Client On The Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by R. J. Jagger

He groaned.

  The sun was high and the humidity was thick. Teffinger cranked over the engine and turned the AC on full blast. Air blew out of the vents, hot at first, but cooling almost immediately.

  “If this next place has snakes, I’m going to let you do the talking,” he said.

  She chuckled.

  “Thanks, you’re so nice.”

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

  The next place—Rituals—and an even darker and more ominous feel than The Serpent’s Kiss. A black girl no more than thirteen or fourteen sat behind the counter, busy making something. She followed Teffinger briefly with her eyes and then went back to what she was doing. After wandering around, Teffinger headed over and leaned on the counter.

  “Hi,” he said. “What are you making?”

  She showed him.

  “This.”

  “Is that a voodoo doll?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s Ryan Green,” she said. “He’s been spending time where he shouldn’t be.”

  “With another girl?”

  She nodded.

  “So you’re going to put a curse on him?”

  “Not a curse,” she said. “I’m just going to make him stop.”

  “Do you think it will work?”

  She didn’t hesitate.

  “It’ll work.”

  “When you see Ryan Green again, tell him I think he’s crazy if he looks at anyone besides you,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Seven.”

  Teffinger shook her hand. “It was nice to meet you, Seven. If Ryan Green doesn’t work out, just go get someone else. You deserve someone nice. There are nice guys out there, if you keep looking around.”

  Someone in the back room coughed, deep and rough.

  Teffinger looked that way.

  The door was open a slit.

  Eyes watched him and disappeared as soon as he made contact.

  Teffinger looked back at the girl. “You see this woman here?” he asked, referring to Jessie-Rae. “Can you put a spell on her and make her like me?”

  The girl laughed.

  Then she studied Jessie-Rae.

  “She’d be tough.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, she just feels strong,” she said. “Why don’t you just treat her nice and see if that works.”

  Jessie-Rae punched Teffinger in the arm.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked. “Treat me nice and see if that works.”

  Outside, walking back to the car, Teffinger raked his hair back with his fingers. The humidity was so thick that it didn’t flop back down. “There was a man in the back room,” he said.

  “I know,” Jessie-Rae said. “But here’s the more important thing—I’m starved. Feed me.”

  Five minutes later, Teffinger spotted a McDonald’s and pulled into the drive-thru lane.

  “She said to be nice to me,” Jessie-Rae said.

  “This is nice.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “You said feed me,” he added. “That’s what I’m doing. If you want something nicer, you need to say dine me.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  He nodded.

  “You need to be precise with your language.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Dine me.”

  The speaker crackled.

  Can I take your order please?

  Teffinger looked at Jessie-Rae.

  “Too late,” he said.

  As he was paying at the window, his cell phone rang and Sydney’s voice came through.

  “Got some big news,” she said.

  68

  W hitney White had been stabbed through the eye. That wasn’t too different from the tattoo that Dawn Hooker put on the mysterious pirate, Robert, years earlier. The more Yardley thought about it, the more she wondered if the two were connected.

  But how?

  There was nothing concrete to suggest that Robert and Whitney White knew each other.

  She looked at her watch—3:42 p.m.

  Time was moving forward.

  Right now, she needed to run the nineteen Roberts to ground and didn’t have time to get sidetracked by a new theory. She jotted it down on a yellow Post-It—Did Robert kill Whitney?—and stuck it on the side of the microwave, just to be sure she didn’t forget, and then set about the task at hand.

  Unfortunately, Google proved to be useless.

  The searches generated too many hits, especially for the Roberts with common last names. Even the less common names generated an unwieldy number of strikes. After a frustrating hour, she closed the computer and headed topside.

  The sun was ferocious.

  Halfway up the steps she remembered she was in her panties and bra. A quick survey of the marina didn’t show anyone in the immediate vicinity, so she kept going. She opened a patio umbrella and bungeed it in place for shade, something she should have done hours ago. Then she tied a rope to a bucket, lowered it into the lake, pulled up cold water and drenched the cushions.

  There.

  Better.

  It was cool enough to be outside now, at least for a while.

  She laid down on her back in the shade, propped her feet up on the back of the boat and watched the mast rock back and forth against the sky. Three seagulls flew past. The wet vinyl felt nice against her skin. Her eyes got heavy and closed. Her mind wandered.

  Then a thought came to her, a wild thought.

  She bolted upright, went into the cabin, opened the yellow pages to Tattoos, and discovered there were a lot more tattoo shops in the Denver area than she anticipated. It didn’t matter because she already knew what she needed to do.

  She needed to find out if Robert got other tattoos of women being murdered; and whether someone then ended up murdered in real life similar to the tattoo.

  Suddenly the boat rocked, meaning someone had stepped on board.

  “Anyone home?”

  The voice belonged to Coyote.

