Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  Jackie’s gut told her this was the north forty she’d been looking for, the place where Northwest lived.

  In twenty or so minutes she came to an asphalt driveway that snaked into a fairly flat field for about two hundred yards and ended at a large house that appeared to be a fairly modern ranch. Hiding behind a tree she pointed the binoculars at the house. The lights were on but she didn’t see anyone home, even after watching it for two or three minutes.

  She walked up the asphalt, hugging the shadows, to get a closer look.

  As she got near the house she spotted a large auxiliary building of metal construction, something in the nature of an oversized modern barn. No lights came from it.

  She walked over and found a man-door next to the large overhead door. She tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, quietly opened it and stuck her head inside.

  All was quiet.

  No one was there.

  She went in and looked around.

  Inside, she saw a number of vehicles, including a van.

  Her heart pounded.

  She came back out and now saw movement inside the house. Taking a position in the shadows behind a tree, she focused the binoculars on the activity.

  She saw a man, about six feet tall, who looked to be in incredibly good shape. He was in the kitchen, holding up a wineglass and dancing, almost as if he was twirling with a partner, except he wasn’t.

  Suddenly he looked right at her.

  She gasped and dropped the binoculars.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Day Fourteen - July 24

  Monday

  _____________

  USING THE COMPOSITE SKETCH AS A REFERENCE, Wickerfield hung around the 16th Street Mall in that part of downtown where Janelle Parker thought she actually saw the woman once. It was a long shot, he had to admit, but he absolutely had to find her one way or another. She was the driver who ran the other car off the road in the desert. The man with her at the time, the one who bashed mommy’s head in with a rock, was the same person who blackmailed Wickerfield. Together they wanted Janelle Parker dead because she was a witness who could put them away. Except they were too gutless to do it themselves so they somehow found out who he was and set him up to do the dirty work. No doubt they were out of town this last weekend in a public place, with plenty of witnesses to back them up.

  He hung around for hours sweating up a storm even in the shade.

  Then, just as he was about to give up, he spotted a young lady with a remarkable resemblance to the person in the sketch, walking out of a building near Glenarm. He snapped a couple of pictures of her with the digital camera when she wasn’t paying attention and then followed her all the way to a parking lot on 20th Street. There she got in a tan colored Honda Accord—license plate number DTM-337—and drove off.

  BACK AT THE FARM HE WENT STRAIGHT TO THE VAN, pulled the door open with a loud clang and shook Janelle Parker’s drugged body until she woke up. “Is this the woman?” he asked, showing her the digital pictures.

  He could tell by the expression on her face that it was.

  “My God! Yes! I can’t believe you found her.” Then: “Now you’ll let me go, right?”

  “Not quite yet,” he said.

  He checked her chains, found them solid, and slammed the door.

  USING THE WOMAN’S LICENSE PLATE NUMBER, he found out her name and address. Snapping his fingers to the oldies station, in a damn good mood, he drove by her house in the Camry after dark. She lived in Arvada, in a so-so place on a large wooded lot.

  Taking her wouldn’t be a problem.

  Yeah, baby.

  Oh yeah.

  Get yourself ready.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Day Fifteen - July 25

  Tuesday

  _____________

  PAUL KWAK HARDLY EVER CAME DOWN to homicide because when he did everyone wanted to know if he had their stuff done yet. So when he walked into the room Teffinger raised an eyebrow.

  “Got something to show you,” he said.

  “Celery sticks?” Teffinger asked.

  “No, I’m off that crap. Come on.”

  Teffinger followed him, realized he left his coffee on the desk, ran back to get it, then followed the man to the elevators where he stopped and pressed the down button. “Parking garage,” Kwak said. Teffinger took the stairs and actually beat him down.

  “This way,” Kwak said.

  Teffinger followed him until he stopped in front of a yellow 1963 Split-Window Corvette. “So what do you think?” Kwak asked.

  “Is this yours?”

  Kwak grinned and nodded. “All original, numbers matching, Second Flight,” he said. “A friend of my dad’s bought it new. I don’t even remember the guy, but apparently I used to play with his son back in my diaper days. I’m the second owner.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  No he wasn’t.

  They checked it from bumper to bumper. Teffinger couldn’t believe the condition.

  “Want to drive it?” Kwak asked.

  He seriously considered it but shook his head. “If I crack it up I’ll have to hear you whine about it for the rest of my life,” he said.

  So Kwak drove.

  With no AC and no way for the air to escape out the back, it was without a doubt the hottest, stuffiest, most unbearable car ever built. Within three minutes Teffinger said, “I’m getting one. That’s all there is to it.”

  KWAK WANTED TO KNOW THE LATEST on the case so Teffinger filled him in while they drove around the city and made heads turn. Now, more convinced than ever that the San Francisco case was related to theirs, they were telephoning everyone on the airline manifests and recording the conversations. Then they were playing them for the Santa Fe woman who swore she’d recognize her attacker’s voice if she ever heard it.

  “Any matches so far?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” Teffinger said. “We’re having lots of luck. Unfortunately it’s all bad.”

