by R. J. Jagger
“Tell me about the blackmail,” Teffinger said.
“Wish I could. It was just a rumor,” Canyon said. “The word was that she had something on someone and was getting money on the side. I was never able to get an angle on it though. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s true or not and probably never will.”
“Tell me about the girlfriends.”
“Not much to tell,” Canyon said. “Just your basic hotties. A few of the priors had a little resentment but not to the level of murder, at least in my opinion.”
“Any Jamaicans?”
“Not that I recall. We never went through the books, never had a reason to. So if the guy left a piece of paper in one of them we don’t know about it.”
“I understand. Can you run it down?”
“I don’t know if they’re still there or they’ve been thrown out or what but I’ll check,” Canyon said. “To be honest, you have my curiosity up. It says, NOIZ?”
“That’s my understanding. It’s in a red hardback on the top shelf.”
Teffinger hung up and swung around a red Mustang. To his shock, Kovi-Ke was behind the wheel. She looked over, saw who he was, and floored it.
He got behind and dialed her.
She answered.
“Pull over,” he said. “All I want to do is talk. Afterwards you’re free to leave if you want.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Yes,” he said. “Pull over.”
20
Day Three
June 6
Friday Afternoon
Kovi-Ke pulled off at the first exit and was out of the car and at Teffinger’s window before he came to a stop.
“Why are you following me?”
Teffinger got out, shut the door and leaned against it. “I’ll answer that but before I do, let me say two words—Lachey Silk.”
“Never heard of her.”
“She’s your black-panties tattoo girl,” he said. “She was stabbed in the heart three times. It happened in New York six months ago, on January eighth.”
“So she’s real?”
“Was,” Teffinger said. “Now she’s a file.”
Kovi-Ke frowned.
“Let me save you the trouble. Yes, I’ve been to New York before, but I wasn’t there in January. I was home doing dives but, no, I probably can’t prove it. No, I didn’t know her; and no, I didn’t kill her.”
An 18-wheeler veered off the interstate and down the exit, passing with squeaking brakes that smelled like hot bacon.
“She was pretty,” Teffinger said. “She was also into girls, like Alley Savannah. She liked to party. Maybe you bumped into her at one point when you were in the city.” He pulled his cell phone out and fumbled with it until he got what he wanted, a photo of a riveting blond, and kept his eyes on Kovi-Ke’s face as he showed it to her. “This is her.”
The woman looked.
A reaction registered on her face; fleeting, brief, quickly masked, but there nonetheless.
“I don’t know her.”
“Take a closer look.”
She did and said, “I know her type. I’ve done her type, more than once, a lot more than once, actually. But I’ve never done her. I’d remember.”
“You might have seen her, though? At a club or something?”
She shrugged.
“She’s the kind I’d talk to, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t kill her,” she said. “That’s the bottom line so stop getting hung up in all kinds of little things that don’t amount to anything.” She paused and added, “Is this why you followed me? To interrogate me about her?”
“No. I just found out about her ten minutes ago as a matter of fact.”
“So why are you following me?”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in.
“Why do you think?”
Then he kissed her.
She struggled, as if in the grip of the enemy, and then softened in surrender.
His phone rang.
“Go ahead,” Kovi-Ke said. “I have to use the facilities anyway. Teffinger watched the sway in her step as she disappeared into the pines and boulders and brush.
The FBI profiler was on the other end.
“Horrible news,” she said. “Poppy’s been murdered.”
“Poppy in Haiti? That Poppy?”
“Yes.”
“That can’t be,” Teffinger said. “I personally spoke to her not more than a hour ago.”
“They cut her tongue off and gouged out her eyes,” she said. “Most of her skin was off, as if she’d been dragged behind a car. Her body was dumped in an alley in downtown Port-au-Prince.”
“That can’t be.”
“The CIA is on their way over to talk to me as we speak. You’ll be next, so expect a knock on the door.”
Teffinger slumped against the Tundra.
“She didn’t want to get mixed up with voodoo. She told me that point blank. I put the pressure on her.”
“Stop it,” Leigh said. “I have to go. We’ll talk later.”
Teffinger’s first thought was, Tarzan.
Tarzan did it.
The more he processed it though the less it fit. Tarzan was brutal but he wasn’t the type to mutilate someone’s face. No, this wasn’t Tarzan’s work. That didn’t mean he wasn’t involved somehow, it just meant that he personally didn’t get the woman’s blood on his hands.
Kovi-Ke came into sight with a spring in her step, a spring that fell away when she saw the look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
He told her about how he’d hooked up with a CIA agent in Haiti to find the source of the voodoo night, working on the assumption that the source killed Alley Savannah and Lachey Silk, plus did whatever that was done that he didn’t know about yet.
“She was just murdered, brutally, as an example.” He kicked a rock. “I don’t want you out chasing anyone. Come back to Denver.”
