by R. J. Jagger
Wilde tilted his head.
“You’re exactly wrong,” he said. “In fact, I’ve gotten over her three or four different times already.”
She punched his arm.
“You’re going to be hard to live with today, I can tell.” A pause then, “So what do you want me to do today, stick with our detective friend Warner Raven?”
Wilde nodded.
“Stay with the sleaze angle,” he said. “If he was in a camera club he was probably taking a hooker for a romp every now and then. Find out who; and find out what he whispered in her ear.” He handed her two more twenties. “Here, take some tongue lubricant.”
She stuffed it in her bra.
“What are you going to do while I’m doing all the work?”
He smiled.
Then the smile dropped off his face. “A woman’s going to be abducted this week, probably today. She’ll be killed on Friday. Just keep that in mind.”
She shifted her feet.
“Give me more lubricant.”
Wilde handed her three more twenties.
She stuffed them with the other two and headed for the door.
“Don’t burn the place down while I’m gone.”
32
Day Two
July 16
Wednesday Morning
Durivage was disappointed that Zongying never came back home last night to give him drunk sex, but he was glad for the reason, namely that she infiltrated Nicole to the point of even ending up with a threesome with her and a guy named Bryson Wilde.
“This guy, Bryson Wilde, was the drummer in the band,” Zongying said. “It turns out, though, that drumming is just a night gig he does every now and then. In the daytime he’s actually a private investigator.”
“Really?”
Zongying nodded.
“Here’s the important part,” she said. “When Nicole found out he was a PI, she asked him if he’d do a project for her, for pay. Wilde said, What kind of project? At that point, Nicole pulled a photograph of Emmanuelle out of her suitcase and said, I’m trying to find this woman. Wilde asked, Why? Nicole said, There’s someone in town who’s going to kill her. The reason I came here is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Durivage’s heart raced.
“She’s lying,” he said. “I hope you understand that.”
“I do,” Zongying said.
“She’s not here to protect anyone,” he said. “She’s here to kill her. The reason she said what she said is that after she kills her, Wilde will just think that she failed in her efforts to protect the woman. It would look too strange if she simply hired Wilde to find the woman and then the next day the woman turns up dead.”
“I know that.”
Durivage paced.
“It’s ironic that me and Nicole are saying the same thing,” he said. “Deep down you have to be wondering which one of us is lying.”
“I know who’s lying,” Zongying said. “And it certainly wasn’t the person who got Spencer out of my life.”
“I hope you actually believe that,” Durivage said.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the bedroom.
“Let me show you,” she said.
Durivage fell into step. As he unbuttoned Zongying’s blouse he said, “Did Wilde take the job?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re in tight with both of them. Keep your ear to the ground.”
33
Day Two
July 16
Wednesday Morning
The client who knocked at the door last night was a fake, Jina was almost positive of that. What she couldn’t figure out was who the mysterious woman in the back of the cab was, the one pulling the strings. Jina was aware of only two females who knew about the scroll and the fact that it came in a box from a mysterious client, namely Taylor Lee and Blanche Twister.
Was one of them double-crossing her?
Jina twisted and shifted all night trying to figure it out.
By the time morning rolled around her groggy brain knew one thing and one thing only, she absolutely had to get the scroll someplace safe.
Her office didn’t qualify.
Her apartment didn’t qualify.
So, where?
Early morning at the break of dawn, she jogged down to her office, jimmied the door open with a screwdriver and then trashed the place.
She went home, wrapped a towel around her fist, went out onto the fire escape and then broke the window with a quick punch. The glass fell inside, as it would if there had been a break-in.
She then trashed the place.
There.
Done.
She rented a car and drove north looking for the perfect spot. Next to her on the seat was the scroll, tucked in a pillowcase. On the passenger side floorboard was the best digging device she could find in her apartment, an ice cream scooper.
The traffic thinned.
Then it disappeared almost entirely.
She came to a railroad crossing. A dirt service road ran parallel to the tracks. She looked around, saw no cars and turned the wheel to the right. The topography along the tracks was typical Colorado prairie, covered with rabbit brush, yucca and wild grass. She would have preferred more trees but the total lack of life and increasing remoteness offset it. She drove slowly, not wanting to throw up a rooster tail.
A couple of miles in, something appeared on the side, wedged into a bush.
She slowed as she came to it.
It was a body.
A man’s body.
She stopped next to it.
He’d been beaten to death.
His eyes were open.
Ants crawled on his face.
She left the engine running, got out and looked around. A couple of magpies jumped off a bush in the distance and flew away. Something small rustled a few steps over to the right, but when she looked over it wasn’t visible.
