License to Die (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  A pile of hundred-dollar bills lay in plain view.

  “I haven’t touched anything,” she told him. “Just in case it turns out to be evidence or something.”

  Teffinger put on latex gloves and looked at her.

  “You could have taken the money,” he said. “No one would have known.”

  She diverted her eyes.

  “I would have.”

  He nodded and made a mental note that she needed the money now more than ever, being suddenly unemployed.

  “There aren’t many like you left.”

  The money turned out to be just short of twenty-five thousand dollars. Also, inside, he found a number of keys, insurance policies, a bag of cocaine, and a variety of other equally uninteresting things.

  He also found an envelope.

  Inside were eight or ten photographs. They had been taken at night without a flash. They were dark and vague but still clear enough to show a vehicle parked in front of a rickety wooden building. They were taken from slightly different angles, but mostly from the side view. All were shot from a distance.

  Teffinger laid them out on Ripley’s desk and looked at them as a group.

  Then he pointed to one of them and said, “It’s a BMW. You can see just a bit of the front end in this picture. See the double ovals?” She looked. “Does Ripley have a BMW?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think he has a black Mercedes.”

  Teffinger focused on the photographs.

  “This car’s either white or silver,” he said.

  She agreed.

  “Do you know anyone who has a white or silver BMW?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “How about this building? Do you recognize it?”

  “No.”

  “It looks abandoned,” Teffinger said.

  “It looks creepy,” she said. “You’d never catch me there in a thousand years.”

  Teffinger understood.

  “It looks like something out of a slasher movie,” she added.

  53

  Day Nine—September 13

  Tuesday Evening

  Aspen left work shortly after five, saying goodbye to lots of people so it was clearly on the record. Then she came back about seven-thirty. Christina Tam, who never left, met her at the door and let her in. That way neither of their keycards would show up as being used for an after-hours entry. They weren’t positive but were pretty sure that keycards were tracked in a computer or security system.

  “Everyone’s gone on this floor,” Christina told her.

  “Good.”

  “You nervous?”

  “Scared shitless.”

  “Me too.”

  Aspen held up a flashlight. “Brought this,” she said.

  “You’re such an organized little criminal.”

  They had already planned it. Christina would hang out in the dead-files room with the door open. She’d have a box down and one of her old cases on the floor. If anyone asked, she’d say she was pulling some research out of it to use in a current case. No one would suspect a thing. She’d have her cell phone already set to Aspen’s number. If she heard anything, she’d call. Aspen would have the phone in her pants pocket, set to vibrate, and immediately turn the flashlight off and hide.

  They walked up to the 45th floor.

  Derek Bennett’s office sat near the end of the hall with the rest of the rainmakers.

  “So have you figured out what you’re looking for?” Christina asked.

  “No.”

  “That’ll make it harder to find.”

  “Considerably.”

  They found the hallway deserted. None of the attorneys locked their office doors at night. In fact, most didn’t even shut them. Derek Bennett was no exception.

  Aspen walked in and turned the flashlight on.

  Her heart pounded and her mind raced.

  Okay.

  You’re in.

  Now get your ass moving.

  She checked the filing cabinets first, looking for a folder on Rachel, or the killings at the railroad spur, or Tops & Bottoms, or anything else out of the ordinary.

  Nothing of interest surfaced.

  Everything appeared to be related to clients.

  She checked his voice messages, being careful to not delete any.

  Nothing unusual rose.

  Did she dare fire up his computer?

  No, not yet.

  Exhaust everything else first.

  His credenza drawers held a lot of personal crap, phone books, office supplies, and other junk. Quite normal. Except the last drawer she checked.

  There she found a gun.

  She carefully picked it up with two fingers. She didn’t know anything about guns but the insignia indicated it was a Springfield 9mm. She memorized the shape and put it back.

  Then her phone vibrated.

  Shit!

  She turned off the flashlight, jumped with giant but very quiet hops to the coat closet, got in and shut the door, setting metal hangers in motion. She reached up and steadied them. Not more than a heartbeat later, the lights went on.

  Someone walked over to the desk and sat down.

  She opened her mouth and breathed as slow and shallow as she could, frozen in place.

  Someone grunted, a man’s voice.

  She pictured Bennett at his desk, getting ready to do who knows what for who knows how long.

  Goddamn it.

  If he found her, there was absolutely no explanation that would work. She would be history at the firm. Nor would any other firm have her after the word got out about what a sneaky little bitch she was.

  Then his computer came on.

  Damn it!

  He was going to be there for a while.

  She stood there, motionless, second after second, minute after minute, for a long time, fifteen minutes at least, then thirty.

  Bennett was doing something at his desk, possibly getting ready for a trial or a meeting tomorrow, maybe looking at porn. Who knows?

  Come on!

  Just finish and leave!

  Bennett’s phone rang. He picked it up, said “Bennett,” and then listened without talking. After a while he said, “Yeah, I saw the newspaper article. It’s sitting right here on my desk. The dumb bitch. I agree, it’s reaching critical mass . . .”

