Sudden Guilt (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
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“Thank you for what?”
“For fine-tuning your criminal instincts; it’s going to make you a better lawyer some day.”
Chapter Forty-One
Day Six—May 10
Saturday Morning
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TEFFINGER PASSED AN EINSTEIN BROS. BAGELS, viewed it as fate since he now had all his six or seven thermoses strategically repositioned in the back seat of the Tundra, and swung in to see if they happened to have Chocolate Macadamia Nut on tap. Not only did they, but there was no waiting line to pay.
Very strange.
First Rain St. John appears from out of nowhere.
Now this.
What’s going on?
His life didn’t work like this.
He headed to the Camel’s Breath, chasing a long shot. Last night a Honda had been parked at the end of the road, at the turnaround, an apparent breakdown. He’d forgotten to get the license plate number, to call the owner and find out if he or she saw anything.
Most likely the bad guy turned around there so his car would be pointing the right way when he made his move. Maybe the people in the Honda saw the type of vehicle he was driving, although Teffiinger doubted it.
He pictured a couple having sweaty sex in the back seat and popping their heads up only long enough to see if the headlights came from a police car.
When he got to the turnaround something bad happened.
The Honda was gone.
Of course.
He killed the engine and then walked back down the road to where the abduction took place, studying the ground, looking for anything they might have missed last night.
On the way Leigh called.
“GOT YOUR RULES,” SHE SAID. “I never knew you were so kinky. I have to tell you right off the bat I’ve got issues with a couple of them.”
Teffinger laughed.
“Oh yeah? Which ones?”
“Well, to start, the one where you want me to call you Master.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just seems a little over the top.”
He chuckled and said, “Speaking of over the top, I met someone.”
“You already told me that.”
“No, this is a new one,” he said.
“A new one?”
“The other one sort of blew me off.”
“This gets back to my point, Teffinger.”
Oops.
Bad subject.
He put a serious tone in his voice and said, “Let me bring you up to speed on a few things.” He told her how Rain St. John showed up alive last night. She had been taken to an old house, drugged heavily and raped at least once. The guy used a condom. The house was in the country somewhere because a pack of coyotes tried to get in.
She hadn’t been put in a collar or left to rot somewhere with a razorblade, meaning their initial thought that she might be the next victim of the collar killer was off base.
“So we’re back to square one,” Leigh said.
Teffinger grunted.
“But this guy bothers me just as much as the collar guy and here’s why,” he said. “He did a body exchange. He dumped Rain in the car of a young woman named Tracy Patterson and took her. We’re treating her as a homicide in progress.”
“He wants credit,” Leigh said.
“Huh?”
“That’s why he marks his new prey with the body of his old one,” she said. “He thinks what he’s doing is wonderful.”
“Okay,” Teffinger said. “But what I’m really interested in is getting your take on the rules.”
“Well, let me ask you one thing,” Leigh said. “Did Rain St. John ever see the guy’s face?”
“No, never. He wore a mask.”
“That’s both good and bad,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s good, because it means he’s actually playing by the rules,” she said. “My guess is that he didn’t let her see his face because if she fully obeyed, and then won the coin toss—emphasis on the and—he would feel constrained to let her go. Which is probably what happened,” she said. “Does she remember a coin toss?”
“No.”
“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one,” she said. “She could have been unconscious at the time. The flip side is that if he’s actually playing by the rules and feels bound by them, then his captive is just as bound. Meaning if she screws up or loses the coin toss, then she’s dead. I’ve seen variations of that theme before, meaning rules for captives. It’s a way for the guy to take the blame off himself when he kills her.”
Teffinger considered it and couldn’t disagree.
Leigh added, “It would be interesting to know if this new woman—”
“—Tracy Patterson—”
“—Tracy Patterson, right, if she’s the kind of person who can sit back and obey or whether she’s going to do something stupid the first chance she gets. That’ll be a good litmus test for whether she’s eventually going to live or die. What do you know about her so far?”
“Hardly anything,” Teffinger said. “Young, pretty, got so drunk at a sleazy bar that she ended up driving down the wrong road.”
“She sounds a little wild.”
“Agreed.”
“That’s not a good thing, in this case,” she said.
Teffinger frowned.
“Maybe he’ll keep her drugged the whole time and she won’t get a chance to be stupid,” he said.
Chapter Forty-Two
Day Six—May 10
Saturday Afternoon
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WHEN HE HOPPED IN THE RUST-BUCKET OF A JEEP to leave the trailer park, Tarzan didn’t turn his Dick Zipp eyes to the left or the right. He wanted to—to see where Del Rae was hiding—but kept his face pointed straight ahead. She was out there somewhere, sitting behind the steering wheel with the engine off, passing the binoculars back and forth to Robert Sharapova, watching the trailer.
Watching him.
The lawyer had seen the body switch last night exactly as planned.
