“Oh, Jesus, Livvie, it’s a mess,” he said and she heard the weariness in his voice. “I got a call from Lorraine, Jennifer’s stepsister, saying she’d spotted Jennifer outside her house. I drove down there and when I got to the house, Lorraine was dead. Homicide.”

“Oh dear God,” Olivia whispered, holding the phone against her head in one hand, twisting the covers with her other. This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t! “Jennifer?” she asked, but felt the truth hit her deep inside. Jennifer Bentz, real or imagined, ghost or person, was behind the carnage.

“Who knows?” He explained the events of the night while Olivia, feeling cold as death inside, listened, trying to concentrate while feeling as if a vise were tightening around her chest. Though she no longer had visions of murders from the victim’s eyes, she still felt the mind-numbing dread run through her as she thought of the dead women and the torture they’d gone through.

Bentz was saying that his friend Jonas Hayes had driven down from L.A. He’d been sympathetic when Bentz had complained about having his firearm confiscated and being forced to endure questioning in the interrogation room. For the first time in his life, Bentz had been questioned on the other side of the mirrored window.

The Torrance police had believed his story, though there were still a lot of questions in the air because Bentz had visited both Shana and Lorraine in the past week and since then both women had been murdered. Bentz was, without too many doubts, under suspicion.

Olivia felt sick inside.

“…it took hours,” he said, his voice tense with a hardly-restrained anger, “to explain about the whole Jennifer-thing and how someone wanted me in the L.A. area, the murderer most likely, so he could start his rampage. The long and the short of it is, I’m being used as the excuse, or even motive, for the killer to strike.”

“Wait a minute. You’re saying you think Jennifer or whoever is impersonating her is killing people and trying to make you look like you’re involved?”

“That’s about it.”

“Good Lord, Bentz. That’s not only far-fetched. It’s just plain nuts.”

“And would take incredible planning, as well as luck.” He paused as if thinking things over. “Look, as I said, I just wanted you to hear it from me, rather than from someone else or on the news. Once the media ties Shana to Lorraine to me and Jennifer, things are really going to heat up.” He hesitated and she imagined him running one hand in frustration through his thick hair, his eyebrows drawn together, his jaw set.

“I’m glad you called. I’ve been worried.”

“Is that why you answered like you did?”

“Wait? What? How did I answer?” she asked.

“Like you were all pissed off. What was that all about?”