Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (10 page)

Why leave?

She found the phone on the counter of the kitchen island, hesitated, put it back down, picked it back up, dialed Jeannie Dannenberg, got an answer and found herself asking if they could meet.

Dannenberg sounded high.

“Sure, but not here. Rachel’s in the bedroom with a guy, smoking and shit.”

THEY ARRANGED TO MEET AT THE RAINBOW BAR,
a two-block walk up the street for Dannenberg, who didn’t own a car. Kelly took Colfax Avenue all the way, got there in fifteen minutes, found four vehicles in the parking lot, all junkers, and parked the BMW in the last slot in the back, five empty spaces down. She’d rather walk a few extra steps than get door-dings hammered out.

The place was one of those Mom-and-Pop neighborhood dives. She’d driven by a million of them but never been in more than one or two. They’d both been the same—cheap beer and drunken mumblings about how crummy life was.

When she walked inside, Jeannie Dannenberg was already there, sitting at the bar with a half-empty bottle of Bud Light in front of her, smoking a cigarette and talking to the bartender who was leaning on the counter like he’d been settled in for a while. Kelly saw him look at her as soon as she came through the door, as if he’d been expecting her, and expecting her to be someone worth looking at. Three other men perched on barstools also turned their heads, older guys, harmless, neighborhood drunks.

Even in cotton khaki pants and a casual blouse she felt overdressed.

The place may have been only one bar but it smelled like ten.

She couldn’t imagine what the floor looked like by the light of day.

Dannenberg must have read something on her face, because she smacked the bartender on the arm and said, “Ray, stop gawking at the lady. You’ve seen women before.” Then to Kelly, “Don’t worry, he doesn’t kill that many people.”

The man smiled. “Not that many, but you’re on the list. You know that, I hope.” To Kelly, “What can I get for you, pretty lady?”

“Bud Light and a glass of ice, thanks.”

“Glass of ice?”

She nodded.

“Right.”

“Ice water?”

“No, just a glass of ice.”

“You don’t want water in the glass or nothing?”

“No, just ice—for the beer. I like it cold.”

He shook his head.

“Never heard of such a thing. Glass of ice . . .”

Dannenberg looked at him. “Raymond, some day when I’m feeling generous I’m going to sit down and explain to you why you can’t get laid.” To Kelly, “Come on, let’s get a booth.” Back to the bartender, “Girl-talk.”

He smiled.

“Booths cost extra. And hey, I get laid plenty.”

They took the end booth, an orange vinyl unit held together with duct tape, and a stained wooden table that more than one person had felt the need to carve something important on. Beers in hand, and now able to talk in private, Kelly poured the beverage into the ice, watched it foam up, took a drink and got right to the point. “We need to find out if Alicia Elmblade is alive or not. Personally, I have my doubts. She would have called you sooner or later if she was.”

Dannenberg smelled like weed and had a glaze over her eyes that looked like it wasn’t about to go away anytime soon.

“Why?”

Kelly rolled the bottle in her fingers.

“Because, if she’s dead, we participated in an actual murder instead of a fake one. Which means that the man who got us involved, namely Michael Northway, is either in on it somehow, or got duped just like us. Either way, this thing goes to a whole new level.”

“Look at that,” Dannenberg said.

Kelly looked outside. Rain was starting to pummel down with an incredible force, bouncing off the asphalt and pounding on the windows.

An ominous figure scurried past outside, hunched against the weather, wearing a dark windbreaker and baseball cap. He looked huge and powerful. Instead of continuing down the street he headed around the corner of the building. She expected the door to open at any second but it didn’t.

Strange.

“He seemed nice, from what Alicia said about him,” Dannenberg said.

Kelly looked back at her.

“Who?”

“This Michael Northway guy.”

“Why? What’d Alicia say?”

“I don’t know, that he was always just real polite, didn’t treat her like a piece of meat, that kind of thing.”

“But you never personally talked to him?”

Dannenberg shook her head.

“I saw him in the van that night but, no, I never talked to him or anything.”

Kelly contemplated it.

“So, the ten thousand dollars, he didn’t personally give that to you?”

“No, Alicia got that from him and passed it on.”

“Okay.”

“Earlier that day.”

“Okay.” Kelly looked around. “I have to admit, I really can’t find an upside for him to knowingly get involved in a situation where someone would actually be murdered. But he did lie to me about why she wanted to disappear.”

Dannenberg contemplated the statement, took a hit on the cigarette, blew smoke out her nose, and said, “Run that one by me again.” She held up the beer and added, “By me and my Bud.”

Kelly leaned in.

“Okay, to get me to participate in the charade, he told me that there was this client of the firm that wanted to help Alicia Elmblade, and that she wanted to fake her own death, because she was scared of something. But you told me she wasn’t scared of anything, she only did it for the money.”

“A hundred grand.”

“Precisely.”

“Okay. I remember now.”

“So he lied to me,” Kelly added. “That seems bad, but I don’t know for sure that it is. I’ve known him for a long time and have more respect for him than you can imagine. This is the first and only thing that’s been out of character for him, and there may well be a good explanation.”

“So why don’t you just ask him straight-out what the hell’s going on? Just say, hey, mister big-shot, what the hell’s going on?”

Kelly felt the bartender’s eyes on her. She looked in that direction but saw that he was pulling glasses out of a sink and drying them with a tattered towel, paying no attention to her and Jeannie whatsoever.

She looked back at Dannenberg.

