“What do you mean?”
“I think he knew I would be coming in,” Venta said.
“How would he possibly know that?”
“Here’s my theory,” Venta said. “Bob Copeland wasn’t a real target at all. He was a rabbit. Someone set me up to follow him to Bangkok for the sole purpose of abducting me into slavery.”
London heard the words and understood them but found the concept so bizarre that she really couldn’t fathom it.
“Come again,” she said.
“All right,” Venta said. “Let me break it down. I’m not trying to be conceited, but I’m an attractive woman.”
“Agreed.”
“I’d be worth a lot of money in the kind of place where I eventually ended up,” Venta said. “Now, suppose someone targets me—and I have no idea if it was someone from Bangkok or someone from here in the States. But assume the fact, that I’ve been targeted. Now the question is, how do they get me to Bangkok? It would be too complicated to abduct me here in the States and then try to smuggle me into Thailand. Too many things could go wrong. But what if I traveled there of my own accord? Do you see where I’m going with this?”
London nodded.
She did.
“So they set up Bob Copeland as a pretend mark for me to follow,” Venta said. “I fall for it and head to Bangkok. Now they have me in the country and all they have to do is get me to the place where they’re going to abduct me. And that’s easy, because Copeland leads me right to them. I get abducted and Copeland walks out the back door with his ten grand or whatever it is that they paid him to be part of the charade.”
LONDON COCKED HER HEAD.
“It’s a theory,” she said. “But what makes you think that’s what happened as opposed to just some random misfortune once you got there?”
Venta grunted.
“Lots of little things,” she said. “First, when I got back to the States, I found out that someone had rifled through both my apartment and my office. Several of my files were gone, including the Bob Copeland file. My computers were all stolen too. So I found it strange that I suddenly didn’t have any evidence at all of the Bob Copeland assignment.”
“That is strange,” London said.
“You bet it is,” Venta said. “Here’s something else that’s strange. I tried to track Copeland down to see if I could shake him up into admitting he had been part of a conspiracy. It turns out that he totally disappeared without a trace.”
“He did?”
“He did,” Venta said. “There’s one more important fact. I got in touch with my phone company and talked them into getting some information for me. It turns out that all the calls to me, from the person who said he was representing a law firm, came from a payphone in the lobby of a building here in Denver. A law firm by the name of Vesper & Bennett has its offices in that building.”
Vesper & Bennett.
“That’s the biggest firm in Denver,” London said.
Venta nodded.
“The world, actually.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve done a lot of research on them,” Venta said. “They have offices all over the world. Three are here in the United States—namely New York, Denver and San Francisco. But they also have offices in London, Paris, Prague, Tokyo and Hong Kong to name a few. Here’s the important thing—their website says they’ll be opening a Bangkok office within the next year, which means they’re over there now putting it together.”
“Bangkok, huh?”
“Right.”
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it?” Venta pushed hair out of her face. “There are other law firms in that building, lots of them in fact. But Vesper & Bennett is the only one that has any kind of connection to Bangkok, at least that I can find.”
London picked up a twig and snapped it.
Venta let it steal her attention for a moment and then refocused. “Anyway,” she said, “this whole discussion started when I asked you if I could ask you a question, and you said yes. So here’s my question. Are you ready?”
London nodded.
“If my theory is correct and someone from Vesper & Bennett hired me to go Bangkok so I would be abducted into sexual slavery, would I have a lawsuit against the law firm?”
“I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t,” London said.
“Okay then,” Venta said. “Do you want to be my lawyer?”
9
Day Two—June 12
Tuesday Morning
TEFFINGER SPENT THE MORNING alone at Alan English’s house going through the victim’s phone bills, daily calendar, drawers, and whatever else he could find—looking for the name of someone who hated the man enough to stab him in the back seven times. It turned out that English had a pretty nice sound system, so Teffinger brought one of his Beatles CDs from the Tundra and let it spin while he worked.
He found nothing out of the ordinary, which surprised him.
Usually hate that strong leaves a lot of footprints; dinosaur-sized.
Maybe they were here but Teffinger couldn’t see them because half his brain cells were focused on Venta. Women had always come easy to him. In fact, according to the FBI profiler Dr. Leanne Sanders, that was Teffinger’s downfall and the main reason he was still single at thirty-four. So it didn’t require a quantum leap in logic to believe that Venta actually did see him on TV and decided to find a way to meet him.
On the other hand Teffinger had to agree with Sydney that it would be unusual, especially for someone as exotic as Venta.
One thing he did know is that he needed to see her again, as soon as possible, and get an answer. If their foundation wasn’t solid, then he needed to know that before he got too wrapped up in her to care.
Damn.
Nothing was ever easy.
And who was he trying to kid?
He was already wrapped up in her too much to care.
“Love Me Do” came from crystal-clear speakers.
