Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (10 page)

Her arms were down.

In her right hand hung a limp gun.

What Teffinger tripped over was a small deer, just a baby, separated from the pack by the storm, now deader than dead with a ripped throat and a number of vicious bites torn out of its body.

In that split second Teffinger realized just how lucky he was.

The animal could have killed him a hundred times.

He’d be dead beyond help if it weren’t for Del Rey.

He got out from under the animal, muscled to his feet and took Del Rey in his arms.

“I owe you one,” he said.

“One?”

26

Day Four

July 11

Friday Night

At exactly
seven o’clock Friday evening, Jori-Lee wiped a D.C. sweat from her brow, pulled her cell phone from her purse as she sat on a bench near the Smithsonian, and punched in the numbers the mystery jogger passed to her yesterday evening.

Her heat pounded.

A woman answered, “Hello?”

The voice belonged to the runner.

“This is Jori-Lee Kent.”

Silence.

“Your little boss Nelson Robertson is supposed to be making this call, not you. Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

“Well that was a big fucking mistake.”

The line went dead.

Jori-Lee redialed.

No one answered.

She paced next to the street, second-guessing the sanity of everything she’d done, everything she was for that matter. Outside the day’s shadows were getting longer but the air still had the city in a stranglehold of humidity and heat. A passing bus sprayed diesel fumes at her.

She choked them out of her lungs and almost headed home.

Instead she redialed.

The connection went through.

Before the woman
could even answer Jori-Lee said, “Don’t hang up!”

“You didn’t follow directions.”

“I will,” she said. “First tell me what you want to talk to him about.”

“It’s personal.”

“In what way?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, lady.”

Suddenly a strange pop came through the line, one that made Jori-Lee picture the phone falling to the floor. Then frantic sounds came through. The more Jori-Lee concentrated on them the more she pictured the woman being attacked.

“Stop!”

The word was laced with fear.

Stop!

Stop!

Stop!

Then the words got muffled, as if a hand went over her mouth.

“Shut up bitch!”

Smack!

Smack!

“Don’t fight me!”

The words were gruff.

They belonged to a man.

Jori-Lee didn’t know the speaker.

He was a stranger to her.

The struggling stopped, just like that, with the force of something absolute, not a gunshot, maybe a knife. More sounds came but there were from motion rather than fighting.

What was he doing?

Was he making sure she was dead?

Was he turning her body face up?

A moment passed.

Jori-Lee concentrated.

The sounds were faint, barely perceptible.

She couldn’t figure out what any of them belonged to.

Then
a very disturbing noise came through, as if someone or something was physically touching the phone.

“Who’s there?”

The words pounded into her blood with the force of a drug.

27

Day Five

July 12

Saturday Morning

Teffinger woke
Saturday morning when the first strokes of dawn bent around the edges of the window coverings and washed the room in a soft watercolor glow. Next to him, half covered and half not, was the incredible being of Del Rey, motionless and breathing deeply. Seeing her made Teffinger feel sorry for every man in the world who wasn’t him.

It wasn’t just the woman’s body.

She was more than just one of the interests he’d let parade in and out of his life.

He could see her popping out little Nickies.

He could see them together when they were older and slower and no longer playing at the edge.

He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.

The events of last night briefly flashed in his brain. The jaws snapped again at his face. The gunfire rang again in his ears.

He squeezed it out.

It was interesting but not productive.

Today he needed to be productive.

The boxer
Danny Rainer killed Portia, possibly for kicks and possibly as nothing more than a chance encounter gone bad. The evidence wasn’t there, not yet, but evidence is always just a matter of time. As much as Teffinger wanted to take the boxer’s smirky face down right now this minute, his more immediate problem was the lawyer, Jack Colder.

The lawyer was the one who hired Portia in the first place.

He was also the one who would hire—or, more likely, had already hired—Portia’s replacement.

He was the one who would see that the job got completed.

He was the one still in motion.

Plus, going back, he was the one who killed or hired someone to kill Seth Lightfield, the man who filled his place in bed. Taking the lawyer down would close a cold case; and there were few things in life as sweet as closing a cold case.

