by R. J. Jagger
She chewed on it.
“It doesn’t fit,” she said. “Revenge would come with warnings. It would be like headlights coming up a dark road.”
Teffinger raked his thick brown hair back with his fingers.
It immediately flopped back down.
“You’re a lawyer,” he said. “People tell you things they don’t tell anyone else. Maybe someone’s reconsidering whether they want someone running around who knows something about them.”
The woman shook her head.
“Theoretically it’s possible but I can’t think of any real life fits.”
“Maybe it’s not law related. Maybe you saw something you shouldn’t have.”
“No.”
“Did you take something?”
“No.”
“Are you into drugs?”
“Nothing you don’t already know about.”
“Do you own anyone money?”
“Yeah, Visa.”
“Are you pressuring anyone about anything?”
“No.”
“Did you break anyone’s heart?”
She paused and sighed.
“I’m not the target, Teff,” she said. “I’ll keep my eyes open but you’ll be better off on concentrating on the other Susan Smiths.” A beat then, “Tell me about the hitwoman.”
He told her.
She was going by the name Portia Montrachet.
She was attractive, blond, and had a Kanji tattoo on her neck.
He didn’t have a photograph yet but would by the end of the day.
“Where’s she staying?”
Teffinger frowned.
“I don’t want you trying to make contact with her.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
“What’s your plan to stop her?”
“That’s still a work in progress.”
“Let me help.”
“No.”
“Come on—”
“It’s a police matter.”
“It’s also a matter for Susan Smith,” she said.
“You already said you’re not the one.”
“True, but we both know I can make mistakes. Just being on the list gives me some entitlement, don’t you think? Besides, it will give us a chance to get reacquainted.”
Back at homicide, Sydney had collected even more information on the Susan Smiths. With coffee in his left hand, Teffinger went through the files one by one, looking for a situation or personality trait or occupation that could possibly trigger a hit.
A few red flags rose.
The 28-year-old Susan Smith who lived on Clarkson was one. She had some minor scratches in her record, including a few that had landed her free room and board at the public’s expense for a short period of time. Currently employed as a Merry Maid, it was possible that she snooped around when she should have been cleaning and ended up taking something. Or maybe she found a more interesting kind of dirt, the kind that could be used for blackmail. It would be interesting to know whose houses she’d been in recently and whether any large sums of money had mysteriously appeared in her bank accounts.
He handed the file to Sydney.
“Take the lead on this one,” he said. “See if she got herself in over her head on something. Get her to say something that would support a warrant to get into her bank records.”
Sydney took the file.
“You’re weird today,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning your old flame.”
He shrugged.
“She said I scared her.”
Sydney wasn’t impressed.
“You’re a lot of things, Teffinger, but scary isn’t one of them.”
Two more files caught his eye.
One was a lawyer who had been disbarred for three years for putting retainer funds into an operating account and then drawing on them as a loan, allegedly with intent to repay it next month. She was in year two of her disbarment period and, apparently, was talented enough to land an interim job as a legal assistant at one of Denver’s largest law firm, Tracer & Banks. In that position she’d have access to a lot of confidential information.
The other file of interest was for a model. Teffinger recognized her from some of the clubs around town. The word was that she had a cocaine habit and a penchant for screwing powerful people.
He handed the files to Sydney.
“Two more.”
She made a face.
“What are you going to be doing while I do all the work? Repeat, all the work.”
He stood up and headed for the coffee.
“I’ll be doing something I shouldn’t.”
5
Day One
July 8
Tuesday Afternoon
Working the net, Teffinger found a real-life New York limited partnership by the name of 47Drop that was in the business of developing upscale residential high-rises in the heart of prominent cities across the country. He also located and printed out information regarding ownership of land and properties in Denver that would potentially be suitable for leveling and development of the types of structures that 47Drop maintained in its portfolio.
Then he headed home, showered, and put on his crispest white shirt, a lagoon-green silk tie and his most expensive summer-weight suit.
He put the files in a tan leather briefcase and drove out to Denver International Airport where he rented a white Range Rover.
From there he drove to the downtown Sheraton, snaked back and forth through the parking garage to see if Portia Montrachet’s rental was there—which it was—and then parked as close to it as he could.
He headed up to his room, 1216.
His ear went to the wall.
There was movement in the adjacent room.
The woman was there.
He opened his door three or four inches to be able to hear her when she left. Then he waited, with the jacket on and the briefcase sitting by the door where he could grab it on the way out.
Half an hour came and went.
The woman didn’t emerge.
Ear to the wall, Teffinger detected water running. She was showering.
Twenty minutes later she emerged.
