Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  He grabbed her by the arm, just above the elbow, and squeezed. “One good blow,” he said. “Right on the top of the head. She’ll never feel a thing. It’s the most merciful thing we can do.”

  She backed away from him.

  “No,” she said. “We need to get help.”

  The man kicked the dirt.

  “She’s seen our faces,” he said.

  SUDDENLY HEADLIGHTS FLICKERED in the desert, still a long way off, small and dim, but definitely heading in their direction. The man walked towards the wreck with the rock clenched in his fist.

  “Get in the car and turn it around,” he said over his shoulder. “Hurry!”

  SOMETHING SHOOK THE WOMAN VIOLENTLY. She woke up enough to tell she was in a dark bedroom and that someone was frantically trying to wake her from a nightmare.

  The man.

  “Same dream again?” he asked.

  She rolled onto her back and breathed heavily. “Yes.” She rested her hands on her stomach and realized she was drenched in sweat.

  “It’ll be over soon,” the man said. “Go back to sleep.”

  She closed her eyes.

  If only it had been just a dream instead of a memory.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Day Twelve - July 22

  Saturday Morning

  _____________

  TEFFINGER CUT HIS SHOWER down to three minutes, popped in his contacts, threw on jeans and a button-down cotton shirt, and dashed past Rain’s sleeping body with his hair so wet that it still dripped.

  There was no time for cereal or coffee.

  He threw the morning paper, three granola bars, a banana and an empty thermos in the passenger seat of the 4Runner and then squealed out of Green Mountain to the 6th Avenue freeway.

  Heading directly east, the sun broke over the horizon just as he came to Wadsworth and set about blinding him as best it could. He put the visor all the way down but still had to squint from the glare off the hood. There were no sunglasses in the vehicle, of course, because there was some kind of law that he had to either sit on them or lose them within twenty-four hours. In fact, the more expensive they were, the faster he was obligated to do something stupid to them. Cars shot past him doing eighty, reminding Teffinger how he was going to die.

  He knew Sydney was asleep but called her anyway.

  She didn’t answer.

  He called the FBI profiler.

  She didn’t answer either.

  The radio spit out the voice of an incredibly awake morning disc jockey who talked faster than Teffinger’s brain was working. He listened for a few moments, decided that if the guy was a dog he would be French Poodle, and punched him off.

  He turned his attention back to the traffic just in time to see that he was about to rear-end the last vehicle in a string of cars that had come to a stop in front of him.

  He slammed on the brakes and braced himself while the antilocks grinded and mashed, trying to see how many people were in the car ahead.

  The 4Runner miraculously managed to bring its bulk to an uneventful stop and still have two or three inches to spare. He immediately thanked Toyota for equipping the vehicle with sticky tires. The person in the car in front of him, an African American man, powered down his window, stuck his arm all the way out and gave him the finger.

  Teffinger waved apologetically and said, “Sorry, it’s one of those mornings,” just in case the man was a lip reader.

  JUST THEN DR. LEIGH SANDT PHONED HIM. “You called me,” she said.

  She sounded asleep.

  “Right.”

  She must have detected something in his voice because she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Except I just got the bird and deserved it.”

  “The bird?”

  “Yeah, you know, the finger.”

  “Oh, that bird,” she said.

  “Yeah, the Colorado State Bird. Listen, can you meet me at Blake and 19th?”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  He stopped at the 7-Eleven on Broadway. Inside, “Don’t Worry Baby” spilled out of speakers with more treble than bass. Teffinger filled the thermos, grabbed two Styrofoam cups and pulled into the Blake Street parking lot seven minutes later. As he suspected, the blue Tacoma pickup was still there and, in fact, was the only vehicle in the lot besides one other parked about fifteen spaces down, an older model Chevy sedan. Teffinger just finished running the plates when Leigh Sandt showed up, looking confused.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  He filled one of the Styrofoam cups with coffee and handed it to her.

  “Hunting,” he said.

  HE TOLD HER HIS THEORY. An unidentified man was stabbed in the back here last night. Detective Richardson drew the case and conducted the initial investigation. Every indication pointed to a garden-variety robbery gone bad. Teffinger swung by the scene near midnight just to see what was going on, didn’t stay for more than thirty minutes, and concurred with Richardson’s assessment.

  “They found a briefcase here. Inside were eight copies of a book called Denver After Dark. I couldn’t get it out of my head,” he told her. “Why would the dead guy have ten copies of the same book? So I came down this morning to see what cars were still in the lot, found these two, and ran the plates.” He sipped the coffee. “That Chevy over there is registered to one David Poindexter. My guess is that he’s the dead guy.”

  Leigh nodded, starting to get interested.

  “This car here,” Teffinger said, kicking the tire of the Tacoma, “is registered to one Janelle Parker. Coincidentally, she’s the author of the book. Her picture’s on the back of it and guess what?”

  “What?”

  “She’s hot.”

  He paused as Leigh retreated in thought.

