by R. J. Jagger
The problem is that the scumbags would figure out what had happened, afterwards, and go after the woman.
She wouldn’t be hard to find, not in a town this small.
This morning, when he first hired her, he didn’t give a shit what happened to her.
Now, unfortunately, he did.
He had to regroup and figure out how to get one of the bikers separated from the pack.
After lunch at Wendy’s, Gretchen asked, “What now?”
Draven thought about it.
The sky above was clear.
The temperature was absolutely perfect.
“Let’s take a hike somewhere,” he said.
She beamed.
“I know the perfect place.”
They ended up at the Pueblo Reservoir, which looked like a mini Lake Powell. Gretchen knew a trail that descended into the back of a canyon. They hiked down—well over a mile from the car—found the place deserted and went skinny-dipping.
The rocks baked the water and kept it surprisingly warm, especially in the shallow spots.
Draven felt the need to show off and swam across the canyon, about a hundred yards, as fast as his overhand stroke would take him.
When he got back Gretchen was impressed.
“You look like Tarzan,” she said.
He beat his chest and did his best Tarzan yell.
A lizard darted by and Draven chased it. It took a full three or four minutes, but he finally caught it. Holding it by the tail, he walked toward Gretchen swinging it back and forth.
“Got a friend for you,” he said.
She screamed and jumped in the water.
“Don’t you dare!”
He tossed the lizard on a bush and jumped in after her.
Then it was time to make love. Right there in the water. They both knew it.
Neither hesitated.
This time, unlike Monday night, she kissed him.
Long and deep.
He kissed her back.
Afterwards they dressed and sat in the sun. Draven’s thoughts returned to the bikers.
“I have some scumbags after me,” he said. Then he told her the story of what had happened in the bar Monday night and how his apartment had been trashed yesterday.
“I heard about the bar,” she said.
“You did?”
She nodded.
“The word’s out that one of them got beat up in the bathroom.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“I know that jerk,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yep. They call him Two-Bits, but his real name’s John Sinclair. I know his three friends, too. They’re all first-degree assholes. They gang-raped me one night, the little pricks. One of them paid money for it, but the other three jumped in and took me for free. To me, that’s rape, not to mention that my ass bled for a week.”
Draven felt his jaw muscles tighten.
“Do you know where they live?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, why?”
16
DAY THREE–SEPTEMBER 7
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Teffinger wadded up a piece of paper and tossed it up in the air, trying to get it to land in the middle of the snake plant. It hit one of the outer edges and bounced onto the floor. Then his cell phone rang. He couldn’t find it at first but followed the sound to his left pants pocket.
He answered just as Sydney pulled up a seat in front of his desk, wearing a nice pants outfit with a matching jacket, one he had never seen before. She looked exceptionally good, and he glanced at her as if to say, “Just give me a second.”
“Teffinger,” he said.
“Mr. Teffinger?” The voice belonged to a woman, a crying woman. He sat up and concentrated.
“Yes, this is me.”
“Mr. Teffinger, this is Marilyn Black.”
Marilyn Black.
He didn’t recognize the name.
“You gave me your card once,” the woman said. “You said you’d help me.”
Still no memory.
“Calm down,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I met you down on Colfax,” she said, “when you were asking us questions about Paradise. You gave me your card and said I could call you if I ever needed help.”
Still nothing.
Then he suddenly remembered.
She was one of the hookers from the Rainbird Bar, a young woman, probably no more than twenty or twenty-one, with needle marks in her arm. Teffinger had interviewed her in connection with the murder of Paradise—a hooker who ended up with a six-inch knife in her eye. He told her to get off the drugs and get off the street and get her life back on track. He said he’d help, if she ever needed it.
He gave her his card and even wrote his home phone number on the back.
“I remember you now,” he said. “How can I help?”
She cried. “Can you come and get me?”
He got directions.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Just hold on.”
Standing up, he looked at Sydney. “I have to run,” he said. “But here’s what I need you to do. First, get a cadaver dog down at the railroad tracks. If there are any more bodies buried around there, I want to know about it now rather than later. Do that ASAP. It’s starting to cloud up and I’m afraid it’s going to rain.”
She nodded.
“I was thinking the same thing,” she said.
“You’re always a step ahead of me,” he said. “Then, in your spare time …”
She laughed.
“… we need to start getting as much background information as we can on Angela Pfeiffer and Tonya Obenchain. Somehow they’re both connected to the person who killed them, and we need to find out what that connection is. Let’s start by getting lists of their friends, work, schools, clubs, vacations, hobbies and whatever else you can think of where they might have overlapped, either with each other or with the same man.”
