Lawyer Trap

87





DAY TWELVE–SEPTEMBER 16

FRIDAY NIGHT


Teffinger hadn’t been on more than two or three stakeouts in his entire career, largely because they almost always represented too much of an investment of time for the potential return. So it was weird, sitting out here in the dark a half block down from Derek Bennett’s house, waiting for something to happen.

Having Davica with him made all the difference.

Without her, he wouldn’t have had the patience.

The rain beat down and sounded incredibly nice.

Better than any song ever made.

Except maybe “Brown Eyed Girl.”

They sipped coffee. The first thermos was only half gone and they still had a second full one in the back.

“I need to tell you something weird,” Davica said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“You’re not going to say you used to be a guy, are you?”

She laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Good.”

“It has to do with last night in the hot tub with Monica,” she said. “Before it all started, I was really excited about it.”

Teffinger smiled.

“You looked pretty excited during it, too,” he noted.

“Right,” she said. “I was. But not as much as I thought I would be. I kept thinking that she shouldn’t be there, that she was invading our space. I felt guilty, being the one who brought her in.”

“Our space, huh?”

She nodded. “The space of you and me; our private space. The bottom line is that I don’t think there are going to be any more Monicas.”

“Your choice,” he said. “Either way, I’m going to support you.”

He called Sydney and when she answered he said, “Talk to me.”

“We got Aspen’s car in the driveway to make it look like she’s home,” she said. “We have most of the curtains partially open and the decoy’s walking around, turning lights on and off, stuff like that, to make it obvious someone’s there. I’m sitting a half block down the street. It’s raining like hell.”

“Here too,” Teffinger said.

“So far, no activity.”

“Same here.”

“How will Bennett know the car in the driveway is Aspen’s?”

“The information is in her H.R. file. Plus I’m sure he’s already been stalking her.”

Forty-five minutes later a silver BMW pulled out of Derek Bennett’s driveway and started to wind its way out of the neighborhood.

Teffinger followed.

He called Sydney to tell her he was in motion.

Being this far off the main roads, the traffic was sparse. So Teffinger had to hang back. Unfortunately he had to hang back so far that Bennett slipped away.

He called Sydney.

“I lost him,” he said. “Watch for him at your end. I’m headed that way.”

“What do you mean you lost him?”

“I had to hang back.”

“Well, don’t hang back that far,” she said.

“Now you tell me.”

Twenty minutes later, when Teffinger was only a few minutes away from Christina’s house, he got a call from Sydney.

“We just had a drive-by,” she said. “A light-colored BMW. It could have been silver.”

“That little shit,” Teffinger said.

“The driver might have looked my way when he passed,” Sydney added.

“Then go ahead and get out of there,” he said. “I’ll take the watch.”

“Done.”

He heard an engine start before the phone went dead.

He drove by the house and saw no suspicious cars and definitely no BMWs. He circled the block twice, took a spot all the way at the end of the street under a burned-out streetlight, and killed the engine.

The sound of the storm immediately intensified.

The coffee was suddenly going right through him, so he stepped outside and pissed by the side of the truck. By the time he got back inside he was soaked.

“Goddamn hurricane out there,” he told Davica.

“So I see.”

He stared down the street.

“Come on, a*shole. Take the bait.”

Nothing happened for the next hour except that Teffinger had to step back out into the storm two more times. Davica did too, but only once.

Then a second hour went by.

Still nothing.

“Do you ever get the feeling like you’re being watched or followed?” Davica asked at one point.

“No, not really.”

“I’ve had that feeling for the last couple of days,” she said.

“That happens sometimes when you’re around all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. It plays with your mind.”

They were half asleep, listening to a country-western station, when Barb Winters called from dispatch. Teffinger pulled up an image of her new implants, double Ds. “We got a dead body,” she said.

Right now, he could care less.

“Call Richardson,” he said. “He’s got duty tonight.”

“Yeah, I already did,” she said. “He wanted me to let you know that they have a preliminary identification. It’s someone called Jacqueline Moore. He said she’s a lawyer.”

Teffinger slammed his hand on the dashboard so hard that Davica jumped.