Pretty at Law (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  “This is it,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  The roll-up delivery door had a two-foot gap at the bottom, exactly like it should.

  Silke got her head down to ground level and shined the light in.

  “Brace yourself. The smell isn’t pretty.”

  She got flat on her stomach and edged her way inside.

  Neverly followed.

  Fifteen steps inside they found the horrific remnants of a body that was now little more than bones and scraps of flesh. Gruesome bits and pieces were scattered in all directions as if they’d been ripped off by powerful jaws and dragged to where they could be devoured in peace.

  The head was little more than a skull and gooey clumps of hair.

  The face was totally eaten off.

  The ears were gone.

  Flies were everywhere, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands. As soon as Silke brushed one off her face, two more landed.

  Neverly took twenty or thirty photos.

  Then Silke said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Outside Silke studied the buildings across the street, particularly the upper levels. Then she headed for one, not the one directly across, the one just south of it and said, “Follow me.”

  “Why?”

  “To find a place where you can videotape Teffinger responding to his own murder.”

  They entered through a broken rear window, using a rusty 55-gallon drum as a ladder. Enough light weaved in through cracks and holes to let them find an open stairway. They took it up four floors and made their way to the front of the building.

  A pane of window glass was partially broken out, leaving a gap the size of a football.

  “We’ll position you right here,” Silke said. “This side of the building is in the shade. From the outside, no one will see anything but darkness if they look up.”

  Neverly agreed.

  “I’m starved,” Silke said. “Let’s get a bite. Then you can come back and set up. I’ll make an anonymous call to the police regarding a body. Then we’ll sit back and let them respond.” She smiled. “God this is fun.”

  12

  Day Three

  June 6

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Tuesday afternoon Teffinger got a call from Barb Winters in dispatch to the effect that a body had been found down in the old warehouse district.

  “Who found it?”

  “From what I understand, some lady overheard two homeless guys talking about it. She didn’t know if it was true or not but decided to make a call anyway and phoned it in to Precinct 9. They sent a patrol car over to sniff around and sure enough, there was a body. They said it’s a mess. It looks like dogs got to it.”

  “Okay, I’m on it.”

  He swung by Sydney’s desk.

  “Field trip.”

  “A body?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “A messy one.”

  At the crime scene, Teffinger’s palms sweated at the sheer horror of the human carnage randomly disbursed on the concrete floor. He wiped them on his pants and told Sydney, “I don’t know what killed her, but we’ll treat it as a homicide if for no other reason than she shouldn’t be here.”

  “You think someone dumped her?”

  “Either that or forced her here,” he said. “I want you take the lead.”

  The surprise on her face was palpable.

  “Really?”

  “That Decker Zero trial is going to be screwing me up next week,” he said. “It’s time you took a lead, anyway. You’re ready.”

  “I take back half that stuff I said about you,” she said.

  “Only half?”

  “That’s more than fair.”

  He pointed the flashlight at the stairs and headed up.

  “Where you going?”

  “Just to scout around.”

  That wasn’t true.

  He needed to clear his head. The woman’s blood was in the bed of his truck. Sure, he’d wiped it down, but forensics could find it if they looked. The broken beer bottle with the woman’s blood was in a plastic bag hidden deep in the guts of the furnace room.

  So was the rope.

  So was the bloody button.

  He got to the top floor. The windows were boarded with plywood. He peered out through a gap. Down below was the crime unit van, cop cars with lights flashing, crime scene tape, the coroner’s van, people with serious faces, all there because of him.

  Suddenly he saw something he didn’t expect.

  Across the street, a building down, someone in the upper level was behind a busted window pointing a camera at the scene. Teffinger looked harder and definitely detected movement. Who was it? A reporter? No car sat at the base of the building.

  Teffinger headed down the stairs, out the back of the building and then down a full block until he was out of sight.

  There he crossed the street.

  Behind the buildings on that side was a weed-invested string of rusty tracks. He walked down the rails until he got to the building at issue.

  On cat feet, he entered through a rear window and headed up.

  On the top floor at the front of the building was a woman.

  “Hi there,” Teffinger said.

  The head turned.

  It belonged to Neverly Cage.

  Her face was etched with stress. She took a step back and said, “Don’t hurt me.”

  He stopped.

  “No one’s going to hurt anybody. We’re doing dinner tonight, remember?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s off.”

  “It is?”

  “It’s way off. I know what you did Saturday night after you left the D-Drop. So does Silke Jopp. A man named Preston has a videotape of the whole thing.”

  Suddenly his phone rang and the voice of Barb Winters came through from dispatch. “Got some more job security for you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I was,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Up near Vasquez at the edge of a switchyard.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s a woman,” she said. “Someone stabbed her in the chest.”

  Teffinger got the exact location, confirmed he’d respond and directed his attention to Neverly.

