by R. J. Jagger
BLANK
R.J. Jagger
1
Day One
July 18
Monday Morning
Pantage Phair got pulled out of a deep, cavernous sleep Monday morning by a painful drumming inside her head. She opened her eyes just enough to see daylight squirting around the window coverings. The clock said 9:02, long past what it should. She was supposed to have been at the law firm more than an hour ago.
Her heart raced.
She yanked the covers off and maneuvered her naked body to the bathroom. In the mirror she saw blood in her hair, lots of blood, dried now but from a vicious wound. It was caked on, thick and messy.
What happened to her?
She couldn’t remember.
She turned the shower on, got the water up to temperature and stepped in. Gently, she eased her head under the spray in short motions. Blood washed down her chest and stomach and thighs and pooled briefly at her feet before moving to the drain. She kept her raven-black hair under the spray until the water turned clear and then took soap to it.
She got out, pat-dried her hair with a towel and slipped into a robe. The wound was visible now, about four inches long, cresting over a large lump, raw but not bleeding. She checked the bedroom and found no blood that would indicate she’d fallen.
She went downstairs.
A trail of blood droppings started at the front door and led up the stairs, as if she’d come into the house already bleeding. She turned the knob and found it was unlocked.
Outside on the front steps were more drops.
She checked the inside of her car. Blood was on the headrest and the front seat, meaning she’d driven home with the wound.
Where had she been?
Her memory was blank.
Aspirin; she needed aspirin, not in ten seconds, now, this second. Back up in the bathroom she popped two and washed them down with a full glass of water.
She wasn’t drunk.
She wasn’t hung over.
She didn’t feel like she’d been drugged.
Her body was as it should be, taut, strong, in its prime. Her face was unmarked, as hypnotic and beautiful as ever. Her eyes were green and focused without blurring. She remembered everything that happened since she got up this morning. She remembered yesterday afternoon, taking a grueling bike ride up Lookout Mountain. She remembered yesterday evening, paying bills and washing laundry with the TV on. She remembered something with her phone, getting a call or a text.
She couldn’t remember who it was from.
That’s all she could remember.
Everything about last night was a blank, a scary, confusing blank.
According to her phone she received a text at 4:38 p.m. yesterday from Jackie Lake:
Need UR help. I developed a conflict for Monday morning and need someone to cover the Anderson status conference in the AM, Denver District Court, Courtroom 18, 8:30. Make my day and say you can do it. I have the file at home. My flight gets in at 9. I should be home by 10. Thx GF! Owe you 1!
Pantage texted back:
Can do. See you tonight.
She must have gone to Jackie’s last night.
If that’s what happened, she didn’t remember it.
She didn’t remember getting in the car, or driving over, or talking to her, or anything else for that matter.
The Anderson file wasn’t on the kitchen counter or on the desk or on a chair or anywhere else in the house. It wasn’t in the car either.
It wasn’t anywhere.
She called Jackie’s cell phone.
No one answered.
She got dumped into voice mail.
“Jackie, it’s me, Pantage. Call me as soon as you can. We may have a problem.”
She hung up.
The aspirin wasn’t working, or if it was, not anywhere near where it needed to. She opened the bottle, tapped two into her palm, then thought better of it and put one back in the bottle.
The other one went into her mouth with a large swallow of water.
She called Courtroom 18 and got the division clerk. “This is Pantage Phair with Beacher, Condor & Lee. We had a status conference set for 8:30 this morning in Anderson v. Delta Financial Group. We might have had a mixup in our office. Did Jackie Lake or anyone else from our firm show up there this morning?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“I can be there in twenty minutes. Is it too late to come down?”
Yes, it was.
She should reschedule.
“Thanks.”
She placed a fingertip gently on her wound. When she pulled it off there was a wet drop of blood. She patted the cut with a towel then blow-dried, got dressed in a gray pinstriped skirt and crisp white blouse, and headed downtown.
Traffic was thick.
On the way, something unexpected happened.
She couldn’t remember how old she was.
She pulled her license out.
According to it she was twenty-eight.
Seeing it didn’t refresh her memory.
The information didn’t exist inside her head.
She flashed back to Saturday.
For that, her memory was clear.
She woke Saturday morning after ten still partially drunk, in a bed that didn’t belong to her. Next to her was a naked man sound asleep, a man with a model’s face and a gladiator’s body and a wild mane of thick black hair that went halfway down his back. She didn’t know his name but it wasn’t because she didn’t remember, it was because she pressed her finger to his lips when they first met earlier that night and said, “No names.”
“Okay.”
He bought her liquor.
He brought her to his loft.
He took her like an animal.
He took her every bit as good as she hoped he would.
