Double Die (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
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Her breath didn’t come.
Her body didn’t move.
She nodded.
“I didn’t think so,” he said. “The other way we can handle this is first and foremost for you to return the flash drive and any and all copies you made of it. Did you make any?”
She nodded.
“I thought so,” he said. “Who’s seen them besides you?”
Sanders Tripp, that was the answer.
It was also an answer she would never give.
“No one,” she said.
“No one?”
“No one.”
He studied her with lawyer eyes, looking for lies. She wasn’t sure whether he saw them or not. She could only hope they were masked by the sweat on her face and the tremor of her fingers.
“Do you agree to give them back?”
She nodded.
“Say it!”
“Yes.”
“That’s a smart answer,” he said. “You’re going to get a call today from an attorney by the name of Leland Everitt, who’s with Overton & Frey. You’ve heard of that firm, I assume.”
Yes, she had.
Everyone had.
It was one of the most powerful firms in D.C. and had offices all over the world.
“He’s going to offer you a job,” Robertson said. “It’s going to be very lucrative. It’s going to be for a lot more money than you get here. You can’t resist the offer. You’re going to tender your resignation to me by the end of the day. I’m going to accept it.” He leaned forward. “Now, here’s the important part. My name is to never cross your lips again. You don’t say anything about me to anyone for any reason. So now the choice is yours. One or two, which suits you better?”
Something snapped
Lightning filled her blood.
She stood up.
“You killed T’amara Alder,” she said. “Either that or you hired someone to kill her which is the same thing. You did it so she wouldn’t tell the world about all your sick little pervert nights.” She hardened her face. “You want to go to the FBI? Really? That’s what you want to do? Well then let me tell you something, go ahead and do it.”
She walked calmly to the door, paused halfway through and said over her shoulder, “I was trying to help you. That’s all gone now. Have a nice life.”
She closed the door gently behind her.
Marilyn Monroe stared at her.
“Please tell Mr. Robertson that I’m quitting, effective immediately,” Jori-Lee said.
Then she left.
62
Day Seven
July 14
Monday Evening
The lights of San Francisco were just beginning to twinkle when Teffinger and Del Rey touched down at SFI. They took a jerky cab ride into the heart of the concrete, checked into the InterContinental and ended up dangling their feet over the water at the end of Pier 39 as they passed a bottle of wine back and forth. Deep shadows were quickly morphing into a black, black night. The air was still and unusually warm.
“I grew up here until high school,” Teffinger said. “All my kid years were here.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I think in a way that may be why Kelly Nine moved here. She always asked me about it. I built it up probably more than it deserved.”
Del Rey took a swig of wine.
“Do you miss it?”
He shrugged.
“San Francisco’s a watercolor. Denver’s an oil painting. They’re both good in their own ways.” A beat then, “I will admit though, when I lived here things were a lot simpler. I was a lot more innocent back then. I miss that. I miss baseball caps and hanging around Fisherman’s Wharf and seeing everything through eyes that didn’t understand much yet.”
Del Rey squeezed his hand.
“Are you going to kill Rail, assuming you find him?”
“That’ll be up to him.”
She hesitated and then said, “Did you love Kelly?”
“Kelly’s in the past.”
“So was I once.”
“Yeah but you’re not now.”
“No, I’m not. Actually, I think it’s kind of romantic.”
He cocked his head.
“What’s romantic?”
“You hunting down the person who killed Kelly,” she said. “I wonder if you’ll do the same thing if someone kills me.”
“No one’s going to kill you.”
“What about the bird ripper?”
Teffinger frowned.
“I still can’t figure that one out.”
“You said before he was someone from your past, maybe out to get you by getting your lovers.”
“I know.”
“And?”
“I’ve busted my brain a hundred different ways and still don’t have a clue who could be crazy enough to hate me that much.”
“Someone though.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
A pause, then Del Rey said, “Well, if you are right and Kelly was the first and I’m going to be the second, then the person who hired Kelly is the same one who’s after me now.”
“True.”
“So, if that person hired Rail the first time, there’s a good chance he hired him this time too. Why mess with a formula that’s already worked fine once?”
“Are you saying Rail’s the bird ripper?”
“I think I am.”
Teffinger brought the bottle to his lips and took a swallow.
“Interesting,” he said.
Few people were around.
Fifty steps away, leaning against a pole in the deep shadows up the pier, someone was lighting matches and tossing them to the ground.
He was alone, not much more than a black silhouette framed against a slightly less-black background.
“How long has that guy been there?” Teffinger said.
“What guy?”
She looked in that direction, seeing nothing until a match struck.
“Weird,” she said.
“I can’t tell if he has a ponytail,” Teffinger said. “Can you?”
