There were two cops inside.
They came fast.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Day Six - July 16
Sunday Morning
____________
WHEN TEFFINGER WALKED into the kitchen he was surprised to find pancakes and coffee waiting for him. Rain wore one of his long-sleeved white shirts and lifted it up just long enough to flash a black thong.
“Careful,” he warned, “I’m a morning guy.”
“Yeah, right,” she said. “An all-day guy is more like it.”
“All day includes the morning.”
He was halfway into his second plate of pancakes and his fourth cup of coffee, and starting to think seriously about giving Rain some first-class rug burns, when Sydney called. “We got her name,” she said. “It’s Jennifer Holland.” Teffinger stood so fast that he dumped coffee all over the table.
“How’d we get it?”
“One of her girlfriends saw her picture on the news before going to work this morning. Apparently she called the hotline and left about ten messages.”
Teffinger talked for another few minutes, poured what was left of the coffee pot into a thermos, and told Rain, “I have to run.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Can’t,” he said. “Police business.”
“I’ll wait in the car.”
He considered it.
“Unless you want to leave me all alone with a target on my back,” she added.
Fifteen minutes later they were at a BNSF switchyard in Golden. The victim’s friend turned out to be a 32-year-old biker-looking woman by the name of Sandra Black, an engineer running a red switcher. Teffinger rode with her in the cab so she wouldn’t fall behind schedule while Rain waited in the 4Runner.
She held back tears.
“You sure you should be driving this thing being so upset and all?” Teffinger asked.
She nodded and dried her eyes with a Kleenex.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Teffinger waited.
“We went out drinking Friday night, me and Jennifer and another lady named Samantha Winger, and closed a bar called the Camel’s Breath,” she said. “Do you know the place?”
No, he didn’t.
“It’s one of those dives north of downtown, near the South Platte, off 38th Street,” she said. Teffinger found himself half listening and half in awe of all the gauges and the way she handled the engine. She stopped the conversation while she talked to one of the crew on the radio, coupled a car and then moved forward, pulling a string of four. “We were all messed up,” she said. “None of us should have driven home but we all did.” She looked at him: “That’s our secret, I hope.”
“Absolutely.”
“Anyway, that’s it. We all left about 2:30 in separate cars. I didn’t talk to her or see her after that, until the news this morning.”
Teffinger had a few questions, then a few more, and then some follow-up. After forty-five minutes, he had as much information as he needed for the time being. He gave her one of his cards and wrote a number on the back. “This is a counseling service for families and friends of victims. It’s free and they’re good people. There’s nothing wrong with talking to someone.”
She was working an area of track about a half mile away from the 4Runner, but Teffinger said, “You can just let me out here so you don’t get behind.”
“Thanks.” She slowed the engine and Teffinger felt the cars push against it, grinding to a stop.
Before he got out he said, “This story is already huge and getting bigger every minute. I’m not going to release your name to anyone, but the news will know Jennifer’s name by the end of the day. Sooner or later they’ll find out about you so be prepared.”
She shrugged.
“I really don’t mind talking to the news. Especially if there’s any chance it can help catch this guy.”
“That’s your choice,” he said, then had one more thought. “If you don’t mind talking to the news, I have a TV friend who would love to get an exclusive. Her name’s Jena Vellone.”
“I know her, she’s the blond. Tell her to go ahead and call me if she wants.”
“Just don’t say anything to turn yourself into a target.”
WALKING BACK TO THE CAR, he dialed Sydney, who should have arrived at the victim’s house by now. She answered on the second ring.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“I’m here,” she said, “walking around the perimeter. No one’s home, so we’ll need a search warrant.”
Ouch.
That would be tougher than normal, on a Sunday morning.
“Call Clay at home,” he said. “I think he knows a judge or two who won’t totally kill him if he bothers them on a Sunday.”
“He’s going to love hearing my voice. You said she drove home in her own car, after the bar closed, right?”
“Right.”
“There’s no car here.”
“There isn’t?”
“No, wait, there are a few down the street. What does she drive?”
“A black Honda, an older model, maybe ten years old or thereabouts.”
“Nope,” Sydney said. “Nothing like that anywhere around here.”
“Okay,” he said. “She may have got taken somewhere between the Camel’s Breath and her house. I’m thinking that we’re not going to find anything useful at the house, so I’ll tell you what. Call Richardson at home and have him coordinate the search warrant. Then meet me at the Camel’s Breath ASAP.”
THE CAMEL’S BREATH WAS A SEEDY PLACE sandwiched between a railroad yard and the South Platte River, in that no-man’s land north of Brighton Boulevard and south of I-70. It sat there alone, an oasis of alcohol in the midst of a harsh urban environment. Pulling up, Teffinger was surprised that he’d never been called there on official business before. It looked like the kind of place where life was cheap.
The gravel lot was empty.
