Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller)
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Teffinger kissed her.
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’ll do it but not with any enthusiasm,” she said. “Like I said, Colder’s a misdirect. Susan Smith is the one you should be focused on.”
“You want to make a dungeon bet on it?”
She shook his hand.
“You’re on.”
Five minutes later Teffinger was in the Tundra heading for the office with a cup of coffee in his left hand.
His stomach churned.
Until this morning he’d never realized exactly how intelligent Del Rey was. Sure, he knew she was a lawyer and was a reputable one, which obviously took some horsepower in the smarts department, but he never appreciated her depth until they had a common ground. Not one in a thousand people could have come up with theory she had.
Even Teffinger hadn’t come up with it.
To her face, he’d dismissed it.
Deep down, though, it was starting to vibrate.
28
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Morning
Del Rey’s theory that Susan Smith killed Portia clawed deeper and deeper into Teffinger’s brain in spite of his every effort to dismiss it. By mid-morning it was so intrusive that he had to get around the woman to take a closer look.
When he knocked, the woman answered the door in workout clothes.
Her chest heaved.
Her body was moist with sweat.
“Come on it.”
He followed her to a treadmill next to a large window and watched the numbers as she worked the dial, stopping at 8.
“I’m impressed,” he said. “That’s about double what I do.”
Her feet pounded.
She looked his way.
“I doubt that.”
“In my defense, though,” he said, “I don’t go that fast but I even it out by not going that far.”
She smiled.
“Are you here to protect me?”
“Maybe a little.”
Her lungs sucked deep. “It’s times like this I actually think about quitting cigarettes.”
“You should.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I like them too much.”
Teffinger frowned.
“Nothing personal but I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot pole.”
She glanced his way.
“They don’t make ten-foot poles any more. In fact I doubt that they ever did.”
The corner of his mouth went up.
“You’re probably right.”
“I mean, what would you do with one if you had it? Touch an ugly girl? No, that’s what you wouldn’t touch her with. So why even have them?”
He nodded.
“I have to admit, I’ve never seen one.”
The woman’s face grew serious.
She said, “So what do you have on Colder? Anything yet?”
He explained how he’d made an excuse to meet with the lawyer, the excuse being a lie, namely that the firm’s phone number was found in Portia’s purse.
“I’m impressed,” Susan said.
“With what?”
“That you lied. I didn’t think you had it in you. So what was your impression of him?”
“He fits.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he has the arrogance, the hate, the strength, the money, the whole package.”
“Okay. So now what?”
“Now I tie him to Portia.”
“How?”
“By first tying him to D.C.”
“How?”
“I have a few things in progress,” he said. “Tell me about Seth Lightfield?”
“Why?”
“Because Colder killed him too, right?”
“Right.”
The woman focused on the distance, as if gathering distant thoughts. Then she said, “Seth was pure sex. Every inch of him oozed it, from his eyes to the way he walked. He picked me up down at the D-Drop one drunken Saturday night. I was under a table blowing him within the first half hour.”
Teffinger pulled up the image.
“Lucky guy.”
“Actually, he was,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for an angle with him, either.”
“What about Colder? Was he someone you had an angle with?”
“He had money. He had power. He had stature. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Teffinger said.
“Yes you do. Seth was totally different from everything that had been going on in my life for the last ten years. He wasn’t work. He was candy.”
Teffinger swallowed.
“How’d you feel when he got killed?”
Susan’s eyes flashed.
She punched the Stop button with the palm of her hand and ground to a halt.
“How did I feel when he got killed? Do you want the truth?”
Yes.
He did.
“I felt like Colder figured out a way to do it and get totally away with it. I felt like the justice system would be a joke. I decided to kill him myself. I walked Colfax at night until I was able to buy an unregistered gun. I stalked Colder for over two weeks.”
Teffinger exhaled.
“You didn’t kill him.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I should have.”
29
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Morning
Late morning Del Rey called Teffinger sounding like she just stepped off a roller coaster. “You want a connection between Jack Colder and D.C.? Well, I’ve got one for you. I’ve got a big one for you.”
Teffinger halted a coffee cup that was headed for his mouth.
“Go on.”
“All right, it turns out that Colder won a big antitrust case in the U.S. District Court here in Denver four years ago. The other side appealed to the Tenth Circuit and lost. Then the other side filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s basically a motion asking the Supreme Court to hear the case,” she said. “Whether they take it or not is discretionary. They can hear it if they want or not hear it if they don’t want. If they don’t hear it then the decision of appeals court automatically stands. Anyway, when a party files a Petition for Writ, the opposing part has the right to file a brief in opposition, if you will, telling the Supreme Court why they shouldn’t take the case. Colder hired a D.C. law firm to help draft the brief in opposition and co-sign it as attorney of record.”
