License to Die (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  “Bingo,” he said. “The monkey spells a word.”

  60

  Day Ten—September 14

  Wednesday Morning

  All morning, Aspen expected someone to walk into her office and ask what she’d been doing in Derek Bennett’s office last night. When no one came, she started to feel better. That changed when Blake Gray called shortly after ten and asked if she was available for lunch today.

  “Of course. What’s the occasion?”

  “Nothing special. Why don’t you swing by my office at 11:30 and we’ll try to beat the crowd.”

  As soon as she hung up, she ducked into Christina Tam’s office, closed the door, and told her.

  “Somehow he knows,” she said. “I can feel it.”

  Christina didn’t seem concerned.

  “How could he?”

  “They could have this place bugged a million different ways and we’d never know it.”

  Christina rolled a pencil in her hand.

  “Now you’re getting paranoid,” she said. “Just calm down, go to lunch, and see what he has to say. It’s probably nothing.”

  She looked amused.

  “What?” Aspen asked, curious.

  “Here’s a list of things to not bring up,” she said. “Tops & Bottoms, Rebecca Yates, Robert Yates, flashlights, coat closets, and guns in drawers.”

  “And Derek Bennett,” Aspen added.

  “Right. And me too, for that matter.”

  Aspen kept her nose to the grindstone all morning and then inconspicuously went to the billing room and pulled the time sheets for Jacqueline Moore and Derek Bennett, to see if either of them had been in New York on July 22nd when Robert Yates got murdered.

  Both had been right here in Denver billing clients like there was no tomorrow, for the week before and the week after as well.

  Just for grins, she checked on Blake Gray too.

  Same thing.

  In a corner booth at the Paramount Café, over the lunch special—salmon and salad—Blake Gray gave Aspen the inside track on how to survive life in a big law firm. Then he got to the point of the meeting.

  She shouldn’t let her guard down.

  He still firmly believed her life was in danger.

  She should go to the firm’s D.C. office until everything blew over.

  She listened carefully, thanked him overwhelmingly for his concern, and then politely rejected the offer. Then she changed the subject.

  “Christina was telling me about this huge antitrust case that the firm won, over a hundred million,” she said. “I can’t even imagine what that must feel like.”

  “Ask Derek Bennett,” Blake said. “He spearheaded the whole thing.”

  She bit her lower lip, trying to not visibly react.

  “Talk about your nasty kick-’em-in-the-balls fight, this was the granddaddy of them all. It was the legal equivalent of two packs of junkyard dogs ripping each other’s guts out. Lucky for us Derek Bennett was the biggest dog in the bunch.”

  “Wow.”

  “Bow wow. As usual, though,” Blake added, “the drama behind the scenes was a whole lot more interesting than the case itself.”

  “How’s that?”

  Blake finished chewing and then said, “The defendant, Tomorrow Inc., was owned and run by a guy named Robert Yates, an insanely rich guy, at least on paper. Have you ever heard of him?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t remember him being at my last party.”

  “Mine either,” he said. “Anyway, he makes a slick move and persuades the trial judge to stay execution of the judgment without posting a supersedeas bond. So he’s temporarily off the hook. Then while the case is on appeal he starts to secretly buy the stock of our client, Omega, which is publicly traded. He’s doing it in small chunks, through a lot of dummy corporations, friends and brokers, to keep everything under the radar so the price doesn’t go up.”

  “A takeover,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “A takeover, but not by the company itself, since it wasn’t Tomorrow buying the stock, but a takeover by a private party.”

  “Why?”

  “My theory is that he wanted to get control of Omega and then have it drop the case against Tomorrow, or at least settle it for some ridiculously small amount. It’s called, If you can’t beat your opponent, eat him.”

  “But how could he have Omega drop the case? There are other shareholders besides him. Whoever’s on the board of Omega has a fiduciary duty to all the shareholders, to maximize the amount of the judgment.”

  Blake laughed.

  “That’s the difference between someone fresh out of law school like you and a crusty old guy like me,” he said. “You’re absolutely right, in theory. In reality, though, it would have worked very differently.” He nodded with respect. “You got to hand it to the guy, he was a genius. The interesting thing was, both companies would have come out stronger. But then, out of the blue, Yates gets robbed one day. It turns out he had about twenty dollars in his pocket. He decides to resist instead of handing it over and gets both himself and his daughter killed. Then, in an even stranger twist, his wife walks in front of a bus. That, by the way, just happened a day or two ago.”

  She sighed.

  “How tragic.”

  He seemed to chew on the words, then looked at her.

  “Yeah. It really was.”

  Back at her office after lunch, she found a sealed envelope sitting on her chair where she’d be sure to find it. Inside she found a sheet of paper.

  A little birdie told me you could use a friend, so here’s your shot of reality for the day. Don’t trust Christina Tam. She’s a spy. My advice is to get out of the firm while you still can. And whatever you do, don’t show this note to anyone. I’m the only one you have watching your back.

  She read it six more times, then swallowed hard and shredded it.

