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 that 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 sun, 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.
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, Paul 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.