Teffinger shook his head.
“No, not at all.”
“Well, you were busy talking,” Rain added.
Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe it meant something. Right now Teffinger wasn’t in the mood to think about it much. “Let’s watch the rest of the tape,” he said.
HIS CELL PHONE RANG AS THEY WATCHED. It turned out to be the FBI profiler, Leigh Sandt, returning his call. “I’m going to take this in the next room,” Teffinger said. It turned out there was no next room, so he wandered down the hall until he found a quiet spot.
“Thanks for calling me back,” he said. “I have some more information I want to run by you regarding our little friend out here in Denver.”
“You have quite the storm brewing,” she said. “I can’t even turn on CNN anymore without getting the latest and greatest.”
Teffinger frowned.
“I’m way out of my league,” he said. “Come to Denver and save my ass, please.”
She exhaled. “You’re doing fine. So what is it that you need to tell me?”
He swallowed. “You’re going to kill me, because I screwed up big time.” With that, he told her about the phone call he received from the mystery man who asked him if he wanted to know the victim’s name. “It was our guy,” Teffinger added. “There’s no question in my mind.”
A pause, then Leigh said, “I thought you were kidding when you said you screwed up.”
“Apparently not.”
“First of all,” she said, “get a cell phone that records. Second of all, keep him talking next time. That’s always Rule Number One. The more he says the more we learn. This is no time for egos.”
He frowned.
She was absolutely right.
“Thanks,” he said. “My ass needed a good kicking.”
“Well, then, consider it kicked.”
He brought her up to speed on everything else going on, including the fact that they were screening the crowd even as they spoke. At the end of the conversation she had just a few parting words of advice. “You’re too much on this guy’s radar screen. He’ll make a play for you, or for that woman you’re hanging around, before this is all over. That’ll be his ultimate victory.”
Teffinger agreed.
“I already know that,” he said.
“I know you do,” she said. “I just want you to hear it from someone else so you’ll take it seriously.”
Chapter Forty
Day Six - July 16
Sunday
____________
JACKIE WAS WRONG about thinking that Stepper was about to tell her that he killed Sarah. In fact, sitting there in the hot tub, those were the first words out of his mouth. “You’re thinking I’m about to confess to killing Sarah,” he said. “Well I didn’t.” He looked away momentarily. “At least not directly.”
Not directly?
What the hell does that mean?
“Okay, here’s the situation,” Stephen said. “Everything I told you about the mysterious Northwest sending me a retainer out of the blue and then calling me and bragging, as reflected in the CD I gave you, is absolutely true. So is the fact that I really don’t know who he is.”
Jackie listened, wondering where he was headed.
“Okay,” she said.
Stephen took a long swallow of diet Pepsi and shifted his body into a more comfortable position.
“Then Sarah and I start going through this god-awful divorce,” he said. “All those assholes who run the newspapers couldn’t find a real story to save their lives, so they start filling their empty pages with stories about me and Sarah. You read all that crap.”
She had indeed.
All the marriage money came from Sarah.
There was a pre-nup.
Stephen Stepper, the infamous criminal lawyer himself, was about to learn how to live like a mere mortal, which served him right.
The womanizer.
The drunk.
The egomaniac.
How’s it feel, Stevie-boy?
“Meanwhile,” Stephen continued, “my mystery client is reading all this. One day he calls me up. I’m in a pissed mood and have a few drinks in my gut. He starts talking about quote-unquote the bitch, and how she’d be better off dead. Of course, I couldn’t agree more. Then he says something like—and I don’t remember the exact words, but it’s something like this—I’ll tell you what, since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll take her out for you. I laughed, and said something like, Perfect. Thanks a lot.”
Jackie processed the information.
“You were joking, of course,” she said.
He looked hesitant, but said, “Of course. I was just ranting and raving. I didn’t think he was serious and never gave it another thought.”
HE LOOKED AROUND THE GROUNDS, almost vacantly, then back at her. “That conversation took place about a week before she disappeared. It’s one of two conversations that I didn’t put on your CD. Then, after she disappeared, which was on May 1st, he called me again. He says it was done and that he buried her body out in the north forty.”
“So he actually killed her?”
“According to him, yes,” Stephen said. “Needless to say, it shocked the stuffing out of me.”
“I can imagine.”
He nodded. “So there I am, all of a sudden, a co-conspirator to first-degree murder.”
That didn’t seem right.
“What do you mean, a co-conspirator? You were just kidding,” Jackie said.
He shook his head.
“True,” he said. “The problem is, I’ve pissed off too many D.A.’s over the years and they’ll just twist it around. The way they’ll see it, I already knew the guy was a murderer, or at least should have reasonably suspected it. When he offered to kill Sarah, my words encouraged him, whether or not I was joking. That, in their minds, would give them enough of a toehold to charge me as a co-conspirator, whether they could actually prove it or not. And in this state every conspirator to a felony offense is as guilty as every other conspirator. They’d go for the death penalty. That’s a given.”
