by R. J. Jagger
Ten seconds later his phone rang.
He looked at the incoming number.
Sydney.
He almost refused to answer, but did.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay.”
“I just keep picturing you getting killed.”
“I understand.”
A white SUV following two cars back grabbed his attention. He studied the driver’s face in the rearview mirror and couldn’t believe who he saw—Kristen Starkell, the woman trying to kill him.
The woman who had Jessie-Rae.
“Nick? Are you still there?”
“Yeah but I got to go,” he said.
He decelerated quickly, jerked directly in front of the SUV and slammed on the brakes.
98
D akota arrived at Yardley’s sailboat, carrying four bottles of white wine, just as dusk settled over the marina. They popped a cork, turned the radio on for background noise, and drank. When the first bottle was gone, and Yardley’s head had a pretty good buzz, Coyote joined them.
Then something weird happened.
Yardley got a call from the last person she expected.
Jeff Salter.
“Is Dakota with you?” he asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“I need to talk to her.”
Yardley looked at Dakota and said, “Do you want to talk to Jeff Salter?”
Dakota made a face.
“Screw that asshole.”
“Tell her I just found out what Osborne did,” Salter said. “He had no authority to do that. Tell Dakota she is not—repeat not—fired and never was. Are you at your boat?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m coming down,” Salter said. “I want to be absolutely sure this gets straightened out tonight.”
The line went dead.
Yardley filled Dakota in on what just happened.
“I don’t trust him,” Dakota said.
“Me either,” Yardley said. “There’s no way Osborne would have fired you without clearing it with Salter first. My guess is that Salter figured out that the law firm’s going to be staring down the barrel of a retaliation suit. That means that all the snooping around that you’ve been doing, and the reason you’ve been doing it, will become part of the evidence, which means it will become a public record. At that point, lots of people will be asking questions.”
“He should have thought it through,” Dakota said. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is.” She took a long sip of wine and said, “So what do we do?”
“We’ll figure that out after we hear what he has to say.”
The twilight morphed to a blacker-than-black night and the thin Rocky Mountain air lost its warmth. The dark silhouette of a man wandered down D-Dock but stopped halfway when he saw three silhouettes on the boat.
“How cute,” Yardley said. “Salter’s being shy.”
She got up and staggered his way.
“Wait here, I’ll see what his problem is.”
The dock swayed and made her realize she was drunker than she thought.
When she got to him, he grabbed her arm and pressed the barrel of a gun into her ribs. “Do exactly as I say or I’ll walk down there and shoot your two friends in the face. Do you understand?”
She didn’t recognize the voice.
It wasn’t Salter.
“I said, Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He jerked her arm and said, “Walk.”
She obeyed.
He led her out of the marina, to the edge of the parking lot and into the back seat of an SUV.
“Lie flat on the floor and don’t make a sound.”
She obeyed.
He took off.
Five minutes later he pulled over to the side of a dark road, hogtied her and then took off again.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“No.”
“You should,” he said. “The word on the street is that you’ve been looking for me all over town. That wasn’t a very smart career move.”
She swallowed.
The pirate?
“Robert?”
“That’s right,” he said, “Robert Poindexter, to be precise. Not that it will ever do you any good.” He paused, chuckled and added, “Oh, I almost forgot. If you hear breathing coming from the back, that’s Lindsay Vail. I’m going to let you watch me kill her before I kill you. Pretty exciting, huh?”
Her chest tightened and she peed her pants.
99
W hen Teffinger slammed on the brakes, both cars went into a spin and slid into a telephone pole with a horrific sound. The other driver—Starkell—got out and ran into the storm. Seconds later her car exploded. By the time Teffinger crawled out of his vehicle and made his way around the fire and smoke, she was gone.
Sirens approached from a distance.
Five or six cars pulled over.
He couldn’t waste precious time giving a statement so he wrote down the license plate number of the SUV and disappeared into the storm before the sirens arrived. A mile down the road he came to a tavern that was, miraculously, still open. He called a cab and drank a Bud Light at the bar while he waited.
“Take me to where I can rent a car,” he told the cabbie.
An hour later, he pulled up to his hotel in a red Mustang, killed the engine and opened the door to his room. He saw something he didn’t expect.
Kristen Starkell.
Sitting on the bed.
He didn’t see anyone else.
Only her.
He stepped inside and closed the door.
“Sorry I left in a hurry before,” she said.
Her hands were empty.
She had no gun or knife.
Teffinger sprang across the room and pinned her to the mattress before she even knew he was coming. He sank his weight on her chest and said, “You got a lot of nerve, lady—”
“Actually—”
“Shut up! You’re either going to tell me where Jessie-Rae is, right here, right now, or I’m going to rip your heart out and throw it in your face.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Bullshit!”
