by R. J. Jagger
Then he hit play again.
A middle-aged white man wearing a Bronco’s jacket got out of the second car and walked into the store, probably to prepay.
A minute of so later, the first car left. Again, though, all the videotape showed was the bottom half of the car for a second or so.
He shifted the tape to fast-forward and watched it for another few minutes. Nothing else happened, other than the man at the pump finished and eventually drove away. There was no reason to believe that he had ever squarely looked in the direction of the pay phone, although obviously it would be worth the time to track him down and find out.
Whoever made the phone call hadn’t gone into the store so there was no eyewitness there to talk to. He hadn’t purchased any gas so there was no credit card number to trace.
The lab would be able to determine what kind of car he was driving, though. That wasn’t a lot but it was more than he had an hour ago.
He popped the tape out of the VCR, walked out of the room and locked it behind him, damn glad to get out of there.
It was almost as bad as an elevator, except it couldn’t fall and kill you.
The young lady at the register smiled when he came back to give her the key. She handed him a napkin and he took it, not knowing what it was.
“That’s my number,” she said. He looked at it and saw a handwritten phone number and the name Janessa. “In case you change your mind about the you-know-what.”
He handed it back.
“Thanks but I can’t,” he said. “I’m taking one tape. I’ll have to keep it, as the original, but I’ll have the lab make you a copy and drop it off sometime tomorrow.”
She smiled.
“Why don’t you just drop it off yourself?”
He grinned.
“Thanks for everything. You stay young, all right?”
He remembered the 7-Eleven across the street. Was it still worth checking out? He looked at his watch, nearly nine o’clock. What the hell, it would only take a minute.
He left his truck where it was and walked across the street, sipping coffee on the way. An older gentleman worked the cash register and the sight reminded Teffinger to keep contributing to his retirement plan. He explained who he was and said, “I’m investigating something that happened across the street at the Total at about midnight last night. I was wondering if by any chance your surveillance cameras pick up any of that area.”
The gentleman shook his head.
“No. Sorry, they don’t.”
Teffinger nodded.
“Okay, I didn’t think so but thought I’d check anyway.”
“They’re basically to get license plate numbers, for drive-offs,” he added. “So we keep them pointed at the pumps.”
“I understand.”
“You’d be surprised how many people don’t pay.”
Teffinger nodded.
The man lowered his voice.
“I did it myself a few times, back in my younger days.”
Teffinger grinned.
“Me too.” Which was true.
“You almost have to, if you don’t have the money,” the gentleman said. Then, “Just don’t tell anyone.”
“Likewise.”
“They really frown on that kind of thing around here.”
When he got back to his truck, he remembered the Wrangler, now gone, and walked over to the passenger side just to be sure he hadn’t been dinged.
Unbelievable.
There it was.
A son-of-a-bitching dent right there in the middle of his door.
Damn it.
It’d cost him sixty bucks to get that taken out, plus the inconvenience.
He got back in the truck, called the station, and gave them the license plate number of the second car that had been there last night. It was registered to someone named Ralph Long. Dispatch was kind enough to look up his phone number. Teffinger got him on the line, explained who he was and said, “You bought some gas last night at a Total, just before midnight. While you were there, someone was over at the pay phone on the left side of the building. Did you by any chance see that person or remember anything about that?”
A pause.
“A lieutenant?”
“Right. Lieutenant Nick Teffinger, Denver Homicide.”
“What’s higher, lieutenant or sergeant?”
“Lieutenant.”
“So the sergeants are under you?”
“That’s right.”
“And they have detectives under them?”
“That’s right.”
“So you’re way at the top?”
“In some ways, yes, but it’s really just one big team.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Okay. Sorry for the side trip, I just wondered who I was talking to. Anyway, last night, I did happen to see someone over at the pay phone when I pulled up.”
“You did?”
“Well, briefly,” the man reported. “I saw him out there in the rain, and thought to myself that it was really weird, because, number one, everyone has a cell phone nowadays and, number two, if you don’t have a cell phone and need to make a call, there’s a lot of places around where you can find a phone inside. Why would someone be standing out in the pouring rain?”
Teffinger was excited.
“So how good did you see him?”
The man must have felt his enthusiasm, because he warned, “Don’t get too worked up. I never did see his face, because, number one, I only looked at him for a second and, number two, he was holding a jacket over his head, because of the rain.”
“So you never saw his face at all?”
“No, never. When I came back out of the store he was already gone.”
“What about his size, could you tell how big he was?”
“Oh, yeah,” the man said. “Now that I did see. This guy was huge. He must have been six-four at least. He was definitely a big boy.”
“Yeah?”
“Tall but filled out, too. He looked strong.”
“You could tell that? Even in the rain?”
A pause. “Yes, I guess somehow I could.”
