Lisa Jackson's Bentz And Montoya Bundle Part 156

But the truth was, he'd read and heard about her brushes with death, about her dealings with madmen, about her long stint in the hospital recovering from the latest attack, and he'd felt bad, even going so far as to call a florist to send her flowers before changing his mind. Kristi was like a bad habit, one a man couldn't quite shake. Jay was fine as long as he didn't hear about her, read about her, or see her. All those old emotions were locked away under carefully guarded keys. He'd been interested in other women. He'd been engaged, hadn't he? Still, having to see her on a weekly basis...

It would probably be good for him, he decided suddenly. "Character building" as his mother used to say whenever he was in trouble and had to pay the price of punishment, usually at the hands of his father.

"h.e.l.l," he muttered under his breath as the truth of the matter sank in. His jaw slid to one side and for a second he let himself fantasize about teaching a cla.s.s where Kristi was his student, where she would have to be under his scrutiny, his control. Jesus! What was he thinking? He'd decided long ago that never seeing her again was just fine. Now it looked like he'd be staring at her face for three hours once a week.

Draining his beer, he slammed the empty bottle onto his desk. He hadn't altered his whole d.a.m.ned work schedule, started working ten-hour shifts, gone through the headache of changing his whole life only to have to see Kristi every week. His jaw clenched so hard it ached.

Maybe she'd drop his cla.s.s. The second she realized he was stepping in for Dr. Monroe, Kristi would probably alter her schedule. No doubt she didn't want to see him any more than he wanted to deal with her. And the thought that he would be her teacher would probably really bug her. She'd resign from his cla.s.s. Of course she would.

Good.

He read the rest of the cla.s.s list of thirty-five students interested in criminology-make that thirty-four. His gaze drifted back to the first name on the list: Rylee Ames. Disturbed, Jay scratched at the stubble on his chin.

What the h.e.l.l had happened to her?

CHAPTER 2.

"...No loud music, no pets, no smoking, it's all here in the lease," Irene Calloway said, though she herself smelled suspiciously of cigarette smoke. In her early seventies with a few short wisps of gray hair poking from under a red beret, Irene was as thin as a rail beneath her faded baggy jeans and oversized T-shirt. Her jacket was a man's flannel shirt and she peered at Kristi through thick gla.s.ses. She and Kristi were seated at a small scarred table in the furnished studio apartment on the third floor. The place had a bit of charm with its dormers, old fireplace, plank floors, and watery gla.s.s windows. It was cozy and quiet and Kristi couldn't believe her luck in finding the place. Irene jabbed a long, gnarled finger at the fine print of the lease.

"I read it," Kristi a.s.sured her, though the copy she'd been faxed had been blurry. Wasting no more time, she signed both sets of the six-month lease and handed one back to her new landlady.

"You're not married?"

"No."

"No kids?"

Kristi bristled as she shook her head. Irene's questions were a little too personal.

"No boyfriend? The lease stipulates only one person up here." She motioned to the small loft that had once been an attic, possibly servants' quarters of the grand old house now chopped into apartments.

"What if I decide I need a roommate?" Kristi asked, though whoever that might be would be relegated to the tired-looking love seat or an air bed.

Irene's lips thinned. "Lease would have to be rewritten. I'd want to run a security check on any prospective tenants and, of course, the rent would go up along with another security deposit. And no subletting. Got it?"

"So far, it's just me," Kristi said, somehow managing to hold her tongue. She needed this apartment. Housing was hard to find in the middle of the school year, especially any apartments close to campus. A stroke of luck helped her discover this loft on the Internet. It had been one of the only units she could afford within walking distance to school. As for a roommate, Kristi would rather fly solo, but finances might dictate trying to find someone to share the rent and utilities.

"Good. I've no use for nonsense."

Kristi let that one slide. For now. But the older woman was beginning to bug her.

"You don't have any other questions?" Irene asked as she folded her copy crisply with her fingernails and slid it into a side pocket of a hand-crocheted bag.

"Not yet. Maybe once I move in."

Irene's dark eyes narrowed behind her gla.s.ses as if she were really sizing Kristi up.

"If there are any problems, you can also call my grandson, Hiram. He's in One-A." She waved her fingers as she explained, "He's kind of the manager on duty. Gets a break on his rent to fix things and take care of small problems." The furrows over her eyebrows deepened. "d.a.m.ned parents of his split up and forgot they had a couple of kids. Stupid." She fished into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a business card with her name and phone number along with Hiram's, then slid it across the table. "I told my son he was making a mistake taking up with that woman, but did he listen? Oh, no...d.a.m.n fool."

