Cathy's gaze seemed to burn and her eyes filled me with sorrow. Over the years I'd met with dozens of parents who displayed their pain in their eyes the way Cathy did-mothers who were desperate for whatever psychological help, or salve, I could provide to aid her child. Mothers who had placed all their hope in me after they'd concluded that I was their last best chance for salvation, but were preparing themselves for the possibility or even the likelihood, that their hope would again be burned at the pyre of disappointment.
The big book that Cathy Franklin held in her lap was a photo album.
She wore a pair of old Lee jeans that she'd cherished so long the cotton was now as soft as chenille. They still fit her as they did the day she bought them. Her blouse was rayon or silk, and she wore it with the top four buttons loose.
Underneath was a faded yellow chemise.
We were sitting in what Dell had called the "sitting room." I would call it a family room. A massive stone fireplace filled half of a long wall above a hearth fashioned from thick pine logs and topped with stone. The mantel above the firebox was crowded with trophies topped with brass golfers and silver golf balls. A coffee service was set up before us on a low table.
Cathy had been anxious for our arrival.
She'd be twenty-eight today. She'd have babies by now. I think she'd have… two babies. I'd be a grandmother." Cathy sighed and flipped open the photo album on her lap and stared at a picture that I suspected had not been chosen at random. Tamara, upside down from my point of view across the coffee table, appeared to have been eight or nine when the picture was taken. She was standing on cross-country skis in front of a teepee. The psychologist in me wondered why her mother had chosen a photograph of her daughter during the quiescence of latency. It might have meant nothing of course, but Cathy Franklin hadn't locked on to an oedipal Tami, or a preadolescent, pubertal one.
She hadn't chosen a picture of Tami just before her death, either.
Cathy said, "Her smile-Tami's? It was so bright-it would make you glad that you're alive." She fidgeted and stared at her hands as she spoke to us about her dead daughter. I was thinking that the absence of a daughters smile could probably leave a mother wishing she were dead. My thoughts leapt to the life growing in Lauren's belly. I pried my attention away and my stomach flipped.
Cathy continued.
"Its been over ten years," she said as she lifted one hand and scratched behind her ear.
"Well more than ten." Her voice was disbelieving. I couldn't tell whether she was disbelieving because the tragedy still felt like yesterday, or whether she was disbelieving because she felt as though she'd already cried away enough tears to lubricate a few lifetimes.
Wendell-Dell-reached over and touched his wife on the knee. He was a bear of a man and the act seemed all the more gentle because of his mass.
His breathing grew less labored as he made contact with her. He said, to his wife as much as to us, "It's still hard sometimes. You know-it's hard to remember… and… it's hard to forget." Cathy clenched her husband's thick fingers and lifted her face to us. She manufactured a smile that brought tears to my eyes.
"We're so grateful you've agreed to help," she said.
I was fighting therapist proclivities. Cathy's arrested grief was fertile ground. But I reminded myself that this field wasn't mine to furrow. Not here.
Not now.
Lauren jumped in and explained our role in Locard. That we were consultants.
And that our participation in the investigation was limited to specific tasks that had been delineated by the permanent members of the Locard team. She explained her role as a local prosecuting attorney.
When she was finished, I spoke.
"As you know, I'm a psychologist. One of my most important tasks is to get to know your daughter," I said, moving my gaze from Dell to Cathy and back.
"When I'm done with my work, I'd like to feel that I've come to know who Tami was on that day that she died."
Dell raised an eyebrow and asked, "Don't get it. How will that help you find her killer?"
I took a moment to compose a response.
"The more I know about Tami-the better I know Tami-the better chance I have of being able to figure out what caused her to…"-I struggled to find the right word-"… to collide with whoever it was who murdered her."
Dell appeared to be on the verge of responding when Cathy said, "She was a sweetheart. No one who knew her would ever want to kill her. It had to be a stranger."
"Tami…" He shook his head a tiny bit and smiled lovingly.
"She could be kind of ornery," added Dell.
"But she was our girl. We loved her from sunrise to sunset. God, how we loved her."
Over a decade had passed and they were both still crying over Tami's death. I noticed that Lauren's hands, which had been folded on her lap, were now spread palms down, the fingers nesting protectively around her womb.
Lauren and I didn't have a plan. As things developed she spent much of the next hour sitting with Cathy at a game table in an alcove on one side of the sitting room, poring through photo albums, listening to Cathy reminisce about a daughter she had never imagined living without.
As soon as the wives retreated to the photo albums Dell invited me outside to show me some of his ranch and, it was apparent, to talk about his living child and not just his dead one. I waited while he changed his boots in a big mudroom before he led me away from the house. He had already surprised me with his openness and his sensitivity in discussing his daughter. Anticipating the visit to the ranch I'd unfairly pigeonholed him as a taciturn old cowboy. It was neither a fair nor an accurate assessment. I was beginning to see Dell as an emotionally resourceful man who didn't run from either his own pain or Cathy's.
The ranch was "a lot of acres" according to Dell.
"My father assembled almost all the land. I've added a couple of small patches over the years. Some new buildings. The technology of course, though Dad would have been the first to have that if it was available to him. But mostly I've been a caretaker of what my father imagined. I consider this place a kind of trust, you know?" I said, "I think I understand." My focus was on the expansive high prairies and the vaulting peaks of the wilderness below Mount Zirkel. Those aspen groves would sparkle like gold dust in the fall.
"Trust" felt like a good enough word.
