Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  The look on her face was priceless.

  “But . . .”

  Wickerfield waved her off before she could say another word. “Don’t make it worse than it already is.”

  When he came back down she was sitting on the bed, as nervous as a mouse in a snake cage. “I did it, just like you said.” She held her fingers up to show him.

  He inspected them.

  She did good.

  Whatever clues had been there were now long gone.

  “Do you have any more anywhere on your body?” he question.

  “No,” she said. “Honest to God.”

  “Take your clothes off.”

  She did, immediately and without protest, obviously aware of just how tenuous her position was. He inspected her and found no scratches or cuts in her skin. Then he said, “Okay. I got to warn you, I’m not sure how mad I am yet. But you’re going into the Punishment Room while I think about it.”

  She looked like she was about to say something to try to get out of it but didn’t. “That’s fair,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Okay, come over here.”

  Then he chained her up in the Punishment Room, in a standing position with her arms over her head and her hands separated by a spreader bar so that one hand couldn’t get to the other. She was stretched tight, on her tiptoes. When her calves got too fatigued to hold her up, she’d have to hang.

  “I want you to spend the time thinking about how bad you were,” he said.

  Then he closed the door, leaving her to the darkness and the sound of her own breathing.

  If she went crazy, too bad.

  THE CITY WAS SO DAMNED INTOXICATING AT NIGHT, with the lights and the movement and the shadows. He drove around the outskirts of the Auraria campus first, to see if there was as much foot travel on the fringes as he originally envisioned.

  There was.

  Good.

  He turned the radio back on and was glad he did because “Paradise By the Dashboard Lights” was playing. He turned it up and sang along.

  There were no words in the English language that described the feeling of the hunt. You might as well try to explain the color blue to a blind man. When you experienced it, you understood it. And if you never experienced it, you never would. It was that simple.

  And—if he dared say—the feeling just keep getting better each time. He wasn’t sure why that was, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that he wasn’t as nervous anymore, not with a string of successes under the belt. Without the nervous edge he seemed to be able to better focus on the euphoria of the event.

  It was better than drugs.

  “Even better than rock ’n roll, Meat Loaf.”

  Better than sex?

  Mmm, now that was an interesting question.

  “Yes,” he finally decided.

  The black bag sat on the seat next to him, and he reached over without looking at it, just because he liked the feel of it. He checked it three times this afternoon. Everything was there.

  HE WAS IN NO HURRY. In fact, he was toying with the idea of just driving around for a couple of hours before picking his prey, maybe even stopping somewhere for a salad first.

  Just for grins, he drove over to Ashley Conner’s neighborhood, to see if there were extra patrol cars circling around. There were, lots of them. So many in fact that he didn’t even turn his head to look down her street. He kept going, straight down Broadway for more than two miles, before cutting over to I-25 and looping back to downtown.

  So, the cops were definitely taking the whole thing seriously, as they should.

  Teffinger had organized them well.

  Too bad it wouldn’t do them any good.

  Just to be on the safe side, he put on the black rim glasses, the mustache and a baseball cap.

  Ten minutes later he was driving north on Speer, singing along to one of the world’s most perfect songs—“Friday I’m In Love”—when the light turned red at 14th Avenue. Ordinarily, he would have stepped on the gas and gone through, but tonight he needed to be on his best behavior.

  The cross-traffic took off, a bunch of ordinary mortals, getting in his way.

  For some reason the last car caught his attention. It was a pickup truck, actually, not a car. There were two figures inside. The passenger was a woman and, even in the dark and at a distance, he could tell she was stunning. She had a dark tanned face, raven black hair and looked vaguely familiar. For some reason, she stared right at him as the truck went through the intersection.

  She even turned her head to look back.

  Then suddenly the brake lights went on, the truck slowed and then came to a screeching halt. The woman and the driver had both turned around at this point and were looking at him, talking to each other in an animated way.

  Then he realized who the woman was.

  The light turned green and he immediately stepped on the gas.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Day Four - July 14

  Friday Night

  _____________

  THEY PASSED A 7-ELEVEN and Teffinger swung back and pulled in, a spur of the moment thing. “Coffee,” he said. In the back seat, he had three or four used thermoses. He grabbed the closest one, unscrewed the cap and took a whiff. It had a definite pungent odor but didn’t seem like anything that would kill him.

  “Good enough,” he said.

  Rain waited in the truck while he ran inside, poured five French Vanilla creamers into the thermos, topped it off with fresh caffeine, grabbed two empty Styrofoam cups and paid.

  When he got back in the truck Rain was looking at him strangely. He unscrewed the thermos and poured coffee into one of the cups. “You want some?” he asked.

  She nodded, “Yeah, but I’ll just share yours.”

  Fine.

  She was still looking at him funny.

  “What?” he asked, concentrating on not overfilling the cup.

  “I’m just trying to think of what we are,” she said. “Are we just Bed-Buddies, or something more?”

