Lawyer Trap

91





DAY THIRTEEN–SEPTEMBER 17

SATURDAY–2:00 A.M.


Teffinger didn’t find a single thing belonging to Jacqueline Moore in Derek Bennett’s BMW, even though he searched it meticulously three times.

No bloody knife.

No jewelry.

No nothing.

Maybe some of the bills in Bennett’s wallet had come from Moore, and had her fingerprints on them, but at this point it seemed like a long shot.

“Looks like he was smart enough to dump everything,” he told Sydney.

“He’s a slippery little bastard all right.”

“Which means we got nothing,” he added. “Except maybe a lawsuit for smashing his car. We’re going to have to cut him loose.”

“What about assaulting a police officer?”

Teffinger frowned. “Hell, I’m the one who rammed him and chased him down. I’d have hit me too in his shoes.”

So they cut him loose.

Then something weird happened.

Instead of leaving, Bennett wanted to talk and suggested that the three of them go to Denny’s for a bite.

Teffinger hated the thought of actually breaking bread with the guy. But hated the thought of not getting valuable information even more. So the three of them ended up in a red vinyl booth eating a 2:00 a.m. breakfast and drinking hot decaf coffee while it rained outside.

“Sloop John B” dropped from ceiling speakers. “We’re not here because I’m trying to save my own ass,” Bennett said. “We’re here because Blake Gray is out of control. He’s been my law partner for more than twenty years. So trust me, this hurts. But it has to be done.”

Teffinger shoved a forkful of pancakes in his mouth.

“Go on,” he said.

“It all started when we got a big judgment for one of our clients called Omega,” he said. “It was against a competitor of Omega’s called Tomorrow, Inc. After we got that judgment, the CEO of Tomorrow, a guy by the name of Robert Yates, started buying up Omega’s stock. His plan was to get control of Omega and then bring it under the umbrella of Tomorrow. He’d be able to make the judgment go away, in effect, plus the two companies would be stronger together than either one was on its own.”

Teffinger nodded.

“All right.”

“This was big trouble for the law firm,” Bennett said. “If Yates succeeded, we’d lose Omega as a client. Omega would be a part of Tomorrow, and all of Tomorrow’s legal work is done by a big Wall Street firm. So me and Blake Gray and Jacqueline Moore got together to see if we could figure out a way to prevent the takeover from happening.”

“Makes sense,” Teffinger said.

“We had the name of a guy who might be able to help,” Bennett said. “A psychologist by the name of Beverly Twenhofel, who also teaches at the University of Denver, was speaking to a group of students at an off-campus session at an Einstein Bros. They were talking about serial killers. After that meeting, a man who had been sitting at a nearby table approached her in the parking lot and asked her all kinds of weird questions. She got the distinct impression that he had killed and would kill again. She followed him and wrote down his license plate number. Then she came to our law firm and met with Jacqueline Moore to get a legal opinion as to whether the discussion with this man was within the physician-patient privilege. Jacqueline gave the case to Rachel Ringer, who handed the legal research down to Aspen Wilde, a summer law clerk at the time. The firm ended up providing a legal opinion that the communication was indeed privileged, which is the correct answer by the way. However, we also had the license plate number of someone who might be a killer.”

“Sloop John B” faded off and “Love Me Do” took its place.

“Blake Gray ran the plates, got the guy’s name—Jack Draven—and actually met with him,” Bennett said. “Then we hired him to go to New York and scare Robert Yates into abandoning the Omega takeover, under a threat that otherwise his daughter and wife would be killed.”

Bennett looked at his food, lost in thought.

Then looked back at Teffinger.

“I’m not proud of that,” he said. “Nothing was supposed to happen other than a threat. But things went wrong and Yates and his daughter, a little girl named Amanda, ended up stabbed to death in Central Park. We all felt like shit, especially Jacqueline Moore, who was having a hard time coping with the guilt.”

He took a sip of coffee.

Interesting.

