by R. J. Jagger
“You mean in the back yard?”
“Right.”
“So you knew I was watching you?”
She nodded. “You should be more careful.”
93
DAY THIRTEEN–SEPTEMBER 17
SATURDAY–3:45 A.M.
In the middle of the night, Davica Holland walked on silent tiptoes from her bedroom to the other one and studied Jack Draven from the doorway. His body made a big lump under the covers. His breathing came deep and heavy. His clothes made a dark pile on the floor. She held her breath and snuck in.
She found his knife in the sheath, on the floor near the clothes.
She slipped it out.
Then she walked back into her bedroom and hid it under the pillow. She lay on her back in the bed, naked, and moved her hand under the pillow and got the knife properly positioned.
Moonlight filtered into the room.
“Draven, are you awake?” she shouted.
Mumbled words came from the other bedroom.
“Wake up and come over here,” she said. “I need you to screw me.”
Draven walked in, groggy, not much more than a naked shape in the dark.
She spread her legs and then raised her arms above her head.
“Come here,” she said. “Make me feel good.”
He straddled her chest and then inched up until his cock was on her mouth. “Get me hard,” he said.
She did.
Using her tongue.
Then he slid down, put his arms under her legs and opened them wide. She bit her lower lip while he inserted himself. Then he rocked inside her with a steady up and down motion.
It was too bad for Draven that he had raped her—twice—and made her change her mind about him. It was too bad that she was no longer interested in giving him an alibi or having him as a business partner. It was too bad that she no longer felt comfortable that he knew what she looked like.
It was too bad that she’d be better off if he was dead.
She reached under the pillow and got the knife in her hand. He didn’t notice as she slipped it out. Then she raised it in the dark and brought it down as hard as she could into his back.
He immediately twitched and made an awful sound.
She pulled it out and stabbed him again.
Then again.
And again.
And again.
Then stuck it in one final time and twisted.
He went limp, no longer fighting death. Warm blood ran down his sides and onto her breasts and stomach. She fought to get out from under him and then rolled him off the bed.
“Asshole.”
She brought his pants in from the other room, pulled his cell phone out of his front pocket, and then threw them on the floor at the foot of the bed.
She chained one of her ankles to the bed frame.
She made herself as hysterical as she could and then called Teffinger.
94
DAY THIRTEEN–SEPTEMBER 17
SATURDAY–4:00 A.M.
When Teffinger got back to Davica’s house at four in the morning, she wasn’t home and hadn’t left a note. He called her cell phone and got no answer.
Weird.
Maybe she’d gone to a girlfriend’s.
He brushed his teeth, took out his contacts, dropped onto the bed, and immediately fell asleep.
Then his cell phone woke him up.
Davica’s voice came though.
Hysterical.
Crying.
Talking a mile a minute.
Something about she’d been abducted.
Something about killing a man with a knife.
He got her calmed down enough to make sense. She was chained to a bed in a cabin in the mountains, but had no idea where it was. He threw on clothes, put his contacts back in and pointed the Tundra west.
On the way, he woke up Sydney and had her work with the cell phone company to pinpoint the location of the phone that Davica was calling from. Almost an hour later he pulled off Highway 119 onto a gravel road and took it west. In a mile it dead-ended at a cabin.
No lights were on inside.
A green VW Jetta sat out front.
He drew his weapon and approached.
Carefully.
Inside, he found Davica in a bedroom with an ankle chained to the bed frame, screaming for him to get her out of there. She was covered in blood. On the floor, next to the bed, lay a naked man with a knife in his back.
He looked like an Indian.
95
ONE MONTH LATER
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Teffinger was on a country road north of Denver, halfway to Loveland, when he found a pastoral scene that moved him. He pulled onto the shoulder, killed the engine, and stepped out. The temperature was only about sixty, but under a full Colorado sun and without a wisp of wind, it seemed like seventy-five.
He felt a little guilty about taking off work early.
Not guilty enough to go back, though.
He set up the easel and positioned an eight-by-ten canvas on it. Then he squeezed Windsor & Newton oils onto a worn wooden pallet, limiting his selection to Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Red, French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna, and Titanium White.
From those six tubes he could mix any color he wanted.
And a few he didn’t.
He solidified the composition in his mind and then laid in the lights and darks with a Burnt Sienna wash, until the painting looked like an old one-tone photograph.
Then he started to lay in the color.
