Dead in Hong Kong (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (33 page)

She flipped the light switch on.

The interior lit up.

What she saw made her stop breathing.

THE PLACE WAS TRASHED. Everything was on the floor, violently smashed. The furniture was overturned. It was almost as if someone had broken in and searched for something small, leaving no crack or crevice untouched.

She held her breath and listened for sounds.

She heard nothing other than Sean Paul.

“Breyona?”

No answer.

“Breyona, are you here?”

No answer.

Nothing.

Her instinct was to turn and run, get somewhere safe and call the police. But she couldn’t, not without knowing if Breyona was safe.

She walked towards the woman’s room
, o
ne step at a time
, r
eady to turn and bolt for even the slightest reason.

She heard nothing.

Not a sound.

Not a peep.

The door to Breyona’s room was closed.
Neva
put her hand on the knob, turned it, slowly pushed the door open and listened. The hinges squeaked. The room was dark and coffin quiet.

“Breyona? Are you in here?”

No
one
answer
ed
.

SUDDENLY
NEVA
'S CELL PHONE RANG.

The sound froze her.

She answered and a woman’s voice came through. “Is this
Neva
Narateja
?” The words were in English but with a thick Spanish overlay.

“Yes, who's this?”

“Good, I got you," the woman said. "My name is Rio Costa. I’m from Brazil. You don’t know me, and I know this is going to sound strange, but I think we’re related. I think we’re both descendants of a man named Antonio Valente. I need to talk to you about something very important.  I’d like to do that tonight, if possible. I’m in Jamaica right now, my plane just landed. If it’s okay with you, I was hoping we could meet somewhere … ”

Neva
almost answered but flicked the light switch on instead.

Breyona was on the bed
, n
ot moving.

Her hands were tied behind her back.

Her ankles were tied.

There was some kind of a gag in her mouth.

Her eyes were frozen op
en, staring at nothing, a
nd there was blood
, l
ots of blood.

Suddenly lightning flashed
f
ollowed immediately by a deafening clap of thunder.

The room shook
a
nd the phone dropped out of
Neva
's hand.

She left it where it was
a
nd headed for the body.

She needed to close Breyona’s eyelids.

It was w
rong that they were still open, s
o terribly wrong.

Day 1—May 15

Friday Night

FRIDAY NIGHT AFTER DARK,
Nick
Teffinger
—the 34-year-old head of Denver’s homicide unit—had his garage door open. Inside that garage was a red, matching-numbers 1967 Corvette with the hood pointed towards the street and the top down.
Teffinger
sat behind the wheel, drinking his second Bud Light and watching a violent thunderstorm rip the night apart. He had the seat pushed back to give his six-foot-two frame room to stretch.

In his shirt pocket was a photograph of Paige Lake.

She didn't die pretty.

Someone stripped her naked, tied her spread-eagle to the bed, and cut the head off a live chicken above her. After she was covered in blood, he played with her nipples and all the other lovely parts. Then he slit her throat.

That was two years ago.

She was twenty-nine at the time; a
school teacher.

She had no
enemies.

She had no lovers
.

Now she was just one more cold case in a stack of cold cases.

Teffinger
's cell phone rang and the voice of
Sydney
Heatherwood
came through.

"
Nick
, are you okay?" she asked.

He hesitated.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"You were weird all day," she said. "Something's wrong."

"No, nothing's wrong."

"I know when something’s wrong," she said. "I'm coming over."

"Don't you dare."

TWENTY MINUTES LATER SHE SHOWED UP, found him in the garage, got a glass of wine from the kitchen and slipped into the passenger seat. She was twenty-seven, African American, athletic and a natural born hunter. Although she was still the newbie of the homicide unit, she had already cut her teeth on Denver’s worst.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong or am I going to have to pry it out of you?"

He handed her the picture of Paige Lake.

"You want to hear a stupid story?"

"Why, do you have some other kind?"

He smiled, t
hen got serious.

"The lady you're looking at is Paige Lake," he said. "She got killed just short of two years ago. I handled the case personally and never got close to solving it."

"Yeah, well, join the club,"
Sydney
said.

"No, no, this isn't a pity party,"
Teffinger
said. "Here's the thing. Seven months or so after she died, I got an email out of the blue. It said:

WHERE: Johannesburg.

WHEN: Next week.

That's all it said. I had no idea what it meant or who sent it, but it was weird enough that I contacted the Johannesburg authorities and let them know about it. They called five days later and let us know that a woman by the name of Jewel Brand had been murdered."

"The same way as Paige Lake?"

Teffinger
shook his head.

"No, not the same way, not with chicken blood or anything like that, but it was with the same intensity," he said. "There was no question in my mind that the person who sent me the email was the same person who killed Paige Lake."

