Confidential Prey (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  The walls were a vice.

  The stillness of the air was a crypt.

  In the evening after everyone left, he scooped up all his papers and reclaimed his old spot. He told everyone it was because it was closer to the coffee pot, but when they paced it off it was actually three steps farther.

  He didn’t care.

  He could breathe there.

  Right now, he paced next to the window, throwing mean glances at his cell phone sitting there in the middle of his desk, as if he could will it to ring by sheer willpower.

  It didn’t ring.

  Minute after minute after minute passed and it didn’t ring.

  Then one of the detectives from the property division walked into the room, a non-confrontational woman by the name of Joanne Lee who’d been given the dubious assignment of going through Teffinger’s old cases to see if anyone popped out as having a motive to murder him, over and above the ordinary.

  “I’ve been concentrating on release records,” she said, referring to felons who recently got paroled. “There’s none with your name tattooed on their forehead, at least that I can see.”

  He nodded.

  He also didn’t care.

  Sure, he was a target, but things had been calm for two weeks, not to mention he had bigger things on his mind.

  “I did find one thing of interest, though,” she said.

  Teffinger cocked his head.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, do you remember that guy you killed with your hands last year.”

  Teffinger winced.

  He remembered.

  Everyone remembered.

  Teffinger had been tailing the guy in connection with three recent murders. A confrontation erupted and Teffinger defended himself, choking the man to death with his bare hands in the process. Afterwards, they found out he was the wrong man.

  The killing was ruled justifiable and Teffinger was cleared following an investigation. Still, deep down in his bones in the middle of the night when no one was looking, he had to admit that he probably could have backed off.

  “I remember him,” he said.

  “Well, get this,” Joanne said. “Somehow Raverly Phentappa is connected to him. She’s that hot little CNN gal that everyone drools over.”

  The words dropped with the weight of a planet.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  No, she wasn’t.

  She wasn’t kidding at all.

  “How’s she connected?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “She was at his funeral though.” She handed Teffinger a photo and said, “See, that’s her right there. Do you recognize her?”

  He did.

  Just like that the ceiling was too low, the windows were too small and the walls were too close. He needed air and needed it now.

  Outside he walked at a maniac pace.

  The sun beat down and soaked into every pore of asphalt and wood and plant and bug and dog in the city.

  It sucked the juice out of Teffinger’s body.

  He didn’t care.

  He had a question on his mind.

  Was Raverly the one who tried to kill him?

  Was she avenging Rekker’s death?

  His phone rang.

  A man’s voice came through, one he didn’t recognize.

  “You wanted me to talk to me,” the man said. “So here I am.”

  “I’m not in the mood right now,” Teffinger said.

  He hurled the phone at a telephone pole.

  It hit and shattered.

  10

  Day Fourteen

  August 16

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Back at homicide he headed up to forensics and dumped the contents of his cell phone on Paul Kwak’s desk next to a bag of celery and carrots.

  “What’s with the rabbit food?”

  “It’s the wife’s idea,” Kwak said. “She says I’m getting fat?”

  “Getting?”

  “Not funny. It turns out these are actually negative calories. It takes more calories to chew them than you get.”

  “Well, be careful you don’t disappear altogether. Someone called me on that cell phone a half hour ago. See if you can find out who.”

  Kwak gave it a curious stare.

  “What happened to it?”

  “It dropped out of my pocket.”

  “Were you in a plane at the time?”

  “Yeah, let’s say that.”

  “Oh, by the way, you still have that ’67, right?”

  Yes, he did.

  “I know a guy who’s looking for one.”

  “Mine’s not for sale.”

  “If you change your mind let me know.”

  “Tell the guy he can buy my first son after he’s born. That car is staying in my garage, though.”

  He got a new cell phone and had the old number forwarded to it. Then he called Sydney, who’d left him three messages.

  “Okay,” she said, “Ashlyn White was a senior associate in Petcher & Sands, which is San Francisco’s biggest law firm. We’re operating under the assumption that her death was somehow connected to her law practice. Right now we have three detectives down here at the firm interviewing every single employee.”

  “How many is that?”

  “Close to three hundred, including support staff,” she said. “So far no one has much to say about Ashlyn other than she was a great person and they’re totally baffled. There’s a lot of whispering going on about one of the uppity-ups though, a senior partner by the name of Austin Bent.”

  “What kind of whispering?”

  “The kind that suggests he might be involved in something heavy.”

  “Like what?”

  “Unknown.”

  “So what’s your theory? That he killed Ashlyn?”

  “That’s possible; or even more possible, he might have hired someone to kill her,” she said. “Maybe Ashlyn found out something she wasn’t supposed to. Maybe she was going to turn it over to the police.”

  “That’s speculation,” Teffinger said.

