by R. J. Jagger
“It didn’t,” he said. “I was flipping the dial and that’s where it was when you answered. Red rope, yes or no.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” she said. “Oh, and I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking. I’ve been running down those numbers from the lawyer’s cell phone. I’ve been able to eliminate a lot of them. There’s one that has my interest. It came from a pay phone in San Francisco.”
“San Francisco.”
Right.
“As in California,” Sydney said.
“Why does that ring a bell?”
“That’s where Jackie Lake was coming back from the night she got killed.”
Right.
“Did the call come before or after she got killed?”
“Before,” she said. “Three days before, actually.”
“Was she in town yet?”
“No. She was still in Denver at that time.”
Teffinger raked his hair back.
It flopped back down over his forehead.
“Do you have any other numbers of interest?”
“Yeah, more than I need,” she said.
“Concentrate on those.” A beat then, “Drop by the lawyer’s house tonight. Tell her we appreciate the gesture regarding the phone but we don’t have time to decipher codes. See if she’ll just tell you point-blank where we can find the little asshole.”
“I’ll try.”
He hung up and listened to the song for a few heartbeats. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t the Beatles. He punched to the oldies station, got Martha & the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” and left it there.
Back at the office he pulled the Jackie Lake file and confirmed that the lamp broken in the living room was blue. He dialed Pantage and asked, “The blue lamp has me curious. You’d been in Jackie’s house before, right?”
Right.
She had.
“Maybe that’s why it’s in your memory,” he said, “because you saw it there before.”
“I’d been in her house before but I really don’t remember seeing that lamp.” A pause then, “Hold on. That’s not true. It was in her bedroom. That’s where I saw it, it was in her bedroom.”
“Okay.”
On his desk was a half-cup of cold coffee. He poured it in the tree-sized snake plant over by the window, got a fresh cup and went through Jackie Lake’s old photos.
Several were in the bedroom.
One showed the blue lamp in there.
So, maybe Pantage’s memory was accurate after all.
If the blue lamp part of it was correct, maybe the James Dean part was too, only instead of it being the real James Dean, maybe it was his ghost—someone who looked like him.
James Dean.
James Dean.
James Dean
Did your ghost kill Jackie Lake?
He called Sydney.
“Another question,” he said.
“Wait, first answer me this,” she said. “After we hung up, did you let Beyonce finish her song or did you cut her off?”
He smiled.
“I’ll tell you what, when you come back I’ll let you program my whole radio. I won’t change it for a week.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “Now answer a question for me. When you were going through those FBI files, did the name James Dean ever come up?”
“James Dean?”
“Right, the actor.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know but—”
“Dead people don’t kill live people, Teffinger,” she said. “That’s Homocide-101.”
96
Day Five
July 22
Friday Evening
From the terrace of her loft Friday evening, Yardley called Cave and said, “The people I report to want a truce. You get a million dollars in cash and leave town. Everyone goes their separate ways. No hard feelings. If that’s acceptable, they’ll have it together by tomorrow. No tricks, no double-crosses, no lies. This would be a final deal.”
Silence.
Then, “I have an account in the Cayman’s,” he said. “You can wire it there.”
No.
No electronic footprints.
“You get cash. You can wire it yourself if you want.” A beat then, “Yes or no?”
“I’ll think about it.”
The line went dead.
Yardley knew that Cave knew it was a lie, but she also knew he was a greedy little bitch.
He’d want to believe it was true.
He’d keep himself off balance, at least for tonight, going over and over that 1 percent possibility that maybe it was legit.
That would give her time to figure out how to kill him.
She poured a glass of wine and stuck Billie Holiday in the player, getting a sultry lamenting of love gone wrong. The terrace was in the shade. The temperature was perfect. Down below, trendy little LoDo was starting to warm up its night moves.
Lights were turning on.
The shorts and Ts of the day were giving way to more formal attire.
She reclined in a lounge chair, safe.
Safe from Cave.
Safe from Ghost Wolf.
Safe from Teffinger.
Save from having to think.
Safe.
Safe.
Safe.
Safe from everything.
The wine dropped down easily and went straight to her blood.
It felt nice.
It freed her.
It lifted her.
It made her human.
She poured another glass, carried it to the railing and looked at the world below. The sun was gone. Sin, seduction and shadows were around the corner.
She loved the night.
Night was when all the stress went away. Night was when people became clearer versions of themselves. Night was when the men got hornier, the women got looser, the dangerous people woke up and the lights and music melted everything together.
She needed it, not from a distance, she needed it all around her, all over her, she needed it right there where she could touch it.
