Bad Client (Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by Jagger, R. J.

  Carrying a shovel through the darkness, she felt like anything but a lawyer.

  She felt more like a grave robber or a voodoo woman.

  She wasn’t sure yet what she’d do if the place she spotted yesterday actually turned out to be Sarah Stepper’s grave. She did know, however, that she had to find out, one way or the other.

  She continued walking, just her and her night shadow.

  The place reminded her of yesterday, when she pissed in her pants. It still surprised her that the man on the dirt bike didn’t see her. He ended up at the metal building, where he parked the bike and then went inside for thirty minutes. Then he headed back across the field to the house.

  She didn’t turn the flashlight on until she was pretty sure she was at the right place. As soon as she confirmed she was, she turned it off again.

  THEN SHE DUG. The soil was loose, as if it had already been turned up before, and the shovel went in easily. She put the dirt in one pile so she’d be able to find it all again afterwards. Even though the thin Rocky Mountain air had cooled the night considerably, she still worked up a sweat.

  She concentrated in the middle of the mound. After getting down a good foot or so, she found nothing and sat down to rest. The silence seemed so strange. It was as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

  She pushed to her feet and continued digging.

  Now she was down two feet and still nothing.

  She rested again.

  When she got down three feet she hit something. Not something hard like a root or a rock, but more like a rubbery object. She got down on her knees, shined the flashlight in the hole, and pulled dirt out with her hands.

  A stench filled the air.

  She uncovered a bellybutton and gasped.

  This was real.

  This whole thing was actually real.

  She removed more dirt and saw even more of an abdomen. The putrid smell almost made her vomit, but she forced herself to stay there and threw dirt back in the hole.

  But she wasn’t done yet. She had to see the face. She had to be sure this was the body of Sarah Stepper. So now she dug where the face would be. Her body ached but she didn’t slow down. She was almost finished. She just needed to verify this one thing. Then she could get the hell out of there. Be home by midnight. Three feet down she hit rubber again.

  She pulled dirt out with her hands and uncovered Sarah Stepper’s face staring up at her.

  The eyes were open but filled with dirt, so incredibly dead.

  It was Stepper’s wife, Sarah.

  There was no doubt.

  Vomit shot up into her mouth but she managed to gag it back down. Then she covered the body up as fast as she could and ran.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Day Sixteen - July 26

  Wednesday Night

  _____________

  WITH THE POINT OF THE KNIFE pressed against the small of Janelle Parker’s back, Wickerfield walked her through the dark into a remote field more than twenty miles from his house. She sobbed through the ball gag, which was sort of neat. When they got a hundred yards or so from the road, he found the perfect spot and told her to stop her ass right there. He spread a blanket on the ground at the base of a small tree and laid the woman on her back with her head near the trunk and her feet pointed away. He pulled her arms above her head and handcuffed them around the tree. Then he stretched her legs down as far as they would go and staked them. She looked like she was on a medieval torture rack except she was on the ground.

  There.

  Perfect.

  She couldn’t escape in a hundred years.

  Then he got the tripod and camera situated and hoofed it back to the car to wait. The man showed up thirty minutes later, right on time, pulled next to Wickerfield’s car and killed the engine, exactly as he had been instructed to do. Wickerfield stayed in the shadows and let him sit there for five minutes, until he was reasonably sure that the police weren’t coming, and then snuck over and pounded on the driver’s side window with the butt of his weapon.

  The man jumped.

  “Step out of the car,” Wickerfield said. “I have a gun.”

  He patted the man down, found no weapons, and led him into the darkness, all the way to Janelle Parker. When they got there he turned on the flashlight—one of those powerful ones with six batteries—and shined it on her.

  She narrowed her eyes against the intrusion and pulled against her bonds, frantic and sensing the end.

  “Make your peace,” Wickerfield told her, then put the light on the man’s face. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” the man said. The tone of his voice sounded sincere. “If you screw me over you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  “No one’s going to screw anyone over,” Wickerfield reassured him. “This is a win-win deal, except for her.”

  Wickerfield started the video camera, made sure it was filming properly, and said, “Do it.”

  As Wickerfield shined the flashlight, the man picked up the plastic bag, slipped it over the woman’s head while she resisted as much as she could, then sealed it on her neck with three wraps of duct tape. They watched her twitch and struggle until she stopped moving.

  “Take the bag off,” Wickerfield ordered.

  The man did.

  “Now step back.”

  Wickerfield zoomed in on the woman’s head. Her lifeless eyes were frozen open. The sheer terror of her last breath was still etched on her face.

  “You did good,” Wickerfield said.

  He put the cuffs, the plastic bag, the duct tape, the stakes, the video camera and the tripod into a pillowcase and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Dump her somewhere at least ten miles from here,” he said. “Someplace semi-public where she’ll be found in the morning. Tomorrow you get your girlfriend back unless you do something stupid in the meantime.”

  The man walked towards Wickerfield, dangerously close.

  Wickerfield shined the flashlight directly into his eyes and pointed the gun at him. “Not another step.”

