Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (17 page)

“Chasing a long-shot.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I don’t think Robertson is the kind of guy to go to the extreme of throwing a case unless someone had him totally by the balls,” she said.

Sanders shrugged.

“You know him better than me.”

“The more I think about it,” Jori-Lee said, “the more I’m persuaded that it wouldn’t be enough for someone to just have evidence that the man was downloading porn, or even evidence that he was addicted to it.”

Sanders shook his head.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “The shame and ridicule would be a bullet to his brain. The inevitable impeachment process that would follow would be a torture rack.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Well, not no, yes, but if he admitted he had an addiction or got off course, and then entered into some kind of program to get help, people would forgive him,” she said.

“Wrong.”

“Why?”

“That might work with rock stars or athletes, but when it comes to the law, particularly the highest echelons of the law, the integrity and thought process needs to be clean and un-decayed. There can’t even be an appearance of impropriety.”

She took a sip of tea.

“What I’m thinking is this,” she said. “I don’t think Robertson would bend all the way to the dark side if only watching things was the issue. I do think he could bend that far, though, if
doing
things was the issue.”

“Doing things?”

“Yeah, getting dominated, actually living out the fantasy, not just watching other people do it. If he did that, and someone had proof of him doing that, say by way of a videotape of something like that, then I could see him getting desperate enough to throw a case.”

Sanders didn’t disagree.

“If that happened, whoever is blackmailing him would have shown him a copy of the videotape,” she added. “They might have emailed a digital copy to him. When I looked at the videos before, I only looked at a handful of them, which was all my brain could hold without imploding. The long-shot I’m chasing is that Robertson actually received a videotape of himself in action.”

Sanders cocked his head.

“If that’s the case, after he watched it he would have hit the delete button so hard his finger would have broken.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “He’d keep it as proof he was being blackmailed, if everything eventually hit the fan; it would be a way, at a minimum, of taking the blackmailer down with him. He’d also want it up the road to refresh his memory as to what his new friend exactly had. If that’s true and he kept it then the question becomes, where would he keep it?”

“You think he buried it in there with all the other videos—”

“That’s where I’d put it.”

The corner of Sanders’ mouth turned up ever so slightly.

“I’m glad you’re on my side,” he said.

49

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Afternoon

Teffinger woke
on a couch in a conference room and vaguely remembered Sydney closing the window coverings, giving him a soft kiss on the cheek and saying, “Nightie-night little angel.” He bolted upright, not needing to waste even one more precious second of the day. The oversized industrial clock on the wall, the one with the twitchy second-hand, said 3:03, meaning he’d been out for more than two hours.

For a brief second he raged at himself.

Then he calmed.

On the outside glass of the door was a yellow post-it. It said, “Beware of animal. Do not feed.”

He headed down the hall to the main homicide room, poured a cup of coffee, took a seat in front of Sydney’s desk and tossed the post-it on her desk.

“That’s your handwriting,” he said.

She nodded.

“Feel better?”

“Actually, yes.” He pointed to his cheek and said, “You kissed me just before I fell asleep. Right there.”

She soured her face.

“In your dreams.”

“Are you saying you didn’t?”

“Do my lips look like they’ve touched acid? Are they falling off?”

“No, they look fine.”

“Okay then.” With a serious face she added, “I got the best still photos I could from the videotape footage of the men in the club who had ponytails. Then I emailed them to every contact we have at the club, including the manager, the doorman and the bartenders. Except for one person, a bartender named Brank, everyone’s gotten back to me. A few of them recognize a few of the ponytails—three total to be exact—as regulars, but no one knows them, as in a name or anything. My assumption is that if the ponytail followed Susan to the club then he’s not a regular. So we can probably scratch three off the list which still leaves nine, nine grainy ghosts.”

A dead end, that’s what it was; deader than dead, even.

“Okay.”

“So, stay on it?”

Good question.

“Like you said, the guy’s probably not a regular there. Even if we found someone who saw him there that night, they wouldn’t know him.” He exhaled. “Let’s expand the scope. Get every security tape in a two-block radius. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see him walking to the club or parking a car.”

“Remember, it was storming.”

He remembered.

“Get the tapes around Susan’s building too.”

Two hours later
he was in a window seat of a big metal beast with his hands in a death-grip on the armrests and sweat dripping into his eyes, sweeping into menacing clouds at a speed man was not meant to go. He listened for noises, the kind that mean that some stupid two-dollar bolt somewhere was coming loose and perfecting an evil plan to throw the aircraft into a death spiral.

Seconds passed, then minutes.

The plane didn’t fall out of the sky.

The bumps lost their bite.

The wings smoothed out.

The ground got farther.

Strangely, the more distant it got, the safer Teffinger felt.

The nose of the plane was pointed towards D.C.

Don’t do anything too stupid,
he warned himself.

No promises,
he answered back.

