Sudden Guilt (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) Read online

  “By the way,” she added, “If that woman you’re seeing, what’s her name—?”

  “—Del Rae.”

  “—Right, Del Rae. If she ever puts your feet to sleep, pencil me in for another ride through the jungle.”

  Aaron chuckled.

  “You’re too much,” he said.

  HE CHECKED HIS WATCH, found it was only 2:37 p.m., and decided he had enough time to get started on the Del Rae Paris project, the one that would put millions in his pocket, and Del Rae’s, if they could actually pull it off.

  He took the stairs down to the first floor where he parked his cars—a red BMW convertible, a white 4Runner, a Chevy Silverado pickup truck and, his personal favorite, a black 1982 Ferrari 328 with collector plates.

  He hopped in the 4Runner and took I-25 to I-76, then exited on Highway 85 and headed north into the flatlands. There he drove around aimlessly down gravel roads under an increasingly stormy sky. He came to a turnoff with a faded sign that said “No Outlet” and headed in that direction.

  The road dead-ended two miles later at a small river.

  An old wooden bridge sat abandoned in place. Four or five thick posts with faded yellow paint stuck up in front of it to prevent crossing. Aaron stopped the 4Runner, killed the engine and stepped out. A steady breeze pushed heavy clouds across the sky.

  Several sparrows flew into the wind, hardly moving in relation to the ground, snatching insects out of the air.

  He walked across the bridge to stretch his legs and on the way back he spotted an old rickety house a mile or so away. He hiked over and found it abandoned. It had two small bedrooms, an old bathroom, and a great room with a kitchen. Everything of value had long since been stripped off. Surprisingly, all the windows were still intact and there wasn’t much dust or debris inside.

  Outside, he followed the weed-infested dirt driveway for fifteen minutes, where it met up with the gravel road, not more than a quarter-mile from the bridge. The vegetation left little trace of the old drive.

  A black-and-white magpie flew overhead.

  He threw a rock at it and missed by a mile.

  No one had been in this neck of the woods in recent history.

  Perfect.

  Better than perfect.

  Now all he had to do is remember how to get here.

  Chapter Eight

  Day Two—May 6

  Tuesday Evening

  ______________

  BY THE TIME PAIGE GOT HOME from her afternoon classes, Ta’Veya had eaten just about everything in the kitchen, so for supper they drove to the McDonald’s on Alameda, at the base of Green Mountain, and then motored down the road to find a quiet place to talk and eat.

  On the way Paige had a crazy idea.

  “How’s your strength? Do you have it back yet?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay then,” she said. “I’m going to show you a part of Denver that no one knows about. It’s called the Hatchet Lady’s Cave. We can talk there.”

  Ta’Veya laughed.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “There is no kidding when you’re talking about the Hatchet Lady,” she said.

  They snaked up one side of the Dinosaur Hogback, down the other, and then winded into Red Rocks Park, eating on the way. They parked not far from the amphitheater and then headed over to the base of a mountain of bald red rock. A sign said, “NO CLIMBING ON ROCKS.”

  Paige led Ta’Veya past it and said, “Be careful. We’re going through a few places where you don’t want to fall.”

  Then they climbed, sometimes out in the open and sometimes through hidden passages.

  Some of it was easy.

  Some of it was hard.

  Some of it was downright scary.

  A half hour later and twenty stories higher they entered the Hatchet Lady’s Cave. It was a large opening in the side of the mountain that hung over the amphitheater. To the east, fifteen miles away, lay the Denver skyline and beyond that stretched the wide-open Colorado plains.

  “This is where the Hatchet Lady lives,” Paige said. “If you sit on the thirteenth row of the amphitheater at midnight, she can see you from here and comes to get you.”

  Ta’Veya made a scared face.

  “The high school boys used to bring us here after it got dark and the rangers left. We’d sit on the thirteenth row and drink beer. The guys had this story that the only thing that could keep the Hatchet Lady away was if they were getting blowjobs exactly at midnight.”

  Ta’Veya laughed.

