A call to the impound lot told him that the vehicle hadn’t been towed, meaning it must have been stolen. That didn’t surprise him, given the neighborhood. He was actually in the process of calling the police to report it missing when he remembered something, something bad, something worse than bad.
The envelope was under the front seat, the envelope with the pictures of Tessa Blake inside.
His name and address were on the registration in the glove box; on the insurance card too.
Damn it!
He stormed out of the loft, took a cab to Enterprise, rented a 4-door Nissan sedan, and drove into the mountains to the boxcars. When he got there, a car that he didn’t recognize sat in the road in front of the gate, a car with no signs of life inside. Whoever had been driving it must have continued on foot.
He got out of the rental, slammed the door and huffed up the road, one foot in front of the other, as the little hammers pounded inside his brain.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
29
Day Five—June 15
Friday Morning
LONDON HOPPED OFF THE TREK, chained it to a tree and walked inside the Starbucks. She spotted Venta at a corner table looking better than a human being had a right to, with two cups of coffee, meaning one was for London. She hugged the woman, momentarily noted that her breasts were too firm to be real and too soft to be fake, and then got right to the point.
“I got up early and worked the phone,” she said. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“The good,” Venta said.
“Okay,” she said. “Our Florida P.I., Rebecca Vampire, who disappeared out of the country, actually disappeared while she was on some kind of assignment in Bangkok.”
Venta slapped her hand on the table.
“I knew it!”
Then she stood up and danced.
Every man in the place watched, transfixed.
After Venta sat down, London put a serious look on her face and said, “That’s the end of the good news.”
Venta didn’t care.
“The end?” she asked. “What more could we possibly need?”
“Lots,” London said. “I haven’t been able to uncover anything to suggest that she was working for a law firm, much less for Vesper & Bennett. Also, no one I talked to recognized the name Bob Copeland. And unlike what happened to you, neither her office nor her house were ransacked.”
“That doesn’t mean someone didn’t slip a file out of a drawer,” Venta said.
“Maybe, but that’s speculation,” London said. “Don’t get me wrong, just the fact that the woman disappeared in Bangkok is enough to convince me that the same exact thing happened to her that happened to you. As far as a court of law goes, however, it’s a whole different story. We’ll need a lot more connections before the court will admit any of it into evidence. Right now, from an evidentiary point of view, the fact that the woman is a P.I., and disappeared while in Bangkok, is nothing more than an irrelevant coincidence.”
Venta was undaunted.
“She’s also hot.”
London nodded.
“Okay, that too,” she said.
“So what do we need?”
“We need to tie her to Vesper & Bennett,” London said. “If we can do that, then we’ll have something.”
“Then let’s do it.”
“How?”
“By taking a road trip.”
“You mean to Miami?”
Venta nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean. There’s only so much you can do by telephone.” Then she stood up and grabbed London’s hand. “Come on, darling, we’re heading to DIA.”
“You know I don’t have money for that.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s going on my plastic.”
Two hours later they were cruising at 35,000 feet, pointed east, maybe wasting their time, maybe not.
30
Day Five—June 15
Friday Morning
TEFFINGER CRAWLED OUT OF BED without waking Venta, slipped into sweats, cranked out a three-mile jog, took a shower downstairs and watched her sleep as he brushed his teeth. He got to headquarters just as the sun cleared the horizon. He inhaled caffeine alone in the room and worked the computer to find out what he could about Mark Remington, the owner of the house that the Frenchman was scoping out last night before Leanne Sanders got blindsided.
Remington turned out to be a partner at Vesper & Bennett, specializing in international law.
He had no record, not even an unpaid parking ticket, or a paid one for that matter.
The clean didn’t get any squeakier than his.
Why would someone from France come over here and pay attention to him? Did he cross swords with the wrong opposing party? Did he get on the wrong side of some foreign leader?
Teffinger scratched his head.
The florescent light directly over his desk hummed like a madman. He ignored it as best he could, but the more he concentrated on not letting it bother him, the more it did.
He climbed up on his desk and pulled it out, then carried it into Chief Forrest Tanker’s office and set it on his desk. He stuck a yellow Post-It on that said, “This is how long my nose grows whenever I say something nice about you.”
TWO MINUTES LATER HIS PHONE RANG and the voice of Leanne Sanders came through, framed by hospital sounds in the background. He could almost smell the antiseptic.
“When I dialed I was going to say thanks for saving me last night,” she said. “But now I changed my mind.”
He smiled.
“Oh?”
“So don’t take this as a thank you,” she said. “What I am going to do, however, is subtract one that you owe me.”
Teffinger considered it and found it fair.
“So how many do I still owe you then?—just for the record.”
“You owed me five. Now you’re down to four.”
“Four, huh? That’s the lowest I owe anyone.”
“That’s not a bragging point, Teffinger.”
