Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  “Oh,” she replied. “Can you do one thing for me?”

  He was curious.

  “What’s that?”

  “When I’m dead, I don’t want anyone to find me without clothes on.”

  He grunted.

  “Trust me, you won’t care at that point.”

  But she was insistent. “I really don’t want everyone looking at me. That’s all I ask. Just that one small favor.”

  Wickerfield thought about it.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  “Thank you. That’s all I ask. That and the gun.”

  THEY WERE AT LEAST A HALF MILE INTO THE FIELD. Now the night was almost black and the house was visible only because of the lights inside.

  Ashley was weak and needed to sit down. So they headed over to the edge of the field where Wickerfield found a log. They sat in silence and watched the moon. If they stared right at it and concentrated, they could actually see it rise. The orange had already faded to yellow and would soon be white. It got smaller and smaller as it lifted off the horizon. Wickerfield broke twigs in two as they watched. The snapping of the wood sounded extraordinarily loud against the deathlike quiet of the night. There wasn’t a car or other sound to be heard from any direction.

  “Don’t even think about shouting,” he said. “If you do, then you won’t get any of those little favors you want.”

  “I won’t.”

  “A woman got bit by a rattlesnake today,” he said. “Right in front of me.”

  “Really?”

  She seemed interested.

  “Yep,” he said. “She stepped right on it not more than ten seconds before I would have. It bit her in the calf and she fell to the ground. Then it bit her in the face. She twitched for about thirty seconds and then stopped moving. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen in my life.”

  Ashley said nothing.

  Ten minutes passed.

  The temperature was just about perfect.

  It was weird being out here in the middle of nowhere at night. Good weird, though.

  Then something happened.

  They heard voices, deep voices, more than one.

  Someone was out there, not far away.

  “Help me!” Ashley Conner screamed. “He’s going to kill me! Over here! Help me please!”

  Wickerfield jerked on the chain as hard as he could and tried to snap her neck. She fell to the ground, momentarily stunned, but continued to scream.

  “Please! Help me, he’s . . . ”

  Wham.

  He delivered a fist as hard as he could to the side of her head. She groaned and then fell silent.

  Out in the field not more than a hundred feet away lights appeared, flashlights, two of them, pointing in his direction and sweeping back and forth.

  He frantically worked to get the chain off his belt, couldn’t, and then took the belt off altogether.

  Good.

  At least he was free.

  The flashlights were closer now, coming fast.

  “Hey, lady, where are you?”

  Silence.

  Then, “John! Over there! I see him!”

  Both flashlights pointed directly into Wickerfield’s eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Day Five - July 15

  Saturday Night

  _____________

  AT NIGHT, AFTER DARK, SOME SECTIONS of Colfax Avenue get darker shadows than they should. The shops close, the dangerous people multiply, the hunt for drugs and sex begins in earnest, and transvestites pop out of nowhere. There were even still a couple of old adult video arcades where guys jerked off with the doors open. Teffinger drove down one of the seedier parts of the street in a silver 8-cylinder 4Runner, a rental paid for by the department until the Crime Lab could decide what to do about Teffinger’s truck.

  He parked on the street in front of a liquor store. He and Rain got out and hoofed it over to the alley where Mary Williams—Paradise—managed to get a knife in her eye. Rain wore jeans and a T-shirt, and looked apprehensive.

  “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said.

  Teffinger nodded. “Yeah, lots of women are stuck in some stupid restaurant right now, being forced to eat lobster and drink wine. You can thank me later for saving you from all that.”

  “Oh I will, trust me.”

  A car drove by and slowed down. Someone yelled out the window, “Hey dude, how much for the girl?”

  Teffinger flashed his badge.

  The car sped off.

  “Asshole,” he said.

  In his left hand he carried an envelope with about a hundred pictures inside. They came off Mary Williams’ laptop, which came out of her safe, which came out of her bedroom closet. The men in the pictures had all been over to her house, probably for some rough stuff. The plan tonight was to interview the night-shift hookers to see if anyone remembered any of these guys being around the night Paradise got killed.

  He hoped to get a few hits.

  Unfortunately he got more than that.

  Within the hour he had a stack of about thirty guys that the women recognized on some level or another, although no one was sure if any of them were around during the night in question. Teffinger was just about done when he spotted one more woman down the street, someone he hadn’t talked to yet.

  “One more,” he told Rain.

  AS THEY WALKED IN THAT DIRECTION, Teffinger shook his head. “The guy we’re looking for—not the guy who killed Paradise, the one who dumped the body in my truck—called me on my cell phone, just before I left to pick you up tonight.”

  Rain looked shocked.

  “He did?”

  Teffinger nodded.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He asked me if I wanted to know her name, meaning the name of the woman in the back of the truck,” Teffinger said.

  “And?”

  “And I said no thanks and hung up,” Teffinger said. “I’ve been kicking myself ever since. It was the absolute worst thing I could have done.”

