Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (30 page)

He brought the vehicle up to a conservative speed and held it there.

“You okay down there?” he questioned, not really sure why. She’d been through a lot. Of course, he’d put plenty of people through a lot before, but never for such an extended period, not like this.

This was something new entirely.

Virgin ground.

“Yes, fine. Thank you.”

“Well, let me know if you get too hot or too cold or anything.”

“Okay, thank you.”

SHE HAD TOTALLY FREAKED OUT
when he left for the walk on Sunday and didn’t come back. But then again, he wasn’t exactly having the time of his life either. He lay on the plywood up in the barn rafters hour after hour, motionless, intentionally and stressfully quiet, not able to cough or clear his throat or stand up. At one point there must have been six or eight people in the place processing the scene, taking photographs of the Harley, measuring distances, drawing field sketches and telling stupid jokes.

When they set up halogen lights and started working into the night, after he had already been up there for over nine hours, a genuine panic started to come over him and his mind lapsed into horrible little scenarios. He knew his muscles could go into spasm at any time and give him away. Plus he’d been forced to relieve himself in his pants a number of times and worried about the odor drawing attention.

Every single minute he expected someone to shine a flashlight his way and say, “Hey, has anyone checked up there yet?”

Everyone left about ten o’clock, everyone except one unlucky cop who stayed behind to guard the crime scene until the morning. Luckily, Ganjon had been able to get down and sneak off without having to kill him.

When he finally got back to the other house, Megan Bennett had been tied up in the same position and abandoned for over ten hours, and was almost to the point of hysteria. It took a long time to calm her down and bring her back to any semblance of normalcy. The rest of the night, out of pity and against his better judgment, he actually let her lie in bed with him without any ties whatsoever.

He held her and rubbed her shoulders and back.

That was Sunday night.

LAST NIGHT, MONDAY NIGHT,
after it got dark, he set out on foot and walked all the way to the Sinclair station, to find out if any roadblocks were up. He must have walked at least fifteen miles all told, not to mention having to duck off the road more times than he would ever want to count. But he did find out what he needed to know.

There were no roadblocks.

Most likely, when the cops found the Camry missing, they surmised that he had escaped early, right after the biker woman made a run for it, and was long gone.

WITH THE ROAD SAFE,
that made tonight, Tuesday night, the escape portal.

He was feeling good.

Then something weird happened.

He couldn’t have been more than a mile from the farmhouse when headlights appeared behind him from out of nowhere. Ordinarily that wouldn’t bother him, even in a situation like this, except that they were coming up strong.

Damn it.

He kept the speed constant and tried to stay calm. The other car must have been doing fifty. He pictured four FBI agents inside, weapons drawn, big old hard-ons in their pants. Sure enough, the lights got brighter and brighter and were now almost right on his ass.

They were going to ram him!

At the last second he floored the car, trying to stay ahead, and braced for the crash. At the same time the other vehicle slammed on its brakes, triggering a nose-plant that made the headlights dip down for just a fraction of a second. Ganjon felt what might have been an impact at the rear end of his vehicle but wasn’t sure.

The other vehicle shot up next to him.

He could make out the silhouette of a man inside, frantically motioning for him to pull over.

What the hell?

He brought the car to a stop, warned Megan Bennett to keep her damned mouth shut, got out of the vehicle and walked back towards the other car—a late model Corvette—which had pulled up behind him. The other man was already out, looking at the front end of his vehicle.

“You got no taillights, buddy,” the man said. “This accident is your fault, not mine. I hope you got insurance because I’m calling the police.”

Ganjon looked at his lights and couldn’t believe it.

The guy was right.

He’d been driving with his lights off.

In another fifteen minutes he would have been on I-25 and, if he didn’t eventually notice, he would most definitely have been pulled over sooner or later.

Damn!

He knew the world was too screwed-up to have a God but couldn’t help but wonder if someone was watching out for him tonight.

“Hey,” he said, his voice as friendly and understanding as he could force it to be. “You’re absolutely right, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. I didn’t have my lights on.” He walked towards the man. “I’ll tell you what, you got a scrape which is maybe a hundred dollars of paint.”

He reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.

“Let me give you five hundred right now in cash,” Ganjon said, pulling the money out of his wallet. “You’re all taken care of and I don’t get any points on my license.”

The man took the money and said, “That’s fine,” but was now writing Ganjon’s license plate number on the back of a business card.

“What are you doing?” Ganjon questioned.

“Just for the record, in case there’s hidden damage or something. I should probably get your name and phone number too.”

Ganjon couldn’t believe it.

He was trying his best to let this dumb-ass live and the guy just wasn’t smart enough to shut his stupid face and drive away.

Well then, screw him.

“Here’s the problem,” he said. “Sooner or later you’re going to see my face in the news and say to yourself, Hey, I remember that guy and, hey, I have his license plate number.”

“Why would I see your face in the news?”

Ganjon felt the intensity rise to the necessary level. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you want it to go the easy way, turn around and face your car and stand real still. I’ll give you a moment to make your peace.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Day Nine - April 24

Tuesday Night

___________

THIS MORNING’S MEDICATION HAD
mercifully worked its way out of her system at this point, releasing Kelly’ brain from the fog that held her back all day. She was still sore and achy but overall surprised at how good she felt, and how horny.