  “Did it work?”

  Paige nodded.

  “I think so because we never had an actual sighting.”

  Ta’Veya laughed.

  “No use taking a chance.”

  “Exactly,” Paige agreed. “Anyway, during concerts people used to sneak up here and watch for free. Then they’d kill themselves trying to get back down in the dark, all drunk and stoned and stupid and everything. So the rangers got pretty tough about keeping people out of here, even during the day. So tough that most people don’t even know the place exists anymore.”

  “Did you ever see a concert from up here?”

  Paige nodded. “Just one, the Eagles. It was totally awesome, until afterwards when I slid down about thirty feet and broke my arm.”

  “Ouch.”

  “No problem. That’s why we have two. I told my mom I fell down my girlfriend’s steps. She kept talking about suing them and then one day actually went out and consulted a lawyer. I had to tell her the truth. Then she grounded me for a month.”

  She picked up a rock and threw it.

  “I don’t want to die all alone in a boxcar,” she said. “I know I sound fine and I’m rambling on and everything, but deep down inside I’m scared.”

  “I’VE RACKED MY BRAIN a million different ways and still have no idea how he chose me,” Ta’Veya said. “The best I can figure is that he saw me somewhere and thought I’d be someone fun to bring into his little games.”

  Paige frowned.

  “Were there others before you?” she asked. “Rescuers, I mean.”

  Ta’Veya shrugged.

  “Good question. I wish I knew.”

  “So how many so-called rescues were you sent on in all?”

  “Four,” Ta’Veya said. “The first one was about two years ago, a 23-year-old woman by the name of Misty Garbarek—an airline stewardess—who lived in Oregon.”

  “Oregon?”

  “Right.”

  “So you actually had to travel?”

  “Yes, every time in fact,” Ta’Veya said.

  “Wow. So you were pretty convinced right off the bat that this guy was for real.”

  Ta’Veya nodded.

  “He put her in this hidden rocky area on the Oregon coast, south of a town called Waldport, not much higher than where the tide came in,” Ta’Veya said. “She was naked and had a steel collar around her neck, chained to a big rock.” She exhaled. “When I first saw her and knew it was real, I ran to her as fast as I could. She looked alive. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I was. But it turned out I was wrong. She’d already slit her wrists.”

  “How terrible.”

  “I sat there for a long time and held her hand,” Ta’Veya said. “She was so fresh. I still think to this day that if I’d gotten there ten minutes earlier she’d be alive right now.”

  Paige said nothing, picturing it.

  “Then what’d you do?”

  “I found the key where the guy said it would be, in a blue plastic box about twenty yards away from her,” she said. “I took her out of the collar because she didn’t deserve to be in anything like that, even dead. Then I covered her with my jacket and went back to Santa Fe.”

  “Did you ever contact the police?”

  Ta’Veya looked at her as if she was crazy.

  “No. That’s the rule. I’m glad I didn’t, too. Because the next time he called everything turned out different.”

  “You saved someone?
”

  Ta’Veya nodded.

  “A waitress from Memphis by the name of Sarah Young.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you try to talk to her, afterwards?”

  “Not at first because of the rules,” Ta’Veya said. “Then I tried to contact her late last year. I couldn’t locate her, but not for lack of trying.”

  “So she disappeared again?”

  “It seems that way,” Ta’Veya said. “Maybe she went underground so the guy would never be able to find her again.”

  “Or maybe something worse happened,” Paige suggested.

  Ta’Veya nodded.

  “Right. I just don’t know.”

  Chapter Nine

  Day Two—May 6

  Tuesday Night

  ______________

  IT WAS ALMOST NIGHTFALL when dispatch called Teffinger at home and told him that the body of a young woman had been found near the railroad tracks next to Santa Fe Boulevard, south of downtown, almost near Evans. Because of the timing his first thought was that this was the woman who had been collared in the boxcar.

  Another spring storm moved in.

  He hopped in the Tundra, set the wipers to medium, swung by a gas station on Simms to fill a thermos with coffee, and then splashed his way through the darkening city as he slurped the so-called coffee from a disposable cup.

