Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  “What’s so important about having these in someone else’s file?” she asked.

  “The truth?”

  “No, give me lies and deceit like everyone else.”

  He grinned, then grew serious. “Someone tried to run me off the road Saturday night and my gut tells me it was Mr. Northwest. So, I want someone else to know what’s going on, and to have the phone conversations, in case something happens to me.”

  She pondered it.

  Stephen wasn’t a man who exaggerated or scared easily.

  “Have you tried to track him?” she asked.

  Stephen shook his head. “Not really. I mean, I’ve always been curious, but not curious enough to throw time at it.”

  She picked up a book of matches, lit one, waved it out and threw it in the ashtray—a nervous habit she’d had since age twenty, when she quit smoking after four years.

  The sweet smell of sulfur hung in the air.

  “Tell me about getting run off the road,” she said.

  He had a hesitant look, as if reaching for it, then said, “Saturday night, about ten o’clock. I’m driving on Santa Fe, way down south, halfway to Castle Rock, when someone in a pickup truck starts playing cat and mouse with me, pulling up alongside, getting on my tail, that kind of thing.”

  “Any damage?”

  “No actual contact,” Stephen said. “But only because I kept evading him. Then, after a couple of minutes, he just dropped behind, turned around and vanished.”

  “Weird.”

  She looked down at the CD and back at him.

  “So what do you want from me?” she asked. “Other than to hang on to the CD?”

  Stephen leaned forward. “Find out who he is,” he said.

  She studied him. “That’s not what I do, Stephen. You’d be light years ahead with a P.I.”

  He frowned. “First of all, I’m not so sure that I could even legally give privileged information to an investigator, since he’d be working against the client, not for him. It seems doubtful that the attorney work-product doctrine would apply. But even if it did, I still want you to handle this.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re making a mistake.”

  “Maybe, but it’s my mistake to make.”

  She exhaled.

  “How much money do you want to throw at this, exactly?”

  He looked her straight in the eyes. “Whatever it takes. This guy’s going to kill me. I can feel it.”

  She cocked her head, lit another match and blew it out.

  Smoke snaked towards the ceiling.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged and looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t have a clue.”

  CLAUDIA MARTINEZ, JACKIE’S PERSONAL ASSISTANT and army of one, got the news about the Stephen Stepper case as soon as she reported for work, before she could even sit down and put her purse in the drawer. As Jackie laid out the details, the young assistant’s forehead got tighter and tighter. “I’d stay away from him if I was you,” she said in that thick Columbian accent of hers. “And you know why.”

  Chapter Three

  Day One - July 11

  Tuesday Morning

  _____________

  DOWNTOWN DENVER ALREADY RADIATED heat, even this early in the morning, warning of yet another blistering July day. Nick Teffinger—the 34-year-old head of Denver’s homicide unit—took off his sport coat, too hot to care if his weapon scared anyone. He walked down the 16th Street Mall deeper into the frying pan, concentrating on trying to find the place he was supposed to meet Jena Vellone. She was the last person he expected to get a call from this morning, anxious to meet him as soon as possible.

  Two minutes later he entered an Einstein Bros, spotting her almost immediately at a corner table, waving him over. Most people along the Front Range knew her as the Channel 8 TV roving reporter, the charismatic blond with the big green eyes who was always smack dab in the middle of the mess. Teffinger knew her from the old high school days in Fort Collins, when she was the ticklish tomboy down the street, three years younger than him.

  “Nick,” she said, hugging him straight on with that famous full body squeeze. She looked expensive and professional, decked out in a summer suit with a crisp white blouse and an inescapable emerald necklace that probably cost more than Teffinger’s first car.

  He spotted two cups of coffee on the table, meaning one was his. He sat down, picked it up and took a sip. Some type of chocolate flavor, piping hot.

  “Stirred, not shaken,” Jena said.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “I’m on a short leash, so I don’t have time for chitchat,” Jena said, getting a serious tone in her voice. “Here’s the reason you’re here. Last week, Monday I think, the station received this weird letter in the mail.”

  She handed him an envelope.

  It was addressed to the TV station’s general manager. It had no return address. Inside was a piece of paper. It said, Next visit: Weekend of July 7th. Both the envelope and letter were computer printed. Neither had any handwriting or marks.

  The weekend of the 7th was this past weekend.

  He looked at her, confused.

  “Now get ready for the weirder part,” she said. “This showed up in this morning’s mail.” She handed him a second envelope, mailed yesterday, Monday, according to the postmark. Inside there was one piece of paper, a Xerox copy of a driver’s license—the driver’s license of one Ashley Conner to be exact. He studied the document and saw the photograph of a young woman with a timid look, neither pretty nor ugly. She had the plain vanilla appearance of a person you could watch for two hours in a movie at night and then not recognize the next morning if she stopped you on the street and slapped you in the face with a hotdog. According to the woman’s license, she was nineteen years old.

  Teffinger felt a knot in his stomach.

