Attorney's Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (3 page)

The city buzzed, vibrant and alive.

Jekker was too, but barely.

The fall off the face of the cliff last evening knocked him out—for a long time, actually. He remembered waking up to a pitch-black world, half frozen, not having a clue where he was, before finally making his way back to the Audi and discovering that it was almost midnight.

His entire body ached, even now, every single part of it, but nothing was broken.

One thing he knew for sure.

He’d go back there a third time and get it right.

No stupid-ass mountain was going to beat him, period, end of sentence.

TESSA BLAKE—THE TARGET—TURNED OUT to be a 22-year-old single female with a string of low-paying jobs in her wake, currently employed as a Molly Maid.

Why she had been chosen as a target was beyond Jekker’s comprehension. The best he could figure, she must have seen something she shouldn’t have. Maybe she snooped around a little too much while cleaning someone’s house.

He didn’t know.

He didn’t care.

To him, she was nothing more than a pile of money.

HE FOLLOWED HER FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS in the morning to get a feel for her and then pointed the front end of the Audi west. He gassed up in downtown Morrison at the base of the foothills, then wound up Highway 74 into the mountains through a river canyon that wasn’t quite as spectacular as Clear Creek but was still pretty damn nice.

He passed Idledale, kept going under a clear Colorado sky, then turned onto a gravel road, kicking up a dust trail as he disappeared into thick Ponderosa pines.

A hundred yards down the road he stopped the vehicle in front of a chain-link gate with a warning sign: Private Property. No Trespassing. A second sign said No Hunting and a third said Keep Out. All of the signs were marked with shotgun blast, just to make a point.

He got out, unlocked the gate, drove the Audi through and relocked it.

Then he continued down the road for a half mile into the heart of his 1,000-acre property where he parked in front of three old boxcars, coupled together, sitting on a short stretch of track that dead-ended at either end of the cars.

They had been there when he purchased the property.

He had always been curious how they got there but never curious enough to research it.

Pine scent perfumed the air.

He inhaled deeply and marveled, once again, at how deathly quiet the place was. Not a sound came from anywhere; no traffic, no music, no nothing, except the occasional flap of a bird’s wing or a marmot’s rustle in the brush.

THE BOXCARS HAD BEEN EMPTY when he purchased the property. He linked them together with a wooden deck, converted the middle one into a kitchen and sitting area, and modified the right one into a bedroom and bathroom.

The left car was empty.

A quick inspection of the cars showed that no one had tried to intrude since he had last been there two weeks ago.

Good.

He jogged.

Then shot the 45-pound compound bow as he came up with the perfect plan to take Tessa Blake.

8

Day Two—June 12

Tuesday Morning

LONDON DIDN’T EXACTLY KNOW what ugly story Venta was about to lay on her, but did know that Starbucks wasn’t the place for it, so they stepped outside and walked down Alameda next to heavy traffic.

Venta turned her face to the sky and let the sun fall on it.

“This is better,” she said. “Anyway, I arrived in Bangkok in the afternoon and studied maps, got my bearings, checked my equipment, that kind of thing. Bob Copeland landed just before nightfall, spent an hour in his hotel room, and then headed over to a place called Soi Cowboy, located in a sleazy sex district filled with blowjob bars, gender-benders and STDs. I got some pictures of him going into one of the bars and then waited outside. Half an hour later he still hadn’t come out. So I went in, took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a beer. I was the only white woman in the place. I couldn’t see Copeland anywhere and figured he’d gone into one of the back rooms to get his cock sucked. Then I started getting seriously sleepy. The next thing I knew, I woke up naked, with a splitting headache, in a stone cell.”

London pictured it.

“So someone spiked your drink,” she said.

Venta nodded.

“I was turned into a sex slave,” she said, “a bondage sex slave to be precise. Men would pay to take us to one of the dungeons. They were allowed to do anything to us that their sick little minds could think up.”

“I’LL TELL YOU MORE ABOUT THAT LATER,” Venta said. “Anyway, I was there for about a month when something happened. One of the customers bought me for a snuff.”