100
T he pirate talked as he drove and every new word terrified Yardley even more. Not just because of the story he was telling, but because he was feeding her facts that would put him in the electric chair ten times over if the cops ever found out.
Meaning there was no going back.
He had to kill her.
Even if he changed his mind, he would still have to kill her.
From what she could tell by their speed and their turns, he had come out the back entrance to the park and was cutting over to Santa Fe. Headlights from behind them bounced off the rearview mirror and flickered inside the SUV.
The pirate stopped ranting and got silent.
She pictured him with one eye on the mirror and his grip tight on the steering wheel.
Suddenly he decelerated rapidly, pulled over to the shoulder and stopped.
Yardley knew why.
This road was relatively abandoned, but once they got to Santa Fe there’d be traffic.
If he had to deal with someone following him, it would be better to do it here where there weren’t any witnesses.
He powered down his window.
Cool night air rushed into the vehicle.
He breathed heavily as if getting ready for battle.
The other car approached and slowed as it got closer.
The pirate powered the window back up and said, “If this vehicle stops, and you say a word, I’ll kill everyone in it. The blood will be on your hands. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“So keep your mouth shut.”
“I will.”
“You better,” he said. “Otherwise, your own death will be so horrible that people will talk about it for years. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The pirate got quiet and tapped his fingers.
Waiting for the other car to pass.
Then he slammed his hand on the dashboard and said, “Goddamn it!”
The other car pulled up next to them and stopped with the engine running.
No light bars flashed.
That meant it wasn’t a cop.
The pirate cranked up the radio, stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Yardley heard the muffled sound of the pirate talking to someone, barely audible above the blare of the speakers.
They were laughing about something.
She almost screamed for help but didn’t.
It was better to die without the blood on her hands.
There was no use dragging another innocent person down with her.
Suddenly the talking stopped and the other vehicle took off. Robert, the pirate, took a piss in the road, got back in, shifted into drive and stepped on the gas.
“It was just some dumb-ass guy who wanted to know if I needed help,” he said. “I told him I stopped to take a leak. Good thing you didn’t call out. I wasn’t kidding about what I said.” He chuckled and added, “Hey, he told me a joke. You want to hear it?”
Silence.
“It’s about the Ono Bird,” he said. “Do you know how the Ono Bird got its name?”
No response.
“Well, the Ono Bird, it turns out, is the only bird species in the world where the male is so well endowed that its cock is actually longer than its legs. Every time it comes in for a landing, it makes a sound that goes like this … Oh-no! Oh no! Oh no!”
The pirate laughed.
“Get it?”
She did.
“Ono Bird,” he said. “I got to remember that one.”
She waited until he calmed down and said, “Let me ask you something.”
“Sure, shoot.”
“I’m not clear why you were stalking Aspen Asher last Saturday night,” she said. “She never gave you a tattoo. She has nothing to do with tattoos or tattoo shops or anything like that.”
“Aspen Asher?”
“Yeah.”
“Never heard of her,” he said.
“She was the one you were following last Saturday night; the architect.”
The pirate grunted.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. Except that last Saturday I was in New Orleans.”
He flicked the radio stations, landed on Guns & Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” and cranked it up.
101
T effinger knocked on the door to James Maddens’ place in the French Quarter. When no one answered, he shot the lock and busted in. Kristen Starkell followed less than a heartbeat behind.
No one was there.
Including Jessie-Rae.
Goddamn it!
“They must be out hunting you,” the woman said.
Teffinger threw a lamp against the wall. Then he tore the place apart. He found no evidence that Jessie-Rae had been held there; or any evidence where she might be.
He looked at his watch.
10:15 p.m.
Less than an hour until Jessie-Rae died.
He picked up a blender and threw it at the window. It bounced off the glass, leaving a three-foot crack. Ten seconds later the storm blew it in. The wind was so fierce that the rain hit Teffinger all the way across the room.
“Let’s go!” he said.
Outside, they muscled the doors to the Mustang open and got in. Teffinger cranked over the engine but kept the transmission in neutral.
He looked at the woman and said, “Now what?”
She sat there.
Staring ahead.
Saying nothing.
Then her face sprang to life and she pointed to a street.
“Go that way!”
He skipped first gear, put the stick directly in second and punched it. The rear tires spun and then the vehicle lunged forward.
“Where we going?”
“To Ida’s.”
He drove but shook his head in disbelief, still not sure that he fully comprehended the woman’s story and, more importantly, whether he believed it. What she told him back at the hotel was that she was the granddaughter of Ida Wrisp, a New Orleans voodoo priestess renowned for death curses. Starkell was born in the United States but lived in Haiti with her mother—Ida Wrisp’s daughter.
