Body of Shadows (24 page)

He’d be creative.

He’d enjoy himself.

76

Day Five

July 22

Friday Morning

During the break-in
last night, the gladiator didn’t jump out of a corner with killer hands, or charge up the fire escape with a knife in his hand, or mysteriously drop out of the ceiling with a war cry. Every noise and flicker of light in the universe seemed like one of those but in the end none were.

Things were much the same as before.

One exception was that they found a full drawer of neatly coiled lengths of red rope, with labels ranging from four to twenty feet.

The other exception was the laptop.

This time when they flipped it open, instead of getting a password screen the display sprang to life. They found a number of flash drives in a drawer, grabbed one and copied the document files.

In the process, Pantage knocked over a small green banker’s lamp, which shattered on the wood planking.

They left it where it was and got the hell out of there.

That was last night.

Now it was morning.

Pantage got two hours of seat work under her belt then pushed the gladiator’s flash drive in her laptop and took a look. One of the folders was labeled “Rope.” In it were hundreds of photos of naked women tied in intricate bondage.

She scanned a few of them and closed the folder.

Then she saw a folder that grabbed her by the throat, a folder labeled “Pantage Phair.”

She clicked it open to find a number of JPEG images of herself spanning back two weeks, long before Friday night when they ostensibly first met. Many were snapped downtown in the financial district or on the mall; she was dressed in attorney attire, often with Renn-Jaa going to lunch, plus a couple with Condor as they walked to the courthouse the week before last. She had a leather briefcase in her left hand.

There were three with her walking with Jackie Lake.

Those weren’t the creepy ones though.

The disturbing ones were at her loft, taken from LoDo below as she stood on her balcony. There would have been some of her in bed if the guy could have gotten an angle.

With the door closed,
she showed the images to Renn-Jaa who said, “We have to get these to Drift right away.”

Pantage frowned.

She knew that.

They’d broken in.

In a perfect world, Drift would never know about that. Unfortunately the world was getting less and less perfect.

“This is actually good,” Renn-Jaa said. “As long as we have to confess to Drift what we’ve been up to, we can tell him about the three guys who attacked the black woman.”

Pantage ran her fingers through her hair.

“We can get disbarred,” she said. “Both of us. Breaking into to someone’s place—twice no less—then stealing information from a computer, that’s pretty serious conduct for an attorney no matter what the motivation.”

Renn-Jaa contemplated it.

She didn’t argue.

“I don’t care about me,” Pantage said. “My life’s pretty much screwed up at this point and I don’t see myself recovering. You’re a different story though.”

“What do you mean? Your life’s screwed up—”

Pantage stood up and looked out the window.

“We need to be smart,” she said. “We need to get all this information to Drift without implicating ourselves.”

“How?”

“We’ll hire an attorney,” she said. “What we say will be privileged. She can then transmit everything to Drift without specifically mentioning our names.”

Renn-Jaa tilted her head.

“Her?”

“Right.”

“Do you already have someone in mind?”

Pantage nodded.

“Kelly Ravenfield,” she said. “She has Drift’s ear.”

Renn-Jaa shook her head.

“She’s trying to get Drift,” she said. “I can see her letting it slip that you and me are her clients. She can get a leg up that way.”

Pantage shook her head.

“If she purposely betrays our trust, Drift wouldn’t look very favorably on it. She’d just be shooting herself in the foot. Besides, Drift already graduated from third grade, meaning he’s going to put two and two together anyway.” She looked at her watch. “Let’s see if we can get Kelly to meet us for lunch. He’ll know we broke in. My concern is that we never formally admit it.”

Renn-Jaa smiled.

“This has nothing to do with anything,” she said. “You just want an excuse to meet Kelly.”

77

Day Five

July 22

Friday Morning

Drift’s night
of so-called sleep dripped with dreams of scorpions. He didn’t realize why until he woke up and remembered the arm tattoo of the man who stalked Pantage yesterday. He got the coffee pot charged up and let it do its thing while he took a three mile pre-dawn jog through the silent streets of Green Mountain, then headed to work with a bowl of cereal in his lap and a thermos of the good stuff laying on the passenger seat.

En route he called Pantage to be sure she survived the night.

The call woke her.

She was fine.

“You were quite the little ride last night,” she said.

“I could say the same.”

He was the first one to work as usual. When he opened the door and flicked on the fluorescents, something happened he didn’t expect. The light above his desk hummed like a flock of angry mosquitoes. He walked down to the chief’s office and turned on the lights. No humming came from above.

He smiled.

How’d the man figure it out?

He was half tempted to switch them back but decided he didn’t have time right now, later, but not now. Instead he got the coffee dripping and searched the net for scorpion tattoos in hopes of finding an identical match to the suspect in question.

Nothing popped up.

He pulled up a listing of tattoo shops in Denver and found that most of them opened at ten, meaning it was too early to start calling.

He printed off a copy of the suspect’s tattoo and tacked it on the wall behind his desk. While he was at it he printed off a copy of Michael Northway walking through the streets of New York and stuck that up too.