Sydney
took a sip of wine
a
nd studied him.

"So what'd you do?"

"WE SENT JOHANNESBURG OUR FILE, they sent us theirs, and we had lots of telephone calls, mostly handled by
Katie
Baxter
," he said. "In the end, none of it did any good."

Sydney
frowned.

"How about the email itself?" she asked. "Did you try to trace it?"

Teffinger
nodded. "The best we could get was that it originated somewhere in Athens—but even that we're not sure of. The geeks say there are ways to relay things, to make them look like they came from somewhere when they really didn't. Or, he might have just contacted someone in Athens and paid them to send it. Who knows? As for the email address, it was just one of those Internet freebies that someone opened using bogus information."

Sydney
scratched her head.

"So why is this so much on your mind all of a sudden?"

"Because I got another email today," he said. "It was the exact same as Johannesburg, except Johannesburg is Tokyo this time."

Lightning arced across the sky.

Thunder rolled over Denver.

Teffinger
drank the last swallow of beer, crushed the can in his fist, and dropped it out the window onto the garage floor. Then he reached into the back seat and pul
led a fresh one out of a cooler, ice cold, dangerously
good.

"So what you're saying, if I'm getting you right, is that the guy who killed our woman here in Denver—"

"—Paige Lake—"

"—right, Paige Lake—that guy is going to kill someone in Tokyo."

Teffinger
nodded.

"There you go. Next week, to be precise."

SYDNEY
TOOK A LONG SWALLOW OF WINE, then looked at him and said, "So what are you going to do?"

Teffinger
groaned.

"Nothing, if you ask the chief," he said. "I had a long talk with him this afternoon. He doesn't have the budget to send me on a ten thousand mile fieldtrip if there's no realistic possibility that something good will come of it."

Sydney
contemplated it.

"I hate to say it," she said, "but he's actually right. There's no way you can stop this guy. About the best you could do is help Tokyo mop up after the fact."

Teffinger
shrugged.

"That's what I thought at first," he said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you're right," he said. "How could I possibly find someone in a foreign city of ten million people? I kept thinking about it all day and couldn't figure it out. But then after I unwound and had a Bud Light, it came to me."

"What came to you?"

He patted her on the hand.

"The obvious."

She thought about it, t
hen punched him in the arm. "Damn it,
Nick
, stop being you for a few minutes.”

He combed his hair back with his fingers.

"Here's what I figured out," he said. "The only possible way I could find him is if he finds me. So I sent a reply to his email and said I would come, but only if he promises to kill me."

Sydney
sat there
, s
tunned
, s
aying nothing.

Teffinger
took a swallow of beer and watched the storm.

Then
Sydney
asked, "So what did he say?"

Teffinger
shrugged.

"I don't know, I haven't checked my messages yet." 

4

Day 1—May 15

Friday Evening

KINJO NESTLED IN THE TOKYO SHADOWS across the street from his apartment building and kept an eye on the windows of his unit, looking for a light to turn on, or a flashlight to flicker, or for some other sign that someone was inside, waiting to kill him.

He was lucky to be here.

He was lucky to have gotten out of Egypt.

He was lucky to be alive.

Since Monday night he had replayed the events a hundred times and, even now, couldn’t think of anything he should have done differently. After diving into the sea, he swam out until the dark totally engulfed him. Then he paralleled the shore for a kilometer, maybe more, before he came back in and crept back to the scene.

The shooter was gone.

The money was gone.

The masks were gone.

Everything was gone.

Except for Rafiq’s body—that was still there; that and the dinghy.

Now what?

RETURNING TO THE CLIENT empty-handed wasn’t an option. He’d be tortured and killed even if the client believed the story. Leaving L’il Misfit at the scene wasn’t an option either. That would only implicate the client in Rafiq’s murder. So Kinjo got in the dinghy, paralleled the shore for an hour, and sank it a kilometer out to sea. Then he swam to shore, curled up in a ball and slept until morning. At the break of dawn, he hitchhiked into Cairo and took the first fli
ght out that was going anywhere, which happened to be to A
msterdam.

Then he made his way back to Tokyo.

It wasn’t until Sunday that he called the client, Adrastos Diotrephes, and explained what happened. The man listened without interruption and then said, “Who was the shooter?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

“You don’t know.”

No.

He didn’t.

He didn’t have a clue.

“Find out.”

Kinjo swallowed.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t go back to Egypt. Everyone’s going to think that I’m the one who killed Rafiq.”

“How would the cops know about you?”

“I’m not talking about the cops,” Kinjo said. “I’m talking about the man’s partners.”

“He has partners?”

“He has to,” Kinjo said. “The theft of the masks was too big for one man.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if your story’s true, they’re the ones who killed him, don’t you think?”