  The man stopped but the intensity in his eyes was unmistakable.

  “Remember what I said,” he warned.

  “Don’t worry. You did your part, I’ll do mine. Then we all walk away.”

  “Tomorrow,” the man said.

  WHEN WICKERFIELD GOT HOME HE WATCHED THE VIDEO.

  It came out perfectly.

  He locked it in the safe, next to the plastic bag—that wonderful piece of evidence that had the man’s fingerprints on the outside and Janelle Parker’s saliva on the inside.

  Then he checked on Ashley Conner. Nothing had changed. He pounded on the dungeon door with the sledgehammer until she screamed for him to go away.

  The new door hadn’t come on Monday as originally scheduled, but was definitely supposed to arrive tomorrow.

  Wound up, he kicked back with a couple of glasses of wine and flicked the TV channels until he got bored. Then he went to bed. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes when his phone rang.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday Morning

  ____________

  AT FOUR IN THE MORNING Teffinger woke up on the couch and remembered falling asleep there last night with his head in Rain’s lap, watching a Nicholas Cage movie called 8mm. He wandered into the bedroom, found Rain sleeping in the middle of the bed, then went back to the couch rather than wake her.

  A flicker of light suddenly appeared on the wall and then disappeared.

  Curious, he walked to the front window and pulled the curtains back a touch. Headlights came up the street. For some reason he sensed that a body was about to be dumped in his front yard.

  He ran to the bedroom, grabbed his weapon, deactivated the alarm system and walked straight out the front door. The cool night air sent a chill up his spine. The vehicle was at the end of the street now, turning around, heading back down.

  It slowed suspiciously at his hous
e.

  Someone suddenly threw something at him.

  He almost shot before he realized it was a newspaper.

  He shook his head, picked it up and walked back inside.

  FULLY AWAKE NOW, WITH A BEATING HEART, he knew that going back to sleep wasn’t an option. Rather than lie there like a sack of potatoes for an hour he decided to cut his losses and head to work. When he got there he kick-started the coffee machine and then waited for it to do it’s magic while he propped his feet up on the desk and watched. He closed his eyes just to rest them for a second.

  When he opened them Sydney was at the coffee machine, singing something in that terrible voice of hers. Teffinger put his feet down, stood up and then fell over. Sydney laughed while he figured out that she had tied his shoelaces together.

  “You should see your face,” she said.

  “I’m glad I amuse you so much.”

  The oversized industrial clock on the wall, the one with the twitchy second hand, said 7:28. He must have really been out cold to sleep that long.

  Sydney brought a cup of coffee over, a peace offering.

  “I had a brainstorm,” she said.

  The sound of her voice told him she was serious now. He untied the shoelaces but kept most of his attention on her. “Go on.”

  “Well,” she said, “it relates to the San Francisco airline manifests. So far, we’ve been concentrating on getting voices recorded to see if the Santa Fe woman recognizes anyone.”

  Teffinger nodded.

  That was true.

  “The woman said she could identify the man’s voice if she heard it again and I believe her,” he said.

  “So do I,” Sydney said. “That’s not the point. These people have faces too. We can pull their licenses and see if any of their faces match anyone in the crowd scenes.”

  Teffinger stared at her.

  “I’m going to say something, but if you ever repeat it, I’ll deny it.”

  “Oh? And what might that be.”

  “Brilliant,” he said.

  THEY GOT BUSY ON THEIR COMPUTERS, pulling up the licenses of the men listed on the airline manifests and downloading them into a central file, pounding down coffee as they went.

  “Brilliant,” Sydney shouted every now and then.

  Every once in a while Teffinger found a face that looked familiar and printed a black-and-white hardcopy of the man’s license. In the end he had three photos of interest, but had no idea where he had seen any of them before, or even if he had. One of the guys seemed vaguely familiar to Sydney, but she couldn’t place him either.

  They transferred all of the downloaded licenses onto a CD.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go up and talk to Kwak and see how long it’s going to take him to compare all these photos to the crowd scenes.”

  Sydney looked at the wall clock.

  “It’s only 9:05,” she said. “He won’t be in for another ten minutes.”

  Teffinger disagreed.

  “Actually he gets here by eight when there’s important stuff going on.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  They bypassed the elevators and walked up the stairs.

  “What do you want to bet?” Sydney asked.

  Teffinger considered it.

  Then they made a bet and shook.

  When they pushed through the door on the sixth floor, Kwak was at his desk, eating a donut.

  Teffinger looked at Sydney and grinned.

  “Sweet,” he said.

  Chapter Eighty

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday Morning

  _____________

  UNABLE TO CONCENTRATE, Jackie left her office and walked down the 16th Street Mall. She passed a homeless guy begging for money outside the Hard Rock Café and ignored him. A block later a homeless woman sat on the sidewalk in the shade. Jackie leaned down and asked her name, which was Mary. She reached in her pocket, pulled out five twenties, and put them in the woman’s hand, making sure she had a good grip on them before she walked away.

  “Don’t let anyone take that from you,” she said.

