Night Lawyers (Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (3 page)

“Cut to the chase,” Teffinger said. “What do you want?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the man said. “We’ll get to all that. First, I want to be sure you understand the full extent of what we have.”

“I’ve watched it.”

“Right, I suspect you have,” the man said. “But I want to be sure you appreciate that I didn’t leave after our little fight. You thought I did, but I hung back in the shadows and saw what you did. My girl did too. We both saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“Don’t play games,” the man said.

“Tell me,” Teffinger said. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

“We saw what you did, you little shit. You slit the woman’s throat open with that little broken-bottle friend of yours; the same little friend you tried to shove into my face. We saw you throw her body in the back of your little white pickup truck. We saw you take off like a bat out of hell.” A pause then, “Reminds you of the Meatloaf song, doesn’t it?”

“Bullshit.”

“Where’d you dump her?”

“You saw nothing because nothing happened.”

“She’s going to show up,” the man said. “Was she your girlfriend or just someone you picked up in a bar?”

Teffinger paced.

The world spun.

“Where did it happen?”

The man chuckled.

“You don’t remember?”

“Just tell me.”

“The old warehouse district on the west side, near the South Platte.”

Teffinger winced.

He knew the area.

He’d used it for sex more than once.

In fact that’s where he spotted Decker Zero.

“So what’s the bottom line?” he asked.

“The bottom line is money,” the man said. “Start getting it in a pile. I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

Thirty minutes later Teffinger was trolling through the abandoned warehouse district in second gear. The asphalt was potholed, cracked and choked with weeds. The structures were decayed, the windows were broken and pigeon wings flapped with abandon. Ten minutes into it he came to a telephone pole with a rope dangling six or seven feet off the ground. He brought the ’67 to a stop and killed the engine.

His heart raced.

This was it.

This is where he killed the woman.

The rope was long and had years and years of weather and dirt. Right now it was looped around the pole multiple times, seven feet off the ground, and tied in a double square knot. The end hung limp, no longer attached to the woman’s wrists.

Dried blood was on the ground.

Teffinger pictured it squirting out of the woman’s neck and rolling down her chest and stomach and legs. He stooped down and picked up a white button with splats of dried blood, no doubt dislodged from her dress when he ripped it open.

He shoved it in his pocket.

He walked across the road to where the videotape was taken.

The scene from that angle was exactly as he saw it.

This was definitely the right place.

He walked over to where the Tundra was parked in the videotape.

There were droppings of blood on the asphalt from the pole to where the bed of the truck had been. He pictured carrying the woman in his arms.

That’s how he got the blood on his hands and shirt and pants.

Where did he dump her?

He’d been too screwed up to dig a grave, not to mention he didn’t have a shovel. He put her in the truck and took her somewhere, probably with intent to get her away from the immediate scene but maybe not without much more thought than that.

Maybe he only went a hundred yards or so.

Maybe he dragged her into a structure or dumped her in the first old rusted trash bin that came up. That would have been smarter than driving around town with a body in the back.

Had he been at least that coherent?

He untied the rope and brought it with him as he headed down the asphalt on foot. The blackmailer, Preston, hadn’t said anything about seeing Teffinger stop anywhere in the vicinity after putting the woman in the truck. He must have made it at least out of visual range before stopping, assuming that’s what he did.

The asphalt curved.

He walked until he was out of range and then looked in earnest for a place that might have attracted him Saturday night.

He came to a dilapidated brick structure, four or five stories high that might have been a small manufacturing plant back in the day. The steel man-door in front was secured with a rusty padlock. Red spray paint said, “No Trespassing.” To the left was a rollup delivery door that was raised up two-feet, leaving a gap at the bottom. Teffinger tried to muscle it up and found it solidly stuck.

He looked around, saw no one, then got down on the ground and worked his way inside through the gap. It was dark. The structure had few windows and those that existed were boarded.

The air had a pungent glue-like odor, maybe the ghosts of chemicals used to make rubber parts.

There was no body on the ground.

If Teffinger dragged the woman in here, he wouldn’t have pulled her far. He took three steps into the darkness just to be sure he wasn’t missing anything.

A dark silhouette ten feet farther in caught his peripheral vision.

It looked like a body.

7

Day Two

June 5

Monday Afternoon

“So what are we doing in here?” The words came from behind Teffinger. They belonged to Neverly. She was already through the gap and getting to her feet, nothing more than a black silhouette.

Teffinger walked towards her.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m working,” she said. “I saw you take the rope off that pole. What’s it relate to?”

“A case.”

“Which one?”

“One that doesn’t concern you.” He got down, rolled out the gap and said, “Come on.”

It worked.

The woman followed him.

From where she had been inside, she probably wouldn’t have been able to see the silhouette on the floor, not to mention that her eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. Now he needed to make sure she left the area.

“I’m starved,” he said. “You want to get a bite?”

She did.

She did indeed.

They ended up at a red vinyl booth at Wong’s on Court Street, sipping tea and munching egg rolls. “This is a weird situation,” he said. “You’re the enemy but I’ll be honest with you, every time I look into your eyes all I want to do is throw you up on this table and rip your clothes off.”

She smiled, slightly crooked, seriously sexy.

“They probably have rules against that.”

He nodded.

“They probably do.”

“You’re a rule-breaker though, Teffinger,” she said. “We both know that.”

“Me? Not really—”

She cut a slice of egg roll, speared it with her fork and brought it to Teffinger’s mouth. He took it, chewed and said, “So how is this going to end?”

She shrugged.

“That depends on how good your memory is.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means the person I work for has some stuff on you,” she said, “or, to be more precise, will have some stuff in 48 hours.”

“Less than that, actually.”

She smiled.

