“Oh, no you don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know you’ll be running a background check on her before that cup is empty,” he said.
“So?”
“So, forget it.” He sipped coffee and added, “She’s Jamaican.”
“Jamaican?”
He nodded.
“A black Jamaican, with blue eyes.”
Sydney chuckled and said, “You’re way out of your league, cowboy. You know that, I hope.”
CAMERON LEIGH—the woman murdered with a wooden stake through her heart—had a friend named Beth Sorenson. Beth’s number was programmed into Cameron’s cell phone. Sydney called that number twice yesterday, to ask the woman if she knew where Cameron had planned to go “downtown” on Sunday afternoon. The woman never answered so Sydney left messages.
“She called me back at 10:30 last night,” Sydney said. “She said Cameron was going to go to a rave in an old brick building off Wazee.”
“A rave?”
“Yeah. A gothic rave, apparently.”
“What’s a rave?”
“You don’t know?”
No, he didn’t.
So she explained.
“Anyway,” she said, “my plan this morning was to walk around the area and check for security cameras.”
Teffinger swallowed the rest of his coffee.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“You’re coming with me?”
“I want that skinhead and I want him now,” he said.
They filled a thermos.
Then headed out.
FOUR HOURS LATER THEY WERE BACK, with videotapes from a furniture warehouse that had security cameras that shined on an alley that a lot of people used on Sunday to go to a rave.
Teffinger and Sydney watched for a half hour.
And saw no signs of Cameron Leigh.
At least not yet.
But did see plenty of skinheads.
“This is going to be tougher than I thought.”
Then he looked at his watch—high noon, exactly.
“Oops.”
“What?”
He was already out of his chair and said over his shoulder, “I’m supposed to be at Wong’s.”
LONDON WAS SITTING IN A BOOTH when Teffinger ran into the restaurant at 12:15 out of breath. He slipped into the opposite side and said, “I am so sorry. Thanks for waiting.”
She said nothing.
And instead studied him.
“Your eyes are two different colors,” she said. “One’s blue and one’s green. I didn’t notice that last night.”
“And?”
“And what?
“And does it freak you out?”
She laughed.
“Nothing freaks me out anymore,” she said. “I like them, so relax.”
They ordered.
Then Teffinger said, “Tell me about you.”
She told him about Jamaica.
And Paris.
And South Beach.
She was still a citizen of Jamaica, technically, but had been living in South Beach for the last three years, following the death of her mother. She was in Denver visiting Rave Lafelle, the singer from the club last night.
She had no boyfriend.
Or kids.
And had never been married.
Teffinger wanted to take her, right then, right there. He wanted to sweep everything off the table, throw her on top and rip her shorts off. He wanted to make her scream. He wanted to turn her into a sweaty, out-of-control animal.
But he didn’t.
Because there were rules against that at Wong’s.
“I’m thinking we should see each other again,” Teffinger said.
“Sure.”
“I’m thinking tonight,” he added.
She didn’t hesitate.
“Okay.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Fontelle.”
“London Fontelle?”
“Right.”
Nice.
Very nice.
AN HOUR LATER THEY PARTED COMPANY and Teffinger hoofed it back to headquarters, feeling sorry for every guy in the world who wasn’t him.
Sydney spotted him as soon as he walked in the door.
“Good news,” she said.
“How good?”
“I think we got a picture of the skinhead.”
Chapter Eighteen
Day Three—April 14
Thursday Morning
______________
TRIPP MADE SEVERAL SWEEPS past Rave Lafelle’s house Thursday morning. The woman’s VW was parked in the driveway but there were no signs of life inside the house.
It would be too risky to break in.
She’d be prepared for intruders, given the Mathew Abbott fiasco.
Hell, she might be sitting in a closet with a shotgun, just waiting for the next dumb slob to open the door.
Then something unexpected happened.
When he made another pass, the woman actually turned into the driveway driving a dark-blue Camry. She hopped out and ran inside.
Tripp circled around the block.
Then he parked down the street and killed the engine.
Five minutes later the woman emerged, threw a suitcase in the back seat and took off.
Tripp followed.
Hanging back.
Where she wouldn’t spot him in a million years.
Then he noticed something strange.
Another car was following her too.
A silver Volvo.
Tripp closed the gap until he got close enough to read the other car’s license plate. Then he veered off, stopped and wrote down the number.
Weird.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Jake VanDeventer called and said, “Guess whose face is all over the news?”
“Abbott’s?”
“Bingo.”
“So what’s the deal?”
“He’s wanted for questioning in connection with Cameron Leigh,” VanDeventer said.
“So the cops don’t know he’s dead?”
“Apparently not.”
“Interesting,” Tripp said. “Did you get that French laptop open yet?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And we now know the phone numbers and emails of most of the top models in Paris,” VanDeventer said. “Other than that, it’s a bust.”
