Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (34 page)

What to do?

Two cops came in.

He was busted!

They walked straight at him.

Then, no—wait.

Instead of pulling their weapons, they walked past him and took a place in line, directly behind the biker bitch. One of then was older, somewhere in his forties, but the other one was young and chewing gum that made the muscles in his jaw pop. He looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t think twice about getting into a bare knuckles fistfight.

He looked fast, like he could run.

Ganjon was strong but he couldn’t run for shit.

The coffee for some reason was suddenly right now building up in his bladder. Ordinarily, this is where he would get up and head for the restroom.

Now the younger cop and the biker woman were talking to each other, apparently about her tattoos, because she was holding up her right arm for him to see better.

She had that come-on, flirtatious aura about her.

The one he recognized so well.

What a slut.

He kept the Westword propped up in front of his face and forced himself to stay as calm as he could. If everything went to hell, he would go for the younger cop first and drop him straight to the floor with a punch to the face, then take care of the old fart before he could get his weapon drawn.

With any luck the biker bitch would order a coffee to go and be out of here in the next two minutes.

Instead, she ordered a coffee and a bagel and took a seat at the table next to his, facing directly towards him. A few minutes later the two cops came over and asked if they could join her. One of them asked Ganjon if anyone was using the extra chair at his table, then took it after Ganjon forced himself to mumble, “No, go for it.”

HE LISTENED, BEHIND THE NEWSPAPER,
while the woman and the cops talked. She told them a story about how Nick Teffinger, who the two cops knew well and described as “a super good guy,” pulled her out from under a Harley that she crashed on some train tracks down by Pueblo. There were some warrants out for her arrest in some other states, but Teffinger made her a deal, that he wasn’t going to call any of those authorities provided she stuck around Denver for a while and helped him out on this big case he was working on.

There was no talk at all about anyone using her for bait.

Ten minutes later the biker bitch got up, said goodbye to the cops, refilled her coffee cup and walked out the front door.

Ganjon headed straight for the restroom.

When he got out the trail was cold.

Chapter Forty-Four

Day Twelve - April 27

Friday

___________

GANJON WOKE IN A COLD SWEAT
and looked at his watch. It was three in the morning. The world was black and quiet except for the heavy breathing of Megan Bennett who slept next to him with one foot chained to a post.

He stood up, grabbed the flashlight, walked outside and pissed in an old one-gallon plastic milk jug, now almost full. He’d take it with him when all was done to minimize the DNA.

Megan Bennett was no longer worth the effort.

She had great legs, he had to admit that, and she honestly had some minor amount of affection for him on some emotional level, but that was no longer enough.

She didn’t love him and never would.

That was obvious.

He gave her plenty of chances to get used to the situation and see the good side of him but she refused at every turn.

So screw her.

She hadn’t earned the right to die quickly.

She made her choice and she’d have to live with it.

That was fine with him, because at least now all his hard work and planning wouldn’t be wasted. Of all the OSU women, she was definitely the most complicated so far. Beth Williamson had been a snap. All he needed was a 55-gallon drum and a nice quiet place to dump her. The next two women were equally easy from a logistic standpoint.

For Dana Frost all he had to do was bury her up to her neck, shave her head and then pour honey all over it. He went to visit her last month, surprised to find she was still right there where he left her—undiscovered. Her skull stuck out of the ground, picked clean.

The other woman, Cindy Smith, was also easy. A little rope, a bottle of acid and a good dripper was all he needed.

Megan Bennett’s little nightmare, on the other hand, was complicated. Ganjon bought a cheap motorcycle helmet and fitted it with two holes, one to let air in from the blower and the other to let air out. The exit hole was fitted with a one-way valve so that the airflow could only go out and not back. The entry hole was connected to a blower by way of a flexible plastic tube. The blower was equipped with a timer that turned the power off after five minutes. You could turn it back on by pressing a button. Designing and fabricating all of this ended up stealing two days out of Ganjon’s life.

But at least he had it and it worked perfect.

Right now it was all stored in the trunk of the Camry. He got it and brought it inside, quietly, so as to not wake the woman.

The time had come.

The reaper was here to visit.

In her psychology paper, Megan Bennett described being strapped down in a chair. But there wasn’t one around so Ganjon decided he would stretch her out on the workbench instead. That would be better anyway because she wouldn’t be able to thrash around as much.

He got everything into position while she lay there sleeping.

Luckily there was still power at the outside junction box to the building and he was able to rig up an extension cord for the blower.

With everything in place, he unchained the woman’s leg from the post and then picked her up and carried her over to the bench as she woke up.

“What’s going on?” she questioned.

“Nothing much,” he said. “We’re just changing positions.”

She fought with her last ounce of strength but it did no good. Within five minutes he had her securely racked on the bench with the helmet on her head and the blower going.

He sat back and watched her for an hour.

It was so cool when the blower shut off.

It startled the woman, every single time.

The way she jerked when it happened was so cool.

She punched the switch immediately, usually three or four times, just to be sure.

Then the blower kicked back on and she got quiet again.

Finally he got bored with the whole thing and went back to sleep.

She’d be a lot more fun to watch in the morning, after she’d been at it for a while.

