Confidential Prey (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  “Damn it, you might be right.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Put that look of surprise on your face at the same time you’re saying I’m right.”

  He kissed her.

  “Did I do that?”

  “Yes you did.”

  “I’ll say I’m sorry later.”

  “I’ll be waiting for it.”

  Teffinger took a big bite, chewed and washed it down with coffee.

  Tonight’s kill would be pre-arranged.

  It wouldn’t be for fun.

  He was fairly sure of that before but now he was certain.

  At the office, he got a call he didn’t expect, namely the Lakewood detective, Brad Bradley, who was working the murder of Atasha that took place in Teffinger’s bed two weeks ago.

  “Did she seem suicidal?” the man asked.

  Teffinger reflected back.

  “She was down,” he said. “She just got dumped by her boyfriend, she was out in the weather, she was broke and all that. She wasn’t what I’d call happy but she never struck me as suicidal. Why do you ask?”

  “We stumbled across a secret compartment in her purse,” Bradley said. “We found a small vial of liquid in there. I’m getting it tested but I’m pretty sure it’s cyanide.”

  “Cyanide?”

  “Right.”

  Teffinger cocked his head.

  “Maybe that’s how we can identify her,” he said. “Check some of the mental health places out in New York. Maybe they’re run across her.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Remember, though, I’m not positive what it is. It might be some kind of weird New York drug that we bumpkins out here in Colorado never came across before.”

  “Take a hit of it,” Teffinger said. “See if you die or get nutty as a squirrel.”

  “Thanks for the suggestion.”

  “No worries. It’s the least I can do, and that’s what I always do.”

  13

  Day Fifteen

  August 17

  Wednesday Afternoon

  Teffinger shouldn’t be worried about personal issues with the witching hour so close, he knew that, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Raverly and, the more he did, the bigger her lie grew. She was the one who tried to kill him two weeks ago and got Atasha instead.

  He could feel it in his gut.

  It was settling into his bones like some kind of a creeping disease.

  He had no future with her.

  It wasn’t surprising.

  Every time without exception that he thought he’d finally found the one he’d been looking for, something always happened.

  He was cursed.

  He didn’t know why but did know that he was.

  The afternoon dragged.

  Airline manifests came in but nothing cross-referenced. They took to running background checks on every single person coming into Denver. Shady characters emerged but none were of the stature they were looking for.

  “He’s driving in,” Teffinger said.

  “Maybe not.”

  “He is, trust me.”

  Who in Denver warranted an assassination?

  That was the question.

  If they could figure out who the target was they’d be halfway to catching the guy.

  Raverly’s words rang in Teffinger’s ear.

  Don’t give him an inch.

  Don’t even give him half an inch.

  That implied contact.

  It implied a face-to-face square off.

  At this point, Teffinger didn’t see that happening.

  Dark-bellied clouds rolled out of the Rockies in the late afternoon, foot soldiers with a solid army in tow.

  It would storm tonight.

  That would make a complicated situation even more complicated.

  The day dragged on.

  Nothing good happened.

  Leigh Sandt called to report that she couldn’t find any shadows of the man in the FBI’s files, closed or open.

  Teffinger tried to shake the L.A. attorney one final time.

  The man didn’t budge.

  “The blood’s on your hands,” Teffinger said.

  “We both know that isn’t true.”

  The line died.

  Teffinger slumped in his chair.

  It was hours until game time.

  He had nothing.

  Outside it started to drizzle.

  14

  Day Fifteen

  August 17

  Wednesday Night

  The drizzle turned into a rain and the rain turned into a storm and the storm turned into an all-out fury with a demonic soul, battering Denver with punch after punch after punch. It was night and Teffinger had no plan other than to drive around the city randomly and hope to stumble onto something.

  It was one final act of desperation.

  It was an arm cocked in hopes of a sucker punch.

  Raverly insisted on riding with him.

  He could have resisted and probably should have. It wasn’t just against protocol; it was downright insane to let a civilian tag along on a hunt for a serial killer.

  She made a point, though.

  “I stuck my neck out. I earned this.”

  He argued but in the end couldn’t deny her, so there she was sitting next to him.

  His watch said 9:48.

  He had coffee in his left hand.

  The storm battered off the buildings, swung the streetlights and filled the windshield with waves. The wipers swung back and forth at full speed, sweeping the nightscape in and out of an eerie watercolor focus.

  At least a hundred cop cars, both marked and unmarked, crisscrossed the city, all connected to central command, all poised to do whatever needed to be done.

  They gave Teffinger no solace.

  He said nothing.

  His thoughts were braced for failure.

  He could already see himself slumped in a chair at a debriefing meeting tomorrow in a room full of people second-guessing how things could have gone better.

  Heading north on Broadway, he flicked the radio on, got a jingly commercial, and then punched the stations until he landed on Blondie’s “Call Me.”