He’d seen Rain St. John get dumped in the other woman’s car and he’d seen the other woman get driven off in a Wrangler. Del Rae had written down the license plate number of the Jeep and traced it to one Dick Zipp. While the lawyer slept his hangover off this morning, Del Rae took a cab to the Camel’s Breath, somehow miraculously got the Honda started, went to Zipp’s apartment and ended up following him to this mysterious trailer.
Now Del Rae and the lawyer were sitting out there waiting for Zipp to leave so they could search the trailer.
Aaron could picture the lawyer’s face.
Tense.
Exhilarated.
Consumed with the thought of making wifey-poo deader than dead and, more important, getting away with it; easily getting away with it as a matter of fact. Because he wouldn’t be the killer—Dick Zipp would. Then he’d sit back and count wifey-poo’s money, enough to bring Del Rae solidly into his life.
What a pathetic idiot.
“Shoot yourself if you ever get that stupid,” Trane muttered. “Even half that stupid.”
WHEN TRANE LEFT THE TRAILER PARK, he made sure no one was following—just in case the lawyer came up with a brainstorm and Del Rae couldn’t talk him out of it—and headed home. There he peeled off the Dick Zipp suit, exercised, showered, put on normal clothes and called Scotty Marks.
“Dude, where are you?”
“Home, why?”
“I’m coming over,” Trane said. “I need to talk to you.”
“What? Another project?”
“Right. Plus something else.”
“Bring some women.”
“You got women.”
“Bring your leftovers,” Scotty said.
Aaron laughed.
“I could live happily the rest of my life on just your leftovers,” Scotty added.
Del Rae dialed him up, let the phone ring four time
s and then punched off.
Good.
That meant everything had gone as planned. Del Rae and Sharapova had broken into the trailer after Aaron left. They found the pictures of Rain St. John and the other woman hidden in the cabinet. They confirmed beyond any doubt that they had the right man.
Now they needed to find where the woman was hidden.
Then—after they found her—it would just be a matter of whether the lawyer had the guts to go through with the next step.
Hopefully he did.
It all hinged on that.
SCOTTY MARKS HAD SOMEHOW FIGURED OUT A WAY to keep a steady stream of marijuana passing through his lungs and simultaneously own a house. Not a mansion by anyone’s standards but still more than enough to keep stray dogs out of his food.
Tarzan parked the Ferrari in the driveway, knocked on the door, shouted “It’s me,” and entered before getting a response.
Two heartbeats later he stepped into the sixties.
Orange shag carpeting.
Beads.
Beanbag chairs.
Posters galore—Animals, Shadows of Night, Doors, Hendrix, Janis, Jefferson Airplane, Who, Zombies, DC Five, Paul Revere, and of course the Stones.
Pot emanated from every pore of the structure.
Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” played from a vinyl turntable with a scratchy edge.
Scotty stepped out of the bathroom, momentarily startled to find someone in the middle of his living room.
“Time warp,” Aaron said.
“That’s jealousy talking,” Scotty said. He lit a joint, took a long deep drag and held it out.
Aaron waved it off.
Tarzan didn’t put that junk in his lungs.
No way.
He talked about his ideas for the next photo shoot for quite some time before finally getting around to the subject most on his mind.
“I got a couple of women tailing me,” he said.
Scotty chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.”
“I don’t mean like that,” he said. “I’m serious. They actually broke into my place Thursday. They tried to copy my computer files before they got away.”
“Why? What’s on your computer?”
“That’s the crazy thing, nothing.”
Scotty shrugged.
“So make a copy and leave it by the front door,” he said. “Maybe they’ll go away.”
“Come on, dude,” Aaron said. “This is serious. Last night they were on top of a boxcar watching me with binoculars.”
“That’s weird.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“So who are they?”
Aaron raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t have a clue. But they’re serious. When I saw them on the boxcar I got stupid and shot at them. I think I even hit one. But they didn’t call the police.”
Scotty took another pull from the joint.
“So why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“Because I’m going to catch them,” Aaron said. “And I need you to help me.”
Scotty shrugged.
“Sure, if you want.”
Aaron put a serious expression on his face.
“If they don’t have a good excuse why they’re on my case, then I’m probably going to do something I shouldn’t,” he said. “You need to know that upfront. I won’t hold it against you a bit if you don’t want to get involved.”
“It sounds like we need to do what we need to do,” Scotty said. “They really haven’t given us a choice.”
Aaron slapped him on the back and said, “I owe you one, dude.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Day Sic—May 10
Saturday Afternoon
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LAW SCHOOL CRASHED IN ON PAIGE. She had a Property exam on Wednesday that was going to be a train wreck unless she did something quick. Deadlines at the Law Review loomed, deadlines that couldn’t be postponed, argued with or placated with a smile or a promise—queries, editing, galleys, and on and on. Not to mention all the basics like going to class, reading a gazillion Supreme Court decisions with all their intricate concurrences and dissents, and transforming her sloppy-copy class notes into something halfway intelligible. She felt like the last horse in the race, staring at a sea of tails.