“That’s true. The only value to that stuff is if you testify at trial. Now, if it turns out that your memory fades before the trial and you’re not really sure if Zero is the person you saw that night, then the D.A. would drop the charges, the trial wouldn’t happen and the all the stuff on you would end up in some forgotten little manila folder in some forgotten little box somewhere.”

Teffinger cocked his head.

“Just for the record, you’re getting awfully close to witness tampering,” he said. “Another way to phrase it is obstruction of justice. That’s a felony offense.”

She pulled out her cell phone, flicked the screen for a moment and then handed it to him.

It was a photograph of him removing the rope from the pole.

A second photo showed him picking a button off the ground.

A third showed him rolling under the gap.

“You’re very photogenic,” she said.

He handed the phone back to her.

“I do what I can.”

“These weren’t taken with my phone,” she said. “I have a digital camera with a good zoom. I download the pictures to my computer and then email copies to myself as well. That way they’re in a bunch of places and can’t get lost.”

He took a sip of tea, put a serious expression on his face and said, “I need you to stop following me for a day.”

“Why?”

“There are things I need to get done.”

She chewed on it.

“What’s it worth to you?”

“You name it.”

She defaulted to a blank stare, then refocused and looked into his eyes.

“Tomorrow night, you take me out,” she said.

“Where?”

“Wherever I want.”

He clinked his cup against hers.

“Deal, but no tricks. I don’t want to see you in my rearview mirror.”

“You won’t.”

8

Day Two

June 5

Monday Afternoon

Teffinger had $6,728 in his savings account. Late Monday afternoon he pulled out $5,000 in cash so he’d at least have something in case Preston decided the dance needed to start tonight. He’d also have his bank statements over the last year to show that he didn’t have much beyond that.

At the end of the workday he went home.

The first thing he did was inspect the bed of the Tundra to see if there was any blood in there.

There was.

The raven-haired beauty had been in there.

She’d left her mark.

The number Rain scribbled on the matchbook was registered to one Rain DeVries. No Colorado driver’s license pulled up for her, nor did a criminal record. The phone registration placed her at an address in an older part of Lakewood east of Alameda where the trees were big, the streets were crooked, and small ranches squatted on large lots.

Twilight settled over Denver.

The sky softened.

The heat dissipated.

Teffinger pulled the ’67 into the woman’s cracked asphalt driveway and killed the engine. A drainage ditch ran next to the property and gurgled against a quiet backdrop.

Crickets sang.

A startled garden snake disappeared under a bush.

No signs of life came from inside the house. The windows were closed, the door was shut and no lights or sounds were present.

Two newspapers were lying near the front door.

One was Sunday’s.

The other was today’s.

Teffinger knocked and got no answer. He tried the knob and found it wouldn’t turn. Around back, the door was equally locked but one of the windows slid up when he tried it. After looking for nosy neighbors and seeing none, he slipped inside and closed the glass behind him.

“Anyone home?”

No one answered.

He was in a bedroom. The bed was made. He checked the closet and found it sardine tight with clothes, some sexy and some the opposite. In the first drawer of the nightstand was a vibrator and a 9mm Smith & Wesson. The second drawer was filled with bondage gear.

The top drawer of the dresser held panties and bras. They were the same style as the ones she was wearing Saturday night.

He headed deeper into the guts of the house.

The kitchen was old and cramped but clean. There was no indication that anything had been cooked or eaten or opened in the last two days.

A framed photo sat on the mantle in the living room. It showed Rain and an equally attractive female standing on a beach in bikinis with a large pier in the background. Teffinger wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be the Santa Monica pier. He took it out of the frame and stuffed it in his back pocket.

A corner of the living room was converted to an office.

On a desk were bills and papers.

One of the stacks of bills was for her cell phone, six months deep, and matched the number she’d written on the matchbook. The statements didn’t itemize ingoing and outgoing calls. All were paid except for the most recent one. Teffinger stuffed an older one in his pocket.

Another stack of bills was for Visa, again six months deep.

He grabbed the entire stack.

Inside the desk drawer was a checkbook, dating back six months, plus a pile of bank statement. He grabbed it all. A number of paycheck stubs were also in the drawer, going back six months. They were from the Majestic Casino & Hotel in Black Hawk. The amounts were minimal, suggesting she was more likely a cocktail waitress or money changer rather than a blackjack dealer.

There were no computers but an iPad was sitting on the desk.

He grabbed that too and then left.

He was weaving out of the neighborhood, almost to Alameda, when his cell phone rang and the voice of Preston came through.

“You got that pile all piled up yet?”

“You’re blackmailing the wrong guy,” Teffinger said. “I’ve got five grand and that’s it.”

“Five grand?”

“I have it in cash and you can have it tonight, right now if you want. That’s all I have though.”

“You want to buy your way out of a murder for five grand?”

“I’ll show you my bank statements,” Teffinger said.

Silence.

“Screw five grand and screw you. Get a hundred by this time tomorrow or pucker your lips and kiss your ass goodbye.”

“How?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Borrow it, steal it from an evidence box, I don’t really give a shit. Just be damn sure you get it. This is your one and only chance.”

The line went dead.

Teffinger headed home and bided his time until a solid darkness fell. Then he put a tarp and a shovel in the bed of the Tundra and headed for the warehouse district. If the silhouette on the floor turned out to be Rain’s body, he’d bury it somewhere.

He’d testify at Zero’s trial.

Preston’s videotape showed Teffinger roughing up Rain and charging Preston with a broken beer bottle. It didn’t show him actually killing Rain, however. That evidence could only be admitted through the testimony of the two witnesses, Preston and his girlfriend. Preston in turn was a blackmailer, so his credibility would be suspect. The girlfriend no doubt condoned the blackmail and would likely share the money, so she’d be equally suspect.