For a brief moment she even considered checking his wallet and getting his name.
Instead she got silently dressed and wrote Thanks in lipstick on the bathroom mirror.
Then she gave him a peck on the cheek, took one last look and slipped out.
The sky was cerulean blue.
The sunshine went straight to her brain.
That was Saturday morning.
It seemed like a century ago.
2
Day One
July 18
Monday Morning
Nick Teffinger, the 34-year-old head of Denver’s homicide department, got up before dawn Monday morning, took a three-mile jog, showered, and filled a thermos with coffee. Then, with a bowl of cereal in his lap and a cup of coffee in his left hand, he pointed the front end of the Tundra east on the 6th Avenue freeway, primarily steering with his knees. The sun lifted off the horizon and blinded him as best it could. Even with the visor down, the glare ricocheted off the hood with an evil intent. He hunted around for his sunglass for a few heartbeats before remembering he sat on them last week.
Traffic was already thick but not insane.
He punched the radio buttons, hoping to get a Beatles song or, if not that, maybe something by the Beach Boys, although fat chance of that. What he got was a bunch of DJs who started drinking coffee two hours before him. He decided if they were dogs they’d be French Poodles and punched them off.
The victim lived in a nice standalone house on the east edge of the city, just west of Colorado Boulevard. Teffinger pulled up in front of her house, killed the engine and stepped out.
It was already hot.
It would probably break a hundred again today.
If that happened, it would be the tenth day in a row.
/> If there were any blades of grass still alive somewhere in the city, today would be their last.
He got halfway up the victim’s cobblestone driveway, then went back to the car, got the thermos and continued to the front door.
It was crisscrossed with yellow crime-scene tape.
He took a sip of coffee, tore the tape off and opened the door with a key.
Inside it was quiet.
It was the complete opposite of the chaos and movement and buzz and lights and questions and anxiety and tension and detail work of last night. He stood there for a moment listening to the nothingness.
It felt like cool water.
The victim was a lawyer named Jackie Lake, age 32, physically fit, single, with strawberry-blond hair. Last night someone tied her wrists to the headboard, removed her pants and panties, and strangled her to death while he raped her. From the marks on her neck, he removed his thumbs from her windpipe several times, taking her to the edge and bringing her back time after time after time.
When he was done he took a souvenir, her left ear.
Teffinger sipped coffee and headed for the bedroom. The bed was still there but the sheets and pillows had been taken as evidence.
He set the cup and thermos on the nightstand next to the alarm clock.
Then he did what he couldn’t do last night when the room was full of people.
He laid down on the bed.
He put his arms up as if they were tied to the frame.
Then he held his breath for as long as he could.
He didn’t breathe in.
He didn’t breathe out.
He kept his lungs immobile as if they had been separated from the world by thumbs pressing into his throat. He imaged the weight of someone straddling his stomach, someone heavy, someone stronger than him. He imagined looking into that person’s eyes and seeing no mercy, and instead seeing only a sick joy of finally doing what he’d dreamed about in his twisted little mind over and over and over.
He exhaled.
He inhaled.
Then the thumbs came again, just that fast. He thrashed his body but could hardly get it to move an inch. The movement barely registered on the person above. It didn’t come within 1% of throwing him off balance. He pulled wildly at the ropes.
They dug into his flesh.
He could feel the skin ripping.
He didn’t care.
He didn’t care if his whole hands ripped off.
He needed air.
Air.
Air.
Air.
The pain was terrible.
His mind got foggy.
He was dying.
He was slipping away.
It was almost over.
He sat bolt upright in a cold sweat.
His lungs screamed for air as if he’d just broken the surface of the water.
He inhaled deeply and quickly, again and again and again.
Oxygen rushed into his blood.
Blood rushed through his veins.
His body responded by not shutting down.
He would live.
He would live.
He would live.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and dipped his head into his hands. He stayed like that until he got his composure back. Then he stood up, looked at the empty bed and said, “I promise.”
Suddenly the doorbell rang.
Teffinger opened it to find a man he recognized, the guy who lived across the street. What was his name? Rosenfield or Rosenberg, something like that, it was in the notes. Teffinger talked to him briefly last night. The man hadn’t seen anything.
“I saw you come in,” the man said.
“Right.”
“I said something last night that wasn’t quite true,” he said. “I said I didn’t see anything. Actually, I did. I was afraid to get involved.”
Teffinger nodded.
“That happens,” he said. “Personally I think it’s all those flashing lights. I’ve seen them a hundred times and they still creep me out, especially at night.”
“You’re messing with me.”
Teffinger raked his hair back with his fingers.
It immediately flopped back down over his forehead.
“I wish I was,” he said. “So what’d you see last night?”