  Suddenly someone entered the room.

  “Knock knock.” Aspen recognized the voice as Christina’s. “Hey, Derek. I’m really sorry to bother you, but I did something stupid.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I left my car lights on all day.”

  He chuckled.

  “That’ll wear your battery down.”

  “Yeah, I just found that out.”

  “Have you got jumper cables?”

  “No.”

  He stood up. “Well, I do. Let’s see if we can get you back on the road.”

  After Christina-the-genius got Bennett out of there, Aspen waited until the coast was clear and then slipped out of the closet. She walked directly over to his desk and found the newspaper article sitting on top of his briefcase.

  It was a New York Times article from this morning about a woman named Rebecca Yates who walked in front of a bus in Times Square yesterday. Witnesses reported that she appeared to do it on purpose. “Suicide by bus,” they were saying. There were high-society rumors that she had been despondent since her husband, Robert Yates, and their daughter, Amanda Yates, were murdered two months ago.

  There were still no suspects in the case.

  Aspen turned off the flashlight and listened for sounds.

  There were none.

  Okay, leave.

  Now.

  Right this second.

  54

  Day Nine—September 13

  Tuesday Morning

  Gretchen ran from the Granada, and from the body on the floor of the back seat, as fast as she could, down the long gravel driveway toward the country road. She sprinted straight toward the s
un, which just now broke over the horizon.

  Draven chased.

  He wore no shoes.

  Almost every step landed on a rock or pebble that shot a pain up his leg and straight into his brain.

  “Gretchen! Come back here!”

  She turned as she ran and looked over her shoulder, to see if he was closing the gap.

  He wasn’t.

  “Gretchen! Let me explain!”

  She kept running.

  Draven slowed down, knowing he’d never catch her without shoes, and then stopped. The wind immediately went out of his lungs. He doubled over and put his hands on his knees to steady himself, breathing deeply.

  “Don’t do this,” he shouted.

  She kept running.

  He walked back to the farmhouse, pulled socks onto his bloody feet, threw on tennis shoes, and grabbed the keys to the Granada. By now Gretchen would be at the main road trying to flag down a car.

  He needed to get the hell out of there; that or get to her before anyone else did.

  Suddenly the door opened and she walked in.

  “It isn’t what you think,” he said.

  They went outside and sat on the front steps. Draven squinted to keep the sun out of his eyes.

  “Part of my P.I. work sometimes involves capture,” Draven said. “It’s no different that what the police do or what a bounty hunter does. The only difference is it’s private in nature. The woman in the car is married to a very wealthy man in Los Angeles. She walked out and took a lot of money and diamonds with her. More than her share. The man wants his share back. Then she’s free to go. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Why doesn’t he just report it to the police?”

  Good question.

  “Let’s just say he has to keep it under the radar screen.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning there are illegalities involved.” He reached down, picked up a rock and threw it at a crumpled pop can, missing by a mile. “I get paid well. In fact, I was waiting to surprise you with this later, but I have a nice house in Malibu.”

  She studied his face, trying to determine if he was bullshitting her.

  “Malibu, California?”

  He nodded.

  “I want you to come out there with me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding,” he said. “All I have to do, first, is drop this woman off with a guy who does the transportation. He’s the one who’s going to take her back to L.A. I don’t like that part of the business and never have. He’s supposed to be here today or tomorrow. Once I hand her over we’re free to leave.”

  “I’ve never seen the ocean.”

  He pictured it.

  “It’s so beautiful you’re not even going to believe it,” he said, which was true. “We’re going to get you a whole new wardrobe, some nice jewelry, a car, the whole bit. You’ll never have to work another day in your life.”

  Water formed in her eyes.

  “Why would you do that?”

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t know. There’s just something about you.”

  “You too.” She kissed him and then said, “I wasn’t going to turn you in or anything. I was just scared.”

  “I know. We’re going to take long walks on the beach.”

  55

  Day Nine—September 13

  Tuesday

  On the way back to headquarters from Brad Ripley’s office, Teffinger realized that he hadn’t done anything formal for Paul Kwak for giving him the lead on the ’67 Vette. So he made a pit stop on the way.

  Thirty minutes later, with a cup of coffee in hand, he hiked up to the sixth floor and handed Kwak a coffee-table book on Corvettes. “For the lead,” he said. “It’s got a picture of a yellow ’63 split-window, exactly like yours.”

  Kwak thumbed through until he found it.

  “Way cool.”

  Then Teffinger handed him the pictures, sealed in individual evidence bags. “This relates to the four-body case at the railroad spur,” he said. “We found these photos in Brad Ripley’s safe.”

  Kwak look confused.

  “Brad Ripley’s the guy in the snuff film, who killed Tonya Obenchain.”

  “Right. Okay, I’m with you now.”