She jumped in the shower, towel-dried her hair until it was damp but not dripping, and dressed in heels, a short black skirt and a sexy black blouse that she tied in a knot below her breasts so her belly showed.
Then she headed out.
She needed to get laid.
She needed it badly.
She needed it now.
Nothing else mattered.
Nothing.
97
Day Five
July 22
Friday Evening
Pantage paced back and forth in front of the windows at homicide while Teffinger finished up one more thing at his desk. They were the only ones in the room. Outside the sun was setting
Several photos were tacked to a board behind him.
One of them was Jackie Lake.
Another was a man.
For some reason he looked vaguely familiar.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
Teffinger turned.
“Michael Northway,” he said.
“Who’s he?”
“A schmuck.”
She smiled.
“He looks familiar,” she said. “I’ve seen him around somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“He used to be a hotshot lawyer here in town,” he said. “You probably crossed paths with him at some point.”
She nodded.
That was probably it.
“Where is he now?”
“New York.” He powered his computer off and stood up. “Are you ready for your surprise?”
Yes.
She was.
“It involves something kinky, I hope.”
He slapped her ass.
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
The Daniels & Fisher Tower sat in the heart of
Denver on the mall. The 17th floor, just below the 2-story clock façade, had a wraparound observation deck. From there, inside the structure, a ladder led to the top of the building above the clock, which was an open bell cap protected by a narrow deck. That’s where Teffinger took Pantage.
Below, Denver spiraled out in all directions.
The Pepsi Center, the Auraria campus and Elitch Gardens looked like toy replicas. The 6th Avenue freeway was a ribbon of headlights coming in and taillights going out.
Immediately below, the mall buzzed with Friday night life.
Teffinger wiggled out of a backpack, got a bottle of white wine out, poured two glasses and handed one to Pantage.
She clinked his with hers and took a swallow.
It dropped into her stomach and sent a warm chill into her brain.
“You’re on the 20th floor right now,” Teffinger said. “Not many people make it up here. Even the 17th floor deck is only opened up to the public once or twice a year.”
“Why are you so special?”
“We had a homicide here two years ago right where we’re standing,” he said. “I got to know the maintenance guys. One of them was storing his pot up here in a weatherproof case. I never told anyone. He was appreciative.”
“You’d be a good lawyer,” she said. “You know how to horse trade.”
“Yeah but I can’t lie good enough.”
“That’s true. You’d need to work on that. I could teach you.”
He smiled.
Then he put a serious expression on his face.
“I did some follow-up on your James Dean flash,” he said. “I got to thinking that maybe you were seeing someone who looks like James Dean. I mentioned it to Kelly Ravenfield who turned me on to something.”
“What?”
“There’s a private investigator in town by the name of Sanders Cave,” Teffinger said. “Kelly’s old law firm used to hire him for projects. He has a remarkable resemblance to James Dean.”
Pantage’s heart raced.
“Do you have a picture of him?”
Yes.
He did.
He pulled an image up of the man’s driver’s license on his cell phone and tilted it so Pantage could see.
“Is this the guy you saw?”
She couldn’t believe it.
“It could be.”
“What’s that mean? Maybe yes, maybe no?”
“I’d say 90 percent yes,” she said.
“Ninety percent,” Teffinger said. “Could you pick him out of a lineup?”
“No.”
“No? I don’t get it.”
“I can’t say he was the person I saw at Jackie’s,” she said. “He’s the person I saw in my flash. I can’t say that the flash was a memory, though. It was more like I was watching a movie. Maybe the movie came from a memory but I don’t have an actual memory. The more I think about it, the whole thing may have materialized in my head because I’d been looking at the cover of ‘Rebel Without a Cause.’ I have to be honest, Nick. If Abraham Lincoln’s face had been on the cover, it might have been him that I saw in my flash.”
Teffinger stared at the lights.
“Can you get a search warrant for his house?”
“Not based on what you’ve told me,” he said. “What you’re saying is that you saw him more in something like a dream than a memory.”
She nodded.
“Sorry. I wish I could say otherwise.”
Teffinger pulled her to him.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. “Right now at this second I don’t care about anything except one thing.”
98
Day Five
July 22
Friday Night
Teffinger swung past the gladiator’s place, found the lights on and decided to hang out for a while and see if the man made a move. The chances were remote but remote was still more than zero. He parked a half block down the street, killed the engine and left the radio on.
The Zombies sang “Tell Her No.”
Teffinger could still smell Pantage in his clothes and taste her in his mouth. She might be a lawyer but she was built for sex and not afraid to prove it.
A shadow moved in the gladiator’s window.
Frankly, Teffinger wasn’t sure he was staking out the right man.
Cave was still a contender in his mind.
