wasn’t?”
“It was.”
“So you say but what if you’re wrong? What if what I’m doing isn’t getting a guilty man off the hook? What if what I’m doing is keeping an innocent man out of prison? What if you’re the one on the wrong side of things and not me?”
That was yesterday.
Now, this morning, he was just passing Federal Boulevard when an email landed on his phone regarding “Exhibit A.” It was from Neverly Cage with a short message, “Happy viewing.”
Several photographs from Saturday night were attached.
Teffinger winced.
The woman had shown them to him yesterday, but having them land right here in his own phone gave them an eerie reality.
He’d have to show them to the chief and the D.A.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
More than that, he might have given the defense what it needed to make Zero a free man. If that happened, some other woman would end up dead down the road. The blood would be on Teffinger’s hands.
Suddenly a bad thought entered his mind.
What if Neverly was right and he was wrong? What if he was mistaken about Zero being the guy?
He shook it off.
“Don’t open that door.”
Mid-morning a padded envelope got hand-delivered to the front desk downstairs by a cabbie. On it was a label with typed words:
Detective Nick Teffinger
Personal & Confidential
Inside was a CD in a clear plastic case. Although the CD itself had no markings on it, an attached yellow post-it had the typed words:
Watch this in private
Teffinger twisted the case around in his hand.
Sydney Heatherwood walked into the room, poured a cup of caffeine and plopped her athletic African-American body into the worn vinyl chair in front of Teffinger’s desk. “Let me guess what your weekend was like,” she said. “Blond, blue eyes, tanned legs …”
He smiled.
“Something like that.”
“You never go for the black girls,” she said.
“I bounced a quarter off your ass once. If I recall right, it snapped up and almost broke the ceiling light.”
She punched his arm.
“You know what I mean. How come you never run down the black girls?”
“I have, three or four times.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And, how were they?”
“They were fine. I have no complaints, other than that quarter incident.” He shoved the CD in his coat pocket and said, “I got to run.”
Then he was gone.
4
Day Two
June 5
Monday Morning
Teffinger headed home in the ’67, picking up Neverly Cage’s beat-up Mustang in the rearview mirror halfway there, three cars back and holding.
He didn’t care.
Let her follow, he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
He parked in the driveway.
The sun beat down.
Ordinarily he would have at least put the top up.
This time he didn’t.
This time he headed straight for the front door and disappeared inside.
His heart raced.
He put the CD in the player.
What he saw he couldn’t believe.
It was dark out.
A woman in a short dress had her back against a telephone pole. Her arms were stretched up above her head as high as they could go. Her wrists were tied together. A man was in the process of wrapping the rope around the pole several times and then tying it off, binding her into position.
The woman was the raven-haired beauty from Saturday night, Rain.
The man was Teffinger.
Someone was across the way, over in the deeper shadows, filming the scene with a cell phone. They were in a pickup truck. The person doing the filming had the phone hanging out the window. The lens shook and the side of the vehicle occasionally bounced into view.
A woman’s voice said, “What’s he doing?”
A man replied, “He’s tying her up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re just screwing around.”
“Forget them,” she said. “Get back over here and fuck me.”
“Hold on a minute.”
“Preston—”
“Just a minute.”
Over to the left of the frame, the back end of Teffinger’s pickup was parked in view.
The license plate was
“It was.”
“So you say but what if you’re wrong? What if what I’m doing isn’t getting a guilty man off the hook? What if what I’m doing is keeping an innocent man out of prison? What if you’re the one on the wrong side of things and not me?”
That was yesterday.
Now, this morning, he was just passing Federal Boulevard when an email landed on his phone regarding “Exhibit A.” It was from Neverly Cage with a short message, “Happy viewing.”
Several photographs from Saturday night were attached.
Teffinger winced.
The woman had shown them to him yesterday, but having them land right here in his own phone gave them an eerie reality.
He’d have to show them to the chief and the D.A.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
More than that, he might have given the defense what it needed to make Zero a free man. If that happened, some other woman would end up dead down the road. The blood would be on Teffinger’s hands.
Suddenly a bad thought entered his mind.
What if Neverly was right and he was wrong? What if he was mistaken about Zero being the guy?
He shook it off.
“Don’t open that door.”
Mid-morning a padded envelope got hand-delivered to the front desk downstairs by a cabbie. On it was a label with typed words:
Detective Nick Teffinger
Personal & Confidential
Inside was a CD in a clear plastic case. Although the CD itself had no markings on it, an attached yellow post-it had the typed words:
Watch this in private
Teffinger twisted the case around in his hand.
Sydney Heatherwood walked into the room, poured a cup of caffeine and plopped her athletic African-American body into the worn vinyl chair in front of Teffinger’s desk. “Let me guess what your weekend was like,” she said. “Blond, blue eyes, tanned legs …”
He smiled.
“Something like that.”
“You never go for the black girls,” she said.
“I bounced a quarter off your ass once. If I recall right, it snapped up and almost broke the ceiling light.”
She punched his arm.
“You know what I mean. How come you never run down the black girls?”
“I have, three or four times.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And, how were they?”
“They were fine. I have no complaints, other than that quarter incident.” He shoved the CD in his coat pocket and said, “I got to run.”
Then he was gone.
4
Day Two
June 5
Monday Morning
Teffinger headed home in the ’67, picking up Neverly Cage’s beat-up Mustang in the rearview mirror halfway there, three cars back and holding.
He didn’t care.
Let her follow, he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
He parked in the driveway.
The sun beat down.
Ordinarily he would have at least put the top up.
This time he didn’t.
This time he headed straight for the front door and disappeared inside.
His heart raced.
He put the CD in the player.
What he saw he couldn’t believe.
It was dark out.
A woman in a short dress had her back against a telephone pole. Her arms were stretched up above her head as high as they could go. Her wrists were tied together. A man was in the process of wrapping the rope around the pole several times and then tying it off, binding her into position.
The woman was the raven-haired beauty from Saturday night, Rain.
The man was Teffinger.
Someone was across the way, over in the deeper shadows, filming the scene with a cell phone. They were in a pickup truck. The person doing the filming had the phone hanging out the window. The lens shook and the side of the vehicle occasionally bounced into view.
A woman’s voice said, “What’s he doing?”
A man replied, “He’s tying her up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I think they’re just screwing around.”
“Forget them,” she said. “Get back over here and fuck me.”
“Hold on a minute.”
“Preston—”
“Just a minute.”
Over to the left of the frame, the back end of Teffinger’s pickup was parked in view.
The license plate was
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