Double Die (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
Page 7
“I’ve reconsidered it,” he said. “It’s too farfetched.”
“Why, what is it?”
“Just forget it.”
“How can I forget it? You’re making it into too big of a thing—”
“I’m not making it into anything, you are.”
“Only because you brought it up.”
“Well, now I’m taking it down. Do me a favor and work the keyboard tonight. Find out everything you can on the boxer. I want to know where his dark side has taken him in recent years.”
“Why?”
“Because if we only concentrate on his latest adventure we’re limited,” he said. “We need to find his other crimes and start building a bigger case.”
“You think he has other crimes?”
“I’m positive.”
“Murders?”
“The man who killed Portia and didn’t even blink,” he said. “That takes practice.”
24
Day Four
July 11
Friday Night
Friday night after dark a vicious thunderstorm rolled out of the mountains and monster-punched Denver with mean heavy fists. With a beer in his gut and a second in hand, Teffinger watched it from a lounge chair on Del Rey’s patio under the shelter of the upper level deck. Jagged flashes of lightning ripped across the sky, whipping like a downed power line. Wild thunder ricocheted through the clouds with the power of a thousand maniac drums.
It was raw.
It was powerful.
The force of it all worked its way Teffinger’s blood.
It made him alive.
It made him an animal.
Del Rey stepped to the edge of the patio and stood under the water cascading off the upper deck. Her hair matted down and her blouse soaked to the skin. She swallowed what was left of her drink and threw the glass into the backyard.
Then she went into a sensual, trancelike dance
Her arms went up.
Her hips swayed.
Her lips opened.
Her eyelids dropped.
Every fiber of Teffinger’s being screamed for him take her, right now, this second, before the universe ticked even the smallest tick.
He resisted.
Instead he watched.
He drank her in with his eyes.
He let her into his blood.
She stepped over and straddled him. The wetness of her thighs and her drenched shorts worked its way through his pants and onto his skin.
It was good.
It was right.
It was destined.
Her lips came to his, stopping just short, so close that the warmth of her breath filled every pore of his body. She licked his neck and pushed down with her body.
Electricity ripped across the sky.
In that split second Teffinger’s peripheral vision detected something out in the field, a long ways off, eighty or a hundred yards, possibly a dark silhouette, possibly a man. Before he could focus on it the world defaulted back to blackness.
A heartbeat later another bolt of lightning flashed.
The silhouette wasn’t there.
He stared at exactly where it should be.
It wasn’t there.
There was only prairie grass whipping with a voodoo curse.
“Teffinger, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
He kept his concentration on the location and waited for the next explosion of lightning. I came quickly. Nothing was there that shouldn’t be. Still, his gut churned and he shifted to get up.
“Get in the house, turn off all the lights and lock all the windows and doors,” he said.
“Teffinger—”
“Do it. Hide somewhere and don’t come out until I tell you to.”
“Teffinger, this is crazy.”
“I’m not taking any chances,” he said.
“There’s nothing there,” she said. “It’s just a trick of the night.”
“Get inside. I’ll be back.”
He ran towards the mark.
The weather immediately assaulted him with thick heavy pelts driven by a horizontal wind, working its wicked way into his eyes in spite of his best squinting. The world under his feet was black and uneven, twisting his ankles and stressing his knees.
The rain soaked through his clothes.
It made them heavy.
It made them grip.
He forced more power out of his body to compensate.
His speed didn’t slow.
With every pounding step he got closer and closer to whatever it was that was out there.
He took another step, and another and another.
His heart pounded.
His chest heaved.
Suddenly something was in front of him, low to the ground as if waiting, not part of the topography. It caught his foot on the upswing and sent him in a violent trip. He tried to brace before he smacked face-first into the ground but wasn’t fast enough. His forehead hit something hard and unforgiving. Fireworks shot through his brain. He got to his feet, staggered and then fell to the side.
Everything went black.
The next thing that happened was gunfire.
It pulled him out a deep unconsciousness long before he was ready. It made him staggered to his feet. Then a voice shouted, “Don’t move!”
He instinctively dived.
It did no good.
The gun went off again before he even hit the ground.
25
Day Four
July 11
Friday Night
Teffinger rolled when he hit, not sure if he’d been shot or not. The gun fired again. Something directly above him made a painful sound and landed with a horrific weight on his legs, pinning him down.
He scrambled to wedge out.
His hand pushed against something sharp and jagged.
He immediately knew what it was and jerked back before jaws clamped down.
Lightning flashed.
For a fraction of a second the world lit as if the noon sun was out. It was long enough for Teffinger to see he was under a mountain lion. The animal’s face had been destroyed into a gooey mess by a bullet.