Teffinger cranked up the volume and plopped down on English’s couch, wondering if there was anything else he should do before he left. The song was so simple, so obvious, that it didn’t seem as if anyone had written it. It seemed more like one of those songs that were always there somewhere in the universe and then just finally got spotted by someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time, like John Denver’s “Country Roads” or the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby;” even “Born to Run” to some extent.
Venta Devenelle.
Who was she?
WHEN TEFFINGER GOT BACK TO HEADQUARTERS he by-passed the elevators in the parking garage and walked straight up to the sixth floor to see if Paul Kubiak had any luck processing Alan English’s computer.
Before he pushed through the door, he realized that his left hand was empty, so he walked down to homicide on the third floor, got a cup of coffee, and then got out of there before anyone could corner him.
He headed back up the stairs, sipping on the way.
Luckily, Kubiak hadn’t gone to lunch early. The man scratched his big old truck-driver’s gut and said, “The rumor is that you have some hot woman hunting you down.”
Teffinger made a sour face.
“This place is worse than a sewing circle,” he said.
“Same thing happened to me once,” Kubiak said.
Teffinger cocked his head.
“Oh?”
“Only it was because I ran over her cat.”
Teffinger grunted.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “You’ll use up all nine of their lives at once.”
Kubiak grinned, took a bite out of a doughnut and told Teffinger that the computer had already been unlocked and given to Sydney. Two minutes later, in homicide, Sydney said she spent the morning going through Alan English’s computer files. She also tapped into the victim’s email history. There was no evidence that the victim’s relationship with his girlfriend was strained; quite the opposite, if anything. Nor was there anything to point to anoth
er woman on the side.
“The only thing weird that I found,” Sydney said, “was a lot of bondage pictures downloaded onto his hard drive.”
“Really?”
Sydney nodded.
“The guy was a big-time sicko,” Sydney said.
“Well that’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
A HALF HOUR LATER, Teffinger finally got through to Venta on her cell phone and arranged to meet her at Wong’s on Court Street for a late lunch. She wore white cotton shorts and an aqua sleeveless blouse. Seeing her for the first time by the light of day, the blueness of her eyes took on a whole new dimension.
He swallowed.
She slipped into the booth next to him and whispered in his ear, “I’m still shaking.”
He grinned.
“Good,” he said. “Then my evil plan worked.”
“Worked isn’t even the word,” she said. “I’m already addicted.” She put her hand on his leg. “So when do I get my next fix?”
The waitress suddenly showed up.
They ordered.
Then Teffinger jumped headfirst into the subject, the dreaded subject, on his mind. “One of my partners, a detective by the name of Sydney Heatherwood, found out about you and asked me a bunch of questions this morning,” he said. “When I explained what happened, she said that you were up to something. She said you were probably snuggling up to be able to tap me for information to help your P.I. practice.”
Venta tilted her head.
“And what did you say?” she asked.
“Well, I basically told her she was wrong.”
“And yet you’re bringing the subject up,” Venta said, “which means you have your doubts. I’m disappointed. I thought we had a connection.”
“We do. It’s just that Sydney has this sixth sense about people, especially women.”
“Well she’s wrong,” Venta said. “Are you sleeping with her?”
Teffinger raked his hair back.
“No.”
“Have you ever slept with her?”
“No.”
“Have you ever wanted to sleep with her?”
He shrugged.
“She’s my partner,” he said. “I can’t have those kinds of thoughts.”
Venta took a sip of tea and said, “Here’s some stuff you’ll find out about me as time goes on. First, my P.I. practice is totally confidential, which means I’m not even going to tell you what I’m doing, much less ask you for help. Second, I will never, ever, either directly or indirectly, ask you for help or a favor in any way, shape or form. That’s not the way I operate. But most importantly, I would never put you in a compromising position. That wouldn’t be right of me. Or fair to you. I’ve never had any intention of anything like that happening and it never is going to happen, plain and simple.” She looked into his eyes. “Any questions?”
He nodded.
“Just one.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you still addicted, or did I blow it?”
She squeezed his hand.
“I could use a fix right now, to tell you the truth.”
10
Day Two—June 12
Tuesday Night
JEKKER HUGGED THE PITCH-BLACK SHAPE of a thirty-foot Ponderosa pine in the backyard of a house, waiting for his little black-haired target—Tessa Blake—to show up. A sliver of moon floated in the east but didn’t throw enough light to expose him.
Still, to be extra cautious, he wore a ski mask.
The woman should show up any time now.
He fingered the black hood in the left pocket of his sweatshirt. Once he got his knife to her throat, and tied the hood over her head, she’d calm down considerably.
The plan was a pretty good one.
Jekker drove around until he found a house for sale that looked like no one was living there. From a payphone he called Tessa Blake and said she was recommended by the people on Birch Street, where Jekker had followed her this morning in her Molly Maid car. He said he was a real estate agent by the name of Jim Hansen who needed a house dusted and vacuumed in preparation of a big showing tomorrow morning.
