by R. J. Jagger
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
Zongying wasn’t home when Durivage got back to the house, which was just the same because it gave him an opportunity to call Night Neveraux.
“It’s me,” he said, knowing that his French accent would tell the rest. “I found a little bag of goodies buried outside in your shed.”
A beat.
“You’re going to die.”
“We’re all going to die.”
“You’re going to suffer first.”
“Here’s the thing,” Durivage said. “Someone saw you coming out of Grace Somerfield’s yard Saturday night. They gave your license plate number to the police. So far they haven’t arrested you, but we both know that will be coming if—for example—they got an anonymous call that the little bag of goodies was in your house and, low and behold, they actually find them when they come over to look.”
“That won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d have to plant them here first,” she said. “You’d die in the process.”
Durivage frowned.
“So dramatic,” he said. “We both know you can’t stay home forever. We don’t have to get to that point though. The goodies are interesting and probably worth a fortune but to tell you the truth I don’t really care about them. You can have them back.”
Silence.
“Did you hear me? You can have them back.”
“I heard you.”
“And?”
“And what do you want in exchange?”
He exhaled.
“Hardly anything.”
“Don’t play games.”
“Just one small thing.”
“Go on.”
“I’m going to ask you a simple question and I want an honest answer,” he said. “I’m serious about what I just said. If you don’t give me an honest answer then I’m going to hang up and things are going to get real bad for you. Do you understand?”
A beat.
“Go on.”
“The woman who stuck the knife in my back, the Mediterranean woman, she’s from Greece, am I correct?”
“That’s right.”
“She’s in Denver to kill Emmanuelle Martin, correct?”
“Among other things.”
“Among other things,” Durivage repeated. “Of course. I want to talk to her, alone, somewhere public, somewhere we’ll both be safe, tonight. If things go the way I want at that meeting, you’ll get your jewels back. You go your way and I go mine. Sound fair?”
“I have no power over her.”
“Suit yourself.”
He was hanging up when a muffled sound came from the receiver. “Suppose she meets with you,” Night said. “When do I get the bag back?”
“Tonight,” he said. “You won’t get everything in there, though. I’m going to keep a couple of things for insurance.”
Silence.
“Where do you want her to meet you?”
Good question.
“Corner of California and 16th, 9:45 p.m. Don’t do anything stupid between now and then like try to kill me.”
“Fine, we’ll wait until afterwards.”
He smiled.
“A sense of humor. I like that.”
he hung up, hopped in the car and took off with the bag on the passenger seat.
He needed a safe place to stash it.
A place that wasn’t Zongying’s house.
81
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
It was time to break the scroll’s hold on her, that’s all there was to it, no matter how hard it would be. Jina had let herself stall past the noon hour to avoid deciding whether to give it up. Now, something might have happened to Taylor, something that Jina could have avoided if she’d been stronger. She wouldn’t make the same mistake for another minute longer. She needed to get the scroll back in hand and then do with it whatever needed to be done.
She was heading out the door when her phone rang.
Stephen Zipp’s voice came through.
“Rebecca said you called,” he said, referring to the receptionist.
“I was calling for Taylor then thought I’d say hello to you as long as I was on the line. Is Taylor back yet?”
“Not as of five minutes ago when I walked by her office. Why?”
A pause.
She was half tempted to tell him.
The burden was so solitary.
Instead she said, “No reason. Can I ask you for a really big favor?”
“Sure.”
“Can I borrow your car for an hour or two?”
“I would but it’s in the shop.”
“Oh, okay.”
“You can borrow my motorcycle if you want.”
Jina had never ridden a motorcycle but she’d ridden a bike and a motorcycle was basically a bike with a motor.
“Okay,” she said.
She swung by her apartment to get something to dig with plus her oversized purse to carry the scroll in. The place was trashed. Someone had broken in since she’d left this morning.
Who?
Taylor’s client?
Her client?
Blanche Twister?
Someone hired by one of the above?
Someone new altogether?
A half hour later she was on Stephen Zipp’s 1951 Indian Brave, all black except for big yellow fenders and a matching gas tank, heading south. The bike was loud, shaky and insanely more dangerous than a bicycle, but so far she’d managed to not kill herself.
She didn’t have a helmet.
Her hair flew.
So did the oversized purse draped over her shoulder.
She went slowly.
Cars passed.
Someone was tearing her office apart right now, she could feel it.
Was Taylor already dead?
It took forever but she finally reached the service road at the railroad tracks, where she pulled over to catch her breath. The ground was uneven. She’d need to go slow.
