by R. J. Jagger
She stopped chewing and studied him.
“That’s not public knowledge,” he emphasized. “So keep it that way.”
She promised.
“If you give me his name I can snoop around the firm,” she said. “See if he has any connections to Rachel or the other two lawyers I just told you about.”
Teffinger hesitated, then leaned across the table and whispered in her ear: “Brad Ripley.”
Then he got a call.
He listened intently, wrinkled his brow, and stood up. “I have to run,” he said. Then, over his shoulder, “Sorry.”
After Teffinger left, Aspen realized he hadn’t paid the bill.
She checked her purse and found four dollars.
Shit.
Now what?
Two minutes later, just as she was about to flag down the waitress and explain the situation, Teffinger ran back in and put a twenty on the table. “Sorry about that. I have no idea where my mind is half the time.”
45
Day Eight—September 12
Monday
With his car surrounded by bikers, Draven walked through the side streets of downtown Pueblo, hugging the buildings and keeping a good lookout for alleys and doorways in case Harleys rumbled up the street.
He was six or seven blocks away when he realized he’d made a huge mistake. Because of all the frustration trying to open the goddamn tattoo woman’s safe, he’d completely forgotten to grab the logbook.
He immediately turned around and headed back.
Damn it.
It would have only taken three seconds to pick it up.
Now he had to go all the way back, dodge the asshole bikers, risk being seen by some busybody with a cell phone, and all the rest. He kicked a pop can lying on the sidewalk. It turned out to still be half full and drenched his sock with sticky syrup.
Goddamn it!
He managed to get back into the tattoo shop without incident, then stayed low and crept to the front window and looked down the street.
Oh, man!
The bikers were still there, about six or seven of them. Worse, someone was hooking the car up to a tow truck. Draven hugged the floor for ten minutes or longer and then looked out the corner of the window as the truck went by. Faded white lettering on the door said, “Bob’s Recovery and Repo Service.”
“Screw you Bob,” Draven said under his breath.
Two bikers followed the tow truck.
The remaining assholes split into two groups and headed off in separate directions, no doubt to scout for Draven.
He found the logbook and checked for the name of the woman who had been in the shop the same day as him, getting the tattoo on her breast. She was Isella Ramirez. Then he shoved the book under his sweatshirt, checked the back of the building, saw no one, and left.
Two cabs sat in front of the downtown Marriott. Draven got in the front one and told the driver to take him to wherever it was that the used car lots clustered together. Five minutes later he got dropped off on Main Street, about a mile north of town. At a place called Harvey’s Quality Cars and Trucks, he bought the cheapest car on the lot—a rusty 1979 Ford Granada—under a false name for $450 cash, and then headed north on I-25.
Mia Avila was going to be sorry for sending him on this wild goose chase, very, very sorry.
On the way back, he stopped at a payphone and called Chase, the stripper. “Have you got some time for me today?”
“You’re going to give me another eight hundred, right?”
“Absolutely. That’s the deal. I have it right here in my hand.”
“Then I got all the time in the world, sweetie. I just have to get my ass to the club by seven—eight at the latest.”
46
Day Eight—September 12
Monday Afternoon
Teffinger showed up ten minutes late to the one o’clock meeting, apologized, sat down, then stood up and walked out. He returned a heartbeat later, this time holding a cup of coffee, which he set on the table—his favorite piece of furniture; stained, beat-up and scratched to the point of no return. He looked at it and said, “You could live for a week just off the stuff in this wood.” Then he got serious. “Okay. Where are we at?”
Sydney went first.
“We now have in hand all of Brad Ripley’s phone records, going back a full year. We have records for his home phone, cell phone, and business phone. There isn’t a single call to, or from, the phones of any of the four victims.”
Teffinger frowned.
“Are you sure?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she said.
“You cross-referenced to all the victim’s phones, meaning home, office, cell, whatever?”
Yes, she had.
“And still no connection to anyone, not even Tonya Obenchain?”
“Nope.”
“Well, that’s not good,” he said. “So you worked hard all morning, just to give me bad news.”
She grunted.
“It’s what I do.”
Teffinger turned his attention to Katie Baxter. “Give me something good and you win,” he said.
“I’ve run a pretty solid background check on Ripley,” she said. “So far, nothing of interest has popped out. And I can’t find any social, economic, or other connection between him and any of the four victims. No common friends, jobs, clubs, or anything. None of Tonya Obenchain’s family or friends recognize Ripley’s name or face.”
Teffinger looked at the coffee and then took a sip.
“If I didn’t know better,” he said, “based on what you’ve said so far, I’d probably conclude that Tonya Obenchain was just a random, spur-of-the-moment pick.”
Sydney raised an eyebrow.
“Meaning what? That you do know better?”
Teffinger nodded.
“We found a day planner at his office,” he said. “He had April 3rd and 4th set aside to SAVE, in red ink. Tonya disappeared on April 3rd. But more interesting is the fact that the only other red-ink notation occurs on March 15th. My guess is that both entries were made at the same time, meaning on March 15th. So in mid-March he knew he was going to kill her on April 3rd or 4th.”
