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“Get in the car and you’ll find out.”

She wrestled him to the floor and pinned his arms above his head. “Why? Where we going?”

“Nowhere, if you don’t get off.”

“Not till you tell me.”

“Someplace you’re going to like.”

She rubbed her crotch on his chin.

“I’m already someplace I like.”

They took Highway 93 south into downtown Golden, where the air smelled like hops and barley. Draven found a liquor store-one with a sign in the window that said No Fresher Coors Sold Anywhere-and bought enough Jack to get them through the next few days. Then they took Old Golden Road east and ended up at a Lexus dealership across the street from the Colorado Mills Mall.

“What’s going on?” Gretchen asked as they pulled in.

Draven put a confused look on his face.

“I don’t know, but as long as we’re here why don’t we have a look around?”

He wore tattered jeans and a black muscle shirt that showed off his tattoo. Throw in the ponytail and the scar and he looked like the last person on the face of the earth who would want, or could afford, a Lexus. He chatted it up with the salesman and the manager, took a long test drive, and waited for a derogatory insinuation that he couldn’t afford it.

When he didn’t get it, he closed the deal, titled the car in Gretchen’s name, had funds wired in from one of his California bank accounts, and then strolled outside with his woman to drink coffee and wait while the dealership detailed the vehicle and gave it a final prep.

Gretchen’s face made it all worthwhile.

No one had ever done anything like this for her before.

Not once in her whole life.

Not even close.

“God are you going to get some sex tonight,” she said. “Be warned.” Then she hugged him tight and cried. He ran his fingers through her hair.

“I love you,” she said. “And not just because of the car.”

She kept her eyes down, as if afraid she might see a reaction on his face that she didn’t want to see.

He looked into her eyes.

“Me too,” he said.

“Really?”

He nodded. “I think I have from the start, to tell you the truth.”

She buried her head in his chest.

“Of course, I did have a second thought when you bashed that guy’s head in with a rock. But that was only for a moment.”

She punched him on the arm and said, “Not funny.” Then she looked into his eyes and said, “Till death do us part?”

He squeezed her.

“Sounds good to me.”

81

DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16

FRIDAY MORNING

While heading back to Denver from Pueblo, Teffinger couldn’t get away from maniac drivers to save his life. No matter what lane he was in, or how fast or slow he was going, the rearview mirror always showed some idiot riding his ass. An 18-wheeler looked like it was actually trying to get into the bed of Teffinger’s truck just as Katie Baxter called to report on her investigation of Chase’s apartment.

“We found an appointment book,” she said. “Unfortunately, nothing was written in it for the day she disappeared.”

“Figures.”

Teffinger swung into the high-speed lane.

The trucker followed.

Goddamn it.

“If I’m reading it right,” Katie said, “she did some freelance hooking on the side, but I wouldn’t say a lot. When she wrote those appointments down, she only used first names. Some had phone numbers and we’re checking them out. There are also some appointments for something called T amp;B, where time is blocked out, anywhere from four to eight hours.”

“T amp;B?” he asked.

“Right.”

For some reason that resonated in his brain.

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know. Tim and Bob?”

He smiled. “That’s not giving me a good visual,” he said. “Let’s make it Tina and Brenda.”

They hung up.

Katie called again thirty minutes later, just as Teffinger passed Castle Rock.

“Hey,” she said. “We found a scrap piece of paper that had a phone number for T amp;B. It turns out to be a place called Tops amp; Bottoms.”

“Thanks,” he said. “You just gave us another tie to our lawyer friend, Derek Bennett.”

Instead of going to the office, Teffinger and Sydney went straight to Tops amp; Bottoms and ended up meeting with a curvy, feminine woman with a soft voice and liquid blue eyes named Rose Abbott. They left an hour later with more than they hoped for. Teffinger also had a standing invitation for a free session with the lovely Ms. Abbott any time he wanted.

“We all have fantasies,” she said. “Even you.”

“Me?”

“Right.”

“What are my fantasies?”

She ran her fingers through his hair.

“You call me when you’re ready.”

Half an hour later, they sat in the reception area of Hogan, Slate amp; Dover, LLC, sipping coffee and waiting.

Teffinger wasn’t sure that this was the smartest thing to do.

His gut told him to slow down, stay hidden, get more evidence, maybe even enough to bring charges. His other gut told him to ignore his first gut, and to stomp on the guy now with the hope that he’d crawl under a rock and at least not hurt anyone else in the immediate future.

A contemporary abstract oil painting on the opposite side of the room kept drawing his eye, so he wandered over past the leather chairs, the coffee tables, and the fresh flower arrangements to take a look at it. The signature said RABBY. The paint was scooped on with a pallet knife, a half-inch thick in some places. Most of the canvas was fairly smooth and earth toned, a backdrop for the strategically placed pops and rivers of thick bright colors.

A lot of thought had gone into it.

And passion.

It was the kind of piece where the average Joe Blow on the street would look at it and say, I could do that.

It was that deceptively good.

Sydney walked over and checked out the signature.

“Rabby,” she said. “I’ve heard of that guy. I think his first name’s Jim.”

“I couldn’t paint like that,” Teffinger said. “Not because it’s abstract but because you can tell that he had to set it down and let some parts of it dry before going on. I need to get it done in one sitting and see if I have a dud or a keeper.”

“Men,” she said. “Instant gratification.”

He sipped coffee and said, “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“No, it’s okay, except when you’re with a woman in the bedroom.”

He smiled, picturing it. “You don’t want it there.”

“No. Not even close.”

They finally ended up in Derek Bennett’s office with the door closed, sitting in expensive leather chairs. The man was Teffinger’s size, six-two, maybe even bigger. His suit was loose, but not so loose as to totally hide the troll-like muscles underneath. His shirt was white and stiff. His eyes protruded too far, as if someone tried to suck them out with a vacuum tube.

Paint his head green and he’d be a frog.

“Thanks for seeing us without an appointment,” Teffinger said. “I’m going to get right to the point. We’re investigating two homicides and we noticed that you have connections to both of the victims.”

Bennett looked insulted. “Are you saying I’m a suspect?”

“No, nothing like that,” Teffinger said. “We just have a few questions.”

The stress lines on Bennett’s face didn’t lighten.

“What kind of questions?”

“Well, one of the victims is Rachel Ringer, and you know her of course,” Teffinger said.

“Everyone who works here knows her,” Bennett said.

“I appreciate that.”

“Meaning I’m one person of about two hundred and fifty.”

Teffinger nodded and fought the urge to bring up the other connectors-someone, probably Bennett, half raped Rachel one night; Bennett drove a silver BMW, the same kind of car in the photograph from Brad Ripley’s safe, the photograph of the building where the four women were killed; and the conversation between Bennett and Jacqueline Moore about a killing, overheard by Aspen Wilde. As fun as it would be to whip those little facts out and slap the smugness off Bennett’s face, Teffinger couldn’t do it without fear of implicating the help he’d received from Aspen Wilde. So he smiled instead and changed subjects.