“Come on outside and I’ll show you.”
“Hold on, let me grab my thermos.”
3
Day One
July 18
Monday Morning
Yardley White took one last look at her hotter-than-sin reflection, blew herself a kiss, and strutted her perfect five-foot-five body across the plush beige carpet and out the front door of the loft, making sure it was locked behind her. She took the granite-walled elevator down eight floors to ground level, walked through a vaulted contemporary lobby and got deposited into the trendy heart of LoDo on the north edge of downtown Denver.
The sun was bright.
The air was already warm.
She wore a short '20s skirt, stockings with a seam up the back attached to a garter belt, and black high heels. Up top was a white blouse tucked at a slim waist and cinched with a wide black belt. Her thick blond hair was pulled up. Her lips were soft and red.
She slipped designer sunglasses on, pulled a pack of Marlboros out of her purse, tapped one out and dangled it in her lips. She dug around for a book of matches and felt two. She pulled one out. It was black with a red M. Inside was writing, not hers, a male scroll that said, "Aaron," followed by a (303) number.
She remembered him.
He wasn't bad.
Maybe she'd call him someday.
She lit the smoke and stuffed the matches back in her purse. The nicotine was magic in her lungs. She held it in then pointed her 25-year-old body west, towards the less trendy areas farther away from downtown and Coors Field.
Three blocks later she came to Wazee and turned right.
Real estate was cheaper there.
Old warehouses were home to small restaurants, not-so-good art galleries and small offices, mostly architects and lawyers who were more interested in the ambiance and texture and parking availability than they were about a fancy 17th Street address.
A block down she came to a brick standalone building with a worn patina that included a dozen different shades of mortar patching. While the building was old, the door was new, pure oak and heavy. The trim around it had been painted burnt-red. Matching awnings hung over the two front windows, one on either side of the door. Stenciled on the left window were the words, Extraordinary Books.
She pushed the front door open and walked in.
The air had an old parchment aroma to it. Weaving through that air was a scratchy record coming from a turntable over in the corner. A female was singing. A band, a big band—too big in fact—was playing behind her, something from the '20s. Surprising, as poor as the quality of sound was, the melody was catchy, even within just a few bars.
The place was crammed with bookshelves.
On those shelves were old books.
Lots of them were leather bound and hand stitched.
They looked like they had been carefully hand collected one at a time over a number of years.
They looked expensive.
They looked rare.
They looked collectable.
Deven Devenshire emerged from the back room looking yummy but slightly hung over.
"I heard you got a lead on a new Steinbeck manuscript," she said.
"I wouldn't call it a manuscript," Yardley said. "It's more of an outline."
"For which book?"
"Cannery Row."
"Has it been authenticated?"
"No, it’s underground."
"You're going to get burned."
"Haven't yet."
"Maybe not but the day's coming."
"Not today it isn't."
She headed into the back room which had a small kitchen and an old roll top desk inundated with papers. On t
he north side she opened another door, which looked like it led to the outside. Immediately behind it was a second door, a thick steel one with a tumbler. Yardley worked the numbers to the right and left five times, pushed down on the handle and swung the door open.
Inside was a small room with steel walls, a steel floor and a steel ceiling. A thick, textured oriental rug covered the floor. In the middle of the room was a contemporary table with a green banker's lamp.
Three of the walls were inundated with bookshelves.
Yardley pulled a worn leather briefcase out from under the table and set it on top. She opened it just to be sure everything was inside and undisturbed even though there was no reason to think otherwise.
Everything was there.
She closed it, grabbed the handle and locked the vault behind her.
Deven was at the counter reading 5280.
Yardley approached her from behind, wrapped her arms around the woman's stomach and nibbled her neck.
"Did you get screwed this weekend?"
Deven turned and grinned.
"You can't even believe."
"Oh, really? By who?"
"Someone named Brittany."
"You going to see her again?"
"Don't know," Deven said. "She has a powerful little tongue though, I'll tell you that much. Are you jealous?"
"I'm always jealous," Yardley said.
"No you're not. Brittany was a kinky little thing. She had toys I didn’t even know existed.”
Yardley cocked her head and said, "Remind me again why I employ you—"
"Because you're secretly in love with me."
"Trust me, that's not it."
"Okay, lust then. Not love, lust."
Yardley shook her head.
"Keep an eye on things. I'll be back some time this afternoon."
A hour later she was in a Grob Aerospace SP jet, the only passenger, heading west over the Rockies with the briefcase on the seat next to her. Three hours later she touched down at LAX where she rented a black 5-Series BMW.
She punched the home address of disbarred attorney Richard Blank into the GPS and studied the map.
Then she merged into traffic.