Lawyer Trap

79





DAY TWELVE–SEPTEMBER 16

FRIDAY MORNING


On the way to work Friday morning, Aspen noticed that the Accord’s gas gauge was on empty, below empty in fact. Luckily she had enough fumes left to get her to a station where she prepaid $20 cash and filled up while “Sweet Child of Mine” played on the radio. She was wearing dark green Dockers and a white cotton blouse, after learning last week that Fridays were casual dress at the firm. When she got to the parking lot twenty minutes later she discovered she was a dollar short. So she drove over to the side streets on the far side of Broadway until she found a 2-hour parking spot and then hoofed it double-time to the firm.

When she got there, she didn’t go up to the office.

Instead, she went to Parking Level 3, where the firm had several reserved spots, and hid behind a van in the corner. She stayed there for over an hour.

Feeling a lot more like a thief than a lawyer.

But she eventually got what she wanted.

Namely, a look at the faces of the people who drove the law firm’s silver BMWs.

When she finally arrived at her office, an envelope was on her chair. Inside, as before, she found a computer-printed piece of paper warning her that Christina Tam was a spy. This time, however, instead of shredding it she marched into Christina’s office, shut the door, and handed it to her.

“This is the second one of these that someone left on my chair,” she said.

Christina had no idea what the letter meant. She did know, however, that she wasn’t a spy and that the whole thing was a lie.

A vicious lie.

Totally preposterous.

Obviously spread by someone with an agenda—Derek Bennett, no doubt, since he was the one with something to gain by driving a wedge between Aspen and Christina.

“That means he knows what we’re up to,” Aspen said.

“Agreed. But how much? And how does he know?”

Aspen had no idea.

Unless he had a camera in his office, or something like that.

Then she changed subjects.

She told Christina about her meeting yesterday with Sarah Ringer at CU, who reported that her sister Rachel had been sexually attacked in her office.

“I know in my heart that Derek Bennett was the one who did it,” Aspen said. “My guess is that he threatened her life to keep her quiet.”

Christina frowned.

“Agreed,” she said. “But it will be impossible to prove it, now that Rachel’s dead and we no longer have her testimony.”

“Fine. We get him for her murder, then.”

Later that morning, Aspen shut her office door, dialed Teffinger, and told him everything she knew, including her theory that Derek Bennett sexually assaulted Rachel one night in her office. And then later cut her head off when she started to leave the firm, just to be absolutely sure that she didn’t change her mind about going to the police.

Teffinger asked her a lot of questions.

He was all over the board as if struggling with a way to fit it into a bigger picture.

He was almost about to hang up when he said, “What about the BMWs?”

“Oh, right, I almost forgot. Derek Bennett definitely has one of them, the one with Colorado plate number BMW 4.”

“Hold on, I’m writing it down …”

“By the way,” she added. “You can’t tell anybody about any of this.”