by R. J. Jagger
She hadn’t been in the wrong place.
The door lettering wasn’t fancy but it was clear: Jack Wilde – Investigator for Hire.
She’d come to see him then changed her mind.
Why?
He grabbed his jacket and hat and went after her.
She was all the way down by the Daniels & Fisher Tower before he caught her.
“You weren’t in the wrong place,” he said.
She was about to deny it but didn’t.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
The woman exhaled.
“Not me personally, someone else.”
“Come on back to the office,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”
She hesitated.
“I’d need a hundred percent confidentiality,” she said.
Wilde nodded.
“Agreed.”
“I’m not talking about ninety.”
“You’re in luck,” he said. “I’m running a special this week, a hundred for the price of ninety.”
The corner of the woman’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. Then she got serious and said, “If what I told you ever got out, a life could be ruined.”
“You’re in luck again,” Wilde said. “I’ve already ruined my month’s quota.”
They turned and headed back.
“What’s your name?”
“Senn-Rae Vaughn,” the woman said. “I’m a lawyer.”
5
F allon Leigh drove north out of Santa Fe doing full speed in a 1942 Packard that she stole from the parking lot of Jose’s Kitchen. Stealing a car wasn’t on the agenda when she got up this morning. It was something that happened before she checked in for her waitress shift, while she scouted the parking lot looking for a stray pack of cigarettes sitting on a dash or stuffed up in a visor. A half-filled pack of Camels drew her to the Packard. Then she saw the keys in the ignition.
In the split second that followed, everything in her life got too small.
Her apartment.
Her job.
Her friends.
Her whole screwed-up existence.
Just like that, it was time to leave it all behind, every last stinking crumb of it. It was time to start over. It was time to get fresh. It was time to get out of this stinking cow town before it sunk its hooks irretrievably into her every inch of flesh.
She hopped in, cranked over the engine and headed north.
She didn’t look back.
That was an hour ago.
Now miles into her new life she had to pull over, and fast, otherwise her bladder was going to explode right here in the turquoise vinyl of the front seat. The topography shooting by was an endless sea of sagebrush, pinions, prairie grasses and arroyos, with an occasional red canyon or cliff. Traffic was almost non-existent. She wasn’t smack dab in the middle of nowhere, but was within a few miles of it.
She was twenty-two.
Her body was strong, taut and perfect.
Her face was built to break hearts.
Her hair was long, fluffy and blond.
Her eyes were the color of the New Mexico sky in early morning, during that magical crossover time when the yellow changed to green and the green changed to blue and you never really knew what color you were looking at.
Her skirt was short and white.
It rode up and showcased shapely tanned legs.
Vogue legs.
Glamour legs.
Denver would be a good place for the next chapter of her life. If things didn’t work there then screw it, she’d go to New York. If that didn’t work, then Paris. That, of course, assumed that she didn’t get sent to prison for stealing a 10-year-old Packard. She’d ditch it an hour outside of Denver and then hitch the rest of the way.
She checked her purse to see how much money she had.
There was a five and two one’s in the wallet, so she had that plus whatever change was in the bottom.
That would get her lunch and supper, and maybe even a room tonight at a flophouse.
Up ahead a couple of hundred yards where the road curved tight to the left, a good-sized pinion pine was nestled in a grove of sagebrush on the opposite side of the road. She brought the car to a stop on the right side, being careful not to drop off into a canyon, and left the engine running. She walked across the road, got as hidden as she could behind the pinion and took her panties all the way off.
She checked for scorpions or rattlers or ticks on the ground, saw none and squatted down with her feet wide, as far as she could get them away from the spray.
Then she went.
So, so nice.
“Better than sex,” she muttered.
She put her panties on and picked her way back over the terrain.
Something didn’t feel right. Just before she got to the asphalt she checked her skirt and found a big wet spot on the backside edge.
Damn it.
She’d be sitting on it.
It needed to come off and dry out.
She took it off then noticed something else wrong, namely that her panties were on inside-out. She stepped out of them, turned them around and was about to step back in when a noise came from her right side.
Loud.
Serious.
A car was speeding down the road.
The driver was a man.
He was staring directly at her.
Leaning forward.
Fixated.
Suddenly he saw the curve in the road and jerked the wheel to the left.
The car flipped three times then disappeared over the edge of the canyon.
6
S hade curled up in a ball and concentrated on the noise. She was in the guts of a 24-foot Island Packet sailboat, awash in heavy ocean seas north of Havana. The thunderstorm raged around her. It was sometime after midnight. The night was blacker than black, except when ignited by lightning. She was lucky to not have gotten washed off getting the vessel out of the marina and motoring it out to sea before taking refuge inside.