Ten seconds later, he trotted past the elevators, ran down the three flights of stairs to the parking garage, and squealed out in his truck. He found Marilyn Black on Colfax, sitting on the sidewalk under a payphone, shaking and disoriented.
He double-parked the Tundra in the street and ran over.
Then he picked her up and put her in the vehicle.
“I’m taking you to the emergency room,” he said.
She looked at him vaguely, then closed her eyes and slumped over.
He stepped on the gas.
A half block later, a man stood in the street, waiting to cross. Teffinger recognized him as one of the local drug pushers. Maybe even the one who’d been supplying Marilyn Black. He pointed the truck at him and stepped on the gas even harder.
The man jumped out of the way at the last second and gave Teffinger the finger.
17
DAY THREE–SEPTEMBER 7
WEDNESDAY EVENING
As the day progressed, Aspen found herself more and more concerned about the visit this afternoon from senior partner Jacqueline Moore. She kept her lowly associate ass in her chair until six o’clock and then uneventfully walked out of the office and drove home.
She immediately drank a glass of wine.
Then she poured another and sipped it as a Lean Pocket heated in the microwave. She ended up on the couch watching the news and trying to figure out if she had already slid too far down a slippery slope.
She couldn’t afford to get fired.
Not if she wanted to continue eating.
She paced, then stopped at the window and looked out. A dark sky threatened rain. She wouldn’t be surprised if it poured like a madman in the next ten minutes.
The news caught her attention.
The body of a woman named Tonya Obenchain had been discovered yesterday buried in a shallow grave not more than a hundred feet from the grave of Angela Pfeiffer, who was discovered Sunday afternoon by a homeless man passing through the area. Both women disappea
red earlier this spring. It was too early to tell if the same person killed both women, but police weren’t ruling out any theories at this point.
Interesting.
The two dead women both disappeared earlier this spring.
That’s when Rachel vanished too.
She set the wine down, fired up the computer, and printed out all the newspaper articles she could find on Tonya Obenchain and Angela Pfeiffer.
Not only did both women disappear earlier this spring, they actually disappeared in early April.
Even more interesting, Rachel disappeared at that same time.
The conclusion was inescapable.
Whoever abducted and killed the two women in the news also abducted Rachel.
And no doubt killed her too.
Rachel’s body must be buried somewhere near the other two.
Aspen grabbed a light jacket and headed to the door.
“Screw you, Jacqueline Moore,” she said, racing down the stairs.
When she arrived at the old railroad spur, no one was there. Two areas were staked off with yellow crime-scene tape. No doubt the locations of the graves. She stopped the Accord and killed the engine.
A heavy rain fell out of the sky and pounded on the roof of her car.
She searched around in the back seat to see if her umbrella was there by chance. It wasn’t, so she put the jacket over her head and stepped outside.
The weather accosted her immediately.
Heavy but warm.
She could already tell that she’d be totally soaked in just a few minutes. So she decided to just give in to it now and threw the jacket on the hood of the car.
Her hair immediately matted down and water ran into her eyes.
She took a Kleenex out of her pants pocket and wiped mascara off.
Now what?
She walked over to one of the gravesites. It was only about eighteen inches deep and filling with water. She checked the other one.
Same thing.
If Rachel was buried here somewhere, Aspen doubted that it would be too close to the existing graves, otherwise the police would have stumbled on it. It would be better to search farther out. She walked down the tracks for more than two hundred yards, looking in both directions for anything that suggested digging—fewer weeds, a raised area, whatever.
She saw nothing of interest.
She came back to where the graves were and then walked down the tracks in the other direction.
Again nothing.
This would be harder than she thought.
But Rachel was here somewhere.
She knew it.
She set up an imaginary grid and walked it, step by step. The rain never let up, not a bit. If anything, it got stronger. Her tennis shoes were caked with mud.
Slippery mud at that.
She fell and ended up with an ass full of it.
Then fell again.
And again.
Now she had mud all over her arms.
And in her hair.
“Goddamn rain.”
Her legs ached and her eyelids were raw from rubbing the rain out of her eyes. She’d been at it for what seemed like forever when she finally finished the grid.
Still nothing.
“Shit.”
Enough.
She went back to the car and rested against it, wondering what to do. If she got in this muddy, she’d ruin the interior, or at least end up having to clean it for an hour.
No thanks, either way.
Maybe she should just take her jeans off and throw them in the trunk. The evening was getting on, darker by the second. There was no one around. It was doubtful that anyone would see her. But still, she wasn’t wearing panties, and the thought of being bare-ass naked out here in the middle of nowhere creeped her out.
Then she remembered the gravesites, filling with water.
She headed over to the nearest one and found it half filled.
She stepped over the yellow tape and waded into the pool of water. Then she leaned backwards and put her hands down, like a crab, and wiggled her ass back and forth in the water.
