Client On The Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller)
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Praise For The Author
“I love the way this man writes! I adore his style. There is something about it that makes me feel as if I’m someplace I’m not supposed to be, seeing things I’m not supposed to see and that is so delicious.”
Rebecca Forester, USA Today Bestselling Author
This book “is creative and captivating. It features bold characters, witty dialogue, exotic locations, and non-stop action. The pacing is spot-on, a solid combination of intrigue, suspense, and eroticism. A first-rate thriller, this book is damnably hard to put down. It’s a tremendous read.”
ForeWord Reviews
“A terrifying, gripping cross between James Patterson and John Grisham. Jagger has created a truly killer thriller.”
J.A. Konrath, USA Today and Amazon Bestselling Author
“As engaging as the debut, this exciting blend of police procedural and legal thriller recalls the early works of Scott Turow and Lisa Scottoline.”
Library Journal
“The well-crafted storyline makes this a worthwhile read. Stuffed with gratuitous sex and over-the-top violence, this novel has a riveting plot.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Verdict: The pacing is relentless in this debut, a hard-boiled novel with a shocking ending. The supershort chapters will please those who enjoy a James Patterson–style page-turner”
Library Journal
A “clever and engrossing mystery tale involving gorgeous women, lustful men and scintillating suspense.”
Foreword Magazine
“Part of what makes this thriller thrilling is that you sense there to be connections among all the various subplots; the anticipation of their coming together keeps the pages turning.”
Booklist
“This is one of the best thrillers I’ve read yet.”
New Mystery Reader Magazine
“A superb thriller and an exceptional read.”
Midwest Book Review
“Verdict: This fast-paced book offers fans of commercial thrillers a twisty, action-packed thrill ride.”
Library Journal
“Another masterpiece of action and suspense.”
New Mystery Reader Magazine
“Fast paced and well plotted . . . While comparisons will be made with Turow, Grisham and Connelly, Jagger is a new voice on the legal/thriller scene. I recommend you check out this debut book, but be warned . . . you are not going to be able to put it down.”
Crimespree Magazine
“A chilling story well told. The pace never slows in this noir thriller, taking readers on a stark trail of fear.”
Carolyn G. Hart, N.Y. Times and USA Today Bestselling Author
CLIENT
ON THE RUN
R.J. Jagger
Jim Michael Hansen
Thriller Publishing Group, Inc.
Client On The Run
Thriller Publishing Group, Inc.
Golden, Colorado 80401
Copyright©2009JimMichaelHansen
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-954518-05-6
DAY ONE
Monday
July 12
1
Y ardley Sage, Esq., woke early Monday morning when her cell phone rang and a woman’s voice came through, one she didn’t recognize. “My name is Aspen Asher,” the woman said. “I met you last fall when you were doing a book signing at Barnes & Noble.”
The name didn’t ring a bell, but Yardley forced her brain as awake as she could and said, “Okay.”
“I’d like to talk to you about a legal matter,” the woman said.
Yardley frowned.
She was only working part-time now as an attorney—trying to transition into a fulltime author—and most of her billable hours were already claimed by existing clients. In fact, she hadn’t taken on a new client in over six months.
“I was hoping we could meet this morning,” the woman said. “As soon as possible, actually. It’s sort of important.”
Yardley almost said no, but something in the woman’s voice wouldn’t let her.
“Sure, why not?” she said.
With a little time to spare, she got the coffee going and then turned on the bilge pump. It hummed and hissed for a moment, sucking water deep down under the floorboards somewhere in the guts of vessel, and then started to spit a heavy stream out the side of the hull into the lake.
It sounded like a hose at full force and made her wonder if the leak was getting worse.
Right now, in the light of day, she didn’t care about it that much; but at night, when she went to bed, it bothered her. She couldn’t help but pull up an image of the boat sinking during the night, which wouldn’t be a good thing, given that she couldn’t swim.
She had long blond hair.
It was too long, actually, to properly take care of on a sailboat.
The wind tangled it.
That forced her to wear a baseball cap.
That, in turn, made her head sweat; which then matted her hair down in strange shapes. Still, even with all that, she wasn’t in the mood to cut it. It had been that long since she was fourteen and now, more than ever, she needed things in her life that had roots in her younger days.
Next week on Thursday, she would turn thirty, and couldn’t yet predict whether it would bring drama.
She looked around for her #1 LAWYER cup and found it sitting on Deadly Web, her debut novel, which got released last fall.
It was her only copy.
Now it had a coffee ring.
The woman showed up an hour later, carrying a newspaper. She wore nylons, an expensive pinstriped dress, a crisp white blouse, and black shoes with a 2” heel. She appeared to be about twenty-seven, with a good body, a spring in her step, and stylish shoulder-length brown hair.