He looked down, beaten.
“Do you still have those two conversations?” Jackie asked.
He looked at her as if she was crazy. “No way,” he said. “They’re long gone, erased, history.”
Silence.
“I need a drink,” he said, muscling his way up. “You want one?”
She did.
“Jack okay?”
“Fine.”
WHEN STEPHEN LEFT, Jackie pulled herself out of the tub to use the facilities. Her body felt heavy, no longer supported by the water, but the sun felt great on her wet skin. When Stephen came back he handed her a water glass half filled with jagged ice and Jack. It looked like the ice got chipped from a block with an ice pick, and briefly reminded her of Basic Instinct.
She made a mental note to rent that again.
“Thanks for not bolting,” he said. “I was afraid you’d dump me, once you found out what was really going on.”
That wasn’t an issue.
She’d known him forever.
He wasn’t the one who came up with the idea of killing Sarah.
He wasn’t the one who did it.
His words had been in jest, irrespective of how the law might treat them.
“Anyway,” he said, “I kept trying to figure out what this guy was up to. After all, no one kills somebody for someone else and doesn’t expect something in return. I’ve come up with two theories.”
“Which are?”
“The first theory is this. He knows he’s eventually going to get caught, for one of his past crimes or a future one. He’s going to ask me to defend him. And I’m going to be motivated as hell, because he’s going to make me an offer I can’t refuse. If I don’t give him the defense of the century, he’s going to tell the cops that I asked him to kill Sarah. He’ll say it was all my idea. Then he’ll tell them where the body is. Sure, he’ll be confessing to another murder
, but at that point it won’t make any difference.”
“Wow.”
Stephen nodded.
“Basically, when I eventually defend him, I’ll be defending myself. I’ll be on trial as much as him, only no one will know it except him and me.”
“Talk about getting an attorney in your corner,” Jackie said.
“Exactly, get the attorney in the muck with you,” Stephen agreed. “The second theory is this. He tells the police that I asked him to kill Sarah and he shows them where the body is. He then agrees to testify against me in exchange for life in prison instead of the death penalty.” Stephen shook his head in apparent admiration. “I’m his trump card, in effect. He’s a clever guy, you’ve got to hand him that.”
Stephen took a long swallow of alcohol.
Jackie did too and felt it drop warm and fiery into her stomach.
“That’s where you came in,” he said. “I wanted you to find out who he is so I can find out where Sarah’s body is. I lied to you about the hit-and-run because I needed you to think he was trying to kill me, so you’d be motivated to find him. I didn’t want to tell you all this other stuff, for obvious reasons. Forgive me?”
She did.
But she also had a question.
“What are you going to do if we find out who this guy is and where he buried Sarah?”
He cocked his head. “I’m going to dig her up and dump her where she’ll never be found. Then, if this guy does in fact eventually go to the police, his story will be total baloney because there won’t be a body.”
“And you’re off the hook,” Jackie said.
“Exactly.” He sipped the Jack and looked her in the eyes. “So my life is in your hands. That’s why I came to you instead of a private investigator to begin with—I don’t know any investigators well enough that I’d trust my life to them.”
Chapter Forty-One
Day Seven - July 17
Monday Morning
_____________
THE DAWN BECAME LIGHTER with each passing minute and then started to take on a warm golden color. At this rate the morning sun would be visible above the horizon line in the next ten minutes or so. Wickerfield picked up the pace, now running five-minute miles according to his best guess. Black-and-white magpies were in the sky, already searching for food. From somewhere off in the far distance came the familiar sound of a tractor firing up. He didn’t particularly like to run in the morning, but with the temperature scheduled to break a hundred again today, there wasn’t much choice. Either get up early or get fat.
He’d take early.
He reflected on yesterday, the day from hell.
The knock on the door had been the cops, telling him that they’d traced the missing boys to a path that went through his property and wanted to rope off a few areas and bring experts in to have a look.
Did he mind?
Or would they need to get a warrant?
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said. “Anything at all to help.”
They came back later, eight people all told, and spent over an hour in the field. Wickerfield intentionally walked out to visit them, just to be absolutely sure that his scent was at the scene, and from the scene to the house, in an explainable way. The dumb asses never suspected a thing. He walked all over the area with them and listened in on their discussions. About all they could tell was that the boys made an abrupt change in direction at two different locations. At one of the locations, it looked like the grasses were matted down more than normal, almost as if they had milled around there for some reason.
But they found no forensic evidence.
No clothing.
No footprint impressions—the ground was way too hard and dry for anything like that.
No blood.
No nothing.
No stake hole.
In the end, the zigzag line of scent was interesting but unexplainable.
SEVEN MILES INTO THE MORNING RUN he still felt good and decided to go for twelve instead of ten. Plus that would give him more time to think. The burning question he needed to resolve, and resolve fast, is what to do with Ashley Conner.
