by R. J. Jagger
Teffinger swallowed.
The story was making more and more sense.
The specter that he had killed an innocent man was correspondingly become more and more real.
“The next time we talked was several days later,” she said. “During that conversation, he told me that he took my words to heart and decided to make it look like someone else committed the crime. He told me he planted incriminating evidence in the garage of a man named Peyton Rekker and then made an anonymous call to the detective in charge to the effect that Rekker was the killer.”
“Meaning me,” Teffinger said.
She nodded.
“Right, you.” She took a sip of beer and added, “Then a few days later the news hit that the prime suspect in Brittany Asher’s murder had died in a police confrontation while resisting arrest. I dug deeper and found that you actually choked him to death during a struggle.”
Teffinger frowned.
“I didn’t choke him to death,” he said. “My thumbs collapsed his windpipe and that’s how he suffocated, not from prolonged pressure.”
“Like I said before, your secret’s safe with me,” she said. “Anyway, the news got out that the police made a conclusive determination that Rekker was the killer and then closed the case.”
Teffinger nodded.
That was true.
“John sort of dropped out of sight at that point,” Tangiers said. “He stopped calling.”
“Your job was done.”
“True,” she said. “There was a problem though. I kept picturing him dropping that rattlesnake into Brittany’s mouth. It was so bizarre that I couldn’t get it out of my head. I started waking up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I tried to shrug it off as baggage that comes with being a defense attorney, but it was hard. Then one day in March of this year, the second week of March to be exact, I got a call from John. He said he might need my services in the future.”
“He killed someone else?”
“Exactly,” she said. “But he had morphed by that time. All the media attention he got from his three rattlesnake victims was exhilarating but in the end it scared the shit out of him and wore him down. He dropped that entire way of murder. His new routine was to abduct the woman, take her to a pre-arranged secluded place and have his fun. Afterwards, he buried her. All the police ended up with was a missing-woman case.”
“So who did he kill in March?”
“He wouldn’t say,” she said. “He wasn’t giving me the same amount of details as he was before. It wasn’t someone from Denver though. The only thing he told me is that it was someone from Illinois.”
“Chicago, maybe.”
“Maybe. For me, the nightmares started coming back. Then one night I knew what I needed to do. I needed to find out who he was. Without the firm knowing anything about it, I hired a private investigator by the name of Charlene Banta, who has an office over on Market Street. Do you know her?”
No, he didn’t.
“I hired her on my own dime and warned her up front that the case could be very, very dangerous,” she said. “She took the case anyway. It took until last month, June, three months from when she started, but she finally tracked him down. He has a house over near Wash Park. She broke into it and found two things of relevance. The first was a set of files filled with newspaper articles and web printouts regarding the murders of Lori Rain, Jacqueline Squares, Brittany Asher and Trisha Williams.”
“Who’s Trisha Williams?”
“She’s the woman who disappeared in Chicago in March and has never been heard from since.”
“The one he called you about,” Teffinger said.
“Right,” she said. “The investigator, Charlene Banta, also found one other thing of interest. The man had three of those little black mileage calendars, one for this year and two others for the preceding two years. In those calendars were the names of the four women he murdered. Their names were hand-written on the dates he killed them, together with their cities. Each entry had two red circles around it. There was nothing written in any of the books other than those entries. It was a murder log in effect.”
Teffinger looked at his watch.
It was 10:30.
In an hour and a half it would be midnight.
“Keep talking,” he said.
“I am. Anyway, there was one other entry,” she said. “It was for midnight tonight. The two red circles were there and inside was a woman’s name.”
“What’d it say?”
“It said Tangiers Vendora, Denver, Colorado.”
“That’s you,” Teffinger said.
“Right, I know.”
“So he’s going to kill you at midnight.”
“That’s his plan.” She put her hand on his arm. “Our plan is different though. Our plan is that we’re going to kill him when he comes to kill me.”
4
Day One
July 26
Wednesday Night
Tangiers’ plan to kill John when he came to kill her didn’t sit well with Teffinger. He wasn’t a killer; he was the opposite. Plus he’d already killed Rekker who, in hindsight, was an innocent man. Sure, Teffinger had been fighting for his life and legally speaking the act was one of self-defense, but deep down in his bones when no one was looking he had to confess that there might have been a little more strangulation involved than what he’d portrayed. The man’s windpipe had collapsed, that was true, but maybe not right away.
“No killing,” he said. “We’ll take him down but it’s going to be by the books.”
“It can’t be by the books.”
“Why not?”
“There are no books left.”
Teffinger scrunched his face.
“What does that mean?”
