Lawyer Trap

52





DAY NINE–SEPTEMBER 13

TUESDAY MORNING


Teffinger met with Sydney late Tuesday morning. She had run down all the phone calls that Brad Ripley made on March 15th. In fact, she had personally called every number and talked to the person Ripley had talked to. She asked them what they talked about and took careful notes.

Everything was legit and unremarkable.

Only one call remained unexplained.

It came to Ripley’s cell from a payphone on the south side of Denver and lasted four minutes. There was no way to track it. Even if it turned out to be within view of a security camera, the tape would have long been recycled at this point.

“Drive out there and check it anyway,” Teffinger said. “You never know.”

She frowned.

“That seems thin,” she said.

Teffinger cocked his head and asked, “When did that call come in?”

She checked her notes.

“12:49.”

“Ripley used two different colored pens in his day planner that day,” he said. “Some of the stuff happened in the morning. That was in black ink. More stuff happened in the afternoon, also in black ink. The red ink comes in the middle of the day, the same time of day as the call from the payphone. So run that call to ground, and then to underground if you have to. Whoever’s on the other end of the line is our connection.”

She said, “I’ll check his credit card statement from that day too, to see if he went to lunch anywhere and happened to end up paying, just in case the communication was in person.”

“Good idea,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

“Welcome for what?”

“For giving you so much job security.”

She grunted. “As if I need any more of that.”

Ten minutes later, his phone rang. He recognized the caller’s name—Tammy—but didn’t remember from where. Then she reminded him and he pulled up a mental picture of Brad Ripley’s blond receptionist.

“Remember when you deputized me and asked where we could find a dark secret, if Mr. Ripley had one?”

Yes he did.

She hadn’t had any brilliant ideas at the time.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve been snooping around in his office and found a wall safe.”

Teffinger stood up and almost fell over the snake plant.

“Go on,” he said.

“I also found the combination,” she said.

“How?” he asked.

“He has a bunch of passwords for various things,” she said. “I know what some of them are. Then I found a list of passwords in his computer for various things, including something called Wall Unit. I figured out that the computer passwords have two random numbers, then the real password in reverse numerical order, followed by three random numbers. So I was able to work backwards from that to figure out the right number for the safe. When I tried it, it actually opened.”

Teffinger cocked his head.

“You have to come and work for me,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.”

Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Brad Ripley’s office. No one besides Tammy had reported to work. She opened the safe and pulled the door open.

A pile of hundred-dollar bills lay in plain view.

“I haven’t touched anything,” she told him. “Just in case it turns out to be evidence or something.”

Teffinger put on latex gloves and looked at her.

“You could have taken the money,” he said. “No one would have known.”

She diverted her eyes.

“I would have.”

He nodded and made a mental note that she needed the money now more than ever, being suddenly unemployed.

“There aren’t many like you left.”

The money turned out to be just short of twenty-five thousand dollars. Also, inside, he found a number of keys, insurance policies, a bag of cocaine, and a variety of other equally uninteresting things.

He also found an envelope.

Inside were eight or ten photographs. They had been taken at night without a flash. They were dark and vague but still clear enough to show a vehicle parked in front of a rickety wooden building. They were taken from slightly different angles, but mostly from the side view. All were shot from a distance.

Teffinger laid them out on Ripley’s desk and looked at them as a group.

Then he pointed to one of them and said, “It’s a BMW. You can see just a bit of the front end in this picture. See the double ovals?” She looked. “Does Ripley have a BMW?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think he has a black Mercedes.”

Teffinger focused on the photographs.

“This car’s either white or silver,” he said.

She agreed.

“Do you know anyone who has a white or silver BMW?”

“No. Not really.”

“How about this building? Do you recognize it?”

“No.”

“It looks abandoned,” Teffinger said.

“It looks creepy,” she said. “You’d never catch me there in a thousand years.”

Teffinger understood.

“It looks like something out of a slasher movie,” she added.