Tripp exhaled.
And said, “Damn.”
AFTER HE HUNG UP, Tripp went for a five-mile jog and questioned whether he had just made a fatal mistake in not telling VanDeventer about the Volvo that had been following Rave Lafelle.
He decided that he made the right decision.
But better not get caught.
He showered.
Then found out who the Volvo was registered to.
Avis.
Chapter Nineteen
Day Three—April 14
Thursday Afternoon
______________
RAVE SQUEALED down side streets and busted through red lights until she finally shook the silver Volvo. When she picked up London at Wong’s, her hands were shaking.
“Did you get a look at the driver?” London asked.
Rave nodded.
“Sort of, it was a man—he had long hair.”
“Blond?”
“Right.”
London grinned.
“Parker,” she said. “That’s so like him, to make a dramatic entrance.”
“You know him?”
London nodded.
“He’s on our side.”
They got caught at a red light.
Three seconds later a silver Volvo pulled up on their left. The driver powered down the passenger side glass and said, “Follow me.”
Rave looked at London, who nodded and said, “Do it.”
THEY HEADED WEST on the 6th Avenue freeway for twenty miles, all the way through Lakewood to the Golden exit. They turned left and climbed a dange
rous road that snaked up the face of Lookout Mountain. The Volvo pulled into a dirt turnoff about three-fourths of the way up and the women pulled in next to it and killed the engine.
They all got out.
From there, a panoramic view opened up for thirty or forty miles. In the valley below—nestled between North Table Mesa and South Table Mesa—lay downtown Golden and the Coors Brewery. Denver seemed small and insignificant, more than twenty miles to the east, followed by flatlands that stretched to DIA and then all the way to Kansas.
While the view was stunning, Rave spent only a heartbeat with it before being pulled in by the man’s face. He wasn’t anything like she expected.
He looked like a California surfer.
With an incredible face.
White teeth.
A good tan.
A solid, athletic build.
Long thick blondish hair that fell past his shoulders.
About thirty.
No wedding ring.
Dressed in khaki Dockers and a blue cotton shirt.
Very sexy.
She swallowed and wondered if they would end up sleeping together.
HE WASTED NO TIME getting to the point. “I apologize for getting into Denver so late,” he said. “I had some stuff going on and couldn’t break away. London has already filled me in on the skinhead you shot. That makes you in this as deep as we are, and because of that I’m going to be able to share some things with you that I probably wouldn’t otherwise—emphasis on the some because it’s better for you if you don’t know too much.”
A magpie flew.
High off the valley floor, but below them.
It was peculiar to look down on flapping wings.
“What kind of things?” Rave asked.
“Let me give you some background,” Parker said. “First—let’s get this out in the open right off the bat—I’m a bloodline descendent of a man named Randolph Gertz, who was reputed to be an immortal vampire back in his day. He got murdered at age twenty-five with a wooden stake through his heart. Then they burned his body to ashes in a bonfire. London, as you already know, is also a bloodline descendent. There are more of us, too.”
“How many?”
“That’s under constant investigation,” he said. “As more and more information has become available on the net, and as more and more historical documents around the world are being archived and translated and made available to the public, the science of genealogy has opened up to proportions never before known, for those who care to dig. While it’s still a very arduous and time-consuming endeavor, it’s getting increasingly easier to trace bloodlines further and further back into the past. Currently, we have thirty-one living bloodline descendents identified. We’ve formed something in the nature of an association, if you will.”
“An association?”
“Right,” he said. “The problem is, over time, the word has gotten out and another group has formed—a group of slayers who are hell bent on eradicating us.”
“Why?”
“We’re not exactly sure, but we have a couple of theories,” Parker said. “One is that they think we’ll go crazy and start copycatting our ancestors and start killing people and sucking blood.”
“Do you?” Rave questioned.
Parker chuckled at the absurdity of the thought.
“Kill people? No, of course not,” he said. “Another theory, perhaps the better one, is that they think we’re carriers of immortality—in other words, that there’s something latent in our genes that could cause someone else to be immortal even though we obviously aren’t. We’re not sure, but they could even be trying to capture some of us alive and trying to tap into that immortality.”
“That’s downright creepy,” Rave said.
“Agreed,” Parker said. “But here’s where we are, right now, today. We have a woman up in Montreal who is doing our genealogy research. We think that the slayers somehow found out who she was. She keeps all of her files locked up in an incredibly sound safe. She called me last week in a panic, convinced that she was being followed and that her life was in imminent danger. We immediately got her to a safe refuge and didn’t even allow her to go home. At the time, she had been working on three files that weren’t locked up. They were sitting on the desk in her study. Her house was broken into and those files disappeared.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Rave asked.