  It tasted like old shoes, better than nothing but not by much.

  He turned on the radio, flicked the channels for a few moments and finally let the dial rest on a country-western station. Five songs later—three of ’em about cheating hearts—he arrived at the scene.

  Sergeant Katie Baxter, who had duty tonight, was already there, hunkered under an umbrella over by the body. Teffinger checked in with the scribe, said “Lovely night,” put on his gloves and headed over.

  He scooted under Baxter’s umbrella and gave her a quick hug as lightning ripped across the sky. Baxter was a catcher of things since her tomboy days. She had an easy smile and short drenched hair that dripped water on her face. Her rain-soaked shirt clung to a chest that could only be described as world-class.

  Teffinger didn’t know a man in the department who wouldn’t lay down a twenty for a ten-second peek.

  His eyes must have lingered there longer than they should have because she punched him in the arm, said “Pay attention,” and jiggled her flashlight on the dead woman’s face.

  He looked down, unprepared for what he saw.

  THE VICTIM—A YOUNG WOMAN—WAS NAKED and her arms were tied behind her back.

  Her feet were tethered with a three-foot rope, long enough to walk but too short to run. Another piece of rope had been worked into a knot, gagged into her mouth and tied behind her head.

  All the rope was blue.

  The bondage wasn’t what bothered Teffinger the most.

  What bothered him the most was the way she died.

  Someone pushed or pounded a screwdriver into her left ear, all the way up to the handle.

  “I need a different job,” he said, putting his index finger under the victim’s elbow and lifting her arm to get a feel for how stiff she was. “I’m guessing she’s been dead less than an hour. Who found her?”

  “One of the train guys.”

  They worked the scene until almost two in the morning and found nothing of interest. Freight trains rumbled past, one after the other, so close that the puddles shook. Now totally soaked, they walked through the water instead of around it. Katie said at one point, “I swear that webs are starting to grow between my toes.”

  As soon as they wrapped up, Teffinger realized he had been running on fumes.

  On the drive home he kept the window open and stuck his head out every few minutes to keep from falling asleep at the wheel, and thought about Ta’Veya White.

  Chapter Ten

  Day Three—May 7

  Wednesday Morning

  ______________

  TARZAN’S ALARM CLOCK jerked him out of a deep sleep with all the subtleness of a cattle prod. His first instinct was to slap it across the room but instead he jabbed at it until he hit the snooze button, then rolled on his back and wondered why he’d set it at all, much less at the ungodly hour of 9:00 a.m.

  Then he remembered and smiled.

  Today would be a good day.

  He took a long heaven-sent piss, threw on a pair of sweatpants and headed outside shirtless for a wakeup jog. The guys at the railroad yard didn’t appreciate that he ran down the middle of the tracks but tolerated it as long as he stayed clear of the cars.

  He liked the roughness of the rails and the timbers and the gravel.

  They’d been put there by men, back when men were men, not today’s shriveled wimps who spent all their time hunched over computers and staring at TVs.

  He ran north out of the yard for miles, until he got tired, then turned around and did what it took to maintain the same pace all the way back—slightly uphill. Then, outside on the asphalt parking lot, he muscled through a high-impact routine that he developed several years ago. After that he dropped to the ground and pumped out pushups until he didn’t have a single one left; then took a three-minute rest and did it again.

  He showered and ate breakfast while the coffee pot gurgled. By the time the models showed up he was wide-awake and ready to make magic.

  THERE WERE EIGHT WOMEN ALL TOLD, the best MOD-ELLE had to offer. They all wore short, sexy sundresses as requested. Aaron gave them a brief tour of the loft area and then packed them into the freight elevator for a trip down to the second floor.

  Scotty Marks was working on the spider’s web. Early Stones—“The Last Time”—spilled out of a boombox.

  Sixties.

  When Scotty saw the women he couldn’t help but come over, introduce himself as the President of the Whole Freaking Universe, and give each one a giant bear hug.