He didn’t like having her in the house with so many cops hanging around. If they somehow came to the conclusion that he was implicated in the disappearance of the two boys, they might surprise him and show up with a search warrant—unlikely, but possible. The safest thing to do would be to kill her and dump her, and the sooner the better.
Then he needed to clean the dungeon like a madman to be sure her fingerprints and DNA were gone. He needed to check every square inch of it also, to find out if she scratched or wrote her name or other incriminating comments somewhere. He wouldn’t put it past her to pull up the carpet somewhere and scratch something on the concrete underneath, especially after the fingernail incident.
He also needed to wipe her down so he didn’t leave any DNA or fingerprints on her body. The best thing to do would be to stick her in the bathtub after she was dead and scrub her with antiseptic soap or bleach, wearing gloves of course. Then wrap her in a clean bed sheet, carry her to the van and dump her somewhere after dark, but not in Teffinger’s truck this time.
Teffinger would be smart enough to have surveillance cameras installed by now.
Maybe he’d dump her where the other woman had the flat.
Her car would be towed by now.
It was a remote location.
Plus, it would make a neat tie-in.
He could almost read the headlines already: Victim One’s body is found where Victim Two was taken!
He smiled.
Yeah, that was neat.
He could live with that.
That’s what a rock star would do.
HE STOPPED RUNNING A QUARTER MILE from the house, to give his heart and metabolism an opportunity to slow down. Then he showered, rounded up the duct tape and plastic bag and headed downstairs to the dungeon.
Ashley Conner was in the exact same position he had left her, lying face up on her back. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
He pinched her.
She didn’t react.
She wore gray drawstring sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt. Her chest hardly pushed the shirt up at all. She had no real tits to speak of. The flat chest made her look like a little girl.
He ran his fingers through her hair.
It was soft, a lot softer than his.
“Well,” he said. “Time’s up. It happens to all of us sooner or later.”
He picked up the bag and positioned it over her head.
He could actually feel the grim reaper in the room.
Then he picked up the duct tape.
“Nighty-night,” he said.
Chapter Forty-Two
Day Seven - July 17
Monday Morning
_____________
TEFFINGER’S MORNING TURNED INTO a rapid-fire series of events. A security company installed a motion detection system and a surveillance system at his house. Rain came down to headquarters to view the videotape of the vans obtained from the bank on Broadway, but none of the drivers’ faces seemed familiar. Teffinger gave her a cell phone while she was there and programmed all his numbers on speed dial. He had a series of coordination meetings with Sydney Heatherwood and Katie Baxter.
Then the autopsy report for Jennifer Holland landed on his desk.
It was true disappointment.
She hadn’t been raped or sexually assaulted. No DNA had been found anywhere on her body—no skin was found under her fingernails, no third-party saliva showed up on her nipples, mouth or face. Nor had any fingerprints been found on her body. There were no strange fibers or third-party hairs in her hair or anywhere else. The cause of death was suffocation. A trace of duct tape glue was discovered on her neck. The best guess is that someone had put a plastic bag of some sort over her head and then duct taped it around her neck. She was tied down at the time, which explained the bruises on her ankles and wrists. Other than those marks there was no physical
trauma evident on the body, the little freak.
Unfortunately, he’d been smart enough to remove the bag and tape before dumping the woman’s body in the back of Teffinger’s truck, probably because he knew they were such good conductors of prints.
He was a careful little prick, you had to give him that much.
Teffinger wanted Rain to be somewhere safe, and Jena Vellone offered to invite her along for the day. At first Teffinger balked at the idea. Jena knew too many things from Teffinger’s growing-up years, not all of which were flattering. No doubt Rain would end up with an earful before the day was over. But after reconsideration he really didn’t care. He had bigger things to worry about right now and liked the idea of Rain being with someone he could trust. The last thing he wanted was for her to be alone, anywhere, which not only meant her apartment but his house as well.
He was at his desk, downing yet another cup of coffee, when the phone rang.
IT TURNED OUT TO BE T-VON, THE TRANSSEXUAL from Colfax, the human with the Adam’s apple of a man and the legs of a goddess. He had some bad news to tell in that semi-feminine voice of his, no doubt because that’s the way Teffinger’s life worked lately.
“No one knows where Paradise’s money went,” he said, which meant that any chance of recovering the twenty-dollar bill and printing it were gone. Teffinger wasn’t surprised. Money disappears faster than innocence on Colfax. “Also, I remembered something after you left,” T-Von added.
“What’s that?”
“Well, basically, I remembered seeing Paradise after I saw her in the alley,” T-Von said. “So whoever was in there with her wasn’t the one who stuck a knife in her head anyway.”
Teffinger frowned.
Oh well.
It figures.
Back to square one.
“Hey, thanks anyway,” he said. “I really mean it,” which was true.
Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller) Page 15