Lawyer Trap (20 page)

“They're pretty dark and grainy,” he observed.

That was true.

“I want to find that building and be walking around inside it by the end of the day,” he said.

Kwak scratched his oversized gut.

“It looks abandoned. As far as the vehicle goes, we don't have much of an angle on the license plate number,” he observed. “It's definitely a BMW, though.”

Teffinger agreed. “I need the model, year, and color.”

Sydney showed up mid-afternoon and plopped down in the chair in front of Teffinger's desk. “The phone's a dead end,” she said, referring to the public phone that someone used on March 15th to place a four-minute call to Brad Ripley.

“You drove out there?”

“I did. The phone itself is located at a gas station on County Line Road. The security cameras don't shine on it. And even if they did, the tapes have already been recycled about two thousand times.”

Teffinger frowned.

“Thanks for trying,” he said. “I wouldn't have been able to sleep without running it to ground.”

Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, just because your idea is a dead end doesn't mean that mine is.”

He thought about it.

He couldn't remember what her idea was.

There were too many ideas floating around to keep track of.

That was the problem with this whole case.

“It turned out that Brad Ripley's credit card statements show a March 15th purchase at the Cheesecake Factory,” she said.

Now Teffinger remembered.

Brad Ripley's connection to someone on March 15th might have been live, over lunch, rather than by phone.

He nodded, impressed.

“Okay,” he said. “Run with it.”

She beamed and stood up.

“Whoa,” he said. “Sit back down. First I need to fill you in on Brad Ripley's safe.”

Later, up on the sixth floor, Paul Kwak beamed as he handed Teffinger printouts of the photos in an enhanced state. Teffinger shook his head in disbelief.

“It almost looks like day,” he said.

“You got to love technology,” Kwak said.

Teffinger had never seen this particular building—old, boarded up, long and low with several doors. It reminded him of a small manufacturing facility.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I can't find any markings or signage on it,” Kwak said. “It was used to make something or store something, is my best guess.”

“What about the BMW?”

“That was easy,” Kwak said. “Last year's model, a 5-Series. The color has some fancy name but it's basically silver.”

Teffinger shuffled through the printouts again.

“Can you bring the building up on the monitor?”

He could and pulled it up on a 30” flat-panel screen.

Electronically it was brighter and clearer but still didn't give up any secrets.

“So how do I find this place?” Teffinger asked.

Kwak cocked his head.

“Find the BMW,” he said. “Then do something to make it go back there. And follow it when it does.”

Teffinger laughed.

“Do you have any simpler ideas?”

He didn't.

“I'm a complicated man,” he said.

56

DAY NINE–SEPTEMBER 13

TUESDAY EVENING

A
spen and Christina sat at the bar in a half-filled tavern near Larimer Square, drinking white wine too fast and bowing to the luck gods for letting them get out of the law firm alive and undetected. The crowd seemed like young professionals, dressed for success, taking a mid-week breath of life on their way to the weekend.

Christina seemed even more rattled than Aspen.

“So I still don't get it,” Aspen said. “Some woman in New York goes into a suicide-by-bus routine. Derek Bennett calls her a dumb bitch and agrees with whoever it was on the other end of the phone that things are reaching critical mass—his words, critical mass.”

Christina took a sip of wine.

No, not a sip, a drink.

“Bennett's turning out to be one strange piece of work,” she said. “And that gun. Why does a lawyer need a gun in his office? It gives me the creeps just knowing it's in the building, much less that he's the one who has it.”

She shuddered.

“That was a stroke of genius, by the way. That whole battery thing.”

Christina frowned.

“Sorry I didn't think of it sooner,” she said. “I was a heartbeat away from pulling the fire alarm when I thought of it.”

“That would have been subtle.”

Two men came over, wearing suits, very polite, and wanted to buy them drinks.

They let them.

Then they headed back to Christina's.

While Christina went to shower the day off, Aspen fired up her laptop and plugged into the Internet to do a little research. The suicide-by-bus woman, Rebecca Yates, turned out to be a still-gorgeous ex-model who had landed a full-time job as a trophy wife ten years ago. Other than giving her husband's money away to charities, and parading her face in every high-society function this side of the moon, she really didn't have many other dimensions.

Her husband—Robert Yates—on the other hand, turned out to be quite the story. A self-made man who worked his way up to Harvard and later said it was the most boring four years of his life. It did, however, springboard him onto a path that eventually landed him as the president, CEO, and majority shareholder of Tomorrow, Inc., a satellite communications company.

He and eight-year-old daughter Amanda Yates were playing Frisbee in Central Park on a nice July afternoon earlier this summer, a common ritual. Except this time they died.

Both had been ripped open with a jagged knife.

The prevailing theory being that a robbery had gone bad.

The father resisted and ended up on the wrong side of the blade.

That left the girl.

A witness.

So she had to go too.

There were no solid leads or suspects.

Even to this day.

Ordinarily it wouldn't have been much of a story, except the guy was richer than God and everyone wondered what the wife would do afterwards. Most expected her to live it up. Who wouldn't? She was young, beautiful, filthy rich, and single.

But, strangely, she actually grew despondent instead.

She threw herself in front of a bus.

When Christina came out of the shower, Aspen told her the story.

“He was President of Tomorrow, Inc.?”

“Right.”

She scrunched her face.

“We had major litigation against that company,” she said. “We represented Omega in a federal case in D.C. against Tomorrow. An antitrust case based on predatory pricing. Our client got a judgment against Tomorrow for over a hundred million dollars.”

“Wow.”

