Attorney's Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (17 page)

Venta looked at Hannah and said, “Feisty, isn’t she?”

“Apparently so.”

HANNAH SPENT THE NIGHT AT LONDON’S APARTMENT. They talked for an hour in bed and then Hannah gave London a backrub before they went to sleep.

51

Day Seven—June 17

Sunday Morning

ON SUNDAY MORNING, TEFFINGER swung by the Marriott West in Golden, picked up Leanne Sanders, and drove back down to the parking lot crime scene while the profiler punched the preset radio buttons.

“It’s all hip-hop,” she complained.

Teffinger grunted.

“Sydney,” he said.

“You let her reset them?”

“I don’t let her do anything,” he said. “She just does it.”

“Well two can play at that game,” Leanne said.

She reset everything to easy listening. “This is what it sounds like inside an elevator,” she said.

“No wonder I never go in them.”

AS THEY PASSED BANNOCK STREET and entered downtown, Kate Baxter called and said, “Got a hit on our BOLO.”

What BOLO?

Brandy Zucker’s car.

Right.

He remembered now.

“It showed up parked at the rest stop at Vail Pass,” she said.

“Vail Pass?”

Right.

“That’s a long way from where she was supposed to be hiking,” he said.

“That it is,” she said. “What do you want to do?”

He considered it.

“Has she shown up anywhere yet?”

“No.”

“Okay, let’s err on the side of caution and treat the car as a crime scene,” he said. “Call Paul Kubiak and have him send someone up there to process it.”

“That’s eighty miles,” Kate said.

“I know, but if she was abducted and there are prints in the car, I want them,” he said. “I also want to know if the car is running fine or broken down. Have you called the weatherman yet?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Go ahead and call him and get him up to speed.”

“He’s going to freak,” Kate said. “He’s already a rubber band stretched to the limit. Should we wait until after we process it?”

Teffinger considered it.

“If I was in his shoes, I’d want to know now.”

IT BEING SUNDAY MORNING, the traffic was actually sane. That didn’t mean some idiot couldn’t take them out at any moment but at least the odds were less.

“I had a strange thought last night,” he told Leanne.

“Did it involve a naked woman, a donkey and a midget?”

He laughed.

“No.”

“Then go ahead and tell me about it,” she said.

“By no, I mean no midget. Still want to hear it?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Go on.”

“Okay,” he said. “The Frenchman was after the lawyer.”

“Remington.”

“Right,” Teffinger said. “Remington knows this, because we paid him a visit. Now the Frenchman turns up dead. Did you note the location?”

“You mean, not too far from Remington’s office?”

“Right,” Teffinger said. “Now, ordinarily Remington would be my prime suspect. Except you said he went to Bangkok.”

“Right, he did.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“So if Remington didn’t kill Frenchie, the question is whether Remington hired someone to do a preemptive strike. That makes sense in a way, because Frenchie was in the passenger seat, meaning he was probably killed somewhere else and then driven there. Maybe so that Remington would see that the job had been done.”

“I doubt it,” Leanne said.

“Why?”

“He’s not in town to see it for one,” she said. “Plus there are a lot safer ways to show that a hit’s been completed, especially since Remington knows that we know that he and the Frenchman are somehow connected.”

They were at the crime scene now. Teffinger parked on Broadway and they took advantage of the light of day to check the surrounding buildings for security cameras.

There were several in the area but none pointed at the parking lot.

That idea was a dead end.

They checked the ground in the parking lot and found nothing new of interest.

Teffinger pulled the tape off the perimeter and threw it in the back of the Tundra.

There.

The scene was released.

FROM THERE, THEY SWUNG BY THE 7-ELEVEN on Santa Fe, refilled Teffinger’s thermos with caffeine, and headed over to the Adams Mark Hotel where Boudiette had initially checked in, to see if the room had any secrets.

If it did, it wasn’t coughing them up.

Teffinger didn’t care that much.

His thoughts were on Samantha Rickenbacker, dead since Tuesday night; and Tessa Blake, missing since Tuesday night.