Teffinger brought the 4Runner to a stop near the front door, kicking up a cloud of dust that drifted to the east. He got out and walked with Rain around the building, a paint-peeling wooden structure. It turned out to be a lot bigger than it appeared from the front. It could probably hold three or four hundred drunks if you squashed them in with a shoehorn and ignored the fire codes.
“Well, her car’s definitely not here,” he told Rain.
Two minutes later Sydney pulled up in her personal car, wearing white shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Without her weapon, her body took on a lot more curves than Teffinger was used to.
Sydney and Rain hugged.
Teffinger swallowed.
“Don’t tell me you two are friends now.”
They simultaneously looked at him and grinned.
“We’ve had a few talks,” Rain said.
“Great. Excuse me a minute.”
He wandered around to the shady side of the building, leaned against it and worked the phone until he had the information he wanted. When he came back, he said, “We’re looking for a 1993 Honda CRV, black, plate number 727-CLZ. I’m thinking that our best bet is to just start here and take the most logical route to her house.”
They pulled out and hadn’t gone more than a half mile when they found the car on the side of the road, sitting there with a flat tire.
“You bastard,” Teffinger said. “Pretending to be a nice guy.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Day Six - July 16
Sunday
____________
STEPHEN STEPPER’S MANSION sat in a gated community in Greenwood Village. Jackie stopped the Porsche at the gate, already doubting the wisdom of what she was about to do. She almost turned around but then thought, Screw it, and pressed the buzzer for Stephen’s place.
No one answered.
She pressed it again.
No one answered.
She put the Porsche in reverse and was just starting to back up when Stephen’s voice crackled from a speaker: “Hello?”
/>
She hit the brakes. “It’s me, Jackie. Can we talk?”
“Of course. You got some news for me?”
“Something like that.”
The gate swung open.
Driving up the street, she had no idea what the people who lived in the place did for a living, but whatever it was, they did it right and they did it big. It was almost hard to believe that this kind of money existed in Denver.
Stephen’s contemporary showpiece was the fifth house on the right, strategically placed on two acres of well-manicured grounds.
Stephen met her at the front entry, which was in and of itself an architectural statement.
He looked good.
Happy.
Tanned.
“Not a bad place,” she said.
“Almost all of it comes from Sarah’s side of the equation,” he said. “Which is why everyone thinks I killed her.”
“Not everyone,” Jackie said.
He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed, then got brighter and said, “Come on, I have an idea.”
THEY ENDED UP IN THE BACKYARD HOT TUB, adjacent to the pool, just down from the waterfall. Stephen had somehow set the temperature so that it was absolutely perfect, not too hot or too cold. From here you couldn’t see a single other house. They wore visors and sunglasses and had large glasses of diet Pepsi.
Jackie decided to get right to the point.
“You need to tell me what you’re holding back,” she said. “Otherwise I’m getting out of the case.”
He looked shocked.
“What do you mean?”
She frowned.
“You withheld one of your taped conversations,” she said. “One that took place sometime between April 15th and May 5th. Sarah disappeared May 1st. So the timing bothers me. What’s going on?”
He looked as if he was going to deny it, but then shook his head as if beaten and asked: “How’d you figure that out?”
“I didn’t, Claudia did.”
“Smart gal, that Claudia.”
Jackie nodded. “Also, that story about the hit-and-run, I keep bouncing it around in my brain and still can’t get it to fit right. I guess that’s a weird way of saying that I’m not quite believing it.”
He smiled.
“You’re smarter than I thought.”
“So it’s not true?”
He shook his head.
“No.”
She couldn’t believe it.
She stood up to leave and said, “I’m out of here.” But he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back, so hard in fact that she lost her balance and her head went under water.
“At least hear me out,” he said.
She shook water out of her ear and almost stood up again, but instead said, “This better be damn good.”
“Actually, it’s damn bad.”
“OKAY, HERE’S THE DEAL,” he said. “Most of what I told you is true. By the way, what I’m about to tell you is highly confidential. You’re my attorney. What I’m about to say stays with you and you alone. I don’t even want Claudia knowing about it, or anyone else. Agreed?”
She nodded.
“If you want.”
“I’m serious,” he added. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I do, which is why I chose you in the first place. But we’re about to go to a new level. So I need your word, both as my attorney and a friend, that you’ll never share what I’m about to say with anyone, unless I personally okay it.”
She nodded and knew that he was about to tell her that he killed his wife, Sarah.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Day Six - July 16
Sunday
____________
WICKERFIELD LOOKED OUT the kitchen window, just to see if it still seemed hot outside, and was shocked to spot a group of five or six police officers off in the distance, on his property, trailing behind two dogs.
Damn it.
He wasn’t in the mood for any more cops. The two that pulled into his driveway this morning—asking if he’d seen or heard anything about two missing teenagers—had been enough.
He grabbed the binoculars from the distressed maple cabinet above the Sub Zero and pulled the scene in closer. The group was following the same path that the two kids used.