  Teffinger raked his hair back. “Way more,” he said, “at least from my point of view.”

  She seemed relieved. “Good, me too.”

  Teffinger got serious. “The truth is, I’ve been waiting for someone like you for a while.”

  She cocked her head. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  That was accurate, to a point. She continuously deflected every question that related to her past. He still didn’t know where she grew up, if she had brothers or sisters, if her parents were alive, how old she was when she lost her virginity, or what she did for a living.

  But he did know how he felt when he was around her. And he knew how her body moved in the dark.

  “I know enough,” he said.

  She paused. “I’m scared.”

  He looked at her.

  “Why?”

  “I’m scared you’re going to find something out about me that’s going to make you change your mind.”

  “What might that be?”

  She looked away.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “You’re not really a guy, are you?” he asked.

  She laughed. “No.”

  “You’ve never been a guy?”

  “No.”

  “Well, okay then.”

  Teffinger cranked over the engine and looked behind the truck to be sure he wasn’t going to run anyone over. It was a good thing, too. A teenage girl was right behind him, apparently cutting through the parking lot while she talked into a cell phone, oblivious to the fact that his backup lights were on and his engine was running. He waited until she passed and then backed up.

  “Time to catch a killer,” he said.

  TWO HOURS LATER THEY WERE DRIVING east on 14th Avenue, listening to one of the best songs ever made—“Friday I’m In Love”—when Rain said, “I know that guy from somewhere.”

  Teffinger looked in the direction she was staring and didn’t see anything, other than a
string of cars waiting at the red light on Speer Boulevard.

  “Who?”

  “The guy driving the van.”

  Something in his gut made his foot go to the brakes. “Where do you know him from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Teffinger brought the rest of his weight down on the pedal, with so much force in fact that the antilock brakes kicked in.

  He turned in his seat.

  The first vehicle at the red light was a van. The driver seemed to be looking their way but shielding his face with his hand—on purpose or just a coincidence? Either way, Teffinger couldn’t make out his features.

  “That guy right there? In the van?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know him?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him.” She looked confused. “Why? What’s the big deal? I’m just making small talk . . .”

  Teffinger wanted to back up to Speer, but the traffic had already taken off and a string of cars was turning onto 14th, right towards him.

  He pounded the dash.

  “Nick, what are you doing? All I said was I’ve seen the guy.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “probably from your neighborhood, when he was checking the place out. He has a van.”

  “That’s awful thin.”

  “Thin is better than zero.”

  He cut back to Speer as fast as he could and then weaved north through traffic. The van was nowhere. It had vanished. To make matters worse, both he and Rain had been looking at the driver so hard that neither of them noticed anything in particular about the van, other than it was a van.

  “I can’t even say if it was white or black,” Rain said.

  Teffinger nodded.

  “Me too,” he said. “It was him though, I can tell by the way he took off when the light turned green. Maybe we scared him enough that he’ll call it quits for the night.”

  “You think?”

  Teffinger thought about it and then shook his head. “I wouldn’t, if I was him. You got to show a little guts.”

  THEY GOT A BOLO OUT ON A VAN with a white male driver wearing black glasses, then continued the drive around the city, hoping against hope to just bump into him again.

  “I wonder what the odds are,” Rain said at one point, “of actually finding someone like this.”

  Teffinger shrugged.

  “I don’t know, but we did it once,” he said.

  She cocked her head. “So what are the odds of actually finding someone like this twice?”

  Teffinger couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Somewhere less than fifty-fifty, I’m guessing.”

  He looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock, meaning the city traffic would still be pretty thick for another couple of hours and the van would be hard to spot. Things would thin out after two or two-thirty, though, and they’d be able to concentrate a lot better on what was out there driving around.

  Teffinger emphasized the fringe areas around Larimer Square and LoDo, hunting down every van on the road, getting into position so they could see the driver’s face, then dropping back so that Rain could write down the vehicle’s license plate number.

  Before long it was three in the morning.

  And still nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Day Five - July 15

  Saturday Morning

  _____________

  WHEN JACKIE OPENED HER EYES she immediately knew she had slept well into the morning. The room was still fairly dark, thanks to thick curtains, but the light that did manage to finger its way in was strong.

  She propped herself on her elbows and looked around.

  She was alone in a bedroom that she’d never seen before; and not just any bedroom, but something out of a magazine. The place oozed money. The bed itself was big enough to play soccer on. The ceiling was vaulted and a massive flat-panel TV hung on the opposite wall, strategically positioned about two feet above an expensive maple dresser. The master bathroom, although not fully visible, had an oversized Jacuzzi and a large glass shower, all befitted in muted tile that looked to be a hundred years old.

  She sank back down on the pillow, still slightly hung over, trying to judge how much her head hurt.

  Not as much as it should, she decided.

