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So whoever killed Jay had targeted her.
But why then, when he’d entered her house, long enough to leave the message in her underwear drawer, hadn’t he stuck around? Why hadn’t he waited for her and attacked? Why would he be playing this cat and mouse game when before he’d tried to kill her? Why the change in attitude?
The answer came in Jay’s voice, echoing inside her head.“Because it’s his sick mind game. He wants to terrorize you. Now that he missed his mark and killed me, he wants to torment you. He’s playing with you, Kris.”
Did that make sense?
“What about this makes sense? He’s toying with you. Getting off on it.”
“Sick-o,” she said aloud, and made her way up the stairs to her office and heard a soft mew from the floor below. “Oh, Lenore.” She’d been so lost in thought she’d forgotten about the kitten. Hurrying down, she found her attempting to climb the steps. “You’ll get it. Soon,” Kristi assured her, then scooped up the little black cat and headed up again. Once in her office she stood in front of the built-in bookcase where copies of her true-crime novels were shelved. Still holding and petting the kitten, she eyed the spines and thought back to the cases. Several of the murderers she’d written about were dead, so she discounted them. Not that a loved one, a member of the killers’ families, or close friends couldn’t have taken up the sword and sought revenge, but they were in the second layer of suspects.
“Who, who, who?” she whispered, kissing the kitten on its head while studying the volumes. Her gaze fell onThe Bayou Butcher, her book on Ned Zavala,who had been tried and convicted of slaughtering a member of his family, cutting his sister up and freezing her parts before using them to hunt alligators. Zavala, like so many convicted killers, had sworn his innocence and, years later, his mother had recanted her testimony, swearing it was her dead husband who had committed the crimes, Zavala’s stepfather. She swore he was behind several other women who had gone missing on the bayou but had maintained her silence until Corrin Hebert’s massive heart attack had taken his life.
Nonetheless, Ned Zavala had served most of his sentence and was only paroled because of good behavior while behind bars.
She slid into her desk chair and turned on her laptop and initiated a quick Internet search of the ex-con. Sure enough, he was living in the area, at the same address as his mother in a small town south-west of New Orleans. Zavala had always blamed Rick Bentz for locking him away and had been outraged that Kristi had written a book and used the name the press had given him for its title. He’d sent letters to her publisher, had always insisted that he wasn’t guilty, and was incensed that anyone was profiting from his tragedy. The letters had stopped three years ago. Just about the time he’d been released from prison.
She reached for a new legal pad from the stash she kept in a drawer and started a list of potential suspects. Ned Zavala’s name was at the top. She also included his address and where he worked, all info she found easily as she paid for an Internet private eye service. Ned’s employment history had been spotty, working through a temp agency at jobs at hardware and sporting goods stores, working in an oyster-processing plant, once driving a forklift for a construction company.
She wondered. No one, including her father, had been able to prove that Zavala’s stepfather, Corrin Hebert, had been the killer, but it was possible as Hebert had been a big bear of a man with a mercurial temper. He’d hunted alligators and anything that moved in the bayou. He’d been a suspect, but the evidence had pointed to Zavala, who had no alibi and some of his dead sister’s blood on his jeans, evidence he’d sworn had been planted. His mother, finally, had said Hebert had done the deed, filled a vial with blood he’d taken off the dead woman, dripped it onto the jeans, and told his wife he’d kill her and the rest of the brood if she so much as said a peep. She’d believed him.
Now Ned was taking care of his housebound mother, the very woman whose silence had kept him locked up. Good old Mom.
A weird twist of fate, Kristi thought, turning the idea over in her mind.
Kristi bit her lip and absently stroked the cat.
Maybe the state of Louisiana had gotten it right after all. Maybe Zavala actually had been the Bayou Butcher. Or maybe he was just pissed that he’d spent years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. Rick Bentz had sent him up the river. Kristi Bentz had profited from and sensationalized the bizarre crimes.
But there were others as well.
She leaned back in her chair and perused the other books she’d written where the convicted murderer in the story was now out, a free man.The God Complex and Murderwas the story of Hamilton Cooke, a brilliant surgeon with a genius IQ, who had been convicted of homicide in the brutal murder of his wife, but the evidence had been thin and circumstantial and with an appeal and new attorney, his conviction had been overturned. Dr. Cooke was working on getting his license to practice medicine reinstated.
He was handsome, arrogant, and cold, and Kristi, to this day, believed he’d murdered his wife for a hefty life insurance payout. Over a million dollars. But he’d proclaimed his innocence, of course, and threatened to sue Rick Bentz and the New Orleans Police Department for false arrest, and Kristi Bentz for profiting from his tragedy and the “incredible miscarriage of justice!”
Kristi didn’t buy it.
Hamilton Cooke was shrewd and never let his public outrage die. When his story faded from the news, it was he who always pumped it up again, giving interviews on television or for the newspapers, keeping up several social media platforms, polishing his infamy into a burnished stardom of sorts.
Her gaze moved to the next book about another local murderer, but before she could think about Mandel Jarvis, a pro football player who’d been charged and convicted of killing his model wife, her cell phone jangled and she saw Zera Stern, her agent’s name, flash onto the screen. Zera was young and ambitious and had only been with Kristi a short while. And she always talked a mile a minute.
Before Kristi could even say hello, she heard, “Is it true? Is the Rosary Killer really alive? Oh, my God, Kristi, is that the person who attacked you? Who killed Jay?” Zera was incredulous. “I thought—I thought he was dead. Father John, I mean. Killed in the swamp or something. Wasn’t that right? Didn’t your father shoot him? Or alligators eat him or something?”
“Yes, but—”
“No ‘buts.’ Now we have a sequel. I mean, I hate to be that person, the agent that sees dollar signs in every tragedy, but this . . . Oh, my God, no one can tell this story like you. I know you must be feeling raw. Good Lord, you haven’t even recovered fully from the attack yourself, but a tragedy like this is a horrible, horrible turn of events. I know your life is turned inside out and I cannotimagine the grief you’re going through. Unthinkable. Just unthinkable. But, you do see my point, right? That you can make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak, spin this thing on its ear, and find a hint of a blessing in this terrible turn of events.”
“Oh—I don’t know. And no one’s certain that whoever killed Jay is the Rosary Killer. It’s still all under investigation.”
“But he’s back, right? There have been other homicides that fit his MO and the police are looking into the idea that he’s returned, almost from the dead! This story will practically write itself because you—you, Kristi Bentz—are smack-dab in the middle of it.”
This was all too fast. “Nothing is certain.”
“Yet. But it will be. Have faith,” Zera said, her voice having a kinder edge. Then, of course, she was back to business: “Just tell me you’ll think about it,” she insisted. “You don’t have to give me an answer right now, of course, but I want to shop the idea around, you know, before someone else gets the idea and it’ll happen, you know it will. Drake Dennison would love to get his teeth into this one.”
“I know.” Drake Dennison was another true-crime author, one who had reached more than a modicum of success, a recluse who was an expert on serial killers. However, Drake had lost some of his luster once Kristi began her own career. As the daughter of a homicide detective and herself a victim of more than one psychopath, she was more in demand, and though she’d never met Dennison, she’d learned that he resented her.
“This could be big. I’ve already talked to your editor and believe it or not the publisher had already discussed rereleasingThe Rosary Killer, you know, because those made-for-TV movies on some of your books? They’re coming out again—this month! Wait—in a week or two? Remember?”
