He took a swallow of his tasteless fizzy fruit juice and held it to the light. “Well, I’m right. It is half empty.”
“And you’re worried sick about Kristi.”
“I didn’t think it showed.”
“You’ve been a wreck ever since she left.” Olivia sat across his lap, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and touched her forehead to his. “She’s going to be all right. She’s a big girl.”
“Who was almost killed…had to have her heart started twice. Almost legally dead.”
“Almost,” Olivia stressed. “She survived. She’s tough.”
He rotated the kinks from his neck and drank in the scent of her as Hairy whined from the nearby recliner as if he wanted to join them in the oversized chair. “I just worry she’s not tough enough.”
“You’re her dad. She’s tough enough.” She took a long swallow from her glass, then twirled the stem. “Wanna fool around?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. You play the big, tough detective and I’ll be—”
“The weirdo who can read a killer’s mind?”
“I was going to say a weak little woman.”
He was taking another drink and nearly choked. “That’ll be the day.” But he kissed her and felt the warmth of her lips mold over his intimately. Familiarly. Old lovers who still had heat.
His cell phone vibrated loudly, quivering across the desk.
“Damn,” Olivia whispered.
He picked up the phone and glanced at the LCD. “Montoya,” he said. “No rest for the wicked.”
“I’ll hold you to that when you get home,” she said as he grinned and placed the cell to his ear. “Bentz.”
“Happy New Year,” Montoya said.
“Back atcha.” It sounded as if Montoya was already driving, speeding through the city streets.
“We’ve got a DB down by the waterfront. Looks like a party gone bad. Not far from the casino. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“I’m on my way,” Bentz said, and felt a jab of regret when he saw the disappointment in Olivia’s eyes. He hung up and started to explain but she placed a finger over his lips.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said. “Wake me.”
“You got it.”
He found his jacket, keys, wallet, and badge, then, making sure Hairy S. stayed inside, walked outside to his truck, an ancient Jeep that he kept threatening to trade in. So far he hadn’t had the heart, nor the time. Climbing behind the wheel, he heard the familiar creak of the worn leather seats as he jammed the SUV into reverse, backing around Olivia’s sedan. Ramming the Jeep into first, he managed to find a pack of gum and unwrap a piece of Juicy Fruit as he nosed his rig down the long lane and across a small bridge. Popping the stick of gum into his mouth, he slowed as he turned onto the two-lane road toward the city, then hit the gas. Olivia was right, he supposed, he had been out of sorts. Worried. He had his reasons and they all centered around his kid. The boles of cypress, palmetto, and live oak trees caught in the splash of his headlights while he thought about Kristi.
Headstrong and beautiful as Jennifer, her mother, Kristi had been described as “a handful,” “stubborn,” “independent to a fault,” and a “firecracker” by her teachers both in LA where he and Jennifer had lived, and here in New Orleans. She’d certainly given him more than his share of gray hairs, but he figured that was all part of the parenting process and it would end once she’d grown up and settled down with her own family. Only, so far, that hadn’t happened.
He took a corner a little too fast and his tires skidded just a bit. A raccoon, startled by the car, waddled quickly into the undergrowth flanking the highway.
Kristi seemed as far from getting married as ever and if she was dating anyone, she studiously kept that info to herself. In high school she’d gone with Jay McKnight, even received a “promise ring” from him, whatever the hell that meant—some kind of preengagement token.
Bentz snorted, listening as the police band crackled, the dispatcher sending units to differing areas of the city. Kristi had claimed she’d “outgrown” Jay and broken up with him when she’d attended All Saints the first time around. She’d found an older guy at the school, a TA by the name of Brian Thomas who’d been a zero, a real loser, in Bentz’s admittedly jaded opinion. Well, that had ended badly, too.
Gunning the engine, he accelerated onto the freeway and melded with the sparse traffic, most vehicles driving ten miles over the speed limit toward Crescent City.
Now, Jay McKnight had finished college and a master’s program. He was working for the New Orleans Police Department in the crime lab and Bentz would defy his daughter to think of Jay as “boring” or “homegrown” any longer. A little turn of the screw was that Jay was going to teach a night class up at All Saints. Maybe Kristi would run into him.
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,