  The room, in fact the whole world, was quiet. Not a sound came from anywhere. She remembered the sex last night, the drunken, crazy sex. She recalled using her mouth and tongue for a long time, giving a deep teasing blowjob. The memory was so real and fresh that she reached between her legs and, over the next twenty minutes, brought herself to a slow explosive orgasm.

  Then she got up and showered.

  She found her purse on a dresser but couldn’t find her clothes anywhere. So she grabbed a long-sleeved shirt out of the master closet and put it on as she walked down a winding staircase to the lower level.

  DOWNSTAIRS IN THE DESIGNER KITCHEN a pot of coffee waited for her with a clean cup sitting next to it. She found cream in the Sub Zero, poured a little in the cup, then topped it off with coffee. It was a blend she had never tasted before, something exotic and expensive.

  Damn good, she had to admit.

  On the granite countertop in the island she found her Porsche keys sitting on top of a handwritten note: “I had a driver bring your car over this morning. Hope you don’t mind. Leave your number before you go, otherwise you’ll break my heart.”

  She walked across a well-furnished room the size of Kansas and looked outside. The Porsche sat in the middle of a cobblestone circular driveway that surrounded a contemporary water feature. The neighborhood houses looked like castles. Unlike the rest of the world, the lawns here were lush green. She must be in Cherry Hills somewhere.

  She refilled the coffee cup and wandered around the house.

  It belonged to Sean Michaels, the businessman she met on the street on Tuesday, who looked over her shoulder for her when she was being followed. She bumped into him after work yesterday at the Paramount Café and let him buy her a drink—too many drinks, actually. She remembered him taking her to some club in a Ferrari, where they danced to pounding music in the middle a thousand crazy people.

  Suddenly she remembered where her clothes were; in the Ferrari.

  She had them off by the time they got to his place.

  She went to the garage to see if the Ferrari was there by any chance. It was, sitting next to three motorcycles that looked like chromed Harleys on steroids, with the wildest, most intricate paint jobs she’d ever seen. Inside the Ferrari, on the floor, she found her clothes and put them on, then hung his shirt back up in the master closet.

  Before leaving she stopped in the kitchen long enough to turn off the coffee machine and throw one of her business cards on the counter.

  She was almost out the front door when she came back into the kitchen and wrote her home phone number on the front of the card.

  Ten seconds later she was in the Porsche.

  It had to be every bit of a hundred and twenty degrees in there.

  IT TOOK SOME TIME TO FIND HER WAY out of the neighborhood but she finally managed. She needed to get to the office and listen to one of Stepper’s conversations again. And knew exactly which one it was. But first she swung by her house and picked up her gym bag, then headed over to 24 Hour Fitness to do cardio until all the alcohol sweated itself out of her system.

  Halfway through the workout a breaking-news report popped up on the TV monitor. When it ended she immediately got off the elliptical, walked briskly to the locker room, grabbed her bag and headed for the front door, still in a deep sweat.

  It was clear where she needed to be, Sixth Avenue at Federal.

  And she needed to be there now, this very minute.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Day Five - July 15

  Saturday Morning

  _____________

  THE HUNT CAN BE A HELL OF A LOT more exciting than the kill. In this particular case, the kill had been a non-event. Wicker
field had almost given up last night, in fact had given up, when something unexpected happened just before three in the morning—a broken car appeared on the side of the road with a woman standing next to it, a woman by herself; alone, unprotected and ripe for the taking.

  He pulled over and found she was insanely drunk.

  She had a flat tire and no spare.

  “If the cops find you here like this, they’ll slap you in the drunk tank so fast it’ll make you head spin,” Wickerfield told her. “I’ve been there. They’ll give you a DWI too. The best thing you can do is just lock it up and let me drive you home.”

  She hopped in.

  “Thank God you came by.”

  Then she hit on him.

  The alcohol had turned her into a slut.

  She kept rubbing his cock and he let her. Then she unzipped his pants and gave him a blowjob as he drove. He pulled off the road, in a dark secluded spot, and let her continue for fifteen minutes. He couldn’t leave his DNA in her mouth, but almost did, not pulling his cock out until a split second before he came. Then he tied her down spread-eagle in the back of the van and played the dice game with her.

  She lost.

  He dumped her body and headed for home, taking nothing with him except her driver’s license, the smell of her perfume and a very satisfied dick.

  WHEN HE GOT BACK TO HIS PLACE it was almost five in the morning. Ashley Conner was still in the Punishment Room, passed out and hanging limp by her wrists. He got her down, rubbed the circulation back into her body, and laid her in the bed. Then went upstairs and fell asleep immediately.

  He woke up a short time later, still tired but too excited to sleep any longer. The camera showed that Ashley Conner was awake now, dressed and pacing in front of her bed. She looked terrified. He wasn’t sure, but he guessed that she’d do just about anything in the world to avoid going back into the Punishment Room again.

  Last night’s kill hadn’t made the morning paper.

  Probably no one found the body yet.

  But they would.

  And that would be today.