by R. J. Jagger
Yardley pictured it.
It wasn’t pretty.
She frowned and shook her head.
“To be honest, I don’t think I’m cut out for that,” she said.
The woman wrinkled her brow.
“I need you to be the bait. We need to lure him somewhere where I can do it and not have to worry about a thousand witnesses. Then we need to dispose of the body where it will never be found.”
Yardley shook her head.
“There’s no such place. Not in this day and age.”
“Wrong, there are a million places and I know at least ten of them,” Elmblade said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is whether you’ll be the bait. You are already, whether you admit it or not. The only question is whether you want me in the shadows waiting for him when he comes.”
“Lovely picture,” Yardley said. She flicked hair out of her eyes. “If I help you, Deven needs to stay out of it. I don’t want her to play any part whatsoever. I don’t want her involved even an inch.”
“That’s fine. You can stick her on a plane to Greenland for all I care.”
46
Day Three
July 20
Wednesday Afternoon
When the California investigator said she had news and it wasn’t particularly pretty, Pantage braced but not hard enough.
“Okay, the woman you asked about, London Winger, was an attorney here in Malibu,” she said. “She was friends with the other woman, Chiara de Correggio.”
“Okay.”
“One day, both of the women mysteriously dropped off the face of the earth,” she said. “Well, that’s a slight misstatement. They didn’t disappear on the same day. Chiara disappeared on a Tuesday and London disappeared the following day, Wednesday. Chiara just vanished; she didn’t cash out a bank account or anything like that. London, on the other hand, did cash out a bank account. The following week, Chiara’s body was found at the base of a cliff just south of Big Sur. She’d been dead for several days.”
Pantage’s heart raced.
“The police came up with a theory that the two women had a falling out. London killed Chiara, dumped her body and then went on the run before the walls closed in.”
Pantage swallowed.
“How’d Chiara die?”
“I don’t have that yet,” she said. “The detective on the case is a man named John Maxwell. He’s a no-nonsense alpha-type. He found out I was snooping around and actually called me. He wants to know what my interest is in all this.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him no interest at all, just curious.” She exhaled. “Like I said before, I don’t know what your interest is in all this and I don’t want to know. I’ll tell you this, though. If you’re mixed up in any of this, I’d back down and do it fast.”
Pantage considered it.
“Find out how Chiara died,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but remember, it’s against my advice.”
“I understand.”
She hung up and looked out the window.
She was a murderer.
She killed Chiara.
Why?
She had no memory, not a spark.
There was no question that she was London Winger. That was clear from the driver’s license and photographs from her closet.
How did she end up in Denver?
How did she become Pantage Phair?
Her phone rang and Teffinger’s voice came through. “According to Sydney, your gladiator friend from Friday night had you in his crosshairs the whole evening,” he said. “When you bumped into him, it wasn’t a real bump. It was something he staged.”
“I know,” she said. “I saw the same thing in the copy you sent me.”
“When you left, you went to his place not yours, right?”
“Right.”
“Where was that? Do you remember?”
She did.
He wrote it down.
Then he said something. She heard the words and knew he was talking but a sudden dark thought wouldn’t let her focus.
Maybe her past life as London Winger was somehow connected to what was happening here in Denver. Maybe Jackie Lake was dead because of something in Pantage’s past.
“Hey, you there?”
“Yes.”
“You left me.”
“Sorry.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No.”
“I said, you should spend the night at my place tonight,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Good.”
She exhaled and said, “Can I ask you something personal?”
“That sounds serious.”
“No, not really, but I was just wondering if you ever killed anyone, you know, in the line of duty or whatever.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me about it tonight?”
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Is that a no?”
“No, it’s a yes with a qualifier.”
When Teffinger signed off, Pantage dialed the California investigator and said, “Aspen, it’s me, Pantage.”
“Did you change you mind about pressing forward?”
“No,” she said. “The opposite, actually. I have something else I want you to run down. Find out if London Winger or Chiara de Correggio had any connection to a man named Evan Starry. That might not be his real name. He’s about thirty, six-four and built like a gladiator.”
“Sounds yummy.”
Pantage smiled.
“We definitely need to meet at some point,” she said. “We like the same foods.”
47
Day Three
July 20
Wednesday Afternoon
Mid-afternoon Teffinger got a call from a very, very, very pissed female who said, “Check your emails you bastard.” The line went dead. He knew the voice but couldn’t place it. Sydney came over and said, “Problems?”
He raked his hair back with his fingers.
“I think so.”
