Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  She recognized him but was having trouble zeroing in.

  “Nick Teffinger,” he reminded her. “Kelly Ravenfield’s friend.”

  The confusion dropped off her face.

  “Right,” she said. “From the club. You’re the detective.” She swung the door all the way open, an invitation for him to enter, walked over to the couch and plopped herself down, yawning. “What time is it?”

  Teffinger shut the door behind him, looked at his watch and took a seat in the overstuffed chair across from the couch. “Ten after eight. Sorry to wake you.” He had a thermos of coffee in his right hand and held it up, a peace offering. “Coffee,” he said. “Some kind of chocolate-cherry flavor, if you’re in the mood.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m going back to bed as soon as you leave. So what’s going on?”

  “I’m assuming you haven’t heard about Kelly,” Teffinger told her.

  The look on her face told him she hadn’t.

  “No. Heard what?”

  Teffinger organized it, not wanting to give her too much information, but enough. “Someone attacked her Saturday night. She’s at Lutheran Medical Center.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  No, he wasn’t.

  “Someone stuffed her into the trunk of her car and drove it off an embankment into Clear Creek, up on Route 6, between the second and third tunnels. Luckily the river dropped and the vehicle ended up lodging itself nose down, with the trunk up in the air. Otherwise she would have drowned.”

  Teffinger waited while the woman processed the information and visualized the scene. She looked seriously troubled.

  “How horrible,” she said

  Teffinger nodded.

  “Ironically, the recovery team almost killed her getting the car out of the river. They didn’t know she was in there.”

  “So is she going to be okay, or what?”

  He wasn’t sure.

  “They’re running tests,” he told her, “and have her all doped up. But she’s a strong woman and that will help.”

  “Poor Kelly.”

  TEFFINGER NODDED AND THEN DECIDED it was time to get what he came for. “Last weekend, last Saturday in fact, a woman named D’endra Vaughn was murdered. I’m assuming that you know about that, since you’re her friend.”

  The woman looked perplexed.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Your name came up as part of our background investigation of the victim, the Vaughn woman, that’s all. You’re not in any trouble or anything.”

  “That would be a first.” Then after a pause, “Yes, I know about D’endra’s death. And yes, we were friends.”

  Teffinger zeroed in on the critical question.

  “And Kelly was a friend of hers too, correct?”

  Dannenberg immediately disagreed.

  “No. Kelly is a friend of mine, but Kelly and D’endra never met.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. Why would I lie?”

  “I’m not saying you are,” Teffinger assured her. “Did you know that after D’endra Vaughn was killed, someone used her cell phone to call Kelly? Did Kelly tell you about that?”

  The woman wasn’t particularly comfortable with the line of questioning. “Look, I don’t know if I should be talking to you about all this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s . . . I don’t know . . . complicated.”

  “Kelly is in a hospital right now, lucky to be alive,” Teffinger reiterated. “The attack on her is connected to D’endra Vaughn. So you need to tell me what I need to know so I can get to the bottom of this.” Then, after a pause, “Otherwise she’s going to end up dead, plain and simple.”

  Jeannie stood up and paced, visibly stressed.

  Her shirt flapped open as she walked and Teffinger did his best to not look, but wasn’t quite succeeding.

  “I got to think,” she finally said. Then, “I’m starved. Did you eat breakfast yet?”

  No, he hadn’t.

  She headed towards the bathroom.

  “Let me throw on a quick face and then I’ll let you take me to Denny’s. I may or may not have something to say so don’t get your hopes up too far.”

  Teffinger said, “Fair enough,” and realized that he could definitely eat. He suddenly visualized a plate of pancakes smothered under whipped cream and strawberries.

  DANNENBERG CAME OUT of the bathroom five minutes later with the sleep off her face and her hair in a ponytail, wearing green cotton pants and a bulky Rockies sweatshirt.

  “Meet the anti-Oasis,” she said.

  They paused long enough for her to grab a mug out of the kitchen cabinet and fill it up with that chocolate-cherry coffee that Teffinger had been carrying around. Ten minutes later they were at Denny’s with orders already in the works and hot fresh coffee sitting in front of them. The stereo played “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon,” not the original Neil Diamond version, but the edgier one from Pulp Fiction. Teffinger visualized the scene with Uma Thurman lip-syncing it and made a mental note that he needed to watch it again.

  He asked the waitress to leave the pot.

  At first she wasn’t going to but then looked at him real close and did.

  Teffinger had to be at least ten years older than Dannenberg and some of the people around them were casting a glance or two in their direction. He could tell that they were thinking that he and the woman had spent the night together. He was half expecting the cook to jump out and give him a big high-five.

  “Your eyes are two different colors,” she said. “One’s blue and one’s green. I’ve never seen that before. It’s sort of cool.” Then she closed her eyes. “What color are mine?”

  Teffinger tilted his head.

  “Brown-Eyed Girl. You ever hear that song, by Van Morrison?”

  She opened her eyes, blew him a kiss and rocked her head back and forth. “. . . you my-yyyy, brown-eyed girl . . .”

  “Very good.”

