Lawyer Trap

55





DAY NINE–SEPTEMBER 13

TUESDAY


On the way back to headquarters from Brad Ripley’s office, Teffinger realized that he hadn’t done anything formal for Paul Kwak for giving him the lead on the ’67 Vette. So he made a pit stop on the way.

Thirty minutes later, with a cup of coffee in hand, he hiked up to the sixth floor and handed Kwak a coffee-table book on Corvettes. “For the lead,” he said. “It’s got a picture of a yellow ’63 split-window, exactly like yours.”

Kwak thumbed through until he found it.

“Way cool.”

Then Teffinger handed him the pictures, sealed in individual evidence bags. “This relates to the four-body case at the railroad spur,” he said. “We found these photos in Brad Ripley’s safe.”

Kwak look confused.

“Brad Ripley’s the guy in the snuff film, who killed Tonya Obenchain.”

“Right. Okay, I’m with you now.”

“I think the building in these photos is the place where the women were killed. Also, if I’m right, then whoever owns this BMW is involved. The car doesn’t belong to Ripley. We already checked. I need you to enhance the crap out of these little fellows.”

Kwak studied the pictures and didn’t seem enthusiastic.

“They’re pretty dark and grainy,” he observed.

That was true.

“I want to find that building and be walking around inside it by the end of the day,” he said.

Kwak scratched his oversized gut.

“It looks abandoned. As far as the vehicle goes, we don’t have much of an angle on the license plate number,” he observed. “It’s definitely a BMW, though.”

Teffinger agreed. “I need the model, year, and color.”

Sydney showed up mid-afternoon and plopped down in the chair in front of Teffinger’s desk. “The phone’s a dead end,” she said, referring to the public phone that someone used on March 15th to place a four-minute call to Brad Ripley.

“You drove out there?”

“I did. The phone itself is located at a gas station on County Line Road. The security cameras don’t shine on it. And even if they did, the tapes have already been recycled about two thousand times.”

Teffinger frowned.

“Thanks for trying,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been able to sleep without running it to ground.”

Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, just because your idea is a dead end doesn’t mean that mine is.”

He thought about it.

He couldn’t remember what her idea was.

There were too many ideas floating around to keep track of.

That was the problem with this whole case.

“It turned out that Brad Ripley’s credit card statements show a March 15th purchase at the Cheesecake Factory,” she said.

Now Teffinger remembered.

Brad Ripley’s connection to someone on March 15th might have been live, over lunch, rather than by phone.

He nodded, impressed.

“Okay,” he said. “Run with it.”

She beamed and stood up.

“Whoa,” he said. “Sit back down. First I need to fill you in on Brad Ripley’s safe.”

Later, up on the sixth floor, Paul Kwak beamed as he handed Teffinger printouts of the photos in an enhanced state. Teffinger shook his head in disbelief.

“It almost looks like day,” he said.

“You got to love technology,” Kwak said.

Teffinger had never seen this particular building—old, boarded up, long and low with several doors. It reminded him of a small manufacturing facility.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I can’t find any markings or signage on it,” Kwak said. “It was used to make something or store something, is my best guess.”

“What about the BMW?”

“That was easy,” Kwak said. “Last year’s model, a 5-Series. The color has some fancy name but it’s basically silver.”

Teffinger shuffled through the printouts again.

“Can you bring the building up on the monitor?”

He could and pulled it up on a 30” flat-panel screen.

Electronically it was brighter and clearer but still didn’t give up any secrets.

“So how do I find this place?” Teffinger asked.

Kwak cocked his head.

“Find the BMW,” he said. “Then do something to make it go back there. And follow it when it does.”

Teffinger laughed.

“Do you have any simpler ideas?”

He didn’t.

“I’m a complicated man,” he said.