The gladiator, however, had more concrete evidence against him. He’d been staking out Pantage for at least two weeks. Admittedly there could be a non-lethal explanation. Maybe the gladiator saw her somewhere, got infatuated and decided to do a little recon before making a move. Guys have done stranger things. Still, the gladiator didn’t really need recon, not if the only goal was to impress a woman. He carried all the persuasion he needed right there in his smile and his muscles. He was more the kind of guy who could just look at a woman and suck her in.
Teffinger needed access to the man’s laptop.
He needed to find out if the guy had photo files on any of the other Van Gogh victims. What would really be nice is if Teffinger could find a bottle of ears. He had to resist the urge to break in. If the evidence was there and he tainted it through an illegal entry, that would be irreversible.
A light went out.
Then another.
Two minutes later the man walked out of the building to a car and pulled into the night.
Teffinger turned the radio off and followed.
“Head to Pantage’s house,” he said. “I dare you.”
If the gladiator was going for Pantage, he was doing it by way of a fifty mile detour, heading east on 6th Avenue all the way to Golden, then cutting to the left and winding up Lookout Mountain.
The road snaked up with an endless string of hairpin switchbacks, winding ever higher. The lights of Denver twinkled to the east, stretching farther and farther out as the road climbed.
Teffinger stayed back as far as he dared and, in fact, didn’t even have a visual of the gladiator most of the time.
He came around a switchback.
The gladiator was parked in a turnoff, standing in front of his headlights.
As Teffinger came around, the man waved him in.
The smart thing to do would be to keep going.
He pulled in, killed the engine and stepped out.
“Nice view, huh?”
“Yeah, real pretty,” Teffinger said.
“I killed a man here once,” the gladiator said. “I was seventeen. He was twenty-three. His girl liked me better than she liked him. He didn’t take too kindly to that and wanted to settle things man to man. I said sure but he’d have to throw the first punch. You know why?”
Teffinger said nothing.
“Self-defense,” the gladiator said. “Once that first punch is thrown, a man has a right to defend himself.”
He took his shirt off, slowly, one button at a time and then neatly placed it on the hood.
His chest was steel.
His arms were pythons.
“How about it Teffinger? Do you feel like taking that first punch?”
Teffinger took a step towards the man and squared off.
“Why don’t we both take it?” he said. “On the count of three. I’ll even let you do the counting.”
The gladiator hardened his face.
He raised his fists.
“Good enough,” he said.
Teffinger put his fists up and said, “This is for that little Asian girl.”
One …
Two …
Three!
99
Day Five
July 22
Friday Night
Yardley ended up in a throbbing club filled with nasty thoughts, hot bodies and a driving beat. She got three rum and cokes in her gut on top of the wine and wedged into the center of the dance floor. The music took control. She surrendered to it, her arms up, her hips grinding, her lips parted, her eyes unfocused.
A body ground into her from behind.
&nbs
p; A hand reached around and cupped her stomach.
She didn’t turn around.
She went with the beat.
She went with the moment.
The hand moved up and went to her breast. Yardley pushed the hand in tighter. A nibble came at the back of her neck.
She turned and found herself face to face with a stunning woman.
A stranger.
A perfect stranger.
A perfect stranger with lagoon eyes, soft blond hair and pink lips.
They kissed.
The woman’s mouth was soft.
Her tongue was wet.
Her perfume was sex.
She put her mouth to Yardley’s ear and said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
Yardley pulled up an image.
They were in bed.
She was on her back.
The woman was above her, naked from the waist down, straddling Yardley’s face, rocking her hips, grabbing a fistful of Yardley’s hair with hard tight fingers and pulling her face up tighter into her pussy.
She squeezed the woman’s hand.
“I live close,” she said.
“Let’s go.”
100
Day Six
July 23
Saturday Morning
Teffinger regained consciousness to find he was outside in the dirt, in the middle of a black night, with a seriously damaged face and a body that may or may not be broken. He got to his knees and used the Tundra for support to get upright. The lights of Denver came in and out of focus to the east. He was still up on Lookout Mountain.
The gladiator had beaten the shit out of him.
It was one-sided from the get.
In fact, Teffinger couldn’t even remember if he got one solid punch to the man’s face.
The guy could have killed him.
The next time he would.
This was a warning.
He got into the truck and sat there until the dizziness in his head dissipated, then made it home alive. The bathroom mirror wasn’t kind. It showed a seriously swollen lip, a half-shut eye, ragged cuts, and a large number of nasty bruises on his arms, neck and torso. Under his hair was a lump the size of an egg. As far as he could tell, no bones were broken. He got in the shower, cleaned up as good as he could, left all the wounds uncovered and fell into bed.