  “I’m down here.”

  Coyote came down, saw the yellow pages opened to Tattoos, and asked, “You going to get a tattoo?”

  Yardley grinned.

  “Yeah, a red skull-and-crossbones, on my forehead.”

  “I always pictured you as more of a rose-on-the-boob kind.”

  “Then you don’t know your target very well. You need to start stalking me better.”

  Coyote chuckled.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” she said.

  Then she kissed her.

  69

  D alton didn’t have time for the pain exploding from his hipbone. He muscled to his feet, charged after Lindsay Vail and caught her at the front door as she fumbled with the deadbolt. Wham! He punched her in the back of the head so hard that his knuckles hurt. She dropped to the floor, twisted briefly and then stopped moving.

  She might be dead and Dalton didn’t care.

  It was her own damn fault.

  He peeked out the front window, keeping his face hidden and expecting to find someone standing at the front door. Instead, a UPS truck was heading down the road, meaning that the doorbell had been nothing more than an announcement to check for a package, if someone happened to be home.

  It was doubtful the driver heard Lindsay’s scream.

  He would have already turned and headed back to the truck.

  The engine would have muffled the sound.

  Suddenly the truck stopped up the road and turned into the driveway of another house.

  A brown shirt jumped out with a package.

  He dropped it off at the front door, rang the bell and walked briskly back to the truck.

  He was clearly continuing with his route. He wouldn’t be doing that if he’d heard Lindsay’s scream.

  Suddenly Dalton’s adrenalin stopped pumping and the pain in his hip intensified. He collapsed on the couch, unbuckled his belt and pulled his pants down. His hipbone was s
eriously bruised but didn’t show any external evidence of breakage or disfigurement.

  Lindsay Vail didn’t move.

  Dalton couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.

  He hoped not.

  That would make things a lot easier.

  70

  S ydney’s big news turned out to be a street rumor that a prostitute named Cynthia Brown was working the Colfax alley the night Ryan Ripley got stabbed in the back.

  “No one’s seen or heard from her since that night,” Sydney added.

  “Meaning she skipped town?”

  “That, or she went deep.”

  “How strong is the rumor?”

  “The usual, third or fourth degree hearsay,” Sydney said. “Not enough for an arrest warrant, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Well, run her down and see if she’ll talk,” Teffinger said. “She may have skipped because she was part of it, but maybe she’s just afraid that whoever did it doesn’t want any witnesses hanging around in a live condition. Either way, she’s the key.”

  Agreed.

  “I’d like to know if it’s her saliva on Ripley’s dick,” he added.

  “Good point,” Sydney said. “How’s it going down there?”

  “I’m learning more about snakes.”

  Eating McDonald’s on the way, Teffinger and Jessie-Rae headed to their next target, a place called Shadow Walkers. When they arrived, a raggedy wooden door was propped open with a metal Gargoyle, meaning no AC. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to wait in the car,” Jessie-Rae said. “The heat’s killing me.”

  No problem.

  Teffinger left the engine running.

  When he returned, she was reclined in the seat with her eyes closed and hip-hop on the radio. Every vent in the car blew cold air at her.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “It’s a possibility, but I’m still more interested in that first place, the one with the snake lady.” He spotted a wayward fry on the seat, popped it in his mouth and pulled into traffic.

  Next stop—The Black Gate.

  “I’m sort of surprised that the station let you off—I mean, you just started on Monday,” he said. “That was pretty nice of them.”

  Silence.

  He looked at her.

  “When I told you before that they let me off,” Jessie-Rae said, “there was maybe a little bit more to it than just that.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, they did say I could take off if I wanted, but I should also consider my ass fired,” she said. “I said fine and that was that.”

  “You got fired?”

  “Yes, but only for about ten seconds, because Geneva jumped in and said if I was fired, then she was quitting.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes,” Jessie-Rae said. “So the bigwigs spent five minutes behind a closed door and then came out and said I could take some time off if I wanted.”

  Teffinger shook his head in bewilderment.

  “I can’t believe you two put your careers on the line.”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  “Well believe it. Geneva said you really helped her out once. She said if I was helping you then she had to help me.”

  “Help is one thing,” he said. “Insanity is a whole different kind of animal.”

  She grinned.

  “What?” he asked, curious.

  “I was just thinking about that snake biting you in the neck. Nothing’s ever normal with you. Do you know that?”

  Teffinger almost answered, but he was more concerned about the car suddenly on his tail.

  Following close.

  Dangerously close.

  Then it rammed him.

  Hard.

  His vehicle left the road wildly out of control and flipped into a death roll.

  71

  A rmed with the newspaper photograph of Robert the pirate, together with the tattoo sketch that Dawn Hooker drew, Yardley drove to tattoo shops Thursday evening to see if anyone recognized the mysterious Robert or gave a tattoo to anyone of a woman being killed.