His phone rang
and Sydney’s voice came through from New York.

“You were right,” she said. “The woman with Northway was a lawyer. Her name’s Michelle Twist. She’s a partner in a big firm here in Manhattan by the name of Block, Winters & LaJunge. Northway isn’t a member of the firm. I went through all the bio photos and he’s not there.”

“Good work.”

“Thanks but here’s the big question. Now what?”

Drift chewed on the options.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “I’m going to email you photos of D’endra Vaughn, both alive and dead. Stake out the base of the law firm’s building and see if you can catch the lawyer—”

“—Michelle Twist—”

“—Right, her, see if you can catch her coming out. Get her alone. If she comes out with someone else, back off. The key is to get her alone, the sooner the better but tonight at her house or apartment if that’s what it takes. When you get her alone, show her the photos and explain the background. At that point, hopefully she’ll give you the name Northway’s using and where to find him, even if he’s a client. Tell her your conversation with her never existed. No one will know what she tells you. All you want is the information.”

“What if she doesn’t cooperate?”

“That will depend on whether she says that Northway’s a client or not,” he said. “If he’s a client and she refuses to give him up, quite frankly I don’t know what we’re going to do. But if he’s not a client, if he’s just a friend or lover or something like that, then make it clear that we’ll be forced to determine whether she’s harboring a fugitive. Remind her that’s a felony.”

“Sounds good.”

“Hopefully we don’t get to that point,” he said. “Give her every opportunity to talk off the record.”

Silence.

“You still there?” she said.

He was.

“Northway has a way with women,” she said. “She’ll tip him off and he’ll disappear again. Maybe we should just lay low and stay in the shadows. Do we have enough to tap her phone?”

Drift raked his hair back.

It flopped back down.

“Doubtful,” he said. “Show her the photos. Hopefully they’ll convince her to do the right thing.”

“That’s your plan? To hope she does the right thing?”

“Yes.”

“Has it ever worked before?”

“No but there’s always a first time.”

78

Day Five

July 22

Friday Morning

Yardley woke
on a raggedy mattress in a strange room with her left wrist in a metal cuff chained to the bed frame. The first rays of light were just beginning to creep into the sky. An old blanket covered the window, nailed to the plaster. No sounds came from anywhere, not from inside or outside. She was in a cabin or farmhouse away from civilization.

She didn’t call out.

She quietly tried to work the cuff off her wrist.

It was too tight.

The chain was secured with padlocks at both ends. The bed frame was thick, heavy metal. She was a hundred percent stuck. There was no way out.

Cave had her.

She was still dressed in the same clothes as last night. She hadn’t been roughed up or raped.

Pee.

That’s what she needed to do, not in ten seconds, now.

Next to the bed was a bucket half filled with water.

Was that her bathroom?

Apparently so.

Next to it was a roll of toilet paper.

Next to the toilet paper was a jug of drinking water and a box of crackers.

She listened intently for signs of Cave, got none, then used the bucket as quickly as she could, before he could interrupt her.

She called out.

“Cave.”

No one answered.

No sounds came.

“Cave, are you here?”

Silence.

She dragged the bed
to the window and pulled the blanket to the side. Outside was prairie topography. A dilapidated barn occupied a position fifty yards to the left. The boards were loose and many had fallen off. Whatever red paint once existed was now peeled and flaked. The base was choked with weeds. No discernible path or road led to it.

She pulled the blanket off and tried to open the window.

It wouldn’t budge.

To many layers of paint kept it locked.

She wrapped the blanket around her hand and punched the glass out, then chipped away at the jagged ends. A cool morning breeze entered the room.

Not a single sound filtered in from the outside world.

She pulled the bed farther to the window, getting the end of the chain directly under it. Then she climbed out and dropped to the ground. Three feet, that’s how far she could extend from the side of the house. That didn’t get her to where she could see around either corner. The only visible universe was more prairie.

She called out.

No one answered.

Wherever she was, it was remote.

Cave could make her scream as loud as he wanted. The end of her voice wouldn’t come within a mile of a human ear.

Suddenly she heard a car, very distant but heading her way.

Cave was coming back.

She tugged wildly at the chain.

The shackle cut into her wrist.

The skin broke.

Blood dripped out.

She pulled harder.

79

Day Five

July 22

Friday Noon

By most talk
the Blue Ricochet Eatery & Pub on Walnut was more worthy of the pub part of its namesake than the other part. The lights were dim, the waitresses wore little schoolgirl outfits and the male patrons didn’t complain. Pantage wandered in there on a drunken bar-hopping night three months ago and ended up leaving with the drummer of a band she’d never heard of. It wasn’t until the next day that she learned the band had played at Red Rocks earlier in the evening.

She opened the front door and stepped inside at 12:05.

The interior was a cave but she knew the layout and headed for the restroom, which was almost as dark as the rest of the place. The lock for the door was broken so she held it shut with her foot as she did what she came to do.

That was better.

She was a human again.

She checked her face in the mirror and fluffed her hair.