Lawyer Trap (21 page)

He walked back to the Granada, slipped behind the wheel and closed the door. The woman made no sounds but he had no idea if it was because she was unconscious or she was just being careful.

“You're not going to die,” he said. “I'm going to let you go, just like always. Unless you screw up and do something stupid. If you do that I'll take you out. You'll give me no choice. Do you understand?”

Silence.

Not a word.

He poked her.

She didn't respond.

He twisted the knife in his hands. Maybe he should just stick it in her head, right here right now, and get it over with. True he'd have a body in the car with him, but at least it would be a guaranteed quiet one.

But then again, if he did get caught, a charge of kidnapping would be a whole lot better than murder.

Shit.

What to do?

Just then one of the cops walked over.

“We're going to push you a little farther onto the shoulder,” he said. “See if we can open up a lane and get this traffic moving.”

Draven nodded.

“Good idea.”

They pushed him farther onto the shoulder while he steered and did his best to not take his knife and just start slashing everyone in sight.

Then he called a tow truck.

58

DAY NINE–SEPTEMBER 13

TUESDAY MORNING

D
raven's tow truck showed up forty minutes later, not long after the cop car got pulled onto a flatbed and disappeared down the canyon. A big-boned woman climbed out. The sleeves of her shirt had been ripped off, displaying thick, muscular arms.

Tattooed arms.

Biker-Mama arms.

“You the call I'm looking for?” she asked.

“That's me.”

She studied him up and down, and then said, “You got quite the body going there. I might have to give you a discount.”

She wasn't his type, but he smiled, not wanting to piss her off.

“Thanks for coming so fast.”

She focused on his scar but didn't say anything about it. Instead she motioned to her body. “It's all muscle under these clothes,” she said.

“You look good,” Draven said.

She smiled.

“Of course it doesn't just fall out of the sky and land on me,” she said. “I work my ass off in the gym. Monday I squatted four ninety-five. A personal best.”

Draven nodded, actually impressed.

“Five plates on each side,” he said.

“Very good.”

It took her only a few minutes to hook up the Granada, and then they headed down the canyon.

The radio played a country-western song that Draven had never heard before. He tapped his hand to it, feeling good and watching the scenery roll by.

“We used to tube here quite a bit,” he said, referring to Clear Creek. “A good ten of the times I've come the closest to death were right there in that water.”

She shook her head with disapproval.

“You got to be nuts to mess with that river,” she said. “You'd never catch me on it in a million years. I'd rather be on a Harley any day of the week.”

Draven smiled.

“Statistically the river's safer. Every other driver's an asshole.”

“That's true,” she said. “But I don't know too many people who have drowned on a Harley. I don't know how I'm going, but it isn't going to be by drowning. That's one thing for sure.”

At the bottom of the canyon they took Highway 93 north toward Boulder, running through the rolling plains at 50 mph, parallel to the foothills. Clouds were building over the mountains.

In another ten minutes they'd be at the farmhouse.

He'd be home free.

Then the woman repeatedly looked in the rearview mirror, so many times that Draven turned around to see what had her attention all of a sudden. He saw normal traffic, nothing unusual, and most importantly no cops.

“What?” he asked.

“I thought I saw something move inside your car.”

His mind scrambled, needing a story, fast. But nothing good came to the surface.

“Yes!” she said. “I just saw movement. I'm sure of it. There's someone in your car.”

She looked at him for an explanation.

He stared back and then put on a face as if he just realized what the situation was all about. “Oh, that,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. That's just my girlfriend. She's major drunk, sleeping it off.” He smiled. “She probably got a little freaked out with the car tilted up and me not in it. She'll be fine.”

The woman didn't seem satisfied.

“I can't have a passenger in a car under tow,” she said. “It's against the law.”

Draven pulled a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and held it out towards her.

“For your inconvenience,” he said. “We're almost there anyway.”

She looked at the bill but didn't take it.

“You don't understand,” she said. “If I get busted I lose my license.”

“We won't get busted. We'll be at my place in five minutes. If we get stopped I'll just say you knew nothing about it.”

She looked in the rearview mirror again and started to slow down.

“We need to move her up here in the cab,” she said.

Draven shook his head with disapproval.

“She's been throwing up for two hours. You sure you want that in here?”

She grimaced.

“Unfortunately we got no choice. I'm down to the last few points on my license.”

They continued to decelerate.

Then pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.

Draven surveyed the traffic and found it moderate, flying by at sixty or more. Even if someone did think they needed assistance, no one would want to slow down from that speed and stop.

He knew what he had to do but tried to think of another way out.

Nothing good came to mind.

He opened the door and stepped out. “She's pretty heavy,” he said. “I'm going to need your help.”

She hopped out and met him at the passenger door of the Granada, on the side of the vehicle facing away from the traffic. He opened the door and said, “Can you pull her out? I strained my back a couple of days ago.”

The woman bent inside and said, “It looks like her hands are tied.”

That's when Draven drove the knife into her spine.

59

DAY TEN–SEPTEMBER 14

WEDNESDAY MORNING

W
ednesday morning, instead of heading to the office, Tef-finger drove straight to the railroad spur where the four bodies had been dumped. By the time he got there, the first thermos of coffee started to run through him and he made a quick detour behind the 55-gallon drum.

This time, though, he didn't uncover a body.

Under a warm cerulean sky, he pulled down the tailgate of the truck and set a map of Denver on it, looking for an industrial area that had passed its prime.

Sydney called and asked where he was.

He told her, and she said to wait there.

Ten minutes later, she showed up.