“The Frenchman had a snapped neck,” Teffinger said. “A woman by the name of Samantha Rickenbacker got killed that same way on Tuesday night.”

Leanne studied him.

“You told me that before,” she said.

“Oh, sorry. I guess it just keeps bouncing around in my mind.”

“That’s okay.”

“I made a promise to her,” he added.

“The dead woman?”

“Right.”

“I didn’t think you did that anymore.”

He didn’t either.

BEFORE THEY LEFT THE ADAMS MARK HOTEL, Teffinger returned the key to the front desk and said, “We’re releasing the room. Go ahead and rent it if you want to.” He turned to Leanne as they walked across the lobby and asked, “Now what?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you know any judges who are sympathetic to the cause,” she said. “Because if you do, I wouldn’t mind getting a search warrant and spending the afternoon in Mark Remington’s house.”

Teffinger chewed on it.

“We can use the theory that Remington hired someone to kill the Frenchman as a preemptive strike,” she added.

Teffinger grunted.

“That’s thin,” he said.

“Maybe we’ll find something to point to who the neck snapper is,” she added.

Teffinger’s eyes narrowed.

“Right. Good idea.”

52

Day Seven—June 17

Sunday Morning

WHEN HE GOT BACK TO THE BOXCARS last night from his contact's house, Jekker grabbed a flashlight and checked on his captive, Tessa Blake, who was pounding on the door and screaming. She couldn’t take the isolation any longer and begged him to let her go. So he made a compromise and told her she could spend the night in his bed if she wanted.

“You mean for sex?” she asked.

No, he didn’t.

Just for company, if she wanted.

It was her choice.

She’d have one side.

He’d have the other.

She bit her lower lip and said, “Okay.”

He let her shower and then they drank beer. She told him about camping trips as a child, a 4th grade play in which she had a singing part, driving on the wrong side of the freeway once, a boyfriend who got a finger blown off with an M-80, and on and on and on. When it was time to go to bed, he let her use the facilities, then chained her ankle to the bed frame and made sure there was nothing she could reach to use as a weapon, even if she got out of bed and stretched to the end of the chain.

He didn’t care about her hands.

She couldn’t use those to hurt him.

But he wanted to be sure she couldn’t get her little fingers on anything sharp or heavy; or on his cell phone, for that matter.

She promised to behave herself.

Then they slept.

She slept well.

He didn’t.

Instead he flipped and pitched half the night with two things on his mind—one, what his contact would say today regarding the request that Jekker gave him last night; and two, how to best handle the guy blackmailing him with the pictures.

SUNDAY MORNING, JEKKER LET TESSA BLAKE sit in the sun and watch him shoot the bow. When his phone rang, he gave her a warning glance to be quiet and then answered.

It turned out to be the call he’d been waiting for.

His contact.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to your request to come up with a way to keep you in the United States,” the man said. “There’s only one way that I can think of to make it work. Obviously, first of all, you’d have to kill Tessa Blake. That means she won’t be released like we wanted. That won’t be as much of a problem as we initially thought if a man named Porter Potter happens to die.”

“Who’s Porter Potter?”

“He lives here in Denver and will be an easy target,” the man said. “The key is, though, it will have to look like an accident. We can’t have anyone even begin to think he was murdered. If you can pull that off, then you have our permission to kill the woman and stay in Denver.”

Jekker grinned.

“I already have a plan,” he said.

“So that’s the route you want to go?”

“Absolutely.”

“Potter has to die before the woman though,” the man said. “If she dies first and he finds out about it, which he will, that will cause us more problems than you can believe.”

“Okay.”

“Say it,” the man said.

“Potter goes first,” Jekker said.

“Then and only then can you do the woman.”

“Then the woman,” Jekker said.

“I’m dead serious,” the man added. “The order is critical.”

“Why?”

“That’s need-to-know,” the man said. “I’ll call you back in an hour with the information on Potter.”

“Be sure you get me his vehicle descriptions and license plate numbers.”

