Bentz stood up and stretched, sick of the small, airless interrogation room. So typical; there was at least one in every precinct. A camera mounted high in the corner near the ceiling had recorded the entire conversation. Bentz could have asked for a lawyer or kept his mouth shut, but he had nothing to hide.

He knew it.

He sensed Hayes knew it. His account of the events at Devil’s Caldron had been confirmed by Travis and his girlfriend. This was an exercise in futility, but one that ensured Hayes didn’t make any mistakes.

He glanced at his reflection on the wall. God only knew who was standing behind the two-way mirror. Andrew Bledsoe and Riva Martinez were probably there, waiting for him to slip up and make a mistake. Maybe the DA was there, along with other detectives. Hell, maybe even Dawn Rankin was watching.

It was ridiculous, but Bentz understood procedure. Rake Rick Bentz over the coals. Prove that he’s a good cop gone bad, someone insane enough to show up in Los Angeles and start killing people who had known his ex-wife.

Even though he’d talked things through with Hayes earlier, this was official, “for the record.” So he’d suffered through the questions about his marriage to Jennifer, her betrayal, the divorce, the fact that while they’d been living together a second time, trying to see if it would work, she’d cheated on him all over again. And around that time, the accident that had taken her life. He understood that it was necessary to rehash this dark period in his life, though that hadn’t made it any easier.

Then Hayes had segued to Jennifer the ghost, and Bentz had recalled how he’d seen her in his hospital room back in Louisiana. How he’d determined that the woman “haunting” him was actually a real flesh-and-blood imposter, one he’d stupidly driven along the coast. They’d stopped at Devil’s Caldron, the park overlooking the sea, where she’d made the tragic leap into the ocean that had killed her.

“Well, tomorrow morning we should have some answers about your ghost. Or at least, your ex-wife,” Hayes had said. The detective had cut through bureaucratic red tape and arranged for the exhumation of Jennifer’s body, scheduled for the next morning. A step in the right direction.

Bentz was questioned about Shana McIntyre and Lorraine Newell. Hayes brought up the Caldwell twins, asked what he knew about the double homicide so similar to the Springer twins’ case. “We’ve been through this before,” Bentz had said, knowing that Olivia was waiting for him. He was tired, hungry and could offer them nothing more than the truth.