Lawyer Trap (2 page)

Aspen shrugged.

She still didn't recognize the place.

“Anyway,” Christina said, “they found Rachel's car in the parking lot. But she never showed up inside the restaurant.”

“What are you saying? That someone took her?”

Christina nodded.

“That's the theory.”

“Who?”

Christina held her hands up in surrender. “She didn't have a boyfriend, or money problems, or health problems, or anything that might explain it. Reportedly, she had been in a good mood all day, suspecting what was going to happen at the restaurant.”

“What was that?”

“The partners were going to tell her that they were putting her name up for partnership at the annual meeting that was coming up in a couple of weeks,” Christina said.

Aspen pondered it.

Rachel would have been ecstatic.

That's all she ever wanted.

And had worked her ass off for eight years to get it.

No one deserved it more.

“Who were the partners she was going to meet?”

Christina wrinkled her forehead, reaching deep, then said, “Jason Foster and Derek Bennett, if my memory's correct. Why?”

“Nothing, really,” Aspen said. “I'm just going to ask them about it, if I ever get a chance.”

Christina shook her head in doubt.

“The cops assigned to the case were way out of their league,” Christina said, “so the law firm actually hired a couple of private investigators and threw some serious money at it. In the end, no one knew much, other than what I just told you. Rachel disappeared somewhere between her car and the front door of the restaurant. How and why, no one knows. Maybe we'll learn more when her body shows up.”

Aspen looked out the window.

Then back at the attorney.

Aspen must have had a look on her face, because the attorney added, “She's been gone for more than five months.”

3

DAY ONE–SEPTEMBER 5

MONDAY MORNING

J
ack Draven didn't know if he was an Indian, a Mexican, or just a really dark white-man, nor did he give a shit. Most people took him for an Indian on account of the high cheekbones, the thick black ponytail, and the scar that ran down the right side of his face, all the way from his hairline to his chin. It had been there ever since he could remember. He had no idea how he got it, but did know that he wouldn't erase it even if he could.

It was part of him.

Somehow he'd earned it.

Now it was his.

Driving south on I-25, the traffic thinned after he passed Colorado Springs and the speed limit increased to 75. He set the cruise control at 88, looked around for cops, found none, brought a flask up to his mouth, and took a long swallow of Jack Daniels.

It burned his mouth and then dropped into his stomach.

Damn good stuff.

A knife with an eight-inch serrated blade sat on the seat next to him. He picked it up and twisted it around in his hand as the arid Colorado topography shot by. To the left a river snaked through the land. Hundreds of ugly cottonwoods—nothing more than 50-foot weeds, in his opinion—sucked up to it.

A hint of yellow had already snuck into the leaves. Fall was coming. Lucky for him, he'd be in California before the first snow fell.

This most recent hunt was going to be a little tricky. He was searching for an Hispanic woman, nice-looking, under thirty, heavily tattooed. Tons of tattoos, that was the most important thing. The more goddamn tattoos, the better.

That would be a tall task in Denver.

But in Pueblo, not so much.

There was more Hispanic pussy down there than the law allowed. Not to mention a biker bar on every street corner—tattoo magnets.

He rolled his six-three, 225-pound frame into the blue-collar town mid-afternoon and checked into a sleazy rat-in-the-closet hotel, paying cash—the kind of place where no one noticed anything and remembered even less. He tried to take a short nap, but some hooker in the next room kept screaming fake orgasms. So he drove around to check out the tattoo shops, just in case the perfect woman happened to be hanging around one of them. He'd hit the biker bars tonight.

He drove by three tattoo shops, saw nothing but guys, and kept going. Then he found a shop with two women inside, one of them working on the other. He stopped across the street, wrote down the license plate numbers of the two cars in front of the shop, and then pulled in and killed the engine.

Rap music filled the air.

When he walked in, the woman giving the tattoo looked up.

“Hi, I'm Mia,” she said. “Go ahead and look around. If you got any questions just holler.”

She fit the bill, perfectly—Hispanic, mid-twenties, with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a tank top with no bra, showing off strong arms covered in ink. The woman getting the tattoo would work too, although she would be second choice. She was getting the new artwork on her left breast, a small rose or flower of some sort.

“Just looking,” he said.

“Besides the stuff on the walls,” she said, “there's books on the desk, too. We can make anything any size you want. We can change the colors, customize them however you want.”

“Great,” he said.

Pattern pictures covered the walls, hundreds of them.

He walked around.

Keeping one eye on the women.

Trying to not be obvious.

Then something weird happened.

He spotted a pattern he actually liked.

“What's this?” he asked, pointing.

Mia stopped working and turned her cute little face toward him. “That's an Indian war symbol,” she said.

He didn't even hesitate.

“I want it.”

She nodded. “That'll look good on you. I'll be about another half hour here, then you're up.”

Perfect.

“Say, would you mind if I watched, and see how you do it? I've never had one of these things before.”

The two women looked at each other.

Neither cared.

So he pulled up a chair and watched.

As they chatted he found out all kinds of useful little facts. The woman giving the tattoo—Mia Avila—owned and operated the shop. She opened it two years ago at age twenty-two after coming out of the wrong end of a marriage. The woman in the chair—Isella Ramirez—was married with two kids. The ink on her tit was a birthday present from hubby-face.

Mia Avila would be the one he'd take.

Assuming the opportunity presented itself.

4

DAY ONE–SEPTEMBER 5

MONDAY AFTERNOON

B
ack at headquarters, Teffinger sat through a series of afternoon meetings drinking decaf while his thoughts wandered to Davica. He liked her eyes, her voice, and the way she tossed her hair.

He needed to see her again, soon.

If not again today, then tomorrow for sure.

