Lawyer Trap

35





DAY SIX–SEPTEMBER 10

SATURDAY AFTERNOON


Aspen sat behind the wheel of her parked car, still trying to determine who or why anyone would trash her apartment, when Nick Teffinger raced into the parking lot and slammed his pickup to a stop.

Even from this distance he looked tense.

By the time she walked over and got his attention, he couldn’t apologize fast enough. “This is all my fault,” he said.

She disagreed.

“I turned you into a target,” he added.

She grabbed his hand. “I’ve been thinking about this,” she said. “If it’s somehow connected to Rachel Ringer or the other dead women, then we have fresh clues inside my apartment. Right?”

He agreed and wondered why he hadn’t thought of that himself.

Before she could say another word, he bounded up the stairs two at a time and got all the local cops out of the apartment before they contaminated the scene to death.

Then he shut the door and walked back down, already punching numbers on his cell phone. As he waited for an answer, he told Aspen, “The Lakewood PD gave me permission to bring the Denver Crime Unit down to process the scene.”

Fifteen minutes later the Crime Unit showed up, with a beer-belly man behind the wheel.

“That’s Paul Kwak,” Teffinger told Aspen.

“I find you a primo 1967 Corvette,” Kwak said getting out, “and this is how you repay me? Making me work on a Saturday?”

Teffinger smiled.

“I was going to call you,” he said. “I bought it.”

Kwak looked flabbergasted.

“You did?”

“Just picked it up a couple of hours ago,” Teffinger added.

Kwak shook his head in wonder.

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you’d do it.”

“I shouldn’t have. It took all my money and then some,” Teffinger said.

“Do what I do,” Kwak said. “Get a cardboard sign—Need Money, Did Something Stupid. Just stay off my corner.”

Then they turned their attention to the job at hand. Teffinger wanted it processed as if it was a homicide scene, not a B&E. If someone left a fingerprint, a hair, or dropped his wallet by mistake, Teffinger wanted Kwak to find it.

Aspen watched from a distance, talking to the renters who had wandered over to see what all the commotion was about. All the fuss made her knees weak.

She didn’t know where she’d sleep tonight.

Not here, though.

She went over to her car, sat behind the wheel and called Blake Gray to let him know that she’d be showing up on the news again. She didn’t want him to get blindsided by it.

“I’m coming over,” he said.

“Blake, really, you don’t have to. I’m fine.”

“I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”

When he arrived, he had a proposition for her. “This is somehow tied to the four dead women, especially if you’re correct that nothing was taken. Here’s what I think we should do. We should send you to the firm’s D.C. office until all this blows over. The firm will pick up all the expenses—air, lodging, meals, the whole thing. You need to get acquainted with the people out there sooner or later anyway, so it might as well be now. Then, when this blows over, we’ll bring you back to Denver.”

She thought about it.

“What if it doesn’t blow over?”

He cocked his head.

“Everything blows over sooner or later. The main thing is your safety. Tonight, tomorrow, and the next day.”

She almost agreed, but then shocked herself.

“Thanks, but no,” she said. “I’m not going to give in to intimidation.”