by R. J. Jagger
“This entry right here is for 412,” she said.
Jundee wrinkled his forehead.
“So?”
“So, we only have 300 pages. There is no page 412.”
Jundee checked.
She was right.
In fact, there were a lot of entries higher than 300. On close examination, half of them, maybe more, were between 300 and 600.
He paced.
“My theory’s right,” he said. “This key refers to the page numbers followed by the line items on that page. What’s wrong though is that we don’t have all the pages. We only have half of them.”
“So where are the other half?”
“This briefcase is full,” Jundee said. “Only half the papers could fit in here. My guess is that there’s a second briefcase. The rest of the documents are there.”
“A second briefcase?”
“Yes. Did you see another one in the car?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I would have grabbed it if I saw it.”
Jundee chewed on it.
“Were the car windows open when you got down to the scene?”
Fallon reflected back.
“I think so.”
“I’ll bet the other briefcase flew out of the car.” He locked eyes with her. “Is that possible?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t really search around or anything like that. I had no reason to.”
Jundee went to the window and looked out silently.
Then he turned and said, “We need to go back to the crash site.”
“It’s a long way. Five hours.”
Jundee looked at his watch.
“We’ll take off work early, say three o’clock,” he said. “That will get us down there by eight. It’ll still be light enough to get down the cliff and look around.” A beat, then, “Grab some comfortable clothes now so we don’t have to swing by here later.”
Black shorts.
A pink T.
White cotton panties.
Tennis shoes.
All that got stuffed into her purse, barely.
“There.”
The briefcase went back under the bed.
They hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob, mad sure the lock was engaged, and headed back to the firm.
“What about Trench?” Fallon asked on the way back. “I’m supposed to work until five, right?”
“Trench won’t be a problem.”
“Are you going to tell him what we’re doing?”
“No. Neither of us can tell anyone anything,” he said. “We need to figure out what’s going on first.”
35
S hade wasted no time putting the bait in the trap—flashing a picture of Visible Moon and a sketch of a man all over town, telling people that Visible Moon was either killed or abducted by the man in the sketch, telling them to please, please, please contact her, Marilyn Striker, at Room 318 of the Kenmark if they ended up seeing either person.
Most were cooperative.
Most wrote down the information.
A few looked at the photo of Visible Moon and said, “She’s an Indian?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
As if the issue was a lost dog.
Shade bit her tongue, forced a smile and told them one more time where to contact her.
Midway through the afternoon, in a rundown bar called the Rainbow Tavern, something unexpected happened. The bartender—a bulky guy with a flattop and a veined nose—took the picture of Visible Moon out of Shade’s hand and studied it closer.
“She’s an Indian, right?”
“Right.”
He tilted his head.
“I saw an Indian woman a couple of days ago, Tuesday evening to be precise,” he said. “I don’t know if it was her or not.”
Shade’s blood sang.
“Where?”
“She was in a car,” the man said.
“A car?”
“Right. She was in the passenger seat. The car went past me. I just happened to be looking. The whole thing took a second.”
“Who was driving?”
“I have no idea.”
“You didn’t see the driver?”
“No, I only saw the woman.”
“What color was the car?”
He retreated in thought.
“Dark,” he said.
“Black?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Black, dark blue, dark green, something dark. I’m not getting a clear picture. I remember though that it was fairly new. That’s what sort of struck me. You don’t see that many Indian women in Denver and when you do, it’s usually not in a fancy car.” He handed the photo back to her. “No offense.”
“I understand.”
“I’m just saying—”
Shade nodded.
No problem.
“Where was this car when you saw it?”
He wrinkled his forehead, lost, then brightened and said, “It was on Broadway, that’s it, yeah, on Broadway, way down on the south edge of town, almost out of the city. That’s where a friend of mine lives, a female friend if you catch my drift. The more I think about it, nine o’clock. That’s about when I saw her.”
Nine o’clock.
South Broadway.
Dark car.
“What’s your name?”
“Jim,” he said. “Jim Poindexter.”
Shade shook his hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, Jim Poindexter.”
“Likewise.”
Shade was almost out the door when she had one more thought and turned. “When you saw the woman, was the car window up or down?”
“Up.”
He scratched his head.
Then he added, “Maybe that’s why I sort of remember this. It was still warm enough out that people were driving with their windows open.”
“Maybe the window was up so she couldn’t yell for help,” Shade said.
The man shrugged.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Maybe she was being held at gunpoint.”
