Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (16 page)

“Such as who?”

“I don’t know.”

Sanders frowned.

“It’s not a big money case,” he said. “It’s a freedom of speech case. Plus, if she was only the messenger, why kill her? Why not go after the real thing?”

“I don’t know. To send a message?”

“I don’t know either,” Sanders said. “The only thing I know is that you were on the line when the Alder woman got murdered, not to mention you’re in possession of Robertson’s computer files. If there’s a list out there of people to kill, you’re on it; maybe it’s still as Jane Doe at this point, but you’re on it, make no mistake about that. And sooner or later someone’s going to figure out who Jane Doe is.”

Jori-Lee already knew that.

Still, the words felt like a spider crawling up her leg.

Ten minutes later
Sanders had a strange thought and said, “One thing we haven’t considered is that maybe T’amara Alder wasn’t a blackmailer or a messenger.”

Jori-Lee wrinkled her brow.

“Meaning what?”

“Maybe she knew who the blackmailer was and was going to tell Robertson,” he said. “Maybe she was killed by the blackmailer rather than from Robertson’s direction.”

“So she was trying to help Robertson?”

“Precisely.”

46

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Morning

The Mediterranean woman,
Sanapella Seffrada, didn’t answer when Teffinger knocked, because that’s the way his life worked. He pounded the door with a frustrated hand, still got nothing, and huffed off. Halfway down the walkway, “Hey,” came from behind him. He turned to see a sleepy dark beauty with disheveled hair in the doorway.

He walked towards her.

“Are you Sanapella Seffrada?”

She studied him.

“You’re the guy who killed that other guy last night down at the club.”

Teffinger shifted his feet and explained he was with Denver homicide, looking for a missing woman. “You were dancing with her last night,” he said. “She was wearing a white dress. Her name is Susan Smith.”

The woman held the door open.

“You want some coffee?”

He did.

He did indeed.

The woman wore a T and black panties.

“Your eyes are two different colors,” she said. “I had a cat exactly like that once, white fur, all white except for one foot which was black. His name was Alley.”

“What happened to him?”

She shrugged.

“He went off to Hollywood to become a star.”

Teffinger smiled.

“He’s probably waiting tables.”

“Probably.” She pushed hair out of her face. “I never got the woman’s name last night. Susan, you say.”

He nodded.

“She deserves something more exotic.”

“Anything you could tell me would be appreciated.”

She got a vacant look.

“There’s nothing to tell, really. We just bumped into each other and had a few dances. That was it. To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember her that well. I was pretty high.”

“With more than alcohol?”

She nodded.

Teffinger took a long sip of coffee.

“With what, exactly?”

“Ecstasy, exactly.”

Teffinger was familiar with the name but didn’t know much about its properties, particularly its effect on short-term or long-term memory.

“So you didn’t leave with her then?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I left with someone else. She’s up in bed.”

A sound
came from behind.

Teffinger turned to find a woman coming down the stairs, a striking woman in a turquoise T, groggy with sleep. Her hands went up to ruffle her hair, raising the T up just enough to disclose an absence of panties. She gave him a peck on the lips and said to Sanapella, “Your man’s nice. I’ll help you do him if you want.”

Sanapella swallowed what was left of her coffee.

“Sure, why not?”

Teffinger shifted
his feet, focused on Sanapella and said, “How is it that you and Susan stopped dancing?”

“Let me think … okay, I remember now, a guy cut in.”

“For you?”

“No, her.”

Teffinger’s chest pounded.

“Describe him.”

“That would be pretty hard considering I never saw his face?”

“You didn’t.”

No, she didn’t.

“He stepped between us and was facing her,” she said.

“So you only saw the back of his head—”

“Right.”

“Describe it.”

“The back of his head?”

“Right.”

“I was just the back of a head. Oh, wait, now I remember something, he had a ponytail, it was black.”

Teffinger smiled.

“Good, what was he wearing?”

“I don’t remember.”

“A shirt? A jacket?

“I don’t remember.”

“Was he tall or short?”

“He was tall enough but not overly, if that makes sense.”

“How was he built? Thin, bulky?”

“I don’t remember. The whole thing was just a flash.”

He turned to the other woman, the one with the T. “Did you see him too?”

“No.”

Back to Sanapella, “When the man cut in, what happened next?”

“They danced.”

“Did the man flash her anything, something that could have been a knife or a gun?”

She shrugged.

“I didn’t see anything like that.”

Teffinger exhaled.

“Okay, that’s fine. What I want you to do is come down to the station and look at some videotapes of the crowd from last night and see if you can spot him.”

“Like I said, I didn’t see his face—”

“I understand but maybe you’ll see something that will spark a memory, a body posture or clothes or something like that. All I’m asking is that you take a look. Will you do that for me?”

“Sure, why not?”

