by R. J. Jagger
No sounds came from shore.
No lights flashed.
No signs of life emerged.
He brought the vessel in and hopped off the bow into knee-deep water. A lifeless, dark silhouette appeared in the sand up ahead. An inspection showed it to be a body, a very dead body with a large bloody wound to the side of the head. Teffinger nudged it with his foot and got no response. Next to the body was a rifle. He picked it up, checked the action and looked around.
There was enough light to show a vertical person if one was there to see.
There wasn’t.
He walked down the beach. A light breeze blew. The moon was high already throwing enough light down to create shadows. Teffinger’s shadow moved ahead him like some kind of eerie attachment.
He came across another body, very similar to the first except this one had massive wounds to the forearms in addition to the face.
Teffinger nudged it, not expecting a response and not getting one.
He kept moving.
In the next four minutes he found four more bodies, all the same, all hacked to death. He recognized three of them as Rail’s men. One was the guy who drove Teffinger to town this afternoon.
A motion caught his peripheral vision. It was Janjak, forty or fifty yards away, walking towards him with a large knife or machete in her right hand.
She didn’t call out.
Teffinger swallowed and then walked towards her.
Two steps later he stumbled upon another body in the sand.
The man’s face was sliced in two.
55
Day Seven
June 10
Tuesday Night
Teffinger and Janjak stopped three steps short of one another.
Teffinger said, “Did you kill all these men?”
“Yes.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I have my ways. They came here to kill me. That was a mistake.” She walked to him, dropped the machete in the sand, put her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, “Did you bring the diamond?”
His instinct was to play coy, to not give her a concrete answer, to hedge his bets. His tongue didn’t obey his instinct.
He dropped the rifle and said, “Yes.”
She kissed him.
“Good. Follow me.”
“Where’s Rail?”
“I’ll show you later.”
She picked up the machete and headed for the palms.
Teffinger reached for the rifle.
“Leave it,” Janjak said. “You don’t need it.”
She led him to the bones, the ones he and Evil Angel found the coins under, and started pushing the pile to the side.
“Help me.”
He hesitated, not knowing her game, and then joined in.
They cleared the bones and skulls away from the center and then dug a hole, deeper and deeper, until it was at least five feet down.
“Good enough.”
Janjak reached into the shadows and pulled out Teffinger’s old shirt, the one he’d initially used to hold the coins, the one he’d buried on the other island, the one he told Janjak about but didn’t know why. She opened it up, dangled it over the hole and let the coins drop in, falling on one another with a metallic banging. Then she tossed the shirt to the side and said, “Give me the diamond.”
He pulled it out of his pocket and held it out.
She checked it, made sure it was real, and then tossed it in.
“I don’t get it,” Teffinger said.
“Maybe some day I’ll explain.”
They filled the hole in, stomped it down and moved the bones back into position.
“Do one more thing and then Modeste is free,” the woman said. “Constance too, and you too for that matter. The last thing I want you to do is bring all the bodies from the beach over here and throw them on the pile.”
Teffinger envisioned it.
They’d be heavy.
It would take some time.
Their blood would get all over him.
“That’s it then, right? That’s the final thing?”
“Yes.”
“What about Evil Angel?”
“I have no need for her any more,” Janjak said. “The diamond made up for her coins. I don’t need them any more.”
“So she’s free?”
“Yes.”
Teffinger set to it.
It took him more than forty painful and repugnant minutes but he got it done.
“Follow me,” Janjak said. “I’ll show you Rail.”
Teffinger braced.
They hadn’t parted friends, but the man had saved his life, twice, once from the lonely clutches of the sea, and then from being beaten to death by Janjak’s men.
Janjak walked ahead of him, saying nothing, dangling the machete from her right hand.
Teffinger followed with a beating chest.
He could feel the grim reaper walking next to him.
He already knew how it would end.
The woman would tighten her curse over him so he wouldn’t be able to resist.
She’d play with him a little, giving him a kiss or maybe even seducing him fully under the moonlight, one final time.
Then she’d raise the brutal blade of the machete high over her head with both arms and swing it down into his face with every muscle of her being.
She’d drag him onto the bones, just one more sucker for the pile.
Then she’d be gone with one more story to tell over cocktails.
56
Day Seven
June 10
Tuesday Night
Rail wasn’t dead but instead was staked out in the sand with a gag in his mouth and wild demons in his eyes. “Teffinger’s here,” Janjak said.
Rail struggled wildly against his bonds.
Frantic unintelligible sounds came from his mouth.
Teffinger’s instinct was to knock the machete out of Janjak’s hand, overcome her and free Rail. Before he could finalize the decision and act, though, the woman waved the weapon at him and said, “Stay back!”
He forced himself to not charge.
