by R. J. Jagger
He had to get out of their web, assuming the activity was actually for him.
Of course, there was a chance it wasn’t. Maybe the cops had done nothing more than find the bodies of the two dead bikers and didn’t have a clue yet that they were connected in any way to Megan Bennett.
He reflected back on the last several hours, which had been productive. Killing the old man last night had basically been a non-event, something that needed to be done, got done, and that was the end of it. His body was up in the rafters of the barn. At some point it would start stinking and be found.
Who cares?
The cops would no doubt try to locate the owner of the other farmhouse. But the farmer didn’t own it, his daughter did, and she was on vacation in Australia. The cops would eventually connect the dots and end up knocking on the farmer’s door, but that wasn’t likely to happen today or tomorrow.
The new place had plenty of food and hot water. All the windows had coverings. And, bless his heart, the one that no longer beat, the old fart was a gun lover. Ganjon picked out the best of the best, loaded them and laid them out on the bed upstairs, lined up like little soldiers.
He had the best of the lot—a 9 mm automatic—with him now, wedged in his belt, not far from the knife.
Megan Bennett had given the weapons a curious look that she tried to hide, but he’d seen it. Still, no big deal, she was overly secured and gagged in the other bedroom, with more than enough sleeping pills pumping through her veins. She wasn’t about to go anywhere until and unless he let her.
The beer fog in his head had totally dissipated at this point. Last night he had been vulnerable but today he was thinking as clearly as ever.
The Camry was hidden in the garage.
The cops could fly over a million times and never see it.
The old man’s pickup truck, a blue single-cab Ford F-150, was no spring chicken but looked to be in good-enough working order. Ganjon found the keys sitting on the kitchen counter and started it up, just for grins. No problems. The only drawback was that the stupid thing had a white aftermarket front fender and a red hood. The locals would all know it by heart and would be suspicious if they saw anyone except the old man driving it.
Ganjon would have to have a story ready, in case that scenario played out.
The thing that concerned him more than anything else at this point was the old man’s telephone. It rang this morning, on two separate occasions, five to six rings each time. Naturally, the old fart didn’t have an answering machine, so Ganjon had no idea who was calling. It could be something totally unimportant, or it could be a friend or a relative, maybe a son or a daughter, trying to get in touch with him. If that was the case, they’d get suspicious sooner or later and end up either calling the cops or coming over to see what was going on.
So be ready for that or, better yet, don’t be here when it happens.
At one point this morning, Ganjon decided to answer the stupid thing the next time it rang, say something like “Heating and Air Conditioning,” pretend that the person calling had dialed the wrong number, just to see if he could get any information. If someone had called while Ganjon was in that mindset, he would have answered it.
And he would have screwed up.
Luckily they didn’t.
He later realized just how stupid that would have been. The person calling might be using a phone that displays the number dialed, or they might be using repeat dial mode. Then they would know that they had dialed correctly and—not only did the old man not answer—something very strange was going on.
So Ganjon decided that he had no real option but to let it ring.
“Life’s never easy, Bailey,” he told the dog. The animal recognized his name and looked up for a second, then set his head back down.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the old farmhouse. Was it safe to go back?
It looked safe.
He didn’t see any movement whatsoever.
No parked cars.
No one walking around.
Nothing.
In all the confusion last night he forgot to grab Megan Bennett’s purse. More importantly, he forgot to grab his wallet off the kitchen counter—maybe because the biker bitch took it, in which case he was really screwed.
Either way, he had to get back there now.
“Come on, Bailey, we’re taking a little walk.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Day Seven - April 22
Sunday Afternoon
____________
Teffinger and the two women stared out the aircraft’s windows, not talking, simply watching the earth fly by below.
The woman sitting next to him, the biker woman, Catherine Higgins, chuckled as if she’d just thought of something funny.
“What?” Teffinger questioned, curious.
She leaned back and grinned at him.
“Just that look on your face, when you let go of the helicopter and started falling.”
Teffinger tried to picture it.
“Ohhhhh shit!” she continued.
He grinned.
“Yeah, well, it worked. So be glad.”
Katie Baxter smiled and looked at him, obviously getting a visual. Then she said, “None of us will ever be allowed back in southern Colorado again, that’s for sure.”
That was probably truer than Teffinger wanted to admit.
The Harley had been too trivial to derail the train but had been significant enough to explode under engine number two and take it out. Although Teffinger hadn’t personally talked yet with anyone from the train company, they supposedly weren’t showing much of a sense of humor about the whole thing. They were talking about damages and delayed shipments and irresponsible police chases. That little incident was going to end up generating more than a few meetings before all was said and done.
Reportedly, the FBI helicopter was still out there too, sitting next to the tracks in the weeds and the rabbit brush, until some genius could figure out how to get fuel to it. One of the flight-for-life guys had remarked that the pilot would probably end up losing his license, for engaging in flight with an insufficient fuel reserve and taking the aircraft into the airspace of an oncoming train. Teffinger resolved to get very personally involved in that little discussion should it ever come about.
