by R. J. Jagger
“Teffinger?”
“Yes.”
“Over here.”
The man approached, one step at a time, as if walking into a hitman. Up close, he was bigger than Wing thought.
“Who are you?”
“No names,” Wing said, keeping his face in the shadows. “I don’t have a gun or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. This isn’t a trap, so relax.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a meeting,” Wing said. “I’m going to get right to the heart of it. I did something wrong and someone found out. Now he’s blackmailing me. I thought he’d want money but that’s not what he wants. What he wants is for me to kill you.”
Teffinger stiffened.
“Relax,” Wing said. “That’s not why you’re here. I have to admit, I thought about it for a while before deciding against it. I don’t know you and have nothing against you. The reason we’re meeting right now is because I want you to tell me who wants you dead.”
Silence.
“That’s the person I’m after, not you,” Wing said. “So tell me, who is it that wants you dead.”
A beat.
And another.
“I don’t know,” Teffinger said.
Wing exhaled.
“Sure you do,” he said. “No one can make an enemy so strong that they want him dead without knowing who that enemy is.”
Teffinger threw a rock into the river.
Then he sat down.
“HE SPEAKS THAI but as a second language,” Wing said. “He’s not native.”
“What’s his accent?”
“English is my best guess, but I’m not positive. It could be French. Maybe even Spanish. He only spoke in Thai.”
“I don’t know anyone like that.”
“Teffinger, let’s get on the same page for a minute,” Wing said. “I could have just killed you and put all my troubles behind me. The reason we’re having this talk is because I’m being a nice guy. I need you to reciprocate. Give me the information. Tell me where to turn my hunt. Who wants you dead? Who’s blackmailing me?”
Teffinger threw another rock.
“Are you going to kill him?”
“I’ll assess that later,” Wing said. “By the way, I need you to keep this conversation confidential. Don’t tell your detective girlfriend.” A pause, then, “Do we have an understanding?”
“That much I can do,” Teffinger said. “But as to who wants me dead, that I can’t help you with. Maybe there isn’t such a person. Maybe he just wants you to try to kill me, hoping that I’ll kill you. Maybe you’re the one he wants dead, not me.”
No.
Not likely.
“He has a hatred for you,” Wing said. “It’s in his voice.”
“Tell me what he has on you,” Teffinger said. “If I get more details maybe I can figure it out.”
No.
No.
No.
“Can’t do that,” Wing said.
“Then I can’t help you,” Teffinger said.
He stood up.
“It was nice talking to you.”
THE MAN WAS THREE STEPS AWAY when Wing said, “Hold on a minute. If you can’t tell me who to kill then you need to do the next best thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Fake your murder,” Wing said. “Make it look like I did what I was supposed to do.”
Silence.
Then, “Where will that get us? I can’t stay dead forever.”
“It’ll give me time,” Wing said. “This is as much for you as it is for me. You can get your girlfriend to respond. She can make it look official.”
Teffinger headed off.
Then he turned and said, “I’ll think about it.”
“Well think fast because it needs to be done by tomorrow afternoon,” Wing said. “That’s the deadline.”
“Do you have my number?”
No.
He didn't.
Teffinger gave it to him.
“Call me at nine tomorrow.”
85
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Night
ONE OF THE MAN’S HANDS swung around Prarie’s stomach and pulled her back while the other wrapped around her face and forced a chemical-soaked cloth over her mouth. She kicked and twisted with every ounce of strength she had but her brain fogged over and everything went black.
She woke, still naked, in the trunk of a moving car, blindfolded.
Her hands were tied behind her back.
Her feet were tied together.
Her hands were tied to her feet.
Hogtied.
The same position Kanjana had been in.
A deep, bass-drum pain throbbed inside her head, just behind her eyes. She struggled against the ropes to no avail. Who had her? Where was he taking her? What did she do to deserve this?
He was going to kill her.
That was certain.
It would be slow.
Painful.
He’d rape her first.
Get away!
Get away!
Get away!
Somehow she had to get away.
86
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Night
TEFFINGER AND JINKA hid in the dark behind a boxcar and trained a pair of binoculars on Petchpon’s house. Under the carriage of Petchpon’s vehicle was a GPS tracker, just in case. They didn’t have a plan, other than to let the night carry itself out.
Lots of things might happen.
Petchpon might lead them to someone he was alternating kills with, the ying part of his yang.
He might go out for another kill, maybe even Jinka.
Or he might do nothing, forcing Teffinger to decide if this was the right time to go in and strangle the man with his bare hands.
