Then he hung up.
The sky was in that magical stage between dusk and dark when the colors changed so fast that you never really knew what they were. Half the cars had their headlights on. A streetlight kicked to life right in front of Teffinger’s eyes.
Everything was set.
He should feel good.
He didn’t.
He felt like a mouse on railroad tracks.
38
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Night
Saturday night after dark an evil wind-whipped storm took revenge on Denver from out of a black-hearted sky. Teffinger leaned against the wall out of line of the windows with his legs stretched out and his weapon by his side, watching a spider crawl across the carpet. The lights were dim. The window coverings were open just enough for the killer to detect Susan Smith’s movement inside and confirm that the sweet little target was home.
The woman walked to the window, pulled the blinds to the side and looked out. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved pullover that rode just above a tanned navel.
“Can’t really see anything,” she said.
Teffinger grunted.
“I’d guess not.”
He was a rubber band stretched to the point of snapping.
“It’s a good night for killing someone,” Susan added.
That was true.
The men outside were compromised, both visually and in terms of readiness.
They were soaked.
They were slow.
They were cold.
They couldn’t tell a man from a dog at fifty yards distance.
Inside, Teffinger’s eyes were heavy
His brain was slower.
His watch said 11:23.
He’d been on a dead run since 5:15 this morning.
He jumped when his phone rang.
Sydney’s voice came through with, “I’m still here at Del Rey’s. Everything’s quiet but I could do without the storm.”
“Same here.”
“Hey, remember when I said before that Susan Smith might have been the one who killed Portia?”
He remembered.
“Well, it just occurred to me that the dead bird works into that.”
“How?”
“Like you said, a diversion. It takes the spotlight away from her.”
“It seems thin.”
“Thin or not, keep your guard. That’s all I’m saying.”
He looked over.
Susan was in a chair, watching him with an unblinking stare, smoking a smoky smoke.
“Sure.”
“I mean it, Nick. And by all means don’t let her know you’re onto her. She’ll put a bullet in your head and make it look like you went down saving her from the killer. In fact, find out if she has an unregistered gun sitting around.”
“The storm’s working your imagination,” he said. “How’s Del Rey?”
“Alive.”
“Keep her that way.”
A beat then, “She showed me the dungeon, Teffinger.”
He swallowed.
“She wants that kept quiet.”
“I know. She made me promise before she showed it to me. We’re going to put on some popcorn and watch a movie later.”
“She should be in bed. She should be sticking to her normal routine.”
“Do you know what the movie’s called?”
No, he didn’t.
“It’s called Nicky Does a Threesome.”
Susan mashed the cigarette in an ashtray and stood up. “Colder can’t come for me here. It’s too fortified. He has to get through a lobby, up to my floor, through the door, all the while avoiding cameras, not to mention physically getting to me before I can call 911. The outside’s no better. What’s he going to do, throw a grappling hook up to my balcony and then pull himself up with a rope? He’s a lawyer, not Spiderman. We need to go out to a club or something. We need to give him an opportunity to stick a knife in my back.”
“No.”
“It’s Saturday night,” she said. “If he’s really set on taking me tonight, he’s out there in the storm somewhere waiting for me to head out. Do you want to catch him or not?”
Teffinger shook his head.
“It’s too risky.”
“So is sitting here and wasting our time,” she said. “Tonight I have you. A week from now I won’t. If he’s going to make a move I’d rather it be tonight. Then at least I have a fifty-fifty chance.”
Teffinger muscled to his feet and paced, thinking it through.
Neither option made him smile.
If she got murdered a week from now when he wasn’t around, no one would blame him. If she got murdered tonight on his watch, however, well, the math was evident. It would be better for him to just sit tight.
It’s not about you, he muttered to himself.
“What?”
He looked at her, brought his voice to speaking pitch and said, “Okay.”
“Okay as in We’re going out?”
He nodded.
“Yes. More accurately, you’re going out. I’m going to be the invisible man.”
She headed for the bedroom.
Over her shoulder she said, “I’m going to take a quick shower. Get rid of the backup guys. They’ll just mess things up.” She stopped, walked over and put her arms around him. Then she looked into his eyes and said, “Get your game face on.”
“It is on.”
“In that case, I’m going to die.”
He smiled.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “You look like you’re 20 seconds away from sleep. Let me put some coffee on.”
Right.
Coffee.
Good idea.
39
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Night
They ended up at a beat-pounding club in LoDo jammed with a sea of dressed-to-kill bodies in motion. Susan was solo in a sin-white dress that showcased a tight body to perfection. Teffinger hung back, keeping her in sight as best he could as she wedged and twisted through a sea of drunken skin.
The woman’s scent was in the air.