“Here's my theory,” he said. “No one drives too far with four bodies in the car, meaning the building's around here somewhere. So I'm going to drive around until I find it.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“You're just going to drive around aimlessly and try to bump into it?”

He nodded.

“That's my plan.”

“I'm glad I didn't come up with it,” she said. “You'd fire me.”

He agreed but added, “Sometimes you just have to turn yourself into a monkey and peck at the keypad. Then hope you get lucky enough to spell a word.”

“I better come with you,” she said. “Otherwise you're going to get yourself into trouble today. I can already tell.”

As they poked and prodded the never-ending industrial areas north of the railroad spur, occasionally stopping to piss behind a dumpster—Teffinger, not Sydney—he got a call from Katie Baxter.

“I have a list of all the BMW owners,” she said. “By the end of the day I should have background checks on all of them. But get this. Eight of them are registered to Hogan, Slate & Dover, where Rachel Ringer worked.”

“Interesting.”

“I thought you'd say that.”

He hung up and told Sydney.

“That law firm's involved in all this up to its ass,” Teffinger said. “I just don't know how.” He studied the buildings as he drove and tried to pay enough attention to the road to keep from running into anyone. “Aspen Wilde's been snooping around,” he said. “She overheard two of the lawyers talking about a death.”

“Which lawyers?”

Teffinger tried to remember.

“I have it written down,” he said. “Anyway, one of them, the guy lawyer, is turning out to be seriously strange. According to Aspen Wilde, he frequents an S&M place called Tops & Bottoms where he sticks pins into the girls.”

“That's goddamn sick.”

Teffinger agreed.

“I mean, how does a guy get to be like that?”

“I don't know, but a mind that thinks that's okay probably wouldn't flinch at cutting someone's head off.”

“So you think he killed Rachel Ringer?”

“He's got my attention,” Teffinger said. “Especially now that we know the firm has lots of BMWs. We need to find that building and confirm that's where the killings took place. Then squeeze it for evidence.”

Three blocks later they came to an abandoned building enclosed in a chain-link fence.

Teffinger held the picture up and compared it to the structure in front of them.

“Bingo,” he said. “The monkey spells a word.”

60

DAY TEN–SEPTEMBER 14

WEDNESDAY MORNING

A
ll morning, Aspen expected someone to walk into her office and ask what she'd been doing in Derek Bennett's office last night. When no one came, she started to feel better. That changed when Blake Gray called shortly after ten and asked if she was available for lunch today.

“Of course. What's the occasion?”

“Nothing special. Why don't you swing by my office at 11:30 and we'll try to beat the crowd.”

As soon as she hung up, she ducked into Christina Tam's office, closed the door, and told her.

“Somehow he knows,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Christina didn't seem concerned.

“How could he?”

“They could have this place bugged a million different ways and we'd never know it.”

Christina rolled a pencil in her hand.

“Now you're getting paranoid,” she said. “Just calm down, go to lunch, and see what he has to say. It's probably nothing.”

She looked amused.

“What?” Aspen asked, curious.

“Here's a list of things to not bring up,” she said. “Tops & Bottoms, Rebecca Yates, Robert Yates, flashlights, coat closets, and guns in drawers.”

“And Derek Bennett,” Aspen added.

“Right. And me too, for that matter.”

Aspen kept her nose to the grindstone all morning and then inconspicuously went to the billing room and pulled the time sheets for Jacqueline Moore and Derek Bennett, to see if either of them had been in New York on July 22nd when Robert Yates got murdered.

Both had been right here in Denver.

Billing clients like there was no tomorrow.

For the week before and the week after as well.

Just for grins, she checked on Blake Gray too.

Same thing.

In a corner booth at the Paramount Café, over the lunch special—salmon and salad—Blake Gray gave Aspen the inside track on how to survive life in a big law firm. Then he got to the point of the meeting.

She shouldn't let her guard down.

He still firmly believed her life was in danger.

She should go to the firm's D.C. office until everything blew over.

She listened carefully, thanked him overwhelmingly for his concern, and then politely rejected the offer. Then she changed the subject.

“Christina was telling me about this huge antitrust case that the firm won, over a hundred million,” she said. “I can't even imagine what that must feel like.”

“Ask Derek Bennett,” Blake said. “He spearheaded the whole thing.”

She bit her lower lip, trying to not visibly react.

“Talk about your nasty kick-'em-in-the-balls fight, this was the granddaddy of them all. It was the legal equivalent of two packs of junkyard dogs ripping each other wide open. Lucky for us Derek Bennett was the biggest dog in the bunch.”

“Wow.”

“Bow wow. As usual, though,” Blake added, “the drama behind the scenes was a whole lot more interesting than the case itself.”

“How's that?”

Blake finished chewing and then said, “The defendant, Tomorrow Inc., was owned and run by a guy named Robert Yates, an insanely rich guy, at least on paper. Have you ever heard of him?”

She shook her head.

“I don't remember him being at my last party.”

“Mine either,” he said. “Anyway, he makes a slick move and persuades the trial judge to stay execution of the judgment without posting a supersedeas bond. So he's temporarily off the hook. Then while the case is on appeal he starts to secretly buy the stock of our client, Omega, which is publicly traded. He's doing it in small chunks, through a lot of dummy corporations, friends and brokers, to keep everything under the radar so the price doesn't go up.”

“A takeover,” she said.

“Exactly,” he said. “A takeover, but not by the company itself, since it wasn't Tomorrow buying the stock, but a takeover by a private party.”

“Why?”

“My theory is that he wanted to get control of Omega and then have it drop the case against Tomorrow, or at least settle it for some ridiculously small amount. It's called, If you can't beat your opponent, eat him.”