He took a sip of coffee, found it lukewarm, dumped the cup in the snake plant and headed over to the pot for a refill.
“You scared me last night,” he said.
“Scared you? You should have seen it from my point of view,” she said.
“Did you see him, before he did it?” Teffinger asked, referring to the Frenchman.
“No.”
He frowned.
That meant they didn’t have enough probable cause to haul him in.
He told her what he found out this morning about Mark Remington, the owner of the house that Frenchie had been so interested in.
“We should drop in on him,” Leanne said. “You want to come down here and pick me up?”
“You good to go?”
“According to the docs, no. According to the stuff I need to get done today, yes.”
Teffinger looked at his watch.
8:15 a.m.
He knew he should be concentrating on Tessa Blake but couldn’t think of anything concrete to do on that case, so he walked down the three flights of stairs to the parking garage and pointed the front end of the Tundra towards Denver General Hospital.
THE RECEPTION AREA OF VESPER & BENNETT looked like a museum. Leanne sat on a leather couch and sipped coffee from a fancy cup and saucer. She looked pretty good considering what she’d been through. Take the gauze wrap off her head and there’d be no evidence at all, except for the tiredness in her eyes.
Teffinger sipped coffee from an equally fancy cup as he walked around and checked out the paintings.
The receptionist smiled every time he looked her way.
He smiled back.
The paintings bored him.
They lacked passion.
They had no freedom of movement.
Each brushstroke had been perfectly planned, too perfectly planned.
He kept hoping to find a wild stroke, a rogue splash of paint, a surprise color, so
mething—anything—to show that the person holding the brush was an actual living human being.
There was none.
He sat down next to Leanne and said, “The people who painted these things should have been engineers or doctors.”
Leanne shrugged.
“They look okay to me.”
Two minutes later they were escorted to the office of Mark Remington.
THE ATTORNEY HAD A PLEASANT FACE and looked a lot better in person than he did in the photo on the firm’s website. For someone who rode a desk, he managed to stay in shape. He wore his tie loose and his hair shaggy. Instead of wingtips, he had soft leather loafers.
As they sat down he said, “I’m at a loss as to why you’re here.”
“Then thanks for seeing us,” Teffinger said. “There was a man on your street last night, a Frenchman by the name of Boudiette. Do you know him?”
For a heartbeat, Teffinger thought he saw something flicker in the lawyer’s eyes, but couldn’t be sure.
“No,” Remington said. “Who is he?”
Teffinger took a sip of coffee.
“The word is, he was scoping out your house,” he said.
“My house?”
Teffinger nodded.
“Why would a Frenchman be scoping out my house?” Remington asked.
Teffinger narrowed his eyes.
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
Remington laughed.
“This is nuts,” he said. “Did one of my partners put you up to this?”
Teffinger shook his head.
“From what I understand, you do international law.”
“That’s correct.”
“When was the last time you were in France?”
“France?”
“Right.”
The lawyer searched his memory and said, “Twelve years ago, thirteen maybe.”
“That’s a long time,” Teffinger said.
Remington nodded.
“My next-door neighbor goes there all the time,” he said.
Teffinger raised an eyebrow.
Really?
To France?
“He’s an interpreter. Big international companies hire him to be sure there are no miscommunications when deals go down.”
“What’s his name?”
Reynolds.
Pete Reynolds.
Peter, actually.
Peter Reynolds.
AS SOON AS THEY STEPPED OUT of the building an RTD bus sprayed them with a plume of diesel. Leanne grabbed Teffinger’s arm and pulled him back.
“So what do you think?” Teffinger asked.
“I’ll run down this Peter Reynolds just so the file’s complete,” she said. “But Boudiette was scoping out the lawyer’s house, not the one next door.”
“How can you be sure?” Teffinger asked. “That street was pretty dark.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m not positive.”
“No one could be,” he said.
But he had already lost interest.
This wasn’t his fight.
He needed to get refocused on Tessa Blake.
Right now.
This second.
31
Day Five—June 15
Friday Afternoon
JEKKER DIDN’T HAVE A GUN OR A KNIFE with him—they were in the middle boxcar—but he did have 209 pounds of ripped muscle as he trotted up the dirt road to the boxcars. He hoped he didn’t have to kill anyone.
He really did.
His head pounded with too much beer pain to deal with the hundred little details of the aftermath.
When the boxcars came into view, his worst fears came true. A young woman was at the door of the boxcar that held Tessa Blake, trying to pry the padlock off with a stick. On the ground not more than two steps away sat a backpack and a large plastic bottle of water. She wore green hiking shorts and a sun visor. Jekker slowed to a walk, concerned about spooking her. When she spotted him, her face twisted in fear.
Be cool.
Just be cool.
Be another hiker.
“Hi,” he said with his best smile. “Is this the way up to Lake Jackson?”