What to do?
Think!
Think!
He powered up the dungeon monitor and confirmed that Ashley Conner was still in a coma in the exact same position he’d left her. Then he turned it off.
Good.
At least if the police ended up in the house, to talk to him or something, there wouldn’t be any screaming or hollering coming from downstairs.
Now what?
Don’t get caught.
If they come for you, don’t be here.
He grabbed his wallet, put on a good pair of jogging shoes and bounded out the front door, locking it behind him. Keeping the house between himself and the cops, he worked his way into the trees on the opposite side of the property, then edged his way closer to the getaway car. When he was halfway there he hid behind a log and focused the binoculars on the search party.
THEY SEEMED TO BE HUNG UP where the two kids first came at him, before they chased him the other way, into the field. The dogs seemed confused, almost as if they kept getting pulled back into ground they had already covered. After about five minutes, however, they picked up the track where the two kids ran after him, and headed that way. A few minutes later they were at the location where the two assholes ended up getting their stupid little necks snapped.
The group stopped there.
Two or three of the cops bent down, looking at something.
Wickerfield held his breath to see if they put anything in an evidence bag.
They didn’t, but they did talk to each other with intensity.
What the hell were they saying?
Just keep moving, assholes.
There’s nothing there.
Just move your big fat asses.
But they didn’t.
They hung there, walking around the area, looking at the ground.
Then Wickerfield remembered something.
He took the stake with him last night, the one he used to mark the location of the clothes; it wasn’t there anymore. But he never bothered to fill in the hole.
Had they spotted the hole?
He doubted it.
And even if they had, so what? There’d be no way to figure out what it meant.
Maybe they were spotted blood from his broken lip, or from the second kid’s nose.
Now that would be a problem.
The dogs tugged on their leashes, anxious to keep moving. The cops talked some more and finally let the animals lead them away. Then something wonderful happened. The dogs followed the exact line where Wickerfield dragged the kids’ clothes. In fact, they followed the trail perfectly, without stopping, all the way to County Road 6, and then walked east on the gravel shoulder. They were still heading up the road, exactly as they should, when Wickerfield lost sight of them.
He slapped his hand on his knee.
“Oh yeah, baby.”
He headed back to the house, wanting to be there, to find out what they knew in case they came to talk to him. He milled around in the yard, wanting to intercept them there if they came, rather than have them in the house. He dragged the hose over and washed the Camry, staying outside for as long as he could stand the heat, full hour at least.
No one came.
He went back inside and poured a glass of wine.
He was in the kitchen, dancing, when someone knocked on the door.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Day Six - July 16
Sunday
____________
THE INVESTIGATION OF JENNIFER HOLLAND’S black Honda took hardly any time and turned out to be a major letdown. It had a flat tire and there had been no attempt to change it, most likely because there was no spare in the trunk. From what Teffinger could figure, the woman got a flat
and either flagged the van down or got spotted. Either way, there was no sign of a struggle. In fact, he doubted that the driver of the van even got out of his vehicle, meaning there’d be no forensic evidence at all at the scene.
“A great big zero,” he told Rain, when he finally went back to the 4Runner. “At least the press didn’t catch wind, so we were able to work in peace.”
“What now?” she questioned.
“Now I’m going to put you to work,” he said.
“Oh, that sounds good.”
He smiled. “Not that way. Real work.”
They met Jena Vellone at the TV studio. She took them into a fancy room with lots of wood and a number of monitors. She cued up a tape and the biggest monitor on the wall lit up. It was the scene from 6th and Federal, the footage of the crowd that showed up to see what was going on. Teffinger wanted Rain to look at it and see if anyone there looked like the driver of the van that got away from them Friday night.
Jena set it on slow motion.
Teffinger watched Rain’s face as she viewed the tape, hoping against hope to walk out of the room in the next ten minutes with an actual photograph of a suspect.
She was serious, concentrating.
“Nothing yet,” she said.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Just do your best.”
Then, at one point, she said, “Stop!”
Jena froze the picture.
Teffinger searched the screen for someone with black glasses but didn’t see anyone.
“What?”
“That woman,” she said, “that woman in the crowd that you’re talking to.”
Teffinger recognized the woman. She was the one who overheard part of his conversation with Baxter, referencing the van and the black glasses—the cute one, sweat and all.
“I’ve seen her somewhere,” Rain said.
“Where?”
She had a distant look, reaching deep. “Oh my God, yes. She was on Colfax last night, just down the street from us.”
Teffinger wrinkled his forehead.
“You mean when we were there showing the pictures?”
She nodded.
“Yes. I remember she kept lighting matches and throwing them on the ground, which got my attention. Then the more I looked at her the weirder it seemed, because she wasn’t dressed like a hooker and didn’t walk over to any cars or anything. I just thought it was strange that she was there. You don’t remember seeing her?”
Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller) Page 14