Confidential Prey (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (4 page)

Raverly ran a finger down his cheek.

“You were all sexy out there in the desert today, sweating and everything,” Raverly said. “Did I mention that before?”

Teffinger shifted his feet.

“No, you must have forgotten.”

“Well bad, bad me. Let’s get back to your room and I’ll make it up to you.”

Day Fourteen

August 16

Tuesday Morning

The earliest flight
to Denver took off just as the Nevada sun rose over the desert. Teffinger put the armrests in a death grip and concentrated on the structural stress of the aircraft. The wheels lifted, the heavy vibration disappeared and the ground dropped away at a crazy speed.

Raverly patted his hand.

“Imagine that, you’re still alive.”

He grunted.

“Tomorrow’s the day,” he said. “I feel like time’s a python and it has me in a stranglehold. The chief is going to want a full briefing. Then he’s going to want to get a plan in motion for tomorrow night. That means mobilizing people, which in turn means meetings, lots and lots of meetings—meetings I don’t have time for, to be precise.”

“Blow them off.”

“Play it out,” he said. “I blow them off, the guy takes his kill, and then I get the blame for not being a team player. On the other hand, if I can get all the noise out of my life and concentrate, I’ll have a better chance of figuring out who he is. That’s the key, not to blanket the city with a shotgun, but figure out who he is and introduce him to a rifle shot.”

“So it comes down to whether you want to cover your ass or catch a killer.”

He nodded.

“That’s it, to a point. When you get right down to it, if I cover my ass all I’m doing is being selfish. I’m putting myself before the wellbeing of the next victim.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to catch him.”

“No you’re not,” she said. “We are.”

“Yeah, right. I forgot.
We
.”

The seatbelt sign
was still on. Teffinger unsnapped, got vertical and wandered back to the flight attendant’s station where a startled young woman gave him a stern look.

“The seatbelt sign’s on,” she said.

Teffinger sat next to her.

“I need coffee.”

“We’ll be serving—”

He handed her a twenty.

“Do me a favor, as soon as you’re authorized, get to me first and keep it topped off. Can you do that?”

She took the bill and stuffed it in her bra.

“Your eyes are two different colors,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “When the left one starts to turn green it means I don’t have enough caffeine in my system. That’s why this is so important.”

She smiled.

“Is that the CNN reporter you’re sitting next to? Raverly Phentappa?”

“Yes.”

“I knew it.”

Back in his seat
Teffinger called the district attorney, Clay Pitcher, a barrel-chested man with yellow cigar teeth. He was five years from retirement and hard to get riled up at this point. After filling the man in on everything that was going on, Teffinger asked him the all-important question. “Can we get a search warrant for Anderson North’s phone records?”

Clay’s reaction was quick.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s not doing anything wrong,” Clay said. “He’s passing information but he’s not committing a crime.”

He hung up,
looked at Raverly who had been listening to it all, and said, “Your turn.”

She dialed Anderson North and caught him on his drive into work.

“I want you to tell me who your L.A. contact is,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“About telling me the name of his client.”

“That’s a dangerous, dangerous path, and I’m not going to let you go down it,” he said. “Besides, my marching orders are clear. No one’s supposed to try to backdoor this guy. That means me and it also means you.”

“But—”

“No buts,” he said. “I’ve been set up to be a Chinese wall and that’s exactly what I’m going to be.” A beat then, “Look, even if I told you who my contact is, there’s no way in hell he would ever turn in his own client. I know this sucks, but that’s the way the system works and you know it.”

That was true.

She did know it.

She hung up, looked at Teffinger and said, “No go.”

The seatbelt sign
went off. Ten seconds later the flight attendant showed up with coffee and a smile. “Let’s get that green eye back to blue,” she said.

“Thank you.”

Teffinger avoided the confused look on Raverly’s face and lowered his voice. “When we get to Denver we’ll hire a P.I. I’m getting those phone records and that’s all there is to it.”

Raverly nodded.

“I’ll do the hiring and the paying,” she said. “That will keep you one step removed.”

“Thanks.”

Twenty minutes
later Sydney called and said, “The woman in the dirt was definitely the lawyer, Ashlyn White. Her throat was slit just like the guy said. I don’t mean to be crass with what I’m about to say, but I don’t think she was a random hit or a spur of the moment thing.”

“Why not?”

“Like I said, I don’t want to appear rude, but the woman’s not a looker. She’s in her mid-thirties and, well, just not all that attractive. More than that, though, she was taken late at night when the parking garage wasn’t getting much activity. It wasn’t a place to stroll. It was more of a place to hide and wait for someone you already picked out.”

Teffinger cocked his head.

“Lawyers know things,” she said. “Maybe she knew something and our friend wanted to get it out of her.”

“Possibly,” Sydney said. “We’re also looking into robbery. The woman left the office with a briefcase. It wasn’t at the grave site.”

“Does anyone know what was in it?”

“Not at this point.”