  “Yeah, but it’s speculation that fits,” she said. “Assume for the moment that Bent hired somebody to kill Ashlyn and assume that person who killed her is the Mr. K you’ve been talking to, which is just about certain given that he knew where the body was. What that means is that Mr. K is a killer for hire.”

  “An assassin?”

  “Use whatever word you want,” she said. “The bottom line is that the woman he’s going to strike in Denver tomorrow night is someone prearranged, someone he’s getting paid to hit.”

  Teffinger scratched his head.

  It made sense but it didn’t quite fit.

  What was wrong?

  Then it came to him.

  “Part of his other history is Brooklyn Parks,” he said. “I’ve known her since high school. There’s no way she would ever be a hit. She was just your basic nice person through and through.”

  “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t a hit,” she said. “Anyone can become a hit. She could have seen something she shouldn’t have. Someone might have told her something. She might have had a secret life. You never know.”

  Teffinger frowned.

  “He ran her over out in the desert,” he said. “That’s not the way a hit goes down. That was fun.”

  “Well, maybe we’re both right. Maybe he’s an assassin who also kills on the side for kicks.”

  Teffinger chewed on it.

  Then he said, “See if you can find out who Bent was talking to prior to Ashlyn’s murder. I’m starting to think you’re right in that Mr. K may very well be on that list.”

  11

  Day Fourteen

  August 16

  Tuesday Evening

  The emotion of the afternoon burned off and got replaced with a silent sense of doom as the day waned on and the evening crept in. Hurling the cell phone into the telephone pole was now something Teffinger would take back a hundred times if he could.


  Raverly called North every half hour throughout the day.

  The man never answered.

  When she called the firm directly, she was told North was out of the office for the rest of the day. She left messages for him to call.

  He never did.

  They were in homicide, Teffinger and Raverly. Everyone else was gone. Outside the twilight was growing ever deeper and now teetered on the edge of night. The windows were almost full black. They had microwave spaghetti in their guts and dirty forks in the sink.

  Teffinger needed a beer but the room was a security blanket. Going home meant the day was over. Staying here meant it wasn’t.

  He slumped back in his chair.

  “It’s my fault about North,” Teffinger said. “I should have never tried to intimidate him. Everything I’ve done in this case has been wrong.”

  Raverly sat on the edge of the desk.

  “Not everything,” she said. “There were a few moments back in Vegas that you handled pretty well.”

  He smiled.

  Suddenly the door opened and Kwak from forensics came in. By the expression on his face the news was good.

  “Got the number,” he said, referring to call Teffinger so eloquently smashed into the telephone pole. “It’s an L.A. number registered to Michael Decker.”

  “Michael Decker,” Teffinger repeated.

  He punched the man’s name into the keyboard and got no criminal records. Then he Googled the phone number and got a hit. It appeared on the contact information for an attorney named Michel Decker.

  “I thought the call came from Mr. K,” he said. “It looks like it actually came from the mysterious L.A. attorney we’ve been looking for.”

  Kwak slapped him on the back.

  “I’m out of here,” he said. “Call me at home if you need anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  Raverly’s phone rang and the voice of the private investigator Jack Bahamas III came through. “Got those phone numbers for you,” he said. “I put them in a PDF format. Give me your email address.”

  She did.

  Thirty seconds later she had the display on her phone.

  “There it is,” she said. “It matches your number. When you got the call this afternoon, what exactly did the guy say?”

  He wrinkled his forehead.

  “The best I can remember it was, You wanted me to talk to me, so here I am.”

  “That would be consistent with the attorney,” she said. “North must have told him that you were trying to find out who he was.”

  Teffinger paced.

  “Should I call him?”

  “I don’t see how it could hurt.”

  That was true.

  His blood raced.

  He grabbed Raverly by the shoulders and said, “I killed a man last year. He was a suspect in a savagely mean murder, his third across the country. I was tailing him, he spotted me and we got into a confrontation. He ended up dead. His name was Peyton Rekker. Do you know him?”

  She stepped back.

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Just answer,” he said. “Do you know him?”

  A beat then, “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I know of him,” she said. “The case was in the papers and there were allegations of excessive force. You were cleared.”

  “That’s right, I was cleared.”

  She looked into his eyes.

  “Just between you and me, did they get it right?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Do you want the truth?”

  Yes, he did.

  “A lot of men have tried to parade into my life over the years, Teffinger,” she said. “You’re the first one in a long, long time that I’m thinking about letting in.”

  He turned away.

  She was lying to him and telling him she loved him at the same time.

  The contrast hurt his brain.

  “I’m going to call the lawyer,” he said.

  She squeezed his hand.

  “Answer my question first,” she said. “Did they get it right?”

  He exhaled.

  “They got it 70 percent right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For being honest.”