Del Rey was two steps distance.
Her arms were down.
In her right hand hung a limp gun.
What Teffinger tripped over was a small deer, just a baby, separated from the pack by the storm, now deader than dead with a ripped throat and a number of vicious bites torn out of its body.
In that split second Teffinger realized just how lucky he was.
The animal could have killed him a hundred times.
He’d be dead beyond help if it weren’t for Del Rey.
He got out from under the animal, muscled to his feet and took Del Rey in his arms.
“I owe you one,” he said.
“One?”
26
Day Four
July 11
Friday Night
At exactly seven o’clock Friday evening, Jori-Lee wiped a D.C. sweat from her brow, pulled her cell phone from her purse as she sat on a bench near the Smithsonian, and punched in the numbers the mystery jogger passed to her yesterday evening.
Her heat pounded.
A woman answered, “Hello?”
The voice belonged to the runner.
“This is Jori-Lee Kent.”
Silence.
“Your little boss Nelson Robertson is supposed to be making this call, not you. Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Well that was a big fucking mistake.”
The line went dead.
Jori-Lee redialed.
No one answered.
She paced next to the street, second-guessing the sanity of everything she’d done, everything she was for that matter. Outside the day’s shadows were getting l
onger but the air still had the city in a stranglehold of humidity and heat. A passing bus sprayed diesel fumes at her.
She choked them out of her lungs and almost headed home.
Instead she redialed.
The connection went through.
Before the woman could even answer Jori-Lee said, “Don’t hang up!”
“You didn’t follow directions.”
“I will,” she said. “First tell me what you want to talk to him about.”
“It’s personal.”
“In what way?”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, lady.”
Suddenly a strange pop came through the line, one that made Jori-Lee picture the phone falling to the floor. Then frantic sounds came through. The more Jori-Lee concentrated on them the more she pictured the woman being attacked.
“Stop!”
The word was laced with fear.
Stop!
Stop!
Stop!
Then the words got muffled, as if a hand went over her mouth.
“Shut up bitch!”
Smack!
Smack!
“Don’t fight me!”
The words were gruff.
They belonged to a man.
Jori-Lee didn’t know the speaker.
He was a stranger to her.
The struggling stopped, just like that, with the force of something absolute, not a gunshot, maybe a knife. More sounds came but there were from motion rather than fighting.
What was he doing?
Was he making sure she was dead?
Was he turning her body face up?
A moment passed.
Jori-Lee concentrated.
The sounds were faint, barely perceptible.
She couldn’t figure out what any of them belonged to.
Then a very disturbing noise came through, as if someone or something was physically touching the phone.
“Who’s there?”
The words pounded into her blood with the force of a drug.
27
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Morning
Teffinger woke Saturday morning when the first strokes of dawn bent around the edges of the window coverings and washed the room in a soft watercolor glow. Next to him, half covered and half not, was the incredible being of Del Rey, motionless and breathing deeply. Seeing her made Teffinger feel sorry for every man in the world who wasn’t him.
It wasn’t just the woman’s body.
She was more than just one of the interests he’d let parade in and out of his life.
He could see her popping out little Nickies.
He could see them together when they were older and slower and no longer playing at the edge.
He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.
The events of last night briefly flashed in his brain. The jaws snapped again at his face. The gunfire rang again in his ears.
He squeezed it out.
It was interesting but not productive.
Today he needed to be productive.
The boxer Danny Rainer killed Portia, possibly for kicks and possibly as nothing more than a chance encounter gone bad. The evidence wasn’t there, not yet, but evidence is always just a matter of time. As much as Teffinger wanted to take the boxer’s smirky face down right now this minute, his more immediate problem was the lawyer, Jack Colder.
The lawyer was the one who hired Portia in the first place.
He was also the one who would hire—or, more likely, had already hired—Portia’s replacement.
He was the one who would see that the job got completed.
He was the one still in motion.
Plus, going back, he was the one who killed or hired someone to kill Seth Lightfield, the man who filled his place in bed. Taking the lawyer down would close a cold case; and there were few things in life as sweet as closing a cold case.
Teffinger showered, towel-dried his hair until the drip was gone and headed for the kitchen, wearing jeans but no shirt or shoes.
Del Rey had her back to him, making coffee.
She wore a black muscle shirt and white panties that said Love Pink on the back.
He cupped her stomach from behind and nibbled her neck.
“Did I say thanks for saving my life?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, if I didn’t, I will.”
She turned and pressed her stomach to his.
Her face was serious.
Something was on her mind.