The sails were down.
A sea anchor kept the bow pointed into the waves.
She thought she was safe after her contact, the woman from the restroom, stabbed the man in the back. She was wrong. They hadn’t gotten two blocks before a gun erupted behind them and the woman fell to the ground.
Shade escaped but not by much.
She never found out the woman’s name.
In all the commotion she didn’t even get a good look at her.
Not knowing how deep the infiltration went, she didn’t return to her hotel room. Instead she made her way down to the marina and stole the boat.
That was three hours ago.
Now, the noise of the storm was deafening.
Whitecaps slammed against the hull.
The wind was frantic.
She was a good sailor and had been in more than her fair share of slop, but this was dangerous even by her measures. She had to get out of Cuban waters before the sun came up.
She snuggled herself good and tight into a life jacket, headed topside, raised the mainsail a third of the way then released the sea anchor. Luckily the storm was coming from the north, which was the direction she needed to go. She kept the bow pointed 30 degrees off the breakers and held the wheel tight.
The wind was almost horizontal.
The rain hit her like needles.
What she worried about, though, was planting the bow under a wave. If that happened a wall of water would wash over the boat. Her grip, no matter how tight, would be no match.
Hold on.
She should have hunted around for rope and tied herself to the wheel.
Too late now.
Her network was disrupted.
Everything she’d worked for was finished.
This was the wrong time to think about it but she couldn’t stop.
Who else had died?
How did it all happen?
What h
ad gone wrong?
Who talked?
What did they say?
Who did they say it to?
Suddenly the boat jarred as if it hit a wall. Shade immediately knew what happened. The bow had slammed into the middle of a whitecap instead of riding over. She locked her arms in the steering wheel and braced for the onslaught of water.
7
S enn-Rae Vaughn, the lawyer, looked around the office as Wilde got her a cup of coffee. It wasn’t fancy but it had the sounds of Larimer Street sifting through the windows. On a credenza by the windows was a radio turned on just enough to hear what was going on without being a distraction. A song came from it, something jazzy.
A closed door led to a second room.
Wilde tapped two cigarettes out of a pack of Camels and offered her one.
“No thanks,” she said.
“You don’t smoke?”
“I do, but only when I’m on fire.”
Wilde smiled, pushed one of the sticks back and lit the other.
“So what’s on your mind this morning?”
The woman hesitated.
“Remember, this has to remain confidential,” she said.
Wilde nodded.
“We’re past that.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s important because if word got out about my being here, I’d lose my license to practice law. That’s about all I have so don’t want it going anywhere.”
“Understood.”
He waited.
“Okay,” she said. “I have a client. Don’t ask me his name because I’m not at liberty to tell you. Let’s just call him Mr. Smith.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“All right. Mr. Smith.”
“Anyway,” she said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, Mr. Smith is as normal as apple pie. The other one percent of the time he has a secret life. He likes to tie women up.” She looked away shyly, then locked eyes and said, “Have you ever done that? Tied a woman up?”
Wilde cocked his head.
“That’s a pretty personal question.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’d appreciate an answer.”
Wilde shrugged.
“I might have done something like that on an occasion or two,” he said.
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because it means you’ll understand,” she said.
Wilde pulled a book of matches out of his pocket and lit it on fire.
“How about you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever been tied up?”
“That’s not relevant.”
“Yes it is.”
“How so?”
“Because you asked me,” Wilde said. “Fair is fair.”
She exhaled and said, “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Yes. Why would I lie?”
Wilde shook the flames out and tossed the remnants in the ashtray. Senn-Rae watched the smoke for a heartbeat and said, “Mr. Smith was indulging his one-percent side on Wednesday evening of last week when something went wrong. He had the woman tied up in a hogtie position on the bed. He stuck a ball gag in her mouth and went to the kitchen to get a beer. Then his phone rang. He talked for a couple of minutes and when he got back to the bedroom the woman was dead.”
“Suffocated?”
Senn-Rae nodded.
“It was an accident,” she said. “He didn’t intend for it to happen.”
“Still—,” Wilde said.
“I agree,” she said. “You don’t have to get into it. Trust me, he doesn’t feel particularly good about the whole thing.”
“I’ll bet she doesn’t either.”
Senn-Rae’s face hardened.
“If you’re going to judge him then maybe you’re not the right person for this case,” she said.
Wilde wandered over to the window and looked down.
He had bills to pay.
“Keep talking,” he said.
“Things got worse,” Senn-Rae said.
“Not for the woman.”
