Sudden Guilt (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

Ta’Veya shook her head and said, “First of all, I think this is from yesterday, judging by how wrinkled it is. Second of all, we have work to do tonight.”

  THEY ENDED UP IN GOLDEN FOR SUPPER at a jam-packed watering hole called Woody’s, sitting in a corner booth eating salads and keeping one eye on the door. The crowd was an eclectic mix of Colorado School of Mines students and older locals. All-you-can-eat pizza was the main draw, that and pitchers of beer.

  Ta’Veya told Paige what she’d found out today, namely that Mitch Mitchell was in and out of his house randomly all day. Sometimes he’d disappear for a few hours. Other times he’d show back up in five minutes.

  She saw him walking across the living room with a shotgun at one point. For some reason she sensed he was setting a booby trap. She pictured a string, one end attached to the doorknob and the other to a trigger.

  He came back home around 2:00 p.m. and carried a number of boxes from his car into the house. She wasn’t positive but was pretty sure it all had something to do with a security system. She wouldn’t doubt it a bit if there were tiny cameras and lasers all over the place now, maybe even tied into some type of transmission device that alerted his cell phone.

  “We were so close,” Ta’Veya said. “Five more minutes and we would have had him. I know it.”

  “Well it’s too late now,” Paige said.

  “Unfortunately you’re right. Whatever goodies we could have found last night are gone by now. Either that or hidden where we wouldn’t find them in a year.”

  “So what do we do?” Paige asked.

  Ta’Veya looked as if she had an idea.

  But was hesitant to verbalize it.

  “What?” Paige asked.

  “Okay,” Ta’Veya said, “this is sort of crazy but here it is. We keep him under surveillance as best we can. I’m going to look into buying a GPS tracking device or something for his car, if there is such a thing. But we also turn our attention back to Aaron Trane.”

  “Aaron Trane? Why? He’s definitely not the guy.”

  “I know that,” Ta’Veya said. “But once we confirm that Mitch Mitchell is, it would be nice if we had someone else to kill him besides us.”

  Paige stopped chewing, shocked by the idea.

  “Trane could eat him for breakfast any day of the week and not even burp,” Ta’Veya added. “Our job is to get some dirt on Trane so he ends up with enough motivation when the time comes.”

  “You mean blackmail him?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  Ta’Veya nodded in agreement.

  “There’s no part of any of this that’s sane, honey,” she said.

  Paige chewed on the idea and found it simultaneously both crazy and pragmatic.

  In fact she felt a sense of relief at the formation of a plan that might actually get her life back to normal once and for all.

  “What makes you think there’s dirt to get?” she asked.

  “You mean on the guy who had you spread out naked on the floor and beat his drums into your ears while he thought of what your punishment should be?” Ta’Veya said. “Give me a break.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Day Five—May 9

  Friday Night

  ______________

  TEFFINGER PAINTED MOSTLY PLEIN AIR. He brought the canvases home and then let them collect dust for a month before looking at them with a fresh eye. Most of them at that point needed a few more brushstrokes, a small dab of just the right color, or some other minor adjustment to bring them up to commercial grade. He usually made those final tweaks to several paintings at once. That’s what he was doing Friday night when his cell phone rang. Unfortunately, the ring came from the living room. He almost blew it off, but then ran for it with a paintbrush still in hand.

  Good thing too.

  It turned out to be call he was waiting for.

  Ta’Veya.

  She apologized for not getting back to him sooner. “I have some stuff going on this evening, but I’m going to be able to break away at some point,” she said. “Do you want to hook up when that happens?”

  He did.

  “It may be late,” she warned. “After midnight.”

  He didn’t care.

  He needed to see her.

  “Not a problem,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “But be warned, I’m bringing dessert. So don’t go spoiling your appetite.”

  HE FINISHED UP IN THE STUDIO, scrubbed the turpentine off his hands and went out for a three-mile jog. Thirty seconds after he got back his phone rang. At first he thought it was Ta’Veya, but it turned out to be Barb Winters from dispatch.

  The woman with the new breast implants.

  She had news.

  Very interesting news.

  Rain St. John had been found. She was alive but traumatized. The responding officers were just now securing the scene, about a half mile up a gravel road from a place called the Camel’s Breath.

  “I’m on my way,” Teffinger said.

  “You need directions?”

  “No, I know where it’s at.”

  “You do?”

  “That’s where our old friend Nathan Wickersham got one of his victims last year,” Teffinger said. “Jennifer Holland, to be precise.”

  “Right, I remember that now. Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll check my crystal ball and get back to you.”

  HE SWUNG BY THE 7-ELEVEN ON SIMMS to get coffee. When he got there and felt around in the back seat of the Tundra for an empty thermos, he remembered taking them out for an all-expenses-paid vacation to the dishwasher. So he bought yet another new one, dumped in five French Vanilla creamers and poured leaded on top. The B-52’s “Hot Lava” came from speakers somewhere.

  Then he hit the road.

  Five minutes later he was back for a disposable cup.

  The guy behind the counter looked familiar.

  “What’s your name?” Teffinger asked.

  “R.J.”

  “R.J. what?”

