Client On The Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller) Read online

Soon he’d be able to concentrate on his GQ life again.

  Eat well.

  Exercise.

  Break hearts.

  Get high.

  Be important.

  He pulled his blindfolded captive, Lindsay Vail, out of the trunk.

  “Smell that pine,” he said. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

  28

  T effinger bagged the voodoo doll and the newspaper article, then continued to search Ripley’s house. Jessie-Rae told him she just had a weird thought.

  “What kind of weird thought?” he asked.

  “The bullet through the windshield,” she said. “Maybe the shooter wasn’t trying to hit you after all. Maybe he was trying to slice your face with glass, like the voodoo doll was sliced.”

  Teffinger considered it.

  “Here’s the important thing,” he said. “Don’t say a word about this on your show.”

  She punched him on the arm.

  “I already know that, Nick,” she said.

  “I know you know,” he said, “but I just want to be sure. I bent the rules by letting you come here in the first place. I need to be sure it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “I won’t say a single word to anyone,” she said.

  He put his arm around her waist and pulled her stomach to his. “You’re too damned sexy.”

  She stared into his eyes.

  Then she put her arms around his neck and brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered, “Prove it.”

  He chuckled.

  “Not here.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an evidence scene.”

  She pushed away, pulled her T-shirt over her head and threw it on the floor. “How about that? Is that evidence?”

  “Jessie-Rae—”

  She reached behind her back, unhooked her bra, and rocked her shoulders seductively until it fell off. Then, before he could stop her, she wiggled out of her shorts. Next her shoes and socks came off.

  She stood before him.

  Wearing a black thong.

  Nothing else.

  “See you later,” she said.

  “Where you going?”

  She slipped the thong over her hips and let it slide down her legs. Then she stepped out of it, rocked her hips, and said, “I’m going to see if you can catch me before I get to the front lawn.”

  Then she turned and ran.

  29

  Y ardley walked for a block and then couldn’t take it any more. She stopped, turned and stared directly at the man in the bandanna as he approached; intent on getting a good enough look at his face to determine if he was the pirate from the newspaper.

  It didn’t happen.

  Instead, the man suddenly darted into traffic, emerged on the other side of Broadway and walked briskly away.

  Yardley flagged a cab.

  They zigzagged for twenty minutes while she stared out the back window to determine if anyone followed. After she felt comfortable that no one did, she had the cabbie drop her off at the 4Runner.

  Then called Aspen.

  “I don’t trust your house tonight,” she said. “I think you should either get a hotel, or spend the night with me.”

  “On the sailboat?”

  Right.

  In fact, the boat was the better idea. That would give them a chance to talk and come up with Plan B.

  “Actually, I think we’re up to Plan C at this point,” Aspen said.

  Yardley chuckled.

  “Meet me there.”

  I-25 southbound was thick, slow and hot. Yardley got stuck behind an 18-wheeler and sucked diesel for a mile before she finally got enough daylight to dart into the next lane. Then someone called who she didn’t expect.

  Dakota Van Vleck.

  “Osborne and Salter spotted me at lunch,” she said.

  Yardley was shocked.

  “They did?”

  “Big time,” Dakota said. “Osborne pulled me into his office and interrogated me on whether I was feeding you information about our side of the case.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “That’s what I told him,” Dakota said. “You know what he did?”

  No.

  She didn’t.

  “He pulled me off the case,” Dakota said.

  “What?”

  “Yep, just like that—boom, off, gone.”

  “What a flaming jerk,” Yardley said. “He doesn’t think that you have enough integrity to have lunch with opposing counsel without violating the client’s confidentiality?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he knows I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have,” Dakota said. “But that’s not the issue. The issue is that he’s pissed off. That means that I get pissed on.”

  “I am so sorry—”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Dakota said.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  A pause.

  “I don’t know,” Dakota said. “For now, I don’t have much choice except to sit back and see if this is the beginning of the end.”

  30

  J ust as Dalton got Lindsay Vail out of the trunk, his cell phone rang and Poindexter’s voice came through. “I got hung up, dude.”

  “How hung up?”

  “Seriously hung up,” he said. “We’re going to have to reschedule.”

  Dalton powered off and kicked a stone.

  Damn it.

  This screwed up everything.

  He paced.

  What to do?

  Now he needed to keep the woman alive but couldn’t take her back to Refuge-7. Plus, he needed to leave almost immediately to pick up Samantha Dent in time to get her set up for G-Drop.

  A bluebird landed on a pine tree twenty yards away.

  Dalton picked up a stone and threw it with all his might.

  He always missed by a mile.

  This time he didn’t.

  The rock hit the bird squarely in the head.

  It fell straight to the ground and didn’t even flap a wing on the way down.