“A snuff?”

“Right,” Venta said. “A snuff is where they torture you, usually for days on end, and then kill you for the grand finale. The place didn’t allow snuffs on the premises so if a customer wanted to do a snuff he had to buy the woman outright and then take her somewhere offsite. I was at the point where I had already been paid for, stuffed into the trunk of a car and was being transported. We ended up veering off the road and tumbling down an embankment. The driver died in the crash. I was in the trunk for two full days and nights before someone spotted the wreck.”

“My god,” London said.

“Now let me tell you where you fit into all of this,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what happened. I’ve done a lot of research. I’ll be the first to admit that drinks get spiked in Bangkok and bad things end up happening, to both men and women. But my mind keeps going back to that first night when I followed Copeland into the bar. I remember the bartender’s eyes falling on me almost immediately. At the time, I thought it was because I was a white woman, a blond one no less, and stood out. But now I think it was because he was expecting me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he knew I would be coming in,” Venta said.

“How would he possibly know that?”

“Here’s my theory,” Venta said. “Bob Copeland wasn’t a real target at all. He was a rabbit. Someone set me up to follow him to Bangkok for the sole purpose of abducting me into slavery.”

London heard the words and understood them but found the concept so bizarre that she really couldn’t fathom it.

“Come again,” she said.

“All right,” Venta said. “Let me break it down. I’m not trying to be conceited, but I’m an attractive woman.”

“Agreed.”

“I’d be worth a lot of money in the kind of place where I eventually ended up,” Venta said. “Now, suppose someone targets me—and I have no idea if it was someone from Bangkok or someone from here in the States. But assume the fact, that I’ve been targeted. Now the question is, how do they get me to Bangkok? It would be too complicated to abduct me here in the States and then try to smuggle me into Thailand. Too many things could go wrong. But what if I traveled there of my own accord? Do you see where I’m going with this?”

London nodded.

She did.

“So they set up Bob Copeland as a pretend mark for me to follow,” Venta said. “I fall for it and head to Bangkok. Now they have me in the country and all they have to do is get me to the place where they’re going to abduct me. And that’s easy, because Copeland leads me right to them. I get abducted and Copeland walks out the back door with his ten grand or whatever it is that they paid him to be part of the charade.”

LONDON COCKED HER HEAD.

“It’s a theory,” she said. “But what makes you think that’s what happened as opposed to just some random misfortune once you got there?”

Venta grunted.

“Lots of little things,” she said. “First, when I got back to the States, I found out that someone had rifled through both my apartment and my office. Several of my files were gone, including the Bob Copeland file. My computers were all stolen too. So I found it strange that I suddenly didn’t have any evidence at all of the Bob Copeland assignment.”

“That is strange,” London said.

“You bet it is,” Venta said. “Here’s something else that’s strange. I tried to track Copeland down to see if I could shake him up into admitting he had been part of a conspiracy. It turns out that he totally disappeared without a trace.”

“He did?”

“He did,” Venta said. “There’s one more important fact. I got in touch with my phone company and talked them into getting some information for me. It turns out that all the calls to me, from the person who said he was representing a law firm, came from a payphone in the lobby of a building here in Denver. A law firm by the name of Vesper & Bennett has its offices in that building.”

Vesper & Bennett.

“That’s the biggest firm in Denver,” London said.

Venta nodded.

“The world, actually.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve done a lot of research on them,” Venta said. “They have offices all over the world. Three are here in the United States—namely New York, Denver and San Francisco. But they also have offices in London, Paris, Prague, Tokyo and Hong Kong to name a few. Here’s the important thing—their website says they’ll be opening a Bangkok office within the next year, which means they’re over there now putting it together.”

“Bangkok, huh?”

“Right.”

“Interesting.”

“Isn’t it?” Venta pushed hair out of her face. “There are other law firms in that building, lots of them in fact. But Vesper & Bennett is the only one that has any kind of connection to Bangkok, at least that I can find.”

