by R. J. Jagger
Jundee pulled up an image of human hamburger and said, “Nice knowing you.”
Fallon laid her head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry you got pulled into that.”
“I’m not.”
128
S omething thick and heavy hit the back of Shade’s head. She knew she’d been attacked but crumpled to the floor in a black fog before she could turn to see who was responsible. A sharp pain radiated briefly and then everything disappeared. She regained consciousness sometime later not knowing if she’d been out two minutes or two hours. She was on the floor face down. Her hands were tied behind her back. Her ankles were tied together. The room was dark except for a sliver of light that crept through the windows. Rain pelted the building. Her brain throbbed and wouldn’t let her remember where she was.
Then it came to her.
She was in Baxter Fox’s office.
“London!”
“Well who’s finally awake.”
The voice belonged to a man.
She’d heard it before.
Suddenly a strong hand grabbed her face and tilted her head up. She found herself looking into the eyes of Mojag. They were intense, bordering on insane.
“You wouldn’t let it go,” he said. “No matter what happened, you wouldn’t let it go. I gave you every chance but you wouldn’t let it go. That’s why you’re here right now. You have only yourself to blame.”
“Mojag—”
“Shut up!”
He pulled a sock off her foot, shoved it in her mouth and wrapped tape around her head.
“There, better?”
She mumbled something.
“What was that? London? Is that what you said, London?” He slapped her ass. “London can’t hear you anymore so don’t waste your breath.”
He paced.
Then he lit a cigarette, squatted down and blew smoke in her face.
“Do you know what it said on the floor under the mattress? It said, Mojag killed Tehya,” he said. “Do you know what it said on that cupboard door where you copied what was under the mattress? It said, Mojag killed Tehya. Do you know what it said on that piece of paper you copied from the cupboard door? It said, Mojag killed Tehya. Do you know why it said that? Because Mojag killed Tehya. Do you want to know why I killed her? Because she was turning five-dollar tricks in the back room of that stupid fucking bar. I told her to quit a hundred times. She never did. That night I got drunk, way drunk, beyond stupid drunk. I told her she was going to quit the tricks, it was over, she wasn’t going to do it again, not even one. She told me to fuck off. She pushed me on the chest and ran out. That’s when my brain exploded.”
He punched the wall with his fist.
Something fell off.
Glass shattered.
“I killed her. She had it coming and I’m not sorry about it. I didn’t take Visible Moon though,” he said. “I scalped Tehya because no one in a million years would picture me doing that. They’d picture a white man. The reason I came to Denver with you was to help you find the person who took Visible Moon. It wasn’t to rescue her though. It was to plant Tehya’s scalp in his house. It was to make him the one who killed her, not me.”
Lightning exploded.
The room lit up then returned to blackness just as quickly.
Thunder slammed against the building so hard that the windows shook.
“I made you take me to the shed to show me what was under the mattress, not because I needed to see the original but so I would know where the shed was and be able to burn the fucking thing down,” he said. “I stole the cupboard door out of Wilde’s office. I scraped the face to a pulp, busted the wood into a hundred pieces and threw them in ten different places. While you were passed out I took the paper out of your purse and burned it to ashes. All the evidence is gone.”
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
“The only other evidence that was left was Visible Moon herself,” he said. “I pretended like I had spotted her killer. I pretended that I found Tehya’s scalp tacked on his wall. I pretended that he said he killed Visible Moon. I pretended that I killed him in a rage. All that was to get you to stop trying to find her and get you to the reservation where I could keep you from saving her. You didn’t do it though. That’s why you’re here right now. You wouldn’t stop. You’ll never stop as long as you’re alive.”
He flipped her onto her back.
He straddled her.
His weight was enormous.
She tried to wiggle but couldn’t.
“Goodbye,” he said.
Then he sunk his thumbs into her throat and bore down with an insane pressure.
She couldn’t breathe in.
She couldn’t breathe out.
Her brain turned to fire.
Seconds passed.
Then more.
Then more.
Her struggle got weaker and weaker.
The world got blacker.
Then she slipped into the darkness of death.
129
P arker Trench lived in a fancy house on a tree-line boulevard just off Colorado Boulevard on the west side of town. Wilde sat in Blondie three doors down, smoking a cigarette and contemplating exactly how to handle things. Half of him wanted to go in, make him confess and then kill him. The other half balked at the seriousness of that. Rain battered down so thick that the ragtop dripped.
Headlights swung around the corner and passed him.
Then the car stopped and backed up next to him.
It was a cab.
Someone gave paper to the driver and hopped out.
It was Alabama.
She ran around Blondie and hopped in the passenger side.
“It’s raining,” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Helping,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
He exhaled.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Is he home?”
“Yeah, I see a shadow move every now and then.”
“Let’s go in and get him.”
“If I go in I’m going to end up killing him,” he said.
“So?”
“So, that’s serious.”
