Nick Teffinger Thrillers - Box Set 1 (Specter of Guilt, Black Out, Confidential Prey)

by R. J. Jagger

“Correct. If we find her body, obviously that will change.”

  “What about surveillance cameras in the parking lot?”

  “They don’t keep the tapes that long.”

  Teffinger looked out the window.

  They were paralleling a surreal mountain range. Unlike the Rockies, these mountains had no trees or greenery. They were barren, wind-chiseled, desolate deathtraps with no redeeming value other than an as a reminder of how inhospitable the earth could be. Rattlesnakes and scorpions might be able to live there but not much else.

  Teffinger put his hand on the pilot’s shoulder and said, “Don’t crash.”

  She patted his hand.

  “Haven’t in over a day now,” she said.

  Teffinger knew she was kidding but looked at Dey-Keya just to be sure.

  The man nodded.

  “You crashed two days ago?”

  “No, not two days ago, yesterday.”

  “You’re messing with me,” Teffinger said.

  “Wish I was,” she said. “They say that when you fall off the horse you need to get right back on it. What you see up here is me getting on a horse.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “It just dropped,” she said. “It was some kind of mechanical failure.” She pointed to the right. “There it is.”

  He looked.

  Sure enough, there on the brown desert dirt was a tangled mess of charred metal with some virgin splashes of lime-green.

  Dey-Keya slapped him on the back.

  “You should see your face,” he said.

  Ten minutes later Raverly said, “That looks like a road.” It wasn’t much, hardly more than an occasional indentation on an otherwise clean desert pallet, but it was enough that they followed it west.

  It dead-ended where the mountains started to rise.

  “This has to be it,” Teffinger said.

  They circled in search of an arroyo or body or anything that looked like it didn’t belong.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Nothing showed up.

  “Set it down,” Teffinger said.

  “Are you serious?”

  Ground level was the same temperature as the business end of a Cuban cigar. Heat radiated through Teffinger’s soles and baked the bottoms of his feet.

  He had no hat or sunglasses.

  The horizon line wiggled behind a plume of rising heat.

  Whatever search was to be had here wouldn’t be a long one.

  They split up.

  Raverly headed up the road.

  “Where you going?”

  “If he was going to play cat and mouse with her, I don’t think he would have come out this far where the terrain gets so uneven. I think he would have hung back where everything is flatter and there was less chance of getting his car stuck.”

  It made sense to a point.

  “Maybe, but she would have run this way, trying to get to higher ground.”

  The heat pounded them with mean fiery fists.

  The search turned up nothing.

  Then Raverly shouted, “Got something!”

  Teffinger pushed through the heat in that direction and found her standing to a slight indentation in the ground, possibly a shallow arroyo at one point but now mostly filled with dirt.

  Out of that dirt stuck a hand.

  It was mostly bones, long picked clean at this point, but definitely a human hand, connected no doubt to a human body beneath the surface.

  Teffinger looked at Dey-Keya and said, “Are your crime lab guys any good?”

  “They’re the best.”

  “Get them out here.”

  5

  Day Thirteen

  August 15

  Monday Night

  The meticulous crime scene investigation dragged on hour after hour after hour. In the end they had a woman’s body silently scooped from the dirt in a state of almost total decay. The bones from her ribcage to her skull were severely shattered, consistent with being hit by a car at high impact. Although her face was unrecognizable, the pendant around her neck wasn’t.

  It belonged to Brooklyn Parks.

  Other than the woman’s body, they found nothing. The scene didn’t cough up a scintilla of evidence as to who killed the woman. There were no cigarette butts, no empty coke cans, no dislodged car parts, not a single thing of use, not from the place where the body was found all the way back to the nearest piece of asphalt.

  They had a victim and not an ounce more.

  At the end of it all, it was too late to catch a flight back to Denver. Teffinger and Raverly checked into separate rooms at the Cosmopolitan. Teffinger drank his weight in water, showered and laid down on the bed just to rest his eyes for a few minutes.

  When he woke up it was evening.

  The sun was almost gone and the city’s neon was in full force.

  The room had a small balcony overlooking the strip.

  He stepped onto it and let a light breeze blow on his face.

  Then his phone rang. It was Sydney Heatherwood, the newbie to the homicide department, one year into her adventure. Teffinger pulled up an image of a young mocha face and tight athletic body.

  “I’m out here in San Francisco working with a detective by the name of Andy Peterson,” she said. “He’s had the crime unit and cadaver dogs working the bluffs at Baker Beach all day. We’re finally hitting pay dirt, right now, even as we speak.”

  “You got a body?”

  “We do indeed,” she said. “It’s buried three feet down, just like your good friend Mr. K said. It belongs to a woman but other than that I can’t tell you too much about it right now.”

  “Good job.”

  “I just watched. They did all the work.”

  “You sound weird.”

