Lawyer Trap (16 page)

Draven headed away from his car, walking as inconspicuously as he could. By the time he turned down a side street, three more Harleys had pulled up to his car.

43

DAY EIGHT–SEPTEMBER 12

MONDAY MORNING

W
ith an early-morning jog under his belt, and a bowl of vitamin-packed cereal in his gut, Teffinger got to the office by seven, already fine-tuning a mental checklist of the things he wanted to get done today. He was almost positive that Brad Ripley was the man in Tonya Obenchain's snuff film, meaning that one of the four murders was solved. The big question now is whether Ripley had killed the other three women as well.

Yesterday, Teffinger and Katie Baxter had spent hour after hour tearing Ripley's house apart, looking for other films. By the time Teffinger felt fairly comfortable that there weren't any more, he was astonished to find that it was almost midnight.

“Sorry, Katie,” he said, looking at his watch. “It looks like I worked you to death today.”

She cocked her head.

“Are you sorry enough that I should sleep in tomorrow?”

He grunted.

“Actually, I was hoping you'd come in early. Say 7:15.”

She actually rolled into the office at 7:14, gave him a dirty look, and walked over to the coffee machine. “Here's the problem, Nick,” she said. “You love Monday mornings. Sane people, like me for instance, don't.”

Actually, she spoke the truth.

Monday mornings meant five uninterrupted days of hunting.

He held a white bag up and dangled it. “Donuts,” he said. “White cake with chocolate frosting.”

She pulled one out, took a bite, and said, “No, thanks, I'm on a diet.”

Two minutes later, Sydney showed up, said hello to Katie, ignored Teffinger, and headed straight for the coffee.

“You look like I feel,” Katie told her.

“We need a nicer boss,” Sydney said, giving Teffinger a sideways look. “Someone who respects our First Amendment right to sleep.”

They ended up huddled at Teffinger's desk, the only ones in the room, pounding down coffee and coming up with a game plan.

Then they split up.

Thirty minutes later, Teffinger walked down 17th Street in the heart of Denver's financial district, holding a Styrofoam cup now empty of coffee. The city bustled around him, smelling like tar and perfume. He swung into an Einstein Bros, stood in a short line, handed the cup to the guy behind the counter, and asked for a refill.

“This isn't our cup,” the guy said.

“Yeah, I know,” Teffinger said. “But I really need coffee.”

“Do you need it enough to pay for it?”

He shrugged and pulled out his badge.

“Einstein was my great grandfather,” he said. “He'd want me to have the coffee for free.”

The guy smiled and filled the cup.

“You should have told me right off the bat you were related.”

Teffinger nodded.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought the resemblance was obvious. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.”

He threw a five-dollar bill into the tip jar and walked out.

Ten minutes later, he entered the lobby of the Cash Register Building on Lincoln Street, paused briefly to see if he was in the mood to get jammed into an elevator, determined he wasn't, and opened the door to the stairwell. Seventeen stories later, with burning thighs, he entered the clean-lined contemporary lobby of Brad Ripley Concepts, a space replete with floor-to-ceiling glass, stainless steel, eclectic textures, and splashes of color.

A young blonde sat behind the reception desk.

She fluffed her hair as he walked over.

“You're the guy from the news,” she said. “The detective working on the four women who got killed down by the railroad tracks.”

“Guilty,” Teffinger admitted. “What's your name?”

“Tammy.”

“Well, Tammy, let me tell you why I'm here.”

Then he told her, as gently as he could, that her boss was dead. Someone had shot him in the face.

He found the kitchen, filled up with coffee, then went into Ripley's office and closed the door while the news of the man's death ricocheted through the halls. The name of Ripley's snuff victim—Tonya Obenchain—didn't seem to exist anywhere in Ripley's office.

It wasn't in his Rolodex.

Or day planner.

Or computer.

Or emails.

Or anywhere else.