  “R.J. Jagger.”

  “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

  The man studied Teffinger and shook his head.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It seems like I know you from somewhere.”

  “Sorry, you don’t seem familiar,” the man said.

  When Teffinger got to the scene, Rain St. John had already been taken away by ambulance. One of the responding officers turned out to be Rex Higgins, a wild-man who straddled both sides of the law. The last Teffinger heard, Rex had been on a Harley headed for a few days of R&R at Sturgis, the last rider in a pack of ten, and mysteriously went down doing ninety.

  That got him a free ride in a flight-for-life helicopter.

  One he didn’t remember.

  Teffinger shook his hand and asked, “Did you ever find out what took you down?”

  “Nothing concrete,” he said. “Just a vague image in my brain every now and then of my ex-wife sticking a needle in a Voodoo doll.”

  Teffinger chuckled.

  “I’ve never had an ex-wife,” he said.

  “Well I’ve got two if you want one.”

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “If I take one though, it’ll need to be the nice one.”

  “That would be the one with the Voodoo doll.”

  “Ouch.”

  Rex told him what he knew so far, namely that a guy and a girl from that white Cougar over there came up the road by mistake, turned around at the dead-end, and then got a flat on the way back. When they got out, they spotted a naked woman in the front seat of that blue Saturn over there. They checked on her and couldn’t wake her. They thought she might have OD'ed and called 911.”

  Teffinger looked around and didn’t see them.

  “Where are they?”

  “They were gone when we got here,” Rex said.

  Teffinger nodded.

  Understanding.

  The
y didn’t want a DUI.

  “There’s roofing nails all over the road,” Rex added. Then, to prove it, he took Teffinger over and showed him with his flashlight.

  “I’m impressed,” Teffinger said. “I don’t have that many in my whole roof.”

  THE SATURN WITH THE FLAT TIRES was registered to one Tracy Patterson. At least according to the wallet in the console between the front seats.

  Judging by her driver’s license she was cute.

  The woman found in the car was Rain St. John.

  “So he takes a new victim and leaves the old one,” Teffinger said. “An exchange of some sort.”

  Rex scratched his head.

  “Exchange. That’s the word I was trying to think of. Weird, huh?”

  Teffinger nodded.

  “Very.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Day Five—May 9

  Friday Night

  ______________

  TARZAN HAD NO IDEA if his new catch was rich or poor, smart or dumb, sinner or saint, or Sue or Amanda—nor did he care. Right now she was nothing more than 110 pounds of bait stashed under a blanket in the back of his Wrangler speeding down the freeway at sixty miles an hour.

  Bait.

  Bait.

  Bait.

  Young sweet bait.

  She stayed perfectly and wonderfully unconscious until he was able to get sufficiently away from the city lights to pull over and stick a syringe in her ass, an incredibly taut ass, to be precise. Then he took her to the hideaway and got her stripped and chained in the bedroom.

  Déjà vu Rain St. John.

  Then he sat down on the front steps to be absolutely sure no one followed. The familiar chorus of crickets sang. In the distance a coyote barked, then another, and in the span of a few seconds a whole pack yapped and yelped. He pictured something lower in the food chain scrambling for ten more heartbeats of life.

  Suddenly the yelping stopped, meaning they’d caught it, whatever it was.

  Now on to the next hunt. He had to admire them, as hunters. They wore their teeth up front. Their mission was clear. They couldn’t trick their prey. And yet they lived on from one generation to the next.

  Human hunters had it a lot easier.

  They could hide their teeth.

  They could confuse their prey.

  They could even pass themselves off as vegetarians if they had a mind to.

  THE MOON WASHED THE NIGHTSCAPE with a muted radiance, not unlike a giant nightlight up in the sky. Trane studied the lunar craters and nervously pondered the big question, namely whether Robert Sharapova, Esq., the fancy-pants lawyer, witnessed the abduction.

  Everything hinged on that.

  Everything.

  Not knowing was driving him nuts.

  He knew that the basic elements of the plan had been in place. He knew, for instance, that Del Rae had taken Sharapova to the Camel’s Breath, a seedy and therefore safe place where no one who lived in Sharapova’s stratosphere would be caught dead and hence wouldn’t see him.

  He knew that Del Rae got Sharapova good and sloppy drunk.

  He knew that she drove him down the gravel road and parked at the end, under the auspices that she needed his cock in her mouth right now and couldn’t possibly wait until they got to her place. Once she got there she’d flip the toggle switch. She’d make an excuse to move her car only to discover it wouldn’t start. Sharapova the hero would try, and maybe even check under the hood, but in the end would be baffled. They’d have to walk out when it came time to leave.

  But it wouldn’t be time yet.

  Forget about the stupid car.

  First Del Rae had to have his cock in her mouth.

  Trane knew that Del Rae would have seen him tap the brake lights, meaning that the car headed up the road towards the turnaround would be the target.

  What he didn’t know is if Del Rae got Sharapova out of the car in time to start walking down the road and get close enough to the abduction in time to witness it.

  He was pretty sure she did.

  They didn’t have to walk that far.

  He had taken his good old time on purpose. He did everything in front of the headlights. They could have seen him clearly fifty yards away.

