He knew she was probably right but still couldn’t get the image out of his brain. “I’ll make you a bet,” he said. “If you’re right, I’ll take you out to lunch or dinner at the restaurant of your choice.”
“Cool.”
“If I’m right, you have to keep my coffee cup filled up for a week.”
She shook her head.
“No way,” she said. “That’s twenty hours of work.”
He grinned.
“Okay, one day then.”
“A morning,” she said.
“Okay. But you have to get to work when I do.”
“No way. I’ll start at eight-eight till noon. That’s the deal.”
After Paul Kwak got the light stands in place, they processed the murder room, slowly and methodically. But it was the things that weren’t there that tugged harder and harder at Teffinger. For example, Brad Ripley’s snuff film showed a sheet on the mattress.
Where was that?
And the pillow?
And the rope?
He wandered outside and found a rusty dumpster in the back of the building, the old dangerous kind with the steel lid that’ll slam down and take your finger off if you give it half a chance. He muscled it up and propped it in place with a piece of wood. Inside he found several black plastic bags.
He put his gloves back on and pulled one out. Then ripped the side open.
Bloody sheets.
Bingo.
Then his cell phone rang and Davica’s voice came through. She called for no reason other than to say hi. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation this morning,” he said. “If being with a woman is important to you, then go for it.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“To be honest, it’ll be a little hard. But I can handle it.”
“Do you want to be there?” she asked.
“Not really.”
A pause.
“I’m not so sure I want to anymore. But I do know one thing. I’m not going to let you fight me off much longer.”
Teffinger smiled.
“I’ll warn the little guy.”
“You do that.”
Three minutes later, Sydney appeared.
“There you are,” she said.
He nodded at the black plastic bag.
“The mother lode,” he said. “There are more in the dumpster.” Then he told her about the conversation with Davica.
She listened patiently and then said, “Congratulations.”
“On what?”
“You just passed your first major test.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she was trying to find out if you’d put her happiness above your own,” she said. “And you did. I’m impressed.”
“So this was just a big test?”
“I thought it might have been all along.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“Because that would have been cheating.”
“I thought you were on my side,” he said.
“Not when it comes to another woman. Besides, aren’t you glad you passed fair and square?”
He thought about it.
Yeah.
He was.
“Don’t go breaking her heart, Teffinger,” she added. “If she’s testing you, that means there’s a whole lot more going on than she’s letting on.”
“That’s fine with me,” he said. Which was true.
Then he looked at the dumpster. “If the eyes are anywhere, they’re in one of these plastic bags. If they’re not there, he ate them.”
She cocked her head.
“Okay, I’ll buy that, at least for the purpose of settling our bet.”
Teffinger ordered six large pizzas, enough to feed everyone working at the crime scene, and even paid out of his own pocket, causing Kwak to note that somewhere down below, hell just froze over. They sat on the driveway and ate, in good moods, having already processed a ton of forensic evidence with a lot more to go.
Clouds filled the sky, black and rain-packed.
They found four black trash bags in the dumpster, which appeared to represent separate throwaways for each of the four murders. Three of them contained blood-soaked bed sheets. Later, they’d run DNA tests to confirm that the blood belonged to Angela Pfeiffer, Rachel Ringer and Catherine Carmichael, but no one had a doubt at this point.
The bed sheet in the fourth trash bag didn’t have blood and no doubt correlated to Tonya Obenchain, who had been suffocated. With any luck, they’d find Brad Ripley’s DNA on it and confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that he was the masked person in the snuff film.
From what Teffinger could tell, each woman was brought into the murder room separately. After each killing the sheets were changed and the space was cleaned up, at least cosmetically, in preparation for the next session.
Very well organized.
By who?
With too much pizza in the gut, Teffinger walked over to the Tundra and brushed his teeth. Sydney joined him just as he spit toothpaste onto the ground.
“Lovely,” she said.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what’s going on with that Pueblo woman? Has she shown up yet or anything?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. I haven’t touched base down there for a couple of days.” He must have had an unhappy look on his face, because she added, “I’ll put it on my to-do list. Which reminds me, by the way, we might have someone else missing too.”
Teffinger didn’t like the sound of that.
“Who?”