Probably a rabbit or a snake.
Against her better judgment she went through the man’s pockets and found a wallet with a driver’s license for one Michael Spencer and a folded sheet of paper that contained several handwritten names and telephone numbers. In his front pocket she found a key ring with 6 keys, plus a money clip with a lot of bills, not small ones either, the one showing on the outside was a twenty.
She pulled the bills out and counted the money.
There was over five hundred dollars.
The air was still and quiet.
No one was around, not anywhere.
She tossed the wallet, keys and money clip on the front seat and kept driving. About two hundred yards down the road she came upon a scraggly weather-beaten pinion pine about eight feet tall.
That would be a good marker.
She stopped next to it, killed the engine and stepped out.
No sounds or movement came from any direction.
She started at the pine and walked directly away from the road. At step twenty-two, she came to a moss rock the size of a basketball. She got down on all fours to see if she could move it, which she could. She buried the scroll one foot under where the rock had been and then moved the rock back into place. A little smoothing of the dirt hid any evidence of digging.
She got back into the car and drove for another three hundred yards, just so the turn marks, if there were any, wouldn’t be by the pinion.
Then she turned around and headed back, wanting to go fast but keeping her speed to where it wouldn’t throw the dust too high.
She came across no one.
Not a single soul.
There.
Done.
On the drive back to the city she kept enough attention on the road to keep from smashing into anything, but most of her thoughts were on the body.
Michael Spencer.
What did he do to get himself murdered?
34
Day Two
July 16
Wednesday Morning
What was that woman’s name? The one wh
o ended up dead when Raven didn’t follow orders? Wilde checked his notes. Jessica Dent. As soon as he read it he remembered. She’s the one who got Next time follow directions carved into her body.
How did the killer pick her out?
Since it worked so well last time, would he do it the same way again?
Jessica Dent.
Jessica Dent.
Wilde pulled last year’s phone book out of his bottom desk drawer to see if she was in there.
She was.
He grabbed his hat, tilted it over his left eye, lit a cigarette and headed for the street. On the way down the stairs he ran into the last person he expected, Nicole, one-third of last night’s threesome.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“To do some snooping around.”
“On my case?”
He winced.
“Actually a different one.”
“Can I go with you?”
“It’s not going to be anything exciting,” he said.
She linked her arm through his.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
She helped him drop the MG’s top and said getting in, “What’s our mission?”
“A woman got abducted and murdered fourteen months ago,” Wilde said. “I want to find out where she got taken from, meaning the physical spot in the universe.”
“Why?”
“Because the same man who took her is going to take another woman, probably today. I wouldn’t mind being there at that physical point when he does it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“About which part?”
“All of it.”
No.
He wasn’t.
“The woman who gets taken today is going to die on Friday,” he said.
Jessica Dent’s phone book address was for a nice house on Grant Street, too nice, actually. Wilde rapped on the door and a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe and curlers answered.
“A woman named Jessica Dent used to live here,” Wilde said. “I’m trying to find out what I can about her.”
“Why?”
“I’m a private investigator,” he said.
The woman studied him, deciding, then let him in.
A half hour later he left with some interesting information. The house had been a rental for at least ten years. Jessica was a renter. “But that was impossible because she was only a waitress,” the woman said.
“Are you sure?”
She was.
“She worked at the Silver Spoon,” the woman said. “I’ve seen her there myself. She even waited on me a few times. What a coincidence, huh?”
“Indeed.”
Wilde also left with a suitcase that the woman discovered in the basement last month. “There’s not much in there,” she said, “just some clothes and papers and photos. I don’t want it here, so if you find a home for it that would be great. It gives me the creeps to tell you the truth.”
“I understand.”
“She must have had a sugar daddy,” Nicole said outside.
“Could be. The next stop is the restaurant. Are you hungry?”
She was.
“Yet another coincidence,” Wilde said. “They’re starting to rule the world.”
The Silver Spoon wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
It took them ten minutes of wandering around and asking questions to figure out that it was now the bar they were standing in front of, Tipsy’s.
They walked inside to see if anyone who worked there knew anything about the restaurant or Jessica Dent.
No one did.
“Do you know why?” Wilde asked.
No.
She didn’t.
“Because that’s how my life works.”
The asphalt was heating up.
It would break a hundred again.
“Did she get taken after a work shift?”
Wilde shrugged.
“That’s my guess.”
“Did she have a car?”
“Unknown.”
“Well, we didn’t drive that far to get here,” Nicole said. “Five blocks maybe. She probably would have walked home, don’t you think? Maybe someone took her between here and there.”
