Night Lawyers (Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) by R.J. Jagger, Jack Rain

 
    1
    Day One
    June 4
    Sunday Morning
     
    Nick Teffinger, the 34-year-old head of Denver’s homicide unit, emerged from a deep unconsciousness to find he was behind the wheel of his pickup truck in the driveway. The ache in his body indicated he’d been there all night. Streetlights still burned but the first taste of dawn was starting to beat the night away.
    He shifted his six-two frame.
    The movement set off hammers inside his skull and pitched his stomach into a typhoon churn.
    He was on the wrong end of a serious night of drinking.
    Last night was a blur.
    He remembered beers and shots of Tequila and his hands up the skirt of a curvy little raven-haired thing in a shadowy booth in the back corner of D-Drop.
    What was her name?
    He couldn’t remember.
    He didn’t remember leaving.
    He didn’t remember driving her home.
    The light inside the cab wasn’t much but it was enough to tell something was wrong with his hands. On closer examination it turned out to be blood. His hands were bloody, not with fresh blood, with dried blood. He couldn’t see or feel a wound. The pattern appeared to be more as if he’d handled something bloody.
    Then his peripheral vision noticed glass in the passenger seat. It looked like a beer bottle with the bottom broken off, leaving a jagged edge.
    The jags were thick with dried blood.
    It was as if the glass had been stabbed into someone’s gut.
    His heart raced.
    What did he do?
    He opened the door, got out and hung on for a heartbeat to get his balance. His feet wobbled. He was still half drunk. The nausea in his stomach climbed up his throat. He swallowed it down, closed the door and headed for the front steps.
    At the front of the truck he found something he didn’t expect; the front end was smashed in on the passenger side. The headlight was busted out. The quarter-panel was crumpled. The bumper was dented.
    He must have hit something.
    He didn’t remember what.
    He didn’t remember how.
    He didn’t remember where.
    Get the truck out of sight.
    Right or wrong, that was his thought— Get the truck out of sight. He got back in the cab, punched the opener and watched the garage door rise. The garage was full. In the left bay sat the ’67 Corvette. In the right bay sat an eclectic miss-match of boxes and junk. He pulled the ’67 out onto the street, got the Tundra inside and closed the door.
     
    He forced himself to drink a full glass of water to get the sandpaper off his tongue, then made his way to the front steps to see if the morning paper was there.
    It was.
    He brought it to the kitchen table and went through it page by page to see if there were any reports of a hit-and-run last night, or someone being run over.
    If there was, he didn’t spot it.
    That didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
    It could have happened but not early enough to make the print.
    He headed for the bathroom and washed his hands. The dried blood turned red under the faucet and pooled in the bottom of the sink before twisting into the drain.
    His prior inspection had been correct.
    There were no wounds.
    He stripped out of his smoke-ridden clothes and spotted blood on his shirt and pants. There were no injuries to his body. It was exhausted and hung over but otherwise intact.
    A book of blue D-Drop matches fell out of his shirt pocket. On the inside handwritten in blue ink was the name Rain, followed by a 303 telephone number. Now he remembered the name of the touchy young squeeze of last night; it was Rain.
    The glass of water in his gut ached with sickness.
    He vomited long and hard until he had nothing left but a dry heave and a chest soaked in sweat.
    Then he curled up naked in the bed under a sheet and closed his eyes.
    The room spun.

    2
    Day One
    June 4
    Sunday Afternoon
     
    Teffinger woke Sunday afternoon not feeling good but not feeling like wormed-over death on a stick either. The worst was behind him. By tomorrow morning when he needed to work, he’d actually be functional. He drank coffee,