“If I pay you direct, can you go over tonight?”
They talked money, so much money that she said, “Okay, but don’t tell anyone.”
“There’s a lockbox on the front door but someone took the key,” Jekker said. “What you need to do is go around to the back. We leave the sliding glass door unlocked.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll have some wallpapering going on until about nine,” he said. “But you can show up any time after that.”
“Like, 9:30?”
“That’ll work,” Jekker said. “I’ll leave the money in an envelope on the top cabinet to the right of the kitchen sink.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate it. And please do a good job. This is really important.”
That was this afternoon.
Now it was 9:28 p.m.
Suddenly headlights flickered up the street.
Game time.
A VEHICLE PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY, the engine stopped and the headlights went off. A car door opened and shut. A trunk opened and shut. Thirty seconds later a dark shape came around the rear corner of the house. As best as Jekker could tell, the woman carried a vacuum cleaner in one hand and an oversized bag in the other, no doubt filled with paper towels and cleaning products.
Jekker left his hiding spot at exactly the right time and approached with coffin-quiet steps.
The woman didn’t have a clue, even as he closed the last five feet.
He brought his left hand from behind and clamped her mouth shut while he brought the knife to her throat with his other hand. “Don’t make a sound!” he warned.
She froze.
He held her tight, immobile, until his gut told him that she had decided not to do anything stupid, then he put the hood over her head. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “This is so you don’t see my face. That way I’ll be able to release you again. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re doing just fine. All this will be over in a minute. Put your hands behind your back.”
She did.
He pulled out the rope.
“All you have to do is cooperate and nothing bad will happen.”
Before he got her tied, a voice cut the night, a second woman’s voice, rounding the back corner of the house.
“You’re not going to believe what that jerk brother of mine just told me.”
Then Tessa Blake screamed.
Jekker pushed her to the ground and ran towards the other woman, fast, with the knife in hand.
She turned and ran but not fast enough. Jekker reached for her hair, got it, then yanked as hard as he could, so hard that her body stopped moving forward and actually lifted off the ground as her head snapped back.
11
Day Two—June 12
Tuesday Afternoon
ALTHOUGH LONDON TOLD VENTA that she’d be her attorney, the cold reality of the undertaking made her hands tremble as she paraded around Tuesday in her waitress apron and delivered food to people who hardly noticed she existed.
She probably couldn’t get a job with Vesper & Bennett as a secretary much less a lawyer, so how was she supposed to cross swords with even one V&B attorney, much less an army of them? They’d cut her to ribbons before she took ten steps towards the courthouse.
She needed to back out and called Venta during a break to tell her.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” London said. “You need to get a real lawyer. There’s no way I can—”
“Stop,” Venta said.
“But—“
“Ah, ah, ah,” Venta said. “I know where you’re headed and I’m not interested in hearing it, so save your breath. You’re my lawyer, so get used to it.”
“You’d be better off with someone experienced,” London said. “
You really would. I hate to lose my first client, but that’s the cold hard truth. Hell, I don’t even have a fax machine. But that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t have the experience or the depth to go after a target as big as V&B. It would be like a mosquito trying to eat an elephant.”
Venta laughed and said, “Maybe we don’t need to eat it. Maybe we just need to give it a good bite and infect it with a disease.”
“I’m serious,” London said. “They’ll put up a scorched-earth defense.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s where they bury you in paper, file one motion after another, don’t produce documents unless ordered by the court, pull witnesses out of thin air, and basically scorch the earth for anything and everything that could possibly help them win. They could throw two or three million dollars in billable hours at the case and never even blink.”
Venta paused on the other end then said, “Speaking of money, I don’t have any. Did I mention that before? The little that I do have is already earmarked to keep food in my stomach and gas in my car. So I won’t be able to pay you anything. You’ll have to take the case on a contingency fee basis.”
WHEN LONDON GOT OFF WORK MID-AFTERNOON, instead of peddling the Trek to the bus stop on Colfax Avenue as usual, she headed into the heart of Denver’s bustling financial district and found a place to lock the bike at the bottom of the Cash Register Building at the corner of Lincoln and 17th Street—a tall office building with a top shaped like an old cash register.
She stepped into a fancy marble elevator wearing her jeans, T-shirt and tennis shoes and pushed the button for floor thirty-four, the lowest of the four floors that housed Vesper & Bennett.
On the way up she noticed a large ketchup stain on her shirt.
Damn.
It looked like blood.
The elevator dumped her into a common area.
To the right was a wall of glass.
She looked for a restroom, found none, then swallowed and pushed through fancy doors into a space that could very easily have been a wing from the Louvre. She knew nothing about art but even her untrained eye registered the fifteen or twenty oil paintings as important and rare.
Attorney's Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) Page 3