As if realizing she was saying too much, Irene quickly added, "Hiram, he's a good kid. Works hard. He'll help you move in, if you want, does all the fix-up. Learned it from my husband, may he rest in peace." Pushing to her feet, she added, "Oh, I'm having Hiram install new dead bolts on all the doors. And if you have any window latches that aren't solid, he'll take care of those, too. I suppose you've heard the latest?" Her gray eyebrows shot up over the tops of her rimless gla.s.ses and she scratched at her chin nervously, as if she were weighing what she was about to reveal. "Several students have disappeared here this school year. No bodies found, y'know, but the police seem to suspect foul play. If ya ask me, they're all runaways." She glanced away and muttered, "Happens all the time, but you can never be too careful." She nodded, as if agreeing with herself, tucking her bag under her arm.

"I saw the news coverage."

"Things were different when I grew up here," Irene a.s.sured. "Most of the cla.s.ses were taught by priests and nuns, and the college, it had a reputation, but now...ach!" She waved one hand into the air, as if brushing aside a bothersome mosquito. "Now it seems they hire all sorts...weirdos, if you ask me, anyone who has a d.a.m.ned degree. They teach cla.s.ses about vampires and demons and all kinds of satanic things...religions of the world, not just Christianity, mind you, and...then there are those ridiculous morality plays! Like we're still living in the Middle Ages. Oh, don't get me going about that English Department. A nutcase is in charge of it, let me tell you. Natalie Croft has no business teaching a cla.s.s, much less running a department." She snorted as she opened the door. "Ever since Father Anthony-oh, excuse me, it's 'Father Tony' because he's so hip I guess, everyone's best friend-ever since he took over from Father Stephen, all h.e.l.l has broken out. Literally."

Lips compressed, Irene shook her head as she stepped over the threshold onto the porch with its poor lighting. "How's that for progress? Morality plays, for crying out loud? Vampires? It's like All Saints stepped back into the Dark Ages!" She grabbed hold of the railing and headed down the stairs.

Open-minded, Irene Calloway was not. Kristi neglected to mention that some of the cla.s.ses the old woman had disdained were already on her schedule.

Locking the door after her new landlady, Kristi checked all the windows, including the large one in the bedroom leading to an ancient, rusted fire escape.

The latch on every window in the small apartment was broken. Kristi figured she wouldn't mention the lack of security to her father. Immediately, as she headed down the exterior staircase for her things, she called Hiram's cell. Irene's grandson didn't answer, but Kristi left a message and her phone number, then began hauling her few belongings to her new home, a crow's nest overlooking the stone fence surrounding All Saints College.

Seated at her desk at the Baton Rouge Police Department, Detective Portia Laurent stared at the pictures of the four coeds missing from All Saints College. None of the girls had resurfaced. Just disappeared, not only from Louisiana, but, it seemed, the face of the earth.

As computer keyboards clicked, printers hummed, and an old clock ticked off the final days of the year, Portia eyed the pictures for what seemed to be the millionth time. They were all so young. Smiling girls with fresh faces, intelligence and hope shining from their eyes.

Or were their expressions masks?

Behind those practiced smiles was there something darker lurking?

The girls had been troubled, that much had been ascertained. So they'd been written off. No one, not the other members of the police department, not the administration of the college, not even the missing girls' families seemed to think that any serious foul play was involved. Nope. These smiling once-upon-a-time students were just runaways, headstrong wild girls who had, for one reason or another, decided to take a hike and not reappear.

Had they been into drugs?

Prost.i.tution?

Or were they just tired of school?

Had they connected with a boyfriend who had whisked them away?

Had they decided to hitchhike around the country?

Had they wanted a quickie vacation and never returned?

The answers and opinions varied, but Portia seemed to be the only person on the planet who cared. She'd taken copies of these girls' campus ID pictures and pinned them to the bulletin board of her cubicle. The originals were in the general file of all the recent missing persons, but these were different; these photos connected every girl who had attended All Saints College, disappeared, then left no trail. No credit cards had been used, no checks cashed, no ATMs accessed. Their cell phone usages had stopped on the evenings they'd gone missing, but not one of them had turned up in a local hospital. None of them had bought a bus or plane ticket, nor had there been activity on their Mys.p.a.ce pages.