Teffinger showered,
towel-dried his hair until the drip was gone and headed for the kitchen, wearing jeans but no shirt or shoes.

Del Rey had her back to him, making coffee.

She wore a black muscle shirt and white panties that said
Love Pink
on the back.

He cupped her stomach from behind and nibbled her neck.

“Did I say thanks for saving my life?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, if I didn’t, I will.”

She turned and pressed her stomach to his.

Her face was serious.

Something was on her mind.

“You’re thinking,” Teffinger said.

She nodded.

“I had a weird thought. I keep telling myself that it’s too crazy to be true but I can’t shake it.”

“Go on.”

“Okay, well, Susan Smith knew that Portia was in town and after someone named Susan Smith, because you told her,” she said.

“Technically Sydney told her.”

“Right, but the fact is that she knew.”

“True, she knew.”

“So, what if she knew something else, namely that she was in fact the Susan Smith who was the target. What if she got already knew Danny Rainer and had some type of history with him. What if she got Rainer to lay in wait for Portia and take her out when she showed up?”

Teffinger shook his head.

“Even assuming all that,” he said, “killing Portia would only buy her time. Someone hired Portia. She was nothing more than a human knife. Getting rid of her wouldn’t solve the problem at source. The only way to really get rid of the problem would be to kill the person who hired Portia. Right?”

“Correct.”

Teffinger frowned.

“When someone says
Right,
and it is right, the answer is supposed to be
Right,
not
Correct.”

“They’re the same thing.”

“Yeah, I know, but it still needs to be right. Otherwise you upset the balance of the universe. Right?”

She ran a finger down his chest.

“Teffinger, stay focused,” she said. “I agree that killing Portia would only buy her time. So, what would be her next move? It would be exactly what you said it would be—kill the source.”

“Meaning the lawyer, Jack Colder.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” she said. “What she told you about Colder being a jilted lover probably has a lot of truth to it, otherwise she wouldn’t have dragged it out. But if her goal is to kill the source and Colder really was the source, she wouldn’t tell you about him because then you’d be in his shadows. If you ask me, Colder is a misdirect.”

“A misdirect?”

“Right, the source is someone else. While you’re focused on Colder, that’s where she’s going to strike.”

Teffinger shook his head.

It was too farfetched.

“Here’s what I need
from you,” he said. “Colder hired Portia. He did it through that P.I. out in D.C., Oscar Benderfield. The P.I., in turn, had an off the grid meeting with a D.C. lawyer named Leland Everitt as soon as he got back from hiring Portia in Denver. That means Leland Everitt is in the chain. He’s in a firm called Overton & Frey. In fact, Leland Everitt might be the person that Colder hired, then Everitt in turn hired Benderfield.”

“Right. You already told me all this.”

That was true.

He had.

“What I need to do is to confirm that there is some type of connection between Colder out here in Denver and someone in D.C. on the other end, be it Benderfield or Leland Everitt or his law firm or, in fact, anyone else. Once I have that connection I’ll know my theory is solid.”

“Well, work on your connection then,” she said.

“I already have.”

“And?”

“And, I can’t find it.”

“So why are you clinging to this theory?”

“Because it’s the right one,” he said. “What I need is your help. You’re a lawyer. You run in the same circles as Colder. Find out if he has any connections to D.C.”

She pondered it.

“There are a couple of things I can do,” she said. “I can find out all the cases where he or his law firm have appeared as the attorney-of-record. I can see if any of those cases were in D.C. courts or had D.C. attorneys on the other side. I can also get the names of the parties on both sides of the case. I can feed those names to you and you can run background checks on them. Maybe one of them has a D.C. connection.”

Teffinger kissed her.

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“I’ll do it but not with any enthusiasm,” she said. “Like I said, Colder’s a misdirect. Susan Smith is the one you should be focused on.”

“You want to make a dungeon bet on it?”

She shook his hand.

“You’re on.”

Five minutes later
Teffinger was in the Tundra heading for the office with a cup of coffee in his left hand.

His stomach churned.

