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Kristi Bentz had nearly died the other night.
But luck had been with her and she’d managed to escape.
That would never do.
Of course, her husband hadn’t been so lucky.
Retribution, he thought, feeling the hint of a smile crawl across his lips. He stood and peered into the dark bayou and the wound that was healing in his shoulder.
Retribution would be his.
And it was long, long overdue.
CHAPTER 20
Late into the night Kristi researched the subjects of her books who now lived in New Orleans. There were few. Less than a handful. She looked again at the spines of her true-crime books and the one that caught her eye wasAmerican Icon/American Killer, the Mandel Jarvis story.
Once a pro football player, next a convicted murderer, and now a local televangelist. And he had found God in prison, even become a minister of some church that, because of his fame, had a solid following.
She pulled out the book and flipped through the pages, but she remembered most of the details of his case. Mandel had been a smart, charismatic, and athletic kid who grew up poor but had worked hard, the oldest of five brothers whose incredible skills as a defensive end in football had earned him a four-year ride to LSU and a third-round draft pick in the NFL. His pro career had just started to take off when it ended with a life-altering knee injury that no amount of surgery, rehabilitation, or painkillers could overcome.
He’d become a celebrity of sorts, showing up on a lot of talk shows, a fit, good-looking man who was featured in a few TV commercials and even modeled for a while. A recurring part in a television series introduced handsome, sexy, bad-boy Mandel Jarvis to a new legion of fans that he fed through the Internet and social media platforms. For a while, at least in New Orleans, Mandel Jarvis was everywhere and far more famous than if he’d continued his football career.
His incendiary romance with Filipa Petrovic, a gorgeous Serbian runway model, threw him into the international spotlight. The fact that Filipa hadn’t quite gotten out of her previous marriage and was rumored to be pregnant with either her husband’s or Mandel’s baby caused the gossip seekers and their publicists to salivate while tabloid sales soared, and the ratings of entertainment news on television or the Internet whenever the couple was featured hit the stratosphere. Filipa and Mandel were everywhere, at least that’s how it had seemed to Kristi at the time.
Filipa had managed a quick divorce and married Mandel in a very public ceremony on a Greek island. No baby was ever born, no mention of a miscarriage. Nothing about it, and Kristi suspected the whole “Is she or isn’t she preggers?” had been part of a publicity stunt.
The marriage of Mandel and Filipa had been stormy from the get-go, rumors flying that the bride had experienced ice-cold feet and had wanted to bolt on the morning of the nuptials. Whether it was all just talk, or a carefully leaked story by Mandel’s publicist, no one ever knew. Mandel and Filipa said their vows on the island with a thousand candles lighting the centuries-old church, Filipa gorgeous in a designer gown that showed, through a webbing of intricate lace, the entire slope of her back, her pale hair partially braided to fall in her signature loose, messy curls. Mandel, arrow straight, his shoulders wide, his waist narrow, was dressed in a black tuxedo, his smile mysterious, his dimple showing through beard shadow, his mocha skin gleaming.
And from that point on, the marriage had been rumored to be stormy, a union of two beautiful people with enlarged egos and more than a dusting of fame, a couple who regularly walked the red carpet and whose relationship was always on again/off again. It was grist for a rumor mill that kept grinding to keep the public interested. In the four years of their marriage there was constant talk of affairs and drugs, gambling debts and orgies. All the while two red-hot tempers were forever igniting.
It had all come to a head early one Sunday morning just before Christmas, when they had argued. The fight had escalated to the point that neighbors heard yelling and screaming, and a gunshot through the heart that had ended Filipa’s life.
Mandel had admitted to accidentally killing her in an act of self-defense. He swore they struggled over her handgun and it went off in the fight. The gun, a Glock, was registered to Filipa. There was a record of her purchasing it the year prior to her death, but there had been questions about the actual firing of it. The prosecution’s expert insisted the trajectory of the bullet, blood splatter, and gunshot residue did not support Mandel’s claim, while the defense had their own celebrity expert who came up with a differing scenario.
In reading over the court transcripts and studying the evidence, Kristi believed Mandel Jarvis probably hadn’t intended to kill his wife, but murder her he did during the heated argument that had turned so violent and eventually fatal.
Kristi had sifted through the evidence after the trial, then walked through the crime scene at the historical home in the French Quarter where the homicide had been committed.
Rick Bentz had been the detective who had arrested Jarvis and provided the evidence for the prosecution. Upon his conviction he’d sworn to get back at Bentz and anyone else involved in the “false arrest.”
Kristi had written the true-crime book. Jarvis had threatened lawsuits against Kristi, her agent, the publisher, anyone he could name to block the publication ofAmerican Icon/American Killer.But the lawsuits had never materialized.
Jarvis had been found guilty of manslaughter, served four years of a ten-year sentence, and gotten out for good behavior. While in prison he found God, became a minister of his own church, and managed, through the help of his publicist, to spread the word outside the prison walls. By the time he walked out of the gates to a newfound freedom, he had a huge following of over twenty thousand believers. Today the membership of his church boasted more than a hundred thousand due to broad television coverage of a reformed sinner preaching the gospel, living the good life, and promising salvation.
Now Kristi flipped open the book to the midsection where photos of Mandel Jarvis filled the pages. Pictures of him from infancy, through childhood with his brothers, in college in full uniform, again as an NFL pro athlete, his disarming smile ever-present. Then shots of Filipa and the wedding on the Greek isle, celebrity head shots, some candid photos of the couple, and finally the police images of the bloody crime scene, a New Orleans mansion forever stained by murder.
She snapped the book closed.
In the nearly five years since his freedom was regained, Mandel had lost none of his swagger. He had married his current wife, a B-level actress with whom he’d been rumored to have been involved while married to Filipa. Despite his tarnished reputation or possibly because of it, Mandel Jarvis was still considered handsome and “cool,” and today he maintained his innocence, that the cops set him up somehow. Today he was a major player in the community, preaching about God and police brutality and the corruption of the system. Despite finding the “path to heaven through Jesus,” he still seemed filled with hatred for the police, prison system, and specifically Rick Bentz.
Worse yet,American Icon/American Killer,timed for publication just as he was released from prison, was a best seller and brought more attention to him, which he had turned to his advantage, using his fame or infamy to preach against sin, corruption, and the American legal system, all the while growing his congregation exponentially.
So would he, after all this time, still be harboring a grudge so deep that he would risk everything he’d gained—millions of dollars, a wife and son—for revenge? Was he deranged enough to think he could turn a second murder around to his advantage? Had he been lying in wait for Kristi and when things went sour, killed Jay either intentionally or accidentally? Besides, Mandel Jarvis was a muscular black man, who was just over six feet and about 220 pounds. She hadn’t been able to see the attacker’s face, nor skin tone, but she didn’t think he was that size, not that heavy and certainly not that tall.
But she could be mistaken. The night had been dark, the rain a downpour, visibility practically nil. And she’d been freaked out of her mind, fighting for her damned life, concerned only about saving herself and her unborn child, not in her right mind.
She froze.