“No, not for the woman, for Mr. Smith,” Senn-Rae said. “There was nothing he could do for her at that point. If it would have helped to take her to the hospital, he would have done it. But she was dead. He made a decision to bury her body and that’s what he did.”
“Does she have family?” Wilde asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Mr. Smith didn’t know either, I assume.”
“Correct.”
“So he buried her body even though she might have family that wouldn’t necessarily look too kindly on such a thing.”
“I’m not implying that what he did was right,” Senn-Rae said. “All I can say is that he was panicked. He was in a survival mode and he did what he did.”
Wilde took one last drag and mashed the butt in the ashtray.
“What was her name?”
“Madison.”
“Madison what?”
“Unknown,” Senn-Rae said. “She was a prostitute out of Colorado Springs. Anyway, there was no news of her body being found in the paper the next day or the day after that or the day after that. Then, three days after the incident happened, on Saturday night, Mr. Smith’s house was broken into. Nothing of value was taken but some personal things were.”
“Like what?”
She got a distant look on her face.
“Cuff links, a watch with an inscription on the back, an address book and, worst of all, the ball gag and the rope that was used that night. Yesterday, Mr. Smith got a phone call from someone he didn’t know—a man. The caller said he saw Mr. Smith bury the body last Wednesday night. He’d be in touch. Then the line went dead. Mr. Smith went back to where he buried the body and it wasn’t there. He’s pretty sure that the man who called him took the body after he buried it. He’s going to blackmail him. If he doesn’t cooperate, Madison’s body will be planted somewhere with some of the incriminating evidence. An anonymous call will be made to the police.”
“Interesting.”
“It’s a lot more than interesting from Mr. Smith’s point of view,” she said. “He called me yesterday to find out how much trouble he was in and to think of a way to help him. I’m coming to you.”
“Without him knowing it?”
She nodded.
“He made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone,” she said.
“You’re breaking that promise.”
“I am,” she said, “but only because it’s in his best interest. What I want you to do is find out who his new friend is.”
Wilde chewed on it.
“Suppose I’m successful,” he said. “What happens then?”
“Then I tell Mr. Smith that I hired you and what you found out.”
Wilde tilted his head.
“Then Mr. Smith kills his new friend.”
Senn-Rae leaned forward.
“He’ll handle it however he decides to handle it,” she said. “That will be up to him.”
She pulled an envelope out of her purse and pushed it across the desk.
“That’s a retainer,” she said. “One thousand dollars. There’s more where that came from. I expect you to be honest but if you need more you’ll get more. Money isn’t the issue.”
Wilde stared at the envelope but didn’t pick it up.
A thousand dollars.
Four months pay.
Senn-Ray stood up.
She set a business card on the desk and headed for the door.
“I need you to start right now, as soon as I leave.”
“Agreed.”
She opened the door, stepped through and said over her shoulder, “Happy hunting Mr. Wilde.”
Then she was gone.
Wilde lit the cigarette, then bounded down the stairs and caught her at street level.
“Jack,” he said. “Not Mr. Wilde.”
“Fine,” she said. “Jack.”
�
�Two more things,” he said. “Where did he dump the body and what did Madison look like?”
She whispered the answers in his ear.
Then she left.
Wilde watched her walk away, then ran after her and put a hand on her shoulder.
She turned around.
“You lied to me,” he said.
“About what?”
“About never being tied up.”
She was about to deny it and then said, “Maybe I picked the right man for the job after all.”
“We’ll see.”
8
T he car bounced twice off the canyon walls on the way down and then crashed on the bottom with a terrible sound. Fallon pulled her panties and skirt on. The world now had an eerie silence to it, except for the idling of the Packard. She turned the engine off then got as close as she could to the edge of the canyon and looked down.
The vehicle wasn’t visible from where she was.
The canyon, however, wasn’t deep—a hundred yards, maybe. Here the wall was almost vertical but down the road a quarter mile or so it was more gradual.
She stood there, deciding.
The New Mexico sun beat on her face.
She wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her hand.
If she went down, she wouldn’t be able to help.
She knew nothing about first aid.
The sight would be upsetting.
If the man was still alive, she’d never be able to get him up to the road. About the best she could do would be to go for help. That was problematic in that the nearest place was Santa Fe and she’d have to go there in the Packard, the stolen Packard to be precise.
What to do?
Her instincts told her to leave.
It wasn’t her fault.
The man may have been looking at her when he went off the road but that didn’t mean it was her fault.
She shut her mind off and ran down the road.
Just go down and help if there’s help to be given.
Worry about everything else later.
She picked her way down a steep face with lots of unstable rocks. The vehicle was right-side-up on the canyon floor but the wheels and tires were demolished.
The dirt near the back end was wet.
