Then, in the rental car, he drove up to the cabin and parked a half mile down the road. He snuck up to the structure on foot and found a car parked in front. After jotting down the license plate number, he crept up to the bedroom window and peeked in.
What he saw almost made him vomit.
He jogged back to the car and snaked down the mountain to Denver. On the way his cell phone rang.
“We got another client,” Swofford said.
Draven smiled.
Another client meant another pile of money.
“Details,” he said.
“He wants a specific person,” Swofford said. “She’s a stripper at a club called Cheeks. She goes by the name of Chase but her real name’s Samantha Stamp. Are you getting this?”
Cheeks.
Chase.
Samantha Stamp.
“Yeah, I got it,” Draven said. “The fee’s a hundred for a specific person,” he said.
A reminder.
Just to be absolutely sure there was no confusion.
“I know that and the guy’s already paid. He’s going to call me when he gets to Denver. My suspicion is that we’ll need the woman sometime tomorrow or the day after, so you’ll want to get it in motion. Don’t take her, though, until I give you the word. The guy wants to be sure he knows when that’s going to happen so he can be somewhere public, with an alibi-just in case.”
Draven could care less about that.
He already had a plan how to get the woman.
He was more concerned with being sure he didn’t have to worry about two live ones at the same time.
“We need to clean out the cabin first,” Draven said. “You know I don’t like overlap.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know when you can go back up,” Swofford said. “My guess is it’ll be sometime in the morning, before noon. I don’t see an overlap problem at this point. Remember to not take the woman until I give the go-ahead. Just scope her out and figure out how to do it, for now.”
“Understood.”
As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Gretchen, calling from a payphone. “I got us a really cool place,” she said.
Excitement oozed from her voice.
Draven smiled, picturing her face.
“It’s a house.”
She gave him directions, and thirty minutes later he pulled into a long gravel drive that dead-ended at a small bungalow in an undeveloped area of Jefferson County, on the west side of Highway 93, between Golden and Boulder. The place must have been a farmhouse at one point, say fifty years ago, given the acreage.
Paint peeled off the sides.
No doubt an old lead-based paint.
A wooden fence lay flat and neglected.
Weeds choked the driveway.
When he stepped out of the car, the air smelled like nature and the Colorado sky was clear and blue. He couldn’t hear any traffic at all. The foothills jutted up not more than a couple of miles to the west.
He liked the place immediately.
Gretchen bounded out the door and jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his hips.
“Isn’t it great!” she said. “I only paid for a month, but we can have it longer if we want.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the front door.
“It’s got a huge bed,” she said. “And I put fresh sheets on it like you wanted. I’ve been waiting all day to try it out.”
“You mean with me?”
She kissed him.
“Yes, silly, with you. Only with you.”
That evening he headed to Cheeks while Gretchen went out to shop for a TV. He told her he was a private investigator and would have to work weird hours. She had no problem with that.
He didn’t like lying to her.
It wasn’t as if he had a choice, though.
Cheeks turned out to be a bustling, high-energy place with lots of grade-B strippers and beer-goggled guys. Draven ordered a Bud Light and hung out at the bar until Chase got called to one of the stages-Stage Number Four, apparently-near the back. Men flocked over so fast that Draven was lucky to get a seat.
And no wonder.
Chase was no ordinary stripper.
She had one of the most incredible bodies he had ever seen but, up top, had a very ordinary face. Because of that the guys, apparently, didn’t find her intimidating.
She had a sleazy, in-your-face routine.
Not afraid of body contact.
Draven laid a five on the stage and waited for his turn. She responded by straddling his shoulders with her legs and rubbing her crotch in his face.
Not close to his face.
Actually touching.
He tipped her another five, then bought her a drink when she came off stage. When she hit him up for a private dance he said, “Sure.”
She took him to the back of the club, sat him in a dark booth facing the wall, and let him feel her up.
“Do you ever give any really private dances, off-site?” he asked.
She ran a finger down his scar.
“Maybe.”
Draven pulled two hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and handed them to her. “There’s eight more where that came from,” he said. “Are you interested?”
“Very.”
She gave him her cell phone number and he told her he’d call her within the next couple of days.
“You won’t be sorry,” she said. “I don’t watch the clock or anything.”
31
DAY FIVE-SEPTEMBER 9
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
The coroner-a small serious man named Robert Nelson who had a perpetual hint of whiskey on his breath- called Teffinger shortly after two in the afternoon. He confirmed a lot of the puzzle pieces that Teffinger already suspected.
The head of body number three did in fact belong to Rachel Ringer, according to her dental records.
The other Jane Doe, body number four-who Teffinger suspected to be a 19-year-old by the name of Catherine Carmichael based on the date of her disappearance-was in fact who he suspected. Again, according to dental records. Her eyes had been gouged out postmortem, after her throat got slashed.
Body number two-Tonya Obenchain-who showed no exterior signs of trauma, died by suffocation.
Then the coroner dropped a bomb.
“Going back to Rachel Ringer,” Nelson said, “whoever took her head off used some kind of a saw with a jagged blade.”