Then to make matters worse, Christina Holiday—a third-year student and one of the Editors on Paige’s team—called. Paige pulled up an image of a serious young woman intent on getting a job with the biggest firm she possibly could.
Holiday had bad news.
“Have you seen what happened to Professor Brown’s article?”
No, Paige hadn’t.
She knew it had been assigned to two Associate Editors more than a month ago for basic editing but hadn’t heard much about it since.
“Let’s just say it went in looking like a tiger and came out looking like a giraffe,” Holiday said. “I mean they hardly left a sentence unscathed.”
“A butcher job?”
“Well, no, not really,” Holiday said. “I wouldn’t say the overall quality went either up or down. It’s more like a lateral move, a huge lateral move—think hundreds of miles.”
Paige frowned.
Professor Brown didn’t like anyone tinkering with his words, not even a little, because no one was as smart as him. If someone changed something it only meant they didn’t understand.
To make matters worse, Paige was supposed to have the proposed edit to Brown next week; and even that would be tight to get it into the next edition.
“Do you have time to fix it?” Paige asked.
“Negative,” Holiday said. “I’m already so slammed it’s not even funny. I wish I could but I just absolutely, one hundred percent can’t.”
“Okay,” Paige said. “Put everything on my desk.”
TEN MINUTES LATER TA’VEYA RETURNED to the hotel with a rental car, a blue Nissan from Hertz. She must have seen a look on Paige’s face because she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Minor emergency at school,” Paige said. “I’m going to have to go in.”
That was fine with Ta’Veya.
She didn’t expect any action until tonight anyway.
“You can take the Audi,” she said. “Just drop me off at an Avis somewhere on the way.”
Good.
That would work.
“How’s the side?” Paige asked.
Ta’Veya pulled up her shirt and showed her.
The stitches were holding up fine.
“You done good,” Ta’Veya said.
“We better clean it.”
THE LAW REVIEW ROOM ON A SATURDAY morning was one of Paige’s favorite places in the world. People were around, yesterday’s donut box almost always had a few remnants, and a professor or two usually dropped by for coffee. Most importantly, everything ran at half speed. The stress of having to dart to a class wasn’t there.
Today she used the room as a shield to block out the rest of her life and be normal for a few precious hours.
Professor Brown’s original article turned out to have a few awkward spots but overall was in a fairly publishable state. Paige decided to use the new editing where it made sense and leave the rest of it alone. Three hours later she emailed the revised version to Professor Brown.
There.
Done.
Now what?
Before she could decide, her cell phone rang. It didn’t recognize the incoming number. She almost didn’t answer but then did since it could be Ta’Veya. A man’s electronically scrambled voice came through.
Him.
“You should wear that T-shirt more often,” he said. “The blue goes with your eyes. And I love the way it rides up and shows your bellybutton when you raise your arm. You have a nice stomach, Paige, you really do, all taut and firm. You should show it off more often. But the fact remains that you’ve been a bad girl, a very bad girl. That presents problems.”
“Leave me alone!”
“I’d like to, Paige, I really would,” he said. “But we’re way past that.”
She hung up.
Then she resisted the urge to hurl the phone against the wall and instead turned it off.
Of course it didn’t ring again.
But she could feel it wanting to.
He was inside.
Trying to get out.
She paced.
Then broke a pencil in two.
And another.
And another.
Then she threw the pieces against the wall, scooped up her books and ran out of the room.
She drove.
Wildly.
Unleashing the power of the Audi.
Rolling through stop signs.
Busting speed limits.
She called Ta’Veya.
No one answered.
When she got to the hotel, Ta’Veya wasn’t there. She opened her suitcase, tore into the secret compartment and pulled out all her cash.
A half hour later she walked into a gun store on Colfax Avenue.
Chapter Forty-Four
Day Six—May 10
Saturday Afternoon
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THE CAMEL’S BREATH HAD A SECURITY CAMERA, ceiling mounted, pointed at the main cash register, but also spilling onto the edge of the crowd. Teffinger obtained copies of last night’s tapes and talked Paul Kwak into transferring them to DVDs—to preserve the originals—on an emergency basis.
Five in all.
Then he spent most of the afternoon with a remote in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, watching for Tracy Patterson, primarily to see who she was with and whether anyone was acting weird around her.
She showed up more than he expected.
She came to the bar eight times in all and each time it was the same—she ordered a screwdriver, drank it at the bar in two to three minutes while the music moved her hips, left the glass on the counter and disappeared again off screen. She paid for her own drinks and never had a guy in tow. Each time she was sweatier than the last.
Clearly she had gone there to dance, not to get laid.
One thing for sure, though. By the time she left she was more than inebriated enough to head down the wrong road.