  31

  T hey didn’t find any more voodoo dolls in Ripley’s house. Teffinger got back to headquarters shortly before five, gave the doll and the newspaper article to Paul Kwak and said, “I need to know if the blood is human or animal. If it’s human, I need to know if it’s Ryan Ripley’s.” Then he went down to homicide, poured decaf and told Sydney that the dead BJ lawyer put a voodoo curse on him.

  “Why would he do that?”

  Teffinger shrugged.

  “The only thing I can figure is that he killed Whitney White, I got close to figuring it out, and he decided to take me off the case,” Teffinger said.

  Sydney frowned.

  “But the article wasn’t about Whitney, right?”

  Teffinger nodded.

  “Right.”

  The article was nothing more than a short piece about how the number of homicide cases in Denver had increased in the last six months. The photograph of Teffinger was nothing more than something visual to anchor the article.

  “Plus, the article came out three weeks ago,” Sydney said. “You haven’t even looked at the Whitney White file in more than six months. I don’t see how it could have sparked anything.”

  “Weird.”

  “Very.”

  Sydney cocked her head. “So, how are you getting along with your new squeeze? Have you laid any serious rug burns on her yet?”

  Teffinger raised an eyebrow.

  Not so much surprised by the question, but surprised at the timing of the question, with the rug burns in question less than three hours old.

  He almost said, Funny you should ask—

  Instead he said, “She’s nice. She told me about her background today. She’s half-black, a quarter Polynesian and a quarter white.”

  “Half black, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “That would be her better half, then,” Sydney said.

  “
Of course.”

  “I guess if you asked my advice, I’d tell you to not fall too fast for her,” Sydney said.

  Teffinger chuckled.

  “I only have one speed,” he said. “You know that.”

  She did but looked concerned anyway.

  “In three months, her face will be plastered all over the city and every horn-dog guy with half a dick will be wanting to hump her leg,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So, is she going to be true to you once she gets in the spotlight?”

  Teffinger shrugged.

  “We’ll find out.”

  When Teffinger got home, Jessie-Rae had spaghetti and meatballs waiting for him, to say thanks for the rug burns. The house was hot, but the front steps were in the shade, so that’s where they ate.

  The sky was cloudless.

  The foothills were quiet.

  A bee kept buzzing Teffinger’s plate.

  He could have swatted it fifteen different time but let it live.

  “I talked to my old roommate and she agreed that the voodoo doll is a curse on you,” Jessie-Rae said. “She thinks that the article about you, with your picture, was used in lieu of something personal of yours. She thinks that Ripley commissioned the curse, and then the doll and newspaper were returned to him after the fact. She also told me something interesting, namely that a curse can only be undone by the person who commissioned it. That’s bad news for you, since Ripley’s dead.”

  Teffinger raked his hair back with his fingers.

  “It’s all hocus-pocus,” he said. “I don’t believe in anything like that. Never have and never will.”

  “Well, my advice is that you start,” she said.

  He chuckled.

  “You can’t believe how much advice I’m getting today.”

  “Are you taking any of it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Not even mine?”

  “Especially yours.”

  She punched him on the arm.

  “Think about it Nick,” she said. “Ripley puts a curse on you—obviously within the last three weeks because of the date of the article. And then yesterday, you almost got shot.”

  “That’s something from an old case.”

  “Is it?”

  After supper, they hiked up the draw to the top of Green Mountain. From there, they could see Denver, the airport, and halfway to Kansas.

  “You said commissioned before,” Teffinger said.

  “Huh?”

  “You said the curse can only be undone by the person who commissioned it,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “I’m glad you said it that way because otherwise I would have never thought of what I’m thinking,” he said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “What I’m thinking is that even though Ripley’s dead, the person who actually performed the curse isn’t. That would be a person worth talking to. I’ll bet he or she has a bunch of answers to a bunch of questions.”

  Jessie-Rae studied the horizon.

  Then looked at him.

  “Do you ever turn off the detective brain?” she asked.

  “Only when I’m thinking about sex.”

  “And how often is that?”

  He chuckled and took the 5th.

  Then he pulled out his cell and said, “What’s your old roommate’s number? I want to ask her a question.”

  She didn’t know offhand but found it in the memory of her cell phone and gave it to him.

  Teffinger dialed and said, “What’s her name again?”

  “Reanne. Don’t ask her what I said about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d be embarrassed.”

  “In that case, now I have to.”

  “Nick—”

  “Thanks for giving me the idea,” he said. “It would have never crossed my mind.”

  “You are so evil.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s why voodoo curses don’t work on me.”

  32

  T hey microwaved low-fat meals at the sailboat. Halfway through, Yardley said, “We’re not going to find this guy sitting on our asses.”

