Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (7 page)

“Killed?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So why’d they let Kovi-Ke go?”

“Unknown.”

“Who orchestrated it?”

“Again unknown,” she said. “I’m getting the information from people who know people who know people. When the question comes up as to who was behind it all, that’s when things get real quiet. Either people don’t know or are afraid to say. I’m going to keep digging but the easy part’s over and, to tell you the truth, it might all be over.”

“Don’t give up.”

“Never have but I’m also a realist,” she said. “I’ll be in touch either way.”

He passed Idaho Springs and Georgetown, made a pit stop at the restrooms at Vail Pass, and charged farther West, past Vail and ever closer to Grand Junction and the western slope, looking into every car he came upon in hopes that Kovi-Ke was behind the wheel.

She never was.

The FBI profiler called.

“Back tattoo and black panties,” she said. “They belong to Lachey Silk, age 25, murdered six months ago on January eighth, in New York City. Check your emails, I just sent you a photo of her. Ironically, she’s your type; pretty, blond, the whole package. The detective in charge is a guy named Jack Canyon.”

“No relation to Grand, I assume.”

“No. Jack’s a lot smaller. Here’s his number—”

Teffinger checked his emails and opened the JPEG attachment. Leigh Sandt was right; the victim was his type, not that it had any relevance to anything.

Jack Canyon had a few interesting things to say when Teffinger called him. Lackey Silk, a fashion designer, a stunning little blond fashion designer to be precise, had been out clubbing the night she got murdered and had a lot of cocaine in her body to prove it. Her demise came by way of a knife to the heart, three times, abandoned in place on number three, apparently not needed for number four. There were the usual suspects—boyfriends, past and present, and girlfriends, past and present, and the people she’d been around earlier in the evening, plus someone she might have been blackmailing—but none were running to the front of the line.

“Tell me about the blackmail,” Teffinger said.

“Wish I could. It was just a rumor,” Canyon said. “The word was that she had something on someone and was getting money on the side. I was never able to get an angle on it though. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s true or not and probably never will.”

“Tell me about the girlfriends.”

“Not much to tell,” Canyon said. “Just your basic hotties. A few of the priors had a little resentment but not to the level of murder, at least in my opinion.”

“Any Jamaicans?”

“Not that I recall. We never went through the books, never had a reason to. So if the guy left a piece of paper in one of them we don’t know about it.”

“I understand. Can you run it down?”

“I don’t know if they’re still there or they’ve been thrown out or what but I’ll check,” Canyon said. “To be honest, you have my curiosity up. It says, NOIZ?”

“That’s my understanding. It’s in a red hardback on the top shelf.”

Teffinger hung up and swung around a red Mustang. To his shock, Kovi-Ke was behind the wheel. She looked over, saw who he was, and floored it.

He got behind and dialed her.

She answered.

“Pull over,” he said. “All I want to do is talk. Afterwards you’re free to leave if you want.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” he said. “Pull over.”

20

Day Three

June 6

Friday Afternoon

Kovi-Ke pulled off at the first exit and was out of the car and at Teffinger’s window before he came to a stop.

“Why are you following me?”

Teffinger got out, shut the door and leaned against it. “I’ll answer that but before I do, let me say two words—Lachey Silk.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She’s your black-panties tattoo girl,” he said. “She was stabbed in the heart three times. It happened in New York six months ago, on January eighth.”

“So she’s real?”

“Was,” Teffinger said. “Now she’s a file.”

Kovi-Ke frowned.

“Let me save you the trouble. Yes, I’ve been to New York before, but I wasn’t there in January. I was home doing dives but, no, I probably can’t prove it. No, I didn’t know her; and no, I didn’t kill her.”

An 18-wheeler veered off the interstate and down the exit, passing with squeaking brakes that smelled like hot bacon.

“She was pretty,” Teffinger said. “She was also into girls, like Alley Savannah. She liked to party. Maybe you bumped into her at one point when you were in the city.” He pulled his cell phone out and fumbled with it until he got what he wanted, a photo of a riveting blond, and kept his eyes on Kovi-Ke’s face as he showed it to her. “This is her.”

The woman looked.

A reaction registered on her face; fleeting, brief, quickly masked, but there nonetheless.

“I don’t know her.”

“Take a closer look.”

She did and said, “I know her type. I’ve done her type, more than once, a lot more than once, actually. But I’ve never done her. I’d remember.”

“You might have seen her, though? At a club or something?”

She shrugged.

“She’s the kind I’d talk to, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t kill her,” she said. “That’s the bottom line so stop getting hung up in all kinds of little things that don’t amount to anything.” She paused and added, “Is this why you followed me? To interrogate me about her?”

“No. I just found out about her ten minutes ago as a matter of fact.”

“So why are you following me?”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in.

“Why do you think?”

Then he kissed her.

She struggled, as if in the grip of the enemy, and then softened in surrender.

His phone rang.

“Go ahead,” Kovi-Ke said. “I have to use the facilities anyway. Teffinger watched the sway in her step as she disappeared into the pines and boulders and brush.

The FBI profiler was on the other end.

“Horrible news,” she said. “Poppy’s been murdered.”

“Poppy in Haiti? That Poppy?”

“Yes.”

“That can’t be,” Teffinger said. “I personally spoke to her not more than a hour ago.”