A flock of geese flew overhead.
There must be water nearby.
Her face was gritty and dripping with sweat.
She wiped it off with the back of her hand.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
She put the bike into first and took off, wondering if Michael Spencer’s body was still down there tucked into the rabbit brush. She hoped not. Seeing it last time with the bugs crawling over his eyes was enough to last her for a while.
Damn it.
There it was, up ahead, a dark shadow where a dark shadow shouldn’t be. As she got closer something happened she didn’t expect, there were two bodies there.
She pulled over, shut the bike down and got off.
Her legs wobbled.
The new body belonged to a man who’d been badly beaten. His left eye was mutilated beyond belief, almost as if he’d been stabbed in it. Blood, now dried to a blackish brown, covered his face.
Jina nudged his head with her foot so she could see the other side, which was much cleaner.
She’d seen that face before.
Where?
Then it struck her.
He was the man who came into Spencer’s house while she was in there. He was the one she hid from in the bathroom tub. He was the one she saw when he looked up after jumping from the window. He was the one who made a threatening phone call to someone named Durivage.
Durivage must have killed him.
Since the guy was dumped with Spencer, Durivage must have been the one who killed Spencer too.
The air was quiet with death.
Jina took one last look at the bodies then turned and got on the bike. Just as she was about to crank over the engine, a noise came in the far distance behind her.
She turned to see a car speeding her way, throwing up a wild tail of dust.
She fired the bike up, shifted into first and let the clutch out.
Too fast.
/> The bike jerked for a foot, then the engine died.
82
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
The bones behind the shed were human. The flesh was gone, first eaten off by critters then picked clean by insects. The skull was there as were some of the other bones, but most had been carried off over time. Scraps of torn clothes were here and there, nothing more than ripped, filthy rags at this point.
Wilde picked one up and shook the dirt off.
It was a remnant of a shirt or blouse.
The buttons were on the left side, indicating a blouse.
He scraped around in the dirt, looking for anything that might indicate who the body belonged to.
Alabama spotted something half buried and pulled it out.
“It’s a necklace,” she said.
It was a cheap thing, once copper or brass, now corroded green.
“Hold on,” Alabama said. She pulled the photo out of her back pocket, the photo from Jessica Dent’s suitcase. “Got a match,” she said, pointing to woman on the left. “It’s the same necklace.”
“So, this is Constance Black,” Wilde said.
“It sure looks that way.”
“I told you before I already knew she was dead,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I was hoping I was wrong.” He kicked the dirt. “It’s pretty clear this is Warner Raven’s handiwork.”
“That’d be my guess,” Alabama said.
“The question is, Why? What did he have against these women that pushed him all the way to murder?”
Alabama shook her head.
“That’s not the question,” she said.
Oh?
No?
Then what was the question?’
“The question is, What are we going to do about it?”
Wilde pulled his hat off and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that I need to get out of the sun.” He took one last look at the bones and said, “Leave the necklace here.”
Alabama tossed it where she found it and matted it in with her shoe.
Then they left.
On the walk back to the MG, Wilde replayed Nicole singing at the club, barely audible over the beating of his drums, but loud enough to completely captivate him.
He needed to hear that singing again.
He needed it today.
He needed it now.
“Are you okay?”
The words came from Alabama who was staring at him with a concerned face.
“We need to find Nicole,” he said.
She nodded.
“I know. Like you said, we’ll stake him out tonight. He’s got to visit her at least once a day.”
Wilde grunted.
“If she’s alive.”
“He won’t kill her until Friday,” Alabama said.
83
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
Durivage ended up on the east side of the city in an old ghost district cluttered with dilapidated buildings and decayed streets. He drove around until he found one he liked, which was an eerie structure four or five stories tall. All the doors were either bolted, locked, or welded shut but he was able to enter through a side window.
Inside it was pitch-black, even in the day.
He felt his way to a stairwell and climbed to the top floor.
There he found a ladder that went up a hatchway to the roof. He opened the hatch, let the light splash into the structure and scouted around.
Machines, cabinets and hoists had been stripped of everything valuable and their guts had been abandoned in place. In the back corner of the floor was a room labeled Electrical. There was a steel door with a padlock hinge but no lock in place. Durivage opened the door and stepped in. There was just enough light for him to make out wires dangling loose out of junction boxes.
He jiggled a couple to see if they were live.
They weren’t.
The space was bigger than he anticipated, three or four meters in each direction. A metal cabinet lined the back wall. Dusty junk cluttered the shelves. The top of the cabinet went almost to the ceiling but not quite, leaving a gap of a foot or so.