Meaning what? That Ripley chose the woman out of the blue as a random encounter? That she just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?

Wait.

This is interesting.

His day planner has the word SAVE written in red ink on April 3 and April 4. Tonya Obenchain disappeared on April 3. That's when you killed her, you little shit.

He walked around the floor until he found the receptionist, Tammy, and asked her to come down to Ripley's office. Then he shut the door behind them.

“You want to be my deputy?” he asked.

She looked at him weird.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you help me, but you don't tell anyone what we're doing or talking about.”

She looked stressed, but intrigued.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

Teffinger smiled.

“Good,” he said. “Now, just suppose for a minute that Brad Ripley had a dark side. A very dark side that he wanted to keep secret. Where around here would I find it?”

44

DAY EIGHT–SEPTEMBER 12

MONDAY

A
spen cranked out billable hours Monday morning, intentionally not doing anything that could get her in trouble, except for calling Nick Teffinger to set up a meeting.

He suggested lunch and said he'd pay.

“It'll give me a chance to dispel those nasty rumors that I'm the cheapest guy on the face of the earth,” he added. Someone in the background said, Those aren't rumors, Teffinger. They're etched-in-stone facts.

He suggested Wong's, a Chinese place on Court Street, because he solved most of his cases using their fortune cookies.

She got there first, shortly before noon, and claimed a booth with her back to the wall and a good view of the entrance. Teffinger showed up a few moments later, wearing jeans, a gray cotton shirt, and a sport coat. An elderly waitress hugged him as he looked around. He spotted Aspen and, as he walked over, she decided that he was close enough to her in age, if he decided to make a move.

“You're still alive,” he said, slipping into the booth. “I like that.”

He looked good.

Really good.

Magazine-cover good.

“That's the first thing I check every morning when I wake up,” she said.

He grunted and picked up the menu.

“Anything you want, up to three dollars,” he said. She must have had a look on her face because he grinned and said, “Okay, four.”

They ordered.

Then he somehow got her to tell him her life story.

Halfway through the meal, she decided it was time to get to why she'd called the meeting. “I have to tell you what I'm going to tell you because you need to know,” she said. “But no one can know that I told you. If the word gets out, I'll lose my job.”

Teffinger was okay with that.

“I think two of the lawyers in my firm might be mixed up in Rachel Ringer's death.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Who?”

“They're both senior partners,” she said. “One is a woman by the name of Jacqueline Moore. The other is a man named Derek Bennett.” Then she told him about the conversation she overheard in the hallway yesterday.

He seemed interested, but not as much as she expected.

“I'm working another angle,” he said. “Between you and me, we're pretty sure we know who killed one of the four women, namely Tonya Obenchain. What we're trying to figure out now is if he killed the other three as well.”

She stopped chewing and studied him.

“That's not public knowledge,” he emphasized. “So keep it that way.”

She promised.

“If you give me his name I can snoop around the firm,” she said. “See if he has any connections to Rachel or the other two lawyers I just told you about.”

Teffinger hesitated, then leaned across the table and whispered in her ear: “Brad Ripley.”

Then he got a call.

He listened intently, wrinkled his brow, and stood up. “I have to run,” he said. Then, over his shoulder, “Sorry.”

After Teffinger left, Aspen realized he hadn't paid the bill.

She checked her purse and found four dollars.

Shit.

Now what?

Two minutes later, just as she was about to flag down the waitress and explain the situation, Teffinger ran back in and put a twenty on the table. “Sorry about that. I have no idea where my mind is half the time.”

45

DAY EIGHT–SEPTEMBER 12

MONDAY

W
ith his car surrounded by bikers, Draven walked through the side streets of downtown Pueblo, hugging the buildings and keeping a good lookout for alleys and doorways in case Harleys rumbled up the street.

He was six or seven blocks away when he realized he'd made a huge mistake. Because of all the frustration trying to open the goddamn tattoo woman's safe, he'd completely forgotten to grab the logbook.

