by R. J. Jagger
“Why don’t you give them a call just for grins and see what they have to say.”
“Where are you going?”
He stopped.
“To pick up Marilyn Black from the hospital.”
She walked toward him.
“Let me go with you.”
“Why?”
“She’s going to need a place to stay,” Sydney said. “I was thinking she could stay with me.”
Teffinger cocked his head.
“I located her mom—in Idaho. With any luck I’m going to put her on a plane. If that fails, you can be Plan B.”
32
Day Six—September 10
Saturday
Aspen woke well rested Saturday morning. She yawned, stretched, showered, and counted her lucky stars that she had actually survived a whole week at the law firm. She studied her face in the mirror as she brushed her teeth.
“Don’t screw up again,” she said.
“Yes, master.”
“I mean it.”
Knowing she still had a paycheck coming in, she let herself think about the pile of bills. It would be tough going until the end of the month, when she actually got paid, but after that she should be able to make ends meet and actually chip away at the student loans.
Maybe even get an oil change for the little Honda fellow.
She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d done that, the poor little thing.
Dressed in khakis and a cotton short-sleeve shirt, she headed straight to work, wanting to bill at least six or seven hours today. Almost every associate on her floor had already beaten her in.
Damn.
What a horse race.
She filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee, grabbed a day-old donut out of a Krispy Kreme box in the kitchen, and headed to her office. Outside, the day was perfect, sunny and blue. Ordinarily, right about now, she’d be on her bike trying to not kill herself on some insane mountain trail that was never intended for two wheels—oh, well, maybe tomorrow.
She pounded out solid work for more than three hours before her mind wandered to Rachel. Deep down, she still believed that the legal file Rachel was working on for the psychologist—Beverly Twenhofel—was somehow connected. Or, if not connected, at least held some answers.
Should she tell Nick Teffinger about it?
Or more importantly, could she?
Probably not.
It was an attorney-client matter.
And one thing beyond all others was certain at this point—if she screwed up again, then Jacqueline Moore would bounce her ass so far out of Denver that she’d end up speaking with a New York accent.
“Well, you look serious,” someone said.
The words startled her so much that she dropped the coffee.
Papers immediately soaked up the liquid and curled.
“Shit!”
The woman in her doorway—Christina Tam—looked amused and said, “I’ve done that five million times. It’s all part of riding a desk.”
Christina held out her hand.
“Come on. I’m here to save you.”
They ended up on the 16th Street Mall, buying dollar hotdogs from a street vendor and finding a bench in the sun. Christina wanted to know why Aspen’s photo had been on the TV, so Aspen told her about how she found Rachel Ringer. But didn’t tell her that the head had been severed.
“It always struck me as strange,” Christina said, “that someone would take Rachel.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She just wasn’t enough of any one thing to make a stranger pay attention to her,” she said. “She wasn’t attractive enough, she wasn’t weird enough, she wasn’t young enough, she just wasn’t anything enough. I mean she was a great lawyer and a wonderful person, but to someone who didn’t know her, she’d look pretty plain vanilla.”
Aspen agreed.
“So why her?” Christina asked.
Aspen considered it.
“Wrong place, wrong time, I guess.” A couple of cops on horseback passed by and waved at them. They smiled and waved back. “Was Rachel seeing anyone?” Aspen asked. “You know, romantically?”
Christina chuckled, as if the concept seemed strange.
“Maybe, but not that I know of. The woman was a workaholic. Much unlike me. Why?”
“When a woman goes missing, nine out of ten times a lover did it,” Aspen said.
“Right. But in this case, with four bodies, there’s obviously something a lot more sinister going on.”
When Aspen got home later that afternoon, two news crews were waiting for her in the parking lot. They probably thought she had some great big juicy tip for them.
Well, too bad, because she didn’t.
Something in her gut told her to turn around and walk away before they spotted her. She had nothing to say and didn’t want to contradict Teffinger by accident. But another part of her said to talk to them, just to reinforce that she didn’t know anything, just in case Teffinger was right and someone out there perceived her to be a threat.
So she walked over.
They recognized her and got the cameras rolling.
She stopped and smiled.
“Do you have any idea why anyone would trash your apartment?”
What?
The smile fell off her face and she looked up at her door.
“Were they trying to find something?”
It was open.
“What does this have to do with the four killings?”
A policeman was inside her apartment, talking to someone.
Shit!
She ran in that direction.
“Is someone after you?”
“Is this a warning of some kind?”
“What do you know about the four killings?”
“Why was Nick Teffinger trying to find you?”
She stopped just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, then turned and faced them.
“I don’t know anything about anything,” she said. “Anyone who thinks differently is wrong. That’s the honest-to-God truth.”
Then she ran up the stairs.
33
Day Six—September 10
Saturday noon
Draven liked the money but he didn’t like the cleanup. In fact, sometimes he wondered if it was even worth it. Like right now, for example, as he drove up to the cabin.