“What firm?”
“The firm’s called Overton & Frey. It’s big and it’s hard-hitting. It does a good chunk of appellate work before the Supreme Court.”
“What attorney did Colder work with?”
“Two attorneys actually signed the brief, one by the name of Molly Flagger and another by the name of Leland Everitt.”
Leland Everitt.
Leland Everitt.
According to D.C. detective Randy Johnson, the black private investigator with the bleached hair, Oscar Benderfield, met with a lawyer named Leland Everitt when he got back into town from Denver.
The conclusion was inescapable.
Jack Colder hired Portia.
He didn’t do it directly.
He contacted his attorney-friend Leland Everitt who in turn contacted his PI connection Oscar Benderfield who in turn hired Portia.
Colder got a twisted little chain reaction in motion.
“Nick are you still there?”
The words brought him back to focus.
“You done good,” he said. “Who was the client Colder was representing in all this?”
“It’s a company called Vistigo. They’re into communication satellites and high-speed data transmission. All the appeals and briefs are public records. I’ll email them to you if you want.”
He wanted.
&
nbsp; He wanted indeed.
He hung up, immediately called his counterpart in D.C., Randy Johnson, and brought him up to speed on the good news. The man wasn’t as excited as Teffinger anticipated.
“Knowing it is one thing. Actually cracking a link is another.”
“Start with emails and phone records,” Teffinger said. “Get warrants.”
“Easy to say.”
“You don’t think you can?”
“That’s not up to me,” he said. “That’s up to the D.A. Just between you and me, I’m not sure he has the intestinal fortitude to go up against someone like Overton & Frey. A misstep in that direction can end a career.”
“Well, try.”
“I will,” Johnson said. “I’ll do it this afternoon and let you know what happens. All I’m saying is to not get your hopes up.”
Teffinger hung up.
His gut was hollow.
Johnson wasn’t going to get anywhere.
Johnson didn’t want to get anywhere. It wasn’t the D.A. who was going to be the roadblock; it was Johnson himself. He was scared of setting up a sequence that could swing back and knock him on his ass. The fear was there in his voice.
Teffinger needed a Plan B.
He needed it badly.
He needed it now.
30
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Afternoon
Plan B wasn’t complex. It was a simple trip to Jack Colder’s law office to rattle the man’s cage. “You have a relationship with a lawyer out in D.C. by the name of Leland Everitt,” Teffinger said. “Leland Everitt rubs elbows with a black investigator with bleached hair by the name of Oscar Benderfield. Oscar Benderfield isn’t a particularly nice guy. He hires people to kill other people.”
Colder screwed his face into confusion.
“I know Leland Everitt,” he said. “We worked a Supreme Court case together. I never heard of the other guy.”
Teffinger frowned.
“Are you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Of being where you are right now, because it’s a dangerous place.”
“Here’s my advice,” Colder said. “You’re pointed in the wrong direction. Go back to the drawing board and get whatever it is you’re working on straight.”
Teffinger raked his hair back.
It immediately flopped back down.
“Someone hired by Oscar Benderfield came to Denver to kill Susan Smith, who, ironically, is someone you’re not particularly fond of. That’s the drawing board I’m working from.”
The implication hung in silence.
Then Colder said, “Get out of my office.”
“I’m giving you a chance to cooperate.”
Colder opened the door and motioned Teffinger towards it.
“Have a nice day.”
Teffinger stood up.
“There are a lot of links in this twisty little chain,” he said. “One of them will snap. It’s the first one that does that gets all the breaks. This is your chance to be smart and cut your losses. Pass this opportunity up and it goes to another link. Then you get to curse yourself with hindsight.”
Colder tensed.
“I don’t know how you got pointed in the wrong direction but you did,” he said. “Now let me explain something to you. A firm like this is built on reputation. If I hear even a whisper of a rumor that you’re saying even the smallest thing out there in the world to hurt this firm’s reputation, I’ll slap a defamation suit on you so big that you’ll think you’re under attack by a pack of brainsick gorillas. Am I clear?”
Teffinger tossed his card on the desk and headed for the door.
Halfway through he turned and said, “Call me. You have until five o’clock. Then I get on a plane to D.C. and have a little chat with Oscar Benderfield. I’ll bet he ends up being smarter than you.”
Down at street level under a bright Colorado sky he called Sydney and said, “I just put a serious rattle on Jack Colder’s cage. What I need is for you to get down here to his law firm and see if he leads us anywhere.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got something else going on.”
