Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (14 page)

“Okay, that’s her.”

“It is?”

“I don’t know. That’s my best guess.”

“Okay.”

“That’s what you asked for, my best guess.”

“I know.”

“If you want my best guess, that’s her. If you want me to say if it actually is her or not, then I don’t know.”

Chapter Fourteen

Day Four - April 19

Thursday Morning

_____________

GANJON REALIZED
there was a good amount of light in the room and that he had slept into the day. The thought immediately troubled him on some deep level but he didn’t know why. He opened his eyes enough to look at his watch without letting enough brightness in to hurt—eight-thirty in the morning, way past six. He closed his eyes, rolled onto his back, and felt every muscle in his body burn.

Then the events of last night jumped into his brain.

He remembered Megan Bennett turning the car into him, her loosing control of the vehicle, sliding sideways off the road in the mud and then slamming to a stop. Then she was out of the car, running into the night. She was damn fast. He remembered the burning in his lungs and the fear that his oxygen would run out before he could catch her. He remembered being scared to death that she’d get far enough ahead to lose him in the darkness, and that he’d somehow have to get the hell out of there and back to the city. Then he was on her and, wham, he had her on the ground.

He remembered pounding her with closed fists.

Teaching her a lesson for screwing with him.

Working her over, knowing he should stop, that he was killing her but not being even close to controlling the rage. Then she went limp and stayed limp and he wasn’t sure if he killed her or not. He threw her over his shoulder and carried her lifeless, mud-soaked body for an eternity, with every step bringing a new pain to his universe. Then she regained consciousness, not fully but enough to walk on her own, and he gripped her arm like a madman and dragged her all the way back to the house. There was no way in hell he was going to let her make a break for it again.

When they got inside the house, he stripped her naked and threw her in the shower, then got in with her. She didn’t even react. He washed the mud out of her hair and ears and they stayed there until the hot water ran out. Then he toweled her off, put her in a long-sleeve button down shirt and tied her to the bed with her arms over her head.

Then he mounted her.

Savagely.

Not caring.

Giving her what she deserved.

That was last night.

Now it was morning.

HE SUDDENLY SAT BOLT UPRIGHT
and looked at the bed next to his. There she was, just like he left her, flat on her back with her arms tied to the head rails.

By the light of day she looked terrible.

What had he done?

Her face was so bashed up that it looked like a solid surface of black and blue with hardly any normal places left. Her lower lip was puffed up at least twice its normal size. Her right eye was swollen so bad that he doubted that she’d be able to open it for days. There was dried blood in her hair. She must have still been bleeding after he washed her.

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat there, staring at what he’d done. His legs began to warm and he realized that sunlight was streaking through the window, landing on him. He had no clothes on.

Bitch.

Serves you right.

Screwing with me like that.

He remembered the car, still out in the field somewhere. He hadn’t had the strength last night to deal with it. Now he needed to get it back to the house, especially if it could be seen from the road, which he wasn’t sure of one way or the other. That was the first order of business. The last thing he needed right now was for someone to see it and start poking around.

Damn it.

All he wanted to do was sleep.

This day was going to be absolutely screwed.

He was half-tempted to smack her again, right there as she slept, for getting him in this predicament.

He stood up, sore from head to toe, especially his lower back, and walked over to her. The ropes securing her wrists to the headboard were in good shape. No way she could escape from them. That was good. Her shirt had ridden up during the night and was now above her belly button, leaving her exposed from there down.

The sight gave him an erection.

He sat down next to her on the bed and started undoing the buttons.

She opened her eyes when he climbed on top.

“Don’t say a word,” he said. “Just enjoy it.”

Chapter Fifteen

Day Four - April 19

Thursday Evening

____________

THIS TYPE OF INVESTIGATION
was way beneath Teffinger. Any first-year detective would be able to handle it just fine, but it was late on a Thursday night and if Megan Bennett had in fact been abducted last night he needed answers now, which pretty well meant that he had to get them himself.

Pulling in from the street, the fluorescent lights shining from inside the Total seemed extra bright, emphasizing that the sun was down and the coolness of the thin night air had taken over. The pay phone was located outside on the far left corner of the store.

He maneuvered his truck past the pumps and parked directly in front of it.

This was the phone that someone had used to call Megan Bennett from just before midnight last night.

There was no sense trying to fingerprint it. There’d been a ton of rain, plus it had already been exposed to the public for over eighteen hours.

Someone in a Jeep Wrangler pulled in next to him, on the passenger side. He looked like a high school kid. Teffinger hated it when Wranglers parked next to his truck because their doors opened so wide and sat so high. One careless move and he’d end up with a door-ding. He walked around to the front of his vehicle and stood there staring at the driver, not in a threatening way, just a watchful one. He must have made an impression because the kid was real careful to hold onto the door as he got out. No contact with Teffinger’s truck.

Okay.

A door-ding avoided.

Teffinger looked around for the surveillance cameras, spotting two, one on each side of the pumps. Only one had any potential for picking up the phone area and the way it pointed the chances seemed slim, unless it was really wide-angled.

A 7-Eleven stood directly across the street. Later, he may as well check over there too, in case they had a camera angled in this direction.