He logged on to his email account, which pulled up unceremoniously on large flat-panel monitor. At the very top was an email from September Tadge, the attorney, with a short, sweet message: “How dare you put my life in danger?”
Teffinger swallowed.
Behind the words was a link.
He clicked it to find that it took him to a video. He watched himself from an outside camera, sneaking into the back window of September’s law office, then from other cameras inside, rifling through lower level rooms before heading upstairs. There a camera picked him up pulling an expandable file out of a cabinet, copying the contents and replacing it.
His face was clear.
There was no question it was him.
When it ended, Teffinger looked around the room to see if anyone had been eavesdropping. If they were they didn’t let on.
Sydney watched it without saying a word.
She gave Teffinger a sideways glance and walked away when he looked at her.
“Sydney.”
She kept going, not looking back, walking briskly out the door.
“Hold on.”
She didn’t.
She sped up.
The elevator door opened just as she got to it and the chief came out. She sidestepped him, ducked in and pressed the close button repeatedly.
The doors shut just as Teffinger got to them.
He nodded at the chief, who was now stopped, and bounded down the stairwell. He didn’t catch Sydney until she was out of the building and half a block up Bannock. He grabbed her elbow and jerked her to a stop.
“Let me explain,” he said.
“Get your hands off me.”
“It’s not like it seems,” he said.
She looked defiantly into his eyes.
“How dare you get dirty?”
“Look—”
She pushed hi
m on the chest, hard enough that he had to step back.
“There are no looks,” she said. “Why is nobody ever who I think they are?”
“Sydney—”
She walked away.
When Teffinger followed she turned and pointed a finger at him.
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”
He stopped.
She walked away.
He watched until he couldn’t stand it, then turned the opposite way and took one step after another.
He had no idea where he was going.
It wasn’t back to homicide.
The sun beat down.
He wiped sweat off his forehead and sped up.
“Come on, bake me to death. Just drop me on the sidewalk right here, right now.”
Then he punched a stop sign.
The streets of Denver slipped by, unfocused, blurred by adrenalin and anger; anger at what he did, anger at getting caught, anger at putting September at risk, anger at jeopardizing the case, anger at putting Sydney in a difficult position.
An hour passed.
That’s how long it took, a full hour of walking at breakneck speed, before his brain began to focus again.
He called September from a pay phone.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“No, no talking,” she said. “There’s only one thing you need to know. I’ve entrusted a copy of the tape to a friend of mine. If I end up dead, he’s going to turn it over to the police. You’ll pay for what you did. That will be my present to you from the grave.”
“Look, there’s no way he could ever find out.”
“You don’t know that.”
The line went dead.
48
Day Three
July 20
Wednesday Evening
Yardley drove Deven to DIA Wednesday evening and gave her an envelope stuffed with money. “Remember, call me and let me know you got safe to wherever you decide to go but don’t tell me where it is.”
“This is wrong,” Deven said.
“No, this is right. What’s wrong is if I have to worry about you instead of focusing on business.”
“We should be doing the business together.”
Yardley gave her a kiss on the check.
“Next time.”
“We’ve always been in things together before,” Deven said.
“Well, this time is different.”
“If that’s true then come with me,” Deven said. “We’ll both just disappear.”
“And look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives? No thanks. Everything will be settled by this time tomorrow. Indulge me until then.”
Yardley gave her a hug, hopped in the car and waved goodbye as she drove off.
There.
Done.
Now it was time to meet with Madison and set the bait.
49
Day Three
July 20
Wednesday Night
The black lens of twilight settled over Denver, dropping the temperature, washing away the stress of the sun and preparing for the sins of the night. Pantage and Renn-Jaa drove north on I-25 in shorts and Ts, en route to the Concrete Flower Factory, with the radio turned to hip-hop.
They didn’t talk much.
Pantage couldn’t clear her mind of the fact that she killed a woman—a friend, no less—in her not-too-distant prior life as London Winger. She didn’t know why but did know there was no acceptable excuse. No matter what led to it, she should have been able to find a resolution short of what happened. The fact that she let herself kill someone spoke to her underlying genetic composition. That flawed foundation would not have changed simply because her memory was faulty.
It was with her right now.
It was drilled into her bones.
She couldn’t survive prison.
A cage would kill her.
She not only knew that now, but undoubtedly knew it back then. That was the jolt that morphed her from London Winger into Pantage Phair.
John Maxwell.
That was the detective after her, John Maxwell, a “no-nonsense” man.
Pantage could feel his reach.
She could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
“Are you okay?”
The words came from Renn-Jaa, over the radio.
