Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (22 page)

The wind whipped around like some primitive unleashed force and he could feel his tolerance for it start to seriously fade. In anther few minutes it would drive him officially crazy.

Damned wind!

HE WAS GETTING CLOSE TO THE HOUSE NOW,
really close. Then he saw something that he didn’t expect, the black shape of two motorcycles. Even from this distance, in the dark, he recognized them as Harleys, and not new ones either, older models with huge saddlebags, and sleeping bags bungeed on top.

Drifters.

They were probably a couple of lowlifes looking for a free place to crash for the night, maybe hiding out from the law. So they pull in here looking for a barn or something and end up finding a house with a woman inside tied up on a bed. It’d be like winning the bikers’ lottery.

Ganjon realized that he had never stopped walking towards the house and was almost at the front door now.

Back door, he told himself.

Go through the back door.

He headed around the side of the house, towards the rear, walking briskly.

He tightened his grip on the knife and knew he was prepared.

Bust in fast and quiet and take out the closest one as quick as you can. Then go for the other one. Don’t let them get you between them.

If you screwed with Megan Bennett you’re going to wish to God you never turned down this driveway.

I’ll rip your head off and piss in the hole.

That’s a promise.

He turned the doorknob, opened the door and walked straight in.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Day Six - April 21

Saturday Evening

____________

IT WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK ON SATURDAY NIGHT
and Teffinger was still at his desk, trying to squeeze the last bit of energy out of the day.

Kelly should be calling pretty soon.

She’d been roped into some kind of a law firm function tonight with out-of town clients but she was going to break away as soon as it was politically correct. Then they were going to join forces and see where the evening took them.

He sat alone in the room with his shoes off, his feet up on the desk and his eyes closed. Everything was quiet, in fact strangely quiet, except for the hum of a couple of fluorescent ceiling lights that were at the wrong end of their useful lives.

Megan Bennett.

Hold on, Megan Bennett, if you can.

The day had been long and frustrating. The FBI had taken the lead in trying to obtain information from the airlines, hotels and car rental agencies. But the going had been tedious and so far no correlations had been discovered. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. That’s just the nature of that type of investigation.

Lots of tips had come into the telephone hot line. Sydney had done a wonderful job sorting the wheat from the non-wheat, and allocating resources to the ones that most justified the effort. But so far nothing solid had come of it. One thing for sure, though, the Denver community was really lining up behind the investigation.

SUDDENLY HIS CELL PHONE RANG.
Someone breathed into it for a couple of seconds and then hung up. He pulled up the menu for calls received to get the caller’s number. It was Unknown.

Weird.

Very strange.

It definitely wasn’t the call he was expecting, from Kelly, because his phone recognized hers.

SUDDENLY IT RANG AGAIN.
This time someone was there. “Nick? This is James, from the Carr-Border Gallery,” the voice said.

Teffinger recognized the voice. James was the husband of the woman who owned the gallery that had taken him in. “James, did you just call?”

“No.”

“Mmm.”

“Hey, listen, Picasso,” James said. “We sold five of your paintings this week. We’re getting low and were hoping you could bring some fresh stuff by.”

“Five?”

James laughed.

“Crazy, isn’t it?”

Teffinger couldn’t believe it.

“Wow.”

He found himself talking art for the next five minutes, learned that the market was picking up, the pieces priced at under a thousand dollars were moving the fastest, and that summer landscapes were the hot ticket right now, which was just fine, because that’s exactly what he painted. By the time he hung up he was missing the smell of turpentine and the challenge of an empty canvas.

“YOU’RE A WORKAHOLIC,” SOMEONE SAID.
He looked up and found the FBI profiler, Dr. Leigh Sandt, walking into the room. “I like that,” she added.

She had changed out of her intimidation suit and into casual white shorts with a pink cotton shirt. He was surprised to see her but glad. Her voice made him realize that his thoughts had started to drift.

“I have no life,” he said.

She nodded.

“Me either. Nor do I want one.”

Her legs were muscular and tanned and looked exceptionally good. She had maintained herself well for her age and had to be respected for that. She must have been an absolute, incredible knockout back in her heyday.

“So what’s going on?” he asked.

She was at his desk now and sat down in a chair. He pulled his feet off so she wouldn’t have to look at them.

“Nothing, just thought I’d check in.” She picked up a pencil and started fidgeting with it. “So what are you working on?”

What, indeed?

He shrugged and combed his hair back with his fingers. It immediately flopped back down over his forehead. “To be honest? I’ve been racking my brain all day trying to think of a way to flush this guy out. I need him to call me and get a dialogue going.” He looked at the woman. “I always have room for brilliant ideas, of course.”

“Oh yeah?”

She seemed intrigued with the idea.

“Yeah.”

He studied her face as she pondered it. “The indicators are that he’s incredibly smart but his emotions can get the best of him. Take the attack on the three men outside Megan Bennett’s window, for example. If you want him to talk to you, my guess is that the best door to entry is through his emotions, not his brain.”

