Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  “We talked about it being a mercy kill,” Brooke said. “But deep down there was more to it. She was a witness.”

  They came back to Denver without incident and thought it was all behind them, except for having to live with what they had done.

  Then Aaron discovered there was a witness. “In fact, you were with me the day he told me,” Brooke said. “Remember? When we were walking through the construction site at Image?”

  Jackie remembered.

  Brooke got a call from Aaron, something that clearly upset her. Jackie asked if Brooke was having relationship problems but Brooke said no, it was something else.

  “Yes, I remember,” Jackie said.

  BROOKE CONTINUED.

  “The witness was a photographer who had been camping out in the desert and saw the whole thing. She gave the police a good composite sketch of me.”

  Jackie lit a match and watched it burn.

  “Okay.”

  “I threw up at the scene,” Brooke added. “So the police had my DNA and blood alcohol count. If they ever tied me to the crash, I was screwed. Once they found me it would just be a matter of time until they found Aaron. He’d go down for murder. Hell, we’d both go down for murder.”

  Brooke swallowed and fidgeted with a pencil.

  “We found out the name of the witness: Janelle Parker. It turned out that she actually lives in Denver. Since you and me look a lot alike, and since you get on the news so much, we were scared that it was only a matter of time before she saw you, thought you were me and called the police.”

  SUDDENLY JACKIE FLASHED BACK.

  “So the woman who followed me on the 16th Street Mall, the one who disappeared into Stephen Stepper’s building, that was . . .”

  “Right.”

  “. . . Janelle Parker.”

  “Right. She thought you were me,” Brooke said.

  Another flashback.

  “I was in the Ragged Page Bookstore after that,” she said. “I remember picking up a book, it had photographs of Denver in it. The author’s picture was on the back cover. I knew I recognized her from somewhere but couldn’t place her.”

  “That was Janelle Parker.”

  BROOKE STOOD UP AND PACED.

  “Then things got worse,” she said. “Stepper hired you to find out who his mystery client is. I came by your office one day to drop off some draft employment policies. Aaron was with me. You played us the latest conversation between Stephen and his mystery client. You said that both you and Stephen believed that Stephen’s client was the same person who was terrorizing Denver.”

  Jackie nodded.

  “I remember that,” she said.

  “Well,” Brooke said, “Aaron recognized the guy’s voice. He was a professor from Berkeley who stopped at CU the summer before last during some kind of national tour, talking about recent mathematical breakthroughs or some such stuff. Anyway, Aaron recognized his voice. He’d forgotten the professor’s name, but we dug around a little and found an archived listing of events. Aaron recognized the guy’s name when he saw it—Nathan Wickerfield.”

  “That’s the guy,” Jackie confirmed.

  BROOKE BOWED HER HEAD.

  “Then it got even worse,” she said. “We figured this guy was going to kill someone anyway, so why not Janelle Parker? We smashed a window in his house and broke in, just to rattle him up. Then we blackmailed him. We called him up and told him we knew who he was. We told him to take out Janelle Parker. That’s why Aaron and me went out of town last weekend, so we’d be somewhere far away, in public and with plenty of witnesses. That way if the police ever figured out that we had a motive to kill Janelle Parker, we’d have an alibi.”

  “Wow.”

  “Right, wow.”

  Brooke dabbed at her eyes.

  “So Wickerfield actually took her just like he was supposed to,” Brooke said. “Aaron and me heard about it and thought it was all over. Except it wasn’t. Instead of killing her he interrogated her to find out who would want her dead, figuring that’s who was blackmailing him. He found out that she witnessed the crash in the desert. He found that out she gave a composite sketch to the police. He got a copy of that sketch from her house. Janelle Parker told him she saw the woman, me, on the 16th Street Mall. Actually, of course, she saw you and thought it was me. Anyway, he hung around in the area looking for the person in the sketch and saw me one day when I came out of your office building. He followed me and got my license plate number. He used that to get my name and address. Then he kidnapped me.”

  Jackie was shocked.

  “He kidnapped you?”

  Brooke nodded. “He told me the whole story while he had me captive. That’s how I know it. Then he made Aaron kill Janelle Parker, while he videotaped it,” Brooke said.

  “Aaron killed Janelle Parker?”

  “To save me,” Brooke said. “That’s the only reason the guy let me go. Now he thinks we’re at a standoff and it’s all over. But he’s wrong.”

  “What do you mean, he’s wrong?”

  BROOKE PACED EVEN FASTER.

  “Sooner or later the police are going to catch him,” she said. “They’ll find the tape of Aaron killing Janelle Parker. So tonight, Aaron’s going to pay this asshole a visit and get that tape. Then he’s going to kill him.”

  “Aaron’s going to kill Nathan Wickerfield?”

  Brooke nodded.

  “Yes. Tonight.”

  “Tell me you’re not going with him.”

