had hardly anything. She paid for the plane tickets, the hotels, the investigator fees, everything. In the end though it was a giant waste of time. We didn’t get anything useful.”
“Damn.”
Waverly grabbed Su-Moon’s hand. “Come on, let’s walk,” she said. They headed for 16th Street, where the buzz was. “Last weekend, we had a similar murder in Denver. My boss, Shelby Tilt, saw it as a big story, not because it was a murder, but because he was personally aware of a similar murder that had happened out in San Francisco when he worked there,” she said.
“Meaning Kava Every.”
“That was the first I’d heard about a fourth victim, fifth actually, if you count the one in Denver,” Waverly said.
“Did you tell Tilt about everything you already knew?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew from the start of all this that I might have to personally kill the guy if there wasn’t enough information to take to the police,” Waverly said.
“So you’ve had revenge in mind from the start.”
“Yes, if by revenge you mean justice,” Waverly said. “My goal is to ruin this guy’s life and get him off the streets. If that can be done through the cops, then great. That’s my route of choice. If it has to be done through alternative means, though, then I’m prepared to do that as well.”
Su-Moon let the corner of her mouth turn up.
“Don’t let me get on your bad side.”
Waverly frowned.
“You know, from the beginning I’ve really had no second thoughts about killing the guy if it came to that,” she said. “Now that I’m getting close, I’m not so sure I’m up for it.”
“What we need to do is figure out a way to trap him,” Su-Moon said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. There must be a way, though, if we think hard enough.”
They walked in silence.
“Why didn’t Emmanuelle meet you in San Francisco? Is she dropping out?”
“No, she’s playing a role.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we had two murders to cover at the same time,” Waverly said. “I went to San Francisco, Emmanuelle came to Denver.”
“She’s here?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she doing?”
“She hired a dick named Bryson Wilde to investigate the murder here,” Waverly said.
“Why would he take the case?” Su-Moon said.
“Money.”
“I know, money, what I’m say is, why wouldn’t he scratch his head and say,
“Okay, I see what you mean,” Waverly said. “She made up a cover.”
The words hung.
“Which is what?”
“Which is she pretended like she saw it from a distance, pretty much like what actually happened to her in Chicago. She’s hoping that the investigator will crack it. If that happens, her plan is to view the guy from a distance, without him knowing it, and see if he’s the same guy she saw in Chicago.”
Silence.
“If she saw him back in Chicago, maybe he saw her too.”
Waverly nodded.
“That’s possible. So?”
“So, what if he sees her by some random happening while he’s out walking around?” Su-Moon said. “What if that happens and she doesn’t know it happened?”
The city was full of life.
Cars moved.
People moved.
Everything made its own special little noise.
Su-Moon stopped, then looked into Waverly’s eyes. “Have you ever considered that maybe Emmanuelle is the killer?”
Waverly laughed.
“Good one,” she said. “How do we trap Bristol? That’s what I want to know.”
Su-Moon grabbed Waverly’s elbow.
“I’m serious,” she said. “She was in the vicinity when Carmen got killed. After you found out about her, she got you to promise not to tell the police about her.”
Waverly started to open her mouth.
Su-Moon cut her off.
“Hear me out,” she said. “Another murder happened in New York, where she was-again. She paid all the bills for all the investigations, including the investigators themselves. Maybe that was her way of being sure they didn’t find anything, or if they did, they only told her about it and not you.”
Waverly wasn’t impressed.
“We need to trap Bristol,” she said. “That’s what we need to focus on.”
Su-Moon frowned.
“Maybe she’s been tagging along not to help you but to be sure you don’t get anywhere,” Su-Moon said.
“Stop it.”
“I’m just saying-”
“And I’m saying I heard you,” Waverly said. “So stop saying. Enough’s enough. Emmanuelle didn’t kill anyone. She couldn’t hurt a fly.”
123
Fifteen miles west of Denver, where the flatlands collide with the Rockies, a frothing whitewater river snakes out of the mountains into Clear Creek Canyon. Next to the river is a twisty, dangerous road. With a dead body in the trunk, River took that road west between vertical rock walls, deeper and deeper into the mountains.
Ten miles into it he turned right on 119.
Eight miles later, an abandoned road appeared on the left. The mouth was barely recognizable as something other than overgrown vegetation. The guts of the road disappeared over a jagged ridge into thick lodgepole pines.
River headed down it.
He hadn’t been this way in years.