“Meaning what?” Teffinger questioned. “Get him pissed-off at me? Get on the TV and say we have evidence that he wets the bed or something?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I had a case in upper Minnesota several years back where we came up with plan. We captured the wrong person, one of our own actually, on purpose, and then put out a news alert stating that we caught the guy we were looking for and the hunt was off. We had great visuals of the so-called capture with helicopters and dogs and you-name-it to put on the TV. The real killer sees all this and calls us to tell us how stupid we are, which is exactly what we were going for. That started a wonderful series of phone calls that got us where we needed to go.”

Teffinger was impressed.

“Very nice.”

“Of course,” she added, “when it was over, the news media jumped all over us for catching the wrong guy in the first place. We could have told them the truth, but didn’t really see the need to get a public debate going as to whether it’s ethical for law enforcement to provide false information to the public in the name of catching the criminal. So we just left the egg on our face and got out of town.”

“Devious,” he said. “I like that.”

She uncrossed her legs, and re-crossed them the other direction.

“So, I have question for you. How would you like to come and work for the bureau?”

Teffinger hadn’t been prepared for that.

“Are you serious?”

She nodded.

“Very. I’ve already talked to a few people.”

He tilted his head and pondered the implications.

SUDDENLY HIS PHONE RANG,
not his cell phone, the one on his desk. “Excuse me,” he apologized, picking it up. “This is the way my life works.”

“Teffinger?”

“Yes.”

“This is Richardson.”

The detective sounded excited.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Give me the scoop. What’s going on?” Richardson asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The phone call . . . What’d you get?”

“What phone call?”

A pause.

“Didn’t someone just call your cell phone about fifteen minutes ago?”

Teffinger wasn’t sure which call he was referring to. “You mean the hang-up? Was that you?”

“He hung up? Okay, hold onto your seat, buddy boy,” Richardson said. “Do you remember D’endra Vaughn, the dead school teacher?”

“No, who’s she?”

“Bad,” he said. Then, “We got a ping on her pen register about fifteen minutes ago. According to the phone company, the call from her phone went to yours. The call that you got fifteen minutes ago was from D’endra Vaughn’s cell phone. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He did.

“I want cars at two places, Kelly Ravenfield’s place and the Paramount Café. Now!”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Day Six - April 21

Saturday Evening

____________

KELLY WAS STUFFED
in something confined and tight and dark, absolutely terrified about it. She couldn’t see a thing or straighten her body out. The side of her face ached from lying on some kind of hard surface for so long. The bones in her hips and knees felt like someone had taken a hammer to them. The muscles in her legs had stiffened and were threatening to convulse from being in the same unforgiving bent position for so long. Noise filled the space; the noise of an engine, sounding as if it was right underneath her. No, not an engine, a muffler. There was a muffler right underneath her.

She was in the trunk of a car.

She remembered what happened in the parking garage; the movement of someone behind her, the hot white excruciating pain in her back. She tried to move her legs, first one, then the other. They both worked. Whatever that asshole did to her back hadn’t paralyzed her.

Thank God for that.

The tires whined almost as loud as the muffler. She couldn’t think straight, not with all that noise in her head.

Someone was taking her somewhere.

She tried to shift around, to get her body in a different position, any position at all, as long as it was different. At first she couldn’t and almost slipped into a panic attack. Then, little by little, she was able to find nooks and crannies to put the parts of her body into as she shifted around.

She managed to get on her back.

That was so much better.

So very much better.

Okay.

Calm down.

Gravitational forces pulled her body to one direction and then the other. The road twisted. It seemed like they might be out in the country somewhere, or maybe heading up into the mountains.

Could the trunk be opened from the inside? She felt around in the dark in the area where the latch would be. She found some kind of mechanism and pushed and pulled at it from every angle she could but the trunk wouldn’t open. Her car was ten years old, probably built before that type of safety feature.

A string of five or six cars whizzed by, going the opposite direction.

She shivered.

It was freezing.

IF CARS WERE GOING THE OTHER WAY,
maybe there was one behind them, too. Maybe if she could get to the wires for the taillight, she could flash them somehow. Or maybe knock them out and get the police to pull them over. She shifted her body to the left, towards the front of the car, and was able to get her right arm over her head, with her hand up and in the corner of the trunk where the taillight would be. The wires weren’t exposed. She could feel only carpet.

Damn it!

Come on!

There had to be a way to get behind the carpet. She needed to find the edge and felt around for it. Her arm ached beyond belief and she had to consciously fight off the pain to keep from bringing it back for a rest.

Everything was so tight.

Ten more seconds.

Then she found her fingers on something that might be a seam. She gripped it as hard as she could and tugged at it. It moved. She felt the carpet pull away from the side of the trunk and tugged even harder and felt a snap open. Suddenly there was a faint red light inside the space, backsplash from the taillight. She could actually see now, not much, but some.

She twisted her head as best she could and looked up above her. She could see the back of the taillight and the wires going to it.

She couldn’t tolerate the pain in her arm anymore and brought it down to her side. That felt so, so good.

She could see the latch mechanism now and felt around with her hand in that area again. But the amount of light wasn’t much and she couldn’t get her head close enough to really see anything.