Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (14 page)

“Yes.”

“At the Supreme Court Building?”

“Yes.”

“That’s at One First Street, right?”

“Yes.”

“Damn. How’d you get a job like that?”

“We can get into that later. For right now, what I have to tell you relates to my job,” she said. “I’m going to have to tell you some things that are sensitive beyond belief. You have to absolutely promise me with every fiber in your being that you’ll keep every word I tell you in absolute secrecy.”

“Of course.”

“That’s why I’m officially hiring you as my lawyer,” she said. “You’re duty bound.”

He stuffed the ten in his pocket.

“I’ve accepted the money. Your confidences are mine, by promise and by law.”

“I’m serious about this.”

“Trust me, nothing will get out.” She studied him, looking for lies or exaggerations. None were obvious and, in fact, the opposite if anything. “Go on,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

She did.

Two weeks ago
she went to Robertson’s chambers to tell him about a new case out of the Ninth Circuit that was on point with a pending case. “He was on the phone talking to someone, so I held back just outside the door to wait until he was finished,” she said.

“Okay.”

“He didn’t know I was there.”

“All right.”

“He was talking low and I could barely make out what he was saying. But as the conversation went on, it became clear that he was talking to someone who was blackmailing him about something.”

“Something, as in what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was something serious though. The nature of the discussion was that he was to vote a certain way in an upcoming case.”

Sanders shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”

“I wish you were right,” she said. “I don’t know how long it’s been going on or how deep it is. The conversation was clear though. He was talking about throwing a case.”

Sanders focused on a water-skier carving a white line in the sky-blue water of the bay, then turned back.

“What was the case?”

“It’s called
Davidson v. Fifty
.”

“Which is about what?”

“It’s basically a First Amendment freedom of speech case,” she said. “It involves a comment posted on an Internet blog. The person who posted the comment was an American who was in France at the time he typed the comment. The person who was allegedly defamed was an Australian woman who was in Australia at the time the comment was made. She’s a public figure in Australia but not in America or France. She later sued the defendant in a California court and the issue before the Supreme Court is whether she has a cause of action in the state court or whether such an action would be in violation of the First Amendment.”

“So which way is Robertson supposed to vote?”

“Basically to protect the right to freedom of speech and deny the plaintiff’s claim as non-cognizable. You have to keep all this quiet.”

“I will, I will. Has the case been decided yet?”

“No. It’s still pending.”

“Okay. So what happened next?”

She gathered
her thoughts and said, “That night I slept on it. Robertson was clearly in some kind of trouble and I didn’t see any way that I could help him. The whole thing was so much bigger than me. But I didn’t have the option to sit by and do nothing. The integrity of the court had been breached. Whatever damage had occurred so far, it couldn’t continue, not even for one single case. I suppose I could have gone to the FBI and blown the whistle at that point but that didn’t sit well with me. For one, Robertson would fall. He’s a great man. His legacy would be ruined. Right or wrong, I felt he deserved a right of redemption, so long as it was immediate and forever. With that goal in mind, I came up with a plan.”

“Which was what?”

“I became obsessed with finding out more,” she said. “Tuesday night Robertson was slated to speak at a fundraising function. I took the opportunity to break into his house.”

Sanders leaned back.

“That was pretty gutsy.”

“Not really,” she said. “What would he do if he found out? Go to the police? In his master closet I found a black briefcase. Inside that briefcase was a MacBook Air. I copied the files from that computer.” She pulled a flash drive out of her purse and passed it to him. “Take a look at this under the file called
Photos
and then we’ll talk some more. Share this with no one and don’t make any copies.”

41

Day Five

July 12

Saturday Night

Colder didn’t move,
not in five seconds, not in ten, not in thirty. His eyes were open, unblinking, staring at nothing. Teffinger knew the look, he’d seen it before, and didn’t need to check for vital signs although he did.

He got no pulse.

He got no breath.

He got no reaction.

He got no life.

The insane beat of the club continued to drop out of amped-up speakers as if nothing had happened. A crowd pushed in, tighter and thicker and deeper than the second before. Teffinger couldn’t breath. He busted through and didn’t stop until he got outside.

There the storm fell, pushed by a demonic wind, and Teffinger didn’t care. He braced against it in the open near the street and sucked the wet air into his chest.

It felt like voodoo.

It felt right.

The drumming in his veins softened.

He’d just killed a man.

Legally it was self-defense; he had no question about that. There’d be a thorough investigation of course but in the end he’d be cleared. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether he could have held back, whether he could have countered without so much intent, without so much power, without so much reaction.

Did he kill the man on purpose?

No.

That’s what he told himself, no.

Deep in his gut though he wondered if he was just tricking himself.

Either way, what was done was done.

It couldn’t be undone.

It was his.

He owned it.

The investigation,
headed up by detective Richardson in conjunction with Internal Affairs, dragged into the small hours of the night. Witnesses saw the dead man strike Teffinger first and then stand over him with clenched fists. Security videotapes confirmed it.