“Yeah.”
“You sure? We can call this off if you want, or I can do it myself. You can wait in the car.”
“I’m fine.”
A mile clicked off, then another and another. In five minutes they would be at their exit. From there it was only a mile or two to their destination.
Pantage shut her eyes.
The vehicle glided effortlessly.
Suddenly an image flashed in her brain. It was night, deep, deep night, pitch-black. She was driving through a heavy fog down a road she knew well. To the left, cliffs dropped off into the pacific. She kept an eye on the rearview mirror, looking for headlights. There were none.
Her heart pounded.
A turnoff appeared up ahead on the left.
She crossed the centerline and swung into it.
Dust kicked up.
She opened the door.
The dome light kicked on and lit up the interior. Her hands, now visible, were stained with blood, blood that she’d wiped off earlier but not completely. On the seat next to her was a towel.
She unrolled it.
Inside was a bloody knife.
She grabbed it by the handle, stepped outside and walked to the edge of the cliff one careful step at a time. The pounding of the ocean against the cragged rocks below cut through the darkness.
She cocked her arm back and threw the knife with all her might.
Then she looked around for headlights.
There were none, not in either direction.
She got back in the car and took off. A mile down the road she swung to the side and threw the towel over another cliff.
That was the easy part.
The hard part was yet to come.
She drove for another two miles. A guardrail appeared on the left side of the road, a guardrail that marked a dangerous curve at the top of steep cliff, a guardrail that she knew well. There was no shoulder on either side. She pulled into the oncoming lane and brought the vehicle to a stop not more than a foot from the rail.
She could see in both directions.
There were no headlights coming either way.
She got out, ran around to the back and opened the trunk. An unpleasant odor escaped. She looked around one more time, then pulled a woman’s body out.
It landed on the ground with a thud.
She dragged it to the guardrail, then got on the other side and pulled it over.
Her heart pounded.
Her lungs fought for air.
She dragged it as close as she dared to the edge of the cliff, then got on the other side and pushed it with her foot until it dropped over.
Then she got the hell out of there.
50
Day Three
July 20
Wednesday Afternoon
Teffinger dragged his exhausted feet back to homicide, hoping against hope that Sydney had returned, which she hadn’t. He set about trying to get background information on the guy who didn’t exist, the gladiator. Five o’clock came and went. Detectives and staff drifted off to their non-work lives, their real lives. The last one, Richardson, got up at 6:15, stretched and said, “You’re in charge.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll expect a written report in the morning.”
Teffinger smiled.
“It’ll be on your desk.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes just to rest them for a second. Just before he lost consciousness his cell phone rang. It turned out to be Condor, the managing partner of Pantage’s law firm. When Teffinger recognized the voice, he expected the call to be about Jackie Lake or Pantage.
He was wrong.
“This isn’t a cal
l I ever wanted to make,” Condor said.
Teffinger leaned forward and rubbed his eyes.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m calling on behalf of a client of mine,” Condor said. “Her name is September Tadge.”
“The lawyer?”
“Right.” A beat then, “I’ve seen the videotapes.”
The words hung.
Teffinger swallowed.
“Go on.”
“To be honest, I’m sort of torn,” Condor said. “On the one hand, I admire the hell out of the fact that you’re doing whatever it takes to find out who killed Jackie. If I was in your shoes, I could only hope that I’d have the same intestinal fortitude. It takes guts to get dirty. What you’re doing in effect is putting the case before your own wellbeing. So don’t think I don’t appreciate what’s going on.”
Teffinger waited.
“But,” he said.
“But, that said, I also have a duty to my client,” he said. “My duty to her is to follow through with whatever it is that I agree to do. In this case, she wanted my promise that if anything happened to her, I would turn the videotape over to your chief and another copy over to the D.A.’s office.” A beat then, “I told her I would do that.”
“I understand.”
“Okay, then.”
“One thing,” Teffinger said. “Just so you know, I had second thoughts about what I did after I did it. I never looked at the files. I burned them. They’re history.”
Condor exhaled.
“That’s admirable,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is one of those genies that you can’t put back in the bottle. I really hope that nothing ever happens to September and we can both go about our business in peace.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“By the way, this file is being kept under lock and key,” he said. “September hasn’t told anyone else and neither have I.”
“I appreciate that.”
Silence.
“One more thing,” Condor said. “If there’s anything the firm can do to help you find Jackie’s killer, just let me know.”
“I will.”
Teffinger called Sydney for the tenth time and got dumped into her voice mail for the tenth time. This time he left a message.