Keeping Teffinger at bay, the woman slit her wrist and let the blood drip down onto Rail’s face and into his eyes. He twisted and contorted as if it was acid. Then the woman dropped the machete, walked to Teffinger and held her wrist out.
“Drink,” she said. “This is my gift to you.”
It was crazy.
Teffinger knew he should resist.
He should punch her.
He should knock her out.
Instead he pulled her wrist to his mouth and drank.
Instantly everything changed.
A vision was in his head, a vision so real it was as if he was actually there.
It was a hot, humid, Miami night. Across the street was a lesbian bar called Blackbird Ordinary. He waited across the street in his car waiting for the right little bitch to step out; sufficiently drunk, sufficiently pretty, sufficiently blond, sufficiently parked far enough away from random eyes.
He checked his face in the rearview mirror.
It was pretty.
His hair was long and black and thick.
His eyes were green.
Everything about him said rock star.
The wait wasn’t long, no more than five minutes.
That’s how fast the perfect woman emerged, beautifully alone, beautifully tipsy, beautifully appearing before his eyes as if sent for his amusement. He did a 180 and pulled to a stop next to her just as she was opening her car door. He powered down the passenger window, leaned over and flashed his best smile.
“Excuse me but I’m a bit lost.”
The words came with a hypnotic English accent. They came from a perfect face framed with perfect hair. She was already his, lesbian or not. He chatted her up and then sealed the deal by letting it drop oh-so-innocently that he was someone named Johnnie Rail, a rock god from
England.
“Busted Skies,” he said. “That’s our latest song. Have you ever heard it?”
“Are you kidding? I love it!”
“I wasn’t sure how good it was doing over here in the states,” he said. “In London it’s been number one for six weeks.”
They chatted.
Her name was Alley Savannah.
Thirty minutes later he had her on the ground on her back, dead, stabbed in the back of the neck. Her pulled up her blouse and let her perfect little stomach show, so beautiful. It wasn’t moving, the way it would be if she were breathing. It was totally and absolutely still. That was the best part about it, the way it was so incredibly still.
With a pencil, he wrote, 1 6 Weeks on a piece of paper. He did it in block lettering, not his normal handwriting, real slow, forcing himself to not use his usual writing. He folded the paper until it was only about two inches long. Then he rolled it up until it was shaped like a cigarette and put it inside a glass vial about three inches long. He screwed the cap on. Then he cut a slit in the woman’s stomach and shoved the vial in.
“Bye-bye, Alley Savannah.”
The vision disappeared, everything turned black for a few seconds as if 8mm reels were being changed out, followed by a new vision with a new excitement and a new thirsty need to kill.
The second murder involved Jaylor Colt, technically a Cuban diplomat in Washington, D.C., but that night nothing more than a sweet little piece of salsa ass.
More reels followed.
Faren White.
Jackie Vampire.
And Nicole Carter, a San Francisco attorney, whose throat needed to be slit and finally was, down at the BNSF switchyard next to Tarzan’s place.
The visions stopped.
Teffinger sprang back into his own brain.
Rail was the killer.
The eyes that Kovi-Ke had been seeing through belonged to Johnnie Rail.
Teffinger’s blood raced.
Could it be proved in court? Maybe, if there was physical evidence tying Rail to the scene, but to Teffinger’s knowledge, there was none. Even if there was, by the time they got an arrest warrant, Rail would be long gone, living the life of a rock star in some country that had no extradition.
He looked at Janjak.
“You knew this? You knew Rail was the killer I was looking for?”
“Yes and I know a lot more, a whole lot more,” she said. “But first it’s time for him to die. His time is over.”
She picked up the machete.
Rail pulled wildly at the ropes.
It did no good.
“You can do it if you want,” Janjak told Teffinger. “If you don’t do it, I will.”
Twenty seconds later the deadly blade of the machete sliced into Rail’s face, through the bone and deep into his brain. He gurgled for a second and then his head tilted to the side and every part of his body stopped moving.
57
(Two Months Later)
Day 68
August 10
Tuesday Afternoon
In the flesh, through the window of the taxi, Ugly Tuna Diving Adventures wasn’t exactly what Teffinger expected. In his mind, he’d built it up to something pretty special, something that would scream to tourists with the pitch-perfect voice of a postcard. The ragged reality was that it sat near the commercial and fishing docks of Montego Bay, the sign above the door was hand-painted wood, and the structure was small and weathered.
Teffinger stepped out the cab, thanked the driver with a generous tip and got his bearings.
The Jamaican sun was high and bright.
The waters were the same color as the sky but a slightly deeper hue.
Seagulls were everywhere.
The docks and channels were active with boats and bodies and commotion and seemed to stretch forever.
He felt as if he was on another planet.
His heart raced.
Kovi-Ke didn’t know he was coming.
He hadn’t told her.
He hadn’t had the guts.
He had no suitcase, he had no hotel reservation, he had nothing but the blood cruising hot through his veins and the hope that he hadn’t come all this way for nothing.