Starkell came to the U.S. and visited her grandmother every so often.
The death curses didn’t bother her.
That was part of voodoo.
Dying was part of life.
But then she heard something troubling.
On her last visit, she heard a street rumor that Ida was using finishers to make her death curses come true. Ida denied it and Starkell concluded that if finishers were being used, Ida truly didn’t know about it. Nor would she condone it.
Starkell decided to investigate and bring the practice to a halt if it existed.
Ida told her who the most recent curse had been put on—a detective from Denver by the name of Nick Teffinger.
Starkell went to Denver to follow Teffinger, to see if he got murdered and, if so, by who.
That’s why she was following Teffinger at Chatfield, when he spotted her on the beach; and that’s why she was following him down at the South Platte, when he chased her into the river and nearly caught her. And that’s why she followed him to New Orleans after she heard on Hot Talk that that’s where he was.
According to her, she wasn’t the one who shot the Corvette.
She wasn’t the one who put the rattlesnake in his truck.
She knew that James Madden was one of Ida’s main contacts. She suspected that he had to be orchestrating the finishers, if there were such things. She knew where Madden lived in the French Quarter.
That’s why she told Teffinger about him, and why they went there just now.
The voodoo priestess Ida Wrisp lived in an unassuming house on the edge of town. Teffinger slid to a stop in front of her house, killed the engine and followed Starkell to the front door.
The voodoo woman sat on a couch watching TV.
A snake was curled up next to her, flicking a tongue.
Incense filled the air.
The woman’s eyes narrowed when they landed on Teffinger. She looked at Starkell and said, “This man is cursed.”
Starkell ignored her and said, “James Madden is holding a woman captive. Where would that be if it’s not at his place in the French Quarter?”
“He would never—”
“Ida! I need you to answer!”
Twenty minutes later they were in an unlit building in a blacked-out neighborhood, feeling their way one step at a time down a pitch-black stairway. The darkness couldn’t have been more absolute. At the bottom they came to a door. Teffinger felt around until he found the knob and turned it.
“It’s locked,” he said. “Stand back and cover your eyes.”
She did.
He shot the lock and pushed into the room.
It smelled like wet rocks.
A muffled voice came from the darkness, something unintelligible, but something that sounded like Jessie-Rae.
“Jessie-Rae? Is that you?”
“Teffinger! Help me, I’m tied—”
He felt his way over, pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “You’re okay, baby. I got you now.”
“Untie me. The ropes are killing me.”
He worked at the knots. They were insanely tight and he couldn’t see what he was doing. Then he heard a noise, up the stairway.
“Someone’s coming!” Starkell whispered.
Teffinger pulled Jessie-Rae into the left corner of the room and told her and Starkell to lie flat on the floor and not make a sound. He went to the right corner, stood in the dark with a racing heart and waited for the footsteps to get all the way to the door.
When they did he said, “I have a gun. Turn around and leave while you can.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he dropped to the floor a
s quietly as he could. A heartbeat later, two guns fired and bullets struck the wall where his chest had been. The flashes from the barrels lit the room just enough for Teffinger to see three figures.
He pulled the trigger.
Three times.
So fast that it sounded like once.
Two bodies dropped to the ground.
The other ran up the stairs.
Teffinger carried Jessie-Rae up the stairs, out of the house and into the yard. He put his weapon in Starkell’s hand and said, “Get her out of here!”
Then he ran to the street.
The storm was even worse now.
Water hammered into his eyes.
To the right he saw nothing.
To the left he saw something that might be movement.
He sprinted that way as fast as he could.
The gap began to close but Teffinger was losing wind. He eased back to a pace he could maintain. A mile later he was only fifty yards behind. It was now clear that his target was a man, a large man.
By the way he swung his arms, he wasn’t holding a gun.
As they came out of the blackout area to where the streetlights worked, Teffinger saw that they were heading straight for the Mississippi River.
The man stopped when he came to the water.
He was white and had long hair.
Mean whitecaps rolled down the water with a thundering noise.
The man suddenly turned and jumped in.
Teffinger ran to the edge and saw the man hanging on to the end of a log, seconds from being swept out of reach.
He dived in and fought his way through the turbulence to the other end of the log.
He held on, trying to catch his breath.
The other man was muscling his way down the log towards him.
Teffinger did the same and had only one thought.
Die you asshole.
Die forever.
ONE WEEK LATER
Thursday
July 22
102
O ne week later, Yardley called Jeff Salter and said, “It would probably be a good idea for us to have a little chat.” He agreed, and an hour later they met at Civic Center Park, across from the Colorado State Capitol. He wore an expensive suit and a burgundy tie. She wore shorts, Adidas and a T. They found a private place to talk on the amphitheater steps.