The biker woman sustained a second-degree burn to her left arm from the Harley’s exhaust pipe, in addition to several large lacerations, one of which was deep. Teffinger and Baxter took the flight-for-life with her to the local hospital in Pueblo and waited with her while she got treated. Until her clothes came off, she actually seemed halfway normal. Then Teffinger saw all the tattoos and, for some reason, wished he could just erase them.
The good news was that she had no problem cooperating with them.
She told them how she and her two biker companions found the farmhouse while looking for a place to crash, how they found the woman tied up in the bedroom, how the big man busted in out of the blue and killed the two bikers, how he tied her up when he left to dump the two bodies.
How she escaped.
Megan Bennett was alive, at least as of last night.
That was the most important fact, together with the biker woman’s ability to hopefully identify the farmhouse from the sky.
“We’re getting close,” Teffinger observed. “How long was he gone, when he took the bodies to dump them?”
The woman looked perplexed.
“I don’t know, some time.”
“Ten minutes? Two hours?”
Teffinger could tell she was trying to get a handle on it for him. “I’m guessing an hour, maybe more.”
Teffinger nodded.
“Okay, good.”
If that was true then the farmhouse should be about a half hour drive from where they found the two bikers’ bodies this morning.
As they started to get in range, Teffinger told the pilot to take them way up. He guessed that the farmhouse would be long abandoned by now. In case it wasn’t, thoug
h, he didn’t want the chopper to look like it was searching. He wanted it to look just like any other aircraft peacefully on its way from point A to B.
They passed over the ground where the two dead bikers had been found this morning. “There’s where he dumped them,” Teffinger told the biker woman, pointing. She looked and grunted, curious but not showing any emotion. There were several vehicles in the area and a lot of activity on the ground. “That’s a pretty important crime scene,” Teffinger explained. “Okay,” he said. “See over there? That’s the gas station you stopped at. The Sinclair. You came from that way, the north, right?”
She nodded.
“Right.”
“Okay. We’re going to follow that road and you tell me when we get to the farmhouse.”
Four minutes later she said, “We need to turn here, follow that road, the one going that way.”
They did.
Shortly thereafter, she said, “There, I think.”
“Are you sure?”
She got excited, visibly excited, and he could tell that she was certain. “Yes. I remember that old rusted car on the right of the house. And the driveway was covered with weeds. And the barn was next to the house, not behind it, just like that. I don’t see his car, through. His car’s gone.”
“It could be in the barn.”
Teffinger gave her a big kiss on the cheek. “You did good.”
Now what?
Teffinger leaned in towards the pilot, to where he would be able to hear him better. “That’s the place we’re looking for,” he said, pointing. “Just hang right here.”
It was important that Sydney be involved in the collar. She’d been working tirelessly for a long time and had earned the right to be there. Teffinger managed to get her on her cell phone and tell her his plan. Thirteen minutes later, she pulled up at the end of the driveway to the farmhouse, along with Agents Charles Miller and Sam Dakota, leading a train of black-and-whites. Once they were in place, Teffinger had the pilot drop the bird straight out of the air and jumped out. The chopper immediately swooped back up, with Katie Baxter on board, who would serve as the eye in the sky.
He pulled his weapon and felt the weight of it in his hand.
The last time he drew like this he used it. The memory was suddenly so palpable he could taste it.
He swallowed and looked at everyone.
“Remember,” he said, “if he’s there he has a hostage. Okay, let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Day Seven - April 22
Sunday Afternoon
____________
Ganjon was in the bedroom of the farmhouse, pissed that he was having trouble finding Megan Bennett’s purse, when he first heard the rumble of the helicopter.
What the hell?
He ran to the front window and saw the aircraft, blue with a white belly. It dropped out of the sky at an incredible, almost dangerous, rate. There were several people inside.
Shit!
They were coming for him!
His senses intensified and recessed survival genes exploded.
If he got caught in the house he was dead.
Get to the barn, at least.
Get there now, right this second, before the chopper pulls back up and pins your sorry ass in the house.
He ran out the back door, behind the house, and into the barn, with Bailey by his side, almost tripping him up in fact. Jesus, the dog was going to screw up everything. His first instinct was to kill it but he couldn’t have fresh blood at the scene.
“Come here, boy,” he said, kneeling down.
The dog came over, hesitant, sensing danger.
“Good boy,” he said, patting him on the head.
He could hear the helicopter pulling back up into the sky now. He was pinned in the barn. Whoever got dropped off would already be heading this way. He worked frantically to get the dog’s collar off. The last thing he needed was for the cops to know where the animal lived. He didn’t need some good-natured civil servant returning it this afternoon and end up stumbling across Megan Bennett and the dead farmer and the Camry.
