Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  He got down on one knee, shook the dice in his hands and rolled them on the floor. She immediately tried to follow them with her eyes, straining her neck, but couldn’t see from her position.

  He smiled.

  Then he looked into her eyes as he playfully rolled the duct tape around in his hands.

  “Guess what?” he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Day Three - July 13

  Thursday

  _____________

  TEFFINGER SHIFTED THROUGH the van photos extracted by the lab from the bank’s videotapes. He separated them into three piles as he chewed on a turkey sandwich and drank coffee—decaf now, since 11:00 in fact.

  Ashley Conner would have walked past the alley between 10:20 and 10:30. All vans time-stamped at 10:45 and after went into one pile as unlikely candidates. The second pile contained the vehicles before 9:45. The third pile—the important one—held the rest, about fifty all told. Some of them showed the driver’s face, but they were blurred and almost unreadable. None of the photos showed license plate numbers.

  He frowned and combed his hair back with his fingers. It immediately flopped back down over his forehead. Then his cell phone rang. He looked around but couldn’t find it, finally following the sound to the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Too late, no one was there.

  Then it rang again.

  He picked it up, lost his grip and watched it fall to the desk and then to the floor. Luckily it kept ringing, unbroken.

  “Nick, Jena Vellone here. Are you sitting down?”

  He stood up, anxious, and said, “Yeah.”

  The minute he heard her voice he knew what she was going to say.

  It turned out he was right.

  As soon as he hung up he swung over to Sydney’s desk, grabbed her by the arm and said, “Come on.” She must have sensed urgency in his voice because she got up immediately and fell into step without even asking why. They walked past the elevators to the stairs and started the three-story descent on foot. Sydney said, “You really need to learn how to ride an elevator.”

  He grunted.

  “No thanks.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not a spider. When I turn into a spider I’ll hang by a thread. But not before then.” He added: “Jena Vellone’s station got another envelope in the mail today.”

  “Same as before?”

  “Yep, except the target date’s this weekend.”

  She slowed her pace.

  “This weekend starts tomorrow,” she said.

  She was right.

  Tomorrow was Friday.

  Technically, the weekend starts Friday night. He had been thinking he had until Saturday but now realized he was wrong.

  “Yeah, I know that,” he said.

  WHEN THEY STEPPED OUTSIDE the heat pounced on them immediately. The grass—normally lush and green—was brown and parched, the victim of watering restrictions. They walked a short distance, to 14th Street, and waited under a tree. Three minutes later Jena Vellone pulled up in a silver Volvo. Teffinger walked around to the driver’s side and motioned for the traffic to go around. The car right behind Jena’s had pulled in too close, and now had to back up to pull around. The driver, a young male, squealed out and gave everyone the finger.

  Jena looked stressed.

  “It’s inside,” she said, handing him a large manila envelope.

  Teffinger took it.

  “Thanks. I owe you one,” he said, turning to leave.

  “Nick, hold on a minute.”

  He came back. “What?”

  She had a look on her face like she really didn’t want to say what she was about to say. “The station’s going to run the story. It’s top billing at five o’clock. My guess is everyone else in town will be doing the same.”

  Teffinger cocked his head, not sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. He did know, however, that he had no control over it in any event.

  “We might want to hold a press conference later,” he said. “I got to think it through. This guy’s a publicity hound so everything anyone says is just going to fan his flames. But people need to know to be careful and call us if they see anything suspicious.”

  “Can you give me an exclusive?”

  Teffinger shook his head reluctantly. “This is too big, you know I can’t. I’ll give you a couple of comments on the side afterwards, though.”

  She reached out and squeezed his hand.

  Three cars had jammed up behind her and one of them started honking.

  “I’ll call you later,” Teffinger said as she pulled off.

  “Send me a resume,” she shouted. “The job’s still open.”

  TEFFINGER HANDED THE ENVELOPE TO SYDNEY. “Do me a favor and take this to the lab. Then round up every other envelope in town.”

  She took it. “What are you going to do?”

  He already had his cell phone in hand. “I have to make a call. I’ll be up in ten minutes.” When she left, Teffinger called Leigh Sandt, Ph.D.—the FBI profiler who helped on the Megan Bennett case earlier this year. She was a Supervisory Special Agent assigned to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) at Quantico, Virginia. Luckily he actually got her on the line. She listened patiently as he explained the situation.

  “My preliminary thoughts are these,” she said. “First, guys like this don’t just wake up one day with a plan. He’s been morphing into this for some time, meaning he has a past if you can find it. It would be something similar to what he’s doing now but on a lesser scale, something in the nature of taunting the police or giving advance warning. Or just getting on the news. He might be the kind to set up a jeopardy situation and then jump in and be the rescuer to get his face in front of the cameras.”

  “We’ve already been searching on a national scale,” Teffinger said.

  “Did you get anything?”

  “We just started.”

  “Well, keep at it. We’ll help if you want. He used the mail so we have jurisdiction to open a file if you want.”

  “I probably will,” Teffinger said.