  Rain looked at him, processing the information.

  “I just got pissed off,” Teffinger added. “I mean, the guy has the balls to think that we need his help to catch him. It was like a slap in the face. I guess hanging up was my way of saying that we were smart enough to get him on our own.”

  Rain nodded.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said. “The asshole.”

  “What I should have done,” Teffinger said, “if I’d been a professional, is let him tell me the name of the victim and then keep him talking for as long as possible. Every word would have been another clue.”

  “Can you call him back?” Rain asked.

  “Tried,” Teffinger said. “But he called from a pay phone.”

  Rain locked her arm through his.

  “I think you were right the way you handled it,” she said. “Who does the asshole think he is? You will get him and it’ll be without his help. Hanging up was a way to show him he’s dealing with a superior, not a wimp, and that you’re pissed. I personally think that sending that message is more important than getting a scrap or two of information.”

  Teffinger considered the argument.

  Then he smiled.

  “You’re not being nice to me, just to get in my pants, are you?” he asked

  She squeezed his arm.

  “You never know.”

  THEY REACHED THE NEXT WOMAN. She was tall, tan, and wore a short glittery dress that showed off shapely, muscular legs that were just about perfect. A pink scarf wrapped around her neck and cascaded over ample cleavage.

  Teffinger looked at Rain who studied the woman. By the look on her face, she was starting to figure out that the woman was a man.

  “Evening,” Teffinger said.

  “Well aren’t you the cute one,” the woman said.

  “Well likewise. What’s your name, darling?”

  “T-Von.”

  Teffinger nodded, said “Nice,” and then explained
the situation.

  “Here’s what I know,” the woman said. “I was walking past the alley Thursday night, sometime around two in the morning. I guess that would be Friday, technically. Paradise was in the alley with someone. She was telling him that he needed to pay first, twenty dollars. The man said, ‘No problem.’ He must have given her the money, because she said something like, ‘Let’s see what we have down here.’ By that time I was past the alley and didn’t hear anything else.”

  “How’d you know it was her?”

  The woman laughed, a deep laugh. “Everyone knows Paradise,” she said.

  Teffinger scratched his head.

  “Did you see the man?”

  T-Von shook her head. “That alley’s dark as a bitch.”

  Teffinger nodded.

  That was true.

  “Did you recognize his voice?”

  “No, sorry.”

  Teffinger receded in thought.

  “Would you recognize it, if you heard it again?”

  The woman cocked her head, weighing the question.

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you know who found Paradise first?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because when we got to her she didn’t have any money. So someone must have taken it first. I could give a crap about that, but I’d like to get my hands on that twenty for fingerprints. I’d swap another bill for it, so no loss.”

  T-Von nodded.

  “Paradise was a good person,” he said. “I’ll ask around. You got a card?”

  He did indeed.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Day Six - July 16

  Sunday

  ____________

  IN HER DRIVEWAY, JACKIE got the oil plug for the Porsche loosened with a crescent wrench and unscrewed it the rest of the way with her fingers. When she pulled the plug away, as always, oil spilled out so immediately that she couldn’t get her hand away fast enough. She made an evil face and wiped her hands with a rag as the spent petroleum drained like a waterfall into a black container. Her cell phone rang just as “Boys of Summer” came on the radio. She almost didn’t answer, but did. It turned out to be Stepper, getting back to her regarding the message she left last night in connection with the Texaco credit cards.

  “Never heard of anyone called John Martin or the Seven Circles Company,” he told her.

  “How about Andrew or Mary Campbell? They’re the directors of Seven Circles, according to the Secretary of State records.”

  “Nope, nothing.”

  “Okay,” she said. “They’re probably nobodies. I can’t find any of them in the phone book, either.”

  “Not even Seven Circles?”

  “Nope.”

  “Probably a dummy corporation of some type,” Stephen said. “Let me guess, they use CT for their registered agent.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s a shell of some kind,” Stephen said. “Probably set up to manipulate taxes.”

  Jackie agreed.

  “There aren’t any tax deductions for killing lawyers that I’m aware of,” Stephen added.

  Jackie laughed.

  “Good thing,” she said.

  Oh well, a dead end.

  She finished changing the oil on the Porsche, then did the laundry, grocery shopped at King Soopers, and cleaned the house. Then she Googled Nick Teffinger, discovered something interesting, and headed for Cherry Creek.

  THE CHERRY CREEK SHOPPING DISTRICT is a several block cluster of high-end trendy stores, restaurants and coffee shops. There’s hardly any parking except on the streets, and those always went fast. So Jackie felt lucky when she found a spot on St. Paul, directly across the street from the Carr-Border Gallery.

  It even had shade.

  Unfortunately, when she walked over to the gallery it was closed. One of Teffinger’s paintings was in the front window, however. It was an eight-by-ten landscape depicting a field that rolled into a cluster of pine trees, with soft lavender foothills in the background, all under a muted cerulean sky. Although the composition was fairly simple, the colors and the brush strokes brought the piece to life. She was astounded at how good it was.