“You’re thinking,” Teffinger said.
She nodded.
“I had a weird thought. I keep telling myself that it’s too crazy to be true but I can’t shake it.”
“Go on.”
“Okay, well, Susan Smith knew that Portia was in town and after someone named Susan Smith, because you told her,” she said.
“Technically Sydney told her.”
“Right, but the fact is that she knew.”
“True, she knew.”
“So, what if she knew something else, namely that she was in fact the Susan Smith who was the target. What if she got already knew Danny Rainer and had some type of history with him. What if she got Rainer to lay in wait for Portia and take her out when she showed up?”
Teffinger shook his head.
“Even assuming all that,” he said, “killing Portia would only buy her time. Someone hired Portia. She was nothing more than a human knife. Getting rid of her wouldn’t solve the problem at source. The only way to really get rid of the problem would be to kill the person who hired Portia. Right?”
“Correct.”
Teffinger frowned.
“When someone says Right, and it is right, the answer is supposed to be Right, not Correct.”
“They’re the same thing.”
“Yeah, I know, but it still needs to be right. Otherwise you upset the balance of the universe. Right?”
She ran a finger down his chest.
“Teffinger, stay focused,” she said. “I agree that killing Portia would only buy her time. So, what would be her next move? It would be exactly what you said it would be—kill the source.”
“Meaning the lawyer, Jack Colder.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” she said. “What she told you about Colder being a jilted lover probably has a lot of truth to it, otherwise she wouldn’t have dragged it out. But if her goal is to kill the source and Colder really was the source, she wouldn’t tell you about him because then you’d be in his shadows. If you ask me, Colder is a misdirect.”
“A misdirect?”
“Right, the source is someone else. While you’re focused on Colder, that’s where she’s going to strike.”
Teffinger shook his head.
It was too farfetched.
“Here’s what I need from you,” he said. “Colder hired Portia. He did it through that P.I. out in D.C., Oscar Benderfield. The P.I., in turn, had an off the grid meeting with a D.C. lawyer named Leland Everitt as soon as he got back from hiring Portia in Denver. That means Leland Everitt is in the chain. He’s in a firm called Overton & Frey. In fact, Leland Everitt might be the person that Colder hired, then Everitt in turn hired Benderfield.”
“Right. You already told me all this.”
That was true.
He had.
“What I need to do is to confirm that there is some type of connection between Colder out here in Denver and someone in D.C. on the other end, be it Benderfield or Leland Everitt or his law firm or, in fact, anyone else. Once I have that connection I’ll know my theory is solid.”
“Well, work on your connection then,” she said.
“I already have.”
“And?”
“And, I can’t find it.”
“So why are you clinging to this theory?”
“Because it’s the right one,” he said. “What I need is your help. You’re a lawyer. You run in the same circles as Colder
. Find out if he has any connections to D.C.”
She pondered it.
“There are a couple of things I can do,” she said. “I can find out all the cases where he or his law firm have appeared as the attorney-of-record. I can see if any of those cases were in D.C. courts or had D.C. attorneys on the other side. I can also get the names of the parties on both sides of the case. I can feed those names to you and you can run background checks on them. Maybe one of them has a D.C. connection.”
Teffinger kissed her.
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’ll do it but not with any enthusiasm,” she said. “Like I said, Colder’s a misdirect. Susan Smith is the one you should be focused on.”
“You want to make a dungeon bet on it?”
She shook his hand.
“You’re on.”
Five minutes later Teffinger was in the Tundra heading for the office with a cup of coffee in his left hand.
His stomach churned.
Until this morning he’d never realized exactly how intelligent Del Rey was. Sure, he knew she was a lawyer and was a reputable one, which obviously took some horsepower in the smarts department, but he never appreciated her depth until they had a common ground. Not one in a thousand people could have come up with theory she had.
Even Teffinger hadn’t come up with it.
To her face, he’d dismissed it.
Deep down, though, it was starting to vibrate.
28
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Morning
Del Rey’s theory that Susan Smith killed Portia clawed deeper and deeper into Teffinger’s brain in spite of his every effort to dismiss it. By mid-morning it was so intrusive that he had to get around the woman to take a closer look.
When he knocked, the woman answered the door in workout clothes.
Her chest heaved.
Her body was moist with sweat.
“Come on it.”
He followed her to a treadmill next to a large window and watched the numbers as she worked the dial, stopping at 8.
“I’m impressed,” he said. “That’s about double what I do.”
Her feet pounded.
She looked his way.
“I doubt that.”
“In my defense, though,” he said, “I don’t go that fast but I even it out by not going that far.”