  “Second,” she said, “I believe Ashley Conner is still alive.”

  The words shocked Teffinger.

  He always pictured her dead.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Her death is part of the publicity, the proof that he not only warns but that he also carries out. When he kills her—and he will—he’ll dump her body somewhere it can be found. It’s the proof of how bad he is. If her body hasn’t shown up, that’s because she’s not a body yet.”

  “Why would he still have her alive? He’s had her since Saturday night, which is more than four days ago.”

  A pause. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s playing with her. Maybe he wants to leave her body at the site of the next abduction. Without more information it’s hard to tell.”

  Teffinger thought about it and suddenly felt out of his league.

  “Can you come to Denver?”

  “I’m up to my ass in so many alligators that I can’t even see the water anymore. But let me work on it. I’ll get back to you.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  He almost hung up and then said, “Hey, can I say something sexist?”

  “Please.”

  “I’m a little jealous of those alligators.”

  She laughed. “Thanks, you just made my day.”

  HE HEADED BACK UP THE STAIRWELL TO HOMICIDE, taking the steps two at a time. First he filled in the chief. Then he pulled Sydney and Sergeant Katie Baxter into a room and closed the door. “Leigh Sandt thinks Ashley Conner is alive,” he said.

  Katie Baxter—a catcher of things since her tomboy days—licked her lips. For some reason her wash-and-blow hair seemed a little longer than usual. “Am I to assume that I’m now involved, since I’m sitting in this room?”

  Teffinger nodded and tried, as usual, to not get distracted by her world-class chest.

 
; “We’re setting up a task force and the three of us are going to head it up,” he said. “Ashley Conner is going to be all over the news tonight, so we’re going to call a press conference this afternoon. The chief wants it to look like the whole idea of going public is ours. So first, we plan what we want to say. Second, we start getting ready for this weekend.”

  “Get ready how?” Sydney asked.

  “I’ve got a few ideas,” he said.

  “Any of them any good?” Baxter asked.

  Teffinger shrugged. “About the usual.”

  Baxter looked at Sydney and said, “We’re in trouble.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Day Three - July 13

  Thursday

  _____________

  JACKIE CLEARLY STARTLED Stepper’s receptionist when she pushed through the office doors at a hundred miles an hour. She looked around for the lady who had been following her but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s the woman?” she asked.

  Before the receptionist could answer, Stepper entered the room. He wore a crisp white shirt with an expensive silk tie, a subtle blue color. Confusion filled his face.

  “What woman?” he questioned.

  “The woman who just came in here. The one who’s been tracking me.”

  Stephen motioned for her to follow him. “Come on back to my office,” he said. “Let’s talk.” On the way, Jackie stuck her head into every room they passed, including the coat closet, the Xerox room and the bathroom. The woman wasn’t anywhere in the office suite.

  She finally ended up in a chair in front of Stephen’s desk, twisting a pack of matches in her hand. Stephen pushed an ashtray towards her and said, “Go for it.”

  She lit a match, blew it out, threw it in the ashtray and then told him the story. She could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn’t connected to it in any way. At the end he said, “Let’s go downstairs and wait for her.”

  THEY WATCHED FOR OVER AN HOUR down on the first floor by the elevator banks, waiting for the mystery woman to reemerge from wherever she had gone. They chatted, read the paper, drank coffee, and took shifts while the other used the bathroom. At one point Jackie said, “You mentioned before that Northwest sent you a note with the cash retainer, something to the effect that he’d be calling you.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you still have that note?”

  His face brightened. “I have to check but I think so.”

  “Make a copy for me but be careful not to touch the original,” Jackie said. “Just in case we want to give it to the police at some point and have them run it for prints.”

  Stephen smiled. “Now I remember why I’m paying you the big bucks.”

  “As for the money he sent, you put all that in a trust account?”

  “Right,” he said. “The bills themselves are long gone.”

  “Okay.”

  They waited another ten minutes and were just about to give up when the woman emerged.

  “That’s her!” Jackie said, bringing the newspaper up to hide her face. “The one with the baseball hat and the hiking boots.”

  “Got her,” Stephen said. “She’s kind of cute.”

  Jackie frowned. “Do you know her?”

  “Nope. Not even close.”

  The woman walked towards them, carrying an envelope that she didn’t have before. They turned their backs, let her pass and then watched her as she headed for the Lincoln Street exit.

  They followed, fifty steps behind, to the 16th Street Mall. When it became apparent that the woman was about to get on a shuttle bus, they decided that Stephen would have to follow her alone. Jackie watched as the two of them got on the bus and disappeared down the street.

  JACKIE HADN’T EVEN NOTICED THE HEAT before but now it hit her hard. She walked back to the office, slipped out of her tennis shoes, peeled off her socks and sat down on the floor next to the air conditioning vent. As Claudia made fun of her, she filled her in.

  “This has something to do with Stephen Stepper’s client,” Claudia said. “This Northwest jerk.”

  Jackie agreed.