“Maybe,” he said. “On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t even her.”
36
W ilde drove down Natalie Levine’s street, not sure exactly why. The search of her house last night revealed nothing other than she wasn’t the pinup woman from the boxcar. That was all he needed to know.
Still, she was blond.
Young.
Stunning.
Pinup quality.
Missing.
Was her body staged somewhere, waiting to be found?
Was she connected to the boxcar victim?
There was one neighbor mowing the grass across the street. Traffic was thin. Wilde swung around the block, parked and headed back on foot, cutting up the drive of the next-door neighbor and then swinging across the backyard to his destination.
Then he was in.
His heart pounded.
Everything was going exactly as he wanted, but still his heart pounded.
It always pounded.
Every time.
The place looked different by the light of day. Okay, now what? Where could he possibly look that he hadn’t already?
He opened drawers and went through them, all the way to the bottom, all the way to the back.
Kitchen drawers.
Bedroom drawers.
Underwear drawers.
Cabinets.
Nothing new, that’s what he found, just the same old stuff.
He tugged at the carpet where it met the floorboards, looking for a weakness that might lead to a concealed compartment.
He found nothing.
Upstairs in the bedroom, he pulled the sheets off and looked for holes in the mattress or box springs. They were in good condition. The room had a small closet accessed with folding doors. Lots of clothes hung on hangers. An equal number were piled on the floor. Nothing was in that pile or under it, only cloth
es. He shut the folding doors and sat down on the bed.
Now what?
He went downstairs, looked in the refrigerator, the oven, the breadbox and the toaster.
He found nothing.
Okay, done.
There was nothing here.
He had his hand on the backdoor knob when a final thought came to him. He went back upstairs, opened the closet and went through the pockets of the clothes on the hangers.
He found nothing.
Then he went through the pockets of the dirty clothes on the floor. Inside the pocket of a pair of white shorts, he found a book of matches, half empty.
The cover was red and had a gold B on it.
It was identical to the boxcar matches.
There was writing on it.
604.
The writing was the same size and style as the boxcar matches.
What had been on those?
He retreated in thought.
Then he remembered.
616.
This one was 604 and the other one was 616.
37
D riving south with Jundee behind the wheel, Fallon lit a cigarette and took a deep drag as the Packard came into view, still sitting where she’d abandoned it. She must have had a look on her face as they passed it because Jundee said, “Are you okay?”
For a heartbeat she considered telling him.
Telling him about the Packard.
Telling him about her past.
Telling him the truth.
Instead she said, “I’m fine.”
“You left me there for a second,” he said.
She blew smoke.
Suddenly she said, “Pull over.”
“Why?”
“Please, fast,” she said.
He did.
She hopped out, closed the door then leaned in the window. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where you going?”
“Ten seconds.”
She headed back towards the Packard on foot. When she got close enough to read the license plate number, she memorized it and then trotted back to Jundee, throwing the butt on the ground as she pulled the door open.
Jundee wrinkled his forehead in confusion.
“What was that about?”
“I thought I saw a wallet by the side of the road,” she said. “Sorry.”
“A wallet?”
She nodded.
“And?”
“And it wasn’t a wallet.”
“What was it?”
She racked her brain for something that looked like a wallet and got nothing.
“I don’t know. Some kind of junk.”
Jundee checked for traffic and took off.
“You don’t need stranger’s wallets,” he said. “I have money.”
She gave him a sideways glance and lit another cigarette.
No man was going to own her.
Never again.
When Colorado Springs disappeared in the rearview mirror, the topography heading south suddenly changed, getting more arid and desert-like. The dirt got a redder hue, the horizon line stretched wider and the clouds in the distance took on more of a cotton-ball shape.
“Someone did something nice for me,” she said. “I want to send him a thank-you card but I only have his license plate number. Is there a way to find out who he is from that? You know, get his name and address.”
“Sure, I suppose. What’d he do for you?”
“He let me use his car.”
“And he didn’t even know you?”
“No.”
“Were you wearing those legs when he let you?”
She laughed.
“Maybe.”
“Then that explains it.”
“I have a transistor radio at home,” Jundee said. “I should have brought it.” A beat then, “I guess it’s just the same. There’s probably no reception out here anyway.”
“I like the quiet,” Fallon said.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“You can see things better when it’s quiet.”
“Like what?”
“See that black bird way over there?” she said, pointing. “Like that.”