  Three stops into it, she still hadn’t had any luck.

  At each place, she left a Xerox copy of Robert’s photograph and the tattoo, so they could be shown to other workers who weren’t around at the moment.

  At this rate, it would take a week to hit every shop.

  Not good.

  Blind luck, that’s what she needed.

  As she drove south of downtown on Broadway, a dark blue sedan in the rearview mirror grabbed her attention. At first, she didn’t know why.

  Then she did.

  She’d seen it before.

  Was she being followed?

  She turned into the parking lot of an antique store. When the other car went past, the driver turned her face away. Yardley saw enough, however, to recognize Coyote. She squealed out of the parking lot, sped up and flashed her lights.

  Coyote looked in the rearview mirror at least six times and finally pulled over.

  Yardley stopped behind her, left the engine running, and walked up to confront her stalker. When she got there, Coyote had the window down.

  “How long have you been following me?”

  “That’s not the question.”

  “Oh, no? So what’s the question?”

  “The question is—what’s your interest in all these tattoo shops?”

  “I’m going to get a tattoo.”

  “No you’re not,” Coyote said. “I’m going to go back to them later and find out what you talked about. So why don’t you just save me the trouble?”

  Yardley shook her head in disbelief.

  “I thought we were friends,” she said.

  “We are,” Coyote said. “You know I have you under surveillance. I don’t understand what you’re so upset about.”

  “You are so frustrating.”

  “I have an idea,” Coyote said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t I just ride with you in your car? We can save gas—be nice to the environment and all that.”

  “You got to be joking.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Think green.”

  When Coyote slid into the passenger seat, Yardley said, “I can’t believe I’m actually letting my stalker ride with me. This has got to be the weirdest surveillance to ever go down in the history of the world.”

  Coyote agreed.

  “So what’s up with the tattoo shops? Talk to me—”

  Yardley told Coyote what she would inevitably find out in any event—namely, that Yardley was trying to locate the man who was pictured in the Rocky Mountain News in connection with the disappearance of Lindsay Vail and the murder of Julie Pratt. She also admitted that she believed the man’s first name was Robert, since she had already thrown the word all over town.

  “Why do you think his name’s Robert?” Coyote asked.

  “I can’t answer that.”

  Coyote looked like she was about to ask the same question again using different words, but didn’t.

  “Okay, then, why are you trying to find him?”

  “I can’t answer that either.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “Did he do something to you at one point? Are you one of his victims?”

  “No.”

  “What makes you think he has a tattoo?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Why do you care if he has a tattoo?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  Coyote shook her head and said, “You sure don’t have many answers.”

  “That’s because you’re asking the wrong questions,” Yardley said. “Try a math question. I’m pretty good at math.”

  Coyote grinned.

  “Okay, what’s the square root of 413?”

  Yardley chuckled.

  “That’s easy—twenty point something.”

  “Very good.”
>
  “Put it in your report.”

  The next tattoo shop, ingeniously called The Next Tattoo Shop, popped up on Broadway just south of Evans. Yardley pulled in, killed the engine and said, “Do you mind waiting in the car?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you already know more than I want you to.”

  Coyote opened the door, stepped out and said, “Come on, we’re wasting time.”

  Yardley got out.

  “For the record, you’re the most annoying stalker ever.”

  Coyote kissed her on the cheek.

  “I’ll put it in my report.” As they walked towards the front door, Coyote asked, “If you do find this guy, are you going to tell me his name?”

  Yardley stopped.

  “What’s in it for me, if I do?” she asked.

  “What do you want to be in it for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Coyote must have seen something in Yardley’s eyes because she said, “The next time we pass a liquor store, let’s pick up some wine.”

  Yardley came to a halt.

  “Let me ask you something and I want you to be totally honest with me,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I said sure.”

  “All this coming on to me, is that just part of some grand plan to butter me up?”

  Coyote hesitated.

  “Maybe it was a little at first, but not now,” she said. “Now it’s real.”

  “Is it going in your report?”

  Coyote rolled her eyes.

  “Are you kidding? I’d be fired in a heartbeat.”

  “So you’re vulnerable to the very person you’re stalking.”

  “Yes I am,” Coyote said.

  “That’s something of a predicament.”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’d never use it against me.”

  Yardley looked at the sky.

  Clouds hung low.

  Twilight was coming.

  There would be a sunset later.

  72

  L ate Thursday evening, Dalton flew out of DIA into a cloudy but calm sky. He sat in first class with a vodka mix in his left hand, thumbing through a Rolling Stone. To his right was an incredibly attractive heartbreaker of a woman, casually dressed, no ring, about twenty-five. She ignored him. Halfway to Miami he turned and said, “You haven’t said a word to me the whole flight. That means one of two things.”