She tightened her brow.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Look, you’re in a better position there,” he said. “Right now you’re just moving blind. You don’t know where the guy is, you don’t know where he’s going, and you don’t know where you’re going. Sure, you might get lucky and end up in the same vicinity as him. But then what? You wouldn’t even recognize him if he came up and asked you for directions. Come back to Denver and wait for a vision that lets you know where he is. Then you can fly there. It’ll be quicker than driving there from whatever back-road sticks you might be in otherwise. Plus, if we’re both in Denver, I can fly out with you.”
She considered it.
“Thanks for the offer. I have to keep going, though.”
Teffinger grabbed her elbow.
“Kovi-Ke.”
“You said you wanted to talk and that I was free to leave afterwards,” she said. “We talked. Now it’s time for you to keep your promise.”
Teffinger relaxed his grip and let his hand fall.
“Okay, then. I’ll come with you.”
She shook her head.
“You’re a red flag. He knows you. I have to sneak up on him. To do that I have to be alone.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Well, if that’s crazy, then try this. I don’t want you involved because I don’t want you getting killed. There, better?”
She got in her car without looking back.
Then she was gone.
21
Day Three
June 6
Friday Afternoon
Teffinger watched Kovi-Ke drive off, not knowing whether to follow her where she could see him, follow her from a mile back where she didn’t know he was there, forget all about her and head back to Denver, or whatever. Then what he needed to do came to him. He dialed her, not expecting an answer but glad when it came, and said, “I’m going to Haiti.”
“What for?”
“Answers, revenge, whatever’s there. Someone in Hait
i knows who the guy is.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I just wanted you to know.”
He hung up, got in the Tundra and pointed the front end east, back towards Denver.
His phone rang.
It was Kovi-Ke.
He didn’t answer.
She might want to come with him. He didn’t want to have to decide whether to let her or not. She called three more times. He didn’t answer three more times.
Then the phone got silent.
He drove home where he got his passport and packed a suitcase, questioned his sanity one final time, and then headed to Denver International Airport where he found out the best travel route was through Miami. He bought a ticket, strapped himself into an aisle seat and gripped the armrests with sweaty palms as the city-sized hunk of metal raced down the runway and tried to muscle its way into the sky.
The wheels left the pavement.
The vibration stopped.
The woman next to him tapped his arm and said, “Are you okay?”
He looked over.
“Yeah, no worries. They’ll be serving beer, don’t you think?”
“I’d think so.”
“Good.”
Late night, slightly tipsy, Teffinger landed in Miami, got a hotel room until morning, and then boarded a mid-sized jet to Haiti, surprised that he was actually doing what he was doing.
Unlike the flight to Miami, this one wasn’t a can of sardines. The skies were crystal blue and drama-free. He’d only have to put up with them for a few short hours. Halfway there one of the flight attendants slipped into the seat next to him and said, “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
She was nice, his type, as nice as Kovi-Ke if the truth be told, but not someone he recognized or knew.
“I’m not from these parts,” he said.
“How long will you be in Haiti?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know. A day or two, maybe a week, it’s all up in the air.”
“Your eyes are two different colors.”
“That’s true.”
“Now I know where I know you from. GQ, you were on the cover. At least I think that was you. Was it?”
He nodded.
“I think they picked me because of my eyes,” he said.
“Well, they chose good.” She wrote digits on a napkin. “That’s my number. I’ll be in town for three days before I have to fly out again. Call me and we’ll do something. I’ll show you all the haunts.”
Teffinger almost shoved the paper in his pocket.
Instead he handed it back.
“I’m here on business,” he said. “It might get a little rough.”
She ran a finger down his hand and said, “I like it rough.”
“Not this rough.”
She shoved the napkin in his shirt pocket, patted his chest and said, “If you change your mind.”
Then she was gone, wiggling up the aisle.
Teffinger took the paper out and studied it, deciding. She’d be a crazy little thing in bed. He had no formal commitments to Kovi-Ke. Then he frowned. He’d probably have withdrawal pains later, but he ripped the napkin to pieces before he could think about it any more.
Right now he was a disease.
There was no use infecting innocent people.
Mid-morning, the flight touched down uneventfully at Port-au-Prince International Airport. Teffinger made his way through customs one painful second at a time and then hopped in a cab and said, “Villa Sky.”
That’s where Kovi-Ke stayed when she was abducted.
As the cab pulled off, a knock came at the window.
The driver braked.
The door opened and the stewardess hopped in, a smile coming to her face from the look on Teffinger’s. She said to the driver, “Toussaint, take me home.”
“Sure thing, pretty lady. You’re second.”
“Actually I’m first,” she said. “He’s going where I’m going.”
The driver gave Teffinger a look.
Then he did a one-eighty and took off.