“They appealed and managed to dodge having to post a supersedeas bond,” she added. “But the case comes up for oral argument next month.”

“Do they have any basis for reversal?”

“According to the powers that be, no. So Tomorrow's on the verge of writing a very big check to our client.”

Aspen spun around in her chair.

“This is getting too complicated,” she said.

“Forget about it,” Christina said. “Obviously it has nothing to do with Rachel. We need to stay focused on Derek Bennett the weirdo sadist and not Derek Bennett the antitrust lawyer.”

“You're right.”

She looked at her watch.

10:42.

“I'm ready to hit the sack.”

“Let's do it.”

Christina had only one bed, but it was big enough that neither of them felt uncomfortable sharing it. They said goodnight and snuggled in. Five minutes later Aspen said, in a very low voice, “Are you sleeping yet?”

“Yes.”

“Robert Yates got killed on July 22nd. We need to find out if anyone from the law firm was in New York at that time.”

Christina moaned.

“Go to sleep.”

57

DAY NINE–SEPTEMBER 13

TUESDAY MORNING

W
ith a gut full of pancakes, Draven kissed Gretchen goodbye under a cloudless Colorado sky, pulled her T-shirt up and licked her left nipple, and then pointed the front end of the Granada towards the cabin, intent on getting everything done today that he needed to get done. In a perfect world, he would have just waited at the farmhouse until Swofford called and said the coast was clear. But he figured it would be smarter to head out now and get Mia Avila the hell out of there before Gretchen started to freak out again, or came up with some wild idea to bring the woman inside and feed her.

His story was already thin.

He didn't know how long she'd actually believe it.

Better to not press his luck.

So he headed down the road.

It was times like this that he wished he had Swofford's number, or—better yet—actually knew who Swofford was. But the rules had been set up long ago, and the communications only went one direction, and always came to him from a mystery voice calling from a public phone.

“It's safer for everyone that way,” Swofford said.

So far, the arrangement had been good.

Swofford always came through with the money.

How the hell did Swofford get the clients?

That was the question.

Draven could cut Swofford out of the deal altogether if he could just solve that little puzzle. And why shouldn't he? After all, he was the one doing all the heavy work and taking all the risk.

Well, most of the risk, anyway.

He skirted around downtown Golden and headed west, winding into Clear Creek Canyon, one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth, with its steep rock walls and frothing mountain river. The radio reception immediately went to hell.

Then, shit!

He noticed that the gas gauge read full. There was no way that could be right, not with all the miles he'd driven. The goddamn thing must be broken.

So how much gas did he have left?

Probably not much.

He could be riding on fumes for all he knew.

So, what to do?

Suddenly the bitch Mia Avila moaned and started to move.

He was just about to tell her to shut up when the engine sputtered and died.

Goddamn it!

He managed to get onto the shoulder, barely clear of the road. When the woman moaned again, something exploded in Draven's brain and he punched her in the head so hard that his hand felt like it broke.

The moaning immediately stopped.

He wasn't sure if he'd killed her or not.

Ten seconds later a cop car pulled behind him and turned on the light bar.

Draven waved at them, as friendly as he could, and walked over. “No problems,” he said. “I just ran out of gas. Someone's bringing some up and should be here pretty quick.”

The driver got out.

“You're awful close to the road,” he said.

“I'm over as far as I can get,” Draven said, which was true. “Like I said, they should be here pretty soon.”

The cop scratched his nose and surveyed the area.

“I'm just worried that someone's going to come around the corner a little too tight and clip you.”

Draven shook his head and said, “I think I'm okay.”

The cop studied the other side of the road, which had twice the shoulder, maybe even three times. “I'd feel better if you were over there,” he said. Then to his partner: “Jake, watch the traffic for a moment, will you? I'm going to push this guy across the street.” Back to Draven: “What I need you to do is put the car in neutral and steer it into that spot over there. Can you do that?”

Draven nodded.

“Sure, no problem.”

The cop walked to the front end of the car. “Did you just buy this?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” Draven said.

“Next time, talk to me first,” the cop said. “My neighbor had one of these. Bought it new and it fell apart in about three months.”

Draven swallowed and tried to look amused.

“Now you tell me,” he said.

Then the cop started pushing.

At that exact second Mia Avila groaned.

Draven coughed to mask the sound, then punched the radio button and worked the dial until he found a station, filled with static but good enough for what he needed.

He knew the song.

“Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.

Must be an oldies station.

“Take your foot off the brake,” the cop shouted.

Draven did.

Pay attention you dumb shit.

The cop couldn't move the vehicle by himself, so his partner came over to assist. Two minutes later, the rust-bucket of a car sat on the other side of the road, far enough from the pavement to where it wouldn't be clipped.

Draven thanked them and said goodbye.

The woman was making noises again.

As the cops started across the road, a Hummer sped around the bend, going too fast and hugging the inside track. It clipped the rear end of the police car, only catching it by a foot or so, but crushing the metal and spinning the vehicle into the middle of the road. The cops dived for cover. The taillight shattered and the rear tire exploded.

“Goddamn it!” one of the cops shouted.

The Hummer hardly got scratched but the cop car ended up in the middle of the twisty canyon road, blocking traffic in both directions. The rear quarter-panel had bent into the tire, not only flattening it but also locking it in place so that the vehicle couldn't be pushed.

Cars were already backing up.

Draven's first instinct was to just calmly walk down the road until he was out of sight and then run. But he was at least five miles into the canyon. If anyone found the woman, there would be no way he could make it back to town before they caught him.

Unless he confiscated a car.

Say the last one in line.