“Like what?”
“Rattling more cages. Colder might head home and put together a care package and then head for the airport. If he does, arrest him right after he buys a ticket.”
“Okay.”
“Be careful of him. He’s a rat in a corner.”
31
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Morning
Jori-Lee tossed with a demonic possession all Friday night, hardly able to sleep, instead replying over and over the sounds of the mystery jogger getting murdered on the other end of the phone.
She didn’t call the police, at least not yet.
She didn’t need to be sitting in a room talking to them, not after breaking into Robertson’s house. There were too many ways things could twist back on her. If she could give them some concrete information on the killer it might be different; but she’d only heard a few words. The voice could belong to anyone.
Tracing the dead woman’s phone number wasn’t hard.
It belonged to one T’amara Alder, a Miami woman.
Jori-Lee pulled the woman’s house up on Google earth.
It was in a crowed Miami neighborhood west of downtown, just south of an airport. The more Jori-Lee stared at it the more she knew she should get down there before the police did. So far there was no news report of a local murder, meaning the police didn’t know what happened, meaning they wouldn’t be snooping around down in Miami yet. The window of opportunity was there.
She should take it.
She should take it now, this second.
She realization hit her so hard that she grabbed her purse, called a taxi and paced outside next to the curb until it came.
“Dulles,” she said.
Two hours later she was in a window seat of a bumpy jet six miles above the earth, trying to figure out if the man who killed T’amara Alder perceived her to be a threat. He knew she’d heard his voice but it was only a couple of words.
Shut up bitch!
Don’t fight me!
Would he be worried that she’d be able to recognize it?
Her incoming number would be indelibly etched in Alder’s phone. From that the killer could figure out who she was and, in fact, probably already had.
She hardened her gut.
There was no time to think about it right now.
Right now she needed to concentrate on the task at hand once the landing gears touched earth.
At first she was scared to break into the dead woman’s house.
The prospect still made her palms sweat but now she was equally resolved.
She’d rent a car, scope it out during the day and make her move after dark.
She’d need a flashlight.
She’d need dark clothing.
She’d need a hotel room.
She’d need an excuse for being in Miami in case it ever became an issue.
She’d need a fair share of luck.
Most importantly, she’d need to be invisible.
She’d need to be the ghost that never was.
32
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Afternoon
Colder wouldn’t crack. He’d flee the country, either that or lawyer-up and bide his time to make sure that fleeing was his only remaining viable option. He wasn’t the weak link. That honor went to Oscar Benderfield.
That was fine.
In fact, that’s the way Teffinger preferred it.
Benderfield was the smallest fish.
Strategically it would be more satisfying to use him to bring down the bigger ones.
Teffinger headed to DIA, bought a ticket for D.C. and paced in Concourse C next to the wall-to-ceiling glass with a nervous eye on the mountains of winged metal falling in and out of the sky.
<
br /> Flying wasn’t natural.
It was nothing more than an act of luck.
Luck was something that could run out at any random moment. He’d flown a number of times before and had only crashed once. That was on the Nile in a puddle-jumper so he wasn’t sure if it really counted. Even if it did, at this point he was still pressing whatever few ounces of luck he had left.
His phone rang and Sydney’s voice came through. “Colder just walked past Susan Smith’s place and gave her apartment the finger.”
“Her or her apartment?”
“The apartment,” Sydney said. “Susan wasn’t around as far as I could tell.”
Teffinger chewed on it.
Colder’s hate was so livid that he had to manifest it. He was unhinging. The hate was overpowering the need to stay concealed.
“Where is he now?”
“Walking towards the financial district. He has a leather briefcase in his hand.”
“Stay with him.”
“Okay but if he hasn’t busted me yet he will soon. He looks over his shoulder every twenty seconds.”
A calm voice dropping out of ceiling speakers announced the boarding of Teffinger’s flight. People stood up, grabbed bags and kids, and headed for the gate.
Susan Smith would be murdered tonight.
Colder would either hire someone or do it himself.
The finger to her apartment was the final goodbye.
Teffinger cashed his ticket in and walked to the Tundra with a brisk stride.
Outside the terminal walls the air was an oven.
He was almost to the Tundra, way at the west end of short-term parking on level E, when his phone rang.
“Teffinger, it’s me.”
Me was Del Rey.
Her voice sounded like a car crash.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone broke into my place,” she said. “There’s a dead magpie on my kitchen counter. Someone ripped its wings off.”
Teffinger pulled up the image.
“Are the wings there?”
It was a stupid question.