She studied the shape.
“Maybe if he moved—”
Teffinger got to his feet.
“Wait here.”
“Teff—”
“I’ll be right back.”
With each step electricity arced deeper and deeper into Teffinger’s body. The man was Rail. Teffinger could smell him. He could hear the man’s jagged heart beating. He could taste the man’s disease.
It didn’t make sense that Rail would know where they were.
They just got into the city hours ago.
Still, it wasn’t impossible.
He might have been staking out either Teffinger or Del Rey. He might have followed them to the airport. He might have even flown out on the same plane.
Teffinger didn’t have his gun.
He didn’t have a knife.
He didn’t have anything.
That didn’t stop him.
He kept walking, picking up the pace faster and faster.
When he got to the mark no one was there. A black hole hung where the man should be.
A feint patina of burnt sulfur hung in the air.
On the ground was a shape.
A closer look showed it to be a dead seagull.
The bird’s wings had been ripped off.
The gooey blood was still fresh.
The man was nowhere to be seen.
Teffinger ran.
Fifty sprints later the man still hadn’t come into sight.
He ran faster.
No one appeared.
The man was a ghost.
Suddenly a dark, dark thought bit Teffinger’s brain.
Del Rey was alone.
She was alone in the dark.
He turned and sprinted that way.
63
Day Seven
July 14
Monday Afternoon
When Jori-Lee t
old Sanders what transpired in Robertson’s office, he frowned and said, “You played it all wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“You burned your bridges.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Fuck him and fuck all the freaks he rode in on.”
“I’m not talking about the bridges to staying there,” he said. “I’m talking about the bridges to bringing him down.”
The words made no sense.
She scrunched her face to prove it.
“Look,” Sanders said, “obviously this lawyer who was going to call you and make a job offer—”
“—Leland Everitt—”
“—Right, Leland Everitt, obviously he’s in bed with Robertson. He’s covering the man’s ass.”
That was true.
“So what?”
“So, if he’s in bed with him as to you, he was probably in bed with him as to T’amara Alder.”
The words landed with an electric bite.
She flashed back to that terrible moment when the woman was murdered while Jori-Lee listed to it through her phone.
“Are you saying Leland Everitt killed T’amara?”
Sanders shrugged.
“What I’m saying is that you had a chance to get close to the man and find out.”
She retreated in thought.
Sanders was right.
She’d been so wrapped up in the fear of being turned over to the FBI and the rage against being forced out of her job that she didn’t think it through.
She looked at Sanders and said, “I’m going back to One First.”
“What for?”
“To reverse it.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell him I’ve reconsidered,” she said. “I’ll take the original flash drive with me. I’ll tell him that it’s his as soon as Leland Everitt calls me. We’ll part friends.” A beat then, “Do you think he’ll figure out what I’m up to?”
Sanders faded off.
Then he focused and said, “He didn’t get to where he is by being stupid. Still, he’s the one who opened the door. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out. What you need to be sure of is that you really want to put your life on the line. If my suspicion is right, Leland Everitt is an even bigger snake than Robertson. He’s the one with the guts to get the dirty work done.”
64
Day Eight
July 15
Tuesday Morning
Teffinger twisted and gyrated his way through an evil fitful sleep Monday night, dropping in and out of a frantic dream where the bird ripper made his way back to Del Rey before Teffinger could intercept him. In hindsight, that was the man’s plan—to get noticed flicking matches, to draw Teffinger away, to circle back and do whatever sick little thing it was that he had planned for Del Rey, right under Teffinger’ nose—just like Kelly Nine.
Teffinger fell for it but not for as long as he should have.
He made it back before the ugly jumped.
At the hotel they were so glad to be alive and unharmed that they took each other with the energy of an apocalypse.
That was last night.
Now it was morning.
Del Rey put on a no-big-deal face and did her best to hide that she was shaking with apprehension down at the core. She showered first, stepped out with a towel around her waist and said, “So what’s the plan for today?”
Teffinger dropped to his knees and kissed her stomach.
“I’m thinking we should break up,” he said. “We should go down to the lobby and have a fight. You slap me like the bastard I am, tell me to screw off forever and jump in a cab to the airport. You go somewhere you’ve never been. You hire a bodyguard and keep your head down.”
She ran her fingers through his hair.
“And then what?
“And then you wait.”
“Wait for what? Wait for him to kill you? Wait for him to find me?”
“Wait for things to get safe.”
“Which is how long? For all we know he’ll go on vacation for a year and then how up when we’ve forgotten all about him.”
Teffinger frowned.
“All I know is that right now the most dangerous job in the world is being my lover.”