She lowered herself down to the motel floor and stretched, no longer capable of doing the splits like in the high school days, but still plenty flexible. Her mind wandered over tomorrow’s trial until she confirmed that she was as ready at this point as she was going to be. There was no use even thinking about it anymore. The only thing left to do was to get to bed at a halfway decent hour, say ten.

The sun had just about completely set and Teffinger would be showing up any time. They’d already reserved the connecting room in his name.

Jeannie was stripped down to her panties and bra, perpetually comfy, lying on the bed watching Basic Instinct. She hardly talked since the movie started, except during commercials. Kelly couldn’t believe that she hadn’t seen it before and felt a little jealous. There are certain movies that you wished you could watch again for the first time.

Someone rapped on the door.

Jeannie was off the bed in a heartbeat and opened it up without even looking through the eyehole.

“Pizza guy,” she announced, pulling him in.

The damage was $11.95. Jeannie pulled twelve ones out of her pursue and handed them to him. Then pulled out two more and held them in her left hand. The pizza guy, to all appearances a nice unassuming fellow, probably working his way through college or some such thing, looked confused. “You can have this tip or you can squeeze these,” Jeannie said, referring to her breasts.

“Really?”

“Sure, go on.”

When he left and closed the door behind him, Jeannie smiled and said, “He’ll be talking about that for twenty years.”

Kelly shook her head in wonder.

“You know what, I’ll be talking about that for twenty years.”

TEFFINGER SHOWED UP
ten minutes later, tried not to stare too hard at the Jeannie show, got situated in his room and made Kelly a proposition. The two of them ended up in his Tundra driving down offbeat roads and winding up at a small parking area by the river.

The night was blacker than black, shrouded in a low-lying blanket of clouds that totally masked any light from above.

Thunder rumbled close by, giving fair warning.

No other cars were parked there.

No one was around.

They ended up walking down a path, right next to the Colorado River, able to hear the force of its power but not able to see it.

Teffinger had a number of things he wanted to talk about and didn’t waste much time getting to them.

“Last week, you wanted to know if someone cut off a lock of D’endra Vaughn’s hair,” he said. “That’s been bugging me ever since you said it.”

He stopped at that, waiting for her to comment.

It turned out that Kelly hadn’t told Teffinger about the files that Northway’s secretary had found on his desk with the pictures of a dead woman, newspaper articles and an envelope containing hair.

So Kelly told him the story.

Ever the detective, he wasn’t satisfied with hearing it just once. He kept probing her about it as they walked until he knew every bit as much as she did about it. In the end, he didn’t know what to make of the fact that Northway’s former secretary, Fallon Somerville, hadn’t been able to say one way or the other whether the dead woman she saw in Northway’s file was Alicia Elmblade; nor could she remember if she saw the file before or after May of last year, when the incident at Rick’s Gas Station took place.

“You only had that one photo of Alicia Elmblade to show her,” Teffinger noted. “I’m going to get some others and have her take another look. I’m finding it more and more interesting that no one’s seen this Elmblade woman alive since the night in question.”

Kelly nodded, even though he couldn’t possibly see her in the dark. “Northway told me that the client hired a private investigator out in California to try to locate her,” she said.

“Oh, really? Who?“

That was a good question.

“He said he’d be more comfortable keeping that information to himself,” she said. “He has an obligation to protect the identity of the client.”

Teffinger grunted.

“He’s got an answer for everything, doesn’t he? You know what I’m starting to think? There is no client, there is no P.I. out in California, Alicia Elmblade is dead, and Northway either killed her himself or is up to his eyeballs in it. That’s why he’s been trying to keep you quiet all this time and why he’s trying to keep me at bay.”

Kelly understood the reasoning but still didn’t want to believe it. She’d been through too much with Northway over too many years. When you have that kind of history with someone you get a sense of their fiber. From that angle, Northway wasn’t the person Teffinger portrayed him to be.

Neither version quite fit.

She was about to tell him that when it started to rain—only a few drops at first, but they were those big heavy ones, the kind that give you a three-second warning before they pound the crap out of you.

They turned and ran for the Tundra.

“Here it comes!” Teffinger warned.

He was right.

THEY MADE IT TO THE TRUCK
and couldn’t have been inside for more than a heartbeat before the whole sky fell down.

She pulled off her sweatshirt and saw Teffinger fumbling around, trying to find the right key on his key chain for the ignition. “Wait a minute,” she said.

She climbed in the back seat, a total spur-of-the-moment thing, excited by the way the rain thundered down on the roof with a thousand pings. It was solid and thick and she could tell that it wouldn’t let up for some time. Being there, in the back seat of a car in the rain, reminded her of the old high school days, which got her even more excited.

She fumbled with her belt and had her pants off by the time Teffinger managed to get his overgrown frame back there with her.

“Take your time,” she said. “Make me beg for it.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Day Ten - April 25

Wednesday Morning

______________

THE MORNING DRIVE FROM
Grand Junction back to Denver was taking Teffinger forever. As beautiful as the Rocky Mountain scenery was, each mile that passed represented another intrusion into a day that was already too short. The old Blondie song “Call Me” bounced around in his brain, stuck there since he heard it on the radio more than two hours ago.