by R. J. Jagger
“Did she report it?”
“You mean to the police? No.”
“How about to the law firm?”
Sarah exhaled.
“I told her to,” Sarah said, “but I don’t know if she ever did or not. She was ashamed by the whole thing. She said that if word ever got out, then her career as a lawyer would be over, especially if someone put a spin on it and put the blame on her. I told her she was nuts but couldn’t get her to see things the way she should.” Sarah looked into Aspen’s eyes. “I’m only telling you this now because if it does have something to do with her death, then it’s time to get it out in the open. You seem like a genuinely good person.”
“I don’t know if I’d say genuinely.”
Sarah laughed.
“I’m not even sure I’d say good.”
“But person,” Sarah said. “You’d at least say that.”
Aspen nodded.
“That much I can admit to.”
Aspen had a ton of work on her desk and would already be cutting the day short, even if she headed back to the office right now. But it looked like Sarah needed to talk.
“You want to get some coffee?” Aspen asked.
74
DAY ELEVEN–SEPTEMBER 15
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Draven’s vehicle almost stopped in time but didn’t, hitting the deer directly in the chest. The animal shot backwards, landed on its side, muscled itself up in a panic and then limped into the mountainside.
“Shit!”
Draven got out and found the front end nearly destroyed. The hood had buckled and couldn’t be opened. Antifreeze dripped onto the ground, not a lot, but enough to indicate a puncture in the radiator or a hose.
“Dumb-ass animal!”
He picked up a rock and threw it at the deer. Astonishingly, he actually hit it, and not just anywhere, but right in the back of the head. The animal immediately fell to the ground and didn’t get up.
“Serves you right.”
He got back in the car and squealed off. He already had enough goddamn stuff on his plate without this. When he arrived at the cabin twenty minutes later he left the engine running and looked under the front end, trying to determine how fast the radiator was draining. The leak, while still present, was barely perceptible. The gauges reported a normal engine temperature.
Okay.
Good.
Maybe things weren’t as bad as he thought.
He turned off the engine and stepped to the front door of the cabin. It was locked, as it should be. Everything appeared to be exactly as he’d left it. He used his key to enter and walked straight into the bedroom.
The tattoo woman—Mia Avila—was still tied to the bed, exactly as she should be. Except unlike the last time he’d seen her, she was awake now.
The drugs would have worn off long ago.
“Visitor,” he said.
Her face twisted into a panic.
But he focused more on the urine smell coming from the sheets. He almost slapped her but reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault. No one could have held it that long.
He untied her and let her shower while he watched. Then he put her in a fresh T-shirt and let her eat until she’d had her fill—cereal, fruit, a sandwich, yogurt, and lots of coffee. He made her remove all the old bedding. Then he flipped the mattress over and let her put fresh sheets on.
She must have sensed that he wasn’t there to kill her, because the stress fell off her face.
She looked pretty, actually, especially considering what she’d been through.
“Can we go outside?” she asked.
Draven didn’t like the idea.
“Just for a few minutes?” she added. “I won’t try anything, I promise. There’s no air in here. I can hardly breathe.”
She was right, actually.
It was stuffy as hell.
“Fine,” he said. “But first I’m going to tie your hands behind your back.”
She nodded.
“No problem.”
“And if you try anything …”
“I won’t, you have my word.”
As he tied her hands he wondered if he should tie her feet too. No, that wasn’t necessary. She couldn’t go anywhere barefoot. The mountains would eat her feet alive within ten steps. They ended up sitting on the steps of the back porch, with the sun on their faces. Draven took his knife out and tossed it from one hand to the other. Then he spotted a fairly straight stick and whittled it into a spear.
“Thanks,” the woman said. “I really appreciate this.”
“No problem.”
His thoughts drifted to the things he needed to do—keep Mia secured until the client killed her, and then dispose of her body; snatch the rich-bitch Davica Holland; dispose of the tow truck; deal with the damage to the car; get Gretchen out to California where they could finally kick back and relax.
Suddenly he heard a vehicle.
It pulled to the front of the cabin and stopped.
Draven immediately put the knife to Mia’s throat.
“Don’t make a goddamn sound!”
She nodded.
Draven jerked her up by the arm to get her back into the cabin. Then something bad happened. The doorknob wouldn’t turn. The little shit was locked! He’d left the keys on the kitchen counter.
He pulled off his T-shirt, ripped off a section and gagged the woman.
She didn’t resist.
In fact she held perfectly still.
Someone knocked on the front door. “Anyone home?”
Draven poked the knife into Mia’s throat. “Lay down on your stomach and don’t move!”
She obeyed.
Draven walked around the side of the house, gave her one last threatening look before he disappeared around the corner, and found the owner’s son standing at the front door—the same kid who met Draven at the cabin initially, to show him around and get his money.