  Ten minutes later she sat in a Starbucks sipping coffee. It felt good to be around people. The buzz helped to squeeze Sarah Stepper’s dead face out of her thoughts.

  What to do?

  She could call Nick Teffinger and tell him where to find his man, put an end to the killing andstop the maniac dead in his tracks before tomorrow came.

  But the cops would search the man’s property, to try to determine how many others he may have killed that they didn’t know about.

  They’d find Sarah Stepper’s body.

  Then they’d connect Stephen to the scene, as the man’s attorney. And, she had to admit, Stephen was right. The cops would think there had been a conspiracy, at the least.

  Stephen—her client—would go down.

  She couldn’t take the maniac down without taking Stephen down.

  So which was more important, stopping a killer or protecting her client?

  She walked outside, sat down and leaned against a building. Then dialed Stepper. When he answered, she said, “Your client’s real name is Nathan Wickerfield. Note his initials are NW, which just happens to be the abbreviation for Northwest. He lives about thirty miles north of Denver on a large tract of land, 350 acres to be precise. I found Sarah’s grave on the property. I dug it up and saw her face.”

  She expected Stephen to be emotional.

  He was the opposite.

  He concentrated on the facts and asked her questions, until he knew as much as she did.

  “So now what?” she asked.

  Stephen didn’t hesitate.

  “I have to get Sarah’s body out of there. Then, even if this guy—what’d you say his name is? Wickerfield?—even if he lies to the police and tells them that I asked him to kill Sarah, or tells them I went along with his offer to kill her, there won’t be a body to back his story up. Without a body, even if the police believe him, they won’t have anything solid enough to bring a case against me.”

  She agreed.

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, after we get Sarah’s body out of there.”

  “First of all, there is no we. You’re not involved.”

  “But I’ll help you,” she said.

  “No, absolutely not.”

  “At least let me show you where it is.”

  “No,” he said. “Just tell me how to find it.”

  “But,” she said, “either way. What happens next? Do we call the police?”

  “Call the police?” The tone of his voice registered the question as an absurdity. “Of course not.”

  She stood up, suddenly too agitated to sit, and rocked on her feet. “But the guy’s a killer and he’s not going to stop,” she said.

  “The guy’s also my client,” Stephen said. “We’re lawyers, Jackie. We don’t turn in our own clients. That’s Rule Number One.”

  “Yeah we’re lawyers,” she said. “But we’re people too. And I was a person a long time before I was ever a lawyer. I’m thinking that the best course of action is for you to get Sarah’s body out of there, then I’m going to make an anonymous call to Nick Teffinger and get the killing stopped.”

  “No,” Stephen said. “That’s wrong.”

  “I don’t care if I get disbarred,” she added, which was true.

  “That’s not the issue,” Stephen said. “The issue is loyalty.”

  She paused.

  “Don’t do anything until we talk some more,” he added. “I’ll get Sarah’s body out of there tonight. Then we’ll talk. The guy won’t strike until the weekend, so we have time to think things through.”

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Day Seventeen - July 27

  Thursday Afternoon

  _____________

  JACKIE FOUGHT THE URGE to pick up the phone and call Teffinger. Stepper’s words kept ringing in her ear: “We’re la
wyers, Jackie. We don’t turn in our own clients. That’s Rule Number One.”

  He was right.

  Rule Number One.

  And it wasn’t just a rule.

  It was a founding pillar of the entire judicial system. Clients had to be able to trust their lawyers. They had to be able to tell the truth to their lawyers without having it bite them in the ass.

  But the fact that she could stop the killing with just one simple phone call was too important to dismiss so easily, rules or no rules.

  As far as any fallout to herself, she could care less about that. She didn’t care if she ended up disbarred.

  She could live with that.

  That wasn’t the issue.

  Her sister Brooke dropped by in the afternoon to pick up some more employment policies for Image. She looked stressed and had a bandaged finger. Jackie told her that she found out who was terrorizing Denver.

  “My dilemma is whether to call the police,” she said.

  Brooke responded emphatically and immediately. “No. You can’t do that.”

  Jackie felt grim.

  Trapped, even.

  “You’re a lawyer,” Brooke added.

  That was true, but it seemed to take on less and less significance.

  “If this guy kills again, and I could have stopped it but didn’t, I’m not sure I could live with myself anymore,” she said. “The hell with being a lawyer.”

  Brooke slumped into a chair, her face serious.

  “Okay,” she said. “I need to tell you a few things. Get ready to hate me.”

  “Hate you?”

  Brooke nodded.

  Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “I’m not the person you think I am,” she added.

  WITH THAT, BROOKE TOLD A STORY that Jackie could hardly believe. It started last month, when Brooke and Aaron borrowed Jackie’s Porsche to drive to Las Vegas to meet with potential investors for Image. They were driving at night, drunk, smoking pot, doing over a hundred, and ran another car off the road. When they doubled back to see what they’d done, they found three kids and a man—presumably the father—dead. A woman, the mother, came through the windshield but was still alive. Aaron bashed her in the head with a rock.