  “So what do you propose?” Aspen asked.

  “Let’s take a drive to Lindsay Vail’s house.”

  They got there shortly before dark and made two passes. The house showed no signs of life. Yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the front door. Yardley parked a block down the street and killed the engine. Even though the thin Rocky Mountain air was cooler now, the heat of the day still radiated from the asphalt. Most of the houses had open windows. A half-block away, a dog barked, which set off another one. Hip-hop music came from down the street.

  “So what’s the plan?” Aspen questioned.

  Yardley frowned.

  “On the way over, I was thinking that we’d take a peek inside and see if we could find something,” Yardley said. “The more I think about it though, we’d probably be committing two felonies—breaking and entering, plus messing with a crime scene. If I got caught, I’d be disbarred.”

  “Then I’ll do it,” Aspen said. “You keep a lookout.”

  “You’ll go in?”

  “Yeah. It’s my problem anyway, not yours.”

  “You sure?”

  Aspen nodded.

  “Just keep a lookout and call me if I need to get out of there.”

  They decided to wait until dark and spent the time driving around until they found a place to buy latex gloves, a flashlight, and blank CDs to download computer files, assuming there was a computer. Then they came back and parked the 4Runner as far away from the house as they could while still having a view of it. They tested their cell phones to be absolutely sure there were no problems with the batteries or reception.

  There weren’t.

  Then it was time.

  Aspen kissed Yardley on the cheek and said, “See you in hell.”

  Forty-five minutes later she returned and said, “I didn’t find anything but I downloaded the computer.”

  “Excellent. How’d you get in?”

  “All the windows were locked so I had to break one.”

  They headed back to the sailboat, brought Yardley’s laptop on deck and fired it up, with glasses of white wine in hand. The marina was pitch-black and quiet. There were probably a few people scattered around spending the night—there always were—but they weren’t partying or obvious.

  Yardley popped in the CD and said, “Okay, Lindsay Vail, talk to us.”

  They opened file after file.

  The woman ran a website business.

  There were project memos; billing statements; a corporate checkbook in Quick Books; correspondence with clients; and similar business files.

  “The pirate could be one of her clients,” Yardley said.

  “You never know.”

  They kept searching.

  Yardley went below to use the facilities. When she returned, Aspen had one of Lindsay Vail’s old resumes on the screen and said, “I’m so jealous of this woman.”

  “Why?”

  “Right there,” she said, pointing. “Tattoo artist.”

  Yardley took a long sip of wine and studied the resume. It appeared that the woman supported herself as a tattoo artist while working her way through college.

  “So why are you jealous?” she questioned.

  “Because both sides of her brain work,” Aspen said. “Only my right side does.”

  Yardley chuckled.

  They kept going without success until the wine made their eyes heavy. Then they crawled into the cabin and went to sleep.

  33

  D alton checked out the bluejay, still amazed that he actually hit it. He nudged it with his foot and jumped back when it actually moved. Then he said, “This is for your own good,” and stepped on its head.

  He nudged it again.

  No movement this time.

  Then he headed back to civilization with Lindsay Vail in the trunk, not sure
yet what he was going to do with her. Then it came to him. He drove back to Refuge-7, picked her hogtied body up and set her in the bottom of a rusty steel dumpster in back of the building.

  “Do you want me to slit your throat?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t even think about shouting out. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going to gag you because you’ve been good today. But don’t make me change my mind.”

  “I won’t.”

  He closed the lid and then picked up Samantha Dent, who was more nervous than he expected, but looked nice and smelled like strawberries. He gave her $5,000. She stashed the cash in the bedroom and then said, “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so.”

  Two blocks from her house, he handed her a bandanna and said, “Time for your blindfold.” She wrapped it around her eyes, tied it in the back of her head, and then put sunglasses on so no good Samaritans would think she was being abducted and call the police. Dalton punched the radio buttons and stopped on an old Rhianna song, “Umbrella.”

  A half hour later they arrived at Refuge-7. Dalton led the woman into the playroom and let her take the blindfold off. Then he called Malcolm and said, “We’re here. When’s he going to come?”

  “We’ll be leaving in a half hour or so.”

  “You’re coming with him?”

  “Just to drop him off and check the place out.”

  Dalton looked at his watch—7:15 p.m.

  “I’ll secure her at eight and then leave,” he said. “The front door will be unlocked.”

  “That’ll work.”

  He hung up and told Samantha, “We have a little time to kill.” They chatted, dropped names and swapped stories. Then, at five minutes to eight, she removed her clothes and laid down on the bench with her arms over her head. He tied her firmly and inescapably, but not uncomfortably.

  “Is that okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He blindfolded her.

  “Can you see anything?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”