Teffinger talked him into coming down to the department tomorrow to give a formal statement to Detective Richardson, for the file.
Then he cranked up the engine, pulled out of the Total and was on the 6th Avenue freeway within five minutes, heading west towards home. It had been a long day, sixteen hours to be exact, and suddenly he was exhausted. Traffic was minimal, as it should be on a Thursday night. A few miles out of downtown, near Sheridan, the speed limit increased from fifty-five to sixty-five, and he brought the Tundra up to sixty-eight and set the cruise control. Someone in a late model sedan closed in on him from behind, switched over to the fast lane, passed him, and then cut back over right in front of him, not more than a car-length ahead.
They were the only two vehicles on the road.
There was no reason for him to cut back in that fast.
It reminded Teffinger that he already knew how he was going to die. Some idiot wielding two tons of steel was going to take him out. Of that he was certain. There were way too many dumb-asses out there armed with cars. He brought the truck out of cruise, let it coast until the sedan got a safe distance ahead, and then reset it. He exited at Union/Simms, headed south to Cedar then snaked up into the Green Mountain foothills, to home.
Ten minutes later his head was on the pillow and he found himself reflecting on the telephone call from Kelly this afternoon. It had been nagging at him all day. She called him to find out if a lock of D’endra Vaughn’s hair had been cut off. She tried to make it seem like an afterthought but it wasn’t. Now why did she want to know that? Clearly she knew something she wasn’t sharing.
But what?
And how hard should he be trying to find out?
Chapter Sixteen
Day Five - April 20
Friday Morning
___________
Kelly sat at her desk with a cyber-smear file in f
ront of her. Two disgruntled ex-employees of Unicom were smearing her client, Charles Weber—the CEO and President of Unicom—up and down the Internet. Mr. Weber wanted them strung up by their thumbs or, at the very least, enjoined. She tried to rein him in early on since there weren’t enough money damages for the suit to make economic sense, but he was insistent on gagging those two jerks and willing to pay big company bucks to get it done. So she was working the case and that’s why it was sitting there.
That’s not where her mind was though.
Today was Friday and Northway would be back in the office this morning. This would be the first chance she had to talk to him since that brief conversation on Monday before he ran off to the airport.
She’d learned a lot since then.
For one, Michael had lied to her about the abduction of Alicia Elmblade.
For two, he had a file in his office memorializing the murder of a woman.
What to do?
She could tell Teffinger everything she knew and just let him run with it. But that phone call, once made, would be irrevocable. No one would be able to put the Genie back in the bottle.
Serious damage could be done to the firm.
Their offices would almost certainly be the subject of a criminal investigation, the media would find out and leverage its way in, and then serve the whole thing up on a juicy primetime platter. Clients would jump ship and lots of good, hardworking people would lose their jobs.
Michael Northway would be disbarred.
She would too, not that that mattered.
And if it turned out that Michael wasn’t in fact criminally involved, or that Alicia Elmblade was actually alive, all the damage would have been for nothing.
That was the disturbing fact, the fact that told her to keep her mouth shut.
Plus, what kind of woman would she be if she squealed on the one person who had taken her under his wing since day one?
So she would hold back, at least for the moment, and pray there was some legitimate explanation for everything.
Okay.
The plan for right now is to keep quiet, play dumb and listen. That might change after she met with Michael later today, but it was the plan for now.
She jumped when the phone rang. It was Northway.
She looked at the clock. Ten-fifteen.
“Kelly,” he said. “Michael here. We need to meet today but my schedule’s busting at the seams. I feel like a banana that someone threw into the gorilla cage. I have an oral argument scheduled for eleven-thirty at the Colorado Court of Appeals. Any chance you could meet me there afterwards, about noon, and we could walk back to the firm together?”
“No problem. See you there at twelve.”
“I really hate to put you out like this, but . . .”
“Michael,” she said, cutting him off. “Not a problem. Read my lips.”
“That’s why I love you.”
“See you at noon.”
She actually showed up at 11:30, just as the court called the case to the docket. Michael apparently represented the Appellee, so the other side took the podium first. The panel judges were wide-awake and actually appeared to be interested. They asked quite a few pointed questions and had obviously done their homework and even read some of the case law. She studied Michael as the other side argued. He wasn’t taking notes and, on closer examination, didn’t even have a notepad in front of him. In fact, there wasn’t anything on the table in front of him, except a water pitcher and three or four drinking glasses turned upside down. Michael’s briefcase sat on the floor next to his chair but he hadn’t opened it.
He’d told her before. It’s very simple. The secret to being a good lawyer is the ability to listen. The secret to being a good listener is sit there and shut your big fat trap every once in a while.
She couldn’t help but smile.
He sat there quietly with his hands folded in his lap, not reacting one way or the other to anything the other side said, being the perfect gentleman.
