Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (9 page)

“Beer or not? Your choice.”

The boxer hesitated and then pointed to a blue tavern across the street. “Over there.” Teffinger knew the place. He’d pulled bodies out of there on two occasions, one a drunken fight over twenty-five cents and the other a married man from Central City looking to get some tranny lipstick on his cock.

They sat
at the far end of the bar with cold bottles of Bud, Teffinger’s treat, a whole $2.00. He took a long swallow and smacked his lips. “I admire you for being able to work high. I couldn’t do it. It would kill me in about ten minutes.”

The boxer’s ice didn’t melt.

“You learn,” he said. “Why are you talking to me?”

Teffinger pulled the victim’s photo up on his phone and said, “Her name’s Portia Montrachet. She got murdered downtown Wednesday night. We’re in possession of a security tape from that night. It shows that you were in the vicinity.” He took a short swallow. “I was hoping you might have seen something.”

“No, nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Wish I had,” he said. “She’s a nice looking lady.”

“Agreed. Did you know her?”

“No. Did you?”

The words hit Teffinger with the power of a tire iron.

“Me? Why do you say that?”

“She just looks like your type.”

“How do you know what my type is?”

“Just a guess.”

Teffinger leaned forward on his elbows and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He closed his eyes and could feel Portia’s body under his, he could taste her sweat and feel her soul from the way she moved her muscles. He opened his eyes. A young woman in street clothes slipped into a barstool three down and ordered a Coors Light.

She was in ordinary clothes, jeans and a T.

He looked at the boxer and said, “There was a time when the pros all wore short red dresses and blond wigs. Things have changed.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“I used to drink Coors Light,” Teffinger said. “There was a joke about it. They said that drinking Coors Light was like making love in the bottom of a canoe. Do you know why?”

The boxer shook his head.

“No, why?”

“Because they’re both fucking close to water.”

The corner of the man’s mouth turned up.

Then he swallowed what was left in the bottle, threw a ten on the bar and left.

Teffinger sat there.
He could feel Portia in his blood. Outside the Harley fired up and rumbled down the street. The young pretty with the Coors Light slid over and said, “Hi there.”

Teffinger focused on her.

Her face had a smile just for him.

It was big.

It was friendly.

It was intimate.

She’d learned how to force it on at will and give it to a stranger. She rubbed his arm and said, “You’re a nice looking man.”

Teffinger pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her. “If you ever get in trouble or need someone, I want you to call me,” he said. “Day or night, now or five years from now. Keep this card with you. That’s my cell phone number right there. I answer it no matter when it rings.”

Then he was gone.

23

Day Four

July 11

Friday Evening

Back in the Tundra
Teffinger called homicide to find Sydney still there. “The boxer is a man named Danny Rainer,” he said. “He’s a richer-than-bitch business man. I just had a beer with him.”

“Don’t tell me this stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

“You drank a beer with a suspect,” she said. “And you drank on the job. What’s next? Oh, yeah, wait. The question isn’t what’s next? It’s, what was before. That brings us to your little touchy-feely session with Portia Montrachet, another suspect if I recall right.”

“I need you to do something for me,” Teffinger said.

“Teffinger, did you hear anything I just said?”

He smiled.

“I’m sorry, were you talking?”

“Teffinger, I’m serious. You’re on the edge. Reel yourself in. I’d do it for you but I don’t want to get my hands all gross.”

He exhaled.

“Are you done?”

Yes.

She was.

“The boxer killed Portia,” he said.

“Why? What’d he say?”

“He said he didn’t do it.”

“So why are you saying he did?”

“Because I was looking in his eyes when he said it. He was lying.”

“Here we go—”

“Trust me,” he said.

“So what was his motive?”

Good question.

“I have two possible theories,” he said. “The first is pure and simple carnal kicks. This guy isn’t getting where he needs to go just by spending his money. He owns a development company that’s building a high-rise down in LoDo, the one right near Coors Field.”

“I know the one you’re talking about.”

“The guy could spend his days sipping Margaritas but he works on the site as, get this, an iron worker. I was watching him. Most of the time those guys up there are tied off to a lifeline. Sometimes they unfasten to do something or move around but it’s not often. Our guy, the boxer, never ties off. He didn’t tie off one time the entire time I was watching him.”

“So he has a death wish?”

“No, I think the opposite,” Teffinger said. “I think he wants to experience life so fully that he won’t let the possibility of death dilute him.”

“And he decided to experience Portia?”

Teffinger nodded.

“Exactly,” he said. “It was a chance encounter and he made a split-second decision.”

“I get it.”

“Does it make sense?”

“Obviously there’s a lot of speculation in there but it’s all possible.”

“Good, then I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say that,” Sydney said.

He smiled.

“Point taken.”

A beat then,
“What’s your second theory?”

“Huh?”

