Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (20 page)

58

Day 68

August 10

Tuesday Afternoon

They ended up sitting in a shady area of the dock behind the shop, dangling their feet over the water. “I know we talked about this,” Teffinger said, “but I want to go over it one more time before I tell you a few things. Tell me again what transpired between you and the lawyer, Stephen Blake.”

“Seriously?”

“Indulge me. I’m going to be adding some parts to the story, some parts you don’t know about yet, but I don’t want to do that until I’m sure we’re on the same page.”

She held his hand.

“He showed up down here at the shop one day,” she said. “I’d never seen him before. I didn’t know who he was. He said he was a lawyer out of New York.”

Teffinger nodded.

“Go on.”

“He said he wanted to tell me something very important but that I needed to keep it confidential. Well, I couldn’t say no to that, because I was too curious.”

“So you agreed—”

“Right, I agreed,” she said. “He told me he had a client named Johnnie Rail who was a big rock star from London. He did all the copywriting and related work for Rail and the band. Anyway, one day Rail mentioned something off the cuff, something that might have been illegal in some way. The lawyer was curious what was going on and sort of suckered Rail into fleshing out what he was alluding to. Well, Rail didn’t, not during that particular meeting, anyway. But his confidence grew over the next few meetings. And one day, when the subject sort of came up, Rail said,
When I tell you things during our meetings, it’s all one hundred percent confidential and everything, right?
And the lawyer assured him it was. The lawyer was bound by law to never disclose the confidences of his client, with a few exceptions, which didn’t apply to them. Plus, the lawyer was a man of his word. He promised on his mother’s grave he would never tell anyone anything about Rail, and in fact never had to date. With that, Rail told the lawyer that he murdered a woman; he just came flat out and said it,
I murdered a woman.
The lawyer kept his cool, pretended like it was no big deal, and got Rail to loosen his lips even more. Rail gave him all the details. The woman was someone named Alley Savannah. Rail picked her up when she came out of a lesbian bar in Miami called Blackbird Ordinary. He stabbed her in the back of the neck. Then he cut open her stomach and shoved a vial, something like a small test tube only closed at the end. Inside was a piece of paper that said 1 6 Weeks. What it meant is that the bands’ latest song, one called
Baby Done Bad
, had been number one on the England charts for the last six weeks.” She looked into Teffinger’s eyes. “Rail did kill her, right?”

“Right. It’s true.”

“So why are we going over this? Rail’s dead—”

“You’ll see in a minute. Just keep going. What else did the lawyer tell you?”

“He told me that over the next few months, Rail told him about other women he’d killed. One was named Jaylor Colt, in Washington, D.C. She actually turned out to be a Cuban diplomat although Rail didn’t know it at the time. Another woman was named Faren White, in San Francisco. Another one was Lachey Silk, in New York.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She was a pretty blond girl,” Kovi-Ke said. “She’d been out partying that evening. Rail spotted her, followed her to her apartment and got her to open the door. He got in and killed her. Then he put stuck a note in a red hardcover book on the top shelf of a big bookcase that was built into the wall. The note said NOIZ. It stood for
Noise
, which was the name of a song the band had released the week before.”

“What about someone named Jackie Vampire?”

“No.”

“The lawyer never said anything about her?”

“No, Who is she?”

“She’s another woman Rail killed.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me about her.”

“I thought he died on that voodoo island.”

“He did. That’s where he told me, before he died. I ran the name down. Sure enough, a woman in Chicago by that name had been murdered. The original investigators never found a note. I flew there and we took a long, hard look. We eventually found it in an air duct. It said
Invasion.
That was the first week one of Rail’s records was released in the United States.”

“So it was definitely him.”

Teffinger nodded.

“That was one of his earlier kills, more than five years ago. He wasn’t as good at covering his tracks back then. We found his fingerprints on the note and his DNA on the victim’s body. He licked her nipples, probably after she was dead, but it really doesn’t matter if it was before or after. That’s where his DNA was.”

“Well, the lawyer never mentioned her to me,” Kovi-Ke said. “Rail must not have told him about that particular murder. Maybe because he was afraid there might be physical evidence there.”

“That’s entirely possible. Let’s take a walk, do you mind?”

They stood up.

“You said you were here for business; dangerous business.”

“I’m getting to it,” Teffinger said. “Trust me.”

“Just tell me what it is.”

He hesitated and then said, “You’re going to be murdered tonight.”

59

Day 68

August 10

Tuesday Afternoon

You’re going to be murdered tonight.

She looked at Teffinger with half a grin on her face, waiting for the punch line, but it fell off when he didn’t give it to her.

“Murdered by who? Janjak?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” he said. “Finish up with what you did with the lawyer. I need to be absolutely sure we’re on the same page.”

They walked.

Kovi-Ke composed her thoughts.