She felt the mud coming off.
Good.
This was working just fine.
She wiggled more.
Her left hand suddenly sank down.
Twelve inches or more, almost up to her elbow.
As if she had slipped into a shaft.
Her fingers felt something weird.
Soft.
Silky.
Definitely not dirt.
She pulled herself up, turned around, kneeled down and then dug. In a few minutes she found the silky stuff again. She tugged at it and found it still firm, but on the verge of breaking loose. She dug even more, scooping out mud and throwing it over the side of the hole.
This time when she grabbed the silky stuff something gave way and pulled up. She fell backwards on her ass with a splash, still gripping whatever it was that she had found.
She studied it—something about the size of a small basketball—and then dunked it in the water and swished it around.
When she pulled it up, she was holding a head.
Rachel Ringer’s head.
18
DAY THREE–SEPTEMBER 7
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
After dark, Draven drove around Pueblo with Gretchen seated next to him, her leg pressed against his. Country-western played on the radio. She showed him where each of the bikers lived. Draven wasn’t sure yet whether he’d kill them, screw them up, or just leave them alone.
Maybe he’d let Gretchen decide.
“Do you want them dead or just messed up?” he asked.
She pondered it.
“Dead,” she said. “I’ve pictured it in my mind a hundred times. I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, though.”
Draven considered the pros and cons both ways.
“It probably isn’t,” he said. “At least not right off the bat. But if we don’t kill them, they can’t know you’re involved.”
She exhaled and fidgeted in the seat.
“I’m not afraid of them,” she said.
“Well, you should be. Which one do you hate the most?”
She answered immediately.
“Two Bits,” she said. “The guy you flushed.”
“Fine. We’ll start with him.”
They parked down the street from Two-Bits’ crappy little rental house and drank Jack Daniels from Draven’s flask in the dark as they waited for the asshole to return home.
Lightning crackled in the distance and then it rained.
Gretchen ran her finger down the scar on Draven’s face.
“So how’d you get this?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Hell if I know,” he said.
She kissed it.
“I like it,” she said.
He smiled.
“Good, because I don’t think it’s going to wash off or anything.” He played with her hair. “What about you? You got any scars?”
“I’m not telling,” she said. “You have to check for yourself.”
“Careful,” he said. “I will.”
She unbuttoned her blouse.
“Do it then.”
He laughed.
“It’s too dark,” he said. “I can’t see anything.”
She took his hand and put it on her breast.
“Just feel for them, then.”
Not more than ten seconds later a headlight came down the street, jiggling and bobbing, unmistakably a motorcycle. Then the deep roar of the engine cut through the rain.
“Company,” Draven said.
Draven waited until the asshole killed the engine and stepped off the bike. Then he walked out of the shadows and cut the jerk off before he reached the front door.
“You pissed all over my carpet,” Draven said. “That wasn’t very nice.”
The biker tried to focus.
Too drunk to place him.
Then the confusion droppe
d off his face and he charged.
Even in the rain he smelled like alcohol and smoke.
Draven punched him in the face repeatedly until he fell to the ground. Then he straddled him and punched him another ten times, until his knuckles bled. The man withered under him, hardly able to even moan.
“This is your only warning,” Draven said. “Tell your friends too.”
He was standing up when a figure appeared.
Gretchen.
Carrying a rock in her right hand, the size of a softball.
She brought it down on the biker’s head as hard as she could.
The guy’s skull cracked.
Then he gurgled and stopped moving.
“Shit!” Draven said. “What are you doing?”
Gretchen just stood there, frozen.
He looked around.
Then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards the car.
“Come on!” he said.
She dropped the rock.
He stopped long enough to pick it up.
Ten miles away, out in the sticks, he threw it out the window.
19
DAY FOUR–SEPTEMBER 8
THURSDAY MORNING
Teffinger got up at his usual time, before dawn, even though he had been up half the night at Marilyn Black’s bedside and the other half of the night fishing a head out of the gravesite down by the railroad spur.
Coffee.
He needed coffee.
Lots and lots of coffee.
He also needed a jog in the worst way but was too tired. So instead he showered, popped in his contacts, and ate a bowl of cereal in the Tundra as he drove to work. Being the first one there, as usual, he fired up the coffee machine and then headed over to his desk to see what additional work had landed on it while he hadn’t been around to fend it off.
He pulled Marilyn Black up on the computer.
She had a couple of prostitution arrests and some minor drug charges but luckily hadn’t gotten herself into any major trouble yet.
Maybe she could actually turn her life around.
She must be terribly alone to call Teffinger in her hour of need. He only met her that one time. He needed to find out if she had any friends or relatives. He’d personally spring for the plane ticket if she had somewhere healthy to go.
