License to Die (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
Page 26
95
One Month Later
Friday Afternoon
Teffinger was on a country road north of Denver, halfway to Loveland, when he found a pastoral scene that moved him. He pulled onto the shoulder, killed the engine, and stepped out. The temperature was only about sixty, but under a full Colorado sun and without a wisp of wind, it seemed like seventy-five.
He felt a little guilty about taking off work early; not guilty enough to go back, though.
He set up the easel and positioned an eight-by-ten canvas on it. Then he squeezed Windsor & Newton oils onto a worn wooden pallet, limiting his selection to Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Red, French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna, and Titanium White.
From those six tubes he could mix any color he wanted, and a few he didn’t.
He solidified the composition in his mind and then laid in the lights and darks with a Burnt Sienna wash, until the painting looked like an old one-tone photograph.
Then he started to lay in the color.
The place was deserted.
There was no vehicle traffic at all.
Not a sound came from anywhere.
Off in the distance a hawk floated on large quiet wings. A butterfly fluttered to Teffinger’s left, one of the last summer holdouts. As he painted, his thoughts turned to the events of the last month.
Lots had happened.
The security system in Davica’s house had recorded Jack Draven abducting her on that fatal Saturday night. There was no question that she shoved the knife in the guy’s back in self-defense, while he was raping her. He had gotten himself too distracted to remember to keep the knife in his hand. Luckily, the events hadn’t seemed to traumatize Davica.
Why Draven had chosen her was still a mystery.
Maybe he did it to screw with Teffinger.
Draven, it turned out, had made a duplicate DVD of a lot of the snuffs, if not all of them. Why? Who knows? Maybe he was going to use them for blackmail some day. Maybe he just liked to watch them.
One of the DVDs showed the murder of 19-year-old Catherine Carmichael. The resulting investigation led to a Kansas man named Porter Adams. The victim’s eyes were found in a formaldehyde jar in Adams’ basement. Adams was in the process of being extradited to Colorado to face the death penalty.
Another one of the DVDs showed Blake Gray sawing off Rachel Ringer’s head. Gray was sitting in prison right now, without bail, facing the death penalty.
“He’ll get it, too,” Teffinger told everyone.
Another one of the DVDs showed a man snuffing Angela Pfeiffer, stabbing her repeatedly. So Davica was officially off the hook for that.
Teffinger and Davica had consummated their relationship that night in celebration and hadn’t stopped since.
Mia Avila, the missing Pueblo woman, was found alive, chained in the cab of a tow truck, which was locked in a structure at the remote location off Highway 93 where Jack Draven had been staying.
She had suffered serious malnutrition and dehydration but in the end managed to pull herself back to normal.
The body of the tow-truck driver still hadn’t been found.
Draven had been staying at the place with a Pueblo hooker named Gretchen Smith. She disappeared the day after she learned that Draven was dead.
No one knows where she went.
She left behind a brand-new Lexus that was titled in her name.
Derek Bennett’s story checked out. He had nothing to do with the deaths of Rachel Ringer, Chase, or Jacqueline Moore. The only thing he had done of an illegal nature was to conspire with Blake Gray and Jacqueline Moore to hire Jack Draven to threaten Robert Yates.
Although that was a felony, Teffinger talked a New York prosecutor into giving Bennett a plea bargain in exchange for Bennett testifying against Blake Gray at trial.
The law firm of Hogan, Slate & Dover, LLC, disintegrated. Teffinger got Aspen and Christina Tam jobs in the D.A.’s office, where they were thriving.
As near as Teffinger could tell, Blake Gray was the one who had killed Brad Ripley. Teffinger’s theory was that Ripley learned from Draven that there would be more events at that same location after Ripley’s.
Ripley then kept an eye on the place.
When Blake Gray showed up, Ripley took the pictures that were found in his safe, and also wrote down the license plate number of Gray’s BMW. From there he learned who Gray was. When he lost money in Las Vegas and needed more, he blackmailed Gray. But Gray traced the phone calls, found out who was blackmailing him, and shot him in the face.
Marilyn Black, the hooker, was living drug-free with her mother in Idaho, working as a cashier in a hardware store. She emailed Teffinger almost every day.
Teffinger worked the paintbrushes for almost two hours and then stopped.
He was finished.
Anything more would just mess it up.
He packed up the Tundra and headed to Davica’s.
If she liked the painting he’d get it framed and give it to her.
Otherwise he’d sell it at the gallery.
It was good enough for that.
Davica called while he was driving over and said, “Let’s get drunk tonight and then take a cab home.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care, downtown somewhere, maybe one of those places on Larimer Street, somewhere dark and cozy. I’m going to wear a short black skirt and a white thong.”
He smiled.
“You’re too wild for me. You know that, I hope.”
“You have no idea,” she said.
THE END