Hit List (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  “Jay, it’s John.”

  Yorty seemed anxious to hear from him.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Working hard on your behalf, as always. Listen up, here’s the deal.” He described the vehicle, walking around it as he talked. Near the end, he added, “She’s a beauty. There was some bodywork done on the rear panel but it was minor and won’t affect the value. The panel itself is still original. The important thing is, it’s a numbers car. The rest is just sweat and money.”

  “Damn,” Yorty said with obvious excitement. “So what do you recommend, price-wise?”

  He thought about it. “Okay, he bought it twelve years ago.” Then he gave him the price, which he knew would give Yorty a big old boner.

  “What, he told you that?”

  “No,” he smiled. “He wasn’t smart enough to pull the bill of sale out of the records.”

  “Jesus. He stole it.”

  “Which is good for us,” he said. “Right now, as it sits, its worth twice what he paid, all day long. But I beat it up pretty bad and he’s real jumpy about the fact it was damaged, which it was, but no big deal. If you could get it for, say, his original investment plus a hundred thousand, you’d be way ahead. You could leave it like it is, or get it up to Concours for another hundred or so. Either way, you’d have some serious equity and a damn fine vehicle.”

  “Do you think he’d go that low?”

  “He needs the money,” he said. “If you came up with immediate cash, I mean the full purchase price in his hands tomorrow, that might get him to do something stupid. He can justify the price because he’s still making a small fortune on it.”

  It turned out that Vine agreed with the proposed purchase price, with a ten grand bump. Forty-five minutes later Ganjon had a duly executed agreement in hand.

  Walking back to the Camry under a clear cerulean sky, he felt the warm rush of the closing and smiled. The transaction meant a twenty-five thousand dollar commission for him, and Yorty paid like clockwork. That would bring his total earnings to one-fifty, year-to-date.

  Not bad considering it was only April.

  Equally important, Yorty would love the car and be slobbering all over himself for another deal.

  When he left Vine’s, he took Belleview west to Santa Fe Drive and then headed south, parallel to the Rocky Mountain foothills. He let his thoughts turn to Megan Bennett. The road was now only one lane in each direction and taking him into the country, farther and farther away from Denver. Crowed residential communities gave way to less crowed ones, which gave way to farms and horses.

  The sky was bigger now.

  Black-and-white Magpies dotted it.

  He came to a side road and turned right, towards the mountains, floating up and down through rolling hills with the window open and a perfect April day overhead. Five miles later the asphalt dead-ended at a dirt road. He turned left, even deeper into the country. To his right about a mile off, giant Cottonwoods snaked through the land, sucking up to a small river. Two miles later he came to a private dirt road. Hanging on a split-rail fence was a sign—For Sale—with a phone number that you could barely read anymore.

  He stopped, pulled it off, and threw it as far as he could out into the brush, just as a precaution.

  Last week he checked the property first, found it to be unoccupied, then called the number on the sign and met an elderly man by the name of Ben Bickerson there a couple of hours later. His daughter, Cheryl Miller, actually owned the house, but she moved to Oregon two years ago, and was currently on vacation in Australia. Bickerson, who lived on the next farm over, was supposed to be selling it for her, but wasn’t trying too hard, just in case daughter-dear decided to come back. Ganjon made him an offer to rent the place for one month for one thousand dollars.

  “What for?” Bickerson questioned.

  “Have you ever heard the phrase, Publish or Perish?”

  Bickerson was an old-time farmer with a scarred nose that suggested he’d had a chunk of sun cancer cut out of it. “Can’t say as I have.”

  “It’s used at colleges,” Ganjon explained. “When you’re a professor, you either have to keep publishing articles to show how smart you are, or you go get a job pumping gas somewhere. So what I do every year is find a quiet place to hole up, without any distractions, and stay there until I get my writing done.”

  “So, what, you’re a professor then?”

  “Guilty, I teach at D.U. Professor Frank Janks.”

  “D.U.?”

  “University of Denver.”

  Bickerson cocked his head. “So you’re a smart fellow.”

  “Not really,” Ganjon said as humbly as he could. “All I ask is that I don’t get any distractions while I’m here. If you’re inclined to rent it, I have cash with me . . .”

  That was that.

  In hindsight, he probably could have gotten it for five hundred, but who cares?

  He turned down the dirt road, covered with weeds. It snaked through rabbit brush for more than a half mile and ended at an old farmhouse with a barn next to it. Rusted hulks of automobiles and dead farm machinery cluttered the grounds. He recognized the outline of a 1962 Olds, perched on cinder blocks. He drove past the house, parked by the barn and got out. The sunlight immediately warmed his face and threw a strong shadow under him. It felt so damned good.

  He was a million miles from nowhere.

  The air was absolutely still without even the faintest hint of a breeze.

  He couldn’t remember a quieter place.

  The tall bulky doors of the barn were closed. He muscled one open and stepped inside. The odor of rotten hay and wood impregnated the air. It was cemetery quiet and almost impossible to see. A few streaks of sunlight intruded from the roof, illuminating an airborne dust that glimmered against the dark background.

  He picked his way into the structure one step at a time.

