Shadow Files

by R. J. Jagger

  “So now what?”

  “I can’t wait that long. Let’s head down to the financial district and see if we can find him.”

  84

  A labama’s search for client information at Senn-Rae’s loft had come up empty. It was starting to make less and less of a difference given the new information coming in, but it was still the most direct path. Instead of heading over to the art school and running down that lead, Wilde went over to Senn-Rae’s and took the stairs up two at a time.

  “It’s time for you to tell me who your client is,” he said.

  The woman shook her head in disbelief.

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  Wilde lit a cigarette and paced.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “Whoever is doing the killing is the same person who abducted the Indian, Visible Moon. We know that because the house where she was kept was too damn close to the shed where Jennifer Pazour was found.”

  “And?”

  “And, there’s someone in town—a Navajo—who can identify the person who took Visible Moon. I want him to have a look at your client. That’s all he has to do, just look at the guy. The client will never even know it’s happening. He’ll never know you told me a word.”

  He paused, waiting.

  Senn-Rae sighed.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you his name.”

  “Good. What is it?”

  She walked over as if she was going to whisper in his ear. Instead she shoved him on the chest with both hands and infuriated her face.

  “Jack, I told you. I don’t know. Get it through your brain. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know who he is. Get it? He’s a voice on the phone, that’s all he is.”

  Wilde blew smoke.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “God, you’re impossible.”

  He smiled.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Don’t press me,” she said. “I’m right on the edge.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her stomach to his.

  “The edge of what? Sex?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “You’re wearing me out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s bordering on crazy.”

  He frowned.

  “Can’t have bordering,” he said. “It needs to be on one side or the other.”

  He walked over and locked the door.

  “Jack, don’t even think about it.”

  “Trust me, I’m not thinking.”

  He picked her up, flung her over his shoulder and took her to the bedroom. “We’re going to find out who he is tonight,” he said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You need to think of something. Will you do that?”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now where was I?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  “You were just about to screw me silly,” she said.

  He stood up.

  “Now I remember,” he said. “I was going to run down a lead. Got to go.”

  “Jack, don’t you dare!”

  “Got to,” he said. “I’ll call you in a couple of hours.”

  “Don’t bother, I hate you.”

  He blew her a kiss.

  “I’m going to spend the afternoon thinking of ways to kill you,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “As long as you’re thinking of me, that’s the main thing.”

  Then he left.

  85

  U pstairs in Vampire’s bedroom, Fallon came across something she really didn’t expect, namely a briefcase under the bed. She pulled it out, shined a flashlight on it and said, “Bingo.”

  Jundee opened it.

  Nothing was inside.

  “Where’s the stuff?”

  “It’s the same as mine,” Fallon said. “It’s identical. Look, even the latches are the same. This has to be from the wreck.”

  “It’s from the wreck alright,” Jundee said. “She must have taken the papers out.”

  “Why?”

  Good question.

  Very good question.

  “If she was going to give them to someone, I don’t see why she wouldn’t have just left them inside. My gut tells me she took ’em out to put ’em in a safe,” he said. “Put this thing back exactly how you found it.”

  She did.

  Then they searched for a safe.

  It wasn’t in the master closet.

  It wasn’t behind any of the wall paintings.

  It wasn’t anywhere.

  “She’s got it hidden, that’s for sure.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Fallon said. “We can’t open it anyway.”

  “We can find out what kind it is,” Jundee said. “I have people I can call. They’ll be able to tell me if they can break into it or not.”

  “I didn’t know you knew those kinds of people.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” he said. “Remember?”

  Suddenly a door slammed downstairs.

  Someone was in the house.

  They turned their flashlights off.

  Now what?

  They were in the master bedroom, which was the only major room on that side of the floor. To get to the other side they’d have to pass the staircase.

  Voices were coming up.

  There was no time to open a window and jump.

  “Get under the bed!”

  86

  M ojag was nowhere to be found in the financial district. Shade crisscrossed again and again to no avail. Maybe he was in a deep shadow, waiting patiently for his mark to end the workday and walk out a front door. Maybe he had already intercepted the man and taken him somewhere for interrogation.

  Mojag was hotheaded.

  That was the problem.

  He might make a move he shouldn’t.

  He might do it without waiting for Shade.

  “What are you going to do when you find him?” London asked.

  Shade wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. The city was hotter than it had a right to be. The sun was beating the life out of everything. “We’re going to find out what he did with Visible Moon. After that, let’s just say that it’s not a healthy situation to scalp Mojag’s woman and then let him get his hands on you.”

  London nodded.

  “Where’s he going to do it?”