Portia stared at their pictures and wondered what the h.e.l.l had happened to them. Deep inside, she believed them all dead, but she hoped against hope that her jaded cop instincts were wrong.

None of the girls had owned a vehicle, and none had called the state of Louisiana home until they'd enrolled at the small private school. The last persons known to have seen each of them hadn't noticed anything strange, nor could they give the police even the tiniest hint of what each girl had in mind, where she could have gone, whom she might have seen.

It was frustrating as h.e.l.l.

Portia reached into her purse for her pack of cigarettes, then reminded herself that she'd quit. Three months, four days, and five hours ago-not that she was counting. She grabbed a piece of nicotine gum and found little satisfaction in chewing as she gazed from one picture to the next.

The first victim, missing nearly a year since last January, was an African-American student, Dionne Harmon, with dark skin, high cheekbones, a beautiful, toothy grin, and a tattoo that said "LOVE" entwined with hummingbirds and flowers low on her back. She hailed from New York City. Her parents had never married and were now both deceased, the mother from cancer, the father in an industrial accident. Her only sibling, a brother by the name of Desmond, already had three kids of his own, had skipped on his child support, and when Portia had tried to reach him he'd told her he wasn't interested in "what had happened to the 'ho.'"

"Nice," Portia remembered aloud, recalling the phone conversation. None of Dionne's friends could explain what had happened to her, but the last person to admit seeing her, one of her professors, Dr. Grotto, had at least seemed concerned. Grotto's specialty was teaching cla.s.ses on vampirism, sometimes using a Y in the spelling-like vampyrism- vampyrism-which was a little odd, though people could become intrigued and inspired by the strangest things sometimes. In his midthirties, Grotto was s.e.xier than any college professor had the right to be. The old Hollywood description of "tall, dark, and handsome" fit him to a T, and he certainly was far more interesting than any of the old dusty profs who had been her teachers in her two years at All Saints over a decade earlier.

The other missing girls were Caucasian, though they, too, had disjointed, uninterested families who had written them off as irresponsible runaways, "always in trouble."

How odd they had all ended up at All Saints and subsequently disappeared within eighteen months.

Coincidence? Portia didn't think so.

The media had finally noticed and was adding some pressure. The public was now nervous, the police department receiving more calls.

Since Dionne had disappeared over a year ago, Tara At.w.a.ter and Monique DesCartes had also vanished, Monique in May, Tara in October, and now Rylee Ames. All of them took some of the same cla.s.ses, primarily in the English Department, including the cla.s.s on vampyrism taught by Dr. Dominic Grotto.

Slap!

A file landed atop her photos.

"Hey!" Detective Del Vernon said, resting a hip on her desk. "Still caught up in the missing girls?"

Here we go again, Portia thought on an inward sigh, expecting a lecture from the ex-military man turned detective. Vernon had the "three-B-thing" going for him: bald, black, and beautiful. Though he was in his forties, he'd never lost his U.S. Marine-honed build. His shoulders were wide and straight, his waist trim, and according to Stephanie, one of the secretaries for the department, his b.u.t.t was "tight enough to hold in his bad-a.s.s att.i.tude." And she was right. Vernon had a great body. Portia tried not to notice. Portia thought on an inward sigh, expecting a lecture from the ex-military man turned detective. Vernon had the "three-B-thing" going for him: bald, black, and beautiful. Though he was in his forties, he'd never lost his U.S. Marine-honed build. His shoulders were wide and straight, his waist trim, and according to Stephanie, one of the secretaries for the department, his b.u.t.t was "tight enough to hold in his bad-a.s.s att.i.tude." And she was right. Vernon had a great body. Portia tried not to notice.

"What's this?" she asked, picking up the file and flipping it open to a crime scene report and the picture of a dead woman.

"Jane Doe...throat slashed, from the Memphis PD. Looks like it could be the same guy who killed the woman we found last week near River Road."

"Beth Staples."

"I want you to check it out."

"You got it," she said, and waited for him to remind her that the girls missing from All Saints weren't known to be victims of homicide and therefore not their concern.

Yet.

But he didn't. Instead Vernon's cell phone rang and he thumped his fingers onto her desk before walking back through the maze of cubicles. "Vernon," he said crisply, crossing the threshold to his private office and kicking the gla.s.s door shut behind him.