“It means this,” Tangiers said. “I wanted to see the files and the mileage calendars for myself so Charlene Banta broke in again and this time I went with her. Everything was gone. The files were gone, the calendars were gone, and as far as we could tell, every shred of evidence that he even lifted a finger was gone. He’d totally cleaned the place up.”
Teffinger tilted his head.
“We can still get him.”
“How?” Tangiers said. “First of all, everything that I’ve told you is off the books, and even if we agreed to put it on the books, meaning I would get disbarred, it would be inadmissible in court. It’s not evidence in any way shape or form. Second of all, any evidence that might have existed at his home is gone. When you add the two together, what you have is no evidence at all.”
Teffinger considered it.
“There could be trace evidence,” he said. “Fibers or hairs or something like that.”
“That’s a long shot,” she said. “Even if we went that route, this whole conversation between you me, plus the illegal break in by Charlene Banta, all of that would have to come out, unless you’re prepared to sit around and lie about it time after time. He’d find out how I betrayed him. He’d find a way to get me. If he couldn’t do it himself he’d hire someone to do it.” A beat then, “Even if something matched up, it would be circumstantial. What we need to do is let him come for me. I’ll be the bait. When he breaks in, that will be an illegal act. You can be there and will be justified in stopping him.”
“That doesn’t mean I can kill him.”
“No, not if he just holds his hands up and surrenders,” she said. “That’s not going to happen though. He’s going to resist. He’s going to attack. You’ll be in the exact same position you were with Rekker. This is your chance to kill the right man. It will be fast and clean. Everything will be over and done with. ”
Teffinger pictured it.
To his surprise, the picture wasn’t distasteful.
If the man forced Teffinger into a life or death battle, well, that would be that. One of them would live and one of them would die.
“Teffinger, there’s something I have to tell you,” Tangiers said. “He’s big. He’s bigger than you by
at least an inch. He’s six-three and maybe six-four.”
“What’s his physique?”
“He’s a gorilla,” she said. “You can’t let it turn into a fistfight. You need to shoot him. If he gets the edge on you he’ll kill you and then he’ll kill me.”
He considered it.
Shooting would be justified if the man was charging.
The bullet needed to go into his chest or face, not his back.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’m in. We’ll set up at your place and let him make his move. If he forces us into a situation where he needs to die, then that’s what happens. It’ll be for Brittany.”
Tangiers clinked her beer can against his.
“For Brittany,” she said.
“What’s this guy’s last name, by the way?”
“I’ll tell you after.”
“Why not now?”
“I don’t want you to change your mind and start thinking about a search warrant,” she said. “Don’t let me die tonight, Teffinger. That’s all I ask.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
He put his arm around her shoulders.
“That’s not the kind of thing I can promise and you know it,” he said.
“I don’t care. Just say the words.”
He squeezed her.
“Okay, I promise.”
5
Day One
July 26
Wednesday Night
Tangiers lived in a standalone Tudor on the east edge of Denver near Colorado Boulevard where the yards were big and the pockets were deep. Teffinger pulled the Tundra up the woman’s cobblestone driveway at 11:03, kissed her deeply as if ending a date, then pulled away and let the taillights get swallowed up by the storm.
Two blocks later he turned a corner, edged to the curb and killed the lights.
His heart raced.
Gorilla.
He couldn’t get the word out of his brain.
He checked his weapon, found everything in order and stepped out into the storm. It hadn’t let up, not a bit, and if anything was even more wicked. He covered his face as best he could and muscled his body against the weather down a residential street that ran parallel to Tangiers’. Duran Duran’s “Rio” ran through his head. He cut through backyards, scaled a wrought-iron fence at the rear of Tangiers’ property, and made his way through squishy grass to the back door.
It was locked, as it should be.
He knocked.
Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand …
A heartbeat later the door opened and Tangiers’ face appeared. She pulled Teffinger in, closed the door and locked it. “It’s ten after,” she said. “We have fifty minutes.”
This level of the house was dark.
They headed through that darkness and up a winding staircase to the second story. The master bedroom was large and opulent. The window coverings were open and the storm rattled the glass. Light came from a table lamp in the corner, nothing too bright, from a 60-watt bulb or something to that effect. Tangiers flipped a switch and brought the room into darkness. Teffinger slipped under the bed and said, “Okay.”
The light went back on.
“Follow your normal routine,” he said. “He’s probably watched you a hundred times.”
“I know.”
That was true, she did know.
That’s all they did on the way over; discuss the plan.
Just like that river twisting through a dusty land.
Lightning shot through Teffinger’s blood.
If the man actually came—and there was no reason to think he wouldn’t—someone would be dead within the hour. It would either be him or Tangiers or John, just like Tangiers said at the beginning. The statement had been so crazy when she said it. Now here it was, as real as real gets.
“I always take a shower before I go to bed,” Tangiers said.
“Then take one.”
