Lawyer Trap

76





DAY ELEVEN–SEPTEMBER 15

THURSDAY EVENING


When Aspen arrived back at the law firm after meeting with Sarah Ringer at CU, she called Blake Gray and asked if his office door was still open.

He laughed.

“Yeah, but not until tonight,” he said. “I’m totally slammed all day.”

“Tonight’s fine. That way if you fire me, at least I can sleep in.”

“Let me tell you where I’ll be.”

That evening, after supper, she headed to Chatfield State Park, paid an expensive entry fee, and then drove all the way around the lake to the marina. The Accord ran sluggish, as if twenty horses had been pulled from under the hood and were now being dragged behind instead.

“If you break, I’m leaving your ass here,” she said.

The car sputtered.

“I’m serious,” she added.

The marina turned out to be a lot bigger than she expected. There must have been three or four hundred slips. Tons of geese walked around, not showing a bit of fear. A gentle but steady wind blew out of the northwest, surprisingly warm. Blake Gray met her at the gate, escorted her to a thirty-foot sailboat moored at the end of D-Dock, and helped her aboard.

“When I want to forget everything, this is where I come,” he said. “This isn’t mine, by the way. It belongs to Doug Willoughby, the CEO of Omega.”

Aspen recognized the name—Omega.

That was the client that had the big antitrust judgment against Tomorrow, Inc. The one Derek Bennett represented. The one that Robert Yates was going to take over, before he and his daughter got killed while playing Frisbee in Central Park.

Aspen couldn’t believe the vessel and headed for the cabin.

“Can I go inside?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

Fifteen minutes later they had the boat on the lake, tilted fifteen degrees to starboard, with the mainsail and jib taut with wind.

He let her take the wheel, disappeared below, and then returned with two glasses of white wine.

They passed a small fishing boat.

“See that guy over there, baiting that hook?” Blake asked. “I’ve known him for years. At one time he was just an amateur baiter. Now he’s a master baiter.”

She laughed.

They sailed for over an hour, long enough for her to learn how to work the lines. Then they dropped the sails and bobbed. A flock of eight or ten geese floated over looking for a handout. Blake went below and returned with a loaf of bread. Aspen threw pieces into the water and decided that this was as good a time as any to get to the point of the meeting.

“I had some information fall into my lap today,” she said. “The long and short of it is, Rachel was sexually assaulted in her office on March 14th. It happened late, after nine o’clock or thereabouts. It wasn’t rape but it was definitely an assault.”

Blake frowned.

“What makes you think so?”

“Rachel’s sister told me.”

“Sarah?”

“Right.”

He took a long swallow of wine. “I already know about it,” he said. “She reported it to me back when it happened.”

“She did?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Who did it to her?”

He looked blank. “She wouldn’t say. I told her to take it to the police but she didn’t want to. She was embarrassed and felt it would hurt her career if the word got out. She didn’t want me to press it so, out of respect for her and against my better judgment, I didn’t.”

“She disappeared just two weeks after that,” Aspen said.

“I know.”

“There’s got to be a connection.”

He didn’t seem convinced.

“Maybe, in theory. But keep in mind that she got killed by some psycho maniac who cut her head off,” he said. “That’s a guy in a totally different league.”

She stopped throwing bread.

Every goose on the water watched her, waiting.

She wasn’t sure whether she should bring up what she was about to, but couldn’t hold back any longer.

“I followed Derek Bennett the other night,” she said. “He goes to a place called Tops & Bottoms, which is an S&M place, and sticks pins into women.”

Blake looked shocked and studied her face, as if trying to decide if she was messing with him.

She wasn’t.

“That’s the kind of guy who could saw someone’s head off,” she said.

Blake didn’t disagree.

“Assume he’s the one who sexually assaulted Rachel,” she said. “Two weeks pass and she hasn’t reported it to the police yet, but then he finds out that she’s in the process of leaving the firm. He starts to get nervous about whether she’ll change her mind after he doesn’t have so much of a grip on her any more.”

“So he takes her out,” Blake said, finishing the concept.

“Exactly. And has fun doing it.”