London picked up a twig and snapped it.

Venta let it steal her attention for a moment and then refocused. “Anyway,” she said, “this whole discussion started when I asked you if I could ask you a question, and you said yes. So here’s my question. Are you ready?”

London nodded.

“If my theory is correct and someone from Vesper & Bennett hired me to go Bangkok so I would be abducted into sexual slavery, would I have a lawsuit against the law firm?”

“I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t,” London said.

“Okay then,” Venta said. “Do you want to be my lawyer?”

9

Day Two—June 12

Tuesday Morning

TEFFINGER SPENT THE MORNING alone at Alan English’s house going through the victim’s phone bills, daily calendar, drawers, and whatever else he could find—looking for the name of someone who hated the man enough to stab him in the back seven times. It turned out that English had a pretty nice sound system, so Teffinger brought one of his Beatles CDs from the Tundra and let it spin while he worked.

He found nothing out of the ordinary, which surprised him.

Usually hate that strong leaves a lot of footprints; dinosaur-sized.

Maybe they were here but Teffinger couldn’t see them because half his brain cells were focused on Venta. Women had always come easy to him. In fact, according to the FBI profiler Dr. Leanne Sanders, that was Teffinger’s downfall and the main reason he was still single at thirty-four. So it didn’t require a quantum leap in logic to believe that Venta actually did see him on TV and decided to find a way to meet him.

On the other hand Teffinger had to agree with Sydney that it would be unusual, especially for someone as exotic as Venta.

One thing he did know is that he needed to see her again, as soon as possible, and get an answer. If their foundation wasn’t solid, then he needed to know that before he got too wrapped up in her to care.

Damn.

Nothing was ever easy.

And who was he trying to kid?

He was already wrapped up in her too much to care.

“Love Me Do” came from crystal-clear speakers.

Teffinger cranked up the volume and plopped down on English’s couch, wondering if there was anything else he should do before he left. The song was so simple, so obvious, that it didn’t seem as if anyone had written it. It seemed more like one of those songs that were always there somewhere in the universe and then just finally got spotted by someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time, like John Denver’s “Country Roads” or the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby;” even “Born to Run” to some extent.

Venta Devenelle.

Who was she?

WHEN TEFFINGER GOT BACK TO HEADQUARTERS he by-passed the elevators in the parking garage and walked straight up to the sixth floor to see if Paul Kubiak had any luck processing Alan English’s computer.

Before he pushed through the door, he realized that his left hand was empty, so he walked down to homicide on the third floor, got a cup of coffee, and then got out of there before anyone could corner him.

He headed back up the stairs, sipping on the way.

Luckily, Kubiak hadn’t gone to lunch early. The man scratched his big old truck-driver’s gut and said, “The rumor is that you have some hot woman hunting you down.”

Teffinger made a sour face.

“This place is worse than a sewing circle,” he said.

“Same thing happened to me once,” Kubiak said.

Teffinger cocked his head.

“Oh?”

“Only it was because I ran over her cat.”

Teffinger grunted.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “You’ll use up all nine of their lives at once.”

Kubiak grinned, took a bite out of a doughnut and told Teffinger that the computer had already been unlocked and given to Sydney. Two minutes later, in homicide, Sydney said she spent the morning going through Alan English’s computer files. She also tapped into the victim’s email history. There was no evidence that the victim’s relationship with his girlfriend was strained; quite the opposite, if anything. Nor was there anything to point to another woman on the side.

“The only thing weird that I found,” Sydney said, “was a lot of bondage pictures downloaded onto his hard drive.”

“Really?”

Sydney nodded.

“The guy was a big-time sicko,” Sydney said.

“Well that’s interesting.”

“Isn’t it?”

A HALF HOUR LATER, Teffinger finally got through to Venta on her cell phone and arranged to meet her at Wong’s on Court Street for a late lunch. She wore white cotton shorts and an aqua sleeveless blouse. Seeing her for the first time by the light of day, the blueness of her eyes took on a whole new dimension.