“Well, he told me that Rail had told him about all these murders in the context of an attorney-client privilege,” she said. “He wasn’t allowed to go to the police, even anonymously. Equally important, he’d be disbarred if he breached the privilege. The fallout would land on the firm. He’d end up penniless and railroaded out of town. But, he’d figured out a plan to avoid all that. That’s where I fit in.”

“How? What’d he tell you?”

“He said that Rail had a place in Haiti,” she said. “He said Rail was into voodoo and it was big in that area of the world, which is why he started sniffing around there and eventually ended up buying a villa on the sea, outside of Port-au-Prince. He became obsessed with a voodoo woman who went by the name of Janjak. They eventually formed a relationship and she started to let him come to some of the voodoo ceremonies.” She looked into Teffinger’s eyes and said, “Is Janjak the one who’s going to murder me?”

“We’re getting there. Keep going.”

“Well, it got to the point where Rail wanted to see if he could develop voodoo powers,” she said. “He talked Janjak into letting him pick out people to bring to the ceremonies. He talked her into letting him actually participate in the performances. During Karnaval in February of this year, Rail picked me out of the crowd and had his men confiscate me. I was taken to a beach. .Janjak presided over the ceremony but Rail took over once I was staked out. He’s the only who sliced open the snake and dripped the blood and guts into my face and eyes.” She paused, recalling it. “Rail later told the lawyer about it. That’s how the lawyer knew. The lawyer then got my name from the police report. He came to Jamaica to see me. He had a plan.”

“Which was what?”

“He couldn’t tell the police about any of Rail’s past murders,” she said. “But he could point the police to Rail when he was out to take his next victim. Rail had just concluded a tour. It was always two or three weeks after a tour that he committed his next murder. So the lawyer anticipated that the next one was looming in the near future. What he wanted me to do was to follow Rail as he zeroed in on his next victim. I would make contact with a local homicide detective and pretend I was seeing through a killer’s eyes. I would in effect direct the detective to the kill that was about to take place and to Rail as the murderer. That would keep the lawyer out of the picture. It would also be plausible to Rail if he ever found out what I was doing. He could think that he’d actually done something to me during that ceremony that caused me to see out of his eyes.”

“And you went along with the plan.”

She nodded.

“I did. Part of it was to get a killer off the streets. A bigger part of it, though, was to get revenge. He had no right to do what he did to me. If there was any way that I could get him locked up in a little cell for the rest of his life, I was happy to give it a try. Do you understand?”

“I do, totally.”

“There was a logistical issue,” she said. “Obviously I couldn’t really see through Rail’s eyes. The lawyer had a good friend he knew from law school that he still kept in close touch with. She was a lawyer now out in San Francisco. Her name was Nicole Carter. He gave her all the background and explained his plan. What he wanted her to do was to tail Rail, watch his moves, and then feed them back to me through cell phone communications. So, all the moves that Rail was making when we weren’t near him, I was able to tell you about them from a distance because Nicole was feeding them to me. It was a simple matter of checking my phone when it vibrated and not letting you see me. I’d excuse myself to go to the bathroom or something like that. As for telling you about the flashbacks, and even having them in your presence, that was all information that I had already gotten from the lawyer.”

“Clever.”

“Yes,” she said. “It was clear that Rail’s intended target was Station Smith. Of course, none of us knew why, and to tell you the truth I’m still not real clear on it, but she was the target all right.”

“Let me ask you something,” Teffinger said. “When we met, there was sex. Was that a way of hooking me in?”

“At first, yes.”

“And later—”

“And later, we were both hooked, as I’m sure you figured out,” she said. “Anyway it was all going according to plan. Obviously, though, Rail spotted Nicole at some point and that’s why she ended up murdered. Since it had all gone to hell, I went into hiding.” She put his hand in hers. “It’s your turn to talk. Who’s going to murder me tonight, and why?”

60

Day 68

August 10

Tuesday Afternoon

The walk led them out of the dock area and into a small strip of bars. They ended at a back table of the Calico Jack’s with bottles of beer. A large ceiling fan rotated above at minimal speed, barely enough to stir the air.

“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told a soul in the world,” Teffinger said.

With that, he told her about the events on voodoo island; how Rail and his men had gone there to kill Janjak and met their fate; how he and Janjak buried the coins and the diamond under the bones; how Janjak dripped her blood into Rail’s eyes and then made Teffinger suck from the wound, at which point visions of the murders played in his head; how Janjak sliced Rail’s face in two with the machete; and all the rest.

“The gold and the coins were buried to re-strengthen the curse of the island,” he said. “All the bones that had accumulated there over the years, they came from Janjak’s ancestry. She warned me that if I ever stepped on any of the islands at any point in the future, I would die within five minutes. So if I had any notions to go back for what was buried there, I’d better get it out of my head.”

“Do you believe that’s true?”

He shrugged.