  As soon as she did, she wished she hadn’t.

  61

  Day Ten—September 14

  Wednesday Morning

  Slightly hung over, Draven crawled out of bed before dawn, being careful to not wake Gretchen. He carried his jeans and T-shirt outside and put them on, then walked over to the barn and took a heaven-sent piss in the dirt. Crickets chirped. Something small rustled in the brush, maybe a mouse or a snake. He zipped up, unlocked the barn and inched his way into the blackness.

  He couldn’t remember a darker dark.

  Nothing was visible, not even the outline of the tow truck.

  He held his arm out until he felt steel, and then followed the cold body of the vehicle around until he reached the door. When he opened it, the dome light came to life and shined on the driver’s dead body.

  He grimaced at the sight.

  Shit.

  The dumb bitch.

  Why’d she have to go and screw everything up?

  He moved her arm to see how much stiffness had settled into the body since yesterday afternoon—not enough to make a difference. He opened the door as far as it would go and then pulled on her arm until she dropped to the ground with a thud. Then he dragged her out of the barn over to the Nissan, where he muscled her into the trunk. The whole thing took less than three minutes but left him covered in sweat.

  He locked the barn and double-checked the lock.

  It was important that Gretchen didn’t stumble across the tow truck today while he was gone. He’d come up with a plan to dispose of it later, but right now he had to concentrate on first things first.

  He checked on the tattoo woman, chained to the seat frame in the back of the Granada. She was still wonderfully unconscious, thanks to the injection. He moved her into the back seat of the Nissan, re-chained her to the frame and covered her with a blanket. Then he left a note on the kitchen table for Gretchen, telling her he had business but would be back this afternoon.

  Finally at ease, he pointed the Nissan toward the cabin.

  He arrived at the structure just as dawn broke.

/>   It looked deserted, as it should.

  No lights were on.

  No cars were parked in front.

  Perfect.

  Everything was back on track.

  He found the stripper—Chase—naked and dead in the bedroom, brutally dead to be precise, the victim of multiple bloody wounds. In addition to all that, a nail had been pounded into her forehead.

  The hammer sat on the dresser, next to a box of 3” galvanized nails.

  “Goddamn sicko,” he muttered.

  For a split second, he had half a mind to hunt the guy down and do the same thing to him, to see how he liked it. But the feeling passed after he wrapped the woman in a bed sheet and made a pot of coffee. Out in the garage, he confirmed that the satellite DVD recorder—the one that the clients never knew about—had done its job. He watched for a few seconds, just long enough to tell that it had worked properly, and then popped the DVD out. He put it in a plastic case, carried it into the cabin, and set it on the kitchen counter where he wouldn’t forget it.

  Okay.

  Good.

  He filled the cup back up with piping hot coffee and then sipped it on the front steps. The sun was already taking the chill out of the air and washing the mountains with a yellow hue.

  It’d be a nice day; autumn in Colorado.

  It doesn’t get much better than that.

  As bad as yesterday had been, things still worked out pretty good in the end. After the stupid tow-truck driver forced him to kill her, Draven drove the rig straight to the farmhouse. Luckily, Gretchen wasn’t home. He figured out how to unhook the Granada, and stashed the truck in the barn, long before Gretchen showed up.

  She cooked hotdogs and chili and bounced up and down on his lap until he promised to take her to a bar.

  They ended up at a dive with cheap beer and a crappy jukebox but a nice, homey feel.

  Then they drove back home with guts full of alcohol and managed to screw like crazy before passing out.

  That was last night. Now, today, he had work to do. He put the tow-truck driver in a wheelbarrow and muscled her into the mountains as far as he could, ending up a good five or six hundred yards from the cabin. Then he buried her a foot down, fighting rocks the whole way.

  In a perfect world, she’d be deeper.

  The effort was too much.

  The ground was almost all stone with hardly any dirt.

  In any event, a foot ought to be good enough to keep the stench in and the animals out, especially after he piled a ton of rocks on top.

  Then he went back to the cabin and ate a sandwich and half a box of cookies, thinking about how he should kill the tattoo woman.

  He heard her moan out in the Nissan.

  Perfect.

  She was waking up, just in time to die.

  He unchained her and carried her into the bedroom, where he tied her on her back with her arms over her head. Then he gagged her, straddled her chest and slapped her face until she was fully awake.

  The hammer kept drawing his attention.

  He pulled up a vision of driving a nail into her forehead.

  On the one hand, death would be quicker than she deserved for all the pain she’d put him through. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have to fuss around with her all day.

  She must have read something in his eyes, judging by the way she pulled so frantically at the ropes.

  “Yeah, it’s that time,” he said.

  She tried to plead with him, through the gag, but everything came out scrambled.

  He leaned over far enough to get the hammer and a couple of nails.

  He dangled them in front of her face.

  “I can’t lie to you,” he said. “This is going to hurt.”

  62

  Day Ten—September 14

  Wednesday Morning

  After working up a search warrant and taking it down to the D.A.’s office for review and processing, Teffinger drove back to the wooden building and paced back and forth outside the chain-link fence.