  She squinted to read the price tag.

  $650.00.

  She resolved to come back next week and buy it, then walked over to Starbucks, bought a decaf and sipped it on her way back to the Porsche. Tons of people paraded around in expensive clothes and lots of them had dogs on leashes, everything from Pugs to ridiculously fluffy Afghans.

  She got back to the Porsche and, once inside, decided to just sit there for a while, one of her favorite pastimes. There was something about the smell of the leather and the round no-nonsense gauges that gave off a slight aura of danger. It was fun just being there even when the vehicle wasn’t moving.

  She powered down the windows and sipped coffee, more than content. She almost turned on the radio but instead put Stepper’s CD in and fast forwarded to about where she needed to be. She finally found the conversation she was looking for, the one that referred to an earlier conversation that wasn’t on the CD. Cross-referencing to the spreadsheet that Brooke prepared, the conversation that she did have took place on May 5th. The one before that was April 15th. That meant that the missing conversation took place somewhere between those two dates.

  She jotted down a few notes on the spreadsheet so she’d remember it later.

  The coffee was gone now and going right through her.

  She looked around, wondering where she could relieve herself. Then she powered up the windows, locked the door, and walked to the Ragged Page Bookstore. They had a restroom downstairs. Plus, she needed a couple of new books anyway.

  The sun beat down hard as if trying to brand her with a tank-top tan.

  THE RAGGED PAGE BOOKSTORE was her favorite place in the world to kill time on a Sunday. She wandered around, picking up whatever book caught her eye. Over in the photography section she found a coffee-table book called Denver After Dark. The photos inside, all night or twilight shots, were absolutely incredible, a lot more like art than photographs.

  A picture of the photographer was on the back cover.

  Jackie studied her face.

  The woman looked familiar but she couldn’t place her.

  Maybe she’d seen her at a club or something.

  She set the book down, bought a novel called Witness Chase, and headed back to the Porsche.

  She had one more stop to make before heading home, one very important stop.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Day Six - July 16

  Sunday Morning

  ____________

  ASHLEY CONNER WAS ON THE BED in the dungeon, breathing but still not waking even when Wickerfield shook her, evidently in a coma. The blow to her head last night, out in the field, must have done serious damage.

  Wickerfield paced back and forth, half watching her, half trying to figure out if there was any way the events of last night could come back to bite him in the ass.

  If there was anything else he needed to do, now was the time.

  His plan last night had been simple and had worked. When the two flashlights came in his direction he ran into the night, away from Ashley Conner, across the field. As he predicted, one of the two men was faster than the other. Wickerfield let the sucker stay on his heels until they were well separated from the second man. Then he turned, knocked him to the ground and snapped his neck. The other man, when he finally caught up, was bigger and harder to kill, but eventually went the same way.

  Then he ran back to Ashley Conner.

  She was still there, exactly where he left her, still unconscious.

  He carried her back to the dungeon, put her on the bed and locked her in.

  Then he had to deal with the two bodies out in the field.

  He grabbed a flashlight and walked back to see who they were. They turned out to be teenagers, about seventeen, probably on summer vacation before their last year of high school.

  That really complicated thi
ngs.

  They probably lived in the area.

  The search would be vicious.

  Mommies would be crying for their babies.

  Well, too bad.

  They were the ones trespassing.

  They were the ones chasing him.

  So screw them.

  HE WORRIED MOST ABOUT DOGS. He didn’t know where the kids came from or where they were going, but one thing he did know is that he didn’t want dogs following their scent onto his property and having it stop there.

  So he came up with a plan.

  He ran back home, got the jeep and drove back out to where the bodies were. He took off their pants and shirts and left them there on the ground, marking the location with a wooden stake. Then he threw their bodies in the back of the jeep and took them to the barn.

  He walked back to the stake, picked up their clothes and dragged them along the ground, heading off his property, to County Road 6, and then up the road for a full mile. Then he stuffed the clothes into a black plastic garbage bag, sealed it and walked back to the house.

  He put their clothes back on, threw their bodies in the back of the van, and drove about thirty miles east, way out onto the plains, where he dumped them in a wooded area about two hundred yards from the road.

  When he got home he burned his clothes and his shoes, then scattered the ashes and remains on the south edge of his property, more than a quarter mile from the house.

  That was last night.

  HE FELT ASHLEY CONNER’S PULSE. She was definitely alive but not responding to anything, even when he pinched her hard. The coma was definitely real.

  The only thing that bothered him about the events of last night was the fact the jeep tracks—if the cops could trace them—started at the barn, went to a point where the boys had been, and then came straight back to the barn. He decided to remedy that defect by taking the jeep back out in the field and driving all over the place, which he did.

  If asked, he would just say he likes to 4-wheel around the property, which was actually true.

  When he got back to the house he wasn’t quite ready for what he saw. A cop car was pulling into the driveway.