  “I hear you,” Kwak said.

  “I mean it,” Teffinger said. “If we don’t catch this guy soon I’m going to end up directing traffic in Waddle Worm, Nebraska.”

  Kwak laughed.

  “Waddle Worm? Is that what you just said?”

  Teffinger grinned. “I think so.”

  “Waddle Worm,” Kwak repeated.

  “Waddle Worm, Nebraska.”

  “That’s the stupidest name I ever heard.”

  Teffinger chuckled.

  “Waddle Worm,” Kwak went on. “It doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “It’s not supposed to,” Teffinger said.

  “Good, because it doesn’t.”

  “Anyway, that’s where I’m going to end up.”

  “In Waddle Worm.”

  “Right. Waddle Worm, Nebraska.”

  WHEN TEFFINGER GOT BACK TO HIS DESK he looked around for his coffee cup and then remembered he set it on the ground in the parking garage so he wouldn’t spill anything on the ’Vette.

  So he got another cup.

  Then he had a wild idea and called Jena Vellone.

  “Listen I got a favor to ask you. Do you remember after the body showed up in my truck and you ended up doing a news coverage of the CSI up at my house?”

  She did.

  “The helicopter up above that day, that was from your station, right?”

  It was.

  “That was the day the woman got bit in the face by the rattlesnake and died, up on the ridge. Do you remember that?”

  She did.

  “Good,” he said. “There was a guy up there that day, who flagged the chopper over. Do me a favor and see if your helicopter friends picked up any footage of that guy.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason,” he said. “Just curious. By the way, have you ever heard of Waddle Worm, Nebraska?”

  She laughed.

  “That’s the stupidest name I ever heard,” she said. “When do you want to know about the footage?”

&
nbsp; “Let me put it this way. Do you have it yet?”

  A pause: “He’s the one, isn’t he?”

  “No,” Teffinger said. “And don’t tell anyone.”

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Day Fifteen - July 25

  Tuesday Afternoon

  _____________

  IN HER LEFT HAND JACKIE CARRIED a paperback book called Native Birds of Colorado. Around her neck hung lightweight bird-watching binoculars. She wore a large brown hat that gave good protection from the sun, a brown T-shirt, lightweight earth-green cotton shorts, and oversized black sunglasses. She wore a fanny pack on her stomach. Inside that she had the gun, the concealed gun permit, two granola bars and a plastic bottle of water.

  She blended in with her surroundings on this beautiful Tuesday afternoon.

  If anyone happened to spot her, she was nothing more than a curious observer of nature, out on a stroll in the open lands of Colorado to see what she could see.

  She entered the farm property all the way across the field from the house, parking on a gravel road about a hundred yards from a metal building.

  She watched for people and so far saw none.

  Every so often she brought the binoculars to her eyes and scouted the trees. If she saw a bird she watched it for a few moments. Every once in a while she opened the book and looked at a picture.

  Then she walked some more.

  As she did she kept her eyes on the ground. She never walked over the same spot twice. More than an hour into her stroll, in the field at the north edge of the property, not far from the trees, she saw something that might actually be what she came to find, a possible grave.

  She stood ten feet from it, brought the binoculars to her eyes, pointed them at the trees, and then shifted her vision down to study the ground.

  The earth mounded up slightly in the approximate size of a body. While the grasses surrounding the area were of uniform thickness, the mounded area had spotty patches. You could actually see dirt in some places, unlike most of the rest of the field. Also on one side of the mound, there was a pile of dirt, possibly thrown there while digging and then never raked or shoveled back in.

  WHEN SHE BROUGHT THE BINOCULARS DOWN and looked around just to be sure she was still alone, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Across the terrain a man raced directly towards her on a dirt bike, still a long ways off, but definitely coming right at her.

  She immediately hit the ground.

  As the sound of the engine got closer she frantically pulled the handgun out of the fanny-pack and took off the safety. Holding it in two hands she pointed it in the direction of the bike.

  She could actually see the motorcycle now through the weeds, even while lying flat.

  It was bright green but strangely quiet.

  The man riding it was the same man from the farmhouse.

  He wore a medium sized backpack but no helmet or eye protection.

  He looked intense, almost insane.

  She tightened her finger on the trigger.

  Just before he got to her, she wet her pants.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Day Fifteen - July 25

  Tuesday Night

  _____________

  SNATCHING THE WOMAN from her house turned out to be easier than Wickerfield expected. The heavy trees provided all the privacy he needed. The sizzling summer day kept her windows beautifully open. The knife put more than enough fear in her heart. He tied her hands behind her back, fastened a ball gag in her mouth, and then marched her out the front door in her pajamas, straight into the trunk of the Camry.

  Piece-of-cake.

  He got caught at a red light at Ward Road. Headlights approached from behind and another vehicle pulled up and stopped—a cop car with two cops inside. One of them looked at Wickerfield’s license plate.

  He had the plate lights off.

  He reached under the dash and flipped the toggle switch. The cops talked to each other. The light turned green and Wickerfield took off, not too fast or too slow. The cops followed him.