  “Is your car here?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s down a couple of buildings.”

  “Why don’t you give me a ride? We can talk on the way.”

  “After you killed someone?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll pay the price for what I did,” he said. “I’m not trying to get away with anything. But first I need to get Decker Zero behind bars.”

  13

  Day Three

  June 6

  Tuesday Afternoon

  The new crime scene wasn’t as horrific as Rain’s but was more than gruesome enough for Teffinger’s taste. The victim was a woman in her mid to late twenties with long thick hair. She’d been beaten badly and stabbed in the heart with a large knife that was nowhere to be found. Most of her clothes had been cut off. By the looks of things she hadn’t just been raped, but raped hard. It all took place at the remote end of an old BNSF switchyard near a silent string of broken boxcars. She’d been dead less than a day. The attack probably took place last night under the cloak of darkness.

  She looked familiar.

  Teffinger didn’t know her but he’d seen her around; where or when he couldn’t remember.

  A search of the entire switchyard, all the way to the road, didn’t turn up her purse. If she was chased to where she met her fate, she wasn’t carrying her purse at the time. She didn’t drop it in a panic.

  Her shorts were ten steps from the body.

  They were jeans material in the nature of Daisy Dukes.

  Teffinger went through the pockets and found no car keys or identification. In the front pocket was a small amount of money, less than twenty dollars. In the back pocket, however, was something worth find
ing; a cell phone. Teffinger called his phone from hers, got the incoming number, and traced the registration to one D’aylor Alexander.

  “What happened to you, D’aylor? Did some asshole spot your legs and decide he needed to have them?”

  Teffinger called her phone from his and listened to the message.

  Her voice was familiar.

  He’d heard it somewhere.

  He racked his brain trying to place it but got nothing other than more rack.

  Processing the scene carried Teffinger into the early evening. En route home he called Sydney and said, “Did you get an ID on your body?”

  “Negative.”

  “Did you run her prints?”

  “I did. She didn’t show up.” A beat then, “You sound weird. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  A pause.

  “Okay, be like that,” she said. “Why don’t I come over tonight? I’ll bring some wine and pretend that everything you say makes sense.”

  He pictured it.

  Ordinarily it would be perfect.

  Tonight wouldn’t be ordinary though.

  He laid low. The heat morphed into twilight and the twilight morphed into night. At 9:45 he got in the ’67, rotated the headlights up and pointed them towards downtown. He kept the radio off and reflected on his conversation with Neverly Cage this afternoon.

  “You were seriously drunk,” she said. “I don’t think you would have killed her if you were sober.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Is that a defense, being drunk? Legally speaking, I mean.”

  He frowned.

  “Not if it’s self-induced.”

  She smiled.

  “Well in that case you’re SOL because you definitely spent more than a few hours inducing it.” She grew serious and added, “You know, Teffinger, the power to make all this go away lies with you. It doesn’t have to get ugly. Silke doesn’t care about bringing you to justice. All she wants is a happy ending for Zero.”

  Teffinger studied her.

  “What about you? Do you care about bringing me to justice?”

  “I’ll probably go to hell for it some day, but no,” she said. “If your identification of Zero ends up getting fuzzy and the charges end up going away, you won’t have to worry about me down the road. I’m not going to tell anyone what went down. I’m not going to blackmail you. Neither will Silke.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “You can keep your job and bring twenty more Zero’s to justice.”

  Teffinger pondered it.

  “Tell me about the meeting between Preston and Silke,” he said. “Where’s it going to be? And when?”

  “Silke’s office, 10:30. You didn’t hear it from me.”

  That was this afternoon.

  Now it was night.

  Teffinger parked the ’67 in a lot with a guard not far from the stadium then took up a spot in the shadows across from Silke’s building. There were three reserved parking spots directly in front of the entry. A silver 5-series BMW sat in one of them. The other two were empty.

  It was 10:20.

  The buzz and the bars were three blocks over.

  Here the windows were dark and the streets were empty.

  Headlights swung around a corner and punched this way. Teffinger wedged farther into the shadows and watched. An older model Ford F-150 pickup slowed as it passed. It was the same style and color as the one in the CD. A man was behind the wheel. His face was pointed at Silke’s building as if scoping it out. A block later he turned to the right and disappeared.

  “Come on, don’t be afraid.”

  Two minutes later the vehicle returned.

  This time it pulled next to the beemer and the lights went out. A man stepped out, briefly looked around, and then headed for the front door. It opened before he could knock. Silke came into view. She was dressed in jeans, a T and tennis shoes.

  The man entered.

  The door closed.

  Teffinger’s blood raced.

  He waited a full minute and then another. He saw no one in either direction and then headed across the street with a GPS tracker in his right hand.