  The four women had been killed inside that structure.

  He was sure of it.

  The question was whether it would give up its secrets.

  Mid-afternoon, Sydney pulled up, dangling a thermos of coffee out the window. Teffinger immediately ran to his truck and searched around in the back seat until he found a used Styrofoam cup.

  “You got the warrant?” he asked, relieving her of the thermos and pouring much-needed caffeine into the cup.

  “Nope.”

  He shook his head in wonder.

  “I’m going to enter Clay in a snail race,” he said. “See if he can at least move that fast.”

  She grinned and then paced with him, for some time, for so long in fact that he brought up a subject that he didn’t think he would.

  “Davica blindsided me this morning,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “Well, you know she’s bi, right?”

  “So you say.”

  “This morning she said she misses women,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have said anything, but of course I did, and we ended up in a little discussion. The bottom line is this. If I give her my approval to sleep with other women, she’s going to look around. If I don’t, she won’t.” He picked up a stick and snapped it. “This has nothing to do with men. She’s crystal clear that she isn’t interested in other men.”

  He studied Sydney to get her reaction.

  “Does this mean you’re sleeping with her?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me, that’s the kind of thing I’d remember.”

  She laughed.

  “Well, this is quite the dilemma,” she said.

  “I want her to be happy. On the other hand, if I give her the go-ahead to get intimate with a woman, I’m afraid she’ll end up falling in love.”

  “Think of the bright side,” Sydney said. “Unlimited threesomes.”

  He smiled.

  “Been there,” he said. “They were fine in their day, but now I think they’d be more work than they’re worth.” He kicked a stone.

  Sydney cocked her head.

  “What if she did get feelings for another woman?” she asked. “Do you think that would mean she would feel differently about you?”

  “I’m don’t know. And I don’t want to find out.”

  He stopped, laced his fingers through the chain-link fence and stared at the building. “I’m jealous of someone who doesn’t even exist yet,” he said. “A woman, no less. How pathetic is that?”

  She looked amused.

  “It’ll either work out or it won’t,” she said. “There are no guarantees. Personally, I think you have a better chance with a woman if you give her what she wants instead of trying to herd her in.”

  He kicked the fence.

  “I know that,” he said. “It’s just going to be hard.”

  “Maybe there’s a compromise,” Sydney said. “She can do other women but only if you’re there.”

  He thought about it.

  “Maybe,” he said. “In the meantime, this is our secret.”

  “I’ll tell the chief. No one else.”

  “Not funny.”

  Just then, Paul Kwak pulled up in a Crime Unit van, waving the search warrant out the window.

  “Is anyone ready to have some fun?” he asked.

  They fingerprinted the padlock on the fence, got nothing useable, then cut it off and bagged it. Teffinger’s heart pounded as they walked over the dirty, weed-infested asphalt toward the building. “I know none of us would ever make a mistake,” he said, “but especially don’t make it today.”

  All the doors had padlocks, so they cut one off and entered.

  The lights didn’t work.

  They wandered around the outside perimeter until they found the main electrical box. The breaker was closed, meaning there was no electricity coming to it. Kwak scratched his gut and frowned.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to
fire up the generators and set up some halogen stands,” he said.

  Teffinger nodded.

  “Go ahead and start on that,” he said. “Do you have any flashlights in your van?”

  “A couple.”

  Teffinger and Sydney entered using flashlights. The building was broken down into a large room and several smaller ones. Most of them were cluttered with old rusty parts, no doubt leftover remnants of machines that no longer existed.

  “I want the eyes,” Teffinger said. “I’ll be a happy man if I can find the eyes.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Sydney said. “I always pictured them floating in a formaldehyde pickle jar on someone’s mantel.”

  Teffinger grunted.

  They searched the place thoroughly but didn’t find the room that had been in Brad Ripley’s snuff video.

  “Damn it,” Teffinger said. “I can’t believe this isn’t the place.”

  One of the metal racks seemed odd, and Teffinger studied it as they walked past. It didn’t seem as dirty as the others. On closer inspection, it seemed as though the boxes and parts on the shelves had been taken off and then put back on. There were scratches and smudges in the dirt. Then he spotted a door hidden behind it and started pulling things off the shelves and setting them over to the side.

  “Help me with this stuff,” he said.

  When they finally got everything moved and opened the door, they found a room unlike the others, empty except for a bed. “Bingo,” Teffinger said, shining the light around. He paused the beam on a black smudge on the back wall. “I remember that mark from Ripley’s snuff film.”

  On closer examination, they saw blood splatters—on the floor, on the walls, not as many as Teffinger anticipated but enough to give them all the DNA they wanted.

  “So this is where it all happened,” Sydney said.

  “Yeah. Nice, huh?”

  They didn’t enter, but instead went back outside to talk to Kwak. “I got some good news and some bad news,” Teffinger said. “The good news is, we have a whole room that we’re going to take apart inch by inch.”

  Kwak’s face brightened.