TUESDAY MORNING
Teffinger got up early Tuesday morning, with Davica already in his thoughts. He threw on sweatpants and jogged out the front door well before the crack of dawn, letting his legs stretch and his lungs burn, while he flashed back to being in bed with her yesterday.
He could have taken her if he’d wanted.
She had him in bed for a reason and it wasn’t just to watch the DVD. They could have done that in the study. Or not done it at all.
“You definitely have some willpower,” he told himself. “Maybe too much.”
Even though September had just started, and Indian summer hadn’t yet begun, the mornings were already getting a chill.
Perfect for jogging.
He did three miles at a pretty good clip and then finished the workout with several sets of pushups and sit-ups in his front yard. Forty-five minutes later, he was at his desk downtown, the first person to work, trying to get organized while the coffee pot fired up.
He drank the entire pot and was just starting to make the second one when Sydney showed up.
“I checked the Internet to exhaustion last night,” she said. “Someone as rich as Davica Holland ought to be showing up all over the place. But Google acts like she doesn’t even exist.”
“That’s interesting.”
Sydney couldn’t wait for the pot to fill, so she pulled it out, stuck her cup under the coffee stream, and then switched back after it filled, never spilling a drop.
“Very impressive,” Teffinger said. “But can you do it behind your back?”
He then did it.
Behind his back.
Spilling coffee all over the place.
“Tell me again why I work with you?”
He smiled, mopping the counter with paper towels.
“Because you have to.”
She looked doubtful. “That couldn’t be enough. There must be more.”
Then Teffinger said something he didn’t expect.
“I might have to take myself off the Davica Holland case,” he said.
“Why?”
“I think I’m more interested in sleeping with her than finding out if she’s a murderer,” he said.
Sydney rolled her eyes.
“Even if you took yourself off, you still couldn’t sleep with her,” she said.
That was true.
“Such a dilemma,” he said.
“Here’s what you do,” she said. “A, don’t sleep with her. And B, put the little fellow back in his cage and then find out if she’s a murderer like the city’s paying you to do.”
“You’re right.”
“And C,” she added, “don’t always look so surprised when I’m right.”
He smiled, then put on a serious face: “What do you mean, ‘little fellow’?”
She sipped coffee.
“You’re not black, are you?”
“No.”
“Okay then.”
He laughed, then surprised himself again, and told her about the bedroom incident yesterday.
She frowned as she listened.
“Davica has motive. And unless and until we can better pinpoint when Angela Pfeiffer disappeared, she also has opportunity. Now she’s got you off balance with this bed thing. My question is whether she’s doing it on purpose.”
It was shortly after nine o’clock when Teffinger realized he had done something really stupid.
“I left my mug down by the railroad tracks yesterday,” he told Sydney.
“The one we got you when you got promoted?”
He nodded.
“I’m going to ride down and get it. You want to tag along?”
A half hour later they were back at the scene where Angela Pfeiffer’s body had been found. The mug was still there, sitting on the top of the concrete retaining wall.
But now Teffinger had another problem.
The first pot of coffee suddenly wanted out.
Now.
Not in two minutes.
Right now.
He looked around for the best spot, decided it was behind a rusted 55-gallon drum, and told Sydney to look the other way for a few moments.
“Unbelievable,” she said. “How is it that you haven’t been fired yet?”
He laughed.
“I have no idea,” he said.
He looked around, saw no one, then pulled the so-called little fellow out and went for it. That felt so incredibly good. He aimed at a small rock, going for accuracy, hitting it pretty damn good even if he had to say so himself. By the time he finished, the rock was much more exposed.
Except it didn’t quite look like a rock any more.
He zipped up and then bent down and looked at it.
It looked like a finger.
He found a stick and moved the dirt away.
A hand appeared.
8
DAY TWO-SEPTEMBER 6
TUESDAY
Aspen parked her car-a faded Honda Accord with a dented front fender-in a lot on the east side of Broadway. The law firm was a six-block hike from there, but the rates were cheaper. She wore the second of the five outfits she’d bought on Saturday. Sooner or later people would notice that her wardrobe wasn’t exactly overabundant, but with over a hundred thousand dollars owing in student loans she could only afford what she could afford.
It was ironic, actually-an attorney at one of Denver’s most prestigious law firms who would be dirt-poor for at least three years.
Probably four.
Maybe forever.
She got to the office by 7:30, wanting to make a good impression, and started billing right away. However, Rachel’s disappearance, and probable death, pulled at her.
Shortly before lunch, she went to the dead-files room and pulled the Dr. Beverly Twenhofel case, knowing she was probably overstepping her boundaries and hoping against hope that no one saw her so she didn’t have to come up with some lamebrain explanation.
“Leave it to you to get fired on the second day of work,” she told herself.
Rachel Ringer, Esq.’s handwritten notes were in the file.
Beautiful.
Unfortunately, Rachel had either never been told, or had never written down, the name of the so-called patient, the one who Dr. Twenhofel believed to be a killer.
The guy’s name was nowhere in the file.
Damn it.
A dead end.
She slipped the folder back exactly where she’d found it and then returned to her office.
No one saw her.
At noon, she expected someone to drop by and invite her to lunch, but no one did. So she pulled out her brown bag and worked the Internet as she ate at her desk, using every search engine she could think of to see what it had on Rachel. By the end of the hour, she’d found six or seven newspaper articles about her disappearance.
None of them were particularly helpful, though.
Another dead end.
At 1:00 she went back on the clock and worked her ass off until six. Then she hoofed it to her car and fought traffic until she got home.
That evening, after supper, she drove to The Fort. It turned out to be a restaurant south of Morrison, smack dab at the base of the foothills in Jefferson County, surrounded by undeveloped land. She sensed that it might have started out as a getaway estate for someone rich.
She understood now how someone could be abducted in the parking lot without anyone noticing.
She went home and turned on the Fitness Channel for background noise as she went over her outstanding bills. Lots of them were overdue, but she just didn’t have the funds in hand right now.
A new cell phone bill arrived today.
So she paid last month’s.
That brought her checking account balance down to $82.00.
She straightened up the apartment and went to bed.
The upstairs neighbors had their music on again. The bass pushed through the walls and straight into her brain. She pulled the pillow over her head and closed her eyes. It did no good, and the more she thought about how rude they were, the more awake she got.
So she drove down to 24-Hour Fitness to exhaust herself on the treadmill.
9