  He slid under the back of the vehicle being careful to not scald his flesh against the exhaust pipe and got the device securely fixed on the frame. He worked his way back out, looked at the license plate and memorized it.

  Then he headed back into the shadows and scribbled the plate number onto the back of a business card.

  Fifteen minutes later the door opened and Teffinger got his first good look at the man. He was average height, five-ten or thereabouts, with an equally average build—the kind of guy Teffinger could pound into oblivion at will. His lip was swollen and his left eye was black and blue, no doubt compliments of Teffinger’s fists Saturday night. Teffinger had to admire the guy for interceding. He’d been up against a superior foe from the get-go.

  A leather briefcase dangled from his right hand.

  The deal had gone down.

  14

  Day Three

  June 6

  Tuesday Night

  Teffinger followed the GPS east on I-70 into a stinky neighborhood that sat downwind of a dog-food manufacturing plant. Ironically the place wasn’t too far from the BNSF switchyard where Teffinger spent most of the afternoon.

  The truck was sold from one of those dubious dealerships on south Broadway six months ago. The license plate was registered to one Preston Lee.

  Teffinger swung past the man’s address and found the F-150 parked in the driveway. The interior of the house was dark except for one upstairs light. That light was out the second time Teffinger swept past.

  He parked down the street and killed the engine.

  Fire was in his veins.

  His instinct was to bust in and teach the man a lesson about playing fast and loose with Teffinger’s life. The gratification would be so extreme that it would almost be worth the consequences; almost, but not quite.

  He let the thumping in his chest dim.

  His eyes grew heavy.

  He closed them, just to give them a moment of rest. It felt like climbing into a soft warm bed. He let them stay shut longer than he wanted.

  “Ten more seconds,” he told himself. “Just ten more.”

  He awoke some time later behind the wheel of the ’67 with a serious crimp in his neck. His watch said 5:09. Every bone in his body was a limp noodle. His muscles were heavy and filled with mush. It was all he could do to get out of the car, wander over to the bushes and take a piss.

  The air was cool.

  Somewhere out in the darkness a dog barked.

  It was for him.

  He’d been warned.

  Preston Lee’s house was still dark but something was different. It took a moment before Teffinger finally realized what it was. The pickup truck was no longer in the driveway.

  He zipped up and headed that way.

  The doors and windows were locked but a sliding glass door to an upper-level deck off the upstairs bedroom was open. Teffinger muscled up a deck post and entered.

  The briefcase wasn’t in the first place he looked, under the bed. It was in the second place though, in the master closet, tucked behind a box.

  He checked to be sure the money was still inside.

  It was.

  He took it and left.

  15

  Day Four

  June 7

  Wednesday Morning

  Getting home shortly before dawn, Teffinger set the briefcase on the bed and counted the money, which was in denominations of twenties and fifties. To his amazement the full five hundred was in there. He expected only half that with the balance to come after trial. Apparently Silke wasn’t as good a negotiator as her reputation suggested.

  Preston was screwed.

  He didn’t have a single additional cent coming.

  He’d probably think that Silke was somehow behind the theft. He’d figure that she had someone outside the office getting his license p
late number while he was inside doing the deal. Maybe he’d figure she was following Zero’s orders. Preston wouldn’t suspect Teffinger. As far as he knew, Teffinger had no knowledge of who he was. The only way that could unravel is if Neverly told Sikle that she told Teffinger about the time and place of the meeting and Silke figured it out from there and then told Preston what she thought happened. That probably wouldn’t get into motion because there was no upside for Neverly to confess what she did. In fact, the opposite.

  With any luck, the missing money would drive a wedge between Preston and Silke.

  Sure, Silke still had the tape, but there was no murder on the tape. She needed Preston’s testimony for that part of the story.

  Teffinger divided the money into five equal piles, wrapped the piles in black plastic garbage bags, duct-taped the bags into tight rectangles and then hid them in the best locations he could find throughout the house.

  Then he headed outside for a jog.

  The specter of D’aylor Alexander’s beaten and stabbed body at the switchyard shadowed his thoughts. The first thing he needed to do this morning was get over to her house and find out if anything there pointed towards her killer. He didn’t have high hopes. His best guess was that she was randomly picked out on a spur-of-the-moment thing. The Daisy Dukes may have set the guy off.

  Suddenly he realized something.

  He’d heard her voice before and now remembered where.

  She was the woman on Preston’s tape, the one in the background, the one whose face never showed. She was the one making out with Preston down in the warehouse district Saturday night when Teffinger kill Rain. He headed home and compared D’aylor Alexander’s cell phone voice to the blackmail tape voice. There was no doubt that the two were the same.

  So what happened?

  Did Preston kill her to cut her out of the money?

  Did he make it look like a random sex attack so it wouldn’t turn back on him?

  That made sense.