  Color me your color baby,

  Color me your car.

  Up ahead a woman was out in the weather pacing back and forth.

  “Sex never sleeps,” he said.

  He drifted to the curb, flashed his badge and said, “Go home tonight, honey. It’s not safe out here.”

  “Sure.”

  He pulled away and told Raverly, “She’ll be back as soon as our taillights disappear.”

  Roll me in designer sheets,

  I’ll never get enough.

  Raverly opened her purse and pulled something out.

  “I brought a friend,” she said.

  It was a .38.

  “Do you have a permit for that?”

  “No.”

  “Is it registered?”

  “It’s registered to peace of mind.”

  “That’s a felony, for the record.”

  “Duly noted, for the record.”

  Teffinger had a brief flash of an image of the barrel in his mouth followed by a firecracker pop followed by an absolute and inextricable silent darkness.

  “Wipe your prints off it and throw it out the window,” he said.

  “No way.”

  She shoved it back in her purse.

  Time passed, then more time and then it was midnight.

  No 911 calls had come in.

  No shots had been heard.

  “Maybe he chickened out,” Raverly said.

  “Yeah, you never know.”

  Those were the words that came out of Teffinger’s mouth. The words in his brain though were that the man had quietly taken his mark and already slipped away. A roommate or co-worker or somebody cutting through Wash Park would stumble across the body in the morning.

  Another hour passed, then a
nother and then another.

  It was three in the morning.

  Every fiber in Teffinger’s body ached.

  His eyes drooped.

  He was almost asleep at the wheel and was sick to death of turning corners and circling from one nowhere point to another.

  He hated to mutter the words but he did, “It’s time to give up.”

  Raverly squeezed his hand in silence.

  Then they headed home.

  15

  Day Sixteen

  August 18

  Thursday Morning

  Teffinger had no room for lust in his heart when they got home. He was too filled with failure to even think about making love, much less doing it. He downed a beer and then slipped under the covers with Raverly at his side.

  If she killed him tonight he didn’t care.

  Outside the storm raged.

  It was almost a repeat of the night Atasha got stabbed in the head.

  He closed his eyes.

  He had no adrenalin left in his blood.

  Sleep fell on him almost immediately.

  At some point later, which could have been five minutes or five hours, a slap of thunder brought him to consciousness. He checked the clock and found he’d only been out for ten minutes.

  He closed his eyes again but sleep didn’t come.

  Raverly was dead weight next to him, breathing deeply and rhythmically, curled in a ball.

  His thoughts turned to Atasha and the fact that the poor girl may have been suicidal.

  It was so sad.

  It made him realize that when he thought he had things bad, he was just being a baby. Having a troubled past, getting dumped by a boyfriend out in the rain with only a handful of money in your pocket, that was bad. The things Teffinger portrayed as bad in his own life were nothing compared to that.

  Atasha.

  Atasha.

  Atasha, suicidal but murdered.

  Either way she didn’t stand a chance.

  Who wanted Teffinger dead?

  Who killed Atasha by mistake?

  The storm beat on the walls and rattled the windows.

  The cyanide bothered him.

  It would be a terrible way to go.

  It was so deadly.

  Once ingested, there was no going back.

  Suddenly a strange thought popped into his head. What if it was there to kill someone else? Atasha’s words rang in Teffinger’s ear.

  “I’ll make you breakfast in the morning,” she said. “What do you like?”

  He swallowed what was left the can.

  “If you feel like working up some pancakes, I have fresh strawberries and whipped cream.”

  She shook his hand.

  “Deal.”

  Was the cyanide meant for him?

  Was the whole thing that night a setup?

  Was it a way to get into his house without being seen by anyone from the outside world? Is that why she resisted the offer of the hotel so violently, not because she had an aversion to charity but because her plan the whole time was to get inside his house?

  His heart pounded.

  It actually made sense.

  Atasha had been a hit woman.

  She’d come to kill Teffinger.

  But if that was the case, how did she end up dead? Did a second person come to kill Teffinger too and kill her by mistake?

  It made sense, at least in the abstract, but it was too coincidental. What were the chances of two hitmen coming to kill Teffinger at exactly the same time?

  The chance was zero, or even less.

  Life didn’t work on those percentages.

  But if he wasn’t the target, that meant that Atasha must have been the target all along.

  So what happened?

  Did someone else know Atasha was going to kill Teffinger and then staked out his house until she showed up to do the deed? Did he sneak in, see Teffinger sleeping on the couch and walk right past him?

  The storm pummeled down.

  A whistling came from the sliding glass door at the back of the house, there for a second and just as quickly gone, almost as if it had been briefly opened. The pressure in the house had moved, Teffinger could feel the shift in the room.

  He stood up silently and concentrated.

  Was someone in the house?

  He crept that way.

  Halfway there he realized his gun was on the nightstand.