He took a deep breath, pulled the aluminum screen door open and stepped inside. Reggae music greeted him from crackly speakers but that was all.
No one was there.
“Anyone home?”
No one answered.
“Hello?”
A rotating desk fan blew into his face and then away.
A wooden door at the back of the structure was wedged open with a brick. Teffinger went through it and found himself on a large dock; piers, planks, ropes, tires, seagulls, a boatyard in the distance with a hundred or more sailboats on blocks—they raked his peripheral vision. His primary vision focused on the woman ten steps away with her back to him, doing something with a dive tank, possibly fixing it or replacing a component. A toolbox was at her side. She wore a white tank top, dampened with sweat. Pink shorts played nicely against shapely mocha legs. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. The strands at the back of her neck were damp and stuck against her skin. Black flip-flips protected her feet from splinters.
Teffinger stayed quiet, watching her work, mesmerized by the movement of her muscles and the way she wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand.
When she finally detected his presence and turned, her chest heaved and her eyes widened.
“Teffinger?”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
“I look terrible.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came for a kiss. Do you have any spare ones laying around that you’re not using?”
She smiled.
“I might.”
She took him inside the shop, shut and locked the doors, flipped the sign to Closed, pulled the blinds, turned up the music and got all over him with her hands and her lips and her legs and her thighs and her tongue and her nasty little moves.
He responded with every fiber of his being, giving as good as he got.
He was an addict.
She was the drug.
The touch of her skin was more than he remembered. The months had made her fade in spite of the constant thoughts he’d thrown her way. Now she was back, refilling his soul and giving him a reason to live, a reason to die and a reason to be everything in-between.
They took their fill of one another.
For Teffinger, it was more than sex.
It was more than just the incredible dance of the woman’s body against him.
It was more than just this moment.
It was more than just the past.
It was more.
It was more.
It was forever more.
He didn’t know exactly what happened inside him, or why it happened, but he did know it had happened and that he would never be the same, not in ten minutes, not in ten hours, not in ten years.
He was a different man now.
He was more complete.
He was more complex.
He was more vulnerable.
He was stronger.
He was weaker.
The woman had taken him to a place that he expected to exist but had never really been sure, not until now. He didn’t want to be away from her; not now, not in the future, not ever.
When it was over, he rolled onto his back, caught his breath as his chest heaved and said, “I didn’t come here just to see if this would happen. I also came here for business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Dangerous business, I’m afraid.”
58
Day 68
August 10
Tuesday Afternoon
They ended up sitting in a shady area of the dock behind the shop, dangling their feet over the water. “I know we talked about this,” Teffinger said, “but I want to go over it one more time before I t
ell you a few things. Tell me again what transpired between you and the lawyer, Stephen Blake.”
“Seriously?”
“Indulge me. I’m going to be adding some parts to the story, some parts you don’t know about yet, but I don’t want to do that until I’m sure we’re on the same page.”
She held his hand.
“He showed up down here at the shop one day,” she said. “I’d never seen him before. I didn’t know who he was. He said he was a lawyer out of New York.”
Teffinger nodded.
“Go on.”
“He said he wanted to tell me something very important but that I needed to keep it confidential. Well, I couldn’t say no to that, because I was too curious.”
“So you agreed—”
“Right, I agreed,” she said. “He told me he had a client named Johnnie Rail who was a big rock star from London. Blake did all the copywriting and related work for Rail and the band. Anyway, one day Rail mentioned something off the cuff, something that might have been illegal in some way. The lawyer was curious what was going on and sort of suckered Rail into fleshing out what he was alluding to. Well, Rail didn’t, not during that particular meeting, anyway. But Rail’s confidence grew over the next few meetings. And one day, when the subject sort of came up, Rail said, When I tell you things during our meetings, it’s all one hundred percent confidential and everything, right? And the lawyer assured him it was. The lawyer was bound by law never to disclose the confidences of his client, with a few exceptions, which didn’t apply to them. Plus, the lawyer was a man of his word. He promised on his mother’s grave he would never tell anyone anything about Rail, and in fact never had to date. With that, Rail admitted to the lawyer that he murdered a woman; he just came flat out and said it, I murdered a woman. The lawyer kept his cool, pretended like it was no big deal, and got Rail to loosen his lips even more. Rail gave him all the details. The woman was someone named Alley Savannah. Rail picked her up when she came out of a lesbian bar in Miami called Blackbird Ordinary. He stabbed her in the back of the neck. Then he cut open her stomach and shoved in a vial, something like a small test tube with a cap at the end. Inside was a piece of paper that said 1 6 Weeks. What it meant is that the band’s latest song, one called Baby Done Bad, had been number one on the England charts for the last six weeks.” She looked into Teffinger’s eyes. “Rail did kill her, right?”