Eyes turned as she passed.
Hands and hips and legs brushed against her.
If someone was out to kill her tonight, this was his chance. He’d be here. He could drop her with a bullet to the side or a knife to the stomach before she even knew he was there. He could be three steps away before the woman hit the floor, and ten steps away before anyone noticed her. He could be out the door before anyone realized the woman was down from an assault as opposed to alcohol or exhaustion.
He might be a her.
Don’t forget that.
Portia was a her.
Teffinger looked for the person who didn’t fit, the one who was too old, too young, too sober, too focused, too alone or too dressed up or down.
No one held his attention for more than a heartbeat.
Everyone fit, even the ones who didn’t.
He was here though.
Teffinger could smell him.
He lost line-of-sight of Susan, momentarily concerned but knowing she’d surface just as quickly. When she didn’t surface, not in five seconds, not in ten, he pushed towards the last place she’d been.
From that vantage he still couldn’t find her.
He moved through the crowd on the tangent she’d been heading.
The woman didn’t materialize up ahead, or to the side, or behind.
He kept going and got more of the same.
He called her cell phone.
She didn’t answer.
He got dumped into voice mail.
“Call me,” he said.
It wasn’t good but he wasn’t ready to panic. The woman wouldn’t leave the club without him. She was probably on the dance floor. There, the bodies gyrated with abandon, each blocking view of the next. Teffinger would have to push in. He’d have better luck squeezing into a can of sardines.
Sud
denly something happened he didn’t expect.
Arms wrapped around him from behind.
He turned to find an Asian woman, one he didn’t know, one with sunset eyes and a dangerous body, one who would work not just fine but very fine in different circumstances. He opened his mouth to say not tonight but before the words got out the woman was already dragging him into the motion.
Teffinger could do a lot of things but dancing wasn’t one of them. His best move was a back and forth shuffle that had more wood in it than some entire lumberyards.
Right now he didn’t care.
There were too many bodies for anyone to see him.
Getting into those bodies would give him a fresh vantage point.
He followed.
They ended up in the thick of it.
Teffinger leaned in and said, “Be warned, I can’t dance.”
The woman turned full circle and said, “You be warned, I don’t care.”
The beat grabbed him, first by the hips and then by the throat.
He gave into it.
A familiar face appeared in the crowd.
It was a rough, manly face.
It belonged to the lawyer himself, Jack Colder.
The man’s hair was disheveled as if he’d been caught in the rain. That’s how a man would look if he’d been staking out Susan Smith’s building out in a storm.
The guy had guts to come here in the flesh.
Teffinger’s chest tightened.
He leaned into the girl and said, “You’re lovely but I have to run. It’s business.”
“Wait, let me give you my number.”
He nature was to say something polite.
Before he could he was already gone.
He pushed through the crowd in the direction of Colder, not yet knowing what the plan was when he arrived, but knowing it would be something. The man was closing in on Susan Smith, only five steps away, as Teffinger approached.
He spun the man around.
Colder halted in disbelief then said, “Back off asshole.”
“You stay right here.”
“Fuck you.”
When the man turned, Teffinger grabbed his shoulder.
A terrible fist swung at his face.
He twisted to avoid it.
He was fast but not fast enough.
The impact landed with the might of a baseball bat. His feet wobbled and his body tumbled. Colder was over him with fists cocked and an insane face. His jacket hung open. A gun holster came into view.
Teffinger acted like he was struggling to get to his feet and then kicked the man’s legs out from under him. As he hit the floor Teffinger punched him in the face with every molecule of energy in his body.
The man’s head snapped back.
Then all motion in his body stopped.
40
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Evening
The beach boy Sanders Tripp didn’t turn out to be the typical starving young lawyer. He came from money, lots and lots of money, and lived on an upper floor of the ultra-chic Paramount Bay Tower. On the terrace, Jori-Lee took in the killer view of Miami to the left and the sailboats cutting wakes through the bay across Ocean Boulevard.
“Something’s wrong,” Sanders said.
That was true.
They came from different worlds.
The man’s closet was bigger than her apartment.
“This is nice,” she said.
“But?”
She pulled a ten-dollar bill from her purse, put it in his hand and said, “I want to hire you as my lawyer. That’s all I can afford though. The rest will have to be pro bono.”
He twisted the paper in his hands.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”
“In that case I’m your lawyer. Talk to me.”
She hesitated, not knowing where to start, and then just jumped in, getting the salient facts out one after another, albeit not exactly in a straight line. When she graduated from Harvard law three months ago, she was fortunate enough to land one of the most coveted jobs in the universe, namely a position as a law clerk with a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in this case Justice Nelson Robertson.