“They cut her tongue off and gouged out her eyes,” she said. “Most of her skin was off, as if she’d been dragged behind a car. Her body was dumped in an alley in downtown Port-au-Prince.”

“That can’t be.”

“The CIA is on their way over to talk to me as we speak. You’ll be next, so expect a knock on the door.”

Teffinger slumped against the Tundra.

“She didn’t want to get mixed up with voodoo. She told me that point blank. I put the pressure on her.”

“Stop it,” Leigh said. “I have to go. We’ll talk later.”

Teffinger’s first thought was,
Tarzan.

Tarzan did it.

The more he processed it though the less it fit. Tarzan was brutal but he wasn’t the type to mutilate someone’s face. No, this wasn’t Tarzan’s work. That didn’t mean he wasn’t involved somehow, it just meant that he personally didn’t get the woman’s blood on his hands.

Kovi-Ke came into sight with a spring in her step, a spring that fell away when she saw the look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

He told her about how he’d hooked up with a CIA agent in Haiti to find the source of the voodoo night, working on the assumption that the source killed Alley Savannah and Lachey Silk, plus did whatever that was done that he didn’t know about yet.

“She was just murdered, brutally, as an example.” He kicked a rock. “I don’t want you out chasing anyone. Come back to Denver.”

She tightened her brow.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Look, you’re in a better position there,” he said. “Right now you’re just moving blind. You don’t know where the guy is, you don’t know where he’s going, and you don’t know where you’re going. Sure, you might get lucky and end up in the same vicinity as him. But then what? You wouldn’t even recognize him if he came up and asked you for directions. Come back to Denver and wait for a vision that let’s you know where he is. You can fly there if you have to. It’ll be quicker than driving there from wherever back-road sticks you might be in otherwise. Plus I’ll go with you.”

She considered it.

“Thanks for the offer. I have to keep going, though.”

Teffinger grabbed her elbow.

“Kovi-Ke.”

“You said you wanted to talk and that I was free to leave afterwards,” she said. “We talked. Now it’s time for you to keep your promise.”

Teffinger relaxed his grip and let his hand fall.

“Okay, then. I’ll come with you.”

She shook her head.

“You’re a red flag. He knows you. I have to sneak up on him. To do that I have to be alone.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Well, if that’s crazy, then try this. I don’t want you involved because I don’t want you getting killed. There, better?”

She got in her car without looking back.

Then she was gone.

21

Day Three

June 6

Friday Afternoon

Teffinger watched Kovi-Ke drive off, not knowing whether to follow her where she could see him, follow her from a mile back where she didn’t know he was there, forget all about her and head back to Denver, or whatever. Then what he needed to do came to him. He dialed her, not expecting an answer but glad when it came, and said, “I’m going to Haiti.”

“What for?”

“Answers, revenge, whatever’s there. Someone in Haiti knows who the guy is.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I just wanted you to know.”

He hung up, got in the Tundra and pointed the front end east, back towards Denver.

His phone rang.

It was Kovi-Ke.

He didn’t answer.

She might want to come with him. He didn’t want to have to decide whether to let her or not. She called three more times. He didn’t answer three more times.

Then the phone got silent.

He drove home where he got his passport and packed a suitcase, questioned his sanity one final time, and then headed to DIA where he found out the best travel route was through Miami. He bought a ticket, strapped himself into an aisle seat and gripped the armrests with sweaty palms as the city-sized hunk of metal raced down the runway and the tried to muscle its way into the sky.

The wheels left the pavement.

The vibration stopped.

The woman next to him tapped his arm and said, “Are you okay?”

He looked over.

“Yeah, no worries. They’ll be serving beer, don’t you think?”

“I’d think so.”

“Good.”

Late night, slightly tipsy, Teffinger landed in Miami, got a hotel room until morning, and then boarded a mid-sized jet to Haiti, surprised that he was actually doing what he was doing.

Unlike the flight to Miami, this one wasn’t a can of sardines. The skies were crystal blue and drama-free. He’d only have to put up with them for a few short hours. Halfway there one of the flight attendants slipped into the seat next to him and said, “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

She was nice, his type, as nice as Kovi-Ke if the truth be told, but not someone he recognized or knew.

“I’m not from these parts,” he said.

“How long will you be in Haiti?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. A day or two, maybe a week, it’s all up in the air.”

“Your eyes are two different colors.”

“That’s true.”

“Now I know where I know you from. GQ, you were on the cover. At least I think that was you. Was it?”

He nodded.

“I think they picked me because of my eyes,” he said.

“Well, they chose good.” She wrote digits on a napkin. “That’s my number. I’ll be in town for three days before I have to fly out again. Call me and we’ll do something. I’ll show you all the haunts.”

Teffinger almost shoved the paper in his pocket.

Instead he handed it back.

“I’m here on business,” he said. “It might get a little rough.”

She ran a finger down his hand and said, “I like it rough.”

“Not this rough.”

She shoved the napkin in his shirt pocket, patted his chest and said, “If you change your mind.”

Then she was gone, wiggling up the aisle.

Teffinger took the paper out and studied it, deciding. She’d be a crazy little thing in bed. He had no formal commitments to Kovi-Ke. Then he frowned. He’d probably have withdrawal pains later, but he ripped the napkin to pieces before he could think about it any more.