  “I think the building in these photos is the place where the women were killed. Also, if I’m right, then whoever owns this BMW is involved. The car doesn’t belong to Ripley. We already checked. I need you to enhance the crap out of these little fellows.”

  Kwak studied the pictures and didn’t seem enthusiastic.

  “They’re pretty dark and grainy,” he observed.

  That was true.

  “I want to find that building and be walking around inside it by the end of the day,” he said.

  Kwak scratched his oversized gut.

  “It looks abandoned. As far as the vehicle goes, we don’t have much of an angle on the license plate number,” he observed. “It’s definitely a BMW, though.”

  Teffinger agreed. “I need the model, year, and color.”

  Sydney showed up mid-afternoon and plopped down in the chair in front of Teffinger’s desk. “The phone’s a dead end,” she said, referring to the public phone that someone used on March 15th to place a four-minute call to Brad Ripley.

  “You drove out there?”

  “I did. The phone itself is located at a gas station on County Line Road. The security cameras don’t shine on it. And even if they did, the tapes have already been recycled about two thousand times.”

  Teffinger frowned.

  “Thanks for trying,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been able to sleep without running it to ground.”

  Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Well, just because your idea is a dead end doesn’t mean that mine is.”

  He thought about it.

  He couldn’t remember what her idea was.

  There were too many ideas floating around to keep track of.

  That was the problem with this whole case.

  “It turned out that Brad Ripley’s credit card statements show a March 15th purchase at the Cheesecake Factory,” she said.

  Now Teffinger remembered.

  Brad Ripley’s connection to someone on March 15th might have been live, over lunch, rather than by phone.

  He nodded, impressed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Run with it.”

  She beamed and stood up.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Sit back down. First I need to fill you in on Brad Ripley’s safe.”

  Later, up on the sixth floor, Kwak beamed as he handed Teffinger printouts of the photos in an enhanced state. Teffinger shook his head in disbelief.

  “It almost looks like day,” he said.

  “You got to love technology,” Kwak said.

  Teffinger had never seen this particular building—old, boarded up, long and low with several doors. It reminded him of a small manufacturing facility.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I can’t find any markings or signage on it,” Kwak said. “It was used to make something or store something, is my best guess.”

  “What about the BMW?”

  “That was easy,” Kwak said. “Last year’s model, a 5-Series. The color has some fancy name but it’s basically silver.”

  Teffinger shuffled through the printouts again.

  “Can you bring the building up on the monitor?”

  He could and pulled it up on a 30” flat-panel screen.

  Electronically it was brighter and clearer but still didn’t give up any secrets.

  “So how do I find this place?” Teffinger asked.

  Kwak cocked his head.

  “Find the BMW,” he said. “Then do something to make it go back there. And follow it when it does.”

  Teffinger laughed.

  “Do you have any simpler ideas?”

  He didn’t.

  “I’m a complicate
d man,” he said.

  56

  Day Nine—September 13

  Tuesday Evening

  Aspen and Christina sat at the bar in a half-filled tavern near Larimer Square, drinking white wine too fast and bowing to the luck gods for letting them get out of the law firm alive and undetected. The crowd was young professionals, dressed for success, taking a mid-week breath of life on their way to the weekend.

  Christina was even more rattled than Aspen.

  “So I still don’t get it,” Aspen said. “Some woman in New York goes into a suicide-by-bus routine. Derek Bennett calls her a dumb bitch and agrees with whoever it was on the other end of the phone that things are reaching critical mass—his words, critical mass.”

  Christina took a sip of wine; no, not a sip, a drink.

  “Bennett’s turning out to be one strange piece of work,” she said. “And that gun. Why does a lawyer need a gun in his office? It gives me the creeps just knowing it’s in the building, much less that he’s the one who has it.”

  She shuddered.

  “That was a stroke of genius, by the way. That whole battery thing.”

  Christina frowned.

  “Sorry I didn’t think of it sooner,” she said. “I was a heartbeat away from pulling the fire alarm when I thought of it.”

  “That would have been subtle.”

  Two men came over, wearing suits, very polite, and wanted to buy them drinks.

  They let them.

  Then they headed back to Christina’s.

  While Christina went to shower the day off, Aspen fired up her laptop and plugged into the Internet to do a little research. The suicide-by-bus woman, Rebecca Yates, turned out to be a still-gorgeous ex-model who landed a full-time job as a trophy wife ten years ago. Other than giving her husband’s money away to charities, and parading her face in every high-society function this side of the moon, she really didn’t have many other dimensions.

  Her husband—Robert Yates—on the other hand, turned out to be quite the story; a self-made man who worked his way up to Harvard and later said it was the most boring four years of his life. It did, however, springboard him onto a path that eventually landed him as the president, CEO, and majority shareholder of Tomorrow, Inc., a satellite communications company.

  He and eight-year-old daughter Amanda Yates were playing Frisbee in Central Park on a nice July afternoon earlier this summer, a common ritual. Except this time they died.