by R. J. Jagger
Now ten.
Suddenly the man turned.
His arm rose.
From the end of that arm, a small flash of orange flame pierced the darkness, here and gone just that fast, simultaneous with an ear-shattering explosive pop.
110
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
The only window shade in Waverly’s roach-in-the-wall hotel was a spring-loaded, pull-down deal with tattered edges. She woke up Thursday morning when the first rays of daybreak pushed around the borders of that piece of junk. She laid there, torn between getting more sleep and getting things done, before finally rubbing her eyes and swinging her legs over the side.
She took a hot shower that got her 70% awake.
Then she headed over to the White Spot to take care of the other 30% with coffee, ending up on a barstool at the end of the counter with a piping hot cup in her hands and a gal named Jane behind the counter that kept that cup topped off.
This insanely early, the diner was a graveyard. All the barstools were empty, plus most of the tables. Two seats down, on the counter in a glass cake holder, was a stack of donuts. The ones on top were concrete but the ones underneath might actually be edible.
She resisted.
If they still tugged at her in five minutes, she’d get one.
Today would be critical.
She needed to find out what Bristol’s investigator, John Stamp, was finding out, if anything. What was the best way to do that? Follow him around? Break into his office while he was out?
She shook it off.
The gal behind the counter, Jane, came over with the pot and topped off the cup. “I saw you eyeing those donuts,” she said. “They’re evil. They’ll break your teeth and steal the soul of your firstborn. Personally I’d go with pancakes. You want some?”
She smiled.
Yes.
She did.
Good idea.
“Thanks.”
Time passed.
The city woke up.
The diner filled.
At ten minutes to eight, Waverly left a healthy tip on the counter, checked her purse to be sure she had plenty of change, then headed outside to find a phone booth.
At exactly eight, she called Su-Moon in Cleveland.
The woman answered before the first ring stopped.
“Waverly, is that you?”
The words were laced with explosion. It sounded like she just stepped off a roller coaster.
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
“You’re not going to believe it,” Su-Moon said. “Bristol was here in town when the woman got dropped off the roof.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I can prove it, too.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ll explain when I see you. I’m heading to Denver.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now. On the first flight I can catch. Tell me how to contact you when I get into town.”
She did.
They’d connect at Waverly’s hotel, fleabag that it was.
“See you soon.”
“Okay,” Waverly said. She almost hung up then brought the receiver back to her mouth. “Su-Moon, are you still there?”
She was.
“How do you know Bristol was in town?”
“He stayed at the Renaissance. He signed the register.”
“Was anyone with him?”
Silence.
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“Why?”
“The woman he’s with here in Denver is someone named Jaden,” Waverly said. “I’m just wondering if she was with him when he was there too.”
A beat.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember seeing a Jaden on the register.”
“Do me a favor,” Waverly said. “Go back and check. If there’s no Jaden there, at least find out if he paid the room rate for one occupant or two.”
“Even if he paid for two, it wouldn’t do us any good. There was no Jaden written on the register.”
Waverly exhaled.
“Okay, forget it then.”
111
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
River thought he felt a presence in the room Thursday morning and opened his eyes to find out if he was right or just having a trick of the night. He was right. The presence was January, sleeping peacefully next to him, naked, on her stomach with her arms up and her hands tucked under the pillow. The sheet draped over the lower half of her body. Her back and ribs and the sides of her stomach and the cusps of her breasts were exposed.
River studied her tattoos and the wonderful curvature of her body for a heartbeat, then rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.
Last night was still in his brain.
Finding January out there in the night still alive was by far, without a doubt, the best moment of River’s life so far. With the first wiggle of her body that showed she was alive, a terrible weight lifted off River’s shoulders. Everything in the world was suddenly right again, just like that.
He didn’t want to bring her back home.
He wanted to get her a thousand miles away.
“Forget it,” she said. “I hope he does come for me, or you, or us, or whatever sick plan is in his sick little brain. I really hope he does. In fact, I hope he does it tonight while I’m still mad enough to do what I’m going to do to him.”
“Which is what?”
“Which is what he did to me.”
River cocked his head.
The tone in her voice was absolute.
He could try to talk her out of it, but that’s all it would be—a try.
“Fine, we’ll go home,” he said.
She looked into his eyes.
“You said home,” she said.
“Right. So?”
“You didn’t say your place.”
“No, I said home.”
Coyotes barked and howled under the stars. The eerie sounds came from three or four different packs, all suddenly on the hunt at the same time.