  “Back at the reservation.”

  “Are you going to help him?”

  “Yes, but only here in Denver. I’m going to help catch him.” A pause then, “You don’t want to be around when that happens.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “For your own good,” Shade said.

  “Like I said, we’ll see. Tell me about Penelope Tap. Why do you think she’s the mole?”

  “Come on, I’ll buy you an RC.”

  They ducked into a fountain bar and sat at the end of the counter closest to the sidewalk. If Mojag walked past, they’d see him. The air conditioning was an arctic storm. The barstools were a gift. The ice cubes were small and chewable.

  “Penelope Tap,” London said.

  Right.

  Penelope Tap.

  Shade pulled up the image of a mid-thirties, Harvard-educated, multi-lingual bombshell who had an actual stint in the underbelly of Russia for more than five years. No one knew exactly how many kills she had logged but everyone agreed the number was big. Her smile was sugar, sweet and tempting.

  “We have high-level information making its way to the Russians,” Shade said. “It mostly involves our current research and development into the hydrogen bomb, but it also involves the foundation of that program, such as policies, decision makers, dates and times of meetings, funding, timetables, and a lot more. We had no idea how big the leak was until two months ago when a Russian woma
n made contact with the FBI. She wanted passage to the U.S., immunity, plus protection and money. In exchange, she’d help us bring down a mole.”

  “Who?”

  “She wouldn’t say,” Shade said. “She gave enough specifications about the information that had been passed to demonstrate that a mole really did exist.”

  London tipped her glass up, got an ice cube in her mouth and crunched down on it.

  “So what happened?”

  “The fourth contact that was supposed to happen never happened,” Shade said.

  “She’s dead?”

  Shade nodded.

  “That’s the thinking,” she said. “Anyway, one thing the FBI was pretty sure about by that point is that the information was being fed through Cuba. Since the mole was high-up in the CIA, the FBI took their information directly to the white house. The white house approached me. I’d been working Cuba for the last four years, getting information from my sources as to what Russia is doing in its weapons development.”

  London tilted her head.

  “Why weren’t you a suspect?”

  Shade laughed.

  “Me? I don’t operate at those levels,” she said. “I don’t have access to the information that was being passed. Only an upper-level CIA agent, or a Senator or Congressman, or someone in the upper levels of the white house would have that kind of information.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, I’ve been working my sources, plying them with large amounts of money in an effort to find out who the Cuban connection is. They must have been getting close because everything suddenly went to hell. Tuesday night I was in Havana. A meeting that should have gone smooth as a summer day ended up with my source getting killed and me having to steal a sailboat to make it out of the country alive. After not getting killed, I’m suddenly framed for being a spy.”

  “Okay, but why do you think Penelope Tap is behind it?”

  “She’s the one who hired you,” Shade said. “That was the cincher. Before that, though, I already had my suspicions. She has the Russian connection. It would be easy for one of her sources over there to set up a line of communication through Cuba. Plus, I never liked the woman, not from day one. She’s too good at what she does. She’s too slick. She’s gotten too many people in the company to believe she’s the most patriotic person that ever existed.”

  London got the attention of the gal behind the counter and ordered two more RCs.

  “She’s a dangerous woman,” Shade added. “I hope you like bullets in your brain because if she finds out that you’re talking to me instead of bringing me in, that’s what you’re going to get. If I was in your shoes, I’d bring me in. I really would.”

  87

  W ilde swung by the office and honked the horn until Alabama stuck her head out. Ten seconds later she came out of the building, threw Tail in the back seat and hopped over the passenger door without opening it.

  “You’re going to ruin my springs,” Wilde said.

  Tail climbed between the seats into Wilde’s lap.

  He tossed it into Alabama’s.

  “Where are we going?”

  He checked for cars, had to wait for two then pulled out. “Back to Jennifer Pazour’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we never found the matches.”

  “So what? Are you starting a collection?”

  “If we didn’t find them that means we didn’t look deep enough.”

  Alabama wasn’t impressed.

  “You know,” she said, “sometimes it’s downright embarrassing to be your boss.”

  He smiled.

  Fifteen minutes later they were back in the victim’s house, hopefully without being spotted by a nosy neighbor. Tail came with them on account of the top being down on Blondie.

  “They’re somewhere in her dirty clothes,” Wilde said. “We didn’t check there last time.”

  They checked.

  The matches weren’t there.

  He did, however, find the woman’s checkbook in one of her pants pockets and stuffed it into his jacket. “We’re going to tear this place apart until we find them,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to know what date the guy wrote on them.”