“Well, she’s our best connection to our little friend so keep pressing. The clock’s ticking.”

“I understand.”

Day Fourteen

August 16

Tuesday Morning

In the 1400
block of Larimer Street, Raverly walked up a rickety wooden staircase to the second floor of a turn-of-the-century building and stepped into the office of private investigator Jack Bahamas III.

He was behind the desk studying papers, sexy as ever.

A cigarette dangled from his lips.

An overflowing ashtray sat to his right.

To his left was a cup of coffee.

He looked up, locked eyes and said, “Long time.”

That was true, it was.

She’d used him once before on a very delicate, very private matter. He did his job well and kept his mouth shut. He also made her thighs tingle every time she was around him.

She hopped up on the desk and dangled her legs.

He ran an index finger in light circles on her knee and said, “Is this business or pleasure?”

“Business.”

“Damn, so close—”

“Actually, sometimes you are. I need phone records,” she said.

“Whose?”

“A lawyer. His name’s Anderson North.”

Bahamas took a deep drag and blew smoke.

“Phone records are almost impossible to get these days,” he said. “You’d think they’d be the easiest thing in the world but they’re not.” A beat then, “If you want to know who this guy’s been talking to, it’s almost easier to just steal his phone.”

Raverly pulled an envelope out of her purse and set it on the desk.

“I don’t care how you do it,” she said. “What I care about is that it gets done today.”

“Today?”

She nodded and scribbled digits on a notepad.

“That’s my new number. Call me the minute you have something. Needless to say, this is confidential. Keep your lips as tight as they go.”

Then she was gone.

Ten minutes later
she was back.

“Look, if you steal it, he can’t know about it,” she said. “Write down all the incoming and outgoing numbers over the last week and then slip it back where you got it.”

“That’s a tall drink of water,” he said.

“Then get yourself thirsty.”

Day Fourteen

August 16

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday morning
was a flurry of motion but whether it was forward or backwards or sideways only time would tell. Either way the basics got done. Teffinger fully briefed the chief who planned to flood the streets with overtime and bodies tomorrow night. He also called in Clay Pitcher to get warrants to obtain flight manifests into Denver for today, tomorrow and the last two weeks, to cross-reference them to flights into San Francisco and Las Vegas when the two prior murders occurred.

“It would be nice if we could cross-reference hotels too,” he said.

That was true.

It would be nice.

It would also be impossible to do it that quickly.

Whether they should issue a public warning for tomorrow night was a delicate matter still under evaluation.

Mid-morning, Teffinger had a thought that wasn’t too bad of one, and dialed Dr. Leigh Sandt, the FBI profiler in Quantico, Virginia, to prove it. As the phone rang he pulled up the image of a classy woman, fiftyish, with Tina Turner legs and a rock on her wedding finger the size of a small planet.

“It’s me,” he said. “Teffinger.”

“If I had half a brain I’d hang up right now before you get to say another word,” she said.

He smiled.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll give you ten seconds.”

Silence.

Then the line went dead.

A minute later his phone rang and Leigh’s voice came through. “Sorry. I just had to do that.”

“You had me going,” he said.

“That was the plan.”

He filled her in on what was happening and said, “If this guy’s telling the truth that he’s killed twenty-four people so far, he’s got to be on your radar screen to some degree or another.”

“You want me to check, don’t you? That’s what you want me to do.”

“No, I just want you to have a nice day,” he said. “The woman he’s going to kill tomorrow night, though, she wouldn’t mind if you checked.”

Leigh exhaled.

“You fight dirty.”

“Glad you noticed.”

“I’ll do it on one condition,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Next time I’m in Denver, you take me out and get me drunk.”

“Done.”

He was about
to punch his phone off when he heard muffled talking emerge.

“Teffinger are you still there?”

He was.

“I just had a thought,” Leigh said. “Maybe the L.A. attorney doesn’t really exist.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, maybe the Denver attorney—what’d you say his name was?”

“North.”

“Right, North,” she said. “Maybe North doesn’t have an L.A. contact at all. Maybe the killer is actually North’s client. Maybe North just made up the part about the L.A. attorney so you wouldn’t be staking out his office to see who went in and out.”

He took a sip of coffee.

“You’re a dangerous woman.”

“So I’ve been told.” A beat then, “I have an extension of that thought, too. Do you want to hear it?”

He did.

“Maybe North doesn’t have an L.A. contact and maybe he doesn’t have a client, either.”

“I don’t follow.”

“What I’m saying is, maybe he’s the killer.”

Teffinger frowned.

“This is why I never like to call you,” he said. “You make my brain hurt.”

He poured
what was left of the coffee into the snake plant, filled up with new hot stuff. Then he headed down the stairs and north on Bannock into the guts of the city.

Fifteen minutes later he was in the heart of the financial district, leaning against a building on the shady side of Broadway with his eyes on the revolving doors that sat at the base of North’s building.

Almost immediately the man emerged, walking in the direction of the 16
th
Street Mall.