Very pretty.
Yardley met her at the marina gate and liked her immediately.
“This isn’t what I expected,” the woman said. “You have sort of a Jimmy Buffet thing going on here.”
Yardley chuckled.
“Yeah, I’m going to go shopping this afternoon for some more Margarita mix; and maybe pick up a parrot,” Yardley said. “You want to come along?”
The woman chuckled.
They ended up in the stern of the sailboat with coffee in hand and the sun on their faces. The woman, Aspen Asher, turned out to be an architect with the Denver branch of New York based Sorenson Design Group, Inc.
Aspen opened the newspaper to page 4 and pointed to an article. “Have you read this?” she asked.
No.
Yardley hadn’t.
“Take a quick read,” Aspen said.
It was an article about a woman named Julie Pratt who ran screaming out of a house owned by Lindsay Vail at approximately 9:45 p.m. on Saturday night. Both women were twenty-five. The neighbors saw a man in a mask chase Julie Pratt down the driveway and stab her in the back with a large knife. Then the man ran back to the house, threw a woman’s body—presumably Lindsay Vail’s—into the trunk of a dark sedan and squeal off. A photograph of a man with the face of a pirate accompanied the article, but no name. The man was a suspect, wanted for questioning. Anyone having information as to who he was should call Denver homicide.
“Here’s the
problem,” Aspen said. “The man that they have pictured in the paper didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he was stalking me Saturday night,” Aspen said.
“Say again?”
“Okay,” Aspen said, “it goes like this. Saturday night I went out with a friend—Samantha Dent. We had dinner and drinks from about 8:00 until about 9:15, downtown at Marlowe’s. I remember seeing this man who looked like a pirate on the 16th Street Mall before we went into the restaurant. For some reason, I felt like he was following me. Then when we came out about 9:15, he was still there, across the street, leaning against a building in the shadows. We walked down the mall to do some clubbing in LoDo and every time I turned around and checked, the pirate was walking behind us.”
“Are you sure it was this same man who’s in the paper?”
“Positive,” Aspen said.
“How positive—like 95 percent?”
“No, a hundred.”
Yardley nodded.
The guy did have a distinctive face, with a hooked nose, a cleft chin and a lightning-bolt scar that ran across his forehead, directly above the eyes.
“We got to the club about 9:45,” Aspen said. “A place called Dazzle. Have you heard of it?”
Yardley chuckled.
“I’m a little past that scene,” she said.
“Anyway,” Aspen said, “we ended up getting stuck in a line outside the club for more than a half hour. This guy hung across the way the entire time.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Absolutely,” Aspen said.
“We finally got let into the club about 10:15,” Aspen said. “I’m positive about the time because Samantha and I both kept looking at our watches.”
Yardley nodded.
“Okay,” she said.
“Then, just for grins, I went back to the front door a half hour later, about 10:45, to see if the pirate was still hanging around. He was. Of course, by then I was freaking out and I told Samantha about it. She came up with a plan to see if the guy was following her or me. The plan was for both of us to leave the club at the same time and walk in different directions. We did that, about midnight. The guy was still there. Guess who he followed—”
“I think I know,” Yardley said.
“I think you do too,” Aspen said. “I only walked a hundred feet or so, just enough to confirm he was following me, and then met Samantha back at the club. We stayed for another hour, got in a cab and spent the night at her place.”
“Okay.”
“So, the bottom line is that I’m this guy’s alibi. The problem is, I don’t want to go to the police and have him walking around with full immunity until I know what he’s up to. For all I know, he’s out to kill me. How ironic would it be if I was the one who actually got him off the hook and then he did me in?”
Yardley understood the dilemma but didn’t understand how she fit in.
“So what do you want from me?” she asked. “A legal opinion as to whether you have an obligation to go to the police?”
Aspen shook her head.
“No. I want you to help me find out who he is and why he’s following me.”
Yardley chuckled.
“That’s not what I do,” she said. “That’s P.I. work.”
“I’ll pay,” Aspen said.
“That’s not the issue—”
“Here’s the problem,” Aspen said. “While I’m not going to the police, they’re focused on the wrong suspect, and the real killer is out there doing who knows what. If there’s more blood, I don’t want it on my hands. So I need to do something and do it quick. But I don’t want to free him up to do something to me, meaning I can’t go to the police. That’s the dilemma.”
“I still don’t understand, why me?” Yardley said.
“I met you at the book signing and you seemed like the kind of person who would help someone if they needed it,” Aspen said. “You were the first person I thought of when I saw the article this morning.” She paused and added, “I need your help.”
