Lawyer Trap

59





DAY TEN–SEPTEMBER 14

WEDNESDAY MORNING


Wednesday 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.”