January’s bare feet were no match for the Colorado prairie.
River carried her all the way to the road without rest.
She was naked and even though River cured that by giving her his shirt, she was still naked underneath, not to mention imbedded with dirt. Her wrists and ankles were raw and chaffed, almost to the point of bleeding. River, now shirtless, was half naked.
They walked for an hour before the first car appeared.
It was a woman, fifty something, a veterinarian, driving home to a nice warm bed after a night call. She took them all the way to River’s place and wouldn’t take a dime in return. Apparently there were still a few people like that left in the world.
They showered.
They melted their bodies together.
Then they passed out.
That was last night.
Now it was morning.
River slipped out of bed without waking January and headed for the shower.
The water was hot.
The sound of the spray was heaven.
The fact that Spencer hadn’t stopped to kill January didn’t mean he wasn’t going to. It only meant that he’d been too occupied with his new captive—Alexa Blank—to get distracted at that particular time and place in the universe. Spencer would get around to them first chance he had.
River knew that.
He also knew that might be as early as today.
It might even be in the next sixty seconds.
He got the soap off and turned the valves to the right until the spray stopped.
He listened for sounds.
There were none.
He heard no intruders.
January wasn’t calling out for help.
Everything was normal.
River’s blood suddenly raced.
Eve
rything was too normal.
He stepped out of the shower.
Two towels hung next to him on a rack.
He didn’t reach for them.
Instead he stood there, dripping onto the floor, listening for a stray sound with every ounce of energy he had.
112
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
Wilde woke up, not in a bed. He was behind the steering wheel of Blondie, parked on the side of a street. The sky was lighter than midnight but not by much. A bona-fide dawn was still an hour away. He stretched and rubbed his eyes. The street was quiet, eerily so.
He stepped out.
His legs were heavy.
The thin Denver air was cool.
No one was around.
He walked over to the bushes, unzipped and took a long, heaven-sent piss. The bullet missed him last night. It also forced him into a panic dive. By the time he got to his feet, the sprint was on. The other man was faster and that was that.
Wilde was stupid.
He was stupid beyond belief.
He should have made the cab driver tell him where he was going to drop London off. Was Wilde smart enough to ask that simple little question? No, he wasn’t, because he was the stupidest man on the planet. So now there he was, having no idea where London was.
The other man knew, though.
He knew only too well.
Wilde hadn’t planned for that contingency. He had planned to the point of capturing the guy, but not for failure.
That was stupid.
He had run over to Colfax then east towards town until he was able to flag down a taxi. He took it to his house, got Blondie, dropped Alabama off at a hotel just in case the guy had been following London earlier in the day and had figured out who Wilde was, then started crisscrossing the city, hoping by blind luck to stumble across London.
That stumble didn’t happen.
He checked her house.
She wasn’t there.
He parked down the street and kept an eye on her front door. Midnight came and went, then one, then one-thirty, then longer. He must have fallen asleep at that point.
He zipped up.
Back at Blondie, the gun and knife were sitting on the passenger seat. He grabbed the gun, tucked it in his waist and headed for London’s front door.
It was unlocked, just like they’d left it when they ran out last night, just like he left it after he checked the place last night.
Two doors down, a rough dog barked.
Wilde stepped inside.
The air was still and quiet.
“London?”
No one answered.
“London? You here?”
Silence.
The lower level was as before. He headed upstairs, not bothering to take the gun out of his belt. London’s bedroom was vacant.
Wilde sat on the edge of the bed.
She was dead.
She was dead because he was stupid.
He flopped back and closed his eyes.
He thought he was tough.
He was wrong.
He was just a guy who did stupid things and got people killed.
He needed to get out of the PI business.
He needed to get out of Denver.
He needed to put all this behind him and hope to never get anyone else killed.
113
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
Just east of the financial district, over on Grant Street, a number of former mansions had been converted into upscale offices over the years. One of those structures had a fancy wooden sign to the right of an oversized maple door that said, John Stamp, Private Investigator.
Waverly headed for it down a fancy cobblestone walkway and put her hand on the doorknob.
She paused long enough to consider the sanity, or lack thereof, of what she was about to do.
Then she mumbled, Just do it, and stepped in.
That step brought her into a two-story foyer with a winding staircase that led to the second level. Beneath her feet was Mediterranean tile. The walls were paneled and the window coverings were an expensive weave. It was the Brown Palace on a private scale.
A stately drop-dead-gorgeous redhead with deep cleavage and curvy hips appeared from another room.