“That’s not an option,” she said. “If he is somehow messed up in this, the last thing I need is for him to know that I know that he lied to me, that’ll just clam him up. The only thing that we have going for us right now is that he doesn’t know that we know that he lied to me. He doesn’t know that you and I are talking and we need to keep it that way.”

Dannenberg smiled.

“We could have Jack pay him a visit. He could get some answers. He hates lawyers anyway. Damn near killed his ex’s divorce lawyer, actually served a year in Canyon City . . .”

Kelly shook her head.

“No. What we need to do is find out if Alicia Elmblade is still alive, on our own, quietly. If it turns out that she is, we can talk to her, and maybe she’ll have an idea why someone might have killed D’endra or be after us.”

“And if we can’t find her, then what?”

Good question.

“Then we need to regroup. Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. It’s just a theory, so don’t get too excited. But suppose someone actually wanted to kill Alicia Elmblade from the start. Somehow, someway, he gets Michael Northway to set up this charade. Alicia participates and disappears and three witnesses say they saw an Asian man take her. One of those witnesses is a lawyer in a prominent law firm, me.”

Dannenberg nodded.

“Later,” Kelly continued, “maybe even that very night, he really does kill her. And he has the perfect alibi, because he’s a white guy. Not only that, he was someplace public with plenty of witnesses at the time she was abducted at the gas station. Plus, he knows that I can’t change my story even if I wanted to, because I’d end up loosing my license and probably even land up in jail. What we did is a felony offense, in case you’re interested.”

Dannenberg shrugged, like she didn’t particularly care, then noted, “He’d have to be awful smart. I mean, that’s a lot of planning. Why would anyone want to kill Alicia?”

“You tell me.”

Dannenberg drew a blank, drained her bottle, held it up and waved it at the bartender. “Hey, Raymond, if you’re not too busy playing with yourself.” She looked at Kelly’s bottle, saw that it was almost empty, and said, “Two.” Then to Kelly, ”Everyone liked her. And she wasn’t messed up in anything serious. I would have known.”

KELLY REMEMBERED THE DARK FIGURE OUTSIDE,
the man who hadn’t come in. She walked to the other end of the bar and looked out. There he was, walking out of the parking lot. He had massive shoulders and a strong physique, not the hunched over depressed look of someone who’d kill time in a dive like this. Now he was heading down the street. She watched him until he disappeared in the storm.

Weird.

What the hell was he doing back there in the parking lot?

Screwing with her car so she couldn’t drive?

“It’s called rain,” the bartender told her.

She smiled.

“Do you have any surveillance cameras outside?”

“You’re kidding. Those cost money. Why?”

“No reason.”

BACK AT THE TABLE, DANNENBERG SAID,
“So what do we do, to find out if Alicia is alive or not?”

Kelly focused.

“I’ve already worked the Internet to exhaustion, which has been a giant dead-end. So we need to get a grassroots search going. We talk to her old friends and find out if any of them have heard from her or know where she might be. We need to find out if she has any family and whether they’ve heard from her.”

“I know a lot of the people she hung with.”

“That’s what I was hoping.” She took a swallow. “The first thing we have to do is get you a car.” She reached into her purse, pulled out an envelope and pushed it across the table. “There’s five hundred dollars in here, for gas and stuff. Go to the Budget on Colfax in the morning, I’ll have a car rented by then for you to pick up. You have a driver’s license, right?”

“Sort of . . .”

“Sort of?”

“It’s not really real, but looks real. Jack got it for me after the DUI.”

Kelly shook her head.

“Well, whatever. You’re going to need a driver’s license to pick up the car. See if it’ll work. If it doesn’t give me a call.”

“Yeah, sure.” She looked outside, nodded in that direction and added, “It’s getting worse.”

KELLY LOOKED OUTSIDE.
The man in the windbreaker was across the street now, looking in their direction as he passed.

She bit her lower lip.

“I want you to sleep at my place tonight.”

Dannenberg laughed.

“Listen, you’re cute and all, but girls really aren’t my thing.”

Kelly ignored it and pulled her car keys out of her purse. “Come on. We’ll be safe there. See if you can get Raymond to walk us out to the car.”

“Hey, Raymond. Feel like getting drenched?”

“Not really.”

“Well too bad, because you are.”

Chapter Ten

Day Three - April 18

Wednesday Night

____________

GANJON CAME TO A STOP
at the 7-Eleven gas pump and killed the engine. The night was dark and water fell out of it, lots and lots of water, from one of those pent-up spring storms. He pushed the emergency brake down, threw a lightweight jacket over his head and stepped out. The storm immediately pounded him, bouncing off his jacket and smashing onto his pants. He selected Pay Inside, removed the nozzle, stuck it in the gas tank, and flipped the lever up. Nothing happened. He stood there for a moment and then mashed the green start button with his thumb. A second later the pump hummed and then the hose bulged and shifted like a startled snake. He ducked back into the car, slammed the door and waited.

It was almost midnight.

He was a balloon on the verge of busting.

The gas shut off with a loud clank and the humming stopped.

He got out, put the handle back, screwed in the gas cap, and trotted towards the store with the jacket over his head, kicking up puddles of water with his feet. Inside, an old fart with white hair told him the bill was $26.93, which he already knew. He paid with a twenty and a ten, pocketed the change, and headed back to the car. No credit cards, no traces. On the other side of the street sat a Total. He drove over, parked at the left corner in front of the pay phone, and killed the engine. The phone was slightly protected by the overhang of the store but not by much. The security cameras were over by the pumps and shouldn’t be a problem. He got out, threw the jacket over his head, which he kept pointed away from the cameras, scurried over to the phone and dialed Megan Bennett’s number.