She pulled him up, hugged him tight and said, “In that case I want hazardous duty pay. But whether you give it to me or not, I’m not quitting and I’m certainly not going to let you fire me.”
He exhaled.
She was right.
The plan could backfire as easily as it could work.
The distance could be the worst thing, not the best.
“Promise me one thing,” he said.
“Which is what?”
“Which is at some point down the road, you’ll let me win at least one argument.”
She smiled.
“We’ll see. You were a little rough last night—”
“Sorry.”
“That wasn’t a complaint.”
Outside a blanket of fog floated over the city and blotted out everything nice. It forced a song into Teffinger’s brain, a haunting song he played over and over back when he was an angst-filled teen trying to learn how to work a cheap guitar.
I see a red door and I want to paint it black.
No colors anymore I want them to turn black.
They ended up on Market in the heart of the financial district, winding through revolving doors into an opulent lobby with modern art on the walls that looked as if it had been thrown there. At the elevator bank Teffinger said, “Meet me on fifteen.”
“Why, where you going?”
“I’m taking the stairs.”
“To fifteen?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“I like stairs, that’s all.”
“Well if you’re taking them so am I,” she said.
The climb wasn’t as bad as Teffinger envisioned. At thirteen he said, “There’s a lot more air here than in Denver.”
“Tell that to my thighs. They’re on fire.”
Teffinger grunted.
“You said before it was romantic that I was hunting down Kelly’s killer,” he said. “I should have corrected you. I never did what I should have.”
“What does that mean?”
“She got taken from my home in Lakewood,” he said. “Lakewood had jurisdiction over the case, not Denver. I wasn’t officially involved in the investigation, although they kept me in the loop. They never flew to San Francisco where Kelly lived at the time to personally talk to anyone. They only interviewed people by phone.”
“So?”
“So, I could have flown out and done that in an ad hoc capacity,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”
“Yeah but they did talk to everyone, right?”
“As far as I know,” he said. “But phone and face are two different things. I should have come out when they didn’t. I was drowned in work and convinced myself that’s why I wasn’t going. That wasn’t the real reason, though. The real reason is that it just hurt too much. Instead of manning up and taking it I let the pain turn into a wall. Then I hid the wall behind my work.”
“You’re human Teffinger,” she said. “We all are. Don’t apologize for it. Plus, you’re here now.”
He nodded.
That was true.
“Just out of curiosity, is the pain still there?” she said.
He considered it.
“Yes but not as much. That’s the problem with time. It robs you of things. I work too hard to get those things to have them robbed.”
Floor thirteen held the offices of b.Box-Media, the advertising firm where Kelly worked at the time she was murdered.
They pushed through an ornate copper door embedded in an illuminated block-glass wall. Inside a too-cute receptionist with a too-white smile sat at a too-contemporary desk.
A narrow rectangular vase held one flower, a yellow rose.
A folded card was tucked under the base.
Perfume punc
tuated the air, more in the nature of vanilla strawberries than burning tires.
“Kelly Nine used to work here a year ago,” Teffinger said. “I’d like to talk to whoever it was that was her best friend here at the time.”
The woman studied him.
The smile dropped from her face.
“You’re Nick Teffinger,” she said.
“Right.”
“There’s a rumor you’re the one who killed her,” she said. “They said it was a lover’s spat. Being a detective, you knew how to cover it up.”
Teffinger tossed a photo of Rail on the desk.
“That’s the guy who killed her. His name is Javier Arcos but he goes by the name Rail. He’s from Portugal. Have you ever seen him before?”
The woman rose.
“No. Wait here.”
She disappeared around a corner.
Teffinger hesitated for a heartbeat; then he swept after her.
65
Day Eight
July 15
Tuesday Morning
In the flesh Leland Everitt didn’t turn out anything like what Jori-Lee expected, which was a chiseled-faced alpha-male wolf pouncing at some helpless prey with barred yellow fangs. He was the opposite—shorter than average, a body that would be lucky to crank out five push-ups, a face made for radio, a forehead that was slowly creeping up his skull and a slightly-crooked tie. His manner was timid and unassuming, almost shy.
His office was large, opulent and old school, replete with mahogany built-ins, lush patterned carpeting and expensive oil paintings.
In that office with the door shut Tuesday morning he told Jori-Lee, “I’ll be honest, I have a lot of pull within the firm, but it’s more of a democracy around here than a dictatorship. What that means is that I don’t have carte blanche authority to hire lawyers. There’s a process that has to unfold. So, the way we’re going to have to proceed is to say that you contacted me. That’s because I can’t have a perception on the street that we’re robbing One First of its talent. The story is that after you contacted me we met, I liked what I saw and I’m bringing you in to meet the crew as a prospective addition to the firm.”