Lawyer Trap

82





DAY TWELVE–SEPTEMBER 16

FRIDAY AFTERNOON


Aspen brought Christina Tam up to speed on the noose that Teffinger was dangling around Bennett’s neck. Then they took turns going up to the 45th floor, ostensibly to visit the dead-files room but actually to see if anything weird was happening in Derek Bennett’s neck of the woods.

Nothing was.

Nothing obvious, at least.

Bennett was in his office with the door closed.

Mid-afternoon, Aspen took a stroll down the 16th Street Mall to clear her head, hugging the sunny side of the street. The city vibrated, with lots more people around than usual, poised on the edge of the weekend.

A deep blue cloudless sky floated overhead.

She ended up sitting on a bench by California Street.

Someone sat down next to her.

When she looked over, she couldn’t believe who it was.

Jacqueline Moore.

Cruella.

Clearly this wasn’t a chance encounter. The power lawyer must have discovered that Aspen was feeding information to Teffinger. She was here to fire her.

“We need to talk,” Moore said. The tone of her voice was serious. Aspen bit her lower lip and tried to appear as if she wasn’t afraid.

“Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”

Moore didn’t answer.

Instead she looked around. Her hair appeared to be slightly disheveled and her makeup wasn’t as crisp and sharp as normal. Her blouse sagged out of her skirt and could have been tucked in better. The normal confident look in her eyes wasn’t there.

“I’m leaving the firm,” she said.

Aspen studied her, to see if this was some kind of a joke, but found no lies.

“You are?”

Moore nodded. “As soon as I leave here I’m heading back to the office to type up a resignation. With the grapevine the way it is, I have no doubt that everyone will be celebrating by the end of the day.”

“Why are you leaving?”

The woman let out a nervous chuckle, as if there was so much to the answer that she didn’t even know where to begin. “That’s not the question,” she said. “The question is, why am I telling you before anyone else?”

Aspen cocked her head.

Good point.

“Okay, why?”

“Because I want to be sure I get a chance to warn you before all hell breaks loose. You need to get out of the firm. My advice to you is to go and go quickly, while you still can.”

The words shocked Aspen.

“Why? What’s going on?”

Moore shook her head. “I can’t get into it. Just trust me. Your life is in danger.” Then she stood up and looked at Aspen one last time. “I’ve done what I could to warn you. If something happens after this, it’s not on my shoulders.”

Then she walked away.

Aspen sat there for a few moments and then stood up and walked in the direction away from the firm. She called Teffinger from Civic Center Park and told him what had just happened.

“My suspicion is that this is some kind of fallout from the heat we put on Bennett,” he said. “Something’s going on and I have no idea what it is. But I do know that things are in motion and that I can’t have you in harm’s way. I don’t want you snooping around anymore.”

“But …”

“No buts,” he said. “At this point you’re officially out of it.”

“But I’m your only inside source.”

“Forget it,” he said. “It’s not going to happen. If I were you, I’d think very seriously about getting out of the firm. Right now. Today. In fact if you don’t, you’re crazy.”

She headed back to the firm, walked into Christina Tam’s office, closed the door, and filled her in on everything. Then added, “I had a stray thought, walking back here.”

“Oh? What kind of stray thought?”

“It relates to the dead guy in New York—Robert Yates,” she said. “Do you remember when we were talking about who might have a motive to kill him, if he was successful in taking over Omega and then merging it with Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I thought of someone else who has a motive.”

“Who?”

“Derek Bennett.”

Christina tried to find the connection but couldn’t. “I don’t follow,” she said.

Aspen stood up. “I got to make a run to the restroom. You’ll figure it out by the time I get back.”

But Christina didn’t figure it out, so Aspen told her. Bennett spent almost all of his time working on Omega cases, his bread-and-butter client. In the antitrust suit brought by Omega against Tomorrow, Bennett had been Omega’s pit bull, the dirty dog who didn’t play fair, the driving force behind the mega-judgment in favor of Omega and against Tomorrow. If Robert Yates succeeded in his goal of gaining control of Omega and bringing it under the umbrella of Tomorrow, then he’d control Omega’s legal work.

Robert Yates, of course, hating Bennett the way he no doubt did, wouldn’t give Bennett an ounce of work to save his life.

Bennett would be washed up.

Even Blake Gray wouldn’t be able to protect him.

Robert Yates, no doubt, would demand that Bennett be completely removed from the firm as a condition of giving the firm any further work.

“So Bennett killed him. He was smart enough to look into the future and figure out that he was boxed in. So he took Yates out as early as he could, before anyone could figure out that he had a motive.”

Christina worked out the details, looking for an inconsistency or a flaw in the theory. “How the hell do you think this stuff up?”

Aspen laughed.

“I don’t know. It just comes to me.”

“You’re in the wrong business, lady. There’s only one thing that doesn’t make sense. Bennett was in Denver when Robert Yates got killed, so he couldn’t have done it.” She smiled. “Other than that little fact, very good theory.”

Aspen stood up, put her hands on the desk and leaned across. “Let me rephrase it,” she said. “Bennett killed Yates. By hiring someone to do it.”