  The black silhouette of a tractor squatted at the far end of the building, and even in the dark, to his untrained eyes, he could tell it was ancient. Empty horse stalls occupied the wall to the right. A makeshift wooden ladder lay on the ground, broken and decayed.

  He smiled and found a place to sit down. There was work to do, but it could wait a few moments. He closed his eyes, unzipped his pants and allowed the fantasy of Megan Bennett to float up to the top.

  Soon baby.

  Very, very soon.

  Chapter Nine

  Day Three - April 18

  Wednesday Night

  ____________

  Kelly leaned against the brass railing on her loft terrace, six floors above LoDo, and turned her face into the cool of the night. It felt good. The voice of Billy Holliday came from a CD player in the living room and wandered through the air like smoke, out the open sliding doors and into the night, painful and lamenting, with tales of broken hearts and love gone wrong. Down below at street level people flowed in and out of sports bars and restaurants, laughing, and sometimes talking so clear and loud that she could actually make out strings of words. Usually they made her feel happy, which is one of the reasons she stretched to buy the place. But tonight the motion and activity seemed just that, so much motion and activity.

  D’endra Vaughn’s death wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She had no watch on her wrist right now but guessed it was almost nine-thirty. She had a deposition scheduled for eight in the morning and ordinarily would be heading to bed. Tomorrow, she’d get a whole day sitting in the same room as opposing counsel Mitch Phillips, a whiny little lawyer-man who liked to paper the file with correspondence so full of lies and half-truths that she seriously wondered about his mental health. She was defending, so it’d be relatively easy, apart from having to breathe the same air as that jerk. She could get to bed as late as eleven, if she wanted, and still be more than rested enough.

  What to do?

  Lightning crackled in the distance.

  Rain was coming.

  The air smelled of it.

&nbs
p; She wandered back inside. The place made her feel comfortable, it always did, with minimal furniture, all contemporary, expensive and earth toned, accented by splashes of color from an occasional throw pillow, a hot pink lamp, a bright yellow coffee maker.

  She was safe.

  Why leave?

  She found the phone on the counter of the kitchen island, hesitated, put it back down, picked it back up, dialed Jeannie Dannenberg, got an answer and found herself asking if they could meet.

  Dannenberg sounded high.

  “Sure, but not here. Rachel’s in the bedroom with a guy, smoking and shit.”

  They arranged to meet at the Rainbow Bar, a two-block walk up the street for Dannenberg, who didn’t own a car. Kelly took Colfax Avenue all the way, got there in fifteen minutes, found four vehicles in the parking lot, all junkers, and parked the BMW in the last slot in the back, five empty spaces down. She’d rather walk a few extra steps than get door-dings hammered out.

  The place was one of those Mom-and-Pop neighborhood dives. She’d driven by a million of them but never been in more than one or two. They’d both been the same—cheap beer and drunken mumblings about how crummy life was.

  When she walked inside, Jeannie Dannenberg was already there, sitting at the bar with a half-empty bottle of Bud Light in front of her, smoking a cigarette and talking to the bartender who was leaning on the counter like he’d been settled in for a while. Kelly saw him look at her as soon as she came through the door, as if he’d been expecting her, and expecting her to be someone worth looking at. Three other men perched on barstools also turned their heads, older guys, harmless, neighborhood drunks.

  Even in cotton khaki pants and a casual blouse she felt overdressed.

  The place may have been only one bar but it smelled like ten.

  She couldn’t imagine what the floor looked like by the light of day.

  Dannenberg must have read something on her face, because she smacked the bartender on the arm and said, “Ray, stop gawking at the lady. You’ve seen women before.” Then to Kelly, “Don’t worry, he doesn’t kill that many people.”

  The man smiled. “Not that many, but you’re on the list. You know that, I hope.” To Kelly, “What can I get for you, pretty lady?”

  “Bud Light and a glass of ice, thanks.”

  “Glass of ice?”

  She nodded.

  “Right.”

  “Ice water?”

  “No, just a glass of ice.”

  “You don’t want water in the glass or nothing?”

  “No, just ice—for the beer. I like it cold.”

  He shook his head.

  “Never heard of such a thing. Glass of ice . . .”

  Dannenberg looked at him. “Raymond, some day when I’m feeling generous I’m going to sit down and explain to you why you can’t get laid.” To Kelly, “Come on, let’s get a booth.” Back to the bartender, “Girl-talk.”

  He smiled.

  “Booths cost extra. And hey, I get laid plenty.”

  They took the end booth, an orange vinyl unit held together with duct tape, and a stained wooden table that more than one person had felt the need to carve something important on. Beers in hand, and now able to talk in private, Kelly poured the beverage into the ice, watched it foam up, took a drink and got right to the point. “We need to find out if Alicia Elmblade is alive or not. Personally, I have my doubts. She would have called you sooner or later if she was.”

  Dannenberg smelled like weed and had a glaze over her eyes that looked like it wasn’t about to go away anytime soon.

  “Why?”

  Kelly rolled the bottle in her fingers.

  “Because, if she’s dead, we participated in an actual murder instead of a fake one. Which means that the man who got us involved, namely Michael Northway, is either in on it somehow, or got duped just like us. Either way, this thing goes to a whole new level.”