  She hesitated and then said, “He won’t let me. He’s going alone. But you can’t call the police. We can’t have the police anywhere near that guy’s house until we get that videotape back. After Aaron kills him, there won’t be a need to call the police anyway.”

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday Evening

  _____________

  WICKERFIELD SET THE TORCH down to rest for a few moments while he surveyed his handiwork. With another twelve inches of cutting he’d have a hole in the dungeon door big enough to step through.

  “Daddy’s coming, Ashley,” he shouted.

  “Go away!”

  “You’ve been a bad girl,” he added.

  “Screw you!”

  “Ten more minutes,” he said.

  It was then that he felt something poke him in the back. When he turned, Aaron Cavanaugh had a gun pointed in his face. Behind him stood Brooke Jax.

  His heart raced.

  He tried to think of a way to kill him, right here right now, in the next two seconds, but nothing came to mind.

  “No games,” Aaron said. “We want that videotape. Now!”

  He held his hands up as if in surrender, and said, “Sure. No problem. It’s in the barn.”

  Aaron waved the gun at him.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They walked to the barn, then through it all the way to the far end. A ladder led up to an elevated storage area. Wickerfield leaned against a workbench, and nodded to the area. “It’s up there,” he said.

  He watched Aaron Cavanaugh think deep, as if deciding whether he should climb up himself, send Brooke, or make Wickerfield go up.

  Wickerfield reached behind his back, as if steadying himself, picked up a circular saw blade lying on the bench and threw it as hard as he could.

  The blade hit Aaron Cavanaugh directly in the forehead.

  It sank into his skull and stuck there, so deep that it didn’t fall out when the man hit the ground.

  The woman screamed and ran.

  Wickerfield bounded after her.

  “Come here, bitch!”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday

  _____________

  BY FIVE O’CLOCK NEITHER TEFFINGER nor Sydney could figure out why they both seemed to recognize the picture of one of the men from the airline manifest, Nathan Wickerfield. When the lobby phoned him and said Rain St. Croix was waiting downstairs for him, ins
tead of taking her out to supper he brought her up to the office.

  “Where do I know him from?” he asked.

  She shrugged but continued to stare at the picture.

  Finally she said, “I don’t know, but he does look familiar somehow.”

  Teffinger folded it up and stuck it in his shirt pocket. “I’m starved,” he said. “Let’s get some food.”

  They ate burgers and drank beer at the Outback.

  Then took a long walk.

  They were back at his house, just before dark, when he looked over to find Rain drawing glasses and a moustache on the printout.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “but this could be the guy I saw in the van, down on Speer.”

  “The guy we chased?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought you said you recognized that guy as one of the TV crew who was at the apartment building.”

  “Right,” she said. “Him. He was walking down the stairwell when I was coming up. I got the feeling he turned around and stared at my ass.” She drew the moustache darker. “In fact, that’s probably why he seems familiar to you and Sydney—you must have seen him there that day.”

  Teffinger thought about it.

  Then he called Alicia Beach, the news reporter, to ask her if she had someone named Nathan Wickerfield on her TV crew that day at Ashley Conner’s apartment building.

  She didn’t answer.

  He left a message and then called and left six more.

  She didn’t return his calls, maybe because she had already gone to bed.

  Finally he said, “Come on, let’s take a ride.”

  Two minutes later they were in the 4Runner heading to Nathan Wickerfield’s house with a pair of binoculars in the back seat.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday Night

  _____________

  JACKIE FREAKED OUT when the night came and Brooke no longer answered her phone. Brooke’s promise that she wouldn’t go to Wickerfield’s with Aaron tonight was beginning to seem more and more like a lie.

  Jackie pictured her dead or dying.

  Then Stepper called her. He said he was leaving in a few minutes to dig up Sarah’s body. He wanted to be absolutely sure everything was still safe and that she hadn’t told the cops anything.

  “I’m heading out there too,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s too complicated.”

  “No. You can’t.”

  “I have to.”

  “You’re going to blow it for me,” he warned.

  “I’m sorry about that but I don’t have a choice.”

  “Damn it!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “All right,” he said. “At least let’s drive out together.”

  That made sense.

  If wouldn’t hurt to have a strong man at her side. Plus she could show him exactly where Sarah’s grave was.

  She holstered the gun under a loose fitting sweatshirt and paced frantically waiting for Stephen to show up. She dialed Brooke’s number every sixty seconds and got nothing but the stupid voice mailbox.

  Stephen finally swung by in a Ford F-150 pickup truck—which he would use to transport Sarah’s body—and she followed him in the Mustang, heading north on I-25 at five miles over the speed limit.

  THEY GOT OFF THE FREEWAY and headed towards Wickerfield’s place down a deserted road. The night was black and the road was bumpy. Without warning Stephen pulled over to the side and killed the engine.

  She pulled in behind him, confused.

  “Got to piss like a madman,” he said.

  She did too, actually.

  They each headed to different sides of the road and disappeared into the darkness. She squatted and peed in the weeds. Just as she pulled her pants back up Stephen stuck a gun in her back.