  That was her gut feeling too.

  “But what?” she said. “We didn’t even get involved until two days ago and have hardly even done anything, other than listen to the CD and track down a few phone numbers. How could I possibly be on this guy’s radar screen?”

  Claudia shrugged. “I don’t know but you are.” She looked concerned. “Listen, I know you and Stephen are close, but maybe he’s setting you up somehow.”

  Jackie laughed, absurd.

  “Not hardly,” she said.

  “Think about it,” Claudia said. “Who knows that we’re trying to track Northwest? You, me, your sister, and—dare I say—Stephen Stepper.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Jackie said.

  Claudia headed back to her desk. “All I’m saying is do the math.”

  STEPPER CALLED HER forty minutes later. “Bad news,” he said. “I lost her.”

  “So you never got a license plate number or anything?”

  “No,” he said. “I think she spotted me, probably because the ponytail sticks out too much. She walked into Jackson’s Hole down in LoDo and never came out. When I finally went in to check she wasn’t there. I don’t know if she slipped out the back or what.”

  Jackie thought about it.

  For some reason she felt Stephen was lying to her.

  “Well, at least you saw her face,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I really did lose her, Jackie. Trust me. I want to find out what’s going on a whole lot more than you do.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, but heard no conviction in her voice.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Day Three - July 13

  Thursday Evening

  _____________

  WICKERFIELD FUNCTIONED BEST standing at the three-by-five foot board in his den with a blue marker in his right hand and an eraser in his left. He could fidget and pace while he worked and the concepts always seemed bigger and more exciting than anything he ever got using paper and pencil. That’s where he was at 5 p.m., smoothing out a wrinkle in Albert Snyder’s Ph.D. thesis, when it happened.

  All three of the local TV newscasts opened with the Ashley Conner story. He grabbed a remote and turned the sound up on the middle unit.

  It turned out better than he could have ever imagined.

  Ashley Conner’s face looked so beautiful.

  Nick Teffinger looked so distressed.

  Everyone out there in the listening audience was warned that the next visit was scheduled for this weekend. Women—especially young women—were cautioned to stay in public places and to travel in pairs.

  “Stay turned to this station for updates.”

  He twirled around and danced as he watched.

  Finally, it had begun.

  The rock star was here.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER DARK, HE DROVE AROUND in the Camry looking for the next perfect spot to make his move. He ended up circling the Auraria campus, finding all the dark nooks and crannies where students walked after getting out of their precious little night classes. Taking a student was almost the perfect idea. They all thought they were bulletproof and few paid any attention to the real world. He doubted that one in ten would even be aware of the Ashley Conner situation, much less take it seriously. Plus, the campus didn’t have any housing to speak of. Just about everyone commuted. And while lots of students drove, just as many if not more took public transportation and walked off campus to get to it.

  It was almost as if someone had built the place just for him.

  There’d be lots of foot traffic on Friday night. Even on Saturday, although there were probably no classes, the diehards would be hitting the main library or be down for some kind of activity or other. He even called and confirmed that the library was open until ten.

  “Either night,” he said, “this place will work.”

  He liked the idea of taking a
student.

  They’d be young and if he was patient, he’d be able to find a looker.

  Just in case, however, he scouted out the side streets around some of the more popular nightclubs in Denver. Within an hour he found at least ten shadowy places where he’d be able to find a drunk single woman sooner or later.

  He looked at his watch—10:00 p.m., time to head to Teffinger’s house.

  Teffinger was the main guy hunting him.

  If he wanted to play, then fine.

  Wickerfield could play too.

  NICK TEFFINGER, IT TURNED OUT, LIVED in a split-level house near the top of Green Mountain, third house from the end of the street, backing to open space. You had to wind up the side streets west of Alkire to get to it. The street dead-ended in a turnaround, a nice touch. From up there you could see a long band of city lights, stretching across the eastern horizon from Boulder to the Tech Center.

  Wickerfield swung by Teffinger’s house. The Tundra was parked in the driveway and lights were still on inside the house. He did a one-eighty in the turnaround, drove back down the street past Teffinger’s house and then parked the Camry in a dark spot midway between two streetlights. He put on a baseball hat and walked up the hill.

  The temperature was just about perfect.

  He made it all the way up to the turnaround and was starting to head back down the hill when Teffinger’s garage door opened. Wickerfield ducked behind a pickup truck parked on the street and watched as Teffinger carried a garbage can to the curb. A moment later a small dog ran over to Teffinger from the neighbor’s yard and humped his leg.

  “Walter, your dog!”

  The neighbor called out, “Finney, get over here, you little freak,” and the dog ran towards the man’s voice. “Sorry about that, Nick.”

  “No problem,” Teffinger said.

  Wickerfield stayed where he was while Teffinger walked back into the garage. Instead of closing the garage door, Teffinger came back out a few minutes later wearing shorts and a T-shirt and jogged down the hill.

  Wickerfield looked around.

  The neighbor wasn’t outside anymore, or his horny little freak of a dog.