“This was big trouble for the law firm,” Bennett said. “If Yates succeeded, we’d lose Omega as a client. Omega would be a part of Tomorrow, and all of Tomorrow’s legal work is done by a big Wall Street firm. So me and Blake Gray and Jacqueline Moore got together to see if we could figure out a way to prevent the takeover from happening.”
“Makes sense,” Teffinger said.
“We had the name of a guy who might be able to help,” Bennett said. “A psychologist by the name of Beverly Twenhofel, who also teaches at the University of Denver, was speaking to a group of students at an off-campus session at an Einstein Bros. They were talking about serial killers. After that meeting, a man who had been sitting at a nearby table approached her in the parking lot and asked her all kinds of weird questions. She got the distinct impression that he had killed and would kill again. She followed him and wrote down his license plate number. Then she came to our law firm and met with Jacqueline Moore to get a legal opinion as to whether the discussion with this man was within the physician-patient privilege. Jacqueline gave the case to Rachel Ringer, who handed the legal research down to Aspen Wilde, a summer law clerk at the time. The firm ended up providing a legal opinion that the communication was indeed privileged, which is the correct answer by the way. However, we also had the license plate number of someone who might be a killer.”
“Sloop John B” faded off and “Love Me Do” took its place.
“Blake Gray ran the plates, got the guy’s name-Jack Draven-and actually met with him,” Bennett said. “Then we hired him to go to New York and scare Robert Yates into abandoning the Omega takeover, under a threat that otherwise his daughter and wife would be killed.”
Bennett looked at his food, lost in thought.
Then looked back at Teffinger.
“I’m not proud of that,” he said. “Nothing was supposed to happen other than a threat. But things went wrong and Yates and his daughter, a little girl named Amanda, ended up stabbed to death in Central Park. We all felt like shit, especially Jacqueline Moore, who was having a hard time coping with the guilt.”
He took a sip of coffee.
Interesting.
“Another series of events happened too,” Bennett said. “Blake Gray got the hots for Rachel Ringer. He came on strong one night and almost raped her in her office. She came and told me about it and was going to go to the police. I actually encouraged her to, but somehow Blake talked her out of it and she didn’t. But she was too uncomfortable to stay in the firm any more and started floating her resume around town. Then she turned up dead. Blake Gray never confessed to me that he did it, but the conclusion is inescapable. He was worried about losing his power over her after she got away from the firm. He was scared she’d change her mind and go to the police.”
“So you’re saying Blake Gray killed Rachel?”
“Like I said, I don’t have the proof, but I’m a hundred percent sure in my mind,” Bennett said. “Either he killed her himself or he set someone else up to do it. Either way, she was a problem for him, and then the problem went away.”
“I follow you.”
“Then the firm hires Aspen Wilde,” he said. “She starts this stupid ad hoc Nancy Drew investigation into Rachel’s death. The problem is that she’s actually finding stuff out. We were worried that if she kept digging, that she’d end up getting into the Robert Yates deal. So we tried to scare her off. Blake Gray hired someone to break into her apartment to make it look like she was in danger.”
“So that was Gray’s deal?”
“Right.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“There’s more,” Bennett said. “He tried to get her to take a job in the D.C. office to get her nose out of our business. But she wouldn’t go. So then Blake set up an associate attorney by the name of Christina Tam to be his spy and to keep an eye on her. Aspen kept digging and Christina Tam keep giving us the updates. We kept getting more and more worried.”
“Aspen’s a digger,” Teffinger said.
“Then something happens out in New York,” Bennett said. “Robert Yates’ widow-a society icon by the name of Rebecca Yates-threw herself in front of a bus. The rumor was that she was despondent over the death of her husband and daughter, and committed suicide-by-bus. Well, this hit Jacqueline Moore right in the gut. She was already feeling guilty and this put her over the edge. Blake and me were getting more and more worried that she’d crack any day.”
“So you killed her?”
“Hold on,” Bennett said. “I’m getting there. Anyway, then you walk into my office this afternoon and put the heat on me in connection with the deaths of both Rachel and that stripper, Chase. After you left, I met with Jacqueline Moore and Blake Gray because they had a right to know. I had to disclose to them that I’ve been frequenting Tops amp; Bottoms, including what I’ve been doing there. I also told them that I had a session with Chase about a year ago, which the cops would find out about sooner or later.”
“You had a session with Chase?”