  “Jackie, you screwed up,” he said.

  WITH THE GUN IN HER SPINE and a handful of her hair in his fist, he made her walk a long way into the darkness.

  “At least tell me what I did,” she said as they walked.

  “You’re going to tell the police about Wickerfield,” Stephen said. “You think it’s your moral duty. You think it’s important enough to violate attorney-client confidentiality.”

  That was true, but only to a point.

  “Not until you get Sarah’s body out of there,” she said. “I’m no threat to you, Stephen. You’ll end up okay.”

  He pushed the gun into her back and kept her walking.

  “Here’s the problem,” he said. “Sooner or later you’re going to find out the truth. If you’re the kind of person who’d turn Wickerfield in, you’d turn me in too. And we can’t have that.”

  Her mind raced.

  What did he mean, The Truth?

  “What truth?” she asked.

  “SURE, WHY NOT,” HE SAID. “I guess you have a right to know why you’re going to die. Nathan Wickerfield did in fact start out as a mystery client, just like I said. But then I found out who he was. I killed Sarah and buried her on Wickerfield’s property. That way, if the police ever found her, they’d think he did it. After all, he is a killer.”

  “You killed Sarah?”

  “Of course,” he said. “She was a bitch. Trust me, she deserved it.”

  She fell to the ground and he pulled her up.

  “Tell me you’re kidding,” she said.

  He laughed. “Then, after the fact, I figured out that my little plan wasn’t as foolproof as I thought. I started to worry about the police making the connection between Wickerfield and me, and thinking that I asked him to kill Sarah, in exchange for money or legal representation or something. I worried that Wickerfield might even go along with it and take me down to get a deal for himself.”

  “I can’t believe you killed Sarah,” Jackie said.

  “So,” Stephen continued, “I needed to shore up my story somehow. So I hired you, told you about a mystery client, and the fact that the client killed Sarah. I had you investigate it. Then, later, if the need ever arose, I would waive the attorney-client privilege and have you talk about all our conversations where I said that the mystery client killed Sarah, and even paid you big money to find him. I’d have you talk to the police, the press, and maybe even get your testimony in at trial. You were my alibi, in effect.”

  HE YANKED ON HER HAIR AND BROUGHT HER TO A STOP.

  “Far enough,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to actually find anything. But you were too good for your own britches. I fired you twice but you still wouldn’t stop. Then I put a gunshot through the window of your Porsche to scare you off.”

  “That was you?”

  “Of course it was me,” he said. “That still didn’t get you to back off. Then you not only found Wickerfield but also found Sarah’s body. Now you want to go to the police.”

  “Stephen,” she said. “I would have never figured this out.”

  He disagreed.

  “Yes you would have,” he said. “You never stop. But even if you didn’t, I still can’t have you making a call to Teffinger and stirring everything up. The last straw for me was finding out that you’d turn in Wickerfield. If you’d turn him in, you’d turn me in too.”

  He paused.

  “The police will look for me,” she warned. “They’ll connect me to you.”

  “Wrong,” he said. “They’ll connect you to Wickerfield, because that’s where your body will be buried, if it’s ever found. You were getting too close to him—passing out your business card to all those gas stations, going out into the night dressed as bait, sucking up to Nick Teffinger, and all the rest—so he had to take you out.”

  “Stephen. You won’t kill me,” she said. “We’re friends.”

  Silence.

  “Just say you won’t kill me,” she said. “Let’s just go back to Denver and forget that any of this ever happened. We can still make all this work out.”

  More silence.

  “The time for t
alking is over,” he said. “I’ll give you a moment to make your peace.”

  She already had her gun in hand, out of the holster, hidden under her sweatshirt.

  Instead of making her peace she fired at his chest.

  He fell to the ground and she ran.

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday Night

  _____________

  WICKERFIELD MADE BROOKE JAX sit on the toilet and watch as he filled the bathtub with cold water. He didn’t say a word to her.

  He didn’t need to.

  She knew what was coming.

  She was stripped down to her panties.

  Her hands were tied behind her back with the belt from his bathrobe.

  He walked over and pulled her to her feet by her hair.

  “We’re going to take our time and have a lot of fun,” he said.

  Then he threw her in the tub on her back and held her head under water. She kicked her legs like a maniac, splashing water all the way to the ceiling. When it seemed like she was about to give up he yanked her head up.

  “Having fun?” he asked.

  Then he pushed her under again.

  The legs kicked, so beautifully, so helplessly.

  Suddenly he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Someone ran into the room pointing a gun at his head. A woman.

  “Die you asshole!” she screamed.

  She shot just as her feet went out from under her on the wet tile.

  The bullet came so close that it brushed through Wickerfield’s hair.

  She hit her head on the floor, and crawled disoriented, but still had the gun in her hand. Her face was insane.

  She fired again.

  And again.

  The woman in the tub had her head out of the water, gasping for air, sensing a rescue and kicking at him.