  “Look at that,” Dannenberg said.

  Kelly looked outside. Rain was starting to pummel down with an incredible force, bouncing off the asphalt and pounding on the windows.

  An ominous figure scurried past outside, hunched against the weather, wearing a dark windbreaker and baseball cap. He looked huge and powerful. Instead of continuing down the street he headed around the corner of the building. She expected the door to open at any second but it didn’t.

  Strange.

  “He seemed nice, from what Alicia said about him,” Dannenberg said.

  Kelly looked back at her.

  “Who?”

  “This Michael Northway guy.”

  “Why? What’d Alicia say?”

  “I don’t know, that he was always just real polite, didn’t treat her like a piece of meat, that kind of thing.”

  “But you never personally talked to him?”

  Dannenberg shook her head.

  “I saw him in the van that night but, no, I never talked to him or anything.”

  Kelly contemplated it.

  “So, the ten thousand dollars, he didn’t personally give that to you?”

  “No, Alicia got that from him and passed it on.”

  “Okay.”

  “Earlier that day.”

  “Okay.” Kelly looked around. “I have to admit, I really can’t find an upside for him to knowingly get involved in a situation where someone would actually be murdered. But he did lie to me about why she wanted to disappear.”

  Dannenberg contemplated the statement, took a hit on the cigarette, blew smoke out her nose, and said, “Run that one by me again.” She held up the beer and added, “By me and my Bud.”

  Kelly leaned in.

  “Okay, to get me to participate in the charade, he told me that there was this client of the firm that wanted to help Alicia Elmblade, and that she wanted to fake her own death, because she was scared of something. But you told me she wasn’t scared of anything, she only did it for the money.”

  “A hundred grand.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Okay. I remember now.”

  “So he lied to me,” Kelly added. “That seems bad, but I don’t know for sure that it is. I’ve known him for a long time and have more respect for him than you can imagine. This is the first and only thing that’s been out of character for him, and there may well be a good explanation.”

  “So why don’t you just ask him straight-out what the hell’s going on? Just say, hey, mister big-shot, what the hell’s going on?”

  Kelly felt the bartender’s eyes on her. She looked in that direction but saw that he was pulling glasses out of a sink and drying them with a tattered towel, paying no attention to her and Jeannie whatsoever.

  She looked back at Dannenberg.

  “That’s not an option,” she said. “If he is somehow messed up in this, the last thing I need is for him to know that I know that he lied to me, that’ll just clam him up. The only thing that we have going for us right now is that he doesn’t know that we know that he lied to me. He doesn’t know that you and I are talking and we need to keep it that way.”

  Dannenberg smiled.

  “We could have Jack pay him a visit. He could get some answers. He hates lawyers anyway. Damn near killed his ex’s divorce lawyer, actually served a year in Canyon City . . .”

  Kelly shook her head.

  “No. What we need to do is find out if Alicia Elmblade is still alive, on our own, quietly. If it turns out that she is, we can talk to her, and maybe she’ll have an idea why someone might have killed D’endra or be after us.”

  “And if we can’t find her, then what?”

  Good question.

  “Then we need to regroup. Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. It’s just a theory, so don’t get too excited. But suppose someone actually wanted to kill Alicia Elmblade from the start. Somehow, someway, he gets Michael Northway to set up this charade. Alicia participates and disappears and three witnesses say they saw an Asian man take her. One of those witnesses is a lawyer in a prominent law firm,
me.”

  Dannenberg nodded.

  “Later,” Kelly continued, “maybe even that very night, he really does kill her. And he has the perfect alibi, because he’s a white guy. Not only that, he was someplace public with plenty of witnesses at the time she was abducted at the gas station. Plus, he knows that I can’t change my story even if I wanted to, because I’d end up loosing my license and probably even land up in jail. What we did is a felony offense, in case you’re interested.”

  Dannenberg shrugged, like she didn’t particularly care, then noted, “He’d have to be awful smart. I mean, that’s a lot of planning. Why would anyone want to kill Alicia?”

  “You tell me.”

  Dannenberg drew a blank, drained her bottle, held it up and waved it at the bartender. “Hey, Raymond, if you’re not too busy playing with yourself.” She looked at Kelly’s bottle, saw that it was almost empty, and said, “Two.” Then to Kelly, ”Everyone liked her. And she wasn’t messed up in anything serious. I would have known.”

  Kelly remembered the dark figure outside, the man who hadn’t come in. She walked to the other end of the bar and looked out. There he was, walking out of the parking lot. He had massive shoulders and a strong physique, not the hunched over depressed look of someone who’d kill time in a dive like this. Now he was heading down the street. She watched him until he disappeared in the storm.

  Weird.

  What the hell was he doing back there in the parking lot?

  Screwing with her car so she couldn’t drive?

  “It’s called rain,” the bartender told her.

  She smiled.

  “Do you have any surveillance cameras outside?”

  “You’re kidding. Those cost money. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Back at the table Dannenberg said, “So what do we do, to find out if Alicia is alive or not?”

  Kelly focused.