by R. J. Jagger
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To rattle a tree.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we got the identity of the man who was following Pantage yesterday,” he said. “Clay says we don’t have enough evidence for a search warrant so I’m going to rattle the guy’s tree.”
“Clay’s too conservative.”
Teffinger worked his way around a blue hair in a faded Volvo going ten under.
“That’s true but he’s probably right on this one,” he said. “So tell me about the gladiator.”
Kelly adjusted her body in the seat.
Her skirt rode up.
“This is off the record,” she said. “The gladiator has a laptop in his loft. On that laptop are a lot of JPEG images of Pantage Phair. They’re clicks of her walking around downtown and up on the balcony of her loft. Here’s the important part, they go back at least two weeks prior to Friday, when he supposedly met her for the first time. He was stalking her for at least two weeks, exactly like what September Tadge told you about Van Gogh.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “That part’s confidential. It’s true though. What you need to do is figure out a way to get a legitimate search warrant based on something else, pretending you have no idea about the computer, then accidentally stumble on it.”
Teffinger wrinkled his brow.
“Did you break into his place?”
“No.”
“Did you hire someone to break into his place?”
“No.”
“Have you actually seen the JPEGs?”
“No, they were described to me.”
“By who?”
“That’s confidential.”
He got silent.
Two blocks later he looked over and said, “Pantage broke in, didn’t she?”
“I can’t tell you any more than I already have.”
He raked his hair back.
It immediately flopped down.
A squatty fat guy in a Hummer cut him off.
Then his phone rang.
Sydney was on the other end from New York. She sounded like she just stepped off a roller coaster before it came to a complete stop.
“Big news,” she said.
“How big?”
“Bigger than what’s in you pants,” she said. “Two inches.”
Teffinger laughed.
“I met with the lawyer and showed her the pictures of D’endra,” she said. “That made an impact. It was there on her face. She wouldn’t admit one way or the other if Northway was a client of hers but that’s the impression I got. She listed patiently but in the end she said she couldn’t help me. She said her hands were tied.”
“Damn it—”
“Wait, I’m not finished,” Sydney said. “We met for a light lunch, that’s where I talked to her, in this little rinky-dinky place halfway down an alley. Anyway, throughout the whole meal, she had her cell phone sitting on the table. At the end, when she said she couldn’t help me, she got up to leave. I said, Hey, you forgot your phone. She looked at me and said, No, it’s in my purse. It wasn’t, of course, it was sitting right there on the table. It took me a second to figure it out, but then it hit me that she was losing her phone on purpose. It’s not a violation of an attorney-client communication to simply lose a physical object.”
“Clever.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like I said, it was those photos that make the day. That was your idea, so good going.”
“You’re the one who presented them the right way,” he said. “I would have come on too strong. So what’s in the phone, anything?”
“There’s no Northway listed. I’ve gone through all the text messages and none seem to relate to him. So what we have are all the incoming and outgoing numbers. My suspicion is that one of them belongs to Northway.”
“Run with it.”
Teffinger hung up and filled Kelly in on the parts she wouldn’t have picked up. She had a right to know given that Northway almost killed her last year, not to mention that she was the one who spotted him on the street.
“Back to Pantage,” he said. “Now I’m confused. We have this guy Jack Plank with the scorpion tattoo following her all over downtown yesterday. We also have the gladiator stalking her for at least two weeks. Which one am I supposed to concentrate on?”
She shrugged.
“Both. Maybe they’re working together.”
87
Day Five
July 22
Friday Morning
Yardley ran but was no match for the warrior feet of Ghost Wolf. He was closing dangerously fast and would be on her in seconds. She was off the road in the prairie sprinting south, hoping beyond hope that the man would twist a foot or step on a cactus or slam down face first into a boulder.
That didn’t happen.
The gap closed.
A fist grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back with a force that snapped her feet out from under her and sent her slamming to the ground on her back.
The wind snapped out of her lungs.
She couldn’t breathe.
Ghost Wolf towered over her, a menacing silhouette blocking the sun. He shifted a large knife from his left hand to his right.
Yardley raised her arms to protect her face.
“Don’t!”
He kicked her.
“All you had to do was stay in the house. That’s all you had to do, one simple little thing.”
“You were going to kill me.”
“Shut up.”
“I have money,” she said. “I can pay you. We’ll go get it right now. It’s at my bookstore. It’s more than a hundred thousand.”
“Sorry, baby.”
“But—”
He kneeled down, grabbed her hair and pulled her face to his.
“You don’t like me,” he said. “You didn’t like me from the first minute you saw me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You think I’m ugly.”
“No I don’t.”