  He hadn’t been smart enough to pick it up.

  Suddenly the black silhouette of an ominous figure came around the corner.

  Teffinger swung a fist at it with every fiber of strength in his body.

  A grunt came, gruff, belonging to a man.

  Furious fists landed on Teffinger’s face and neck and shoulders and chest. Then a slash ripped across his face. He dropped to the floor, reaching for his face as he did and already able to feel the blood leaving his body.

  Suddenly the lights flicked on.

  A man was standing over Teffinger cocking his arm to bring a knife down in his face.

  “Don’t move!”

  The words came from Raverly, somewhere behind him.

  The man stabbed the knife down.

  Just before it tore into Teffinger’s face an explosion of gunfire erupted.

  The man grabbed his chest, fell backwards and dropped to the floor.

  The knife stayed in his hands but his fingers loosened.

  He gurgled and twitched and then stared at the ceiling with open eyes, seeing nothing.

  16

  Day Sixteen

  August 18

  Thursday Morning

  Mid-morning Teffinger got a call from the L.A. attorney, Michael Decker, who said, “The word on the street is that you killed my client. Is that true?”

  “Is your client’s name Pretson Rail?”

  “It is.”

  “Then it’s true.”

  Silence, then, “He left me a briefcase to be delivered to Raverly Phentappa in the event of his death. Please have her call me to make arrangements for the transfer. She can pick it up her or I can deliver it in person to her out there.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Details,” he said. “Details of twenty-four murders.” A beat then, “Warn her that it’s extremely dangerous. There are fifty people out there in the world at this moment that would kill her if they knew she had it. Me too, for that matter.”

  “Who?”

  “You name it,” he said. “Lawyers, politicians, CIA … Rail was a hitman who worked for a lot of different people. Heads in high places are going to roll once all this becomes public.”

  Teffinger took a sip of coffee.

  “Was Atasha a hitman?”

  “Yes. Her full name’s Atasha Severson.”

  “Was she assigned to kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who hired her?”

  “It’ll be in the notes,” Decker said. “Rail was hired to kill her, which he did, two weeks ago. Then, when she didn’t complete her mission, the same person who hired her in the first place hired Rail to finish the job.”

  “Ironic.”

  “Not really. There aren’t that many hitmen around to draw on. It’s a small pool.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t get,” Teffinger said. “The mark in Denver was supposed to be a woman.”

  Decker chuckled.

  “That just goes to show you that you can trust a guy who murders for a living,” he said. “That was a misdirect. You were the target all along.” He exhaled and added, “There’s one more thing. One of the heads that’s going to roll once you and the FBI and everyone else in the world gets their hands on this briefcase is mine.”

  “You’re dirty?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry, though, I’m still going to hand the briefcase over. It’s time all this comes to an end, including my role in it. I’d like a 24-hour head start.”

  “Let’s make it 72,” Teffinger said.

  “That’s fair.”

  At noo
n, he picked up Raverly at her loft and drove her out to Red Rocks in the foothills. They took a stroll on a dusty path with the Colorado sun beating down.

  “Did I say thanks for saving me last night?” Teffinger said.

  “No.”

  “I will.”

  White gauze strapped into place with white tape covered most of the left side of his face. The cut was long but not deep.

  The doctor who stitched him up was a plastic surgeon.

  There would be a scar but it wouldn’t be of the Frankenstein type.

  The path narrowed as it wound higher into the foothills.

  The earth opened into an expanse to the eastern flatlands. They could see for fifty miles.

  They walked single file with Raverly in front, climbing ever higher.

  “You lied to me,” Teffinger said.

  Raverly stopped and turned.

  “About what?”

  “About not knowing Peyton Rekker,” he said. “You went to his funeral.”

  She tensed, as if caught.

  Then she softened.

  “I didn’t know him,” she said. “I went there with a friend of his. I knew her. I was there to support her. That was it.”

  “You should have said that back when I brought it up.”

  “I didn’t see the need.”

  They walked in silence.

  Several magpies sat in a pinion pine.

  Yellow butterflies dotted the grasses and bushes.

  Raverly stopped and turned.

  “You were right that I lied to you,” she said. “It wasn’t about knowing Peyton Rekker though. I’m going to tell you something horrible. You’re going to despise me and then we’re going to split up. It’s better that it happens now than later.”

  Teffinger’s blood raced.

  The woman was serious.

  The stress was etched on her face.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She looked at the horizon, then at him. “I had a boyfriend last year by the name of Robert Wicks. We were headed to Las Vegas. I was driving, traffic was almost non-existent and I was paying more attention to the radio than the road. There was a car up ahead on the shoulder. A woman was changing a tire on the street side, slightly on the road but not by much. I didn’t see her until the last second. I swerved but it was too late and I ended up hitting her. It was Brooklyn Parks.”