Attorney's Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (30 page)

“And she left out the fact that you killed Alan English.”

Hannah took a sip of wine and shook her head.

“Technically she didn’t leave it out. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the case against V&B. And you never asked her about it.”

The rain pounded even harder against the window.

London scratched her head.

“Then how did Venta recognize Remington as being in the dungeon?”

“Easy,” Hannah said. “When you came up with the idea to have Venta look at the V&B profiles to see if anyone in the firm had gone to the dungeon, Venta made sure that I was there at the time. If I saw someone, I was supposed to kick her and then she would tell you. It turned out to be easier than that, though, because you went grocery shopping. I recognized Remington, told Venta about Remington including his tattoo and the size of his dick, and then she called you as if she knew it all firsthand.”

London pondered it.

Then she said, “But you weren’t there when Venta identified Kiet from the BJ bar, sitting in a booth with three or four women.”

“True,” Hannah said. “But what happened is this. Venta came into the bar to look for me after I never came back out. That’s when she saw him.” Hannah sipped wine. “So I guess the question is—what do we do now? We still have a law firm to bring to justice.”

London nodded.

True.

Very true.

“You’re our lawyer,” Hannah said. “Right?”

Yes.

She was.

“So what do we do now?”

96

July 21

Thursday Morning

(One month later)

LONDON WALKED through the heart of Denver’s financial district under a bright Colorado sky. She wore a conservative pinstriped suit and carried a leather briefcase. The city bustled around her and felt like home.

She felt like a lawyer.

She was a lawyer, a lawyer with a good man named Michael Montana in her life.

Most of the picture had come into focus for her during the last month.

The information came from a variety of sources.

Dylan Jekker, for example, left behind a wonderful laptop filled with places, dates and names. Apparently it was his way of getting back at V&B from the grave if the firm killed him. The firm didn’t, of course. Instead, Jekker died at the hands of Teffinger during a horrible fight in the icy waters of Bear Creek. Still, the computer was found in Jekker’s middle boxcar and served its purpose well.

Some of the information came from Porter Potter’s house.

Some came from the extensive interviews of V&B’s attorneys conducted by the D.A.’s office, as well as interviews of V&B’s clients. Some came from documents such as phone statements, financial records, day timers, personal notes, and the like. And some came from other sources—often unlikely sources.

Most of the information went to Teffinger, then to Venta, and then to London.

In the end, a clear picture of a deadly, high-stakes international conspiracy of terrible proportions emerged.

THE LAW FIRM OF VESPER & BENNETT had two or three high-ranking partners in each of its offices throughout the world who functioned as part of a highly-solidified and clandestine group.

They called themselves rainmakers.

The rainmakers from Denver consisted of three people.

Mark Remington.

Thomas Fog.

And Sarah Woodward.

The rainmakers used carefully selected persons to enhance the law firm’s advantage in high-stakes litigation. The enhancement might include, for example, the elimination, intimidation or coercion of a judge, witness or party.

In the United States, the enhancer was Dylan Jekker.

Thomas Fog was his contact—the person who assigned the projects and arranged for payment.

In Europe, the enhancer was Jean-Paul Boudiette—a man who had become a person of interest to INTERPOL following the suspicious death of a Paris judge.

PORTER POTTER WAS AN IMPORTANT WITNESS who needed to be enhanced. But V&B didn’t need him dead. What it needed was false deposition testimony from the man.

Potter’s daughter had died in an airplane crash earlier this year.

The law firm located another woman who bore a striking resemblance to Potter’s daughter, a woman named Tessa Blake. The firm had Dylan Jekker kidnap the woman. After the woman’s abduction got reported in the media, the firm contacted Potter and made him an offer. If he lied in his upcoming deposition, the woman would be released alive and unharmed. If he didn’t, the woman would die. The firm hoped that Potter would think of the woman as his daughter and be sympathetic towards her. They even let him talk to Tessa Blake by telephone to confirm that they actually had her and that she was still alive and well.

The gamble paid off.

Potter chose to cooperate and lied in his deposition.