The place was deserted.
There was no vehicle traffic at all.
Not a sound came from anywhere.
Off in the distance a hawk floated on large quiet wings. A butterfly fluttered to Teffinger’s left, one of the last summer holdouts. As he painted, his thoughts turned to the events of the last month.
Lots had happened.
The security system in Davica’s house had recorded Jack Draven abducting her on that fatal Saturday night. There was no question that she shoved the knife in the guy’s back in self-defense, while he was raping her. He had gotten himself too distracted to remember to keep the knife in his hand. Luckily, the events hadn’t seemed to traumatize Davica.
Why Draven had chosen her was still a mystery.
Maybe he did it to screw with Teffinger.
Draven, it turned out, had made a duplicate DVD of a lot of the snuffs, if not all of them. Why? Who knows? Maybe he was going to use them for blackmail some day. Maybe he just liked to watch them.
One of the DVDs showed the murder of 19-year-old Catherine Carmichael. The resulting investigation led to a Kansas man named Porter Adams. The victim’s eyes were found in a formaldehyde jar in Adams’ basement. Adams was in the process of being extradited to Colorado to face the death penalty.
Another one of the DVDs showed Blake Gray sawing off Rachel Ringer’s head. Gray was sitting in prison right now, without bail, facing the death penalty.
“He’ll get it, too,” Teffinger told everyone.
Another one of the DVDs showed a man snuffing Angela Pfeiffer, stabbing her repeatedly. So Davica was officially off the hook for that.
Teffinger and Davica had consummated their relationship that night in celebration.
And hadn’t stopped since.
Mia Avila, the missing Pueblo woman, was found alive, chained in the cab of a tow truck, which was locked in a structure at the remote location off Highway 93 where Jack Draven had been staying.
She had suffered serious malnutrition and dehydration but in the end managed to pull herself back to normal.
The body of the tow-truck driver still hadn’t been found.
Draven had been staying at the place with a Pueblo hooker named Gretchen Smith. She disappeared the day after she learned that Draven was dead.
No one knows where she went.
She left behind a brand-new Lexus that was titled in her name.
Derek Bennett’s story
checked out. He had nothing to do with the deaths of Rachel Ringer, Chase, or Jacqueline Moore. The only thing he had done of an illegal nature was to conspire with Blake Gray and Jacqueline Moore to hire Jack Draven to threaten Robert Yates.
Although that was a felony, Teffinger talked a New York prosecutor into giving Bennett a plea bargain in exchange for Bennett testifying against Blake Gray at trial.
The law firm of Hogan, Slate & Dover, LLC, disintegrated. Teffinger got Aspen and Christina Tam jobs in the D.A.’s office, where they were thriving.
As near as Teffinger could tell, Blake Gray was the one who had killed Brad Ripley. Teffinger’s theory was that Ripley learned from Draven that there would be more events at that same location after Ripley’s.
Ripley then kept an eye on the place.
When Blake Gray showed up, Ripley took the pictures that were found in his safe, and also wrote down the license plate number of Gray’s BMW. From there he learned who Gray was. When he lost money in Las Vegas and needed more, he blackmailed Blake Gray. But Gray traced the phone calls, found out who was blackmailing him, and shot him in the face.
Marilyn Black, the hooker, was living drug-free with her mother in Idaho, working as a cashier in a hardware store. She emailed Teffinger almost every day.
Teffinger worked the paintbrushes for almost two hours and then stopped.
He was finished.
Anything more would just mess it up.
He packed up the Tundra and headed to Davica’s.
If she liked the painting he’d get it framed and give it to her.
Otherwise he’d sell it at the gallery.
It was good enough for that.
Davica called while he was driving over and said, “Let’s get drunk tonight and then take a cab home.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care, downtown somewhere, maybe one of those places on Larimer Street, somewhere dark and cozy. I’m going to wear a short black skirt and a white thong.”
He smiled.
“You’re too wild for me. You know that, I hope.”
“You have no idea,” she said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all the fantastic people who played a part in making this happen. Special appreciation goes out to Tonia Allen, Carol Fieger, Dawn Seth, Kenneth Sheridan, and Martha Stoddard, as well as the wonderful people at Pegasus, and of course the extraordinary Noah Lukeman.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2011 by R. J. Jagger
interior design by Maria Fernandez
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
LAWYER TRAP
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Copyright Page