“You said you had two possible theories,” Sydney said. “What’s the other one?”

“No, I only have the one theory.”

“You said you had two.”

“Yeah.”

“So what is it?”

“I’ve reconsidered it,” he said. “It’s too farfetched.”

“Why, what is it?”

“Just forget it.”

“How can I forget it? You’re making it into too big of a thing—”

“I’m not making it into anything, you are.”

“Only because you brought it up.”

“Well, now I’m taking it down. Do me a favor and work the keyboard tonight. Find out everything you can on the boxer. I want to know where his dark side has taken him in recent years.”

“Why?”

“Because if we only concentrate on his latest adventure we’re limited,” he said. “We need to find his other crimes and start building a bigger case.”

“You think he has other crimes?”

“I’m positive.”

“Murders?”

“The man who killed Portia and didn’t even blink,” he said. “That takes practice.”

24

Day Four

July 11

Friday Night

Friday night
after dark a vicious thunderstorm rolled out of the mountains and monster-punched Denver with mean heavy fists. With a beer in his gut and a second in hand, Teffinger watched it from a lounge chair on Del Rey’s patio under the shelter of the upper level deck. Jagged flashes of lightning ripped across the sky, whipping like a downed power line. Wild thunder ricocheted through the clouds with the power of a thousand maniac drums.

It was raw.

It was powerful.

The force of it all worked its way Teffinger’s blood.

It made him alive.

It made him an animal.

Del Rey stepped to the edge of the patio and stood under the water cascading off the upper deck. Her hair matted down and her blouse soaked to the skin. She swallowed what was left of her drink and threw the glass into the backyard.

Then she went into a sensual, trancelike dance

Her arms went up.

Her hips swayed.

Her lips opened.

Her eyelids dropped.

Every fiber of Teffinger’s being screamed for him take her, right now, this second, before the universe ticked even the smallest tick.

He resisted.

Instead he watched.

He drank her in with his eyes.

He let her into his blood.

She stepped over and straddled him. The wetness of her thighs and her drenched shorts worked its way through his pants and onto his skin.

It was good.

It was right.

It was destined.

Her lips came to his, stopping just short, so close that the warmth of her breath filled every pore of his body. She licked his neck and pushed down with her body.

Electricity ripped across the sky.

In that split second
Teffinger’s peripheral vision detected something out in the field, a long ways off, eighty or a hundred yards, possibly a dark silhouette, possibly a man. Before he could focus on it the world defaulted back to blackness.

A heartbeat later another bolt of lightning flashed.

The silhouette wasn’t there.

He stared at exactly where it should be.

It wasn’t there.

There was only prairie grass whipping with a voodoo curse.

“Teffinger, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I saw something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

He kept his concentration on the location and waited for the next explosion of lightning. I came quickly. Nothing was there that shouldn’t be. Still, his gut churned and he shifted to get up.

“Get in the house, turn off all the lights and lock all the windows and doors,” he said.

“Teffinger—”

“Do it. Hide somewhere and don’t come out until I tell you to.”

“Teffinger, this is crazy.”

“I’m not taking any chances,” he said.

“There’s nothing there,” she said. “It’s just a trick of the night.”

“Get inside. I’ll be back.”

He ran
towards the mark.

The weather immediately assaulted him with thick heavy pelts driven by a horizontal wind, working its wicked way into his eyes in spite of his best squinting. The world under his feet was black and uneven, twisting his ankles and stressing his knees.

The rain soaked through his clothes.

It made them heavy.

It made them grip.

He forced more power out of his body to compensate.

His speed didn’t slow.

With every pounding step he got closer and closer to whatever it was that was out there.

He took another step, and another and another.

His heart pounded.

His chest heaved.

Suddenly something was in front of him, low to the ground as if waiting, not part of the topography. It caught his foot on the upswing and sent him in a violent trip. He tried to brace before he smacked face-first into the ground but wasn’t fast enough. His forehead hit something hard and unforgiving. Fireworks shot through his brain. He got to his feet, staggered and then fell to the side.

Everything went black.

The next thing
that happened was gunfire.

It pulled him out a deep unconsciousness long before he was ready. It made him staggered to his feet. Then a voice shouted, “Don’t move!”

He instinctively dived.

It did no good.

The gun went off again before he even hit the ground.

25

Day Four

July 11

Friday Night

Teffinger rolled
when he hit, not sure if he’d been shot or not. The gun fired again. Something directly above him made a painful sound and landed with a horrific weight on his legs, pinning him down.

He scrambled to wedge out.

His hand pushed against something sharp and jagged.

He immediately knew what it was and jerked back before jaws clamped down.

Lightning flashed.

For a fraction of a second the world lit as if the noon sun was out. It was long enough for Teffinger to see he was under a mountain lion. The animal’s face had been destroyed into a gooey mess by a bullet.

Del Rey was two steps distance.