Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (22 page)

I see a red door and I want to paint it black.

No colors anymore I want them to turn black.

They ended up on Market in the heart of the financial district, winding through revolving doors into an opulent lobby with modern art on the walls that looked as if it had been thrown there. At the elevator bank Teffinger said, “Meet me on fifteen.”

“Why, where you going?”

“I’m taking the stairs.”

“To fifteen?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“I like stairs, that’s all.”

“Well if you’re taking them so am I,” she said.

The climb wasn’t as bad as Teffinger envisioned. At thirteen he said, “There’s a lot more air here than in Denver.”

“Tell that to my thighs. They’re on fire.”

Teffinger grunted.

“You said before it was romantic that I was hunting down Kelly’s killer,” he said. “I should have corrected you. I never did what I should have.”

“What does that mean?”

“She got taken from my home in Lakewood,” he said. “Lakewood had jurisdiction over the case, not Denver. I wasn’t officially involved in the investigation, although they kept me in the loop. They never flew to San Francisco where Kelly lived at the time to personally talk to anyone. They only interviewed people by phone.”

“So?”

“So, I could have flown out and done that in an ad hoc capacity,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

“Yeah but they did talk to everyone, right?”

“As far as I know,” he said. “But phone and face are two different things. I should have come out when they didn’t. I was drowned in work and convinced myself that’s why I wasn’t going. That wasn’t the real reason, though. The real reason is that it just hurt too much. Instead of manning up and taking it I let the pain turn into a wall. Then I hid the wall behind my work.”

“You’re human Teffinger,” she said. “We all are. Don’t apologize for it. Plus, you’re here now.”

He nodded.

That was true.

“Just out of curiosity, is the pain still there?” she said.

He considered it.

“Yes but not as much. That’s the problem with time. It robs you of things. I work too hard to get those things to have them robbed.”

Floor thirteen
held the offices of b.Box-Media, the advertising firm where Kelly worked at the time she was murdered.

They pushed through an ornate copper door embedded in an illuminated block-glass wall. Inside a too-cute receptionist with a too-white smile sat at a too-contemporary desk.

A narrow rectangular vase held one flower, a yellow rose.

A folded card was tucked under the base.

Perfume punctuated the air, more in the nature of vanilla strawberries than burning tires.

“Kelly Nine used to work here a year ago,” Teffinger said. “I’d like to talk to whoever it was that was her best friend here at the time.”

The woman studied him.

The smile dropped from her face.

“You’re Nick Teffinger,” she said.

“Right.”

“There’s a rumor you’re the one who killed her,” she said. “They said it was a lover’s spat. Being a detective, you knew how to cover it up.”

Teffinger tossed a photo of Rail on the desk.

“That’s the guy who killed her. His name is Javier Arcos but he goes by the name Rail. He’s from Portugal. Have you ever seen him before?”

The woman rose.

“No. Wait here.”

She disappeared around a corner.

Teffinger hesitated for a heartbeat; then he swept after her.

65

Day Eight

July 15

Tuesday Morning

In the flesh
Leland Everitt didn’t turn out anything like what Jori-Lee expected, which was a chiseled-faced alpha-male wolf pouncing at some helpless prey with barred yellow fangs. He was the opposite—shorter than average, a body that would be lucky to crank out five push-ups, a face made for radio, a forehead that was slowly creeping up his skull and a slightly-crooked tie. His manner was timid and unassuming, almost shy.

His office was large, opulent and old school, replete with mahogany built-ins, lush patterned carpeting and expensive oil paintings.

In that office with the door shut Tuesday morning he told Jori-Lee, “I’ll be honest, I have a lot of pull within the firm, but it’s more of a democracy around here than a dictatorship. What that means is that I don’t have carte blanche authority to hire lawyers. There’s a process that has to unfold. So, the way we’re going to have to proceed is to say that you contacted me. That’s because I can’t have a perception on the street that we’re robbing One First of its talent. The story is that after you contacted me we met, I liked what I saw and I’m bringing you in to meet the crew as a prospective addition to the firm.”

“I was supposed to have a job,” Jori-Lee said. “That’s what Robertson said.”

Lee nodded.

“And you will, and you will. We just have to stay within the structure. At the end of the day tomorrow, you’ll have an offer. You can accept it if you want and, if you do, I look forward to having you around here and watching you mature into a partnership position. Or you can reject it. The choice is yours. My secretary, Anabella, will be taking you around today to meet some of the lawyers. You’ll be joining six of us for lunch at The Palm at 11:30. Are you up for all of that?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The day
turned into a blur of rotations in and out of offices populated with faces that were all etched to one degree or another with competence, a high work ethic and, to a more hidden degree, exhaustion. It wasn’t until the end of the day that one of those faces broke the mold.

It belonged to Zahara Knox, a petite black-haired beauty with golden island-girl skin and no wedding ring on her finger.

Behind a closed door she leaned forward and said, “You look like a nice person so I’m going to do you a favor. Don’t join this firm. Run like hell. Go anywhere you want but don’t come here. Trust me, you’ll be better off.”

Jori-Lee cocked her head.

“Why? What’s so wrong?”

The woman stood up, escorted Jori-Lee to the door said, “I’ve already said too much. Be a friend and don’t tell anyone what I said.”

“I won’t.”

“Thank you.”