50

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Afternoon

The long-shot
struck payday, sick, sick payday; payday in the form of a video buried deep in the file, a video in which Robertson himself played a demented little role right there in his own demented little flesh. There was no question it was him.

His face was clear.

It was clear as he lay on his naked back on the carpet with his privates in some kind of metal device, obediently sucking a woman’s toes. It was clear as he got bent across a table, strapped down and then rammed from behind by a woman with a strap-on. It was clear in the next twisted little deal, and the next, and the next.

The woman’s face, by contrast, wasn’t clear.

It rarely came before the camera.

When it did, a black leather mask concealed it.

“So who’s the woman?” Sanders asked. “T’amara Alder?”

“It has to be.”

“It’s a hidden camera,” Sanders said. “It never moves. Robertson didn’t know he was being filmed.”

True.

Sanders got a look
on his face.

“You’re thinking—”

He nodded.

“I’m thinking that Robertson doesn’t belong on the bench, not at that level.”

“That’s not our call.”

“If it’s not ours then whose is it?”

“Stop it.”

“At this point we should just do what it takes to get him off,” he said. “I’m not saying go public and embarrass the man. Try it private first. Let him know what we know. Let him resign for whatever reason he wants to come up with. Get a void in his position and let it get filled with someone who deserves it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not perfect.”

Sanders shook his head.

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, he’s not perfect, none of us are perfect,” she said. “He’s got issues but if they’re not interfering with his duties then they’re nobody’s business.”

“But they are interfering,” Sanders said. “He’s going to throw a case, remember?”

“That’s the future,” Jori-Lee said. “The future may or may not come to pass.”

“We should get him out now,” Sanders said. “If we just wait until he actually throws a case then things will be worse, not just for the reputation and integrity of the court but for him personally as well. He’ll be facing jail time. We both know what he’ll do to avoid it.” He put a finger to his head and pulled the trigger. “Let’s get him out, mitigate damages all around and let everyone go their merry way. Don’t think of it as ratting him out. Think of it as saving his life.”

Jori-Lee considered it.

It made sense inside her head.

It didn’t make quite so much sense inside her gut.

Sanders was too eager.

Why?

Was he picturing himself making the rounds on the talk shows and nonchalantly dropping in a bookstore with his latest squeeze and showing her his new bestseller sitting on the shelf?

“Remember one more thing,” he said. “T’amara Alder is dead. Who do you think is behind that?”

Jori-Lee swallowed.

Only one answer made sense.

She wished there was another but there wasn’t.

There was only one.

Nelson Robertson.

“He’s coming for you,” Sanders said. “You’re the last person on the face of the earth who ought to be protecting him. What you ought to be doing is yelling to the world about the monster you found.”

She studied him.

His eyes were experience.

His skin was sunshine.

His face was a magazine cover.

His body was a Greek statue.

His hands could cradle a baby or swing a sword.

“I can’t think,” she said.

51

Day Six

July 13

Sunday Night

D.C. was sloppy
with drizzle when Teffinger touched down late Sunday night. By the time he rented a car, got his bearings and made the actual drive to Oscar Benderfield’s house it was almost midnight.

The structure was dark as death.

Teffinger rang the bell, then again and again, in rapid succession, while simultaneously rapping powerful knuckles on the wood.

An interior light went on.

The porch light went on.

Teffinger stood there, getting increasingly wet and increasingly inspected, feeling the man’s thoughts on the other side, whether to open the door or not.

The entry swung in a few inches and got snagged by a chain. Benderfield’s confused face and bleach blond hair appeared in the crack.

“I’m a homicide detective from Denver,” Teffinger said. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About lots of stuff. This is off the record but if you don’t open the door we’ll continue this tomorrow and I guarantee you things will be ugly.”

Silence.

“Are you here to arrest me?”

“No. We’re going to talk and then I’m going to leave.”

The door closed.

The chain came off.

“Come on in.”

The interior
was out of a magazine, with perfect textures and perfect colors and perfect attitude and perfect swagger and perfect proportions. The man was living large, too large given his craft.

The place was built on coffins.

Teffinger felt dirty just being in it.

They ended up in the kitchen on opposite sides of counter, Benderfield with a glass of orange juice in hand and a face that was growing ever more awake. The man was bigger than Teffinger expected, six-three or more. He wore loose silk pajamas that mostly but not totally belied the muscle underneath.

“I’m going to make you a deal,” Teffinger said. “Before I do, though, let me tell you why you should take it. You should take it because I know all kinds of things about you.”

“Like what?”

Teffinger laid it out.
Benderfield came to Denver and hired Portia Montrachet to kill Susan Smith. The only reason the hit didn’t go through was because Portia got murdered minutes and feet before the attack. “Recently you got a call from a friend of yours in Denver, a man named Benjamin Fisher. At his bequest you hired a second hitman, a guy with a ponytail,” Teffinger said. “That’s what I want to know about. Who was he?”

“As a hypothetical, even if you were right, why would I tell you anything?”