  He was cute enough that they let him.

  Aaron watched with amusement and waited patiently, knowing that Scotty wouldn’t calm down until he got it out of his horny little system.

  “Okay,” he told the group. “Here’s the deal. I’m not sure how many of you I’m going to use yet, maybe half of you, maybe all of you, we’ll see. We’re doing a shoot to launch a new men’s fragrance called Snare. The client’s targeting men aged twenty to thirty. He’s looking for a seriously edgy image. Right now, here’s the concept. Mr. Hugger, who you just met, is building a giant spider’s web. When he’s done, which should be—?”

  “—later this afternoon—”

  “—later this afternoon, we’re going to hang it. You guys are going to be caught in the web. The concept is that the web has been sprayed with Snare. Sexy women can’t help but get drawn into it and captured. The cologne is that powerful.”

  “Awesome.”

  Aaron bowed, “Thank you. What I’m saying is, you guys are going to have to get up on the web. If anyone has a problem with heights, now is the time to talk.”

  They all looked at one another.

  No one backed out.

  “Good,” Aaron said. “Once you get stuck in the web, it’s going to be a windy day. Your skirts are going to blow. We’ll do some shots where they’re way up with your thongs showing as well as some others not quite so explicit. We’ll also do some with your legs spread pretty wide and some where they’re more closed. That way the client will have a range of stuff to choose from. My guess is that he’s going to want the whole spectrum so he can match a variety of magazines.”

  “Yummy.”

  “What we’re going to do today is put you up on chairs, have you pretend you’re tangled up in the web, then blow your dresses up and take some pictures. Is everyone in?”

  They all nodded.

  “When will you choose?”

  Aaron thought about it and said, “You know what? I’m just going to use all of you and then let the client choose. So you all have a decent shot. Is that fair?”

  Yes.<
br />
  Absolutely it was.

  AFTER THE SHOOT, DEL RAE PARIS CAME OVER. They drank Jack and snorted coke. Then Aaron beat his Tarzan chest, flung her over his shoulder and carried her across the room.

  They wrestled on the mattress.

  And planned their next move.

  Chapter Eleven

  Day Three—May 7

  Wednesday Morning

  ______________

  PAIGE DROVE TA’VEYA TO THE BUS STATION early Wednesday morning and bought her a one-way ticket to Santa Fe. Right now Ta’Veya was a ghost-woman who carried no identification, driver’s license, credit cards, money, clothes or evidence of existence. She would round all that up this afternoon and then drive back to Denver to hunt.

  Bus fumes permeated the air.

  “I didn’t tell you something last night that I should have,” Ta’Veya said.

  Paige raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh?”

  “A homicide detective by the name of Nick Teffinger showed up at your apartment yesterday afternoon.”

  Paige’s stomach dropped.

  “A detective?”

  Ta’Veya told her the story of how a security camera down the road picked up an old Ford Mustang on the night in question and the cops were trying to locate the owner to see if he or she saw anything. Paige must have had a worried expression because Ta’Veya added, “It’s nothing to be concerned about. I told Teffinger that you and I were together all evening.”

  “Did he buy it?”

  “Sure, why wouldn’t he? Plus the camera didn’t pick up a license plate number, or the driver’s face—your face—on account of the rain and the camera angle, so it wouldn’t matter much even if he didn’t.”

  Paige exhaled as a layer of stress peeled off.

  “He took me out for coffee,” Ta’Veya added.

  “He did?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you let him?”

  “I had to—he has one green eye and one blue one.”

  Ta’Veya’s voice had a flutter in it, so much so that Paige said, “You’re in lust.”

  “Maybe a little,” Ta’Veya said, “which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because he’ll be a good source of information. He already told me that there’s more to the case than just the drifter. Although he didn’t come right out and say it, it’s pretty clear that what he’s really interested in is the collar and chain. He wants to know who was in it and why and, more important, who put them there. So he’s after the same guy we are. And he’ll end up getting information that you and I wouldn’t be able to dig up in a million years.”