That swung a billion dollar case from a probable loser to a probable winner; a case that V&B had on a 25 percent contingency fee in the event of success, in addition to being paid on an hourly basis, meaning an extra $250 million or more.

At that point it was incumbent upon the firm to follow through with its end of the bargain and release the woman; otherwise Potter would undoubtedly go to the police and recant his testimony. Unfortunately, the woman had seen Jekker’s face and couldn’t be released without risk. So rather than releasing the woman, the firm had Jekker kill Potter and make it look like an accident.

Now they had the man’s deposition to use as evidence at trial with no associated risk.

VESPER & BENNETT WAS NOT ENGAGED in human trafficking or an international conspiracy to lure women to Bangkok for sexual slavery.

However, Mark Remington was, and had been doing it for years in exchange for money and unbridled privileges with any woman in the stable anytime he wanted. Tall, athletic blonds brought a high premium in that part of the world, both as a daily rental and as an outright purchase for a snuff. Remington came up with a wonderful idea to find female investigators who fit the physical profile and lure them to Bangkok.

Venta Devenelle from San Francisco.

Rebecca Vampire from Miami.

Susan Wagner from Cleveland.

Shirley Jones from New York.

Venta came to Denver to pursue a theory that her assignment had not been legitimate, but had instead been a charade to get her to travel to Bangkok of her own accord where her abduction was prearranged.

Venta hired London who rattled swords at V&B.

When the two other rainmakers—Thomas Fog and Sarah Woodward—found out what Remington had been up to, they decided that he needed to be removed. There was too great a risk that Venta could actually file a public lawsuit alleging the firm’s involvement in sexual slavery. That would result in tremendous media spotlighting, which might spill over to and uncover the whole rainmaker operation.

Since Jekker was friends with Remington, they couldn’t use Jekker for the job. So they brought Jean-Paul Boudiette in from France. As long as he was going to be here, they decided to have him remove Jekker too.

Jekker had been getting too sloppy.

He let Tessa Blake see his face.

He killed Samantha Rickenbacker.

He was a liability.

Remington then learned that he was being targeted. He learned that from the FBI profiler, Dr. Leanne Sanders, and from Nick Teffinger, when they came to Remington’s office after Boudiette assaulted the profiler.

Remington fled to Bangkok.

Boudiette then went after his second target, Dylan Jekker.

Unfortunately for Boudiette, Jekker got the upper hand.

The law firm told Jekker that Boudiette was either a rouge or else someone unknown was pulling his strings.

Jekker fell for it and stayed in Denver.

The firm then flew its Hong Kong enforcer to Bangkok. That person hung Remington in his hotel room and made it look like a suicide.

VESPER & BENNETT PLANTED A BUG in London Vaughn’s apartment early on, almost immediately in fact. London actually remembered coming home one night and feeling as if someone had been there.

But the bug wasn’t found until long after the fact.

In the meantime, Sarah Woodward and Thomas Fog learned that London and Venta had suspicious thoughts about another law firm, one that had ties to Bangkok, namely Thung, Manap and Deringer.

They then fed London false information.

They told her that their Bangkok P.I. had uncovered information to suggest that the Thung firm and associated family members were rumored to operate the dungeon where Venta had been taken.

All that was a big lie.

No one in the Thung firm had been involved at all.

The sedan that swung through London’s apartment parking lot late one night was merely there to figure out why the three women had followed Kiet to Shotgun Willies.

THE DAMAGES TO VENTA DEVENELLE came from Mark Remington, acting on his own, outside the scope of his employment, without the knowledge or consent of Vesper & Bennett. Therefore the law firm wasn’t liable for his actions.

That is, until the law firm got stupid.

Everything changed when the law firm, acting through Sarah Woodward and Thomas Fog, engaged in a variety of acts designed to aid and abet Mark Remington and to protect the law firm.

They bugged London’s apartment.

They ran London off the road on her bike.

They gave London false information in an attempt to implicate the Thung firm.

They had Remington murdered.

And, most importantly, they hired Jekker to kill Venta.

