloud, his jaw tight.
He caught a glimpse of her approaching one of the lower switchbacks on the trail. The precipice at that turn was so dangerous that a platform had been constructed, complete with safety railing. From that point tourists were able to look down to a spectacular view of the roiling sea in the cove known as Devil"s Caldron.
He was gaining again.
Saw her reach the platform.
Panting, pushing himself, he hurried faster.
Ahead of him, she paused, waiting at the platform. For a second he thought she was waiting for him. Then, to his horror, she swung one leg over the railing.
Oh, G.o.d, what was she thinking?
But he knew.
Holy Christ, he knew.
"No!"
His heart clutched as she climbed onto the railing and perched on the edge, high above Devil"s Caldron.
Oh, no. Please. He skidded to a halt, watching in horror. "Don"t!" He skidded to a halt, watching in horror. "Don"t!"
She looked over her shoulder and blew him a kiss. Then she turned back to the ocean and lifted her arms over her head, poised like a ballerina. A moment later she jumped, her body a tiny needle of a woman soaring down past the cliffs. Bentz forced himself to watch as she disappeared from view and fell into the roiling furious tide far, far below.
CHAPTER 29.
It was like watching Jennifer die all over again. Bentz stared into the churning waters, feeling sick as he clutched the railing. His heart was pounding, his mind screaming. Why had she jumped? Why?
His gaze sc.r.a.ped every inch of the sh.o.r.eline and water, trying to locate a trace of her-a sc.r.a.p of pink or white bobbing on the angry swirling surf so far below.
No. For the love of G.o.d...
"Hey!" he heard from somewhere, as if through a long tunnel. "Hey!"
Blinking, trying to focus, he turned and saw someone running down the hillside. No, two people. A long-haired boy in his twenties and a leggy girl chasing after him.
"I saw her jump. Jesus Christ, she jumped!" the boy said, his face red from the run, his eyes round with fear. "Is she okay?"
"She couldn"t be," his companion said. "I mean, it"s got to be fifty feet."
"More. Maybe seventy-five!" The kid was emphatic and ran to the railing, even if he was a poor judge of height. Then he noticed Bentz"s gun. "Oh, whoa..." He stopped abruptly, raising his hands. "Easy, man."
"I"m a cop," Bentz said, digging out his badge and flipping it open. Something he"d done hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but today it felt awkward, surreal, as if he were watching himself. "Rick Bentz. New Orleans Police Department." His own voice sounded disembodied. He kept looking down at the surf. Surely she would surface. She had to. But his gaze scoured the raging tide, rocky shoals, and sweep of beach.
Nothing.
The boy said, "Oh, so...like you were chasing her. She was a criminal?" Obviously the kid wasn"t buying it.
"From New Orleans?" his girlfriend said as she stepped behind her boyfriend and peeked coyly around his shoulder.
If you only knew, Bentz thought wearily and reached for his cell, his gaze still on the ocean. Bentz thought wearily and reached for his cell, his gaze still on the ocean. Where the h.e.l.l are you? Come on! Where the h.e.l.l are you? Come on! Silently he willed her to surface, to live, this woman he"d already buried. Silently he willed her to surface, to live, this woman he"d already buried.
"No service down here, dude," the kid said eyeing Bentz"s cell. "You have to go up top to connect to a tower."
Bentz nodded, but he couldn"t drag his eyes from the sea and the surging waves pounding the sh.o.r.e, sending up clouds of spray. Holy G.o.d.
There was no sign of anyone in the surf.
Once again, like the night in Santa Monica, "Jennifer" had disappeared. "d.a.m.n it all," he muttered between clenched teeth, then turned to the boy and girl and tried to concentrate.
"What"s your name?" he asked the kid.
"Travis."
"Good. Here, Travis, take the phone, climb up to the top, and call 9-1-1." He slapped his cell phone into the kid"s hand. "Tell them what happened, that a woman jumped into Devil"s Caldron, then if they want to keep you on the line, stay. If not, hang up and speed-dial number 9. It"ll connect you to Detective Jonas Hayes, a friend of mine and a detective for the LAPD. Tell him what happened here and that I won"t be making it to Point Fermin. Tell him we need a search-and-rescue team. ASAP!"
Travis nodded, obviously relieved to have something to do, any thing to help.
"But where are you going?" the girlfriend asked Bentz.
He nodded toward the swirling sea below. He knew it would be fruitless, but he had to try and find her. She couldn"t have just vanished. No way!
Montoya"s diligence was finally rewarded.
He"d spent so much time on the Internet and phone to California that his shoulders ached from inactivity. But it had paid off. He glanced to the window and saw that it was dark, most of the detectives from the day shift long gone.
But the long tedious hours had been worth it, he thought now, twisting the kinks from his neck.
Earlier, through the California DMV, he"d located several Yolanda Salazars who resided in Encino.
He"d weeded through them and zeroed in on the woman he was looking for. Just like Carlos had told him on the phone, Yolanda was married to his cousin"s boy, Sebastian. He"d pulled all the records he could on her, found her to be clean, a student at a junior college, studying accounting while she paid the bills as a hairdresser.
But the bit of information on Yolanda that caught Montoya"s attention was her maiden name. According to her marriage license she was born Yolanda Filipa Valdez.
Valdez? His heart skipped a beat as he made the connections. He leaned back in his chair and clicked the pen he was holding as a copy of her California driver"s license appeared on the screen. His heart skipped a beat as he made the connections. He leaned back in his chair and clicked the pen he was holding as a copy of her California driver"s license appeared on the screen.
A pretty woman. Thirty-two, according to the driver"s license. A model citizen.
Nothing to make her suspicious whatsoever.
Aside from not registering her car, which wasn"t that big of a deal. But there was another piece to the puzzle, a factor that made the lack of registration more interesting.