47

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Morning

The dead PI
who Colder repeatedly called last night to abort the project had an office on south Broadway in a standalone building that was an affront to every building code known to man. Surprisingly the front door was cracked open a couple of inches. Teffinger knocked and shouted, “Anyone here?” No one answered. He tried again, got more of the same, and thought briefly about getting a search warrant before going any further. Instead he decided to follow the directions on the door:

Benjamin Fisher, Private Investigator

Confidentiality Guaranteed

Walk-Ins Welcome

Inside the place was a throwback to an old black-and-white TV show, replete with garage-sale furniture, mismatched metal filing cabinets and a large wooden desk with enough food mashed into the scratches to live on for a week.

A smaller desk was to the right.

On it was an ashtray overflowing with butts, each smudged with pink lipstick, meaning the dead man had a secretary or assistant.

Teffinger looked at the papers on the desk, not touching them, not going beyond the invitation on the door. None of them related to the hiring of a hitman to kill Susan Smith. Most were handwritten notes relating to small matters—follow a husband; follow a woman receiving workmen’s compensation to see if she was doing anything that would prove her claim of physical injury was fabricated or exaggerated; figure out if a judgment debtor had a secret bank account in the Caymans; that kind of thing.

Teffinger frowned.

He couldn’t snoop further, not legally.

He needed a search warrant.

Suddenly the door opened and a woman walked in, a bleach-blond with pink lipstick that matched the butts, cute in a trashy sort of way. She wore a cheap yellow sundress with a stain on the hem and oversized white sunglasses, the latter of which she took off as she said, “Who are you?”

Teffinger went to answer but his lips didn’t move. His brain was too busy processing the fact that the woman looked exactly like what he would have expected her to look like, had he done any expecting before she walked in.

“I’m Nick Teffinger,” he said, “I’m a homicide detective. Do you work here?”

She did.

“Good,” he said. “Your boss Benjamin Fisher got killed last night. He hired a guy with a ponytail to kill a woman named Susan Smith. I need to know who that guy is.”

Her name
was Danielle Westchester and she knew nothing about anything, not for the full ten minutes Teffinger grilled her, but she did give him permission to search the place and even directed him to where things could be found.

Minutes passed, then halves of hours, then hours, and none of those things were helpful.

Not one of them gave shape to the elusive ponytail man.

Then something happened that Teffinger didn’t expect.

He found phone records that showed numerous calls between Bennie on the one hand and a Washington, D.C. area code number on the other.

The number turned out to belong to another private investigator, none other than Oscar Benderfield, the black man with the bleached hair who first hired Portia to kill Susan Smith.

The two investigators were connected.

“This is why you don’t know anything,” he told Danielle. “Bennie didn’t hire the guy with the ponytail, not directly anyway. He passed the assignment on to a buddy in D.C. They must have some kind of network in place.”

Del Rey called
and said, “Are you okay?”

An image flashed in Teffinger’s brain, an image of her dancing in the storm, so perfect, so seductive, so absolutely right.

The answer was no; he said, “Yes.”

“I need to see you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to explode if I don’t.”

He played it out.

He deserved it.

It wouldn’t take much time.

Still, it would take some time, and some was something he didn’t have, or more to the point, Susan Smith didn’t have. “Right now I have zombies coming at me from every direction,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Zombies,” she said. “Now there’s a word I never thought I’d hear coming out of your mouth.”

“Yeah, well get used to it.”

“Come on, Teffinger, just ten minutes—”

“Tonight, I promise.”

“You promise?”

He did.

He did with every fiber of his being, then he got off the line before his weakness betrayed him.

He headed
to homicide where Sanapella Seffrada and her little no-panties friend were reviewing the club tapes under the guidance of Sydney, who pulled Teffinger into the adjoining room, closed the door and said, “Not good so far.”

“Great, another zombie.”

She wrinkled her face in confusion.

“Private joke,” he said.

“Whatever. We found at least a dozen guys with ponytails. None of them are ringing bells. With the cameras coming from the ceiling, their faces are at an extreme downward angle. Plus the film’s grainy beyond belief when you try to zero in on something that small.”

Teffinger slumped in a chair.

The lack of sleep from last night was a wet blanket around his brain.

“Keep trying,” he said.

“I will but don’t expect anything.”

He closed his eyes.

His head bobbed.

The next thing he knew Sydney was helping him onto a couch.

His feet were up.

His shoes were off.

The fluorescents went out.

The door closed.

The air got quiet.

Then everything disappeared.

48

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Afternoon

Someone had proof.
Someone had proof that Robertson was way down deep into the freaky stuff; otherwise he wouldn’t be getting ready to throw a vote.

Who had it?

Who?

Who?

Who?

Jori-Lee rattled the question inside her gray matter hour after hour without coming an iota closer to finding the answer. Then something struck her. Just having the proof wouldn’t be enough to make Robertson act.

He’d need to see the proof.

He’d need to be sure someone wasn’t just trying to fake him out.

Early Sunday noon, out on the terrace overlooking the bay, Jori-Lee pulled up the “Photos” file from the flash drive and opened the porn videos, one after another, watching them for thirty seconds and then going to the next. Sanders came out, handed her a glass of iced tea and said, “What are you doing?”