He grabbed her blouse and ripped it open with a violent motion that sent buttons flying. Then he grabbed her bra and tore it off. Holding her down with one hand, he wedged his knee between her legs, then the other
“One last ride before you die,” he said. “That’s my gift to you.”
He was undoing his belt.
Yardley flailed her hands wildly, searching for a rock or stick or anything.
There was nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
The man grabbed her face and squeezed.
“You’re going to like this,” he said.
His eyes were crazy.
Slobber dripped from his mouth.
She reached for the knife.
She was fast.
He was faster.
He held it at length, taunting her.
“Is this what you want?”
He tossed it to the side, far, twenty or thirty feet.
Then he pinned her arms above her head with one hand and reached between her legs with the other.
She struggled to get her wrists free.
They wouldn’t budge.
The man’s strength was absolute.
88
Day Five
July 22
Friday Afternoon
Marabella’s question—Do you remember a woman named Yardley White?—pounded inside Pantage’s brain with the strength of a hundred maniac drums. Somehow that woman, whoever she was, had something to do with Pantage’s past.
Luckily the woman lived in Denver.
According to the Internet, she owned a bookstore on Wazee that specialized in collectible and valuable books. The scope of the business was international; the store’s website was offered in five different language selections.
The name of the store, Extraordinary Books, was vaguely familiar.
She’d heard it bef
ore.
Either that, or maybe she wandered in one day.
No.
Wait.
She’d seen the name in the paper, recently too, about a third of the way down the page.
She headed to the firm’s library on the middle floor and flipped through the stacks. It took twenty minutes but she eventually found what she was looking for. As soon as she saw it, she remembered. It was an article about a woman named Deven Devenshire who was murdered outside a club called Rikki. The victim worked at Extraordinary Books.
The article felt like a black nail being pounded into her soul.
She’d killed a woman in California in her past.
Yardley White was mysteriously a part of her past.
An associate of Yardley White’s just got murdered.
Pantage dialed the number at the store.
No one answered.
She grabbed her purse and headed for the elevator.
89
Day Five
July 22
Friday Afternoon
The scorpion tattoo lived in a small brick bungalow on Marion, two blocks east of Colfax, awash in a sea of the same. None of the houses had driveways or garages meaning curb parking was at a premium. Teffinger swept by the house after putting Kelly in a cab back to the firm. The windows were open and the front curtain was twisting whimsically as if being pushed by a fan. The screen door was closed but the wooden one behind it was open.
Teffinger found a space big enough for the Tundra two blocks away and doubled back on foot.
An alley ran behind the houses.
The suspect’s 7-year-old Mustang was parked in that alley. The driver’s window was down. Teffinger felt the grill; it was warm, not from the sun, from driving.
Jack Plank was home.
Teffinger rolled up his sleeves, swung around to the front, walked up the cracked concrete to the door and knocked.
A man answered.
Gone were the jeans and black T of yesterday, now he was well dressed in a gray summer suit with the jacket on as if Teffinger caught him just before he was about to leave.
He had a rough, manly face.
“Pantage Phair,” Teffinger said.
“What about her?”
“You were stalking her yesterday.”
The man tilted his head.
“Now I recognize you,” he said. “You’re that detective all over the news.” He opened the door, “Come on in.”
Inside the place was simple but neat.
“I wasn’t stalking her I was guarding her,” he said. “I’m with Personal Security Specialists, we do bodyguard work among other things. We were hired by Grayson Condor to keep an eye on Pantage and make sure nothing happens to her.”
“Does she know about it?”
No.
She doesn’t.
“Condor offered it to her early on but she wasn’t interested,” he said. “Yesterday his nervousness caught up to him and he hired us on the sly. We’re in the same building as him, down on the tenth floor. Our mission is not to be intrusive to the point of infringing on the woman’s privacy but keep her close enough to protect her if anyone makes a move.”
Teffinger called the law firm.
Condor confirmed the story.
Teffinger shook Plank’s hand.
“Sorry about the mix-up.” He was halfway out the door when he turned and said, “How come you aren’t following her today?”
“We rotate,” he said. “Lea has her today.”
“Lea?”
Right.
Lea.
“A female?”
Plant smiled.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t want to mess with her.”
“What does she look like?”
“A lifeguard.”
“Okay.”
“Blond.”
“Okay.”
“Tanned.”
“Okay.”
Teffinger pulled up an image.
Plank said, “I don’t know if this is worth anything but I saw a guy yesterday. There was nothing suspicious about him and I only saw him once but for some reason he rubbed me the wrong way. I told Lea to keep an eye out for him today just in case.”
Teffinger raked his hair back.
“What’d he look like?”