Yolanda just happened to be the older sister of Mario Valdez, the boy Bentz accidentally shot while he was still working for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Montoya clicked his pen again, put in another unanswered call to Bentz and Jonas Hayes, the one detective Bentz felt was on his side in L.A.
Montoya considered flying out to the West Coast to help, then discarded the idea. Bentz was a grown man, able to handle his own problems, even if people were dropping like flies around him. He"d figure it out.
If he needed help, he"d call. Right?
He stared at the picture of Yolanda Valdez Salazar. "What"s your deal?" he asked the image. Did she look enough like Bentz"s wife to fake him out? Had she been involved with the deaths of Shana McIntyre and Lorraine Newell? He clicked his pen again and eyed the screen. And what about those twins who were killed? Was she the mastermind behind the double homicide that looked, on the surface, identical to the murders twelve years earlier? She would have been around twenty when Mario was killed, and the same age when the first double homicide was committed. Younger Younger than her victims. than her victims.
"Nah," he said aloud, leaning even further back in his chair and frowning. That didn"t add up.
The picture on the screen just stared at him blankly. A killer? The mastermind behind the entire Jennifer Bentz haunting?
If so, she would have had to have made a trip or two to New Orleans to "appear." He figured he"d help the L.A. cops out and check her credit card statements, find out if she"d taken a trip to the Big Easy any time in the last year. And then he"d e-mail all the information he"d gathered about the woman to Detective Jonas Hayes of the Los Angeles Police Department.
He smiled, imagining that he was tugging on her string a bit, unraveling her master game. "It"s over," he told the image on the computer monitor. "You screwed with the wrong guy."
"So what the h.e.l.l happened here?" Hayes demanded over the rush of the surf and wind and the steady whomp, whomp, whomp of the Coast Guard helicopter hovering high overhead.
"I wish I knew." Bentz felt numb inside, disbelieving. They stood on the sand, the afternoon sun warm and bright as a crowd of rescue workers scoured the roiling waters of Devil"s Caldron. The California Highway Patrol was coordinating the search with the Coast Guard.
"But you"re saying that this woman jumped into the water from up there?" Hayes pointed at the platform some forty feet above the water swirling in the cove.
"Yes." Bentz eyed the decking with its railing from below, seeing the posts and beams that supported the platform as it jutted over the cove.
"No one could have survived that."
A muscle in Bentz"s jaw worked. He wanted to protest, to think that the woman was alive, that her leap into the churning waters wouldn"t have taken her life.
He"d already explained his conversation with her, but of course he would have to make a formal statement to that effect. Hayes had asked him the reasoning behind the aborted drive to Point Fermin. He"d questioned how Bentz had been fool enough to get into the car with her.
A good question.
Bentz had thought about everything that had happened in the last few hours, turning the events over and over again in his mind. But he had no answers as to why the woman had finally let him approach her, only to elude him here. For the past two hours he"d scoured the rocky shoals, beach, and tidewaters hoping against hope that the woman who"d sworn she was Jennifer had survived the horrifying descent to the cove. But so far no one had found any sign of her.
"So where"s the body?" Hayes was saying, staring out to sea. "s.h.i.t, we"ll have to send divers down if the Coast Guard doesn"t come up with anything. If If they can even get down there. s.h.i.t." they can even get down there. s.h.i.t."
Bentz reached down and cupped a handful of sand, thinking that she could not have disappeared without a trace, without leaving behind a patch of clothing, a trace of hair or skin. How was it that this woman defied all laws of forensic science?
"Nothing more we can do," Hayes said, shaking his head. "Okay, let"s get out of here."
As they headed to the trail, Hayes couldn"t help lecturing Bentz. "So you get into a car with her. Taking a little afternoon drive? G.o.d almighty, Bentz. I guess we"re lucky she didn"t take you over that cliff with her. But I don"t get this woman trailing you, then disappearing. And why is it that this ghost of yours is so h.e.l.l-bent into diving into water?"
"She"s not a ghost," Bentz said as they started up the steep incline to the parking lot. "And I don"t know." He was hobbling as he climbed the path, his knee and thigh on fire. No doubt he"d reinjured himself.
"When we get to the top, I"ll need your weapon," Hayes said. "Just to make sure it wasn"t fired."
"It wasn"t."
"Just the same."
"Yeah, I know."
It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the parking lot. Bentz was sweating, his leg throbbing. He eyed the silver car that Jennifer had driven, the one "Jennifer" had said was a gift. Everything about her story was all smoke and mirrors, nothing being what it seemed. The police had already roped the vehicle off, a tow truck on its way to take the Chevy to the police garage where it would be examined thoroughly.
His cell phone beeped, and he realized he had several messages. Mostly from Olivia, the last stating she was on a plane to Los Angeles. "d.a.m.n."
"Bad news?"
"Olivia"s on her way. Her flight lands in a couple of hours. I need to pick her up at LAX."
"I don"t think that we"ll be done in a few hours," Hayes said. "There"s a lot to go over. And I know she"s coming in. She called me, too, when she couldn"t get hold of you. We"re sending a cop to pick her up. She can meet you at the Center, if you want. Afterward, I"ll take you to rent a vehicle."
"Or she could rent one herself."
Hayes waved off the idea. "No, her pickup is all arranged. And I left her a message. You might want to call her and explain."
Bentz started to dial just as he heard shouts rising from the beach below. Turning, they saw the Coast Guard helicopter hovering over one spot in the ocean where a diver bobbed in the water. Bentz"s stomach turned over.
Hayes"s gaze was fixed on the basket that was slowly being lowered from the chopper to the ocean"s surface. Squinting, his jaw tight, he stated the obvious: "Looks like they found Jennifer."