Durivage put the bag on the top of the cabinet and pushed it all the way back until it hit the wall.
Even if the room was lit, no one would be able to see it.
Good enough.
He closed the roof hatch and then made his way back down to the first floor where he stuck his head out the window to make sure no one was around.
No one was.
He climbed out, got in the car and headed for Zongying’s.
84
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
The Indian thrashed and bucked and did its best to throw Jina into the air as it sped over ruts and deteriorated road. She gripped the handlebars with all she had and hugged the gas tank with her legs.
The car was closing.
She put an even more serious twist on the throttle. The bike responded but jerked so violently and out of control that she had to ease off.
Who was in the car?
What did they want?
Maybe she should just pull over before she broke her body, they were going to catch her sooner or later anyway.
No.
No.
Keep going.
She turned her head just long enough to see the silhouette of a man in the vehicle, a silhouette with a hat. She didn’t get enough focus to tell if he was Taylor’s client, but he had the same general size and shape.
He was going to ram her then run over her when she fell. She’d end up dead or paralyzed.
Get away.
Get away.
Get away.
A new noise intersected the revving of the engine and the pounding of the bike. It was a deep, throaty, heavy noise. She looked in that direction and saw the source, a train rumbling down the tracks in her direction. She made a split-second decision and jerked the bike to the left, off the road, into a ditch and then up the embankment towards the tracks, intent on getting to the other side.
When she got to the top, the bike shot into the air and twisted violently to the left.
A landing was impossible.
She screamed and held onto the handlebars as her body catapulted off the seat.
The Indian crashed hard.
Metal twisted.
The world jerked with a surreal violence.
Pain came as she hit the ground.
Hard pain.
Serious pain.
When her body came to rest it was pinned under the front of the bike. The rear wheel was off the ground, pointed diagonally into the air, still being driven by the engine at a frantic speed. The chain cycled violently no more than a few inches from her face.
She tried to pull free.
The bike didn’t budge.
An insanely loud horn filled the air.
Jina twisted her head and saw she was in the middle of the tracks.
The train was coming at her.
It wouldn’t be able to stop in time.
She closed her eyes and screamed.
85
Day Three
July 17
Thursday Afternoon
Back at the office pacing back and forth in front of the windows, Constance Black’s skull and bones shadowed Wilde’s every thought. He couldn’t get them out of his brain. He pictured her captive in the shed day after day and then unceremoniously taken into the field and murdered. She knew why she was being paraded out there even if Raven was making up an excuse and telling her otherwise.
That’s the kind of thing a person could feel.
How did she die?
Was she stabbed?
Shot?
Smashed in the back of the head with a rock?
In hindsight, he wished he had studied the skull closer.
Tonight he’d follow Raven.
/> Before, he wasn’t sure what he’d do if the man led him to another captive, particularly if that captive was Nicole.
Now he knew.
He would punch him in the face harder than hard. Where it all went from there would be beyond his control. He’d take it all the way though, if that’s where it went. The world would be a better place. Afterwards he’d have to decide whether to make a police report or silently mask his involvement. After all, no one knew he was working for Raven except Alabama and Nicole.
They could be trusted.
Late afternoon, the office door opened and Raven walked in. Wilde’s instinct was to grab his throat and say, Tell me where Nicole is, right this second!
He forced it down.
If he gave up the fact that he knew what Raven was up to, the man would cover his tracks. He’d move Nicole to a different place, either that or he’d slip her into the trunk of his car, drive to some remote part of New Mexico and murder her in an arroyo, never to be found except by vultures.
He stood up and shook the man’s hand.
“Good to see you.”
Raven’s face was somber.
“There’s a rumor out on the street that you’re sneaking around in my shadows,” he said.
The words shocked Wilde.
He had no idea he’d been spotted.
“What do you mean?”
Raven didn’t sit down. “What I mean is that assistant of yours has been asking questions about me all over town.”
Wilde nodded.
“That’s true.”
“Why?”
“We’re trying to find out who hates you enough to kill you,” Wilde said. “You said yourself that you’ve been through all your cases and couldn’t find anyone. That led me to believe that maybe it was someone from your personal life.”
Raven narrowed his eyes.
“I would have told you something like that,” he said.
“Maybe it’s someone you don’t know about.”
“I would know,” he said. “What do you have so far, other than investigating me?”
Wilde frowned.
“Not much, I’m afraid.”
Raven headed for the door, then turned as he opened it and said, “It was a mistake hiring you. Keep the money but you’re off the case. Stay out of my life. I have a reputation to maintain.”