This was the sick part.
He never knew what to expect.
All he could hope for is that things hadn’t gotten too bloody.
He arrived at the cabin shortly before noon, saw that the car that had been there yesterday was now gone, and pulled in front of the structure as the tires kicked up a cloud of dust. The radio played “Heart of Stone,” which he hadn’t heard in years. He left the engine running until it ended, watching a bluebird bounce up and down on the branch of a lodgepole pine.
He took a swig of Jack and stepped out.
The sky above him was just about perfect—blue, sunny, warm and inviting. A thick pine fragrance filled the air. He stood still and listened.
No sounds came from anywhere; not from inside the house, not from the gravel road behind him, not from anywhere.
Good.
He walked to the front door, found it locked as it should be, and used his key to get in. He located the body in the bedroom, posed in a spread-eagle position on the bed, covered by a white sheet. He checked the DVD recorder and confirmed that the client had removed his souvenir copy of the snuff.
He couldn’t see any blood on the sheet and pulled it off.
The woman’s eyes were closed.
He saw no visible evidence of trauma or blood.
Excellent.
This would be a piece of cake.
He felt for her pulse and found none.
Her body was still warm.
She couldn’t have been dead more than an hour or two.
He sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand up and down her body, tracing her tattoos. She didn’t
move. He felt his cock swell and pushed it down but the pressure only made it stand up more. Maybe the woman needed one final act of love to send her off. He checked his wallet to see if he had a condom.
He did, so he put it on and mounted her.
She was tight.
He took his time, working up to the verge of a climax and then backing off, two times, then three, then four. Finally he couldn’t stand it any more and gave it to her like the rock star he was.
“Yeah baby!”
“How’s that feel?”
“Good, huh?”
“You like it.”
“You like it.”
“You like it.”
Then he exploded.
Drenched in sweat and exhausted, he collapsed on her and didn’t move, staying inside her. Then he closed his eyes just to rest them for a second.
At some point later, he felt movement, very minor, barely perceptible, but something nonetheless.
When he opened his eyes, the woman was staring at him.
34
Day Six—September 10
Saturday
In Davica’s spare bedroom, Teffinger twisted and tossed in bed half the night, going back and forth on whether he should buy the Corvette. The seller liked him and offered a good deal last night, a steal-of-a-deal in fact; but stressed he could only hold it until noon today. Lots of other people were calling and wanting to see it. The car was everything Kwak described, namely a primo representative of classic American muscle. But, even at a good price, it was still a pretty penny. To get it in his garage would take every bit of his savings plus a small loan.
But it was so damn beautiful, not to mention a sound investment.
It would never go south in value.
He already pictured himself driving it on Sunday afternoons with the top down and the Beach Boys blasting.
“Just get it,” he told himself.
Too excited to sleep any longer, he crawled out of bed, peeked in on a still-sleeping Davica, and then took a jog, thinking it over one last time before he committed. When he got back to the house, he called the seller and left a message that he’d take the car and would be over before noon with the money.
There.
Done.
He hit the shower and got his mind back on the case. The four murders were connected. If he could crack one, then the others would follow. But which one was the weakest link?—probably Rachel Ringer.
That killer was the most extreme and would stand out the most. Plus the law firm was eager to help. She was also the one who cried out the most for justice. No one should have their head cut off, especially while they were alive.
He toweled off and found Davica in the kitchen, firing up the coffee and wearing a short pink nightie. Every time he saw her, he was shocked at how beautiful she was.
“Morning, wet-head,” she said. “So did you decide to get it, or what?”
He nodded.
“Yep—guilty of stupidity.”
“I knew you would.”
He smiled.
“Even I didn’t know I would until thirty minutes ago.”
“I knew last night,” she said.
“Meaning what? That you know me . . .”
“. . . better than you know yourself?”
He shook his head, beaten.
They picked the car up shortly before noon. Teffinger gave the seller two checks and told him not to cash the second one until Tuesday. The seller trusted him, gave him the keys and a bill of sale, and said, “Remember. None of us really ever owns a car like this. We just save it for the next guy.”
Teffinger drove it back to Davica’s, parked it in the driveway and drooled on it for over an hour while Davica washed her Lotus. Then she said, “Why don’t you pull it in the garage? We’ll get in the back and you can feel me up.”
Later that afternoon, Teffinger left the Corvette in Davica’s garage and took the Tundra home to get a jump on all the dreaded, time-wasting tasks that came with being alive—clothes washing, house cleaning, food shopping, bill paying, checkbook balancing, and a thousand other little things that were already long overdue.
He was halfway through food shopping at the King Soopers in Green Mountain, trying to not buy too much junk, when his cell phone rang. A female’s voice came through. “This is Aspen Wilde, the attorney. You said I should call you if anything happened.”