Draven stuffed the knife behind his back and smiled as nonchalantly as he could.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“There you are,” the kid said.
“Right. What’s going on?”
“My dad wanted me to swing by and give you a heads up that someone from the state’s going to be coming by to take a sample from the well,” the kid said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. My dad just wanted to be sure you knew it was coming, in case you came back and found a car here or something like that.”
Draven nodded.
“Tell your dad thanks, I really appreciate it.”
The kid headed towards his car.
“When are they coming?” Draven asked.
The kid stopped walking and tried to think. Finally he gave up. “I can’t remember. Sometime within the next week, I think.”
“Okay. Thanks again.”
As soon as the kid pulled away, Draven ran around the side of the cabin.
The woman was gone.
He looked at the mountains.
In every direction.
And saw her nowhere.
“Bitch!” he shouted as loud as he could. “Get your ass back here right now!”
75
DAY ELEVEN–SEPTEMBER 15
THURSDAY EVENING
It was dark outside and Teffinger was alone in homicide, feeling the weight of the day, when the phone company finally faxed over Chase’s cell phone records. On Monday she’d received about fifteen calls.
Monday was the day she disappeared.
Teffinger dialed the people who had called the woman and got their stories as to why they called, what they talked about, and whether Chase mentioned anything about meeting a man for sex.
He took notes but none of substance.
One of the calls came from a payphone north of Pueblo.
Teffinger dialed the number.
No one answered.
The oversized industrial clock on the wall, the one with the twitchy second hand, said 9:10 p.m. Overhead, a fl
uorescent bulb hummed. He stood up, dumped a cup of cold coffee into the snake plant, and turned the lights out as he left.
Then he headed south on I-25.
He was passing through the tech center, trying to stay out of the way of maniac drivers, when Sydney called for an update. He filled her in and was almost about to hang up when a stray thought entered his head.
“Hey,” he said, “before you go, help me out on something. One of the calls to Chase on Monday came from a public phone north of Pueblo. For some reason, that’s been nagging me. It means something but I don’t know what.”
“Pueblo?”
“Right.”
“We have a missing person down there,” she said.
Teffinger knew he should have remembered that as soon as she said it. Early in the case he’d asked Sydney to keep track of anyone who turned up missing in Colorado. She subsequently told him about a Pueblo woman. He’d dismissed it as not much more than a curiosity at the time because the location was too far away and all of the bodies found at the railroad spur had been white.
“I remember,” he said. “What’s her status? Did she ever show back up?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’d be interesting, if she hasn’t.”
Fifteen minutes later, when he arrived at Davica’s, a strange car was in the driveway—a white Jaguar. When he knocked on the door, no one answered. He tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, and stepped inside.
He called for her.
No answer.
He grabbed a Bud Light out of the fridge, took off his weapon and put it on the kitchen counter, and finally found Davica out back in the hot tub, naked, in the company of another equally naked and well-endowed young woman with long, wet, jet-black hair.
“Hey, stranger,” Davica said. “We’ve been waiting for you. This is Monica.”
The woman stood up, displaying a totally shaved body, and leaned over to shake his hand. When she did, she suddenly grabbed his arm with both hands and yanked him into the water.
When his head came to the surface both of the women were laughing.
“Be careful of her,” Davica warned. “She has a bit of a wild side.”
Teffinger shook water out of his ear.
“So I see.”
“Now get out of those clothes,” she said.
He hesitated.
“You said I could have another woman,” Davica said. “This is her. But we haven’t done anything yet, because I’m not going to do anything unless you’re with me.” She squeezed Monica’s breast and then looked back at Teffinger. “And now you are.”
The two women kissed.
Long and deep and passionately.
Then Davica looked back at Teffinger.
“You can join in or you can watch. Your choice.”
76
DAY ELEVEN–SEPTEMBER 15
THURSDAY EVENING
When Aspen arrived back at the law firm after meeting with Sarah Ringer at CU, she called Blake Gray and asked if his office door was still open.
He laughed.
“Yeah, but not until tonight,” he said. “I’m totally slammed all day.”
“Tonight’s fine. That way if you fire me, at least I can sleep in.”
“Let me tell you where I’ll be.”
That evening, after supper, she headed to Chatfield State Park, paid an expensive entry fee, and then drove all the way around the lake to the marina. The Accord ran sluggish, as if twenty horses had been pulled from under the hood and were now being dragged behind instead.
“If you break, I’m leaving your ass here,” she said.
The car sputtered.
“I’m serious,” she added.
The marina turned out to be a lot bigger than she expected. There must have been three or four hundred slips. Tons of geese walked around, not showing a bit of fear. A gentle but steady wind blew out of the northwest, surprisingly warm. Blake Gray met her at the gate, escorted her to a thirty-foot sailboat moored at the end of D-Dock, and helped her aboard.