Yardley cocked her head.
“Do you know how to sail?” she asked.
Aspen made a face and said, “God, no.”
“Good,” Yardley said. “I don’t want anyone around here who might be tempted to untie this thing.”
2
N ick Teffinger, the 34-year-old head of Denver’s homicide unit, parked the Tundra at the end of the dead lawyer’s cobblestone driveway, twenty steps from the front door, and turned his face to detective Sydney Heatherwood. She was an athletic 27-year-old African American from Five Points, personally stolen by Teffinger out of vice a year ago. Although she was still the newest addition to homicide, she had already cut her teeth on Denver’s worst.
“I don’t get it,” Teffinger said.
Sydney raised an eyebrow, opened the pickup’s door and stepped out. The Colorado sun beat down, relentless, warning of yet another scorcher.
“Get what?” she asked.
“Why this guy was messing around with Colfax whores,” he said.
The dead attorney—Ryan Ripley, Esq.—was found stabbed to death Saturday night with his pants off in a Colfax alley known for $20 BJs.
“Maybe it was some kind of adrenelin thing,” she said. “That’s the last place a guy like him should have been. Who knows?”
Teffinger shrugged.
“Getting his kicks on Route 66.”
“Whatever.”
They walked towards the front entrance.
Teffinger held a thermos of coffee in one hand and a cup in the other.
“Have you ever paid for it?” Sydney asked.
He chuckled and raked his thick brown hair back with his fingers. It immediately flopped back down over his forehead. “What do you think?”
“I think not,” she said.
“Okay then,” he said, “that’s my answer.”
“Wait a minute—”
“And I’m sticking to it,” he added.
The dead lawyer’s house turned out to be slightly more than just protection from the elements. Expensive textures and materials complemented an open floor plan that seemed even more expansive because of the number of windows. What really caught Teffinger’s eye, however, was the huge oil painting on the fireplace wall.
He headed straight for it and said, “I can’t believe it—a Delano.”
“Is he someone?”
“Was, he’s dead now,” Teffinger said. “This piece is worth more than my house.”
The painting—titled “Navajo Desert Sheep”—depicted a flat, desert floor that stretched many miles into the distance, where it got interrupted by a rock mesa. In the foreground, a Navajo woman on horseback watched patiently over a flock of grazing sheep. Above it all, consuming 80 percent of the painting, was a blue summer sky with white, cotton-ball clouds. In typical Delano style, the colors were realistic and the brushstrokes were brilliantly loose.
“It’s not bad,” Sydney said.
Teffinger laughed.
“What?” Sydney questioned.
“That’s like saying a Beatles song is sort of catchy.”
She groaned.
“Teffinger, we have to get you out of the sixties,” she said. “I think we’re wasting our time here. I mean, the guy got horny and decided his dick needed to be in someone’s mouth. He ended up getting a little more than he bargained for. End of story.”
Teffinger didn’t disagree, but every once in a while a crime scene wasn’t what it fist arppeared to be. Every once in a while it was staged. And every once in a while, there was something in the victim’s house to suggest that it had been staged and, more importantly, why; and by who.
He drained the coffee cup, filled it back up from the thermos and said, “You want the upstairs or the down?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re not going to find anything.”
They split up.
Sydney headed upstairs and Teffinger took the vic
tim’s study.
The mother lode.
Two computers.
Bills.
Phone statements.
Credit card records.
The room of secrets and electronic footprints.
He was a half hour into it when Sydney’s voice came from upstairs, “Hey, Nick, come up here a minute.”
She sounded excited.
He headed up a winding staircase.
Two steps at a time.
Fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t sip coffee.
He didn’t know what he expected, but it definitely wasn’t what she showed him; namely an expensive wooden box with a strange doll inside, about six inches long, with a needle stuck in the left eye.
“Ihis looks like one of those old voodoo dolls you used to see on those late night movies,” Sydney said.
Voodoo.
Teffinger heard the word but didn’t waste his time processing it. His thoughts were suddenly filled with the image of Whitney White, who was found dead a year ago with a massive injury to her left eye, as if someone had pounded a screwdriver into it, up to the handle, and then pulled it out.
She was only twenty-nine, a legal secretary in a large law firm downtown.
Teffinger never found her killer.
What was the name of that firm again? He tried to pull it up, but found it too buried. He picked the doll out of the box, sat down on the bed and studied it. “Tell me again the name of the law firm that our dead BJ lawyer was with,” he said.
“Radcliffe & Snow,” Sydney said.
As soon as he heard the words, Teffinger remembered the name of the law firm that Whitney White had worked for.
Radcliffe & Snow.
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