She looked apprehensive, as if she sensed a trick, but she didn’t bolt.
That was the main thing.
Jekker concentrated on not scaring her as he closed the gap.
“I think I might be lost,” he said. “Do you live here?”
“No,” she said.
Beautiful.
Totally beautiful.
She was talking instead of running.
“I heard about a place up here with boxcars,” he said. “But I always thought it was a story. Looks like I was wrong. How the hell did they get up here?”
“There’s someone inside this one!” the woman said.
“What do you mean?”
“A lady’s trapped inside.”
He increased his pace and put a concerned look on his face.
“You’re kidding, right?”
No, she wasn’t.
She was dead serious.
Suddenly Tessa Blake yelled, “That’s him! Run! Do you hear me? Get out of here!”
The woman ran, but not fast enough.
JEKKER GRABBED THE BACK OF HER HAIR, pulled it straight down as hard as he could—towards her ass—and snapped her neck. Even before she dropped to the ground, Jekker wished he had smothered her instead, because now she had been killed the same way as Tessa Blake’s friend, Samantha Rickenbacker.
Okay, think.
The important thing is that her body never be found, not in a million years.
He needed to get rid of her car too.
Where?
And when?
Now?
Or after dark?
SUDDENLY HIS CELL PHONE RANG. He looked at the incoming number, got himself as calm as he could and answered.
“It’s me,” the voice said.
“I know that.”
“Your instructions at this point are to release the woman alive and unhurt, sometime tomorrow morning. Be sure there aren’t any surveillance cameras around. And be sure she doesn’t see you, your car or your license plate number when you’re leaving. In fact, I’d suggest that you keep her tied and blindfolded the whole time. Just drop her by the side of a road where someone will eventually find her. Do you understand?”
Jekker kicked the dirt.
Damn it!
“We had a complication,” he said.
There was a pause on the other end, a serious pause.
Jekker swallowed.
“What kind of complication?”
“When that other woman showed up and forced me to deal with her, you-know-who ran and got all the way up to the street,” Jekker said. “My mask came off. We were under a streetlight. She got a good look at me.”
“She saw your face?”
“Like I said, it was because of that other woman. It’s one of those things that just happens. You hope it doesn’t but it does.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because I thought you were going to tell me to kill her,” Jekker said. “Then it wouldn’t matter.”
Silence.
Jekker exhaled.
“You should have told me.”
True.
And equally true that he should report what happened just minutes ago—namely, that he killed a hiker.
But he didn’t.
“This changes everything,” the voice said. “Don’t do anything until I can think this through.”
“So don’t release her?”
“No. And don’t kill her either. Do you understand?”
“I understand, but why don’t we just kill her and be done with everything?”
“It’s not that easy,” the voice said.
Then the line went dead.
INSIDE THE BOXCAR, barely audible through the steel, Tessa Blake cried.
Jekker picked up a rock and threw it at the door as hard as he coul
d.
“Shut up!”
Then he threw another.
And another.
And another.
“Shut up!”
“Shut up!”
“Shut up!”
No sounds came from inside any longer.
He pictured her cowering in the corner, curled up in a fetal position, crying, stifling the sobs.
The entire mountain was silent.
Not a wing flapped.
Not a leaf rustled.
The only sound came from the air passing in and out of Jekker’s lungs. He exhaled, flung the dead hiker over his left shoulder, swooped up her backpack, and headed down the road.
Little hammers pounded in his head.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
32
Day Five—June 15
Friday Afternoon
THE SUN AND HUMIDITY assaulted London and Venta the second they stepped out of Miami International Airport. “Watch close and you’ll be able to actually see my hair curl,” Venta said. They rented a plain-vanilla Chevy coupe, the last one left, a black heat-magnet that had been parked on sticky asphalt all day. It took fifteen minutes for the air conditioner to make a dent.
Venta drove.
After fighting with traffic for over an hour—traffic best described as crowded, fast and rude, meaning no different than Denver—they ended up at a South Beach nightclub on Collins Avenue called Outrageous.
The front entrance was locked.
They banged on it.
No one came so they headed around to the back.
That door was unlocked. After calling without response, they finally found a woman in an upstairs office, working the keyboard of a laptop with her back to them.
The woman jumped when they knocked.
“Are you Mackenzie Vampire?” Venta questioned.
The woman nodded.
“That’s me.”
She appeared to be about thirty-four, in good shape, mildly but not wildly attractive, with a business attitude. She wore sandals, white shorts, an expensive blue blouse and lots of gold.
“You’re the two from Denver, I assume,” she said.
“We are.”
After chitchat, introductions and universal agreement that Miami was too hot and sticky, the woman said, “So your theory is that my sister Rebecca got lured to Bangkok, as part of some pre-arranged thing, and then got taken into sexual slavery.”
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