That made the law firm liable under a number of legal theories including RICO and civil conspiracy.

OF COURSE, THERE WERE A COUPLE of additional facts that were known only to London, Venta and Hannah, which they never shared with Teffinger, V&B or anyone else.

Namely, Hannah went to Bangkok too.

Hannah was the one who got abducted, not Venta.

And, most importantly, Hannah killed Alan English.

LONDON PUSHED THROUGH the revolving doors of the Cash Register Building, walked across the lobby and took the elevator up to Vesper & Bennett.

There she met with the new manager of the Denver office.

A man named Charles Meyer.

They met in the same conference room where London had once brought the Trek.

Meyer handed her two certified checks.

The first check was in the amount of $30,000,000 made payable to the order of Venta Devenelle and London Vaughn, Esq. Venta and Hannah had made an agreement to split their cut of the money fifty-fifty on the side, and keep Hannah’s name out of it.

The second check was in the amount of $10,000,000 made payable to the order of London Vaughn, Esq. and her new client, Tessa Blake.

Meyer also handed her two settlement agreements.

“As soon as your clients sign the settlements and you get them back to me, you’re free to cash the checks,” he said.

She stuffed everything in her briefcase and shook his hand.

“That will be later today,” she said.

He nodded and said, “And please give them my apologies, on behalf of the firm.”

“I’ll do that.”

London left.

She had the cases on a one-third contingency fee, meaning thirteen million and change went to her, pre-tax of course, but still, not bad for her first two cases.

97

July 21

Thursday Morning

(One month later)

TEFFINGER SIPPED COFFEE as he walked around the corner of the for-sale house and into the backyard. He put a rose on the ground where Samantha Rickenbacker died, looked at it for a few seconds, and then sat down on the patio in the sun.

The sky didn’t have a cloud.

Robins flew.

Somewhere a block or two away a dog barked.

A ceremony was scheduled this afternoon for Brandy Zucker, the weatherman’s daughter. Her body hadn’t been found yet, but it was clear that she died at the hands of Dylan Jekker, given the story of Tessa Blake about how a female showed up at the boxcar one day and tried to set her free.

Thomas Fog and Sarah Woodward were in jail, without parole, facing the death penalty for hiring Jekker to abduct Tessa Blake, which proximately resulted in the murders of Samantha Rickenbacker and Brandy Zucker. Additional counts charged them with the murder of Porter Potter; hiring Jekker to kill Venta Devenelle which proximately resulted in the attack on Teffinger; and hiring Jean-Paul Boudiette to kill Mark Remington which proximately resulted in the attack on Dr. Leanne Sanders.

TEFFINGER LOOKED UP AS A FIGURE APPEARED.

Tessa Blake.

She set a rose on the ground, next to Teffinger’s, then sat down next to him and stretched her legs out.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said.

Teffinger smiled.

“You look good,” he said. “How’s the baby-growing business?”

She patted her stomach and said, “Good. London called me a few minutes ago and said she had my settlement check in hand. I can pick it up this afternoon.”

Teffinger raised an eyebrow and asked, “How much did she get for you?”

“Ten million,” she said. “I almost feel sorry for the law firm to be paying so much. It was only those three who were the really bad ones.” She referred to Mark Remington, Thomas Fog and Sarah Woodward, the ones who had hired Jekker to abduct her.

“Don’t be too sorry,” Teffinger said. “The firm got rich over the years because of those three. This is just payback.”

“London is letting me keep the whole amount even though she’s entitled to one-third,” Tessa said.

“She is?”

“Yeah,” Tessa said. “She said I did all the hard work.” She paused and added, “I was thinking that since London doesn’t want her one-third, I would give it to you.”

He patted her knee.

“Thanks, but you keep it,” he said.

IN THE AFTERNOON THE CLOUDS ROLLED IN. Venta called, excited as hell about something, and talked him into breaking away from work for a half hour to meet her on the 16th Street Mall.

She wore white shorts, a baby-blue tank top and tennis shoes. But what really grabbed his attention was her hair—raven black instead of blond.