“You don’t think you’d see it if a radio was on?”
“I’m not saying necessarily that you wouldn’t see it,” she said. “Obviously your eyes still work the same. What I’m saying is that you generally see more when your brain isn’t worrying about something else. The opposite is true too, you hear more if your eyes aren’t working so hard.” She stuck the cigarette out the window and flicked ashes. “What are we going to do if we find the other briefcase?”
Jundee grunted.
“That’s not the question,” he said. “The question is, what are we going to do if we don’t find it.”
38
S hade left the Rainbow Tavern with the corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. The woman Jim Poindexter saw Tuesday night was Visible Moon; it had to be. She was being held at gunpoint or knifepoint, that’s why the car window was up. More importantly, she was being taken somewhere.
Where?
Somewhere close?
An abandoned building?
A basement?
A wood shed in the back forty?
Shade needed to rent a car, get out there and drive around, right now, this second. A taxi came down the street from the opposite direction. She ran across, got in front of it and waved her arms.
The vehicle skidded to a stop.
The driver swung the door open and shouted, “Are you crazy lady?”
“I need you to take me where I can rent a car,” she said.
“I have a fare.”
He pointed.
Shade looked.
Two people were in the back seat, a man and a woman, watching intently.
“Sorry.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I almost didn’t get stopped.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I really am.”
Suddenly something caught her eye—a woman on the sidewalk, thirty steps away, stopped in her tracks and watching he with intensity.
She was about thirty and on the short side, five-two or thereabouts, but with an athletic build. Up top was a red baseball hat. A blond ponytail wagged out of it in the back. Down below were black tennis shoes. In her left hand was an oversized purse, yellow.
Their eyes locked for the briefest of moments.
The woman was pretty.
Shade turned and walked away.
She didn’t look back.
At the first street she took a right, then a left at the next, then another left at the one after that. She stopped in front of a restaurant and pretended to read the menu as she used the window as a mirror. If the woman was behind her, Shade couldn’t tell. She headed inside the restaurant, took a seat at the counter where she could see out the front and ordered a cherry-coke.
The woman never walked past.
Shade put a nickel tip on the table and left.
Outside, she looked in both directions as if deciding which way to go.
The woman was nowhere to be seen.
She headed north and flagged down the first taxi she saw. It actually turned out to be the same one, this time without the startled man and woman in the back.
“That’s better,” the driver said. “Doing it from the curb, that’s better.”
“Sorry about before.”
“It’s okay, it gives me a story.”
“Glad I could help.”
“I’m going to embellish it though,” he said. “It’s not quite good enough to be a story just on its own. It’s close but it’s not quite there. I’m going to have to add to it.”
“Like what? What are you going to add?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’ll say your hair was on fire. What do you think?”
She smiled.
“That gives it a little more oomph.”
“Yes it does.”
“I’d add that,” she said, “and something else too. I mean, if you’re going to build it up, you might as well really go for it.”
The man chewed on it.
“I’ll say you actually flagged me down a second time, which is true,” he said, “and when you got in, a giant snake stuck its head out from inside your purse.”
“I like that.”
He got serious.
“That’s not going to actually happen though, right?”
“No, I left all my snakes at home.”
“Good.”
Thirty minutes later she was behind the wheel of a rental—a 1952 Studebaker Starliner—driving south on Broadway, getting closer and closer with each passing street to the edge of the city.
39
T he phone rang just as Wilde walked into the office. He tossed his hat at the rack, remembering at the last second to aim to the right, and got a ringer. He shook his head in disbelief and picked up the receiver.
“You’re there,” a voice said.
It was soft but stressed.
It belonged to Senn-Rae.
“Just got here,” Wilde said.
“Don’t go anywhere, I’m coming over.”
“I just got a ringer.”
“Huh?”
“My hat, I just got a ringer.”
“Good for you. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Aim to the right,” he said. “That’s the secret. It took me five years to figure it out.”
The line died.
He picked his hat off the rack, went back to the door and tossed it again, aiming to the right. It curved to the right and missed by two feet.
He picked it up and got positioned again.
“Come on, two out of three.”
He tossed it and watched it hook by no more than half an inch.
Good enough.
“Got you.”
Fifteen minutes later Senn-Rae busted through the door with a serious expression on her face. “It’s official,” she said. “My client is being blackmailed. He got the call just a little while ago. The guy wants $10,000.”
Wilde winced.
“Who the hell has that kind of money?”