“I’ll do it then,” she said. “You hold him.”
He pictured it.
“We need to think it through.”
Suddenly Trench came out the front door and trotted through the weather to the garage. Headlights came on and moved down the driveway.
Wilde fired up the engine but left the lights dark.
“I’m going to follow him. You go in and snoop around. Find out if he’s after Senn-Rae. After fifteen minutes, get out of there whether you’ve found anything or not.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it,” Wilde said. “Fifteen minutes tops. Promise me.”
“Wilde, I always do what you say.”
She hopped out and ducked into the shadows.
Wilde followed Trench who was already at the corner turning right.
In the city it was easy to hang behind and just be an anonymous car in a sea of cars. As they got farther south though the traffic thinned and Wilde’s headlights got more pronounced. If they went much farther it would be obvious what was going on.
What to do?
Maybe he should just ram the guy and force a confrontation.
No.
Hold on just a little longer.
Find out where he’s going.
Traffic got almost non-existent.
Suddenly Trench pulled to the side of the road.
They were in the sticks.
The place was deserted.
If Wilde stopped, it would be obvious he was following.
It was already obvious though.
He slowed down and came to a halt fifty yards back.
Nothing happened for ten seconds.
Then a gun fired and his windshield exploded.
More shots came.
Bam!
&n
bsp; Bam!
Bam!
He opened the door, dove to the asphalt and rolled into the shadows. The bullets continued to hit Blondie. Wilde got to the far side of the road and sprinted through the blackness towards the gun. All he could hope was to stay invisible for as long as it took.
He closed the gap in no time.
Trench never saw him coming.
In a heartbeat Wilde had the man on the ground, pounding his face with every ounce of strength he had.
“This is for Jennifer Pazour!”
130
V ampire’s house was dark. Not a light was on inside. Either she was sleeping, out, or laying a trap. Fallon and Jundee broke a window in the back and climbed in. Jundee grabbed the largest gourmet knife of several displayed in a wooden holder in the kitchen and headed upstairs with Fallon in tow.
Vampire was asleep.
Jundee flipped her over and put the knife to her throat.
“All we want are the documents,” he said. “Be smart and you’ll live.”
The woman stared at him.
Then she said, “Okay.”
131
W ilde’s fists pounded into Trench’s face over and over and over. He was killing the man but couldn’t stop. “You’re the pinup killer!”
“No I’m not”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not.”
“Bullshit I said!”
“I can prove it,” Trench said.
Wilde stopped his fist in mid-swing.
“I killed Jennifer Pazour,” Trench said. “I’ll admit that. I didn’t kill anyone else though.”
Wilde punched him again.
“You’re lying!”
“I have a woman captive,” he said. “If you kill me she’ll rot to death. Her blood will be on your hands.”
Wilde punched him again.
“You’re lying.”
“No I’m not,” Trench said. “She’s an Indian girl.”
The words jerked Wilde’s rage to a stop.
“What’s her name?”
“Her name’s Visible Moon. She’s real, I swear to you.”
Wilde grabbed the man’s shirt with two fists and pulled him to his feet.
“Take me to her, now.”
They got in Trench’s car with Wilde behind the wheel.
“Go straight,” Trench said.
They rode in silence.
“Here’s the deal,” Trench said. “I’ll take you to her but you have to let me go. Nor can you ever tell the police about what I did to Jennifer Pazour.”
Wilde leaned over and punched the man’s face.
“That’s your deal.”
“You’ll never find her,” Trench said. “If I don’t tell you where she is you’ll never find her. I guarantee you that.”
Wilde’s instinct was to break his fucking nose a hundred different ways.
He didn’t though.
He held his fist in check.
“Look,” Trench said. “I was drunk one night and ran into a woman who was changing a tire. It wasn’t entirely my fault. She didn’t have the car lights on and she was partly in the road. But I hit her nonetheless, plus I sideswiped her car. I was driving a friend’s car at the time, a female friend’s. She was with me that night.”
“I don’t care.”
“Just hear me out,” Trench said. “We ditched the car, walked a half-mile and got lucky enough to spot a cab. We flagged it down. We told the driver—who was Jennifer Pazour, in hindsight—to take us to a bar on the west side of town. We drank there for a couple of hours. Then we came out and pretended like the car had been stolen out of the parking lot. We called the police and they made a report. They found the car three days later and eventually tied it to the accident where the woman got run over. They never challenged our story though that the car had been stolen. We were off the hook.”
“Good for you.”
“Right, good for us,” Trench said, “but not for long. The cab driver figured things out and hired a detective to find out who we were. Then the blackmail started. We paid her twice, $5,000 each time, but it was clear she’d never stop. We had no choice except to kill her.”
“That’s a coward talking.”
“Be it as it may, that’s what we decided to do,” he said. “I decided it, actually. The woman I was with on the night in question wasn’t involved. She didn’t have the deep pockets, I did.”