  They stayed on his ass, tailgating, trying to get him to speed so they’d have a reason to pull him over. He kept it two under the limit until they finally thought of more important things to do and turned around. He exhaled, got safely to I-25 and headed north, finally relaxed enough to power the radio back on. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came out of the speakers. He sang along with the words he knew and faked the rest, which were most of them.

  WHEN THEY GOT TO THE FARM HE TOOK THE WOMAN to the metal building at the far end of the property, where he kept the getaway car. He brought her inside, strapped her to a chair and then sliced a chunk of flesh from the end of her baby finger while she screamed through the ball gag.

  Now that he had her attention he said, “Tell me your boyfriend’s phone number. Right now!”

  She did.

  He dialed it.

  A man answered.

  “Listen carefully, otherwise your little lady friend here is going to die a horrible death,” he said. “You want Janelle Parker dead? Well fine, but you’re going to do it yourself and I’m going to videotape you doing it. After you do it then I’ll have as much on you as you have on me. That’s the only way I’ll ever be sure that I’m free of you. After you do it I’ll let the woman go. You have my word on that. Then you two go your way and I go mine. That’s the deal and that’s the only deal. I’ll call you tomorrow with instructions. In the meantime don’t do anything stupid. I have the woman where you’ll never find her so don’t even think about a rescue. Just follow the plan and we’ll all get through this alive.”

  He hung up.

  The woman watched him with wide eyes. He ran his fingers through her hair, and said, “We’re about to find out if he really loves you or not.” He cocked his head. “What do you think? Will he kill for you?”

  The look on her face told him she didn’t know.

  “Well, he better,” he warned. “It looks like you two blackmailed the wrong person, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Day Sixteen - July 26

  Wednesday

  _____________

  TEFFINGER COULDN’T SLEEP. He got up at four in the morning and went to work. Two hours later—wired on coffee—he paced back and forth so fast that he knocked over the snake plant and spilled a load of dirt onto the carpet. He muscled the stupid thing upright then scooped up the soil with his hands and threw it back in the pot, good as new.

  An hour later Katie Baxter walked in needing coffee in the worst way.

  “What would it take for you to get on a plane to San Francisco?” Teffinger questioned.

  She ignored him and filled a coffee cup.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said. “You’ve had coffee, I haven’t.”

  He waited while she took a swallow.

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  “But you were just there,” she noted.

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, but we didn’t get into the victim’s background all that much,” Teffinger said. “I’m starting to give more and more credence to Leigh’s theory that the guy flew there specifically to kill her. So we need to dig into her background, find out who has a motive, and maybe that’s the guy we’re looking for.”

  “Wouldn’t San Francisco have already done that, when she disappeared?”

  Teffinger nodded. “They did to an extent. I want you to find out if they went far enough.”

  WHEN SYDNEY SHOWED UP thirty minutes later he intercepted her at the coffee pot.

  “Here’s my idea,” he said. “You go down to Santa Fe and see Jacquelyn Davis-Wade again,” he said. “Hypnotize her, get her drunk, I don’t care how you do it, but find out something we don’t already know. Maybe go over the police file again too. See if there’s any more news coverage with crowd scenes that we don’t already have, or amateur video, or whatever. Bring me back something.”

  She wrinkled her forehead and gave it ample consideration before responding.


  “Nick,” she said. “That seems like a long shot. We were already more than thorough.”

  He slumped in his chair and closed his eyes.

  She was right.

  It would be more productive to think of something new instead of plowing the same tired ground.

  The morning turned into a flurry of motion: task force meetings, placating the chief and the mayor, phone tips, cross-referencing data, developing press conference strategies, continuing work on the airline manifests.

  Shortly after 10:00 Jena Vellone called with two updates. Another letter arrived in today’s mail. The next strike was scheduled for this weekend, meaning two days from now. Also, the helicopter had no footage of the man on the ridge, the one who was with the woman when she got bit by the rattlesnake. By the time the aircraft was landing the guy was already leaving. They never talked to him or got a good look at him, or even a bad look for that matter.

  “Figures,” Teffinger said. “Thanks for checking.”

  BY NOON TEFFINGER COULDN’T EVEN THINK STRAIGHT. So he left the building, headed down to the South Platte River and found a shady spot on the bank, about twenty feet away from a couple of homeless guys who were sleeping next to overflowing shopping carts.

  The guy lived north of Denver.

  Teffinger was pretty sure of that because the guy came upon the woman with the flat tire at three in the morning. His hunt was done for the night and he was headed home.

  That road was a back street way to get from LoDo to I-25.

  The guy also lived in a place where he could hold people captive. Teffinger pictured a place that had space between the houses. Or better yet, a remote place where no other houses were even visible.

  He stood up and headed back to the office.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Day Sixteen - July 26

  Wednesday Night

  _____________

  THE MOON SHINED SO BRIGHT that it threw shadows. In the distance a coyote barked, then another, and within seconds a whole frenzied pack yelped and yapped. Jackie paused briefly, shivered, and pictured something lower in the food chain scrambling desperately for ten more seconds of life.