Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  PROCESSING THE SCENE CONSUMED the rest of the morning and Teffinger didn’t get to headquarters until shortly before noon. His desk was over by the windows next to a snake plant that had grown halfway to the ceiling in spite of—or maybe because of—everyone’s best efforts to drown it with coffee and pop.

  As the head of the Homicide Unit, he had every right to occupy the office down the hall, which was a real office with real walls and a real door, viewed by most as the symbol of having arrived. He actually sat in there for three miserable days once before the walls closed in on him and he reclaimed his desk back on the floor.

  “I couldn’t think without the chaos,” he told everyone, which had more truth to it than he liked to admit.

  As soon as he sat down his phone rang.

  It was James, one of the co-owners of the Carr-Border Gallery, a reputable establishment of fine art with a solid following and a Cherry Creek address. James was a good guy who could schmooze with the best of them.

  “Hey, Picasso,” James said, “One thing. No, two things, actually. One, we need some more work.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I got tired of looking at your old stuff and sold it.”

  Wow.

  That was encouraging.

  Teffinger started to dabble in oils only a couple of years ago but found quickly that he had a knack for plein air landscapes. He managed to place his work in the Carr-Border Gallery and actually even found a check in his mail every once in a while. They told people he was an up and coming talent.

  “How many do you need?”

  “As many as you can fit in your truck.”

  Teffinger considered it. He had some eight-by-tens at home that weren’t quite commercial yet but probably could be with the right tweaking. If he could get one full evening to himself he could probably get all of them up to standards.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  “Don’t see, do,” James said. “Second thing, the Abenshall-Nyster Gallery from Santa Fe called me a couple of days ago. They want to talk to you about hanging your work.”

  Teffinger scratched his head. “Are they any good?”

  James laughed. “You really need to start reading Southwest Art or something. Quality-wise, they’re ten times what this place is, all day long. You’ll be hanging next to the best.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “That’s not even a discussion point. Most people paint their whole lives and never end up in a gallery like that,” James told him.

  “But I can’t even keep you stocked.”

  “My suggestion is, in that case—and I hate to say it—but switch over to them,” James said. “Maybe send me some of your C or B-minus stuff at some point down the road if you start to get prolific.”

  Teffinger didn’t even have to think about it.

  “Tell them I appreciate the opportunity, but don’t have enough work for two galleries at the moment. Anything else?”

  “You mean, other than the fact that you’re nuts?”

  “Yeah, other than that.”

  “No. That’s it.”

  DETECTIVE SYDNEY HEATHERWOOD CAME OVER and sat down as soon as he hung up, looking like a cat had dragged her around all morning.

  Teffinger said, “You’re looking lovely.”

  She scrunched her face. “I got some news for you, Infatuation Man,” she said. “This woman you’re suddenly so interested in—Rain St. Croix—doesn’t exist.”

  Teffinger raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t?”

  “Not that I can tell,” she said. “She has no social security number, no driver’s license, no bank accounts, no credit history, no nothing. INS hasn’t heard of her either.”

  He twisted a pencil in his hand.

  “You checked?”

  She nodded. “Someone has to take care of you, Nick. Obviously you’re not interested in the job.”

  Teffinger considered it. “So she’s using a false name, is what you’re saying.”

  “At the very least.”

  “Hmm.” He tossed the pencil on the desk. “What’s your availability today?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m a thousand light years behind on everything.”

  “Good, because I need you full time on the Ashley Conner case.”

  “On everything,” she repeated.

  He shrugged. “Hand things off.”

  “To who?” She gave him a mean look. “Besides, Ashley Conner isn’t even a case. She’s a driver’s license in an envelope. For all we know she’s partying with a boyfriend in Central City and they’re laughing their asses off about the clever little prank they came up with.”

  Teffinger waited until the expression on her face softened, then said, “The first thing I need you to do is a nationwide search to find out if anyone has sent envelopes like this to TV stations in any other cities.”

  She looked stressed.

  “I’ll let you have the snake plant,” he added.

  She ignored the comment, then retreated in thought as if trying to figure out how to rearrange everything. “You just seriously wrecked my life, for the record.”

  He leaned across the desk and squeezed her hand. “I owe you one.”

  “You owe me ten.”

  “Three.”

  “Seven.”

  “Five.”

  “Okay, five then. And don’t forget.”

  “Have I ever?”

  “Don’t even go there,” she said. “By the way, all the envelopes that we got from the TV and radio stations are in forensics getting printed.”

  Teffinger nodded in appreciation. “Thanks.”

  “We won’t get anything out of it,” she added.

  He was already up and walking out of the room. “I know, but we still have to document it,” he said over his shoulder.

  HE WAS SCHEDULED TO TESTIFY in Denver District Court at an evidentiary hearing that was supposed to start at 1:00 and last about an hour. As usual, they ended up cooling their heels in the hallway waiting for the case to get called to the docket, and once it did it ran all the way until 5 p.m. Ten seconds after the defense rested the trial court ruled from the bench in favor of the People. They won but it took all afternoon to do it.