He could almost feel the temperature drop even farther as he looked around. He stuffed his hands in his front pants pockets and hurried inside. “You’re Going to Lose That Girl” spilled out of speakers somewhere off in the corners. Hearing it, he wondered why it never got much airtime; it had to be one of the best Beatles songs ever.

He hadn’t planned on getting a cup of coffee but once inside it seemed like the right thing to do. Then he remembered he had a big aluminum mug in the truck, went out, got it, hurried back in, poured in five vanilla creamers, filled it to the top with decaf and immediately took a sip.

Good stuff.

Nice and hot.

A young lady, no older than nineteen or twenty, with tattoos running up her neck and blue streaks in her hair, took his money at the counter. He explained who he was and told her that he wanted to check the surveillance tapes from last night.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone do that,” she said. “That kind of stuff’s all supposed to go through corporate.” A pause, then, “But, hey, what’d corporate ever do for me, right?” She rang open the bottom drawer of the cash register, pulled out a key and handed it to him. “It’s the room in the back, by the johns.”

Teffinger smiled, pulled a card out of his wallet, wrote “We owe her one,” scribbled his initials, and handed it to her. “If you ever get stopped for speeding or something, give them this. No guarantees it’ll work but you can always try.”

“Hey, thanks, man.” Then, as he was walking away, “Hey, do you ever do phone sex?”

He grinned.

“’Cause I could call you tonight, if you want,” she added. “I get off at 11:30. It’s fun.”

“Thanks but that’s probably not a real good idea.”

THE ROOM WITH THE VCRS
for the surveillance cameras turned out to be the stocking room, which was jammed to the ceiling with inventory. Teffinger kept the door open so the walls wouldn’t close in, and popped in unlabeled tapes until he found the one he needed. Beautifully, the recording was imprinted at the bottom with a date and time. The call to Megan Bennett had been placed at 11:47 last night. He fast-forwarded yesterday’s tape to 11:45, then switched over to the play mode and sat back to watch.

Bad news.

The surveillance camera didn’t view the payphone area. Everything at the station last night was pretty dead. There were no cars at the pumps. The rain beat down like a madman. Second after second went by and all he had to watch was the rain.

Then the bottom half of a car suddenly appeared in the screen as it drove past the pumps. It disappeared almost immediately as it headed into the area where the phone was located. He could only see the side view of the car from about the door handle down. No license plate, no driver’s face. He didn’t recognize the manufacturer or make of the vehicle but that’s the kind of thing the lab should be able to determine without too much trouble. A few seconds later a second car pulled up, into the pump area, and stopped. The license plate was in direct view. He paused the tape, pulled one of his cards out of his wallet, and jotted the number down.

Then he hit play again.

A middle-aged white man wearing a Bronco’s jacket got out of the second car and walked into the store, probably to prepay.

A minute of so later, the first car left. Again, though, all the videotape showed was the bottom half of the car for a second or so.

He shifted the tape to fast-forward and watched it for another few minutes. Nothing else happened, other than the man at the pump finished and eventually drove away. There was no reason to believe that he had ever squarely looked in the direction of the pay phone, although obviously it would be worth the time to track him down and find out.

Whoever made the phone call hadn’t gone into the store so there was no eyewitness there to talk to. He hadn’t purchased any gas so there was no credit card number to trace.

The lab would be able to determine what kind of car he was driving, though. That wasn’t a lot but it was more than he had an hour ago.

He popped the tape out of the VCR, walked out of the room and locked it behind him, damn glad to get out of there.

It was almost as bad as an elevator, except it couldn’t fall and kill you.

The young lady at the register smiled when he came back to give her the key. She handed him a napkin and he took it, not knowing what it was.

“That’s my number,” she said. He looked at it and saw a handwritten phone number and the name Janessa. “In case you change your mind about the you-know-what.”

He handed it back.

“Thanks but I can’t,” he said. “I’m taking one tape. I’ll have to keep it, as the original, but I’ll have the lab make you a copy and drop it off sometime tomorrow.”

She smiled.

“Why don’t you just drop it off yourself?”

He grinned.

“Thanks for everything. You stay young, all right?”

HE REMEMBERED THE 7-ELEVEN ACROSS THE STREET.
Was it still worth checking out? He looked at his watch, nearly nine o’clock. What the hell, it would only take a minute.

He left his truck where it was and walked across the street, sipping coffee on the way. An older gentleman worked the cash register and the sight reminded Teffinger to keep contributing to his retirement plan. He explained who he was and said, “I’m investigating something that happened across the street at the Total at about midnight last night. I was wondering if by any chance your surveillance cameras pick up any of that area.”

The gentleman shook his head.

“No. Sorry, they don’t.”

Teffinger nodded.

“Okay, I didn’t think so but thought I’d check anyway.”

“They’re basically to get license plate numbers, for drive-offs,” he added. “So we keep them pointed at the pumps.”

“I understand.”

“You’d be surprised how many people don’t pay.”

Teffinger nodded.

The man lowered his voice.

“I did it myself a few times, back in my younger days.”

Teffinger grinned.

“Me too.” Which was true.

“You almost have to, if you don’t have the money,” the gentleman said. Then, “Just don’t tell anyone.”

“Likewise.”