66

Day Eight

July 15

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday morning
Rail woke to find San Francisco encased in fog and the streets already neurotic with headlights. He pulled his hair into a ponytail, tucked it under a baseball hat and headed out for a jog down Haight Street. The salty air filled his chest like medicine. He needed to do what needed to be done and then get out of town before anyone recognized him.

The concrete was hard under his feet.

It jolted up his shins and into his knees.

He didn’t care.

Pain was good.

Pain was nature’s way of reminding you that you were still alive.

He passed a flower shop, one he bought a yellow rose in a year ago for Kelly. The thought of her popped an image into his brain, an image so clear and detailed that it was if he was right there.

_____

A terrible storm
pounded down on Denver. Jagged rips of lightning shredded the coal-black sky again and again and again, slamming shut with monstrous explosions that rumbled all the way to infinity. Rail took shelter as best he could, in the dark, hunched in a ball against the backside of Teffinger’s house.

The Rocky Mountain air was thin.

Even though it was the middle of summer the night was cold. The rain was an onslaught of chilly little needles working their way into Rail’s skin and then drilling deeper into his bones.

He shivered.

He willed himself to stop.

It didn’t work.

In his hand was a pink SIG with a silencer. Ordinarily he wouldn’t let a piece of art like that get wet in a million years.

This was no ordinary night.

The storm was actually a good thing. It kept the neighbors inside. It kept the dogs and coyotes away. It kept the rattlesnakes away.

Minute after minute passed, followed by a half-hour, followed by an hour.

Nothing happened.

Teffinger didn’t show up.

No one else showed up.

Everything stayed frozen in time.

Then time changed.

Headlights punched up the street and pulled into Teffinger’s driveway. The garage door came up, the vehicle entered, the door swung down.

The interior lights turned on.

Rail wedged back into a deeper shadow.

Teffinger went to the kitchen, got a beer for himself and a glass of white wine for the woman—Kelly Nine—and then turned off the lights as they headed for the couch.

They were visible at first, two black silhouettes raising drinks to their mouths and fondling each other. Then they dropped horizontal and molded into one indiscernible shape.

Rail crept closer to the window and waited for lightning.

It came.

The flash lasted only a bite of a second but was long enough to bring the shapes into clear view. The woman was naked now, stretched out on the couch with her arms up above her head. Teffinger had his lips and tongue on her stomach, making her hips gyrate.

Rail’s heart pounded.

He waited for the next flash.

It took forever but when it the shapes were on the carpet now. Teffinger was on his back. The woman was straddling his hips and riding him for all she was worth. Her face was pointed away from Rail but he could picture it.

He’d seen it before from the other angle, many times in fact.

67

Day Eight

July 15

Tuesday Morning

Kelly Nine’s
best friend at b.Box-Media turned out to be to a contemporary, late-20s Chinese woman named Dandan Phon, who Teffinger remembered talking to on the phone at one point but couldn’t remember about what. Her face was confident, her dress was urban-chic, her facial expressions were quick and her eyes were focused.

Teffinger explained who he was and why he was in town. He handed her the photo of Rail and said, “Have you ever seen this guy?”

“No, never.”

“Are you sure?”

“Crystal.”

“Did Kelly ever mention seeing someone—a man, I mean, romantically?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“If she was seeing someone she never mention it to me.” She focused on the photo, looked into Teffinger’s eyes and said, “Is this the man who killed her?”

He nodded.

“Yes.”

“He would be her type,” she said. “Sort of like you.”

Teffinger asked her questions from every angle and on every possible tangent, got not a bit of useful information, then gave his cell phone number in case anything came to her later.

He talked to four other people equally without knowledge of anything and then left.

Five minutes away he got a call.

It was from her, Dandan.

She wanted to meet for lunch.

She told him where and when.

“Come alone,” she said. “Don’t bring anyone with you. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

Shortly after noon,
with Del Rey safely tucked back in the hotel room, Teffinger stepped off a trolley in the heart of Chinatown and made his way to Chef Jia’s, a hole-in-the-wall looking place on Kearny Street between Jackson and Columbus. Dandan waived at him from a back table.

“I already ordered for you,” she said.

He sat down.

“So what am I having?”

“Egg rolls.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

She smiled and then got serious. “There’s something I’d like to tell you, something that might help you,” she said. “But I’m going to need you to keep it absolutely confidential.”

He nodded.

“Sure.”

“I’m serious about the confidentiality,” she said. “What I’m going to tell you is partly about me and some things I’ve done, some illegal things. If word ever got out I’d be ruined. My family would be shamed. So what I need you to do is convince me that you really mean it when you say you’ll be confidential.”

Teffinger poured tea from a spout into a little ceramic cup.

He took a sip.

It was hot, coffee-like, but way short.

“Let me put it like this,” he said. “I don’t give a shit what you did, what you’re doing or what you’re going to do in the future. The only thing I care about in the whole world is finding the man who I showed you in the picture. And it’s not just to avenge Kelly, although that’s a large part of it. He took someone else and she may still be alive, a Denver woman named Susan Smith. On top of that, he may be after me and/or my lady friend Del Rey, who you met back at the agency. So, rest assured that anything you may tell me about yourself is thoroughly and utterly trumped. Your sins or lack thereof are not on my radar and never will be, unless you’re selling kids into slavery or something like that. Give me even a grain of sand that helps me and I’ll be eternally thankful. But even if what you tell me doesn’t help, rest assured that your words will end at my ears. Nothing will come back to haunt you, ever, as least not as a result me.” He cocked his head. “Was that convincing enough?”