She sounded panicked.
He listened patiently, hung up, and then walked over to a young lady stocking the shelves with cans of corn. “See that cart over there?” he said, pointing. “That’s mine but I have to leave. There’s some frozen stuff in there that someone’s going to need to put back. I’m really sorry about this.”
He kicked himself in the ass all the way over to Aspen’s apartment.
He was to blame.
He should have never put her face on the news.
He had turned her into a target.
35
Day Six—September 10
Saturday Afternoon
Aspen sat behind the wheel of her parked car, still trying to determine who or why anyone would trash her apartment, when Nick Teffinger raced into the parking lot and slammed his pickup to a stop.
Even from this distance he looked tense.
By the time she walked over and got his attention, he couldn’t apologize fast enough. “This is all my fault,” he said.
She disagreed.
“I turned you into a target,” he added.
She grabbed his hand. “I’ve been thinking about this. If it’s somehow connected to Rachel Ringer or the other dead women, then we have fresh clues inside my apartment. Right?”
He agreed and wondered why he hadn’t thought of that himself.
Before she could say another word, he bounded up the stairs two at a time and got all the local cops out of the place before they contaminated the scene to death.
Then he shut the door and walked back down, already punching numbers on his cell. As he waited for an answer, he told Aspen, “The Lakewood PD gave me permission to bring the Denver Crime Unit down to process the scene.”
Fifteen minutes later the Crime Unit showed up, with a beer-belly man behind the wheel.
“That’s Paul Kwak,” Teffinger told Aspen.
“I find you a primo 1967 Corvette,” Kwak said getting out, “and this is how you repay me? Making me work on a Saturday?”
Teffinger smiled.
“I was going to call you,” he said. “I bought it.”
Kwak looked flabbergasted.
“You did?”
“Just picked it up a couple of hours ago,” Teffinger added.
Kwak shook his head in wonder.
“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you’d do it.”
“I shouldn’t have. It took all my money and then some.”
“Do what I do,” Kwak said. “Get a cardboard sign—Need Money, Did Something Stupid. Just stay off my corner.”
Then they turned their attention to the job at hand. Teffinger wanted it processed as if it was a homicide scene, not a B&E. If someone left a fingerprint, a hair, or dropped his wallet by mistake, Teffinger wanted to find it.
Aspen watched from a distance, talking to the renters who had wandered over to see what all the commotion was about. All the fuss made her knees weak.
She didn’t know where she’d sleep tonight; not here, though.
She went over to her car, sat behind the wheel and called Blake Gray to let him know that she’d be showing up on the news again. She didn’t want him to get blindsided by it.
“I’m coming over,” he said.
“Blake, really, you don’t have to. I’m fine.”
“I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”
When he arrived, he had a proposition for her. “This is somehow tied to the four dead women, especially if you’re correct that nothing was taken. Here’s what I think we should do. We should send you to the firm’s D.C. office until all this blows over. The firm will
pick up all the expenses—air, lodging, meals, the whole thing. You need to get acquainted with the people out there sooner or later anyway, so it might as well be now. Then, when this blows over, we’ll bring you back to Denver.”
She thought about it.
“What if it doesn’t blow over?”
He cocked his head.
“Everything blows over sooner or later. The main thing is your safety. Tonight, tomorrow, and the next day.”
She almost agreed, but then shocked herself.
“Thanks, but no,” she said. “I’m not going to give in to intimidation.”
36
Day Six—September 10
Saturday
With the tattoo woman Mia Avila hogtied on the bed, terribly and disgustingly alive, Draven took a hit from the flask and watched his copy of the DVD—the secret copy no one ever knew about, the one transmitted to a second recorder located in the garage. It convinced him that the client fully intended to kill the woman and thought he had.
Draven felt better knowing that.
If the asshole had chickened out, and intentionally left him with a live mess to dispose of, Draven wouldn’t have had much of a sense of humor about the whole thing.
He didn’t mind abducting the women.
He didn’t mind that they died.
He didn’t even mind how they died.
Quick.
Slow.
Clean.
Messy.
Whatever.
But he had absolutely no respect for little spineless twits who didn’t have the balls to carry through with what they started. That had happened twice before. Afterwards, Draven hunted them both down and taught them a little lesson, about how gutless little toads didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as him any more. They didn’t even know who he was until their last ten seconds of life when he told them. Without being fully vested they couldn’t continue to live, plain and simple. Because otherwise they might end up with buyer’s remorse and feel the need to go to the cops—the assholes.
This case was different, however.
Nothing more than an innocent mistake.
No need to hunt the guy down.
He got the call he was waiting for mid-afternoon, from Swofford, and explained that the tattoo woman had been left alive, unintentionally, according to his best guess. Swofford paused and then said, “I see three options. You can kill her, or I can call the client and see if he wants to come back and finish up, or you can offer the woman to the next client as a freebie.”