And maybe he could be convinced to check in on Bentz’s daughter….
He inwardly groaned. He didn’t like going behind Kristi’s back, but wasn’t above it, not if it meant her safety. He’d nearly lost her twice already in her twenty-seven years; he couldn’t face it again. Until the Baton Rouge Police figured out what was happening with the missing coeds, Bentz was going to be proactive.
Easing off the freeway, he headed for the waterfront. In the moonlight, the decimated parts of town looked eerie and foreboding, abandoned cars, destroyed houses, streets that were still impassable…. This part of New Orleans was hardest hit when the levees gave way and Bentz wondered if it could ever be rebuilt. Even Montoya and his new wife, Abby, had had to abandon their project of renovating their home in the city, two shotgun row houses that they had been converting into one larger home. The house, which had survived over two hundred years, had been in its final phase of reconstruction when the wind and floodwaters of Katrina swept through, destroying the once venerable property. Montoya, pissed as hell, was commuting from Abby’s cottage outside the city.
They were all tired. Needed a break.
He sped to the crime scene, where two units were already in position, lights flashing around a roped off area where officers were keeping the onlookers at bay. Montoya’s Mustang was parked half on the sidewalk, and he, dressed in his favorite leather jacket, was already talking to the officer who’d been first on the scene.
The body was lying face up on the sidewalk. Bentz’s gut clenched and the taste of bile climbed up his throat. The woman was Caucasian, in her early forties. Two gunshot wounds stained a short red dress. There were signs of a struggle, a couple broken fingernails on her right hand and several scratches across her face. Bentz stared at her long and hard. She wasn’t one of the missing women who had disappeared from All Saints College. He’d memorized the faces of Dionne Harmon, Tara Atwater, Monique DesCartes, and now Rylee Ames. Their images haunted his nights. This unidentified woman was none of them.
He felt a second’s relief and then a jab of guilt. This victim belonged to someone, and whoever it was—mother, father, brother, sister, or boyfriend—would be devastated and grief-stricken.
“…so I’m thinkin’ it was probably a robbery gone bad. No wallet or ID on her,” the officer was saying.
Jane Doe.
“She was found by those guys over there—” He hitched his chin to a sober group of four, two men and two women, who’d been separated from the lookie-loos wandering by. “They’re just partiers on their way home from the Hootin’ Owl, a bar on Decatur,” the officer said.
Bentz nodded. He knew the place.
The officer continued, “They claim they didn’t hear or see anything, just nearly stumbled over her body. But then, they’re pretty wasted.”
Bentz glanced at the two couples, dressed in glittery clothes and looking suddenly sober as judges.
“I’ll talk to them,” Montoya said, easing toward the couples, both African American. The girls rubbed their arms as if chilled to the bone, their eyes wide with fear. Their dates were both tight-lipped and tough-looking. The slimmest girl stared at the body, the other looked away, and the tallest of the group lit a cigarette that he shared with his date, the thin one.
Bentz’s cell phone rang as the crime lab van arrived with Bonita Washington at the wheel. She double-parked behind a cruiser. Inez Santiago, hauling a tool kit, climbed out of one side, while Washington cut the engine of the big rig.
Bentz glanced down at the digital readout on his phone. Police dispatch. No doubt another homicide.
Crap.
“Bentz,” he answered, watching as Bonita, in all her self-important fury, ushered the uniforms and gawkers away from what she considered “her” crime scene. She was an intense black woman with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude and an IQ rumored to be in the stratosphere. She loved her job, was good at it, and didn’t take flack from anyone. Santiago was already taking pictures of the dead girl. Again Bentz’s stomach twisted.
Over the phone, the dispatcher gave him the location and a quick rundown of what looked like a hit-and-run closer to the business district.
“I’ll be there ASAP, as soon as I’m done here,” he said, hanging up.
“Move away,” Washington yelled at one of the uniforms near the yellow tape, waving him off with one hand. “Who the hell has been tromping all over here? Damn it all—Bentz, get these people back, will ya? And you,” she said to the uniformed cop, “don’t let anyone, and I mean not even Jesus Christ himself, across that line, you got that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Just as long as we understand each other.” She flashed him a smile with zero warmth and got down to the business of collecting samples, gunshot residue, footprints, and fingerprints as the medical examiner’s van pulled up.
“Don’t tell me,” Montoya said as his phone began to play a salsa melody. “Damn.” He checked his watch. “Fifty-three friggin’ minutes into the new year and already two DBs.”
“There’ll be more,” Bentz predicted as he glanced once more at the victim. Two hours ago, this woman had been ready to celebrate the new year.
Now she’d never see another day.
His cell phone rang again.
His jaw clenched.
It promised to be a helluva night.
Midnight.
The witching hour.
A time when the last day was done and the next starting, and, in this case, a new year. He smiled to himself as he walked through the rain-washed city streets, hearing the sounds of firecrackers and, he supposed, champagne corks, all sounding like the rapid-fire reports of guns.
Not that he was into that type of weaponry.
Too impersonal.
Being so far from a victim, hundreds of yards in some cases, took away the thrill, the feeling of intimacy that came when the lifeblood drained from the body, the light in the victim’s eyes died slowly, and the frantic, fearful beating of her pulse at her neck slowed to nothing. That was personal. That was perfect.
Dressed in black, blending into the shadows, he crossed the campus, smelled the sweet odor of burning marijuana, and watched a couple clumsily fumbling at each other’s clothes as they kissed and made their way toward a dorm, and presumably a small twin bed where they’d go at it all night.
He felt a twinge of jealousy.
The pleasures of the flesh…
But he had to wait.
He knew it.
Despite his restlessness.
His need.
Deep inside he craved release and knew it would only come through the slow taking of a life…and not just any life. No. Those who were sacrificed were chosen.
The ache in him throbbed, refused to be denied, and his nerves were strung tight. Electrified. Anxious.
He smelled their lust. Their own special yearning. The blood singing through their veins.
He clenched his fists and cleared his mind of lust, of desire, of the heat that pounded through his skull.
Not now.
Not this night.
Not them.
Giving the entwined, stumbling couple one last angry glance, he clamped down hard on the most basic