  “So,” he continued, “I could see how she’d have ten copies of her book with her, but the dead guy wouldn’t. Meaning she was here. She was the one carrying the briefcase. But her car’s still here, meaning she made it to this spot, but never made it into her car.”

  “So you think our friend took her?”

  Teffinger nodded.

  “She’s gone and there’s a dead guy on the ground. My guess, a Good Samaritan who came over to help.”

  Leigh looked doubtful. “That doesn’t fit the profile,” she said. “This place isn’t secluded enough for his taste. It’s too risky. Think about it. Ashley Conner was a dark alley. Jennifer Holland was a breakdown on an offbeat road.”

  Teffinger shrugged.

  “Maybe he knows that’s where we were looking for him. So he shifted over to where we weren’t.”

  SUDDENLY HIS CELL PHONE RANG. A man’s voice came through, disguised, the same voice that called last week. “Do you want to know her name?”

  “No thanks,” Teffinger said, and hung up.

  He must have had a look on his face because Leigh stared at him.

  “Tell me that wasn’t him,” she said.

  He shifted feet.

  “It was,” he told her.

  “And you hung up on him.”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  She frowned. “We talked about this. I thought we were on the same page.”

  He looked at her, hard, understanding her point of view, but wanting her to understand his as well. “I’m not going to play games with this guy,” he said. “I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Day Twelve - July 22

  Saturday

  _____________

  THIS TIME WHEN STEPPER FIRED HER, Jackie knew deep down that that was that. The decision was irreversible. In hindsight, she shouldn’t have told him about going out last night dressed as bait. He didn’t understand that she was actually safe and could take care of herself.

  “This is too much, Jackie,” he said. “Even for you. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  She didn’t blame him.

  Maybe he was right.

&nb
sp; Maybe she’d turned herself into a crime junkie.

  Maybe the whole thing was a way to pump excitement into her life.

  If Stephen didn’t know who she was anymore, she wasn’t sure she did either.

  She worked at the office all day, then went home and slept.

  She woke up at eight, threw supper in the microwave, and then got herself looking all soft and feminine. Now it was Saturday night, time to forget everything and get laid.

  SHE STARTED WITH SCREWDRIVERS at The Supreme Court, got bored, and headed over to an insanely upbeat nightclub in LoDo where the music was louder and the bodies were sweatier.

  That was better.

  She ordered a drink, downed it, and headed straight for the dance floor. The music controlled her. She was nothing more than a slave, twisting at its whim, unable to remember if another reality even existed. She went with it, letting it wash over her, taking her. A body came behind her, grinding on her from behind, moving with her. She didn’t turn around, not caring who it was, just enjoying the touch. A hand reached from behind and held her stomach, directly on her skin, caressing her abdomen as she gyrated. She looked down and saw it was a woman’s hand. She guided it up to her breast, never missing a beat, and bit her lower lip.

  She hadn’t had a woman in years and now wondered why.

  She turned around, looked into mysterious green eyes, immediately fell in love, and kissed soft full lips as if it was the last kiss she’d ever give.

  THREE ORGASMS LATER, TIRED AS HELL and nearly asleep at the wheel, she drove down her street, almost ready to turn into her driveway, when a yellow light popped out of the darkness up ahead. It looked like a single firecracker, no more than four or five feet off the ground, appearing from out of nowhere and then gone just as fast.

  By the time she registered it as gunfire the windshield of the Porsche exploded.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Day Twelve - July 22

  Saturday

  _____________

  ASLEEP ON THE GROUND, Wickerfield woke when his nervous system detected something wrong with his face. His brain slowly came to life, enough to realize that his lips tickled. He reached up to scratch them and felt a rough object, something that shifted when he touched it. Something alive. He instinctively brushed it with his hand. It moved, but not all the way off, and curled up. A snake! He wrapped his fingers around it and threw. A piece of flesh broke away from his index finger as the reptile shot through the air.

  He jumped up.

  He was in the barn. The snake was ten feet away, curled up in a defensive posture, waving its head in the air and hissing at him. A rattlesnake! He chopped it in half with a shovel and watched both halves twist until they stopped.

  On closer examination he found it was a bull snake.

  He opened the door of the van and confirmed that Janelle Parker was still there, as she should be, chained and drugged. Last night he decided that was the safest place to keep her. He slept next to the van, on the ground, just to be absolutely sure she didn’t escape.

  He threw the reptile in the woods and then went to the house for a shower and coffee as the sun broke over the tree line to the east.

  WHEN HE CAME BACK THE WOMAN WAS AWAKE. He had removed her pants, panties, socks and shoes last night but she still wore the white shirt.

  “I need to use the facilities,” she said. “Bad.”

  “Shut up.”

  He cuffed her hands behind her back, put on leg shackles, and walked her into the house. He didn’t care if she saw the place because she wasn’t going to live to tell anyone. In the master bathroom he let her use the toilet as he stood there and watched. Because of Ashley Conner, no one would ever get any leniency again.

  “Is that better?” he asked.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  He smiled.

  “Good. Come on, let’s get some food.”