  “It’s winter out here,” she said. “There’s fog and rain and wind. I don’t know who invented this place but they sure screwed it up.”

  Teffinger smiled.

  “Figure out how the guy picked the lawyer to be his victim. Why her out of everyone in the world? Figure out if she was a wrong place wrong time girl or something more deliberate and calculated. Figure out the motive.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Thanks, I owe you one.”

  “One? What kind of math are you using?”

  He dialed Raverly’s room and said, “I’m going to go scrounge up a beer somewhere. You want to come along?”

  She did.

  She did indeed.

  They headed north on Las Vegas Boulevard, watched the Bellagio fountains dance to a Celine Deon song, then crossed over to Paris and played the pass line at a craps table long enough to get four complimentary drinks, Bud Lights for him and screwdrivers for Raverly. He was $100 up at that point, tossed the chips on the waitress’s tray as she passed and told Raverly, “Forty-eight hours.”

  He expected her to not understand.

  She knew what he meant, however.

  He was referring to the time left before Mr. K struck Denver.

  “How are you going to stop him?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Outside the strip was chocked with headlights five lanes thick in both directions, moving slower than the walkers. Horns honked, motorcycles revved, drunken party voices shouted and faces hung out windows.

  “You need to get North to tell you who his attorney friend is out in L.A.,” Teffinger said. “Then we need to get him to tell us who his client is.”

  Raverly chewed on it.

  Her expression wasn’t enthusiastic.

  “You’re asking for two separate attorneys to breach their trust,” she said. “I’ll try but we better be working on a plan B in the meantime.” A beat then, “It might be easier to follow the telephone trail. If we could get North’s records, that would show who he’s talking to in L.A. Then if we could get that person’s records, it would show who he’s talking to.”

  Teffinger kicked a coke can.

  “Our guy’s too smart to not have thought of
that,” he said. “He’s probably using a payphone and if he is using a cell, I’m sure he’s distanced himself from it. It’s probably a disposable or prepaid, purchased for cash, or something of that nature. There are a hundred ways to do it. Go to Google and type in anonymous cell phone and you’ll find half of them right there.”

  “Still, it’s worth trying.”

  “It is and I’ll set it in motion. Maybe he wants to be caught and he’ll get sloppy on purpose. That’s not what my gut tells me but you never know. The only thing I know for sure is that this guy is 100 percent legit and has coughed up two bodies to prove it.”

  Suddenly something happened that Teffinger didn’t expect. Raverly grabbed his hand and held it as they walked.

  “We need to get him talking some more,” she said.

  “I was thinking the same thing, except shouting instead of talking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Talking implies control and deliberation,” he said. “I need to get into his emotions and twist them. I need him to spit things out before he gets a chance to think them through.”

  Raverly squeezed his hand.

  “The system’s not built for that,” she said. “There’s too much back and forth.”

  “Exactly,” Teffinger said. “That’s why we need to change the system.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I need to start talking to him directly.”

  “How are you going to do that? Just shut him off unless he calls you direct?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know that he’ll go for it,” she said. “There’s another option, though. We already know he’s taken a shining to me. He probably wouldn’t mind talking to me as long as he felt there wasn’t too much risk.”

  Teffinger put his arm around her waist.

  “No. You’re already too close to the fire.”

  “Screw the fire,” she said.

  They let themselves get soaked by the buzz of the strip. Teffinger kept his arm around the woman’s waist, occasionally moving his fingers a bit.

  Her muscles were taut.

  “There’s something you should know about me,” he said.

  “That sounds serious.”

  “It sort of is,” he said. “Someone’s out to kill me.”

  Raverly came to a stop and looked at him.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Two weeks ago I picked up this girl hitchhiking. She was broke and from out of town and just got dumped by her boyfriend. It was storming out and she was soaked and cold. I tried to get her a hotel but she had this thing about not taking charity. Finally I convinced her to at least sleep on my couch for the night.”

  “I remember that storm. I watched it for over an hour.”

  “Then you know how bad it was,” Teffinger said. “My whole neighborhood was in blackout when I got home. Nice guy that I am, I talked her into taking my bed and letting me sleep on the couch. She didn’t want to put me out but finally relented. When I woke up the next morning, she was dead in the bed. She’d been stabbed in the side of the head with a knife that was meant for me. Whoever did it thought they were killing me.”

  “Damn.”

  “Right, damn,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. The poor girl, I don’t even know who she was. She told me her first name—Atasha—but I never even asked her last name. She didn’t have any identification her purse, no driver’s license or anything. All she had was makeup, a couple of candy bars and $27.32 in cash.”

  “Did she say where she was from?”

  “New York, on her way to Seattle,” he said. “I’ve spent hours trying to trace her with no luck.”

  “What a nightmare.”

  “Actually, it is; and I don’t want it spreading in your direction,” he said.

  “Well, maybe I do,” she said. “Do you have any idea who wants you dead?”