Sydney cocked her head.
“I think you might be going a tad too far,” she said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he knew he was going to kill her. It could just mean he knew he was going to kill someone.”
Teffinger understood her reasoning but didn’t buy it.
“I really don’t see him planning a future date for a random target,” he said. “But I do see him planning a future date for a specific target.”
“Possibly,” Sydney said. “But maybe his specific target petered out for some reason and he went to Plan B.”
Teffinger hadn’t thought of that.
She was right.
“Either way,” he said, “we need to recreate March 15th in the life of Brad Ripley, which is the day he knew he would kill someone two weeks later. If we have multiple killers, they obviously coordinated and communicated with each other. It looks like one of those communications took place on March 15th. So I want to know the details about every phone call he made or received on that day. I want to know everyone he met with and everywhere he went that day.”
He combed his hair back with his fingers and read the discouragement on their faces.
“I know,” he said. “We’re looking at tough, tedious work.”
After the meeting broke up, he went straight to the restroom. He was standing at the urinal when his cell phone rang, and he wasn’t sure whether to answer it or not.
He did.
The voice of FBI profiler Leigh Sandt came through. “We’re about 99 percent sure at this point that the guy in your snuff film is who you thought, Brad Ripley, based on body size and posture. We’ll know a hundred percent after we get his clothes.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate you getting to it so fast.”
She hesitated and then said, “Where are you right now?”
He shook his head.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Are you taking a piss?”
“Maybe.”
“This is so gross,” she said. “You have me in one hand and Mister Happy in the other. I feel downright violated.”
Before he could zip up, the phone rang again. This time it was the coroner, Robert Nelson. “I looked at that film like you wanted,” he said. “I don’t think the guy in there killed Catherine Carmichael or Angela Pfeiffer. As to the other woman, I don’t know one way or the other.”
“Why not Catherine Carmichael or Angela Pfeiffer?”
“Well,” Nelson said, “unless I’m totally reading things wrong, the guy in the film is left-handed. The slit on Catherine Carmichael’s throat appears to be from someone who’s right-handed. So do the stab wounds to Angela Pfeiffer.”
“What makes you think he’s left-handed?”
“That just seems to be his dominant hand,” Nelson said. “But you should be able to ask a few people who knew him and confirm it fairly easily, one way or the other.”
That was true.
But if Nelson was correct, then they were definitely dealing with more than one killer. Meaning that Rachel Ringer’s killer was still on the loose. Which also meant that Aspen Wilde was still in potential danger.
47
Day Eight—September 12
Monday
Aspen felt pretty good following her lunch meeting with Teffinger, until he called later and told her he had a solid reason to believe that Brad Ripley hadn’t killed Rachel after all, meaning she should continue to take every precaution.
“Gee, you really know how to cheer a girl up,” she said.
He didn’t lose his serious edge.
“Where are you sleeping tonight?”
“At Christina Tam’s house.”
“Give me the address.” She did. “That’s actually not far from my place. I’ll try to drive by a couple of times.”
“Stop in if you do.”
She worked her little billable ass off all afternoon, intent on having the right numbers at the end of the month. Then Christina walked in shortly before five and closed the door.
“So what’s the plan?”
“The plan’s changing,” Aspen said. “Earlier today, I thought it would be best to snoop around and find out if this Brad Ripley guy had any connection to Rachel, or Derek Bennett or Cruella. But now Teffinger is thinking that Ripley isn’t Rachel’s killer.” She twirled a pencil in her fingers. “So instead I’m thinking we should focus on Derek Bennett.”
“Focus how?”
Aspen shrugged.
“I don’t know. Maybe we start in his office, tonight after everyone leaves.”
Christina put her hand up.
“That’s too risky.”
“Not really,” Aspen said. “I’ll go inside with my cell phone set on vibrate. You stand lookout down the hall and call me if anyone’s coming.”
Christina didn’t seem impressed.
“Bad idea,” she said. “It’s too risky. And if he actually is involved in Rachel’s death somehow, he’s not exactly going to draft a memo about it and leave it sitting on his desk.”
Aspen considered it.
Christina was probably right.
“So we need to look outside the office, is what you’re saying.”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Like a good old-fashioned stakeout or something,” she added.
Derek Bennett lived in a Greenwood Village mansion and drove a silver BMW flagship. That night, after dark, Aspen and Christina parked down the street from his house, not really expecting anything to happen.
But it did.
Bennett pulled out shortly after eight-thirty, and they followed.
“We’re officially crazy at this point,” Christina said.
“You watch,” Aspen said. “He’s going to lead us straight to more bodies.”
“Yeah, ours.”
Bennett wound his way to I-25, headed north, drove all the way through Denver and out the other side, and finally exited at 56th Avenue. A mile or so later, he pulled into an industrial park. Aspen continued down the road and then circled back.