Teffinger grabbed the briefcase, stepped into the hall and closed the door, jiggling the handle to make sure it was locked. Then he looked over, ostensibly surprised to see someone there.
He smiled but said nothing.
Instead he turned right towards the elevator bank.
The woman followed five steps behind.
Teffinger pressed the down button and faced forward.
He looked good.
He looked important.
He looked like money.
He looked like he was hung like a T-Rex on a Saturday night.
Come on, bite.
Seconds passed then the woman said, “In town on business?”
He looked over.
She was more than he expected.
He tried to appear unaffected by her goddess eyes and her goddess face and her ample goddess chest tucked under a sleeveless pink blouse.
“Yeah. You?”
“Same. Your eyes are two different colors. One’s blue and one’s green. I’ve never seen that before.”
He cocked his head.
“I think it’s from the New York water.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
He nodded.
“Right. How about you?”
“Same; New York. I have a flat over on 84th.”
“Well, small world.”
“So they say.”
The elevator came, replete with half a dozen sardines already packed in and facing the front. They stepped in and did the same. At the lobby the woman said, “My name’s Portia. Why don’t you take me out to dinner tonight?”
Teffinger frowned.
“I have a business engagement.”
“Oh.”
He paused in contemp
lation and said, “I should be back around nine. We could get a drink if you’d like.”
“Sounds good.”
“My treat,” he added.
She smiled.
“What’s your name?”
“North,” he said. “North Reynolds.”
She straightened his tie.
“There, all better.”
Two heartbeats later she was out the revolving doors and down the street on foot. Teffinger suppressed his urge to follow and instead headed for the Range Rover.
At the office he called his old high school buddy, Matt Vernon, in New York, and said, “Matt, it’s me, Teffinger. I need to be from New York tonight. Tell me some stuff that only the locals know.”
“Okay but on one condition.”
“Here we go …”
“Take Jena out and get her drunk,” he said. “She still talks about you.”
Jena.
Jena Vernon.
She was Matt’s younger sister, three years younger than them, in 9th grade when they were in 12th. Now she was a reporter for the Channel 8 news and, for the last three years, a mutual booty call, although no calling by either side had been done for the last six months.
“Sure, why not?” Teffinger said.
6
Day One
July 8
Tuesday Afternoon
With Sydney busy giving warning to all the Susan Smiths on the list, Teffinger paced next to the windows with a cup of coffee in his left hand and a phone in his right, calling hotels in hopes of finding the black man with the blond hair. Outside, across Cherokee Street, old houses had been converted into bail bond junkets and painted cartoon colors. Neon signs burned in the windows. A kid on a skateboard shuffled past.
Then something happened.
The receptionist at the Westin had some interesting news. A black man with bleached hair, nicely dressed, had checked into the hotel late Sunday and back out early this morning.
His name was Oscar Benderfield.
“Do you know where he was going?”
“The airport. He took the hotel shuttle. Where he was flying to from there, I have no idea.”
Teffinger got the man’s credit card number and from there traced him to be a private investigator out of Washington, D.C. That confirmed his earlier suspicion that the man hadn’t been the one who wanted Susan Smith dead but instead was a link in the chain; part of the smoke and mirrors.
So who was he working for?
He called the homicide department in D.C., explained who he was and got connected to a man named Randy Johnson, who answered in a deep growly voice with a thick drawl that sounded like it got honed on Burton Street down in the guts of the Big Easy.
“Oscar Benderfield is a high-priced low-life,” Johnson said. “Most of his clients are law firms. He gets things done for them, and I’m not just talking about investigations and information gathering.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning whatever needs doing,” Johnson said. “He’s given us occasion to sniff around more than a few times but we never come up with anything other than a bad smell. He’s a guy who knows how to cover his tracks. My guess is that you could break into his office right now and go through every file in there without finding a shred of evidence as to who he’s working for or why.”
Teffinger cocked his head.
“Look,” he said. “He’s flying back even as we speak. Whoever hired him might be waiting for a report on how the handoff went. That might be done in a meeting rather than by phone. Is there any chance you could put a tail on him for a day or two?”
A pause.
“Manpower’s tight,” Johnson said.
“I appreciate that.”
The man exhaled.
“I’ll make you a trade. I’ll tail our P.I. friend if you come out to D.C. at some point in the next six months and do a training session with our detectives.”
Teffinger grunted.
“That might set them back.”
“Not from my angle. I saw you talk out in San Francisco last year.”
“Then you should understand what I mean.”
Johnson chuckled.
“Do we have a deal or not?”
Yeah.
They did.
