Of course, all this walking and trudging through sand hadn’t helped. But he had wanted to explore the underbelly of the pier by daylight, hoping to find an escape method the woman might have used. A ladder, a rope, a catwalk. Unfortunately, when he’d hitched along the beach, he’d looked up and seen only the guts of the massive dock, pillars covered with creosote and tar. No means of escape.

By light of day Santa Monica Bay was a different animal. The other night the whole area around the pier had been eerie with the lights of the amusement park muted and fuzzy in the fog, but bright enough to reflect in the black waters. This morning the pier wore an entirely different face. Yes, there was a carnival atmosphere, but it seemed far less sinister. The amusement park bustled with noise and the shouts of delighted riders. There were lots of people walking, riding bikes, jogging, or window-shopping on and around the beach. Men fished off the pier, people strolled on the beach, kids played in the sand. Nothing menacing or dark.

Almost as if he’d dreamed the horrid situation. He’d checked with the webcam people twice, and there was some hitch in locating the film. “Just give me another day,” the technician had told him. Bentz wasn’t sure if the holdup was about authorization or technical issues, but he was skeptical that he’d ever get access to the webcam records.

He looked out to sea one last time.

How does a woman plunge into the water and disappear?

Maybe Hayes would help answer that question.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered, climbing into the warm interior of his rental car. After a quick U-turn, he stepped on it and was lucky enough to stay ahead of a few yellow lights. Traffic, for once, was light and he didn’t spot a tail or catch one glimpse of Jennifer.

As he drove he toyed with the notion that Hayes might want to talk to him about the old Caldwell case, to pick his brain to see if there was something the files didn’t hold. Maybe Hayes was hoping Bentz had a forgotten piece of information that might be the key to unmasking the Twenty-one killer and solving the new case with the Springer twins as the vics.

He thought of the grief-stricken parents, the hell they must be going through. A few times in his life he’d almost lost his daughter and the horror of it was branded in his memory, even though she’d pulled through. And now Olivia wanted another child. Of course she did. He didn’t blame her; she was younger than he and had never been a parent.

Maybe…

If he survived whatever was going down here on the coast.