Wilde looked at her.
“I’m impressed.”
They walked the route.
It was very public.
There were no dark alleys or menacing hiding places for someone to jump out of.
“Sorry,” Nicole said. “I just wasted our time.”
“Maybe not,” Wilde said.
“What do you mean?”
“It means there were no really good spots for a random abduction,” he said. “If it wasn’t random then it must have been planned.”
“You think she was targeted all along?”
“Could be,” he said. “Let’s head back to the office and see what’s in the suitcase.”
“I need food first,” she said. “Food and iced tea. So feed me, cowboy.”
“Feed you?”
“Right, feed me.”
“As in, I’m the one who’s going to pay?”
She nodded.
“We’re not going to split the bill or anything like that?”
“No, you’re going to pay.”
“Are you going to leave the tip at least?”
“No, you are.”
Wilde put his hand on her stomach and moved it around.
“You don’t feel hungry,” he said.
“Feel again,” she said.
35
Day Two
July 16
Wednesday Morning
While Zongying canvassed more hotels to see if she could locate Emmanuelle Martin, Durivage got a crazy idea and decided to act on it, right here, right now. He took a cab to Nicole Wickliff’s hotel, walked up the stairs two at a time to her room and rapped on the door with a racing heart.
His plan was simple.
He was going to tell the woman that he knew who she was and knew she was in town to kill Emmanuelle. He was going to tell her that he’d never let that happen. He was going to tell her she had one hour to pack her bags and get out of town.
Rap, rap, rap.
No answer.
Durivage turned the knob.
It was locked.
He headed back down, spotted a greasy spoon across the street and drank coffee with one eye on the hotel.
This was important.
It was worth waiting for.
The area was a study in motion.
Everyone was on the move, focused, scampering.
Durivage’s cup got empty. A middle-aged woman in an apron came over with a pot and filled it with a smile.
“Merci,” he said.
The word startled her.
“Are you French?”
He nodded.
“Oui.”
“I’ve never remembered so many foreigners being in town,” she said. “There was a woman from Greece in here yesterday.”
Durivage didn’t care but smiled as if he did.
“That’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
He drank two more cups of coffee, put a nice tip on the table and left.
From there he headed over to Larimer Street.
Halfway there he turned around and headed back. The waitress was still there. Durivage ordered another cup of coffee and said, “So there was a Greek woman in here yesterday, huh?”
Yes.
True.
“We haven’t had a foreigner in here for years,” she said. “Now two in as many days.”
“Tell me about her,” Durivage said. “What’d she look like?”
36
Day Two
July 16
Wednesday Morning
From the lobby of the Daniels & Fisher Tower, Jina surprised Taylor Lee with a telephone call that she was in the building and they needed to talk. They ended up walking down 16th Street as Jina recanted how the mystery client showed up at her a
partment last night. She didn’t mention following the man or seeing him in the back of a cab with a woman.
If Taylor turned out to be that woman, she already knew about the client showing up at Jina’s door. In turn, she’d expect Jina to tell her about it.
That’s why Jina was here.
That and to try to get a vibe as to whether the cab woman was in fact Taylor.
So far, she saw no definitive signs one way or the other.
Taylor looked at her watch.
“He’s coming to your office at noon?”
“Right.”
“It’s already 10:30.”
“I’m about 99 percent sure he’s a fake,” Jina said. “The only person who knew that I had the scroll and got it from a mysterious client I’d never met is the woman I talked with at the university, Blanche Twister.”
“You think she’s behind this?”
Jina shrugged.
“If she’s not, then the client’s real,” Jina said. “The way he had it dropped off so mysteriously and then showed up wanting it back without actually wanting any legal representation would force me to conclude he was just using me as a safe haven, which in turn meant he stole it. So, either way, I’m not going to give it to him.”
“We need to think,” Taylor said. “Where’s the scroll right now?”
“In my freezer.”
“Let’s head over,” Taylor said. “I’ll take it and keep it safe until we can learn more about what’s going on.”
“Good idea.”
When they got to Jina’s apartment, it was trashed and the freezer door was open.
The scroll was gone.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
Taylor hung her head and said, “This could be my fault. I told someone about the scroll.”
“Who?”
37
Day Two
July 16
Wednesday Morning
Back at the office Wilde tossed his hat at the rack and missed. Nicole picked it up, walked back to where Wilde was and tossed it—bingo. “Beginner’s luck.” He opened the windows and got the fans blowing while Nicole looked around and said, “You’re a man who believes in keeping the overhead low.”
Wilde lit a cigarette.