  Teffinger picked up a meal from Wendy’s, carried it back to headquarters, eating fries on the way, and pounded out overdue paperwork alone in the room.

  Then, about 8:30 p.m., he went over to Rain’s. In a tank top and abbreviated jean shorts, her body seemed to fill the room. He’d slept with more than his fair share of women over the years, particularly in his high school and college days when he lived to get laid, but not many were the caliber of Rain. Yet it wasn’t just the prospect of sex pulling him in. In fact, he couldn’t have sex with her, technically, if Ashley Conner turned into a formal investigation, since she was someone who might eventually need to give testimony in court. But sex or no sex, he liked her smile, her nature, the way she tossed her hair.

  He was in trouble.

  After dark they walked over to the bar, the Soft Sell, to see if they could find anyone who had been around the area Saturday night and might have seen something.

  When they walked in, Teffinger could hardly believe his eyes. The place was packed. Rain grabbed him by the arm and muscled her way to the bar, telling him that if she was going to do this, she needed a shot, no, two shots, first.

  “Do what?”

  “Help you find your witnesses.”

  Three minutes later she climbed up on the bar and waved her hands in the air to get everyone’s attention. As the eyes fixed on her, a chant went up, Take it off! Take it off! Take it off!

  She pulled Teffinger up on the bar next to her, peeled off her tank top, waited for the applause and catcalling to stop, and then shouted, “Now, listen to the man for a second. He needs to talk to everyone who was down here last Saturday night. This is important so please help us out.”

  Teffinger was just about to start talking when the chant went up again:
Take it off! Take it off! Take it off!

  Chapter Ten

  Day Two - July 12

  Wednesday Morning

  _____________

  JACKIE WOKE WEDNESDAY MORNING slightly hung over, in the bed of a man so incredibly good looking that she just had to climb on top for one more ride. Then he put her on the back of his Harley and dropped her off by the Little Bear, at the Porsche, giving her one long, last wet kiss.

  Driving back to the city her thoughts turned to Stepper. She called Brooke—in her capacity as the law firm’s ad hoc investigator rather than as her sister—and asked if she could meet at Jackie’s house in a half hour.

  She could.

  Brooke was actually waiting for her when she pulled into the driveway of her modest Lakewood home.

  “Long night?” Brooke asked.

  Jackie rolled her eyes. “About nine inches long.”

  Brooke shook her head.

  “You are such a slut.”

  Jackie nodded. “We all have our vices,” she said. “You should have seen this guy. I’m still shaking.”

  Inside the house, Jackie handed her sister the CD, and said, “Here’s the deal. I need to get going on an investigation ASAP but I’m slammed all day, so I need your help to get started. This is a confidential attorney-client matter, so you’re acting as an independent contractor to the law firm on this. Keep track of your time. Listen to this CD. You’re going to hear various conversations between Stepper and some unknown guy who calls himself Northwest. My job is to find out who this Northwest guy is. He’s freaking Stephen out.”

  “Stephen doesn’t freak out,” Brooke said.

  “He does this time. These are all phone conversations, so we have that connection going for us. I’d suggest that you start there. Find the number or numbers of the phone that this guy used when he called Stephen. Work with Stephen’s phone company. With any luck this guy called from a cell phone and we’re done.”

  Brooke shrugged, as if to say, “Fine.”

  Jackie put a serious look on her face, to stress the importance of what she was about to say. “This is confidential stuff and, more importantly, serious. This Northwest guy’s a killer and his passion is young women. So don’t make yourself any more visible than you need to. You fit the profile too good.”

  “Then so do you,” Brooke replied.

  Jackie considered it. She was right, actually. Jackie—at the age of twenty-nine—was three years older than Brooke but they still looked like twins from a distance. Funny she hadn’t even thought of that before. “One more thing,” she said. “Stephen is holding something back from me so keep your eyes open. He might say something to you that he wouldn’t say to me.”

  THAT AFTERNOON, JACKIE was on the phone with in-house counsel for Sigman Corporation, negotiating an employment agreement on behalf of the woman they wanted to bring in as the new corporate CEO, when Brooke strolled in and danced.

  Jackie couldn’t help but grin.

  The girl had some serious moves, as she should considering how much of her life she spent clubbing. When Jackie hung up, Brooke gave her the story. Stephen’s telephone company was happy to cooperate with her after Stephen faxed over his approval for them to release his records to her. According to the phone records, all the calls to Stephen from the creepy Mr. Northwest came from public phones. Most were made from Denver, but some came from New York, San Francisco and Santa Fe. Of the Denver calls, no two came from the same phone. The majority of them came from the downtown area but others originated in Boulder, Golden, Westminster, Littleton and other surrounding communities.

  “I made a spreadsheet for you,” Brooke said, handing her a stapled set of pages.

  Jackie flipped through them. The calls were numbered from 1 to 42. Each call had columns showing the date, time, length, originating phone number, and location of the incoming phone.

  “I am seriously impressed,” she said.