  Jena waited for him to process the information and said, “We did some snooping around this morning to see if we could find out who this Ashley Conner is, to figure out if this is just some kind of a prank. She’s not in the phonebook. So we had someone swing by the address on her driver’s license. It turned out to be a crappy little apartment building off Broadway. The mailbox has her name on it all right, but no one answered when we knocked. That’s when we decided that the police should have this information. Since I know you, I volunteered to be the messenger.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She hesitated, then said, “Nick, I’m hoping that this turns out to be a great big nothing. But if this is the opening act of some publicity-crazed maniac, and you want to give me an inside track on the story, that would be fine with me.”

  He frowned. “Let’s not jump the gun.”

  “I’m just saying if,” she said, standing and hugging him. “I got to run.”

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Did any other TV stations get letters like this, do you know?”

  She shrugged. “We don’t exactly sleep with each other.”

  He raised an eyebrow: “So who do you sleep with?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder as she walked off: “Why, are you applying for the job?”

  “What’s the pay?” he asked. He intended that to be the last of the discussion and fully expected her to keep walking. But instead she came back, leaned in close and whispered in his ear: “The pay is very, very good. Send your application in.”

  Chapter Four

  Day One - July 11

  Tuesday Morning

  _____________

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER TEFFINGER FOUND HIMSELF on the south side of the city, circling the neighborhood around Ashley Conner’s apartment building, finally finding a place to park on Broadway in front of a bondage paraphernalia shop. He walked up the street past a tattoo parlor, a vacant building with a full-length crack in the glass, and a Chinese takeout place. Then he turned west down the first street he came to and kicked a box down the middle of the sidewalk until he came to the woman’s building.


  The elevator had a cardboard sign duct-taped on it that said Broke, which was all the same to Teffinger because he wouldn’t have stepped inside it to escape a T-Rex attack. So he hiked up the dim-lighted cinderblock stairwell to the fourth floor.

  When he came to apartment 406—Ashley Conner’s place—he put his ear to the door and listened for signs of movement, heard none, then rapped on the door.

  No one answered.

  He tried the doorknob and found it locked.

  Damn it.

  He knocked again.

  Come on, be home; don’t be dead on me, I don’t have the time.

  Suddenly the door behind him opened. When he turned he found a woman standing there, a woman so striking that it took him a moment to realize that she was major pissed-off and ready to smack him upside his head.

  “Get the hell out of here before I call the cops,” she said. By the look on her face she most definitely meant business. Teffinger backed up and held his hands up in surrender, then pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her.

  “Here’s the number,” he said.

  He studied her as she read it. She had a dark exotic Island Girl edge, with hair down her back, thick and black, looking as if she had washed it, let it hang until it dried, and then raked it out with her fingers. She wore a pink T-shirt barely long enough to cover her ass; no pants or socks, just legs. Her body was strong and toned and taller than most. She looked to be around twenty-eight or twenty-nine. She should be sipping Margaritas in a South Beach bar and fighting off men instead of hiding her life away in a rat-hole like this.

  No ring on her finger.

  “You’re with homicide?” she questioned. She had a soft English accent, very sexy.

  “Yes.”

  “Is Ashley dead?”

  He shifted his weight to his left foot. “Not that I know of,” he said, which was true.

  “So what do you want with her?”

  Teffinger shrugged. “I just want to be sure she’s okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “No reason, I’m just checking,” he said. “You don’t happen to know where she is, do you?”

  She shook her head. “School, I’d assume. She goes to art school, the Art Students League, down on Grant Street.”

  Teffinger found himself focusing on a smell.

  It came from the woman’s apartment.

  “Sorry,” he apologized, “I thought I smelled coffee.”

  “You did.”

  “Oh.”

  “Does that mean you want some?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

  “What if it wasn’t an intrusion?”

  “Then I wouldn’t mind intruding.”

  INSIDE THE WOMAN’S APARTMENT, Teffinger sat down on a couch that could have used a few more springs. The place was clean and organized, but frugal. He could duplicate everything in there for five hundred dollars and still have change left over for a Big Mac.

  While she set about making a fresh pot, he stepped into the hallway for a minute to call Detective Sydney Heatherwood, the newest member of the homicide unit—a young African American woman who Teffinger stole from vice unit almost a year ago. After filling her in, he asked if she could find out whether Ashley Conner was scheduled to attend class this morning and, if so, whether she had shown up. He also wanted her to call the other TV stations and find out if they received envelopes similar to Jena Vellone’s.

  Back inside, the woman told him her name.

  Rain St. Croix.

  He liked it.

  Rain St. Croix.

  For a brief moment he pictured them together, at a nice air-conditioned restaurant, laughing and getting tipsy, with a long night still ahead.

  Her apartment faced east and was already heating up, in spite of the open windows and the fan. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like at four this afternoon when the asphalt got sticky.

  She handed him a cup of coffee, black.

  “Sorry, no cream or sugar,” she said. “Money’s a little tight.”

  He took a sip. It was hot and actually pretty good. “Thanks. I’m going to need a lot of this today.”