7
Day One
July 8
Tuesday Night
Tuesday night after dark Jori-Lee Kent paused at the sidewalk next to the ornate brick security wall encompassing the mansion and reflected on the seriousness of what she was about to do.
The city wasn’t as dark as she’d like.
There were too many streetlights and wandering cars. There were too many urban lights bouncing off a low blanket of clouds. In typical D.C. style, the air was humid and muggy. A mosquito drilled fangs into her arm and she slapped it dead.
She wore black jeans and a black T with gray Nikes down below. Her long brown hair was tucked under a baseball cap.
No one was in close proximity.
She exhaled one last time, quieted the lightning in her veins as much as she could and maneuvered her 26-year-old body over the wall, landing in landscaping rock between two bushes.
Her heart pounded.
This was crazy.
She should back out now while she still had the chance.
Lights were on inside the structure.
No one was home, though. She knew where the owner was. He wouldn’t be back for over an hour.
She headed across the grass.
The motion of her body ignited a floodlight and brought a blinding glare into her eyes. She sped up, concerned but not overly. No one from the street could see her through the wall. The nearest neighbor was fifty yards away with plenty of trees in between.
Several of the rear windows were cranked open.
She slipped on latex gloves, worked the screen out of a window and entered.
The air was coffin quiet.
She headed up a winding staircase to the upper level. The master bedroom was at the far end of a walkway that opened on one side to the level below. She had a feeling that if she was going to find what she was looking for, it would either be buried someone in the master closet or inside a safe.
The bedroom was dark.
She closed the window coverings, turned on the lights and dimmed them to half. The room was something out of an interior designer magazine, fitted pitch-perfect with contemporary textures and colors. The dresser drawers contained nothing of interest.
The master closet was larger than most bedrooms.
Twenty tailor-made suits hung on sculpted wooden hangers. A hundred or more silk ties were neatly folded on top of a built-in dresser made out of the same blond wood as the shelves.
In the far corner, hardly visible, were two black briefcases.
She picked one up.
Something was inside.
The latches were locked. She turned the tumblers to zero on the chance that the pre-sets had never been changed. They hadn’t. The latches sprang open.
There was a small MacBook Air laptop inside.
She set it on top of the ties and opened it up.
There was no password protection.
The screen sprang to life.
She opened Documents and found a large number of files, too many to look through. She headed downstairs with a racing heart, found the home office in a separate room off the dining room, and rummaged through the drawers until she found a box of blank thumb drives.
She took one upstairs, copied the contents of the Mac, stuck the drive in the pocket and put everything back exactly like she’d found it.
Then she got the hell out of there.
8
Day One
July 8
Tuesday Night
Portia had the look. Teffinger had only seen it briefly in the elevator and then down in the lobby when she straightened his tie, but that had been enough. She was the kind of woman he could wrap around every night and think about every minute.
; That was the problem.
At exactly nine he knocked on her door, shifting his feet and reminding himself one last time not to fall in love with her.
She was a killer.
Susan Smith—maybe even his Susan Smith, Del Ray—was depending on him. The next two hours were business, potentially pleasurable business, but business all the same.
The door opened.
The woman wore a bra and panties but no clothes. Her body was tanned and taut and belonged to a California surfer girl, straight out of a Beach Boys song. Her hair was thick, straight and freshly washed.
Her eyes were green.
He hadn’t noticed that before.
She smelled like Paris.
She pulled him inside and said, “I’ll be ready before you blink. Do you feel like getting a little crazy tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Good. I’ve found a place for us to go.”
“Where?”
She smiled and headed for the bathroom.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“Mystery woman.”
“Always.”
While she was in the bathroom, Teffinger cast his eyes around for the briefcase. It wasn’t in sight or under the bed. He had his eye on the closet, wondering if he had enough time to open the door and take a quick peek inside. He thought better of it. Even if it were in there it would be closed. He’d have to undo the latches and pull the top up to get to the photo inside. Legally, that would be a search without a warrant. As nice as it would be to know which of the eleven Susan Smith’s was the mark, it wasn’t worth jeopardizing the legality of the investigation.
He stood at the window.
Denver was thick with twilight.
Streetlights were on.
Headlights were on.
The air was full of mischief.
The bathroom door opened.
Portia was now in a short red dress that framed her body to perfection, tighter up top at the cleavage but flaring dangerously loose over her hips, barely covering her posterior. She wore no nylons.
Her lips were the same red color.
So were the high-heels.
“Acceptable?”
Teffinger swallowed.
“I suddenly feel understated.” In jeans and a white cotton shirt with no tie, the words were more than true.
Portia linked her arm through his.