“THE FIRST FILE WAS A FRENCH MODEL named Diamanda,” Parker said. “It turns out that she was killed at her estate south of Paris the night before last, on Tuesday. She was beaten badly and then a wooden stake was pounded through her heart.”
“You’re kidding.”
No.
He wasn’t.
“It’s all over the French newspapers,” Parker said. “You can pull the stories off the net. The second file was a Denver woman named Cameron Leigh,” Parker said. “She was killed Sunday night.”
Rave knew that.
The murder had been in the papers.
And on the news.
But she didn’t know the background.
“Was she killed with a wooden stake?”
“We don’t know,” Parker said. “My suspicion is that she was, but the police are keeping it close to the vest.”
Rave said nothing.
“The third file was you,” Parker said. “It turns out that you and Cameron Leigh had the same great-great grandfather. I don’t know if you knew that or not.”
No.
She didn’t.
She didn’t know anything about her genealogy.
“There must be a mistake.”
Parker shook his head.
And said, “I’m sorry this is happening. If I could change your past, I would.”
“You shouldn’t have dug it up,” she said.
“I’m sorry we did,” he said. “But we can’t undo what’s been done. All we can do at this point is deal with what we have.”
Rave sank to the ground.
And leaned against the front tire of the Camry.
And bowed her head.
She knew she shouldn’t.
She knew she was coming off as weak.
She tried to stop.
But couldn’t.
She kept hoping the whole situation would go away. Instead, it kept getting more and more real.
Suddenly Parker was down in the dirt with her.
And had his arm around her shoulders.
And let her lay her head on his chest.
Chapter Twenty
Day Three—April 14
Thursday Afternoon
______________
THE SECURITY TAPES from the furniture warehouse showed a tattooed skinhead following Cameron Leigh to the rave and then, three hours later, from it. Each time he hung twenty steps behind. Whereas most people wore black, he wore white. Teffinger got his face on every news station in Denver as soon as he could. So far, however, no one had called with information on the guy. Nor had Teffinger been able to match the face to any databases.
He hung around his desk.
Wadding up paper and throwing it into the snake plant.
Waiting.
Getting nothing.
Then he got the clearest pictures of the man’s tattoos that he could and faxed them to every tattoo shop in Denver to see if anyone recognized them.
And waited some more.
And got more nothing.
Piles and piles of nothing.
Then the phone rang.
“NICK, IT’S ME.” The voice belonged to Dr. Leigh Sandt, the FBI profiler. “I checked around for you to see if anyone else got killed with a wooden stake. Nada for the U.S., but get this—the exact same thing just happened in Paris, to a model named Diamanda.”
“When?”
“Tuesday evening.”
“Tuesday as in two days ago?”
“Bingo,” she said. “It’s the front page story in every French newspaper.”
Teffinger chewed on i
t.
“I need to get in touch with whoever is in charge over there,” he said.
“Get a pencil,” she said.
She gave him a name and number.
He wrote them down.
“Do you speak French?” she questioned.
“No, just that one line from the song.”
“What song?”
“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir.”
She chuckled. “How come that doesn’t surprise me?”
TEFFINGER WAS JUST ABOUT TO CALL his French counterpart when his cell phone rang. It was Geneva Vellone, the radio half of the Vellone sisters, a 27-year-old fireball who had an insanely popular morning show on FM 104 called Hot Talk.
Teffinger listened to it a few times.
And found it a little too over-the-top for his taste.
In high school, Jena Vellone was the baby sister of Matt Vellone, Teffinger’s best friend. Jena was three years younger, a tomboy, and always hung around whenever Teffinger was over. She was cute enough that Teffinger always had a bit of a crush on her, but nothing ever became of it.
Except that Jena would start wrestling fights every now and then, and wouldn’t stop until she got pinned and tickled.
Geneva was the third of the Vellone siblings.
Three years younger than Jena.
Six years younger than Teffinger.
He didn’t pay much attention to her back in the older days, but they turned into flirting-buddies four or five years ago.
“Where’s Jena?” Geneva asked.
Teffinger didn’t know.
“You were with her last night, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“She was scheduled to do an interview a half hour ago and didn’t show up,” Geneva said. “The station’s in a panic—and mad. Jena isn’t answering any of her phones. The girl needs to get herself in gear, and I’m talking about right now, this second.”
“Did you go over to her house?” Teffinger asked.
“Not yet.”
“Try that,” he said. “She got pretty trashed last night.”
“She did?”
“She’s probably still sleeping it off.”
The line went dead.
TEFFINGER CALLED HIS FRENCH COUNTERPART and got informed by an assistant that the man was up to his eyeballs in a murder investigation. Teffinger explained that he had a similar case in Denver, meaning a woman stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake, and thought that the cases might be connected.
Dark Hunger (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) Page 5
