Lawyer Trap

62





DAY TEN–SEPTEMBER 14

WEDNESDAY MORNING


After working up a search warrant and taking it down to the D.A.’s office for review and processing, Teffinger drove back to the wooden building and paced back and forth outside the chain-link fence.

The four women had been killed inside that structure.

He was sure of it.

The question was whether it would give up its secrets.

Mid-afternoon, Sydney pulled up, dangling a thermos of coffee out the window. Teffinger immediately ran to his truck and searched around in the back seat until he found a used Styrofoam cup.

“You got the warrant?” he asked, relieving her of the thermos and pouring much-needed caffeine into the cup.

“Nope.”

He shook his head in wonder.

“I’m going to enter Clay in a snail race,” he said. “See if he can at least move that fast.”

She grinned and then paced with him, for some time, for so long in fact that he brought up a subject that he didn’t think he would.

“Davica blindsided me this morning,” he said.

“How so?”

“Well, you know she’s bi, right?”

“So you say.”

“This morning she said she misses women,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have said anything, but of course I did, and we ended up in a little discussion. The bottom line is this. If I give her my approval to sleep with other women, she’s going to look around. If I don’t, she won’t.” He picked up a stick and snapped it. “This has nothing to do with men. She’s crystal clear that she isn’t interested in other men.”

He studied Sydney to get her reaction.

“Does this mean you’re sleeping with her?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me, that’s the kind of thing I’d remember.”

She laughed.

“Well, this is quite the dilemma,” she said.

“I want her to be happy. On the other hand, if I give her the go-ahead to get intimate with a woman, I’m afraid she’ll end up falling in love.”

“Think of the bright side,” Sydney said. “Unlimited threesomes.”

He smiled.

“Been there,” he said. “They were fine in their day, but now I think they’d be more work than they’re worth.” He kicked a stone.

Sydney cocked her head.

“What if she did get feelings for another woman?” she asked. “Do you think that would mean she would feel differently about you?”

“I’m don’t know. And I don’t want to find out.”

He stopped, laced his fingers through the chain-link fence and stared at the building. “I’m jealous of someone who doesn’t even exist yet,” he said. “A woman, no less. How pathetic is that?”

She looked amused.

“It’ll either work out or it won’t,” she said. “There are no guarantees. Personally, I think you have a better chance with a woman if you give her what she wants instead of trying to herd her in.”

He kicked the fence.

“I know that,” he said. “It’s just going to be hard.”

“Maybe there’s a compromise,” Sydney said. “She can do other women but only if you’re there.”

He thought about it.

“Maybe,” he said. “In the meantime, this is our secret.”

“I’ll tell the chief. No one else.”

“Not funny.”

Just then, Paul Kwak pulled up in a Crime Unit van, waving the search warrant out the window.

“Is anyone ready to have some fun?” he asked.

They fingerprinted the padlock on the fence, got nothing useable, then cut it off and bagged it. Teffinger’s heart pounded as they walked over the dirty, weed-infested asphalt toward the building. “I know none of us would ever make a mistake,” he said, “but especially don’t make it today.”

All the doors had padlocks, so they cut one off and entered.

The lights didn’t work.

They wandered around the outside perimeter until they found the main electrical box. The breaker was closed, meaning there was no electricity coming to it. Paul Kwak scratched his gut and frowned.

“Looks like we’re going to have to fire up the generators and set up some halogen stands,” he said.

Teffinger nodded.

“Go ahead and start on that,” he said. “Do you have any flashlights in your van?”

“A couple.”

Teffinger and Sydney entered using flashlights. The building was broken down into a large room and several smaller ones. Most of them were cluttered with old rusty parts, no doubt leftover remnants of machines that no longer existed.

“I want the eyes,” Teffinger said. “I’ll be a happy man if I can find the eyes.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sydney said. “I always pictured them floating in a formaldehyde pickle jar on someone’s mantel.”

Teffinger grunted.

They searched the place thoroughly but didn’t find the room that had been in Brad Ripley’s snuff video.

“Damn it,” Teffinger said. “I can’t believe this isn’t the place.”

One of the metal racks seemed odd, and Teffinger studied it as they walked past. It didn’t seem as dirty as the others. On closer inspection, it seemed as though the boxes and parts on the shelves had been taken off and then put back on. There were scratches and smudges in the dirt. Then he spotted a door hidden behind it and started pulling things off the shelves and setting them over to the side.

“Help me with this stuff,” he said.

When they finally got everything moved and opened the door, they found a room unlike the others, empty except for a bed. “Bingo,” Teffinger said, shining the light around. He paused the beam on a black smudge on the back wall. “I remember that mark from Ripley’s snuff film.”

On closer examination, they saw blood splatters.

On the floor.

On the walls.

Not as many as Teffinger anticipated, but enough to give them all the DNA they wanted.

“So this is where it all happened,” Sydney said.

“Yeah. Nice, huh?”

They didn’t enter, but instead went back outside to talk to Paul Kwak. “I got some good news and some bad news,” Teffinger said. “The good news is, we have a whole room that we’re going to take apart inch by inch.”

Kwak’s face brightened.

“You found it?”

“We found it,” Teffinger said.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

“That’s true but not relevant right now.”

Teffinger walked toward his truck.

“Hey,” Kwak shouted, “What’s the bad news?”

“The bad news is I have to piss like you can’t believe, so turn your back.”

“Just don’t turn up any more bodies.”