“Are you looking for John?”
Yes.
She was.
Five minutes later she was in his upstairs office with the door closed.
The man was a movie star.
He tapped two cigarettes out of a pack, offered her one, then pushed hers back in when she declined. He lit up from a gold lighter and blew a perfect ring.
“What’s your name?” he said.
Waverly leaned forward in her chair.
“Tom Bristol killed Charley-Anna Blackridge,” she said. “You’ve been hired by him, through Gina Sophia, because Bristol found out somehow that there was a witness. After you find out who it is, that person is going to end up dead.”
The corner of Stamp’s mouth turned up ever so slightly.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re the one who’s been nipping at Bristol’s tail out in San Francisco.”
The words took her by surprise.
She kept the expression of her face.
“Yes.”
“You’re ruining the man’s life,” he said. “Leave him alone.”
“He’s a killer.”
Stamp leaned back in his chair, unimpressed.
“I generally don’t share information about my clients with third parties,” he said. “Here’s a piece of fact though. I’ve been hired to find out who killed Charley-Anna Blackridge. Once I figure that out—and I will—I’m giving the name and all the supporting evidence to Bristol. He’s then going to give it to you.”
“To me?”
He nodded.
“He wants you off his back,” he said. “Getting you on the right track is his way of accomplishing that.”
Waverly hardened her face.
“Charley-Anna isn’t the only one he killed,” she said. “There was another woman out in San Francisco by the name of Kava Every. She was a young female architect in Bristol’s firm. They were having a secret affair. There was another woman out in Cleveland, too. Her name was Bobbi Litton.”
Stamp’s face reacted, not much, but enough to show he hadn’t been privy.
Waverly stood up and walked to the door.
Halfway through she turned and said over her shoulder, “It looks like you don’t know your client as well as you thought. If you proceed from this point on, you’ll be an accomplice. I’ll be sure you end up being held accountable as such.”
Then she was gone.
114
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
River’s sense of intrusion was well founded because the dark silhouette of a man was approaching, fifty yards away on foot, closing hard with a purpose. He was strong and carried his body like a warrior. His posture was vaguely familiar.
River threw on clothes and had the gun in hand by the time the figure was close enough to recognize.
It was Robert Gapp.
He looked more like Robert Mitchum now than ever.
River motioned the man into the boxcar and closed the door.
They hugged.
The man focused on January, at first her face, then her tattoos, then her eyes. “You’re too good for him,” he said.
She smiled.
“It’s the other way, actually.”
“No, trust me, I have it right.” Then to River, “We need to talk.”
“I already figured that.”
They stepped outside.
Gapp got right to the point.
“There’s a dick named Bryson Wilde running around town trying to figure out who dropped that red dress off the roof this past weekend. I was buying her drinks and squeezing her ass right up until the minute
she left.”
“That was stupid.”
“It would have been if I was the one who killed her,” Gapp said. “That’s not what happened though. What happened is that you killed her and set me up to take the fall. You paid her to pick me up and be seen with me. Then you killed her.”
Gapp stopped talking.
He let the words hang in silence.
River studied his face to see if he was joking.
He wasn’t.
“That’s bullshit,” River said.
“Is it?”
“Yes, it is, total, one hundred percent, falling down dead drunk bullshit. Why would I do anything like that?”
Gapp tightened his brow.
“I’m still chewing on it but once I get my brain convinced, I’m going to have to kill you. You know that. The only surprise in all this is that I’m giving you a warning.”
River let the corner of his mouth turn up.
“You’re going to kill me?”
“You forced me,” Gapp said. “You’d do the same.”
River picked up a piece of gravel and threw it at a pigeon down on the tracks.
He missed.
The bird and three more like it took to the sky.
He turned to Gapp.
“What we need to do is get this PI off your ass. We’ll do it tonight. Meet me back here at nightfall.”
115
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
Wilde stayed alone in London’s bed until dawn, neither sleeping nor awake, then headed over to Alabama’s hotel and rapped on the door until her groggy face answered. Her hair was a mess, clearly the loser in the fight with the pillow.
She stretched.
“What time is it?”
Wilde stepped inside and shut the door.
“Time to get to work,” he said.
“Did London ever show up?”
Wilde shook his head.
“No.”
“That’s not good. I got to pee and take a shower,” she said.
“Do ’em both at the same time. The clock’s ticking.”
She headed for the bathroom and said over her shoulder, “There needs to be a law against having to wake up to you. I’m going to need coffee.”
“Fine.”