  She sat on the couch next to him and crossed her legs. “Your eyes are two different colors,” she said. “One’s blue and one’s green. I’ve never seen that before.”

  Teffinger shrugged. “One of my many flaws,” he said.

  She smiled briefly and then grew serious. “So what’s going on with Ashley?”

  Teffinger pondered the question.

  “All I can tell you is we have some information that’s suspicious. That doesn’t mean that she isn’t perfectly fine, though. When did you see her last?”

  Rain retreated in thought.

  “Saturday afternoon, about four-thirty, I guess. Just before she went to work.” She sipped coffee and added: “Ashley is only a hundred pounds, dripping wet. She’s the smallest, sweetest, most demure, innocent thing you’ve ever seen in your life. If something happened to her, I can’t say that I’m totally surprised. She’s the world’s perfect victim.”

  Teffinger cocked his head. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Let me show you.” The woman put her cup down and walked over to the kitchen cabinets, which were cheap pine painted a putrid olive green. She said, “Turn your face for a minute, because I have to reach up in the cabinet and I’m not wearing anything under this T-shirt.”

  “Okay,” he said, turning his head towards the windows.

  “Close your eyes, too.”

  He did.

  Hinges squeaked. “Okay, you can open them.”

  He did.

  “You didn’t peek, did you?” she questioned.

  He shook his head. “No, but I have to warn you, I used up all my willpower for the entire day. Now I have to cross the street if I get too close to a donut shop and it’s all your fault.”

  She laughed, sat back down and handed him two photographs. “This is Ashley,” she said. “You can just look at her and tell that she’ll do anything you want. She’s nineteen with the heart of an eight-year-old.”

  Teffinger had to admit; she did have an innocent look.

  “Guys can smell women like her,” she said. “She doesn’t give people problems.” She sipped her coffee. “I thought you were one of those creeps who comes around to see her.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Let me put it this way,” the woman said. “Ashley’s not a prostitute or anything, but she runs into guys here and there and they can tell she needs money. So they show up at her door, smiling and polite, with cash in hand, looking for a little company.” She looked sympathetic. “The girl has to eat, just like the rest of us.”

  Teffinger nodded.

  “I’ll bet I’ve chased three or four guys off in the last couple of weeks.”

  “So, she’s trying to get by on her own? No parents or anything?”

  “As far as I can tell, every penny she gets, she gets herself.”

  SUDDENLY HIS CELL PHONE RANG. Sydney told him that Ashley Conner was in fact scheduled for an eight o’clock class this morning but hadn’t shown up; or for yesterday’s classes, either. Also, both of the other local TV stations had in fact received similar letters.

  “Clear your schedule for the indefinite future,” he told her.

  She laughed.

  “I’m serious,” he said, which was true. “Oh, and call the radio stations and see if they got anything.”

  He hung up and told Rain that Ashley missed class.

  The concern on her face was real. “Art is that girl’s life. She never misses class, even when she’s sick.”

  Teffinger stood up, walked over to the window, and looked down, getting a birds-eye view of some old man rifling through an overfilled dumpster.

  The sound of running water came from the bathroom. He must have been distracted by it, because Rain said, “That’s the toilet. It runs.”

  Te
ffinger headed that way. “Let’s have a look.” The rubber valve in the bottom was old and brittle and didn’t fit tight anymore. It would have to be replaced. Also, the chain from the handle to the valve was broke, meaning you had to reach into the water and pull the valve up by hand to flush. He reconnected the separated chain links with a paperclip and at least got the handle working again.

  All the while they talked about Ashley Conner. Most of the young woman’s life was spent either at art school or at the Mile High Eatery, a restaurant in lower downtown where she worked as a waitress, straight down Broadway by bus.

  “You don’t have the key to Ashley’s apartment, by chance, do you?”

  No she didn’t.

  He headed for the door. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll be back this afternoon sometime. Are you going to be around?”

  “I can be, if you want.”

  “Good. I’ll probably have some more questions for you.”

  She nodded. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  Teffinger started through the door and then turned around. “Say, would you mind if I took those two pictures of Ashley with me?”

  Two minutes later he was in his truck with the air conditioner on full blast, heading down to the office to work up a search warrant for Ashley Conner’s apartment.

  She was dead or dying.

  He could feel it.

  She wasn’t the last one, either.

  That was even clearer.

  Chapter Five

  Day One - July 11

  Tuesday Noon

  _____________

  NATHAN WICKERFIELD SAT AT A WOBBLY TABLE in a rat-on-a-stick restaurant called Mama’s, picking at a stale lunch salad, with the corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly.

  The one and only waitress scurried about, lugging chipped plates full of crappy food from the kitchen to lowlife customers who looked like they were more than ready to argue about whether a 25-cent tip was fair enough.

  He didn’t pay any attention to her. She took his order, brought him a glass of water, delivered his order, refilled his glass, walked by his table again and again, and asked a number of times if everything was okay. Through all that, he hardly glanced at her. From his table, he had an unobstructed view of Ashley Conner’s apartment building, and that’s where he focused his attention.