Portia picked up the Jane Doe file, turning her attention away from the pictures of the coeds. There was a chance that she was wrong, a chance that the missing coeds were, indeed, still alive, just teenage runaways rebelling and getting into trouble.

But she wasn't laying odds on it.

Two days after Kristi moved in, she landed a job as a waitress at a diner three blocks from campus. She wasn't going to get rich making minimum wage and tips, but she would have some flexibility with her shifts, which was exactly what she'd wanted. Waiting tables wasn't glamorous work, but it beat the h.e.l.l out of working for Gulf Auto and Life Insurance Company, where she'd spent too many hours to count in the past few years. Besides, she hadn't given up her dream of writing true crime. She figured with the right story, she could become the next Ann Rule.

Or a close facsimile thereof.

Twilight had settled as she crossed campus, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her head hunched into her shoulders as the first drops of rain began to spatter the ground on this, the day before New Year's Eve. A gust of winter wind stole through the quad, rattling the branches of the oak and pine trees before brushing the back of her neck with a frosty kiss. She shivered, surprised at the drop in temperature. She was tired from the move and her legs felt leaden as she angled past Cramer Hall, where she'd lived her freshman year of college nearly ten years earlier. It hadn't changed much, certainly not as much as she had, she thought ruefully.

Her breath fogged in front of her, and from the corner of her eye she thought she saw a movement, something dark and shadowy, in the thick hedge near the library. Gaslights glowed blue, casting watery light, and though she squinted, she saw no one. Just her overactive imagination.

But who could blame her? Between her own experiences at the hands of predators, her father's warnings, and her landlady's remarks, she was bound to be jumpy. "Get over it," she admonished, cutting past Wagner House, a huge stone edifice with dark mullioned windows and black iron filigree. Tonight, the grand old manor seemed foreboding, even sinister. And you think you can write true crime? How about fiction? Maybe horror? Or something equally creepy with your imagination! Geez, Kristi, get a grip! And you think you can write true crime? How about fiction? Maybe horror? Or something equally creepy with your imagination! Geez, Kristi, get a grip!

Hurrying as the rain began to pour, she heard footsteps on the walk behind her. She hazarded a quick glance over her shoulder and saw no one. Nothing. And the footsteps seemed to have stopped. As if whoever was following her didn't want to be discovered. Or was mimicking her own hesitation.

Her stomach squeezed and she thought about the can of pepper spray in the backpack. Between the spray and her own skill in self-defense...

Dear G.o.d, get over yourself!

Hoisting her bag higher, she started off again, ears straining for the sc.r.a.pe of leather against concrete, the whisper of heavy breathing as whoever it was gave chase, but all she heard was the sound of traffic in the streets, tires humming over wet asphalt, engines rumbling, an occasional squeal of brakes or whine of gears. Nothing sinister. Nothing evil. Still, her heart was hammering and despite her mental berating, she unzipped a pocket of the leather pack and fumbled for the canister. Within seconds it was in her hand.

Again she looked over her shoulder.

Again she saw nothing.

Half running, she cut across the lawn and through the gate nearest her apartment. She'd reached the street when her cell phone jangled. Jumping wildly, she cursed softly under her breath as she reached into her coat pocket. Her father's name lit the screen. Clicking on, and grateful, for once, that he had called, she greeted, "Hey, don't you ever work?"

"Even cops get breaks every once in a while."

"And so you decided to take one and check up on me?"

"You called me," he reminded her.

"Oh, right." She'd forgotten...one more little reminder that she wasn't a hundred percent-her d.a.m.ned faulty memory. Every once in a while, she totally blanked out on something important. "Look, I wanted to tell you my new address and that I got a job at the Bard's Board. It's a diner and all the food is named after Shakespearean characters. You know, like Iago's iced latte and Romeo's Reuben and Lady Macbeth's finger sandwiches or something. It's owned by two ex-English teachers, I think. Anyway, I have to learn them all by Monday morning when I start. I guess it'll get me back into the swing of the whole memorizing thing again."

"Romeo's Reuben sounds s.e.xual."

"Only to you, Dad. It's a sandwich. I might not mention it to your partner."

"Montoya will love it."

She smiled and, as she reached the apartment house, asked, "So how're you feeling?"

"Fine. Why?"

She thought of the image of him fading to gray as she'd driven away the other day. "Just checkin'."

"You're making me feel old."

"You are are old, Dad." old, Dad."

"Smart-a.s.s kid," he said, but there was humor in his voice.