Witness Chase (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (3 page)

Chapter Three

One Year Earlier

____________

THREE DAYS AFTER THAT CONVERSATION
with Northway, on a creepy moonless night in May almost a year ago now, Kelly sat alone in the dark behind the steering wheel of her 3-Series BMW, parked on the shoulder of a beat-up country road a half mile down from an equally beat-up place called Rick’s Gas Station.

Waiting.

She was excited but apprehensive.

She was excited that Michael Northway and other still unknown but obviously high-ranking partners trusted her enough to do this.

She was apprehensive about breaking the law.

What they were about to do, although innocent enough looking at first blush, was actually serious business. She’d spent a couple of unsettling hours in the library looking up the statutes and the case law. Once it was done, if caught, they could be prosecuted under a number of felony offenses including perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. Hell, they were already guilty of conspiracy. And there’s no shortage of prosecutors around who would love nothing more than to notch their belt with the high and mighty.

Suddenly lights appeared behind her—a car approached.

It slowed, pulled up next to her and stopped.

A touch of dust kicked up.

It loomed there as a large black shadow, darker than the night but not by much, and she recognized it as a van. Inside Northway sat behind the wheel, his face tight and faintly illuminated from underneath by the dashboard lights, motioning for her to roll her window down. She inhaled, turned the key to auxiliary power and brought down the glass. The sound of the van’s engine abruptly burst through the open window, punctuated by a fan belt given to slipping and squealing.

He stayed behind the wheel and leaned toward her as far as he could.

“They haven’t come by yet, have they?”

His voice was tense and anxious—so tight in fact that she caught the feeling herself.

“No.”

He exhaled, and the furrow between his eyes visibly eased back.

“Where have you been?” she questioned. “You’re late.”

“Traffic. Are you ready?”

She hesitated.

“Yes.”

“You don’t sound sure. You need to be sure. We can’t afford . . .”

She cut him off.

“I’m sure. Your getting here late didn’t help anything, that’s all.”

He looked at her hard, glanced at his watch and then at the rearview mirror.

“They should be here any minute. I’ll give them a five-minute head start, time to gas up and get positioned. When I leave, give me thirty seconds before you take off. Then bring your speed up to twenty-five and hold it there . . .”

“I know.”

“I know you know. I’m just being sure.”

“Thirty seconds, twenty-five miles an hour. Relax.”

“Watch my taillights. If you get too close, back off. Timing is everything.” He looked at her and she looked back at him, realizing that this was it. “Okay, point of no return. Anything else?”

She thought about it.

Was there anything else?

If so, it wasn’t popping up in neon.

They talked it over at lunch, twice. She drove the area yesterday and knew the layout. She played it out repeatedly in her mind, running through What Ifs one after the other. The cell phone signal was strong, no problems there.

But something was out of place.

What?

The van?

The weirdness of seeing Michael out here in the dark?

“Where’d you get the van?” she questioned.

“Borrowed it.”

A beat, then, “If we get caught . . .”

He cut her off.

“We won’t.”

SUDDENLY THERE WAS A LIGHT ON HIS FACE
, a flicker of illumination present and then gone, and she realized that headlights from behind them were reflecting in his rearview mirror and into his eyes. She twisted and saw them, snaking up the road, punching out fleeting images of trees and brush and asphalt as they approached. They looked eerie and for a brief moment she wondered if she was really going to go through with this, but knew that she had already come too far to go back.

He turned his eyes from the rearview mirror and looked at her.

“Looks like we’re up.”

She nodded.

“See you in hell.”

He smiled.

“Dramatic. I like that.”

Northway pulled up in front of her, on the shoulder, and waited with the engine running, looking in the driver’s side rearview mirror at the approaching car. From behind, the headlights grew brighter. The inside of her car started to light up. She turned on her parking lights as a safety precaution and the dashboard sprang to life. She could hear the whine of the approaching car’s tires now.

It pulled up next to her and stopped. There were three figures inside, all women, she could tell that from the hair and profiles, two in the front and one in the back. She could see well enough to tell that she didn’t know any of them. The sound of a radio dropped off, she could hear them talking to one another, but couldn’t make out the words. Then she saw Michael with his arm out the window, waving them forward, and they must have seen it too because they pulled up next to him and stopped. She heard a brief exchange of words, laughter, then more talk. Then they took off. Whoever was in the passenger seat waved an arm out the window. The whole thing reminded her a little of high school, when they’d pull over somewhere and decide whether to head to Dairy Queen or down by the river.

She looked at her watch.

Ten fifteen.

With luck she’d be home by midnight.

There was nothing to do now but wait—wait for five minutes, then Michael would take off; wait for another thirty seconds, then she’d take off. Wait and hope that another car didn’t come along and screw things up.

SHE SHIFTED IN HER SEAT
and tried to clear her head.

Tomorrow morning would be busy.

