“Maybe,” he said. “In the meantime, this is our secret.”
“I’ll tell the chief. No one else.”
“Not funny.”
Just then, Paul Kwak pulled up in a Crime Unit van, waving the search warrant out the window.
“Is anyone ready to have some fun?” he asked.
They fingerprinted the padlock on the fence, got nothing useable, then cut it off and bagged it. Teffinger’s heart pounded as they walked over the dirty, weed-infested asphalt toward the building. “I know none of us would ever make a mistake,” he said, “but especially don’t make it today.”
All the doors had padlocks, so they cut one off and entered.
The lights didn’t work.
They wandered around the outside perimeter until they found the main electrical box. The breaker was closed, meaning there was no electricity coming to it. Paul Kwak scratched his gut and frowned.
“Looks like we’re going to have to fire up the generators and set up some halogen stands,” he said.
Teffinger nodded.
“Go ahead and start on that,” he said. “Do you have any flashlights in your van?”
“A couple.”
Teffinger and Sydney entered using flashlights. The building was broken down into a large room and several smaller ones. Most of them were cluttered with old rusty parts, no doubt leftover remnants of machines that no longer existed.
“I want the eyes,” Teffinger said. “I’ll be a happy man if I can find the eyes.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sydney said. “I always pictured them floating in a formaldehyde pickle jar on someone’s mantel.”
Teffinger grunted.
They searched the place thoroughly but didn’t find the room that had been in Brad Ripley’s snuff video.
“Damn it,” Teffinger said. “I can’t believe this isn’t the place.”
One of the metal racks seemed odd, and Teffinger studied it as they walked past. It didn’t seem as dirty as the others. On closer inspection, it seemed as though the boxes and parts on the shelves had been taken off and then put back on. There were scratches and smudges in the dirt. Then he spotted a door hidden behind it and started pulling things off the shelves and setting them over to the side.
“Help me with this stuff,” he said.
When they finally got everything moved and opened the door, they found a room unlike the others, empty except for a bed. “Bingo,” Teffinger said, shining the light around. He paused the beam on a black smudge on the back wall. “I remember that mark from Ripley’s snuff film.”
On closer examination, they saw blood splatters.
On the floor.
On the walls.
Not as many as Teffinger anticipated, but enough to give them all the DNA they wanted.
“So this is where it all happened,” Sydney said.
“Yeah. Nice, huh?”
They didn’t enter, but instead went back outside to talk to Paul Kwak. “I got some good news and some bad news,” Teffinger said. “The good news is, we have a whole room that we’re going to take apart inch by inch.”
Kwak’s face brightened.
“You found it?”
“We found it,” Teffinger said.
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“That’s true but not relevant right now.”
Teffinger walked toward his truck.
“Hey,” Kwak shouted, “What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is I have to piss like you can’t believe, so turn your back.”
“Just don’t turn up any more bodies.”
Aspen almost walked into Christina Tam’s office fifteen different times to tell her someone was running around accusing her of being a spy. But she didn’t.
Instead, she continued to think it through.
If she was a spy, who for? Clearly not Derek Bennett. Christina’s disgust at what they found at Tops amp; Bottoms was genuine. No one can fake those kinds of facial expressions.
As for Jacqueline Moore, Christina’s personality conflict with the woman was on record. Plus Cruella wouldn’t ever help anyone other than herself. She particularly wouldn’t go out of her way to help Aspen after the blow-up last Wednesday, even though things had supposedly smoothed over.
So rule her out too.
What about Blake Gray?
He had, after all, saved Christina’s ass after she botched a case by failing to timely disclose an expert. So, technically, she owed him big-time. Plus Blake is the kind of guy who wants to know what’s going on in his little kingdom. Still, even though the pieces could technically fit, it didn’t feel right. And, now that she thought about it more, Aspen had been with Blake at lunch when the envelope got put on her chair.
So rule him out.
Who, then?
Either someone else altogether or-more likely-Christina wasn’t a spy at all. Maybe someone was just trying to drive a wedge between Aspen and her.
Who would want to keep them apart?-the person who had the most to lose by them being together, meaning the person who they had their sights on, namely Derek Bennett.
Did that mean he knew what they’d been doing?
Did he see them at Tops amp; Bottoms?
Or in his office?
He was just the kind of guy who would be clever enough to sneak through the back door and try to drive them apart instead of confronting them head on.