He put a finger to his face.
“You broke my nose.”
“Fuck you. I’ll break it again.”
“Right, fuck me,” Trench said. “Anyway, being a lawyer I have lots of lawyer friends. One of them is a man named Stuart Black. Over lunch one day, Stuart told me about a man who referred to himself by the name Shadow, who kept calling Stuart up and telling him about these pinup murders he was committing. I decided to duplicate that MO when I killed Jennifer Pazour. That way the blame would fall on someone else.”
“Clever.”
“We can go to a phone and call Stuart right now,” Trench said. “He’ll verify that my voice isn’t the voice of the Shadow. He’ll also verify that he told me about Shadow over lunch.”
“So who’s Shadow?”
“I don’t know,” Trench said. “Stuart doesn’t know. No one knows. I’m telling you what I’m telling you so you’ll understand that I’m not the pinup killer. I killed Jennifer Pazour but I’m not Shadow. I’ll tell you more, the part about Visible Moon, but only if we strike a deal.”
“There are no deals.”
“Then there’s no Visible Moon.”
132
W ilde was stuck and he knew it. Sure, there was a chance he could find Visible Moon on his own; she’d be somewhere remote, like the shed. He could check every remote place he could find in this part of the universe. But there was a risk he’d never find her. That wasn’t a risk that sat good in his throat.
Over the next five minutes driving through the relentless storm, he hammered out a deal with Trench.
Trench, for his part, would tell Wilde where Visible Moon was. He would also tell him why she was there.
Wilde, for his part, would let Trench go. Also, he’d never tell the cops or anyone else anything about the tire-changing accident, the murder of Jennifer Pazour or Trench’s involvement with Visible Moon.
“Visible Moon has seen my face, many times,” Trench said. “She’ll talk to the police. That’s fine. I’ll be on the run and I deserve it. But I don’t want you telling the police some of the other things I’m going to tell you, things that Visible Moon doesn’t know.”
They shook.
They had a deal.
There was one additional agreement though. They would leave each other alone for a week. After that week was over, Wilde was free to hunt Trench down and kill him if he chose to, and Trench was likewise free to hunt Wilde down and kill him if he chose to.
Wilde, for his part, didn’t know if he’d ever act on that option. It was worth having it though even if that meant giving Trench the same thing.
“Okay, talk,” Wilde said.
“I was with the CIA for a number of years,” Trench said. “A couple of the higher-ups slowly brought me into their confidence. One was a man named Kent Harvin. Another was a woman named Penelope Tap. They were selling confidential information to the Russians. They recognized me as a money-oriented man and brought me into the fold.”
“They were moles?”
“Moles, double-spies, whatever you want to call them,” Trench said. “They sold secrets to the enemy. I was one too by the end, the number three man. I made a lot of money. I don’t regret it. There came a point where I didn’t trust my luck to run forever. I got out, moved to Denver and started a law practice. On the side, though, I still do an occasional project for my two friends.”
“Okay.”
“One of the biggest things going right now is the nuclear arms race,” Trench said. “We’re ahead, Russia’s behind. We’ve been developing an H-bomb for some time n
ow. The project is spearheaded in Las Alamos, New Mexico. One of the foremost scientists is a man named Richard Zephyr. He was a pretty straightforward man but had a little quirk. There was an Indian bar that he stumbled on one day while driving. The bartender was a woman named Visible Moon. Zephyr developed a little thing for her, and to his credit, got a similar reaction from her. They began seeing each other more and more frequently. Are you following me?”
“I’m following you.”
“Good,” Trench said. “The information on the H-bomb was worth a fortune but the CIA didn’t have access to it. Kent Harvin and Penelope Tap came up with a plan. The plan was to kidnap Visible Moon and then give Zephyr an ultimatum, either turn over the plans for the H-bomb or kiss his little Indian friend goodbye. My part in the plan was to be the one who kidnapped Visible Moon. I went down there, waited outside in the shadows for the last drunk to leave the bar where the woman worked, then kidnapped her and brought her up here to Denver. The scientist, Zephyr, actually chose his girlfriend over everything else. He was in the process of driving to Denver to deliver the documents. Unfortunately, he ended up missing a turn and driving over a cliff. The documents disappeared.”
“Interesting.”
“Right, that’s one word for it,” Trench said. “This is where it gets strange. Unknown to anyone, a CIA agent named Shade de Laurent turned out to be a half-sister of Visible Moon. She started a search, first down at the reservation then getting a lead that brought her to Denver. My two contacts—Kent Harvin and Penelope Tap—didn’t want her on the case. She was too good. Kent Harvin, believe it or not, was actually her immediate supervisor. He knew what she was capable of.”
“Small world.”
“Small world indeed,” Trench said. “Anyway, they set her up to look like she was a mole. They broke into her apartment and planted evidence that made it look like she was selling confidential information to Russia through her contacts in Cuba.”