Sanders didn’t believe her, not at first, then must have seen the expression on her face and said, “You clerk for Robertson?”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
“In D.C.?”
“Yes.”
“At the Supreme Court Building?”
“Yes.”
“That’s at One First Street, right?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. How’d you get a job like that?”
“We can get into that later. For right now, what I have to tell you relates to my job,” she said. “I’m going to have to tell you some things that are sensitive beyond belief. You have to absolutely promise me with every fiber in your being that you’ll keep every word I tell you in absolute secrecy.”
“Of course.”
“That’s why I’m officially hiring you as my lawyer,” she said. “You’re duty bound.”
He stuffed the ten in his pocket.
“I’ve accepted the money. Your confidences are mine, by promise and by law.”
“I’m serious about this.”
“Trust me, nothing will get out.” She studied him, looking for lies or exaggerations. None were obvious and, in fact, the opposite if anything. “Go on,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She did.
Two weeks ago she went to Robertson’s chambers to tell him about a new case out of the Ninth Circuit that was on point with a pending case. “He was on the phone talking to someone, so I held back just outside the door to wait until he was finished,” she said.
“Okay.”
“He didn’t know I was there.”
“All right.”
“He was talking low and I could barely make out what he was saying. But as the conversation went on, it became clear that he was talking to someone who was blackmailing him about something.”
“Something, as in what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was something serious though. The nature of the discussion was that he was to vote a certain way in an upcoming case.”
Sanders shook his head.
“No,” he said. “That kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”
“I wish you were right,” she said. “I don’t know how long it’s been going on or how deep it is. The conversation was clear though. He was talking about throwing a case.”
Sanders focused on a water-skier carving a white line in the sky-blue water of the bay, then turned back.
“What was the case?”
“It’s called Davidson v. Fifty.”
“Which is about what?”
“It’s basically a First Amendment freedom of speech case,” she said. “It involves a comment posted on an Internet blog. The person who posted the comment was an American who was in France at the time he typed the comment. The person who was allegedly defamed was an Australian woman who was in Australia at the time the comment was made. She’s a public figure in Australia but not in America or France. She later sued the defendant in a California court and the issue before the Supreme Court is whether she has a cause of action in the state court or whether such an action would be in violation of the First Amendment.”
“So which way is Robertson supposed to vote?”
“Basically to protect the right to freedom of speech and deny the plaintiff’s claim as non-cognizable. You have to keep all this quiet.”
“I will, I will. Has the case been decided yet?”
“No. It’s still pending.”
“Okay. So what happened next?”
She gathered her thoughts and said, “That night I slept on it. Robertson was clearly in some kind of trouble and I didn’t see any way that I could help him. The whole thing was so much bigger than me. But I
didn’t have the option to sit by and do nothing. The integrity of the court had been breached. Whatever damage had occurred so far, it couldn’t continue, not even for one single case. I suppose I could have gone to the FBI and blown the whistle at that point but that didn’t sit well with me. For one, Robertson would fall. He’s a great man. His legacy would be ruined. Right or wrong, I felt he deserved a right of redemption, so long as it was immediate and forever. With that goal in mind, I came up with a plan.”
“Which was what?”
“I became obsessed with finding out more,” she said. “Tuesday night Robertson was slated to speak at a fundraising function. I took the opportunity to break into his house.”
Sanders leaned back.
“That was pretty gutsy.”
“Not really,” she said. “What would he do if he found out? Go to the police? In his master closet I found a black briefcase. Inside that briefcase was a MacBook Air. I copied the files from that computer.” She pulled a flash drive out of her purse and passed it to him. “Take a look at this under the file called Photos and then we’ll talk some more. Share this with no one and don’t make any copies.”
41
Day Five
July 12
Saturday Night
Colder didn’t move, not in five seconds, not in ten, not in thirty. His eyes were open, unblinking, staring at nothing. Teffinger knew the look, he’d seen it before, and didn’t need to check for vital signs although he did.
He got no pulse.
He got no breath.
He got no reaction.
He got no life.
The insane beat of the club continued to drop out of amped-up speakers as if nothing had happened. A crowd pushed in, tighter and thicker and deeper than the second before. Teffinger couldn’t breath. He busted through and didn’t stop until he got outside.
There the storm fell, pushed by a demonic wind, and Teffinger didn’t care. He braced against it in the open near the street and sucked the wet air into his chest.
It felt like voodoo.
It felt right.
The drumming in his veins softened.
He’d just killed a man.
Legally it was self-defense; he had no question about that. There’d be a thorough investigation of course but in the end he’d be cleared. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether he could have held back, whether he could have countered without so much intent, without so much power, without so much reaction.
Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) Page 10