Chapter Forty-Five

Day Twelve - April 27

Friday Morning

___________

TEFFINGER WAS DOWNTOWN
at his desk by 5:30 in the morning, which was 7:30 Memphis time, dialing the direct number of Corey Peterson, who was the detective in charge of the Melinda Russell investigation. Teffinger naturally got the answering machine again, for the umpteenth time, hung up and walked over to refill his coffee cup.

Before he could do that his phone rang. He weighed his options for a second and then ran to his desk.

“Teffinger,” he said.

“Teffinger, huh? Well, I thought I’d better get back to you first thing, before you wear out the ringer on my phone.”

Teffinger was excited.

“Hey, listen,” Teffinger said, “thanks for getting back to me. We have a killer in common, namely the one from your Melinda Russell case. We have reason to believe he’s out here in Denver and that he murdered a young woman named D’endra Vaughn. It’s a long story and I’ll fill you in, but let me ask you one thing, what’s your file like on this case, good, bad, ugly or what?”

“Our file sucks. We got nothing, basically.”

Ouch.

“That’s not good.”

“No forensics, no eye witnesses, no motive, no nothing.”

Teffinger paused.

“Could we look at it anyway?”

“Sure but you’re wasting your time.”

“I’m going to fly someone down there this afternoon.”

“Whatever. I’ll be here.”

“Thanks,” Teffinger said. “By the way, do you guys still have all those blues clubs down there, on Beale Street or wherever it is?”

“Let me put it this way. Do you guys still have all those mountains out there?”

Teffinger smiled.

“Touché. Listen, this person I’m sending down, his name is Richardson. He loves that stuff, just for your information.”

Teffinger spent the next half hour bringing Detective Peterson up to speed as to what was going on in Denver. Even with that, Peterson couldn’t think of anything in his file that would help.

After he hung up, Teffinger pulled out photocopies of the dead woman obtained yesterday from Northway’s bedroom. He spread them out on his desk and studied them.

Who are you, darling?

If he could find out her name, he’d be able to track down yet another case file to look at. Somehow he had to get some direct face time with Northway’s client.

Right now he had the Megan Bennett case to worry about.

Yesterday, FBI profiler Dr. Leigh Sandt made a comment that Teffinger couldn’t get out of his head. She’d suggested that extended abductions, like the one involving Megan Bennett, followed a modified bell curve. The abductor’s interest initially rises fast as things start off fascinating and intoxicating, then holds at a steady level for a time, and then falls straight down when everything turns dull and familiar and high maintenance. Right now, in her opinion, they were standing at the edge of that cliff, if they hadn’t fallen over it already.

He called her about nine-thirty.

“Leigh,” he said, “it’s me, Teffinger. I’m starting to panic here. Are you free for lunch?”

She was.

“I just want to pick your brain, one on one,” he explained, “without all the group dynamics to worry about.”

That wasn’t a problem.

BY MID-MORNING TEFFINGER HATED HIS DESK
and found himself heading outside and taking a walk on the path next to the South Platte River, dodging inline skaters, dog walkers and homeless people pushing shopping carts. On the Megan Bennett case, he thought about going back to the two farmhouses and revisiting the crime scenes, on the chance there was a neon sign he hadn’t seen before, but in the end he wasn’t convinced that was the best way to spend the day.

The morning’s coffee propelled him further than he intended, then he remembered lunch with Leigh Sandt. When he got back his office it was already 12:10 and Dr. Sandt was sitting at his desk, waiting for him.

“I am so sorry,” he apologized.

She ignored it and instead picked up one of the photographs from his desk, the ones he obtained from Northway’s bedroom. “Where did you get these?”

Her voice was tense, as were her eyes.

“Why?” he questioned. Then, “I have another case going on, involving the murder of a woman by the name of D’endra Vaughn. We have reason to believe that the person who killed the Vaughn woman also killed the woman in these photographs.”

“Do you know who this is?” she questioned, waving the picture.

“No.”

“No?” Dr. Sandt said. “Then let me tell you. This is Dana Frost. Remember when we were talking before, about the two OSU students from the psychology class who disappeared after Beth Williamson, but were never found?”

Teffinger remembered, but vaguely, and tried to bring it to the surface. Beth Williamson was the OSU student who had been stuffed into the 55-gallon drum and left out in the woods to rot. She had been in a psychology class and had described the barrel as the way she’d most hate to die. Two other girls from that same psychology class later disappeared, one six months later, and one about a year later. Neither of them had ever been found. Megan Bennett had also been in that psychology class. It was the FBI’s theory that the person who killed Beth Williamson also killed the two missing students and is the same person who abducted Megan Bennett. In fact, that’s why the FBI was out there in Denver right now, trying to find Megan Bennett’s abductor.

“Yeah, I remember,” he told her.

“Well,” Dr. Sandt said, “This dead woman is Dana Frost, who is one of the two OSU students who disappeared and were never found. So where did you get these photos?”

Teffinger waved her off for a second.

He had to think.

There was only one conclusion he could reach and when he did he was flabbergasted.

The Megan Bennett case and the D’endra Vaughn case, which he had always viewed as separate and distinct, were actually connected.

Whoever the OSU killer was—the one who abducted Megan Bennett—he was the same person who killed D’endra Vaughn.

Teffinger looked at Dr. Sandt.

“We need a task force meeting immediately. We have a new wrinkle. A big new wrinkle that I need to fill everyone in on.”