“I hate to admit it, but yes,” he said. “Somehow she made me see through Rail’s eyes. There’s no way that could really happen but it did. That was on top what happened earlier when she got me to tell her everything I didn’t want her to know, and not remembering it until she told me. Plus she somehow killed all those men at close quarters. How? Some kind of mind control or curse, that’s all I can figure. She has powers, how and why I don’t know, but I’m not going to doubt them. I can’t.”

“I told you before there were rumors,” she said. “That part of what I told you was true.”

“Well, believe them,” Teffinger said. “Here’s the thing, though. She told me something very interesting. The voodoo ceremony that she performed on you, that was done at the request of the lawyer, Stephen Blake, not Rail. He chose you. He was there when it happened. He paid her for it, a lot of money in fact.”

“It wasn’t Rail?”

“No, it was Blake,” Teffinger said. “You weren’t the first in fact. There were two others before you. After each one, he fed them the same story he fed you, about how Rail was a killer and about how he wanted them to pretend to see through Rail’s eyes in an effort to bring him down. Neither of them fell for it. You did. He told you Rail was behind the ceremony so you’d want to seek revenge.”

“That bitch.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of digging over the last two months,” Teffinger said. “One thing I found out is that Rail had struck up an acquaintance with a guy who used to live in Denver that we called Tarzan. It took a lot of work, but I eventually figured out that Rail was in fact the one who killed Nicole Carter, but he did it by Tarzan’s building to point in Tarzan’s direction. Tarzan is the one who killed Station Smith. That happened when Rail was already back in Haiti, so it gave Rail an alibi. They exchanged alibis in effect.”

Teffinger took a long swallow of beer.

It was warmer than he would have wanted but still good.

“That’s not of interest to you, though,” he said. “What’s of interest of you at this point, and to me, is that when I was on the island and Rail’s murders were flashing in my mind, there was no murder of Lachey Silk. At first it just struck me as nothing unusual. But the more I thought about it, particularly since Rail even sent me a flash of that Chicago victim, Vampire, I started to wonder if maybe Rail didn’t actually kill Lachey Silk. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get the flash.”

“But all the evidence was there,” Kovi-Ke said. “The vial in her stomach which only Rail knew about, the note in the book, all that stuff.”

“That’s what the lawyer Blake told you that Rail told him,” Teffinger said. “And it was all there.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that it wasn’t put there by Rail,” Teffinger said. “I’m about ninety percent positive that Blake killed Lachey Silk. He set Rail up to take the fall.”

“Why?”

“Why’d he kill her?”

“Yes, that.”

“I’m not sure,” Teffinger said. “The detective in charge of the case had heard a rumor that Lachey was blackmailing someone. In hindsight, I think it was the lawyer, Blake.”

“Why? What’d she have on him?”

“I don’t know but it must have been big,” Teffinger said. “My gut tells me that Blake didn’t set this whole thing in motion because he’s a goody-goody guy who wanted to take down a killer without losing his license. He wanted to plant his own murder on someone else. That was his motivation.”

“Do you have any proof?”

Teffinger shook his head.

“None, other than the fact that Rail didn’t flash the murder into my brain. That’s not exactly the kind of thing you can parade out in front of a jury. Like I said, you’re the only person in the world who knows what happened that night on the island, outside of me and Janjak.”

“Well, maybe you’re wrong.”

“That’s possible,” Teffinger said. “That’s why I’ve been keeping close tabs on Blake. It’s off the books. I’m doing a lot of it through a private investigator in New York. No one in my department knows I’m doing it. It’s not an official investigation. Yesterday I found out two very interesting things.”

“Like what?”

“One, Blake’s been investigating me over the last two months. He’s been doing it through a private detective in town by the name of Anderson Biggs. Two, Blake purchased a roundtrip ticket to Jamaica,” he said. “He’s landing here at 7:10 tonight and taking off at 10:23 tomorrow morning. It’s obvious he’s not coming for a vacation.”

“He’s coming to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s worried that I’m starting to figure out what he really did,” Teffinger said. “He’s worried that he might eventually get charged in Lachey Silk’s death. If that happens, you would be a key witness—
the
key witness, in fact. You would be able to testify that he told you all about the particulars of Lachey Silk’s murder, ostensibly because Rail told him about them. Now, Rail was in fact in New York the night of that murder. However, Blake is afraid that there might be evidence to show that Rail didn’t commit the murder, an alibi at the time of death or something like that. So, at this point, you’re the biggest piece of evidence against him. I think he’s sneaking into Jamaica to remove the specter of that evidence.”

“So what do we do?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On two things. One, on how mad you are at him for abducting you into that voodoo ritual and then tricking you into a charade. And two, on whether you’re willing to be the bait.”

She looked at him.

“Say it.”

“No problem,” he said. “He’s going to come after you tonight. When he does, I’ll be there.”

“And you’ll kill him?”

“He’ll leave me no choice.”

She held her hand out.

“Shake on it.”

He did.

Then he swallowed the rest of her beer, stood up and said, “Let’s go. We have logistics to take care of.”