Until this morning he’d never realized exactly how intelligent Del Rey was. Sure, he knew she was a lawyer and was a reputable one, which obviously took some horsepower in the smarts department, but he never appreciated her depth until they had a common ground. Not one in a thousand people could have come up with theory she had.

Even Teffinger hadn’t come up with it.

To her face, he’d dismissed it.

Deep down, though, it was starting to vibrate.

28

Day Five

July 12

Saturday Morning

Del Rey’s theory
that Susan Smith killed Portia clawed deeper and deeper into Teffinger’s brain in spite of his every effort to dismiss it. By mid-morning it was so intrusive that he had to get around the woman to take a closer look.

When he knocked, the woman answered the door in workout clothes.

Her chest heaved.

Her body was moist with sweat.

“Come on it.”

He followed her to a treadmill next to a large window and watched the numbers as she worked the dial, stopping at 8.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “That’s about double what I do.”

Her feet pounded.

She looked his way.

“I doubt that.”

“In my defense, though,” he said, “I don’t go that fast but I even it out by not going that far.”

She smiled.

“Are you here to protect me?”

“Maybe a little.”

Her lungs sucked deep. “It’s times like this I actually think about quitting cigarettes.”

“You should.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I like them too much.”

Teffinger frowned.

“Nothing personal but I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot pole.”

She glanced his way.

“They don’t make ten-foot poles any more. In fact I doubt that they ever did.”

The corner of his mouth went up.

“You’re probably right.”

“I mean, what would you do with one if you had it? Touch an ugly girl? No, that’s what you
wouldn’t
touch her with. So why even have them?”

He nodded.

“I have to admit, I’ve never seen one.”

The woman’s face grew serious.

She said, “So what do you have on Colder? Anything yet?”

He explained
how he’d made an excuse to meet with the lawyer, the excuse being a lie, namely that the firm’s phone number was found in Portia’s purse.

“I’m impressed,” Susan said.

“With what?”

“That you lied. I didn’t think you had it in you. So what was your impression of him?”

“He fits.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning he has the arrogance, the hate, the strength, the money, the whole package.”

“Okay. So now what?”

“Now I tie him to Portia.”

“How?”

“By first tying him to D.C.”

“How?”

“I have a few things in progress,” he said. “Tell me about Seth Lightfield?”

“Why?”

“Because Colder killed him too, right?”

“Right.”

The woman focused
on the distance, as if gathering distant thoughts. Then she said, “Seth was pure sex. Every inch of him oozed it, from his eyes to the way he walked. He picked me up down at the D-Drop one drunken Saturday night. I was under a table blowing him within the first half hour.”

Teffinger pulled up the image.

“Lucky guy.”

“Actually, he was,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for an angle with him, either.”

“What about Colder? Was he someone you had an angle with?”

“He had money. He had power. He had stature. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Teffinger said.

“Yes you do. Seth was totally different from everything that had been going on in my life for the last ten years. He wasn’t work. He was candy.”

Teffinger swallowed.

“How’d you feel when he got killed?”

Susan’s eyes flashed.

She punched the
Stop
button with the palm of her hand and ground to a halt.

“How did I feel when he got killed? Do you want the truth?”

Yes.

He did.

“I felt like Colder figured out a way to do it and get totally away with it. I felt like the justice system would be a joke. I decided to kill him myself. I walked Colfax at night until I was able to buy an unregistered gun. I stalked Colder for over two weeks.”

Teffinger exhaled.

“You didn’t kill him.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I should have.”

29

Day Five

July 12

Saturday Morning

Late morning
Del Rey called Teffinger sounding like she just stepped off a roller coaster. “You want a connection between Jack Colder and D.C.? Well, I’ve got one for you. I’ve got a big one for you.”

Teffinger halted a coffee cup that was headed for his mouth.

“Go on.”