There was something between them, unspoken but yet tangible. He couldn't remember the last time a woman's pull had so strong a grip on him, especially right from the start.

After the last meeting, he swung by Sydney Heatherwood's desk. At age twenty-seven, she was the newest detective in the Unit, personally stolen by Teffinger from vice a year ago. But she had already cut her teeth on two of the scariest guys to ever hit Denver.

“Want to take a ride?” he asked.

She looked relieved at the opportunity.

They were headed to the stairwell, almost past the elevators, when Sydney jumped in front of him waving a bill.

“Ten dollars if you take the elevator,” she said.

He stopped.

“Why?”

“Just to see if you're capable.”

“I am,” he said, trying to walk around her.

She blocked him again.

“Ten bucks says you're not,” she said.

He studied her.

“Remember, I'm the cheapest guy on the face of the earth,” he said.

“I already know that.”

He grabbed the bill and pressed the down button. When the elevator doors opened, he hesitated, then stepped inside and pressed the button for the parking garage. Sydney—visibly startled—stepped inside with him.

Before the doors shut he jumped out.

He returned the bill down in the parking garage.

“Try me again tomorrow with a twenty,” he said.

They headed north on Broadway in his Tundra, with the windows cracked just enough to let in air but not noise. The weather couldn't have been more perfect, eighty and sunny. He flicked the radio stations, finally stopping at “Two Out of Three Ain't Bad.”

“Does this car even get black music?” Sydney asked.

He raised an eyebrow and realized that sometimes he actually forgot that she was African American, born and raised in Five-Points.

“What? You don't like Meat Loaf?”

“No, I like steak,” she said.

He smiled and added, “He was in
Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“Who?”

“Meat Loaf. He was in the
Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“What's that?”

“What do you mean—what's that? You never saw the
Rocky Horror Picture Show?”

“No, what is it?”

“Have you ever danced the Time Warp?”

She looked at him weird. “No more coffee for you,” she said. “Tell me about your meeting with Davica Holland this morning.”

He did.

Leaving out the bedroom scene.

“She did everything she could to incriminate herself,” he said. “Either because she's innocent and doesn't care what we find, or because she's guilty and wants to appear so innocent that she doesn't care what we find.”

“So which is it?”

“I don't know. I need more time with her.”

Fifteen minutes later, they ended up driving through weeds and dirt down an old abandoned BNSF railroad spur north of downtown. Teffinger parked the vehicle and they hoofed it down the tracks for about fifty steps. Then they walked north for thirty yards until they came to the shallow grave where Angela Pfeiffer's body had been found.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Sydney asked.

Teffinger shrugged and raked his hair back with his fingers. It immediately flopped back down over his forehead.

“Whatever we missed the first time,” he said.

Three geese flew overhead.

The grave had been shallow; in fact, not more than six inches deep. Either the digger tired easily—say, a woman—or didn't really care how deep the grave was, just so long as the body was hidden from sight.

Ten yards farther past the gravesite was a concrete retaining wall, about four feet high. Teffinger got on top and scouted around. The ground on the other side came up to about two feet from the top of the wall.

Teffinger jumped back down on the track side of the wall and called Sydney over.

“How much do you weigh?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Just indulge me,” he said. “How much?”

“I don't know,” she said. “One twenty-five, maybe.”

Good.

That was about the same weight as the dead woman.

“Do me a favor and lay down on the ground,” he said. “I'm going to see how hard it is to lift you up and get you over this wall.”

She looked at him as if he was crazy.

“I don't think so,” she said.

“Come on,” he said. “It's for the case. If I was going to dump a body here, I would have put it on the other side of this wall if I could.” Still, she hesitated. “Come on, lay down and be dead.”

She did.

“Okay, here we go,” he said. “Stay limp.” Then he reached down, picked her up and muscled her to the top of the retaining wall, finding it more difficult than he at first thought, but not an all-out effort.

She hopped down and brushed herself off.

“Satisfied?”

He was.

“Most women wouldn't be able to do that,” he said. “Most men would.”

Sydney continued to brush the dust off her ass and said, “That doesn't mean it was necessarily a woman. It could still be a guy. Maybe he just didn't see the wall because it was night, or saw it but could care less.”

That was true.

But he found himself saying, “The best place to bury the body is on the other side of the wall. A man would have gone to the bother. A woman might not have.”

“So the position of the grave points to Davica as the killer?” she asked.

“It's a strike against her.”

From the railroad spur they headed to Femme, which turned out to be an upscale lesbian bar in Glendale, not far from Shotgun Willies.

The bar was closed but they rapped on the door until someone answered.

The woman they were looking for, in fact.

Natalie.

Teffinger explained the situation, including the fact that Davica herself had suggested that they talk to her.

“I don't know why she'd do that,” Natalie said. “I'm not going to lie about what happened.”

They ended up sitting in a booth, drinking diet Cokes.

Teffinger asked if the place had a men's room, was told, “Of course, that's city code,” and then used it. When he came back, Sydney and Natalie were chatting like old friends. Natalie was soft and curvy and reminded Teffinger of Sophia Loren, back in her early days, say the
Man of La Mancha
era.

“Okay,” Natalie said, “Angela Pfeiffer was your basic hardcore slut, except in a classy, upscale package. She'd come in here alone about twice a month, pick out whoever she wanted, take her home and screw her brains out. Then dump her and start all over again. She openly bragged about having some rich lover wrapped around her little finger, someone she milked for money.”

“So she had lots of enemies,”Teffinger said. “Meaning the women she dumped.”

“I don't know if I'd go that far,” Natalie said. “Getting dumped was sort of understood when it came to Angela. Most of the women accepted it going in.”