There was no question Petchpon was involved in the murders of at least four of the women. The necklace found in his safe was being worn by one of the women who was never found, as described precisely by her boyfriend who was the last person to see her before she disappeared. The ring belonged to another one of the victims. She had worn it the day she went missing but it wasn’t on her body when it eventually turned up. Same thing for a pair of diamond earrings.
And, of course, there was Aspen Leigh’s Rolex.
The strange thing, though, was the lack of souvenirs from three of the other victims, leading almost inescapably to the conclusion that Petchpon was working in conjunction with another killer.
Who?
How did such a bizarre arrangement come about?
Was the other guy someone Petchpon caught in connection with a case and then decided to join instead of arrest?
Did he get sucked into the game?
“TEFFINGER, YOU DON’T TRUST ME,” Jinka said. “That’s wrong.” He knew what she was talking about. So far, he’d kept his word to the man at the river and hadn’t told Jinka what the meeting was about. “How am I going to come to Denver with you if you don’t trust me? Either we’re a team or we’re not. There’s no middle ground.”
He chewed on it.
“You know what, you’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Sound so amazed when you finally realize I’m right about something.”
He grinned.
“Sorry.”
“You better be.”
Then he told her what the meeting was about, namely someone was blackmailing the man at the river into killing Teffinger.
“Who could possibly want you dead?” Jinka asked.
Teffinger shook his head in bewilderment.
“No one,” he said.
“You haven’t even been here that long.”
He shrugged.
“Like I told the guy, maybe I’m really not the target,” he said. “Maybe he was being set up to try to kill me and would get killed himself in the process.”
Jin
ka shook her head.
“That’s too indirect,” she said.
“Okay, what then?”
“I don’t know.”
They grew silent.
Watched the house.
Waited.
“I JUST HAD A SCARY THOUGHT,” Jinka said.
She sounded truly panicked.
“Like what?”
“Okay, let me back up a second,” she said. “Someone might want you dead if you posed a serious threat to them, right?”
Right.
Definitely.
“So who do you pose a threat to?”
Teffinger tilted his head.
“No one.”
“Wrong,” Jinka said. “You pose a threat to that man in the house over there, the one we’re staking out at this very minute.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know about me.”
“That’s what we’ve been assuming,” Jinka said. “But what if he knew we’d broken into his house?”
“How would he know that?”
“I’ll tell you how,” she said. “He has some of those little nanny cameras hidden here and there.”
The words were simple.
They were also obvious, once said.
Teffinger swallowed and pulled up a vision of Petchpon watching them on a computer screen somewhere as they rifled through his house.
“The man blackmailing the guy at the river has to be Petchpon’s co-killer,” he said. “It wasn’t Petchpon himself, because the guy had an accent.”
SUDDENLY THE LIGHTS WENT OUT in Petchpon’s house. The front door opened and slammed. The car in the driveway started and the headlights kicked on.
“Come on!”
They ran for their car.
“It could be a trap,” Jinka said. “He could be leading us somewhere on purpose.”
“We’ll take our chances.”
87
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Night
AFTER WING’S MEETING WITH TEFFINGER at the river, Jamaica picked him up and they headed back to his loft. Several police vehicles with flashing lights sat out front, together with two TV vans.
“Do you think that’s for us?” Jamaica asked.
“I don’t know but we’re not going to stick around and find out.”
He pulled away and disappeared into Bangkok traffic.
Two minutes later his cell phone rang and Yingfan’s voice came through.
“Have you seen the news?”
She sounded panicked.
“What’s going on?”
“The cops,” she said. “They’re in your loft.”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down? You got to be kidding—”
“What are they there for?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “All the TV is saying is that they’re there, searching for something.”
Wing’s heart raced.
“Where are you right now?”
“Home.”
“Go somewhere else, a bar or something.”
“THE COPS ARE IN MY PLACE, searching it,” he told Jamaica. “I’m not sure why yet.”
“Probably Rain,” Jamaica said. “The Hong Kong cops must have traced Po Sin to us from that bar meeting. They called their counterparts here in Bangkok.”
Maybe.
But maybe it related to the rich Tokyo guy with the Monets that Jamaica killed in the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
Or, maybe it even related to the four photos.
Maybe the man blackmailing Wing into killing Teffinger saw the meeting at the river, felt he was getting double-crossed, and decided to go ahead and turn everything over to the police.
“What are we going to do?” Jamaica asked.
Good question.
“The first thing we have to do is ditch this car.”
“Do you have any friends who will help?”
He chewed on it.
Then said, “Help me spot a payphone.”
“Who you going to call?”
“Sarapong.”