  They tore the place apart, not literally, but in the sense that they looked into every crack, crevice or corner that something as small as a matchbook could be hiding.

  If it was there it was being a stubborn little thing.

  It never showed its face.

  “It must be with the body,” Wilde said.

  “We already checked.”

  “Apparently not good enough. Let’s go.”

  “Tell me we aren’t going back to the body.”

  “Can’t,” Wilde said. “I’d be lying.”

  He stuffed all the papers from the desk into a large brown bag and headed for the back door.

  “What’s all that for?”

  “You never know,” Wilde said.

  The ride south into the country was candy to the eyes but the sun turned Wilde into a hot tamale to the point that he had to pull over and put the top up.

  They parked at the bridge under a tree and rolled the windows up to where Tail couldn’t climb through. Wilde picked the animal up, held it face-to-face and said, “Here’s a math lesson for you. If you scratch my seats while I’m gone, that’s two lives. Two out of your nine. Get it?”

  Tail said nothing.

  The air smelled like stale smoke.

  They found out why soon enough.

  Someone had burnt the house to the ground.

  The interesting thing was that no one had shown up to put it out. It died on its own of natural causes.

  The shed was exactly as they’d left it.

  The body was on the ground next to it.

  “Check the body,” Wilde said.

  “For the matches?”

  “Right.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to check the weeds.”

  “I’ll check the weeds,” Alabama said. “You check the body.”

  “Take her shoes off,” Wilde said. “See if they’re inside. If they’re not, check the rest of her clothes. Pull them open to where you can see inside.”

  “No way.”

  “Come on.”

  “Why not you?” Alabama said.

  “Because she’s a woman, that’s why.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’d feel like a pervert.”

  Alabama shook her head.

  “You do the body, I’ll do the weeds. After you do it, though, don’t tell her you’re going to call her if you’re really not.”

  “Not funny. I need you to do it. That’s too much for me.”

  “Hey it was your idea Romeo, not mine.” She chuckled and added, “At least check her mouth first. Kiss her before you go all the way.”

  “Still not funny.”

  Irrespective, it wasn’t a bad idea.

  He checked the mouth with a stick.

  Inside there was no red book of matches with a gold B.

  He looked up to find Alabama staring at him. “Well, are you going to do it cowboy or not?”

  He frowned.

  “I think I’ll help you check the weeds.”

  He took the back area, walking back and forth and studying the ground with hawk eyes, then widening the circle.

  “You’re too far,” Alabama said

  She was at least 90 percent right. Even if the matches had started off on the top of the shed and got sucked off by a hellacious wind, it was still doubtful they’d carry this far.

  One more pass, that’s all he’d do.

  Just one more.

  Suddenly he spotted something twenty steps farther out.

  He headed over.

  “Hey, ’Bama. Come over here and check this out.”

  She headed towards him.

  “Did you find them?”

  “No but look at this.”

 
88

  F allon got coffin-quiet under Vampire’s bed. Thunder pounded through her veins but she didn’t let it press a noise out of her lips. Next to her, Jundee was equally still. The voices were getting closer. One belonged to a man and one to a woman, no doubt Vampire and a lover.

  They were coming to the bedroom to get nasty.

  Fallon could feel it.

  She grabbed Jundee’s hand and squeezed.

  He squeezed back.

  Then something happened she didn’t expect. The voices didn’t turn right at the top of the staircase, they turned left. She exhaled with relief so loudly that she heard the air pass out of her mouth.

  Jundee squeezed her hand.

  It was a signal.

  Be quiet.

  This was more of the curse of the briefcase. If she lived through it, she was through. It was over. She didn’t care about any of it any more. She just wanted to be free from it.

  Just do what you’re going to do, go downstairs and leave.

  Do it.

  Do it.

  Do it.

  No lights turned on from the other end of the house.

  That was weird.

  Suddenly the flicker of a flashlight scrapped across the wall outside the bedroom, there and gone. Then a strange noise came from the other end of the house, almost like tools clanging together. Then a drill turned on and the bit sank into metal.

  “They’re robbers,” Jundee whispered. “The safe must be down there. They’re drilling out the tumbler.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “How?”

  “Out the window.”

  “That’s a serious drop,” Jundee said.

  “The stairs then.”

  “No,” he said. “We might be seen. Just stay here. They have no reason to come in here. They’ll never look under the bed.”

  “How long do you think they’ll be there?”

  “I don’t know. Ten minutes, maybe twenty.”

  “I can’t last that long.”

  “Yes you can,” he said. “They already cased the place. They knew right where to go. They’re going to get what they came for and then get the hell out of here. Just stay calm and wait until it’s over.”