“There it is,” Christina said, pointing.
Sure enough, Bennett’s BMW was parked in front of a detached brick building, in the company of eight or ten other vehicles. They killed the lights and drove past. The only signage consisted of small white lettering on the door: Tops & Bottoms.
“What the hell is this?”
Aspen backed into a dark deserted area about fifty yards away and killed the engine. Then she pulled out her cell phone, called information to get the number for Tops & Bottoms, and dialed.
She got a recording, a sexy female voice.
She listened and then looked at Christina. “The best I can tell, it’s some kind of a dungeon.”
Christina slapped the car seat.
“Do you mean to tell me that Derek Bennett, senior partner in our prestigious law firm, is in that building over there, even as we speak, chained naked to a cross and getting his cock whipped by some lady?”
Aspen grunted.
“No more visuals, please. Or it could be the other way around. He might be a top, working some woman over. Or a guy, even.”
They waited, just to see how long he stayed.
It turned out to be an hour.
“The old Richard’s got to be hurting a truckload,” Christina said.
“All red and irritated,” Aspen said.
“Wondering what it ever did to justify all this.”
After Bennett pulled his BMW into the night and disappeared, Aspen started the engine and pointed the Honda towards the street, but instead swung into a parking space in front of Tops & Bottoms at the last second.
“I’m going in,” she said.
Christina unbuckled her seatbelt. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“No,” Aspen said. “That’ll look too suspicious, like we’re cops or something. Just wait here.”
The door opened into a small waiting room with barren white walls, no chairs or furniture, a red door, and a sign that stated this is not a place of prostitution and that it is against the law to solicit a sexual act. Aspen hadn’t been in the room more than ten seconds when the red door opened and a woman walked in.
She was strikingly beautiful, young—younger even than Aspen—and wore her breasts falling out. She looked Aspen up and down, then hugged her and said, “‘I’m Jasmine. We don’t get many women.”
Aspen shifted from one foot to the other, nervous.
“I’m Aspen. I’m not sure you have me yet,” she said. “I just stopped in to get more information.”
“Have you visited our website?”
“No. I didn’t even know you had one.”
Jasmine turned, opened the red door with one hand and grabbed Aspen’s hand with the other.
“Follow me,” she said.
They entered a hallway and walked past several doors, each painted in a different cartoon color. Aspen felt weird, holding a woman’s hand, but didn’t pull away. They entered the room with the green door. And Jasmine said, “This is our green room.”
It was a well-equipped dungeon with a hospital smell.
“It’s fully soundproof and totally private,” Jasmine said. “Are you a top or a bottom?”
Aspen knew she better have an answer, quickly at that.
The thought of surrendering control to a stranger terrified her.
“A top.”
Jasmine smiled. “No problem. We have three subs working tonight. None of them have any problem surrendering to a woman. I think you’d especially like Antoinette. She’ll do bondage, light spanking, cum control, obedience training, submissive wrestling, and just about anything else you might have in mind.”
Aspen pictured it.
“The room’s totally soundproof,” Jasmine added. “And totally private. There are no cameras
or anything like that. Whatever happens in here is between you and your sub. The rate is a hundred dollars an hour for the room, which goes to the house. The girls work for tips. The minimum tip rate is a hundred an hour. So, would you like to meet some of the girls?”
Aspen nodded.
“Sure. Why not?”
48
Day Eight—September 12
Monday Afternoon
On the way back to Denver, Draven swung by the stripper’s apartment. She scrunched her face as she looked at the Granada and almost didn’t get in, but changed her mind when he handed her the remaining eight hundred dollars.
“Nice ride,” she said, sliding over on the bench seat until she was next to him.
“My Porsche is in the shop.”
Her face brightened.
“You have a Porsche?”
“A 911 Turbo,” he said, which was true. That, his house on the beach, and his whole other existence was in Malibu, all under his real name, Jack Brentwood.
“Red, I hope.”
“That’s the only color,” he said. “If it ain’t red, it’s dead.”
She rubbed her hand on his thigh. “Do you want to know what I have in store for you, for paying me so well?”
He pulled into traffic.
“Sure, why not?”
She moved her hand to his cock.
“Okay,” she said. “But don’t come before we get there.”
He drugged her on the way to the cabin, then carried her into the second bedroom, stripped her down to her thong, and secured her spread-eagled to the bed, double-checking the knots to be absolutely sure there was no way she could escape.
Then he walked into Mia Avila’s room, carrying the logbook that he’d gotten from her tattoo shop, and bitch-slapped her across the face before she could make a sound.
“You screwed with me,” he said. “That was a very wrong career move.”
She mumbled something through the gag.
He could pry the safe combination out of her, but he really didn’t care about it anymore. He already had the logbook, which was the main thing. Without that, the police wouldn’t be smart enough to tie him to the other woman getting the tattoo, Isella Ramirez. And without her, they wouldn’t get a description of him.