When the Appellant’s attorney eventually sat down, Michael stood up, approached the podium with nothing in hand, and said, “The Court has asked twelve very good questions. Let me tell you the straightforward answers to each one of them.”
Which he then proceeded to do.
After the arguments, when they were out of the building and walking back to the firm, he said, “God I’d hate to have their job. No power at all. The trial judge is the one with the power.”
The weather was just about perfect, sunny and seventy.
“So how have you been?” he asked her. “Anything strange happening since Monday?” He appeared genuinely interested in her welfare.
“No. I’m okay.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’ve actually been working on this matter quite a bit this week. I talked to the client a number of times, the one we were doing the favor for. He has a theory but nothing concrete.”
“What theory is that?”
“It goes something like this,” Michael said. “Alicia Elmblade witnessed a murder or crime or something, which is the reason she wanted to disappear in the first place, although she never actually said that in so many words. Somehow, whoever it was that was after her in the first place, learned that her abduction was a fake. Now he’s out to teach everyone a lesson.”
“Including you?”
Michael shook his head. “He probably wouldn’t know my name. But you and the other two witnesses, your names are in the police report, which isn’t all that hard to get.”
She considered it.
Michael must have seen hesitation on her face because he said, “He also has a permutation of that theory, which goes like this. Someone was after Alicia Elmblade in the beginning, which is why she wanted to vanish. He somehow finds out her abduction is a fake and finds out that D’endra Vaughn is involved in it. He suspects that she knows where Alicia Elmblade is and tries to get it out of her, except she dies in the process.”
Kelly considered it.
It was plausible as well, even a little more so.
“So what did happen to Alicia Elmblade?” she questioned.
Michael smiled.
“The client set her up in California with a brand new identity, a driver’s license, a social security card, some pretty sophisticated stuff, when you stop to think about it.”
“Under what name?”
Michael shook his head and sighed. “You’re better off not having that information, just in case someone really is trying to find her. For your sake as well as hers.”
Kelly tried to hide her disappointment.
“Okay.”
“Oh,” Michael added, “get this. The client told me he even gave this Alicia Elmblade woman a hundred thousand dollars, to help her get situated. I knew he was going to give her something but had no idea it was so much. He also gave her two friends ten thousand each just to encourage their continued silence.” Michael shook his head as if in wonder. “He must have liked this Elmblade woman an awful lot.”
“I’d say.”
“I almost feel sorry for the poor guy.”
“Why is that?”
“Well,” he said. “He goes to all this trouble and then two months later she stops calling him.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” Michael confirmed. “She moves out of the apartment he set her up in and drops off the face of the earth.”
“Wow. Strange.” Then, before she could stop herself, she said, “Maybe, in actuality, he killed her.”
Michael looked at her as if she was crazy, and laughed. “Not likely,” he said. “But I’ll tell you one thing, once a sap always a sap. You know what he’s doing right now, even as we speak? He’s working with one of the best private investigator firms in Los Angeles to find her, just so he can warn her about what’s going on back here in Denver.”
Kelly found herself going back to the hundred thousand dollars. She couldn’t help but think that maybe Northway and Jeannie Dannenberg were both t
elling the truth, in their own ways.
“So he actually gave her a hundred thousand dollars?”
Michael nodded and grinned.
“Nuts, isn’t it? But trust me. For this guy, that’s pocket change.”
“Umm.”
“Saturday night fun money.”
He looked like he remembered something, then reached into his inner suit pocket and pulled out a black device about the size of a cell phone. “Got a present for you,” he said, handing it to her.
She looked at it. It was a black box with a large button on it and a small red light, and the imprint of a company name, Anderson Security Services.
“It’s a GPS security alarm,” Michael said. “If you’re in trouble, you press this button. It sends a signal back to the security company and feeds them your exact location using GPS. They then call the police.”
“GPS?”
“Global Positioning System,” he explained. “Based on latitude and longitude, supposedly accurate to within twenty feet. And the signal is registered to you, so when you press it, the security company can tell the police who they should be looking for.”
“Interesting.”
“Compliments of the client,” he added. “He also wants to get you a bodyguard.”
Kelly shook her head no.
“We already talked about that,” she said.
“I told him you’d say no. But remember that the offer remains open if you change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“Oh,” he said. “He also wants to get you a gun, if you want one.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“I told him you’d say that.”
“I’ve never touched a gun in my life,” she emphasized.
They were on 17th Street now, walking in the heart of downtown, almost at the firm’s building.
“So, what now?” she questioned.
Michael considered it. “Now we just be careful, keep our eyes open and let the client continue his investigation. The one thing we can’t do is get the police involved. There’s nothing we can do or say to help them, anyway. And if they ever do find out about Rick’s Gas Station, a lot of damage is going to result.” He paused and looked at her. “You understand that, I assume.”