  “I didn’t know who sang it though.”

  Teffinger wasn’t surprised. “It came out before you were born. So let’s get back to Kelly and D’endra Vaughn for a second. Tell me the connection.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “So un-complicate it for me.”

  “It’s complicated as in maybe a little bit illegal,” she clarified. “If I talk to you, you can’t be using what I say against me or Kelly. That’s the deal.”

  Teffinger had no problem with that.

  “Unless you all killed somebody or something, I don’t really give a flying donut what you did.”

  She studied him.

  “She likes you, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Kelly. So you be nice to her. Don’t go breaking her heart.”

  “She’s lucky to have a friend like you. Now, talk to me.”

  OVER PANCAKES AND COFFEE Teffinger heard quite a story.

  Jeannie Dannenberg had in fact been a friend of the murdered schoolteacher, D’endra Vaughn. They also had a third friend by the name of Alicia Elmblade.

  In May of last year, the three women participated in a fake abduction staged at a place called Rick’s Gas Station. Alicia Elmblade was the one abducted. Jeannie and D’endra were each paid $10,000 to witness the abduction and make a false report to the police, saying that they saw an Asian man drag her into a van and drive off.

  Kelly was also in on the deal, although she wasn’t a friend of the other three women. Her part of the charade was to pull up just as the abduction was taking place, witness it, call 911 and then give the same story to the police, namely that she’d seen an Asian man.

  The other person in on the charade was the driver of the van. He’s the one who arranged the whole deal and paid the money. They didn’t know his name at the time. However, Jeannie later found out from Kelly that he was Michael Northway, an attorney in Kelly’s law firm.

&nbs
p; Alicia Elmblade, by the way, got $100,000 for her role.

  She’s never been heard from since that night.

  After letting her get the general story out, Teffinger led her back to the beginning and had her go over the whole thing again, this time filling in the million details that he needed to know. By the time they were finished, he was surprised to see that they’d been talking for over an hour.

  “You done good,” he told her, which was true. “I couldn’t have figured this out in a thousand years if you hadn’t told me.”

  She looked relieved that it was all out in the open.

  “It’s off the record, though. Right?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s the deal.”

  With two pots of coffee flowing through his veins, he knew what he needed to do next and was suddenly anxious to get going on it.

  HE DROPPED THE BROWN-EYED-GIRL OFF at her apartment, thanked her again, then called Baxter and started talking as soon as she answered. “Katie, it’s me, the pain in your posterior. We need a full background check on a guy named Michael Northway. He’s a lawyer, lives out in Cherry Creek or Cherry Hills somewhere. Cherry something. Also, there was an abduction of a woman named Alicia Elmblade last May, somewhere in the foothills but I’m not exactly sure where, at a place called Rick’s Gas Station. There’s a local police report on it that I need to get my hands on. Oh, I almost forgot. Good morning. By the way, this all relates to the D’endra Vaughn and Kelly Ravenfield cases. I’ll fill you in this afternoon. Love you, darling.”

  “You have a strange way of showing it.”

  “Yeah. By the way, did I say thanks?”

  “No.”

  “I will.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Day Nine - April 24

  Tuesday Morning

  ____________

  KELLY FOUND HERSELF coming out of a deep, drug-enhanced sleep. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a dashboard and realized she was in a car, sitting in the passenger seat, reclined as far as it would go. Next to her Jeannie Dannenberg stared out at the road, driving. The car radio was turned down low, barely audible, to a country-western station. She looked out the window and realized they were clipping along at a pretty good rate on an interstate, winding through an incredible canyon of sheer rock walls with a raging river off to the left. She was most definitely not in Denver anymore.

  Jeannie must have noticed her movement, because she said, “Good morning, sweetheart.”

  Kelly felt like she was in the middle of a fog that had her surrounded for a hundred miles. Then she remembered taking the painkillers this morning.

  She fumbled around for the seat control and managed to get her body up to vertical. That felt better on her back.

  “Where are we?”

  “You don’t recognize Glenwood Canyon?”

  Then she did.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “You’ve been out for more than two hours.”

  Kelly now realized why she woke up.

  “Bathroom,” she said. “Now.”

  “Me too. We need gas, anyway. How you feeling?”

  Good question.

  She remembered the endless hours of being stuffed in the trunk of her car. She recalled the ambulance ride, after they pulled her from the river, and remembered being in the hospital. She remembered being so very, very cold, and hearing the word hypothermia several times. She remembered getting warmer and warmer at the hospital and how incredibly good that felt. She remembered the X-rays and the faces of lots of strangers, telling her which way to turn, doing things to her and asking if it hurt. She remembered that every time she woke up during the night, Teffinger had been there.

  This morning she was feeling a whole lot better and all the news from the doctors had been good. She didn’t have any broken bones and her spine hadn’t sustained any permanent injury from the stun-gun. Her neck had been strained from her head bouncing around, similar to a whiplash injury, but there didn’t appear to be any torn muscles. They told her the pain should go away in a couple of days and if it didn’t she might need some physical therapy, but nothing to get worried about.