At the end of the bed the woman’s dress dropped to the floor, followed by a bra and panties. Then her body came into sight as she walked across the room to the master bathroom.
Her ass was taut.
Her back was strong.
Her legs were perfect.
She flipped the bathroom lights on, dimmed them to half and got the shower up to temperature. Then she stepped in and lathered up.
The shower door was clear glass.
The spray washed against it and brought the woman’s body in and out of focus with all the magic of an oasis in the desert.
And when she shines she really shows you all she can.
The bed was closing in on him. Teffinger brought his head and shoulders and arms out from under it, still out of line of sight from a window, and focused on Tangiers.
He couldn’t let her die.
She was too beautiful.
She was filled with too much light.
He pulled his weapon out of the holster, flicked the safety off and felt the hardness of the cold steel before placing it on the carpet next to him.
Tangiers had her head under the spray.
Her eyes were closed.
Water cascaded down her face and dripped off her chin and onto her breasts and down her stomach.
Oh Rio, Rio dance across the Rio Grande.
Suddenly a vibration came from somewhere, something that was probably the storm but might not be. Out of an abundance of caution Teffinger turned towards it. His peripheral vision detected a shape swinging savagely from above.
Before he could react his head exploded in pain.
6
Day One
July 26
Wednesday Night
Iron fists yanked Teffinger out from under the bed by the hair and then a solid kick smashed into his ribs. The man towering above him had a chiseled face filled with rage. His arms were pythons. Teffinger looked for the gun, saw it to the side and went to grab it. Just as his hand felt the steel a kick from the man’s boot sent the weapon flying across the floor. Teffinger grabbed the man’s foot and twisted, then got to his feet before the man could stop him.
Blood ran down his forehead and into his eyes.
He wiped it off with the back of his hand and squared off, blinking wildly to get the last drops out.
The man paused and let a smirk creep onto his mouth.
“This is going to be fun,” he said.
Then he sprang.
Teffinger was going to die, he knew that, but he was going to get his licks in before he did. He swung wildly at the man’s face with a deathblow and missed. The momentum sent him off balance and tumbling to the floor. Before he could react, the man was on him, pounding his head and neck with furious fists.
Blow after blow after blow came but none killed him.
Then he was on his feet.
Things were squared again.
He charged.
What happened next were the worst moments of his life. At the end he found himself straddling the man’s chest and pounding his face into oblivion.
The man stopped moving.
Teffinger pounded more.
All reactions stopped.
Teffinger got to his feet with his hands clenched and dared the man to move a muscle.
The man didn’t move.
He looked dead.
Teffinger nudged him with his foot.
No reaction came.
Teffinger’s chest heaved as his lungs fought for air. Second after second after second passed and each one brought Teffinger to the realization that the fight was over. The adrenalin drained from his blood and a deep exhaustion filled his muscles, so absolute that it brought him to his knees.
Suddenly Tangiers was at his side.
She had a lamp in her hands and raised it over her head. Then she swung it down. The corner of the lamp’s base smashed into the man’s forehead and shattered his skull.
Tangiers’ arms trembled and her lips quivered.
T
he lamp dropped from her hands.
Then she sank to the floor next to Teffinger and collapsed in his lap.
7
Day One
July 26
Wednesday Night
Time stood still. The storm beat down, the windows rattled and jagged flashes of lightning ripped the sky. Tangiers stood up. She was still without clothes but her body was dry. She sat on the bed and put her face in her hands. Then she looked at Teffinger and said, “I just killed a man.”
“No you didn’t, I did.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes we do. I could feel the life leaving his body the last time I punched him,” Teffinger said. “That’s why I stopped. It was over. He was dead.”
“He could have just been unconscious.”
Teffinger opened his mouth to rebut it.
No words came out.
She was right.
“I could go down for murder,” Tangiers said.
“That won’t happen.”
She stood up and paced. Panic had a solid stranglehold on her face.
“If he died from you, that was self-defense,” she said. “But if he died from me, it wasn’t. It was murder.”
Teffinger exhaled.
Legally speaking, that was true.
The man was unconscious and had been for many seconds, maybe even a full minute, at the point in time when Tangiers smashed him. He was no threat to either of them at that point. They were not in a defensive mode. They had been earlier, granted, but they weren’t at that point. The act, when reduced to its essence, was one of aggression against an unconscious man. It was understandable and it was no doubt powered in large part by a continuing rush of adrenalin, but it was still unnecessary.
It was excessive.
“So what do we do?” Teffinger said.
“I can’t go to jail,” Tangiers said. “We should just get out of here, both of us, right now.”
Teffinger got to his feet, staggered to the bed and collapsed backwards onto the mattress.
“Turn the lights off,” he said.
Tangiers did.