Lawyer Trap

49





DAY EIGHT–SEPTEMBER 12

MONDAY EVENING


Teffinger had been the only one in homicide for some time now. When the windows turned black and started to reflect the fluorescent ceiling lights, and he had to fight to stay focused, he knew the useful part of the day had come to an end.

He headed to Davica’s.

She fed him.

Then they ended up in the garage, sitting in the ′67 Vette in the dark, drinking Bud Light from the bottle.

“Heaven,” he said.

“Rough day?”

“Not really,” he said. “A rough day is when I’m the victim and someone else is doing the investigation.”

She smiled.

Headlights came up the street and swept a pattern of light across the garage walls. Then they disappeared and everything returned to black. Teffinger held his hand up in front of his face and couldn’t see it.

“Dark,” he said.

“Sort of weird,” she said.

He agreed.

“Good weird, though.”

Halfway through the second round, he told her about the day.

“This Brad Ripley guy is getting more and more interesting,” he said. “It turns out that the woman he killed, Tonya Obenchain, the real estate agent, disappeared between two house showings, sometime between one and three in the afternoon. Today we found out that Ripley was in a meeting during that time period, all afternoon in fact.”

“So he’s not the one who abducted her?”

“Apparently not,” Teffinger said. “But he’s the one who killed her, the one in the snuff film.”

“So two people are involved? Is that what you’re saying?”

Teffinger nodded.

Even though she couldn’t possibly see him in the dark.

“At least two,” he said. “We found out some other stuff too. He set the whole thing in motion on March 15th. On the 18th, he withdrew a hundred and fifty thousand from his bank.”

“So that’s connected to the killing?”

Teffinger didn’t know.

“It could have been for coke, or gambling debts, or who knows what. All we know is we can’t trace it. Then,” he added, “we found out that he flew to Vegas in July. He stayed for almost two weeks and lost a boatload of money. A Titanic full. He ended up cashing out a lot of stocks to pay casinos. I’m talking millions.”

“I hate that place,” she said. “They ought to just wipe it off the face of the earth. All it does is fill people full of false sunshine and then suck their money away.”

Teffinger took a long drink of beer.

He didn’t agree, at least not totally, but didn’t feel like getting into it.

“Anyway,” he said, “the gambling problem might be connected to the hole in his face. Maybe he did something stupid like go to some after-hours place to win money to pay back the casinos. Then he lost there too and couldn’t pay up.”

“Do people actually still do that?” she asked. “I mean, rough people up over gambling debts? I thought those days were all in the past.”

Teffinger sighed.

“Money’s a motivator,” he said. “Always was, always will be. Anyway, I was hoping Ripley would be nothing more than a two-hour puzzle, but he’s turning more and more into a two-story question mark.”

She played with his hair.

“Maybe you need some stress relief,” she said.

Then his cell phone rang.