“Done.”

WHEN JEKKER HUNG UP, Tessa Blake looked at him with kind eyes. He had been good to her lately. And had told her he would be releasing her as soon as he was absolutely convinced that she wouldn’t help the police.

“Thanks for letting me be outside,” she said.

“No problem.”

“It really means a lot to me.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

A hawk circled above, riding a wind current on outstretched wings, scouting for food. Jekker’s heart raced as he suddenly realized something. He had been counting on releasing Tessa Blake, which meant that the police would find out who he was, which meant that the blackmailer with the photographs wasn’t a real threat since he wouldn’t be telling the police anything they didn’t already know. But now that he would be killing Tessa Blake, the blackmailer was a problem, a problem that needed to go away permanently, and fast, today if possible.

53

Day Seven—June 17

Sunday Morning

LONDON WOKE SUNDAY MORNING when the mattress moved. A deep recessed survival gene immediately forced her arms over her face for protection. Then she saw that the movement came from a woman.

Hannah Trent.

Breathing deeply.

London shifted onto her back and closed her eyes.

Five minutes later she forced herself out of bed, turned on the hot water for the shower, and used the facilities while the water came up to temperature. She lathered her legs with soap and shaved them in the shower while the spray splashed on her back. Fifteen minutes later she was in the kitchen wearing a T-shirt with her hair combed but still soaking wet. She got the coffee pot in motion, fired up the laptop and pulled the blinds to the side to see what the day looked like outside.

The sun broke over the horizon.

A cloudless sky floated above.

Nice.

Hannah joined her in the kitchen thirty minutes later, showered and refreshed. Her short hair had almost dried. She looked slightly embarrassed and said, “Sorry about last night.”

London had a pretty good idea what she was referring to but feigned ignorance.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the backrub,” she said. “I guess the wine just got to me.”

“It’s okay,” London said. “It felt good.”

“You’re probably wondering if I’m gay,” she said. “I’m not, at least that I know of.”

“Well I’m totally straight, but it felt good, so thank you.”

“You’re not mad?”

London walked over and hugged her, quick but tight, then kissed her on the cheek.

“You’re a nice person,” she said. “I’m glad you stayed over last night.”

Hannah smiled.

“I just didn’t want to appear inappropriate.”

OVER BREAKFAST, LONDON HAD A WILD IDEA and immediately called Venta. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” she said. “We know you never saw the man who hired you.”

True.

That had all been done by telephone.

“But obviously he has some type of a connection to Bangkok,” London said.

“Right.”

“I mean, he’s embedded there deep enough to not only know about the place where you were taken, but also to get women for the place. That means that whoever runs the place trusts him, and no one’s going to trust him unless they know him pretty well.”

Agreed.

“So how do they know him?”

Silence.

“I don’t know.”

“Me either,” London said. “But I do know one thing. He’s definitely been to the place.”

Agreed.

“More than once.”

Agreed.

“And when he goes there, they’d treat him like royalty.”

Agreed again.

“Meaning that he’d have his pick of the women,” London said. “Not necessarily for S&M—we don’t know if he was into that or not—but at least for a good blowjob.”

True.

“Which means that you might have seen him there,” London said. “In fact, it’s even possible that he chose you in the first place to have you personally service him in Bangkok. You might not have been as random as we thought. So the bottom line is this: even though you didn’t see the guy when he hired you, you might have seen him in Bangkok.”

“That makes sense.”

“So here’s what we do,” London said. “We get on the website of Vesper & Bennett, pull up the bios of the lawyers one at a time, and see if you recognize anyone.”

“You’re brilliant,” Venta said. “I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”

SHE ACTUALLY ARRIVED IN FOURTEEN, wearing green shorts and incredible legs. Following hugs all around, they pulled up V&B's website on the web. Venta said, “They have 175 lawyers. This is going to take some time.”

True.

That gave London a chance to walk down to King Soopers and pick up a few groceries. Her phone rang as she pushed a shopping cart down the frozen foods section.