“Huge,” Plank said. “Six-four or thereabouts and built like a warrior.”
“A warrior?”
“Right, ripped.”
“Like a gladiator?”
“Right. Warrior, gladiator, same thing.”
“Did he have long hair?”
Plank wrinkled his brow.
“Yeah, halfway down his back. Do you know him?”
90
Day Five
July 22
Friday Morning
Ghost Wolf had his body on Yardley’s, his bare stomach flat on hers, his tongue licking her face, his pants around his knees and his hips maneuvering for penetration, when he suddenly froze. The hate in his eyes gave way to something different. He was consumed with something directly behind Yardley’s head.
Then a rattle shattered the silence.
It was a snake.
It was so close that the earth behind Yardley’s head vibrated.
For several seconds Ghost Wolf didn’t move.
Then he slowly lowered his face so it was pointing directly at Yardley’s chest and began to slither backwards down her body one inch at a time.
The rattles grew more agitated.
Yardley braced for a bite to her cheek or neck.
Her face suddenly felt cooler and she lifted her eyes to find the head of a massive rattlesnake bobbing directly above her, in and out of the sun, casting shadows across her eyes.
The reptile wasn’t looking at her.
It was fixated on Ghost Wolf.
Yardley closed her eyes.
She didn’t want the snake to snap at them.
Ghost Wolf had his face all the way down to Yardley’s navel. He was almost free. Then with a quick jerk he drew back and stood up.
The snake lunged.
The distance was too great.
The forward momentum of the snap brought the reptile onto Yardley’s chest.
It was heavy.
It was thick.
It was hot.
The rattle shook with a fierce warning directly above her face, striking her nose and ricocheting off her forehead.
She didn’t breathe.
She didn’t move.
Suddenly the snake lunged a second time.
Ghost Wolf screamed.
His massive body tumbled hard and bounced on the ground.
The snake was off Yardley.
She opened her eyes and twisted her head but couldn’t see it.
Ghost Wolf was twitching on the ground with his hands between his legs. When he pulled them back, his cock was an awful purplish color and grotesquely swollen.
Blood dripped from it.
It took thirty minutes for Ghost Wolf to die.
Yardley watched every minute of it.
When the man finally stopped twitching and showed no reaction to being nudged, Yardley stuck a hand into his pants pocket in hopes she’d find a set of car keys.
The wait was worth it.
They were there.
A lighter was in there too.
Cigarettes were in his back pocket.
In the other back pocket was a wallet. The man’s driver’s license showed he was Ghost Wolf Ki-Jaka from New Mexico. In the fold was $2,300 cash. Yardley stuck the bills in her pocket, wiped the leather as clean as she could of prints and dropped it on the ground.
Half a mile up the road she found the car, locked with the windows down a couple of inches.
She fired up the engine, lit a cigarette, made her way to an abandoned country road she’d never seen before and headed west.
The air conditioning was heaven.
The smoke in her lungs was an oasis.
As the miles clicked by her
thoughts turned to Marabella. It wasn’t clear if the woman had given Ghost Wolf orders to protect Yardley from Cave or to pretend that was his goal. She needed to get home and find out if her loft or store was being scrubbed of loose ends.
It took an hour and twelve minutes to get back to the city limits, less than she thought. She swung down C-470 to the west end of the light rail, dumped the car on a side street off the 6th Avenue frontage road, and took the tram east into downtown.
Her blouse was tied but not perfect.
Anyone who focused on it could tell it had been ripped off.
She kept as covered as she could, ostensibly reading a newspaper, and made her way to the loft without drawing any direct questions as to whether she was okay or what happened to her.
There she walked through the lobby, took the elevator down to the parking garage and got the spare key she kept hidden on top of the sprinkler pipe over in the corner.
Then she headed up to her loft.
Everything inside was normal.
No one had entered.
She took a long hot shower, slipped into panties and laid down on the couch.
Her eyes closed.
Everything was fine.
Everything was good.
She didn’t fall asleep, almost but not quite. Twenty minutes later she got dressed and headed for the bookstore on foot.
She needed to know if it had been sanitized.
She needed to know if Marabella was friend or foe.
91
Day Five
July 22
Friday Afternoon
Cutting through downtown on the shady side of the street, Pantage turned directly into the path of a skateboarder carrying a box. They both went down, the box flew and the skateboard skidded upside down to a stop.
It happened fast.
Pantage didn’t know if it was her fault.
The person next to her on the ground was a teenager, high school age, a girl, with a ponytail pulled through the back of a Rockies hat. Pantage helped her to her feet. The girl’s knee was bleeding.
“Sorry. Are you okay?”