“Who’s he?”
“A lawyer,” Wing said.
“Does he know how to keep his mouth shut?”
“Yes,” he said. “But now that I think about it, they might be able to track me to him.”
He crossed into the next lane then turned left.
“Where we going?”
88
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Night
EXHAUSTED, KANJANA GOT HOME shortly after eleven to find no lights on inside the house. The front door was locked as it should be. She unlocked it, stepped through, closed it behind her and hit the light switch on the wall.
Nothing happened.
She jiggled it up and down but the room stayed dark.
Suddenly someone flicked a match.
It gave off enough light to show a man sitting on her couch, lighting a cigarette, wearing a black mask.
“Sit down,” he said.
Kanjana froze.
She took a step back.
Then another.
The door stopped her from going any farther.
“Where’s Prarie?”
“She’s safe,” the man said. “She’s unharmed. What you do and say in the next two minutes is going to decide if she stays that way.”
Her blood raced.
“What do you want?”
The man took a long drag on the cigarette, inhaled, and blew smoke.
“What I want is very simple,” he said. “I want to know who killed Tookta.”
“Tookta?”
“Right, Tookta Vutipakdee.”
“What makes you think I know?”
The man exhaled.
Loudly.
Showing impatience.
“I’m the one who hired you to find her killer,” he said. “You dropped the case because of a conflict. We both know that the conflict developed because you figured out who did it and it turned out to be one of your other clients.”
He paused.
Giving her time to deny it.
She didn’t.
She couldn’t say a thing.
Her mind was too busy racing towards where this was headed.
“The conflict didn’t go away just because you’re sitting here,” she said.
He agreed.
No.
No.
No.
“The conflict’s going away because I have Prarie,” he said. “What I want to do more than anything in the world is make a telephone call and have her delivered back here in thirty minutes, safe and sound, like nothing ever happened. But I can’t do that without your help.”
Kanjana breathed in.
And out.
Then again.
“Let me talk to her and be sure she’s okay,” she said.
“Let’s suppose I did that and you find out I’m telling the truth,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
She closed her eyes.
And held them closed.
Then she looked at him.
“Then we have a deal,” she said.
“I want to know how you figured it out, too,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I want to be sure you didn’t make a mistake.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t.”
“I’ll be the judge,” he said. “Are you ready to say hello to your friend?”
She nodded.
89
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Night
TEFFINGER AND JINKA caught up to Petchpon just before he got to the freeway and followed him deeper and deeper into western Bangkok. He crossed the river and made his way up a canal road.
The traffic thinned.
They hung back, then killed the headlights altogether.
“Help me watch the road,” Jinka said.
Teffinger stared out the windshield, barely able to discern shapes.
“Keep going.”
“I’m going to hit something,” she said.<
br />
“You’re fine. Where the hell is he going?”
The road got rougher and the taillights ahead of them slowed. Ten minutes later, they pulled to the side of the road and went out.
“Stop here,” Teffinger said.
Jinka did.
They got out and walked.
There was no moon. A thick blanket of low clouds reflecting the city lights provided the only light.
They were almost on the bumper of Petchpon’s car before it became visible. No one was inside. It wasn’t parked in front of a house or other structure. Thick growth encroached the road from both sides.
“Where the hell is he?”
Jinka grabbed Teffinger’s arm and pulled him to a stop.
She whispered, “He’s pulling us into a trap. Let’s turn back.”
“No.”
He walked ahead.
“Teffinger—”
“Stay here if you want.”
She caught up to him.
“This is a mistake,” she said.
“It wouldn’t be my first.”
CANAL HOUSES APPEARED on their left between the road and the water. The hugged the shadows and slowed down, not making a sound.
Suddenly Jinka grabbed Teffinger’s arm.
He stopped.
She pointed.
Not more than thirty steps away a man stood in the dark, his body framed as a black silhouette against the backlight of a window.
He stood motionless.
Then turned towards them.
A lighter flicked, quickly lit a cigarette then went out. The man turned back to face the house, keeping the cigarette cupped in his hand.
It was gone in two minutes.
He lit another.
Then he turned and walked down the road, towards them.
They slipped into the darkness of the vegetation and held their breath as he passed.
He didn’t see them.
He kept walking.
90
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Night
WING AND JAMAICA TOOK REFUGE at the video-rehearsal warehouse, parking the car out back. There were lots of escape routes. They kept the lights off, using only flashlights to get around. They ate leftover catering food, then headed to the roof with a bottle of white wine and glasses of ice.
Wing powered up his cell phone and called Sarapong, the attorney.