He finally managed to get it off, then immediately pushed the animal away, made a violent gesture towards it, and sneered, “Go!” The animal, visibly startled, backed up, then turned and ran away.
Now what?
Up in the rafters of the structure, a good twenty feet off the ground, someone had laid down a couple of sheets of plywood, a crude ancient storage platform. There was no ladder or way to get to it, though.
Well, wait, maybe there was.
Ganjon ran to the other end of the barn, climbed onto the top of some old rusty piece of machinery, and then jumped up to catch a rafter. From there, he swung from rafter to rafter, like a kid on monkey bars, all the way back to the side of the barn where the plywood was. He muscled himself onto it and lay down, not quite believing he had been able to do it.
The helicopter sounded like it was right over his head.
His hands burned.
He must have picked up fifteen or twenty splinters and started to pull them out, being as careful as he could not to break them off inside. The plywood was covered with dust, dirt and pigeon shit that had to be at least twenty years old.
He managed to find a knothole in the side of the barn big enough to see through when he got his eye right up to it. Four people were running up to the house, quietly motioning to one another, with their weapons drawn. Ganjon recognized one of them as the cop from TV, Canterbury, or whatever the hell his name was, the hunter. Two of the assholes, an older man and a younger bodybuilder type, ran around the side of the house and disappeared. The TV cop and a strong black woman crept up to the front door, waited for a few seconds, and then rushed in.
Bailey the dog followed them.
He could hear them shouting to one another but the noise of the helicopter kept him from deciphering the individual words. There were other cops now, too, lots of them, fanning out around the property.
This was it.
He pulled his eye away from the hole and lay down flat in the dirt and bird-shit on the plywood, with the gun on his right side, safety off, and the knife on his left. Whenever he moved the wood creaked a little. He folded his arms under his head, put his body in the most comfortable position he could find and concentrated on getting his breathing as quiet and shallow as possible.
The witching hour was here.
He’d been immobile only a short time when they enter the barn.
The dog was with them.
He could hear it panting.
They were covering ground quickly, obviously looking for any sign of Megan Bennett, dead or alive.
He didn’t move a single muscle.
His bladder had built up a pressure that was getting exponentially worse with each passing second.
An eternity passed.
Then a cell phone rang, right below him, and he heard one of the men answer it.
“Teffinger.”
A pause, then the man said, “They just found Kelly Ravenfield’s car. I got to go.”
For some reason the dog barked.
The sound startled Ganjon so much that he pissed in his pants.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Day Eight - April 23
Monday Morning
____________
Teffinger rapped on the apartment door, waited, and then rapped again, harder and longer. He knew he was waking the woman up but she’d just have to forgive him. He finally heard movement inside, peeked through the window where the blind didn’t cover, and saw Jeannie Dannenberg come out of a bedroom and walk towards the door. She was in the process of throwing a long-sleeve shirt over a naked body as she worked her way across the living room. When she got to the door and opened it two buttons were fastened and that’s all she had time for.
Her hair was a mess and she looked like she’d just been dragged out of hibernation.
She recognized him but was having trouble zeroing in.
“N
ick Teffinger,” he reminded her. “Kelly Ravenfield’s friend.”
The confusion dropped off her face.
“Right,” she said. “From the club. You’re the detective.” She swung the door all the way open, an invitation for him to enter, walked over to the couch and plopped herself down, yawning. “What time is it?”
Teffinger shut the door behind him, looked at his watch and took a seat in the overstuffed chair across from the couch. “Ten after eight. Sorry to wake you.” He had a thermos of coffee in his right hand and held it up, a peace offering. “Coffee,” he said. “Some kind of chocolate-cherry flavor, if you’re in the mood.”
She shook her head.
“I’m going back to bed as soon as you leave. So what’s going on?”
“I’m assuming you haven’t heard about Kelly,” Teffinger told her.
The look on her face told him she hadn’t.
“No. Heard what?”
Teffinger organized it, not wanting to give her too much information, but enough. “Someone attacked her Saturday night. She’s at Lutheran Medical Center.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
No, he wasn’t.
“Someone stuffed her into the trunk of her car and drove it off an embankment into Clear Creek, up on Route 6, between the second and third tunnels. Luckily the river dropped and the vehicle ended up lodging itself nose down, with the trunk up in the air. Otherwise she would have drowned.”
Teffinger waited while the woman processed the information and visualized the scene. She looked seriously troubled.
“How horrible,” she said
Teffinger nodded.
“Ironically, the recovery team almost killed her getting the car out of the river. They didn’t know she was in there.”
“So is she going to be okay, or what?”
He wasn’t sure.
“They’re running tests,” he told her, “and have her all doped up. But she’s a strong woman and that will help.”
“Poor Kelly.”
Teffinger nodded and then decided it was time to get what he came for. “Last weekend, last Saturday in fact, a woman named D’endra Vaughn was murdered. I’m assuming that you know about that, since you’re her friend.”