  So, all the pieces fit.

  Sharapova must have seen it.

  But still—

  Trane knew his mind wouldn’t stop spinning until Del Rae called and told him definitely one way or the other.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER SHE CALLED.

  “Bingo,” she said.

  “It went okay?” he asked.

  “Perfect,” she said. “I’ll fill you in later. I got to go now. Be ready for tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Likewise.”

  “Get ready to be rich,” she said.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually pulling this off.”

  “Well, believe it,” she said, “because we are.”

  He punched off.

  Then beat his Tarzan chest and yelped at the coyotes.

  One of them barked back.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Day Five—May 9

  Friday Night

  ______________

  PAIGE AND TA’VEYA PARKED THE AUDI on the other side of the railroad yard and then snuck over to Aaron Trane’s on foot through the dark, a solid twenty minute trek. No lights came from inside the building. They circled around to the east where they could see the garage doors and settled into the shadows behind a small electrical shed.

  The moon threw a light patina over the world.

  They both wore jeans and dark pullover sweatshirts.

  Ta’Veya picked up a pebble and flicked it with her thumb. “We need to get into those photograph drawers,” she said. “That’s where we’re going to find our dirt.”

  Paige wrinkled her forehead.

  There was no way she would ever step foot in that place again.

  “Don’t even talk about it,” she said.

  “I’m just saying as a last resort if all this other stuff doesn’t work,” Ta’Veya said. “I guarantee you he has a picture of Marilyn Poppenberg, all tied up in his pretty little blue rope with a screwdriver sticking out of her ear. When I close my eyes I can see him jerking off to it.”

  Paige didn’t disagree.

  Aaron Trane killed Poppenberg.

  “That’s what we need to concentrate on, is those pictures,” Ta’Veya said. “If we can get our hands on them, we’ll have him on a leash. Then we get him to kill Mitch Mitchell after we confirm he’s our collar man. Then we’ll turn Trane in to the cops.”

  Paige said nothing.

  They’d already talked about it a number of times.

  Conceptually it still made sense.

  But there was a million ways it could go wrong.

  A million ways they never talked about.

  Then she had a thought. “The other thing that might help us is if we could get to his tools,” she said. “Maybe the screwdriver in Marilyn Poppenberg’s head came out of a set. It would be interesting if he had the rest of that set in his garage, minus that one piece.”

  Ta’Veya slapped her on the back.

  “Good thinking, girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Now I see why you’re the up-and-coming lawyer and the rest of us aren’t. The only thing I would add is that as long as we’re inside getting your tools, we may as well stop upstairs and get my pictures.”

  Paige grunted.

  “You don’t quit, do you?”

  No, she didn’t.

  Blame the boxcar and the razorblade.

  PAIGE WAS HALF ASLEEP when Ta’Veya shook her and said, “Company.” Sure enough, a lonely pair of headlights cut through the darkness, bouncing up and down as if on a short-framed vehicle.

  Flickering lights lit up the side of a building.

  —A fire hydrant.

  —An old shirt hanging on a chain-link fence.
>
  Thirty seconds later the garage door opened and a dilapidated Jeep Wrangler pulled inside. Trane hopped out dressed in ragged jeans and an old flannel shirt, holding something that looked like a wig.

  The garage door closed almost immediately.

  “Weird,” Ta’Veya said.

  “Very.”

  “What’s he doing driving that piece of crap on a Friday night when he’s got a Ferrari sitting in the garage?”

  “And those clothes—I’d go naked first.”

  There were no windows on this side of the building so they hiked over to the railroad yard. There they climbed a gritty steel ladder to the top of a boxcar, pulled in the scene with binoculars and found Aaron Trane in the shower.

  They couldn’t believe his body.

  “Too bad this guy’s so weird because I could sign up for that in a heartbeat,” Ta’Veya said.

  Paige swallowed.

  “Tarzan,” Ta’Veya added.

  After the shower, he pulled a beer from the fridge and played the drums.

  They listened.

  He was actually pretty good.

  Then he stopped and disappeared into the stairwell.

  There was no sign of him for over fifteen minutes.

  “Maybe we should get down,” Paige said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if he spots us here we’re trapped.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ta’Veya said. “There’s no way he can see us. I can hardly see us.”

  Suddenly they saw him.

  Up on the roof of the building, not much more than a black silhouette against a not-quite-as-black night; barely perceptible but definitely him. His hair was dry now and hung like a lion’s mane.

  “See, he’s still there,” Ta’Veya said. “You worry too much.”

  Paige exhaled.

  True.

  Three seconds later a small light flashed from the roof.

  Almost immediately a bullet ricocheted off the top of the boxcar.

  “I’m hit!” Ta’Veya said.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Day Six—May 10

  Saturday Morning

  ______________

  TEFFINGER WORKED THE SCENE of Tracy Patterson’s abduction, down the road from the Camel’s Breath, until two in the morning. Ta’Veya didn’t call the entire time and still hadn’t by the time he got home. He went to sleep with the cell next to his pillow. When the first rays of dawn fingered their way into the room and pulled him back to consciousness, he checked the phone.