22
Day Four
June 7
Saturday Morning
The stewardess—Modeste—ended up squashed against Teffinger as the cab driver picked up three more passengers en route. The pressure of her thigh against his went straight to his brain, so much so that he could even tolerate the cramped quarters.
They got closer and closer to a mountainside of colored structures that all seemed attached to one another. From a distance they seemed bright and inviting. Up close they took on a more deprived and dangerous patina.
The driver dropped them as far up as the road allowed.
Modeste grabbed Teffinger’s hand and said, “Don’t be afraid.”
Then they headed up, winding through stairs and alleys for some time before finally entering an aqua green three-story structure, something in the nature of an apartment building sandwiched between more of the same. A dark stairwell took them to the top floor, where a short hallway ended with a door on each side. Modeste slipped a key into the door on the right and found the lock jimmied. The knob turned and she entered.
Then she gasped.
Teffinger stepped in and saw why.
The place was trashed.
“This is getting more and more frequent,” she said.
“It’s happened before?”
“Too many times,” she said. “They’re looking for drugs or guns or money or whatever is worth anything. Liquor, anything like that. Too bad for them I don’t have anything.”
“So you’re not in trouble or anything? No one came here to get you?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Yeah, my lucky day.”
Teffinger helped her straighten up.
A million years of recessed caveman genetics made his peripheral vision size her up at every opportunity. Her skin was dark; her body was compelling; and the way she moved, well, that was the best of it all. Every stance was a pose; every change of position was a song. Her mouth was cute and wide and given to easy smiles.
His phone rang and Sydney’s voice came through. “Kovi-Ke’s back in Denver. She said she had another flash, from Denver. The guy had doubled back. She’s back here trying to find him, just like before. I’ll be honest, Teff, I have no idea what to make of her. She’s here, she’s there, she seems legit when you talk to her face to face, but how can she be?”
“Call Station,” he said. “Tell her to keep her guard up. Don’t let her get relaxed just because nothing visible is showing on her radar screen. Has there been any sign of Tarzan?”
“Nothing, not a peep. The CIA guys were peeping, though. They went to the chief when they found out you weren’t in town. They gave him an earful. He took it but he’s saving it up for you. It’s in a box with your name on it.”
“You didn’t tell him where I went, did you?”
“No. I only said you were on vacation.”
“Which I am.”
“Do you want my advice?”
“No.”
“Good, because here it is,” she said. “Get your posterior back to Denver, get the CIA behind you and figure out what Kovi-Ke is up to.”
“I will, I will and I will. Until I do, though, get close to Kovi-Ke, but be seriously careful. Make sure she doesn’t kill Station; and make sure no one kills her. Most importantly, make sure no one kills you. Oh, one more thing. Kovi-Ke said she thought the guy did four murders. She only gave me the stories on two of them, Alley Savannah and Lachey Silk. Get the other two and run them to ground. Don’t go through Leigh Sandt, though. I’m sure she’s buying GQs by the dozens as we speak just so she can shred the covers.”
“Good visual.”
“Thanks.”
“I think I’ll go out and buy some while I can, for when you give me those same moments in the future.”
He smiled.
“Good idea.”
“Where ca
n I get a shredder sharpened? Do you know?”
He hung up, turned to Modeste and said, “What do you know about voodoo?”
Her face tightened.
“I know that it’s not for tourists. I know that it’s not a plaything.”
“Who in town practices it so hard that they kill people?”
Her eyes retreated in fear.
“Even asking that question is a dangerous thing.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But so is not asking it.”
He told her about Kovi-Ke’s abduction during Karnaval, the fact that she could now see through a killer’s eyes, and the reason he was in Haiti, namely to get to the source of the night in question.
At the end Modeste said, “This woman, Kovi-Ke. It sounds like you’ve fallen for her. Am I right?”
It was a good question, one he’d avoided asking himself.
“The whole thing’s volatile,” he said. “To be honest she’s like a loaded gun. I’m never sure if she’s pointed at me or away.”
“Either way, you and me not going to have sex, are we?”
Teffinger hated to give the answer.
He hated to lock out the possibility.
But there was only one answer to give.
“No.”
Modeste turned and shook her backside at him, a tribute to what he was missing.
“Tell her she’s a lucky girl, this Kovi-Ke.” She grew serious and added, “The person you’re looking for is a voodoo woman named Janjak. She’s twice the devil and then some. My advice is to leave right now and forget you ever heard her name, which by the way, you didn’t hear from me.”
23
Day Four
June 7
Saturday Morning
“Janjak can steal your soul from a distance and you wouldn’t even know it until she started to carve it up with a razorblade. She can break you from the inside just because it amuses her. Death is no escape. In fact, when you die it gets worse. At least while you’re alive you have worldly elements in your life. In death there’s nothing except Janjak,” Modeste said. “Once she has you, she has you forever.”