by R. J. Jagger
She looked over.
“Which are what?”
“Either you really like me or you really don’t.”
“How do you know it’s not something in the middle?” she asked. “Maybe I don’t care one way or the other. Or maybe I have other stuff on my mind.”
Dalton shook his head.
“No, because in the middle, there’s always some talk,” he said. “It might not be much more than How you doing?, but it’s something. You got to work hard to have absolutely no talk at all. It’s the equivalent of keeping your body perfectly still. It doesn’t happen by accident.”
“So, let’s suppose you’re right, just for the sake of argument. Which one is it?”
Dalton studied her.
“I have an okay face,” he said.
“An incredible face,” she agreed.
“Nice hair.”
“Yummy hair.”
“A good, strong body.”
True again.
“So the smart money would be on you really like me. But I’m betting the other way.”
“I really don’t like you?”
He nodded.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you see me sitting here with this tan and hair, drinking vodka and reading Rolling Stone, and you think I’m trendy and shallow. You have too much substance to want to know anyone like me. You’re above the person who you think I am. That’s why I decided to talk to you. To let you know you got me all wrong.”
“I do, do I?”
“Way wrong.”
“And you’re going to set me straight, I suppose.”
“Well, since you insist, why not?”
She turned out to be Heather Ray, a flight attendant headed back to South Beach after a week in the sky. The lights of Miami were just starting to twinkle when they landed.
“You want to hit some of the clubs tonight?” she asked.
“Sure. I need to find a place to stay first.”
She chuckled.
“You’ve already had that for more than an hour.”
He tipped her with his glass.
Perfect.
This way his name wouldn’t be in a hotel registry.
73
T he vehicle rolled violently, skidded on its roof, slammed into a telephone pole and spun. Teffinger dangled upside down, caught in the seatbelt, disoriented.
He smelled gas.
“Nick!”
“Hold on!”
He tried to get his door open but it wouldn’t budge. The metal must have tweaked. He released the seatbelt and got untangled, then put his weight into the door.
It didn’t move.
He pushed the window button.
No response.
“Go out your door!” he said.
Jessie-Rae tried but couldn’t get it.
“It’s stuck!”
Teffinger kicked the windshield.
It didn’t crack or show signs of weakening.
They were trapped.
The tank could explode any second.
Then glass smashed.
Teffinger followed the sound to the other side of the car. Someone outside had smashed the passenger window with a rock. It was totally shattered, leaving an opening.
“Get out!”
Jessie-Rae pulled herself through and Teffinger followed as fast as his muscles let him. A young black girl was next to the car, about eleven or twelve—no doubt the one who smashed the window. Her bicycle was lying on the ground and she was bending down to pick it up. Teffinger swooped her up in one arm and ran as fast as he could with Jessie-Rae at his side.
They didn’t get more than twenty steps when the vehicle exploded.
A wall of fire rushed past and knocked them to the ground.
Teffinger shielded the girl with his body.
She turned out to be 12-year-old Melissa Johnson, who happened to be riding her one-speed Schwinn down the road when Teffinger’s car flipped—so close, in fact, that the vacuum pulled her over and took her down.
She got back on and peddled to the wreck.
She saw Jessie-Rae struggling with the door, then spotted the rock.
Teffinger kneeled in front of her, so they were eye to eye, and put his hands on her shoulders. “You saved our lives. If you hadn’t smashed that window, we’d both be dead right now. Thank you—thank you very, very much.”
She had dirt on her face and a skinned knee.
Her teeth were the whitest white.
Her eyes were shy.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
She wore a tattered sundress two sizes too big; an obvious hand-me-down. One of the straps was fastened with a safety pin. Her socks were two different colors. Her canvas tennis shoes had holes at the toes.
“I’m going to get you a new bike,” Teffinger said. “Do you live around here?”
She pointed.
“Over there.”
“I want to talk to your parents and tell them what a fantastic, brave young woman you are.”
“Only my mom,” the girl said. “My dad doesn’t live with us any more.”
“Your mom will be proud of you.”
Two patrol cars and an ambulance pulled up with lights flashing.
Their cuts and scrapes turned out to be treatable at the scene. Jessie-Rae’s neck hurt but not enough that she wanted to go to a hospital.
The cops took their statements and jotted down notes.
“We were rammed on purpose,” Teffinger said. “What we’re dealing with is attempted murder, pure and simple. Two counts.”
The cops didn’t seem impressed.
“Could have just been a drunk,” one of them said. “Did you get a look at him?”
“No.”
“Was he white or black?”
Teffinger didn’t know.
“He was a guy though, right?”
Teffinger wasn’t sure.
The cops pressed for details.
Teffinger didn’t have any.