“Another series of events happened too,” Bennett said. “Blake Gray got the hots for Rachel Ringer. He came on strong one night and almost raped her in her office. She came and told me about it and was going to go to the police. I actually encouraged her to, but somehow Blake talked her out of it and she didn’t. But she was too uncomfortable to stay in the firm any more and started floating her resume around town. Then she turned up dead. Blake Gray never confessed to me that he did it, but the conclusion is inescapable. He was worried about losing his power over her after she got away from the firm. He was scared she’d change her mind and go to the police.”

“So you’re saying Blake Gray killed Rachel?”

“Like I said, I don’t have the proof, but I’m a hundred percent sure in my mind,” Bennett said. “Either he killed her himself or he set someone else up to do it. Either way, she was a problem for him, and then the problem went away.”

“I follow you.”

“Then the firm hires Aspen Wilde,” he said. “She starts this stupid ad hoc Nancy Drew investigation into Rachel’s death. The problem is that she’s actually finding stuff out. We were worried that if she kept digging, that she’d end up getting into the Robert Yates deal. So we tried to scare her off. Blake Gray hired someone to break into her apartment to make it look like she was in danger.”

“So that was Gray’s deal?”

“Right.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“There’s more,” Bennett said. “He tried to get her to take a job in the D.C. office to get her nose out of our business. But she wouldn’t go. So then Blake set up an associate attorney by the name of Christina Tam to be his spy and to keep an eye on her. Aspen kept digging and Christina Tam keep giving us the updates. We kept getting more and more worried.”

“Aspen’s a digger,” Teffinger said.

“Then something happens out in New York,” Bennett said. “Robert Yates’ widow—a society icon by the name of Rebecca Yates—threw herself in front of a bus. The rumor was that she was despondent over the death of her husband and daughter, and committed suicide-by-bus. Well, this hit Jacqueline Moore right in the gut. She was already feeling guilty and this put her over the edge. Blake and me were getting more and more worried that she’d crack any day.”

“So you killed her?”

“Hold on,” Bennett said. “I’m getting there. Anyway, then you walk into my office this afternoon and put the heat on me in connection with the deaths of both Rachel and that stripper, Chase. After you left, I met with Jacqueline Moore and Blake Gray because they had a right to know. I had to disclose to them that I’ve been frequenting Tops & Bottoms, including what I’ve been doing there. I also told them that I had a session with Chase about a year ago, which the cops would find out about sooner or later.”

“You had a session with Chase?”

“Yeah, but I had nothing to do with her death,” Bennett said. “Anyway, when Jacqueline Moore found out what I’d been doing down at Tops & Bottoms, that was the last straw. She turned in her resignation a couple of hours later. When Blake Gray found out about it, he busted into my office, frantic that she was about to spill everything to the police. Then, tonight, she turns up murdered.”

“So you’re saying Blake Gray did it.”

Bennett nodded.

“It was either him or me and I know it wasn’t me,” he said. “I’m not a perfect man, but that was even more than I can tolerate. That’s why we’re talking right now. The bottom line is that you got the wrong person. You want Blake Gray, not me.”

Sydney leaned on the table and looked at Bennett.

“Did you drive by Christina Tam’s house earlier this evening?”

Bennett looked at her as if she was nuts.

“No. Why would I do something like that?”

Teffinger chewed a mouthful of pancakes.

Then he cocked his head and said, “How do we know you’re not making all this up? To try to put the blame on Blake Gray, now that we’re closing in on you?”

Bennett smiled.

“Well, for one thing, I was giving a speech in Colorado Springs this evening and have about two hundred people who will back me up. So if I didn’t kill Jacqueline Moore, who do you think did?”

Back in the Tundra, after the meeting, Sydney asked, “So what do you think?”

Teffinger wasn’t sure.

“He might be telling the truth. On the other hand, he has all the same motivators that Blake Gray does. As far as his alibi for this evening goes, assuming it checks out, he could have hired someone to take Jacqueline Moore out.”