“When I want to forget everything, this is where I come,” he said. “This isn’t mine, by the way. It belongs to Doug Willoughby, the CEO of Omega.”
Aspen recognized the name—Omega.
That was the client that had the big antitrust judgment against Tomorrow, Inc. The one Derek Bennett represented. The one that Robert Yates was going to take over, before he and his daughter got killed while playing Frisbee in Central Park.
Aspen couldn’t believe the vessel and headed for the cabin.
“Can I go inside?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
Fifteen minutes later they had the boat on the lake, tilted fifteen degrees to starboard, with the mainsail and jib taut with wind.
He let her take the wheel, disappeared below, and then returned with two glasses of white wine.
They passed a small fishing boat.
“See that guy over there, baiting that hook?” Blake asked. “I’ve known him for years. At one time he was just an amateur baiter. Now he’s a master baiter.”
She laughed.
They sailed for over an hour, long enough for her to learn how to work the lines. Then they dropped the sails and bobbed. A flock of eight or ten geese floated over looking for a handout. Blake went below and returned with a loaf of bread. Aspen threw pieces into the water and decided that this was as good a time as any to get to the point of the meeting.
“I had some information fall into my lap today,” she said. “The long and short of it is, Rachel was sexually assaulted in her office on March 14th. It happened late, after nine o’clock or thereabouts. It wasn’t rape but it was definitely an assault.”
Blake frowned.
“What makes you think so?”
“Rachel’s sister told me.”
“Sarah?”
“Right.”
He took a long swallow of wine. “I already know about it,” he said. “She reported it to me back when it happened.”
“She did?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Who did it to her?”
He looked blank. “She wouldn’t say. I told her to take it to the police but she didn’t want to. She was embarrassed and felt it would hurt her career if the word got out. She didn’t want me to press it so, out of respect for her and against my better judgment, I didn’t.”
“She disappeared just two weeks after that,” Aspen said.
“I know.”
“There’s got to be a connection.”
He didn’t seem convinced.
“Maybe, in theory. But keep in mind that she got killed by some psycho maniac who cut her head off,” he said. “That’s a guy in a totally different league.”
She stopped throwing bread.
Every goose on the water watched her, waiting.
She wasn’t sure whether she should bring up what she was about to, but couldn’t hold back any longer.
“I followed Derek Bennett the other night,” she said. “He goes to a place called Tops & Bottoms, which is an S&M place, and sticks pins into women.”
Blake looked shocked and studied her face, as if trying to decide if she was messing with him.
She wasn’t.
“That’s the kind of guy who could saw someone’s head off,” she said.
Blake didn’t disagree.
“Assume he’s the one who sexually assaulted Rachel,” she said. “Two weeks pass and she hasn’t reported it to the police yet, but then he finds out that she’s in the process of leaving the firm. He starts to get nervous about whether she’ll change her mind after he doesn’t have so much of a grip on her any more.”
“So he takes her out,” Blake said, finishing the concept.
“Exactly. And has fun doing it.”
77
DAY ELEVEN–SEPTEMBER 15
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Draven frantically searched the mountainside for Mia Avila, gripping the knife so tight that his fingers hurt, already p
lanning what he’d do to her for putting him through this.
“Get back here, you bitch!”
No response.
“All you’re doing is making me mad!”
Silence.
There were too many trees, too many boulders, too many goddamn places to hide. He ran from one to the next, hoping beyond hope to find her cowering on the ground and scared out of her mind.
His lungs burned from the mad dashing but he didn’t care.
She couldn’t have gone far, not in those shoeless little feet of hers. The whole mountain was covered in rocks and twigs and pine needles and other pointy things. She might start out with enough feet to go for a ways, but before long they’d be raw and bloody and stuck full of needles. She’d have to stop no matter how desperate she might be.
She was here somewhere.
Where?
He covered ground as quickly as he could, no longer shouting now that he realized he was only giving his position away.
He hunted quietly, quickly, trying to remain confident that sooner or later he’d spring around the corner and grab her by the hair.
His legs grew increasingly heavy.
His lungs no longer got enough oxygen.
He was no longer just tired.
He was slipping into a deeper and deeper state of exhaustion.
He stopped and sat on a boulder, just to catch his breath for a second. Bad thoughts pounded his brain. He might not catch her. She might actually escape.
He knew he should stand up and continue the search.
He was too tired to move.
But muscled himself up anyway.
He searched every nook and cranny that she could have possibly made it to without being seen, found her nowhere, and then finally gave up and went back to the cabin.
Time to get the hell out of there.
Then, shit!
A large puddle of green antifreeze sat under the car. He kicked the side of the door, giving it a huge dent while sending a bone-compressing shockwave up his leg, all the way up to his hip.