  He raked his hair back with his finger. It immediately flopped back down over his forehead.

  “It doesn’t come naturally,” he said. “I have to work at it.”

  “As long as it comes.”

  He dialed the L.A. lawyer, Michael Decker, who answered on the third ring.

  “Why’d you call me before?” Teffinger said.

  “Because you’re threatening Anderson North,” Decker said. “He’s a mouthpiece, nothing more and nothing less. I want to be crystal clear that you understand that. He has nothing to give you so leave him alone.”

  Teffinger exhaled.

  “Let’s stop this stupid dance,” he said. “Give me the name of your client and let’s be done with it.”

  “That can’t happen.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  “I want you to know something,” Teffinger said. “Brooklyn Parks was a personal friend of mine. I’ve known her since high school. What happened to her out there in the desert, it’s personal to me.”

  The phone was silent.

  Then Decker said, “I never heard of anyone named Brooklyn Parks.”

  “Your client never told you about her?”

  “No.”

  “Then how’d you pass the information on to North?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You know what I think? I think that maybe you and your client are the same person.”

  He hung up.

  12

  Day Fifteen

  August 17

  Wednesday Morning

  Teffinger tossed all night with the equivalency of a rowboat adrift in a hurricane and paid for it with a deep exhaustion when he woke Wednesday morning. Raverly, still sleeping, hadn’t killed him during the night, so he had at least that much going for him.

  He didn’t have energy but set out on a pre-dawn jog nonetheless, letting the cool thin air clean his lungs and wash his brain.

  Today was the day.

  He had a few tricks left but not many. He’d get more airline manifests today and be able to cross-reference them against San Francisco and Las Vegas. If he got a hit, maybe he’d be able to trace the name to a hotel. Most hotels had security cameras. That would give him a face to attach to the name. If the guy rented a car, he’d also have a license plate number.

  Things weren’t totally hopeless.

  Still, the emptiness in his gut was tangible.

  He felt like the smaller guy in the ring, hoping to land a sucker punch.

  He ran three miles under the streetlights.

  When he got back, Raverly was in the kitchen wearing a T that hung mid-thigh over bare island-girl legs, whipping up pancakes. She put her arms around his neck and said, “I’ve been thinking about tonight.”

  “And?”

  “And, you’re basically a good guy inside, Teffinger.”

  “Basically?”

  “Right, basically,” she said. “Don’t let yourself be your own enemy tonight. If you get a chance to kill him, do it. Don’t give him an inch.”

  “That’s not the way it works.”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “You get a better book if he’s alive,” he said. “You have a chance to pick his brain.”

  “Don’t give him an inch,” she said. “Don’t even give him half an inch. The world will be a lot better off without him in it.”

  She poured two cups of coffee, handed one to him and said, “I’ve been thinking about what that L.A. attorney Michael Decker said, about him never telling North anything about Brooklyn Parks.”

  Teffinger frowned.

  “He wa
s just screwing with me.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t,” she said. “Maybe he was telling the truth.”

  “How could he be?”

  “Okay,” she said, “it goes like this. You wanted details on a murder, right? So you had a sense that this guy was really legit—”

  Teffinger took a sip.

  It was hot.

  It was heaven.

  “Right.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What if Decker told North only about one murder, namely Ashlyn White, which would be enough to prove Mr. K’s pedigree.”

  “But—”

  “Hear me out,” she said. “What if North is the one who killed Brooklyn Parks?”

  “North?”

  “Right, think it through,” she said. “Here North is, in a position where he’s feeding information to a detective from a killer who’s owning up to murders. All he had to do was slip in information on a second murder—one done by him—and let you think Mr. K was confessing to it. That gets North off the hook.”

  Teffinger grabbed plates out the cupboard and set the table.

  “So he was framing Mr. K, that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Precisely.”

  “The more I think about it, the more it fits,” she said. “Maybe when you rattled North yesterday you had a bigger effect than you realized. Maybe that’s why he never called me back. Maybe he’s feeling trapped.”

  She slid pancakes onto the plates.

  Teffinger smothered them with strawberries and whipped cream and sunk in.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The problem is that Brooklyn was just a hand sticking out of the dirt. No one was going to ever find her by accident. Hell, even looking for her, it took us a long time and a truckload of luck.”

  “Yeah, but North wouldn’t necessarily know that,” she said. “He dumped the body—when?—almost a year ago, in September of last year. He never went back to it. He didn’t know it got covered up.” She speared a strawberry with her fork and brought it to Teffinger’s mouth. “That explains why Ashlyn White was an assassination out in San Francisco but Brooklyn Parks was more in the nature of a fun kill. It wasn’t the product of one guy with two dimensions, it was the product two different guys.”

  The words stuck.

  They made sense.