Teffinger cooperated but didn’t care.

He cared about one thing and one thing only, namely that Susan Smith hadn’t yet shown her face and still wasn’t answering her phone. It shouldn’t be an issue, not with Colder dead, but her absence minute after minute after minute grew more and more palpable.

Teffinger broke loose at the first crack and headed into the storm to find out what in the hell was going on.

42

Day Five

July 12

Saturday Night

Needing to be the ghost
that never was, Saturday night after dark Jori-Lee drove past the dark lifeless house of T’amara Alder one final time and found it exactly as coffin-quiet as before. She parked a block over and doubled back on foot, dressed in shades of black. An image was back in her head, an image of the woman being killed on the other end of the phone, followed by the killer’s voice in Jori-Lee’s ear.

She made her way through the dark to the back door.

It was locked.

The windows were equally locked.

With her elbow, she busted the door glass and then stood still, listening for a barking dog or nosy neighbor.

Nothing came.

The world stayed the same.

She reached through, unlocked the bolt and entered.

The only sound was the motion of air passing in and out of her lungs. She was in a small kitchen, a place of no interest, and made her way to the living room. There she closed all the window coverings. Creaking stairs led her to the upper level where the bedrooms where. She closed all the coverings, took a pillowcase off a pillow and then headed back down.

In a small study she flicked on the flashlight.

Papers came into view on a wooden desk—bills, handwritten notes, coupons and the like. She stuffed the cell phone bill into the pillowcase. A telephone book sat folded opened to the Hs. No numbers were circled. She ripped out the two facing pages and stuffed them in the pillowcase. In the upper drawer was a stack of business cards cinched in a rubber band. They went into the case.

She needed to find the woman’s computer.

That’s where the secrets would be.

There was no desktop computer, printer, fax machine or home phone.

She headed upstairs.

Next to the bed on an end table was an iPad.

She took it.

In the master closet on an upper shelf was a box of loose photographs.

She took them.

She checked the rest of the house including the basement and found nothing else of interest. Then she got the hell out of there.

She didn’t know
if the iPad had a GPS tracking device but wasn’t about to take any chances by bringing the thing back to the hotel. Instead she headed west out of the city and pulled over in a dark enclave of a raggedly industrial road.

There behind the wheel she brought the screen to life.

As she hoped, the woman’s email account displayed without requiring a password.

A recent message confirmed a flight to Hong Kong with a departure set for 8:30 Tuesday morning. A second confirmed a three-night stay at the Kowloon InterContinental.

Hong Kong.

Why did that strike a cord?

She dug but couldn’t bring it up.

It would come to her later.

In any event, the woman was getting out of town.

Why?

Was she trying to escape?

Was she going to shake Robertson down for money and then retire in comfort?

Was she meeting a friend or a lover or a co-conspirator?

There were too many messages for her to process. Even the inconspicuous ones might show relevance later on closer scrutiny, meaning the device was too valuable to abandon.

She shut it off, cranked over the engine and pointed the front end towards Paramount Bay.

She needed to find a dry safe place to stash the device.

Then she needed Sanders.

43

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Morning

Susan was nowhere
to be found, not all night, not at the club, not at her condo, not at the other end of her phone, not at a single point in the universe. The club’s security tapes showed her milling around in the early goings and then dancing seductively with a hypnotic young woman who looked like she belonged sipping margaritas in a Mediterranean beach cabana. That was the last sighting, recorded ten minutes give or take before the Colder made Teffinger do what he did.

Teffinger’s best hope was that the woman left the Mediterranean beauty, couldn’t find him to tell him her plans, and figured no harm done since she’d be safe.

That was his best hope.

It didn’t come from his gut; it came from his brain.

His gut didn’t have a best hope.

His gut was a lot more cynical than his brain.

At four in the morning Teffinger checked the woman’s condo one final time, found her not there again one final time, and slumped down on her couch.

He closed his eyes just to rest them for a second.

The darkness felt like cool water.

It felt good.

It felt right.

His phone rang,
initially as an abstract barely-audible sound and then growing louder and louder as his brain kicked out of unconsciousness and into reality. He flipped it open just before the last ring.

It was Sydney.

“Where are you? It’s ten-thirty.”

He muscled against the cushions into a vertical position.

His tongue was sandpaper.

His face was leather.

His eyelids were glue.

He stood up, got his balance and headed for the bathroom. “I’m at Susan’s,” he said. “Is Del Rey okay?”

“Yeah, not a bird-ripper in sight.”

“Good,” he said. “Close your ears or you’re going to hear something you’d rather not.” He took a piss, not talking, not holding back, watching the water splash and using the seconds to wake up. “Okay I’m back.”

“That was disgusting.”

“Good because that’s how I feel.”

“So what’s the plan for today?”

“The plan is to find Susan.”