He immediately turned around and headed back.

Shit.

It would have only taken him three seconds to pick it up.

Now he had to go all the way back.

Dodge the asshole bikers.

Risk being seen by some busybody with a cell phone.

He kicked a pop can lying on the sidewalk. It turned out to still be half full and drenched his sock with sticky syrup.

Goddamn it!

He managed to get back into the tattoo shop without incident, then stayed low and crept to the front window and looked down the street.

Oh, man!

The bikers were still there, about six or seven of them. Worse, someone was hooking the car up to a tow truck. Draven hugged the floor for ten minutes or longer and then looked out the corner of the window as the truck went by. Faded white lettering on the door said, “Bob's Recovery and Repo Service.”

“Screw you Bob,” Draven said under his breath.

Two bikers followed the tow truck.

The remaining assholes split into two groups and headed off in separate directions.

No doubt to scout for Draven.

He found the logbook and checked for the name of the woman who had been in the shop the same day as him, getting the tattoo on her breast. She was Isella Ramirez. Then he shoved the book under his sweatshirt, checked the back of the building, saw no one, and left.

Two cabs sat in front of the downtown Marriott. Draven got in the front one and told the driver to take him to wherever it was that the used car lots clustered together. Five minutes later he got dropped off on Main Street, about a mile north of town. At a place called Harvey's Quality Cars and Trucks, he bought the cheapest car on the lot—a rusty 1979 Ford Granada—under a false name for $450 cash, and then headed north on I-25.

Mia Avila was going to be sorry for sending him on this wild goose chase.

Very sorry.

On the way back, he stopped at a payphone and called Chase, the stripper. “Have you got some time for me today?”

“You're going to give me another eight hundred, right?”

“Absolutely. That's the deal. I have it right here in my hand.”

“Then I got all the time in the world, sweetie. I just have to get my ass to the club by seven—eight at the latest.”

46

DAY EIGHT–SEPTEMBER 12

MONDAY AFTERNOON

T
effinger showed up ten minutes late to the one o'clock meeting, apologized, sat down, then stood up and walked out. He returned a heartbeat later, this time holding a cup of coffee, which he set on the table—his favorite piece of furniture; stained, beat-up and scratched to the point of no return. He looked at it and said, “You could live for a week just off the stuff in this wood.” Then he got serious. “Okay. Where we at?”

Sydney went first.

“We now have in hand all of Brad Ripley's phone records, going back a full year. We have records for his home phone, cell phone, and business phone. There isn't a single call to, or from, the phones of any of the four victims.”

Teffinger frowned.

“Are you sure?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she said.

“You cross-referenced to all the victim's phones, meaning home, office, cell, whatever?”

Yes, she had.

“And still no connection to anyone, not even Tonya Obenchain?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that's not good,” he said. “So you worked hard all morning, just to give me bad news.”

She grunted.

“It's what I do.”

Teffinger turned his attention to Katie Baxter. “Give me something good and you win,” Teffinger said.

“I've run a pretty solid background check on Ripley,” she said. “So far, nothing of interest has popped out. And I can't find any social, economic, or other connection between him and any of the four victims. No common friends, jobs, clubs, or anything. None of Tonya Obenchain's family or friends recognize Ripley's name or face.”

Teffinger looked at the coffee and then took a sip.

“If I didn't know better,” he said, “based on what you've said so far, I'd probably conclude that Tonya Obenchain was just a random, spur-of-the-moment pick.”

Sydney raised an eyebrow.

“Meaning what? That you do know better?”

Teffinger nodded.

“We found a day planner at his office,” he said. “He had April 3rd and 4th set aside to SAVE, in red ink. Tonya disappeared on April 3rd. But more interesting is the fact that the only other red-ink notation occurs on March 15th. My guess is that both entries were made at the same time, meaning on March 15th. So in mid-March he knew he was going to kill her on April 3rd or 4th.”