“All right, it turns out that Colder won a big antitrust case in the U.S. District Court here in Denver four years ago. The other side appealed to the Tenth Circuit and lost. Then the other side filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s basically a motion asking the Supreme Court to hear the case,” she said. “Whether they take it or not is discretionary. They can hear it if they want or not hear it if they don’t want. If they don’t hear it then the decision of appeals court automatically stands. Anyway, when a party files a Petition for Writ, the opposing part has the right to file a brief in opposition, if you will, telling the Supreme Court why they shouldn’t take the case. Colder hired a D.C. law firm to help draft the brief in opposition and co-sign it as attorney of record.”

“What firm?”

“The firm’s called Overton & Frey. It’s big and it’s hard-hitting. It does a good chunk of appellate work before the Supreme Court.”

“What attorney did Colder work with?”

“Two attorneys actually signed the brief, one by the name of Molly Flagger and another by the name of Leland Everitt.”

Leland Everitt.

Leland Everitt.

According to D.C. detective Randy Johnson, the black private investigator with the bleached hair, Oscar Benderfield, met with a lawyer named Leland Everitt when he got back into town from Denver.

The conclusion was inescapable.

Jack Colder hired Portia.

He didn’t do it directly.

He contacted his attorney-friend Leland Everitt who in turn contacted his PI connection Oscar Benderfield who in turn hired Portia.

Colder got a twisted little chain reaction in motion.

“Nick are you still there?”

The words brought him back to focus.

“You done good,” he said. “Who was the client Colder was representing in all this?”

“It’s a company called Vistigo. They’re into communication satellites and high-speed data transmission. All the appeals and briefs are public records. I’ll email them to you if you want.”

He wanted.

He wanted indeed.

He hung up,
immediately called his counterpart in D.C., Randy Johnson, and brought him up to speed on the good news. The man wasn’t as excited as Teffinger anticipated.

“Knowing it is one thing. Actually cracking a link is another.”

“Start with emails and phone records,” Teffinger said. “Get warrants.”

“Easy to say.”

“You don’t think you can?”

“That’s not up to me,” he said. “That’s up to the D.A. Just between you and me, I’m not sure he has the intestinal fortitude to go up against someone like Overton & Frey. A misstep in that direction can end a career.”

“Well, try.”

“I will,” Johnson said. “I’ll do it this afternoon and let you know what happens. All I’m saying is to not get your hopes up.”

Teffinger hung up.

His gut was hollow.

Johnson wasn’t going to get anywhere.

Johnson didn’t
want
to get anywhere. It wasn’t the D.A. who was going to be the roadblock; it was Johnson himself. He was scared of setting up a sequence that could swing back and knock him on his ass. The fear was there in his voice.

Teffinger needed a Plan B.

He needed it badly.

He needed it now.

30

Day Five

July 12

Saturday Afternoon

Plan B
wasn’t complex. It was a simple trip to Jack Colder’s law office to rattle the man’s cage. “You have a relationship with a lawyer out in D.C. by the name of Leland Everitt,” Teffinger said. “Leland Everitt rubs elbows with a black investigator with bleached hair by the name of Oscar Benderfield. Oscar Benderfield isn’t a particularly nice guy. He hires people to kill other people.”

Colder screwed his face into confusion.

“I know Leland Everitt,” he said. “We worked a Supreme Court case together. I never heard of the other guy.”

Teffinger frowned.

“Are you scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of being where you are right now, because it’s a dangerous place.”

“Here’s my advice,” Colder said. “You’re pointed in the wrong direction. Go back to the drawing board and get whatever it is you’re working on straight.”

Teffinger raked his hair back.

It immediately flopped back down.

“Someone hired by Oscar Benderfield came to Denver to kill Susan Smith, who, ironically, is someone you’re not particularly fond of. That’s the drawing board I’m working from.”

The implication hung in silence.

Then Colder said, “Get out of my office.”

“I’m giving you a chance to cooperate.”

Colder opened the door and motioned Teffinger towards it.

“Have a nice day.”

Teffinger stood up.

“There are a lot of links in this twisty little chain,” he said. “One of them will snap. It’s the first one that does that gets all the breaks. This is your chance to be smart and cut your losses. Pass this opportunity up and it goes to another link. Then you get to curse yourself with hindsight.”