  “Nothing concrete,” he said. “The best guess is that it relates to an old case; maybe a brother or relative of someone I ended up catching, something like that. We’re pulling files but nothing’s jumping up and shouting yet.”

  Raverly ran a finger down his cheek.

  “You were all sexy out there in the desert today, sweating and everything,” Raverly said. “Did I mention that before?”

  Teffinger shifted his feet.

  “No, you must have forgotten.”

  “Well bad, bad me. Let’s get back to your room and I’ll make it up to you.”

  6

  Day Fourteen

  August 16

  Tuesday Morning

  The earliest flight to Denver took off just as the Nevada sun rose over the desert. Teffinger put the armrests in a death grip and concentrated on the structural stress of the aircraft. The wheels lifted, the heavy vibration disappeared and the ground dropped away at a crazy speed.

  Raverly patted his hand.

  “Imagine that, you’re still alive.”

  He grunted.

  “Tomorrow’s the day,” he said. “I feel like time’s a python and it has me in a stranglehold. The chief is going to want a full briefing. Then he’s going to want to get a plan in motion for tomorrow night. That means mobilizing people, which in turn means meetings, lots and lots of meetings—meetings I don’t have time for, to be precise.”

  “Blow them off.”

  “Play it out,” he said. “I blow them off, the guy takes his kill, and then I get the blame for not being a team player. On the other hand, if I can get all the noise out of my life and concentrate, I’ll have a better chance of figuring out who he is. That’s the key, not to blanket the city with a shotgun, but figure out who he is and introduce him to a rifle shot.”

  “So it comes down to whether you want to cover your ass or catch a killer.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s it, to a point. When you get right down to it, if I cover my ass all I’m doing is being selfish. I’m putting myself before the wellbeing of the next victim.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to catch him.”

  “No you’re not,” she said. “We are.”

  “Yeah, right. I forgot. We.”

  The seatbelt sign was still on. Teffinger unsnapped, got vertical and wandered back to the flight attendant’s station where a startled young woman gave him a stern look.

  “The seatbelt sign’s on,” she said.

  Teffinger sat next to her.

  “I need coffee.”

  “We’ll be serving—”

  He handed her a twenty.

  “Do me a favor, as soon as you’re authorized, get to me first and keep it topped off. Can you do that?”

  She took the bill and stuffed it in her bra.

  “Your eyes are two different colors,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “When the left one starts to turn green it means I don’t have enough caffeine in my system. That’s why this is so important.”

  She smiled.

  “Is that the CNN reporter you’re sitting next to? Raverly Phentappa?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it.”

  Back in his seat Teffinger called the district attorney, Clay Pitcher, a barrel-chested man with yellow cigar teeth. He was five years from retirement and hard to get riled up at this point. After filling the man in on everything that was going on, Teffinger asked him the all-important question. “Can we get a search warrant for Anderson North’s phone records?”

  Clay’s reaction was quick.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s not doing anything wrong,” Clay said. “He’s passing information but he’s not committing a crime.”

  He hung up, looked at Raverly who had been listening to it all, and said, “Your turn.”

  She dialed Anderson North and caught him on his drive into work.

  “I want you to tell me who your L.A. contac
t is,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “About telling me the name of his client.”

  “That’s a dangerous, dangerous path, and I’m not going to let you go down it,” he said. “Besides, my marching orders are clear. No one’s supposed to try to backdoor this guy. That means me and it also means you.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he said. “I’ve been set up to be a Chinese wall and that’s exactly what I’m going to be.” A beat then, “Look, even if I told you who my contact is, there’s no way in hell he would ever turn in his own client. I know this sucks, but that’s the way the system works and you know it.”

  That was true.

  She did know it.

  She hung up, looked at Teffinger and said, “No go.”

  The seatbelt sign went off. Ten seconds later the flight attendant showed up with coffee and a smile. “Let’s get that green eye back to blue,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  Teffinger avoided the confused look on Raverly’s face and lowered his voice. “When we get to Denver we’ll hire a P.I. I’m getting those phone records and that’s all there is to it.”

  Raverly nodded.

  “I’ll do the hiring and the paying,” she said. “That will keep you one step removed.”

  “Thanks.”

  Twenty minutes later Sydney called and said, “The woman in the dirt was definitely the lawyer, Ashlyn White. Her throat was slit just like the guy said. I don’t mean to be crass with what I’m about to say, but I don’t think she was a random hit or a spur of the moment thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like I said, I don’t want to appear rude, but the woman’s not a looker. She’s in her mid-thirties and, well, just not all that attractive. More than that, though, she was taken late at night when the parking garage wasn’t getting much activity. It wasn’t a place to stroll. It was more of a place to hide and wait for someone you already picked out.”

  Teffinger cocked his head.

  “Lawyers know things,” she said. “Maybe she knew something and our friend wanted to get it out of her.”