  After Brooke left, Jackie walked outside to the 16th Street Mall, sat down on the sidewalk, leaned against the building, slipped out of her shoes to cool her feet, and studied the spreadsheet. She pulled out a book of matches and lit them one after the other, throwing their spent remains in a pile on the sidewalk. Someone walked by and put a dollar bill in her shoe.

  She looked up when he did. “Thanks,” she said.

  It turned out that one of the calls came from a public phone at a Texaco gas station in Westminster. Maybe that was because Northwest was there getting gas at the time.

  And maybe he paid for that gas with a credit card.

  Chapter Eleven

  Day Two - July 12

  Wednesday Morning

  _____________

  WICKERFIELD WOKE EARLY Wednesday morning, took a long heaven-sent piss and then headed down to the kitchen. He flipped on the monitor to find Ashley Conner asleep, curled in a fetal position on the bed.

  She looked like a child.

  If this was the first time he’d seen her, and someone told him she was eleven, he would have believed it.

  He frowned at the sight.

  She needed to be dead.

  Gone.

  There was too much work in front of him and he didn’t need her still in the picture weighing him down.

  He started the coffee machine, ate a nonfat yogurt with a plastic spoon, slipped into his jogging clothes and was three miles into a ten mile run before the sun came up. When he got back Ashley was still sound asleep in the exact same position. For a brief moment he thought she found a way to kill herself during the night, but then studied the monitor without blinking and saw the movement of her breathing ever so slightly.

  He poured nonfat milk directly into the coffee pot and stirred it until the white cloud went away and the coffee turned a solid creamer color. Then he poured a cup and took a sip. Ah, delicious.

  Today would be a big day, an incredibly big day.

  There was so much to do that he hardly knew where to begin.

  He danced with the coffee cup in hand, twirling around like he was on stage, and then headed to the shower.

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER HE WAS HARD AT WORK in the study when the phone rang.

  “Is this Dr. Wickerfield?”

  “That depends. Who am I speaking to?”

  “My name is Lindsey Abernathy. I got your name from Peter Sinclair.”

  Peter Sinclair.

  Good.

  Sinclair could be trusted. He had a lot more to lose than Wickerfield did if the truth ever got out.

  “How do you know Peter?” he questioned.

  “He dates my sister.”

  “So you’ve met Peter, personally?”

  “Yes, I . . .”

  “Tell me about his dog.” Sinclair had a dog, not just a dog, a best friend. Anyone who knew Sinclair knew his dog.

  “You mean Ralph?”

  “Yeah, Ralph.”

  “Ralph’s a collie.”

  “That he is. Very good.”

  “I’m a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, in physics. Getting that degree means a lot to me.”

  “It’s a good degree to have.”

  “So . . . are you still in the business?”

  Wickerfield leaned back in his chair. “In fact I am. Did Peter tell you my rates?”

  “He said $200 an hour, with a $50,000 non-refundable retainer upfront.”

  “It’s actually a little higher, now, but if that’s what Peter told you, I’ll go with it. Are you interested?”

  “Like I said, getting that degree means a lot. But I need guaranteed results.”

  Wickerfield nodded. “Don’t worry about that. You need to appreciate the scope of the work upfront though. The average bill turns out to be in the one hundred to one-fifty range. I don’t want you to get started on it if you can’t go the distance, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Well, then, let me be the first to call you Dr. Abernathy.”

  They talked for another fifteen
minutes and by the end Wickerfield could tell that she had made the right choice calling him. She’d never be able to formulate, research, write and defend a dissertation in physics on her own. But with him as her ghostwriter and navigator, she should be able to get through the program just fine. Two years from now she’d be teaching college somewhere, or just dropping the degree at cocktail parties. Who knows and who cares, as long as the checks cleared.

  With her as his latest client, that brought the current total number of projects to ten, meaning over a million dollars in the pipeline. Not bad for someone who worked out of a study at home; certainly a lot more than he ever made teaching at Berkeley.

  HE WORKED HARD UNTIL NOON and then turned on the news to see if anyone was airing the Ashley Conner story yet. No one was and he knew why: because so far she was just a suspicious disappearance and not a dead body.

  That would all change.

  They’d get their body soon enough.

  A week from now he’d be the number one story on everyone’s lips. Two weeks from now he’d be the only story.

  He opened a new blank document on Word, typed “Next visit: Weekend of July 14th,” printed twenty-two copies and set about making envelopes.

  Then he drove to the north edge of downtown, walked around until he found a mailbox that didn’t have any security cameras pointed at it, and dumped them in.

  They’d be delivered tomorrow, Thursday.

  He’d strike either Friday or Saturday.

  Before then, he’d dump Ashley Conner’s body in a location where it would be found, just to be sure he had everyone’s full attention.

  The rock star was on stage.

  Chapter Twelve

  Day Three - July 13

  Thursday Morning

  _____________

  TEFFINGER WOKE TO A PITCH-BLACK ROOM and realized that he was on Rain’s couch, it was the middle of the night, and he was no longer alone. Rain had left her bed and was there with him, her face close to his, her breath hot on his face, smelling of alcohol.