Suddenly his phone rang and the voice of Chief Forrest F. Tanker—Double F—came through. “I just got a call from one Max Moniteau down there in New Orleans. He said you held a news conference this morning, trying to get information on our pirate friend. Is that true?”
“I think I saw him in a club last night,” Teffinger said.
“Well, Moniteau’s got his nose all out of joint, since it didn’t go through his office. He said you’re a wild, rogue cop, who either needs to get with the program or get out of town.”
Teffinger groaned.
“What’d you say?”
“That’s not important. What is important is that—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You didn’t stick up for me?”
“I didn’t see a need to start debating it.”
“Damn—”
“Nick, stay focused,” Double-F said. “What’s wrong with you anyway? You sound weird.”
Teffinger told him about the crash.
Double-F said, “Get back to Denver.”
Teffinger picked up a stone and threw it at a crushed Coke can lying in the dirt.
He actually hit it.
“I can’t,” he said. “When you see Sydney, tell her to call me. I want an update on Lindsay Vail.”
A TV news van suddenly pulled up to the scene. Tammy Bahamas popped out of the passenger door with a microphone in hand before the vehicle even came to a complete stop.
“A lot of people live in this town for ninety years and never make the news,” she said. “You make it twice your first day here. I’m impressed.”
“Someone said nothing’s ever normal with me,” he said.
“Well it looks like they know what they’re talking about.”
She surveyed the scene.
“Was that a rental?”
It was.
“They’re not going to be very happy.”
Teffinger chuckled.
“I’m going to wash it before I take it back.”
Then Teffinger directed her to the hero of the day, 12-year-old Melissa Johnson.
Teffinger was watching Bahamas interview the girl when another vehicle pulled up to the scene. It was an unmarked cop car with detective Max Moniteau behind the wheel.
He had a no-nonsense look and headed straight for Teffinger.
“I warned you something like this would happen,” he said.
Teffinger cocked his head.
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. He was tempted to add, “It’s almost like you have a crystal ball,” but didn’t.
“You’re not going to listen, but I’m going to say it again anyway,” Moniteau said. “Get out of New Orleans.”
74
W ith her stalker Coyote at her side, Yardley worked the tattoo shops until they closed, without any luck. No one recognized the pirate. No one remembered giving anyone a tattoo of a woman being killed.
Maybe she was off base and wasting her time.
She left her business card at every shop, with her cell phone circled. If she couldn’t find Robert, maybe he could find her.
She eventually ended up sitting in the back of the sailboat under a pitch-black sky, drinking white wine with Coyote. The scorching heat of the day had given way to a thin air that was cool enough to make them swap shorts and tank tops for jeans and long-sleeved shirts.
Yardley wore her hair down.
The wine tingled in her stomach.
The marina was deserted, as usual. Tomorrow night would be a different story. The weekend drunks would be down to kill brain cells and pass out in their boats.
“We thought you knew the pirate,” Coyote said. “We thought you might be his attorney. That’s why we put you under surveillance. We were hoping that he’d come to see you and we could grab him.”
Yardley sipped the wine.
“Thanks for telling me. But why did you think I was his attorney?”
Coyote explained and also said they knew she broke into Lindsay Vail’s house. Yardley said nothing about the fact that it was actually Aspen Asher who broke in; Yardley just sat down the street and kept watch.
“Suppose you’re right that I did that,” Yardley said, “what’s going to come of it?”
Coyote shrugged.
“Eventually, Teffinger is probably going to want to use it as leverage to squeeze information out of you,” she said.
“And if I refuse?”
“That’ll probably depend in part on what happens with Lindsay Vail,” Coyote said. “If it turns out that she died early on, and you didn’t really know anything that would have helped anyway, he probably won’t view it as too big of an infraction. But if it turns out that you knew something vital—something that could have saved her life if you had come forward with it in a timely fashion—then he’s not going to have much of a sense of humor about it.”
“Are you trying to scare me into talking?”
Coyote set her wine down and rubbed Yardley’s shoulders.
“I’m actually trying to save you, darling. You’re getting in way over your head. If I were you, I’d just tell me everything you know, right here right now, and let the professionals handle it.”
The massage felt good.
“I have a better idea,” Yardley said. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”
Coyote stopped rubbing.
“Say again—”
“I can’t tell you anything,” Yardley said. “Everything I know is protected by the attorney-client privilege. The privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney. Even if I did tell you something in breach of the privilege, you couldn’t use it; not in court or anywhere else. What that means is, the only way to get your pieces of information together with my pieces is for you to give me yours.”
Coyote chuckled.
“That can’t happen.”
“I’d never tell anyone,” Yardley said. “Plus, if I get enough information to figure out who the pirate is, I have a feeling that my client will give me permission to feed you his name—and that’s what we both want, isn’t it?”