  She remembered checking out this morning, against her doctor’s recommendations, but with his authorization if she insisted. Then Jeannie Dannenberg picked her up and they swung by her loft to pack some clothes, and pick up the case file, before heading out on the road.

  “Are you okay?” Jeannie asked again.

  “Yeah, just groggy.”

  She wanted to wake up in the worst way. “Find a gas station that has coffee,” she said.

  Jeannie nodded and then threw a nervous glance her way. “Are you sure you’re not mad at me for telling Nick about Rick’s Gas Station?”

  Kelly wasn’t sure, if the truth be told, one way or the other.

  She hadn’t talked to Northway yet and didn’t have a clue how much fallout was going to end up coming her way after Teffinger confronted him, which was inevitable.

  But it made no sense to have Jeannie feel bad about it. “No, forget it. Things were going to start busting open one way or the other anyway. If I end up unemployed or disbarred, though, I’m coming to live with you. You understand that, I hope.”

  “That’d be okay but our lease has a No Lawyers clause.”

  Kelly smiled.

  “Most do,” she said.

  A gas station popped up and they stopped.

  TEN MINUTES LATER THEY WERE FULLY GASSED up, with a bug-free windshield, and back on the road, sipping from Styrofoam cups filled with the best piping-hot coffee that either one of them had ever tasted. Kelly felt her brain starting to return.

  They were heading to Grand Junction for a one-day trial that was scheduled to start tomorrow morning in the Mesa County District Court. No one else in the firm would have been able to jump in and handle it and wouldn’t want to in any event. Kelly had taken it pro bono. Her client, Catherine Wilson, 23, single mother of two, was being sued by her former employer for embezzlement of company funds. The only problem was, she didn’t do it, and if Kelly couldn’t get a judgment in her favor, she may as well hang up any chance of ever getting a decent job again, in this or the next two lifetimes.

  They were heading west on I-70 with the cruise control of the Honda set at 78 mph, three over the speed limit. It was the same car that Kelly rented for Jeannie a few days ago.

  As they left Glenwood Springs behind them the terrain lost its mountain edge, turning more arid and hilly. The traffic fell off considerably and the eighteen-wheelers began to outnumber the cars. A severe thunderhead was building up in the north, twenty miles away, maybe further, looking like it would spit lightning any second. The sky overhead, by contrast, was bright blue and dotted with solid, white, cotton-ball clouds, seriously stunning.

  At certain crests in the road you could see forever in every direction.

  “You know what we should do?” Jeannie suggested. “After your trial tomorrow, just keep going, all the way to California and see if we can find Alicia.”

  She laughed.

  “I’m a lawyer, honey, a lawyer with a mortgage. There’s more golden handcuffs on these wrists than you’d ever want to know about.”

  “You’re a lawyer with a target on her back,” Jeannie said. She wore white shorts, a tank top and sandals, and looked way too feminine. “We should go to L.A. and hire a P.I.”

  “We could do that from Denver.”

  “Yeah but it wouldn’t be as much fun. Have you ever been to La-La Land?”

  “No.”

  “It’s nuts there.”

  They were at a point in the road where they could only get three stations on the radio, all country. Kelly had never really listened to country before and was a little surprised to find that it wasn’t all just about pickup trucks and cheating hearts.

  The scenery continued to roll by. For some reason Kelly found herself mesmerized by it. It was incredibly nice being on the road.

  Plus her body needed the
rest.

  AT SOME POINT THE COLORADO RIVER appeared on their right, running wide and brown and powerful, escorting them into Grand Junction. The interstate and the river funneled into a canyon and rubbed against each other. The road tightened and twisted and the speed limit dropped. When they were just a few miles from the first exit into town, Kelly’s cell phone rang. It was Teffinger. He sounded harried.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Grand Junction.”

  “Grand Junction?”

  “Yes, Grand Junction. I have a trial here tomorrow. You sound strange, like you’re in a tunnel or something.”

  “A stairway,” he explained. “Twenty-first floor. I’m about five minutes away from peeling back Michael Northway. I thought you should know.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Day Nine - April 24

  Tuesday Noon

  __________

  TEFFINGER WALKED UP the twenty-five flights of stairs to the law offices of Holland, Roberts & Northway, LLC, not in the mood to mess with elevators. By the time he got up there his legs were on fire. Then he found out that the stairwell door wouldn’t open on that floor from his side. He ended up having to rap on it for several minutes before someone finally opened it to see what all the fuss was about.

  Sydney was waiting for him in the law firm’s lobby, parked in an oversized leather chair, reading a Sunset magazine and looking like she’d been there for a while. She didn’t seem overly surprised when someone escorted him into the area from behind the receptionist’s desk.

  “Don’t even say it,” he warned.

  “It.”

  “Not funny.”

  She leaned forward in the chair but made no move to get up. “He’s here and he’s going to see us, as soon as the client he’s with leaves.”

  “When’s that?”

  She shrugged.

  “When they’re done, I suppose.”

  That was fine with Teffinger. It would give the lawyer additional time to build up a sweat. The main thing is that they were invading his turf, letting him know just by their presence that the golden walls of the building couldn’t protect him.