  He walked her into the kitchen and had her sit on a bar stool at the island while he made scrambled eggs. Then, with her hands still cuffed behind her back, he fed her and gave her coffee. They chatted, almost as if old friends. Wickerfield knew she was trying to get information to help her escape, or at least figure out how to ingratiate herself so he wouldn’t kill her.

  He didn’t care.

  Let her try.

  He pulled the other bar stool next to hers, so close that they almost touched, and sat down. Then he put his arm around her shoulders. They were full of muscles and reminded him to be careful.

  “The reason you’re here,” he said, “is that someone wants you dead. I have nothing against you. I don’t want to hurt you in any way and, so long as you cooperate, I won’t. What I need you to do is tell me who wants you dead.”

  She looked at him, mystified.

  “Me? Someone wants me dead?”

  Wickerfield nodded.

  “No one,” she said. “I don’t have an enemy in the world. You have the wrong person.”

  Wickerfield shook his head, sadly, as if contemplating what he’d be forced to do if she didn’t cooperate. “You need to help me,” he said, “so I can help you.”

  THEY TALKED FOR A LONG TIME before finally, together, figuring it out. It related to what she saw in the desert last month.

  She camped about a quarter mile off the road, up on a ridge, in a primitive Nevada topography east of Las Vegas. Three cameras sat on tripods, pointed at different parts of the valley, set to continuous exposure to capture the movement of the starlight above the desert floor. They’d be great shots for her upcoming book, Secrets of the Desert.

  At some point during the night, squealing tires woke her from a deep sleep.

  She looked over just in time to see a vehicle roll several times and coast to a stop. Then it sat there, motionless, with one headlight and both taillights still on.

  Not a sound came from it, or a movement.

  She grabbed the binoculars.

  Another car doubled back. A man and woman got out. She could see the woman clearly through the binoculars, but the man never had his face to her. All she could tell about him was that he had extremely long hair, down his back, and moved like he was young.

  He bashed the passenger’s head in with a rock.

  Then they took off.

  She went down to the scene and found everyone dead. Then drove to the nearest town and filed a police report. The police had her work with a sketch artist and she was able give them a very good composite of the female.

  She actually saw the female on the 16th Street Mall last week. She even followed her to see where she went, to get an address or license plate number or something, but lost her.

  Wickerfield smiled.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Day Thirteen - July 23

  Sunday

  _____________

  TEFFINGER PUT THE ARMRESTS into a death grip as the Learjet pushed him back in the seat with serious G’s and then shot up into a black sky at an incredibly steep angle.

  “You should see your face,” Leigh said.

  Teffinger didn’t even respond.

  Sweat dripped into his eyes.

  After a few seconds he craned his neck and looked out the window. The night lights of Denver were disappearing at an alarming rate. Then they vanished altogether as the aircraft pushed west over the Rocky Mountains.

  Rain, sitting in the window seat, leaned around Teffinger and said to Leigh, “He’s such a baby sometimes.”

  Leigh smiled.

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  Teffinger looked first at Rain, then at Leigh and said, “Hey, guys, I’m right here. I can hear what you’re saying.” Then he concentrated on the sounds and movement of the plane, searching for that inevitable telltale sign of a malfunction that would plunge them to their death at any second.

  But minutes passed and they still didn’t fall out of the sky.

  “Next time we’re driving,” he said.

  Rain lea
ned around him again and said to Leigh, “I was hoping to join the Mile High Club, but I think the little guy’s too scared to come out and play.”

  “Hey, I’m right here. Remember? And so is the little guy.”

  Fifteen minutes went by and he started to calm down, at least enough to communicate. “I talked to the chief yesterday about our idea,” he told Leigh. He was referring to the plan that he and Leigh came up with to draw the killer out. “He nixed it,” Teffinger added. “I knew he would. He’s too conservative. We should have just done it and asked for forgiveness afterwards.”

  Leigh nodded.

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  They were the only three people in the aircraft, an FBI charter. Teffinger sat with Rain on one side of the aisle. He wouldn’t leave her in Denver alone. The FBI profiler, Dr. Leigh Sandt, sat on the other side of the aisle. On the seat next to her sat yesterday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.

  Page 8 of that newspaper had a short story about a body that washed up on the beach. The head of that body had a plastic bag over it, duct-taped at the neck.

  BY THE TIME THEY LANDED IN SAN FRANCISCO dawn was breaking. Coming back down to earth wasn’t nearly as frightening as leaving it, until they entered a fogbank so thick that Teffinger tightened his seatbelt six or seven times.

  After they landed without dying, they took a cab to the homicide department of the SFPD and met with a detective by the name of Merle Brown.

  Merle reminded them it was Sunday.

  He usually didn’t work on Sundays.

  Since the body just washed up recently, a positive identification hadn’t been made yet. The body had suffered serious decomposition and it looked as if every small fish this side of Hawaii had taken a nibble out of it. At this point they’d need to review dental records to get a solid identification. But a bracelet still present on the left wrist of the body matched the description of the one worn by a young woman named Tess Singer, who disappeared on March 18th.