“The whole idea is nuts,” Coyote said.
“As nuts as you sitting here drinking wine with your target? Or as nuts as me talking to the person who has me under surveillance?”
Coyote grinned.
“Good point,” she said.
“At least think about it,” Yardley said.
Silence.
Two minutes later, Coyote said, “We’re pretty sure the pirate doesn’t live in Denver. His photo has been broadcast too many times; both in the paper and on TV. If he lived here, someone would have seen it by now and called.”
“So why is he a suspect in the first place?”
“We traced the footsteps of Lindsay Vail for the two or three day period before she disappeared,” Coyote said. “We found video cameras that shined on her. When we viewed the tapes, the pirate showed up in three of them, at different locations and at different times.”
“Meaning he was stalking her,” Yardley said.
“Exactly.”
“And now she’s gone.”
“She is,” Coyote said, “and probably dead, given the length of time that’s passed.” She paused and added, “You promise to never tell anyone what I’m telling you, right?”
Absolutely.
Yardley would take it to her grave.
“The pirate might be from New Orleans,” Coyote said. “Teffinger’s down there now and thinks he might have spotted him in a club.”
“New Orleans?”
“Right.”
“What’s Teffinger doing down there?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” Coyote said. “It has something to do with voodoo.”
Yardley raised an eyebrow.
“You’re kidding, right?”
She wasn’t.
“The rumor is that someone put a death curse on him,” Coyote added.
“Don’t tell me he actually believes in that stuff.”
“No, of course not,” Coyote said. “But he’s had three or four near-death experiences in the last couple of days. So someone believes in it.”
“Weird.”
“Very,” Coyote said. “The poor guy’s fighting for his life. To be honest, that’s sort of why I’m talking to you now. He’s not as focused on Lindsay Vail as he wants to be. So if I can get some information for him, even if the means is somewhat unorthodox, I think he’d probably appreciate it.”
75
D alton forgot how much raw sexual energy the South Beach clubs had. The flight attendant, Heather Ray, wore a short black dress, long legs and bouncy tits. She got drunk, loose and touchy; but it was the movement of her hips to the beat of the speakers that excited Dalton the most. Some women oozed sex from every pore. Heather was one of them, even standing still, but she took it to a whole new level when her body got in motion.
To his amazement, he didn’t see another woman he’d rather be with.
Not a one.
They danced until their legs hurt, stopping only for liquor.
Then she took his hand and said, “Come on.”
She led him to the beach where they pulled their shoes off and walked where the sand was wet and the water lapped their feet.
A perfect ocean breeze blew.
The moon threw a light patina over the world. When they got sufficiently away from people, Heather slipped out of her dress and handed it to Dalton.
“Carry this for me, will you?”
Sure.
No problem.
She stepped out of a white thong and threw it into the water. Then did the same with a bra.
“Your woman’s naked,” she said.
“So I see.”
She took two steps and said, “If you can catch me, you can have me.”
Then she ran.
Dalton didn’t know if she was just going to go a few yards to tease him or what. But when she kept going, he charged after her.
With each step, he f
elt more and more like an animal.
It took him longer than he thought to catch her. When he did, he brought his hand around her body, to the smooth skin of her stomach, and swung her off the ground. Then he put her on the sand, straddled her and pinned her arms above her head.
“Looks like you’re caught,” he said.
She panted deeply and raised her head to kiss him.
He pulled back.
“You don’t get it until you beg for it,” he said.
She wiggled her hips.
“Please,” she said.
“Please what?”
“Please give it to me.”
“That’s not good enough,” Dalton said. “Leave your hands exactly where they are.”
He released his grip from her wrists.
“Don’t move,” he said, and got off.
“Don’t move a muscle,” he said.
Then he sat in the sand next to her and teasingly ran one finger in light circles around her bellybutton.
She wiggled her body.
“I want you,” she said.
“Stay exactly like you are,” he said.
Then he slowly teased her lips and thighs and feet and stomach and sides and arms until she was thoroughly and completely reduced to nothing more than raw animal lust.
76
W hen the crash scene commotion died down, Teffinger pulled Jessie-Rae aside and said, “That’s it. You need to go back to Denver.”
“No, not even close.”
He kicked a crumpled beer can lying in the dirt and said, “It’s not an option. You’re not safe here.”
“I don’t care.”
“Go back to Denver, work on your ratings and wait for me,” he said. “I’ll be back in a couple of days; a week tops.”
“You need me to watch your back.”
“I know you think that,” Teffinger said, “but what I really need is the freedom to do whatever it is I need to do without worrying about whether it’s going to end up getting you killed or not.”