Russell Travis, the horniest man on the face of the earth, wanted to meet her for an early breakfast at the Brown Palace, ostensibly to discuss his case. He put in the infrastructure for an upscale residential subdivision and then enticed five builders to construct spec houses, at their cost, with an understanding that anyone who bought a lot in the future in the subdivision would have to use one of the five ‘approved’ builders to construct their house. Now, some jerk wanted to buy a lot and use an outside builder. Travis wouldn’t sell the lot to him. So the want-to-be buyer sued, claiming that the approved-builder system was an illegal tying arrangement, an antitrust violation, in that someone couldn’t buy a lot without being tied to a group of five particular builders. Travis wanted to discuss defense strategy. Emmit Jackson, one of the firm’s law clerks, was researching the law for her. He was supposed to e-mail her a memo by nine tonight, but it hadn’t showed up by a quarter to when she left the house. Worst-case scenario, she’d fill the breakfast with smiles and let Travis spend some time with a younger woman.

Maybe she’d wear the black skirt and a white sleeveless blouse if he was lucky.

SUDDENLY MICHAEL STARTED OFF,
with a short honk and a rigid thumbs up. Kelly fired up the engine—it started just the way it was supposed to, bless those Germans—then looked at her watch. It didn’t have a second-hand. The realization unnerved her. So basic, yet missed.

What else had she overlooked?

No time.

One thousand one.

One thousand two.

One thousand three . . .

One thousand thirty.

Pulling out, according to plan, she brought the car up to twenty-five and held it there. The half-mile to Rick’s Gas Station took no time. The place was a two-pump, paint-peeling shack with a neon sign in the window that said Bait and another one that said Coors Light. No video cameras, which is why they chose it. The women’s car, now recognizable as an old green four-door sedan, sat on one side of the pump, the side closest to the station. Northway’s van sat on the other side. At first Kelly didn’t see any movement and wondered if something had gone wrong.

Then everything happened at once.

Michael appeared from around the back of the van, dragging a limp body that was unmistakably a woman’s. For some reason, he didn’t look like himself, really strange, some kind of trick of the night. Two women came out of the station, walking towards their car. One of them looked in Michael’s direction and started to yell.

Hey, what the hell . . .

Game time.

Kelly stopped the car and dialed 911.

A voice answered, a calm woman’s voice, asking her short questions that sounded like they came off a cue card. Now Northway’s van was pulling out, fast, but not powerful enough to squeal the tires.

The cops showed up
almost immediately, within three or four minutes max. Way too fast. Damn it. What if they actually caught him? Three police cars, pulling in from the same direction she’d come from, slid to a stop. Red and blue lights bounced through the air and suddenly made everything very real.

She bit her lower lip and clenched the steering wheel.

One of the cops was out of his car now and running over to her.

He had a hand on his gun, as if ready to draw.

“What happened?”

“A man . . . he took a woman.”

“What is he driving?”

“A van.”

“What color?”

“I don’t know . . . dark . . .”

“Did you get a license plate number?”

“No.”

“Okay. Which way?”

She pointed.

“That way.”

“How long ago?”

“Just a few minutes.”

He ran back to the car, shouting “Stay where you are,” over his shoulder.

Get to the fucking freeway, Michael.

Goddamn it.

Interstate 25 was a mile up the road . . .

Two of the cop cars squealed off and the smell of rubber filled the air. The third car stayed behind. There were two cops inside. One of them talked into a radio, very excited.

The other two women stood by their car. A man had joined them, someone with baggy jeans and a flannel shirt, undoubtedly the person who worked at the gas station. The women were attractive, somehow that came through even at a distance. The flannel shirt looked like he might be coming on to them. He was standing a little too close.

THE COPS GOT OUT OF THE CAR.
One went over to the group and one came over to her.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said. “Are you the one that called 911?” She thought, the one
who
called 911, not the one
that
. He was short, surprisingly short for a cop, maybe five-four, with a baby face. He couldn’t have been on the force for more than a few years.

Even she could kick his ass if she had to.

“Yes,” she said.

He held a spiral notebook and opened it up. “I’d like to get a statement, if you don’t mind. Why don’t you come over to my car? I’ve got the heater on.”

Sitting there in the front seat, by the shotgun, she told him what she saw. She was just starting to pull into the station to get some gas when she saw a man drag a woman’s limp body around the back of a van. He slid open the passenger-side door, threw her in and took off. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

She called 911.

“Describe this guy,” the cop said.

“Well, I didn’t get a real good look,” she said, “because he was sort of hunched over, dragging her under the arms. He was Asian, that much I did see.”

“Asian?”

“Yes,” she said. “Whether he was Korean or Japanese or Chinese, that I can’t tell you. But something like that.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive,” she said. “I mean, I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, but I saw his general features pretty good.”

“Was his face flat, or more rounded?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He nodded vaguely, and said, “So, this Asian guy, what are we talking about size-wise? Small, I assume.”

She nodded.

“Yes. I didn’t exactly run up to him with a tape measure . . .”

He smiled as if picturing it.

“. . . but he was definitely on the smaller side. He had baggy clothes, but they were hanging on him like he was skinny. And he didn’t appear to be overly strong. It looked like he was having a pretty hard time with the woman, especially when he tried to get her through the door.”

“Okay.”

“Black hair.”

The cop grilled her for another five minutes, and then seemed ready to wrap up. “Oh, one more thing. You see those two ladies over there, talking to the other officer?”