"My part's been the animals. My addition to my father's vision. I do well with them. With the animals. I especially love just about everything that's involved with breeding. You know much about ranching?" I was a step behind him, following him down a wide asphalt lane that led from the family home to the barn with the shiny new roof.
"Not much," I admitted.
"Almost as much as I know about the economy of Serbia."
He laughed.
"Most don't. Some think they do; they think any brain dead cowboy can run a ranch. Some pretend they know. But most don't understand. Tami did. She loved it out here. Really understood what it was we were up to. What it takes to feed this monster. What it takes to tame it. We hoped-me and Cathy-we hoped Tami'd stay, marry somebody who would want to take over the ranch with her."
"Joey's not interested, Dell? In the ranch?" I assumed he wasn't but wanted to hear Dell's response.
"In this? Nah. He's got his golf. Its all he seems to need. Never seen anyone who's been so completed by one activity." Dell shook his head, apparently perplexed by his own son.
"We're blessed in Routt County. You know you can play golf up here almost as long as you can in Denver? In a good year you can play all the way from May through October. We're not as high up in the mountains as people think. Where we're standing right this minute, we're only a little above seven thousand feet. You're surprised, right? Still, don't know how Joey got so darn good at it. Golf, I mean. Some people just click with some things. You ever notice that? " I said I had noticed that.
The first two stalls on the inside of the huge barn had been rebuilt as an indoor golf driving range.
An elevated tee. A huge net to catch balls. A computer to analyze and measure something. Distance? I didn't golf. I couldn't tell.
"I play a little. Been a member for years at the little golf club that's out on 40. Started as an excuse to hang out with some friends, really. I hack. It's a nine-hole and if I'm lucky, I break fifty maybe twice a summer. Never really have time to play eighteen. Lose more balls than I care to count. Joey used to like to come with me to the range when he was little, you know, like five or six. He'd hit some balls. Had a real sweet swing, right from the start. Soon enough, he wanted to play in the winter, too. Only kid I knew who would rather hit golf balls than go skiing, so one year I built this for him." Dell waved at the indoor golf setup.
"It wasn't always this fancy. At first it was just a piece of Astroturf I nailed to the floor and a net I hung to keep him from killing the animals. I added stuff to it as he got better and better during high school. After… you know… he's been… well, a kind of salvation for me. Whenever I hated life because of what had been done to Tami, I had Joey to be thankful for. I can't tell you how much it helped. Church helped, too, of course. But when life got especially rough, Joey helped me keep the ball on the fairway."
I didn't know how my next words were going to be received. I said them anyway.
"You more than Cathy though. Dell?"
He didn't flinch at all.
"Oh, you betcha. You… betcha." He scuffed the toe of his boot into the floor. Did it again.
"Cathy was Tami's best friend. And Tami was hers. Cathy loves Joey, don't misunderstand me.
But… he was never the right shape to fill the hole that Tami left when she was…"
Dell couldn't bring himself to say "murdered" or "butchered" or "ravaged" or whatever word his unconscious mind had used to pigeonhole the horror that had been inflicted on his only daughter.
I tried to remember why I was there. Despite my instincts, I steered south of Dell's pain.
"Mariko wasn't Tamis best friend?"
"Miko was new. For Tami, for us. And she was… what's the word? Exotic, you know, Oriental like that and all? I think that Tami was intrigued by the foreignness. Tami spent her whole life up here. Other than occasional family trips, I mean. Until the Japanese bought the ski area we never saw too many of them in these parts. I think most of 'em went to Vail and Aspen. Hell, we never saw much of anybody but the American tourists. And most of them were as white as we were. We got some Mexicans for a while before their economy tanked. But they go more for Vail and Aspen, too. That's what I hear anyway. Better shopping over there.
"The girls became good friends, sure. Miko could ski with Tami. Bump for bump.
Not too many girls could, or would. Tami liked that. But when I talk about Cathy and Tami and friendship, I'm talking the bigger picture. Confidences and all that. Cathy and Tami shared something special."
I was at a loss as to how to follow him wherever he was heading. It was as though he were leading me through a cave. I should have just shut up. Instead, I asked, "Does Joey still live up here?"
The tone of his voice lightened and I knew I'd let him off a hook with my question.
"We see him a lot. But he has a big fancy place near San Diego. On a golf course, of course. We visit. He visits."
"He has that plane. That must make it easier to see him."
Dell shook his head.
"Joey has investment advisers. Agents. Managers. The jet was their idea. They want him rested and relaxed while he plays. He's just a kid; he went along.
Waste of a lot of money far as I'm concerned. But it's his now so I try and get him to do some occasional good with it."
I decided to see how Dell would react to my mentioning that Lauren and I had been on the plane. Did he already know?
"We were flown to the Locard meeting in DC. on it. I was grateful for the convenience."
He nodded. He knew.
"Yes, I know. I told him it was the least he could do for his sister."
Although the tone harbored no bitterness, the words surprised me. I followed them. Apparently the plane trip was Dell's idea, not Joey's.
"What was their relationship like? Joey and Tami?"
"Good. Fine. They got along all right. Typical brother-sister stuff. But it was good."
I waited a long minute for Dell to expound on his impression of his children's lives together. But he just let the silence bob and float on the surface and didn't nibble on it at all.
I tried another cast.
"The ranch must feel empty."
Almost instantly, he replied, "I tell her over and over that they'd both be gone now anyway. Tami'd probably have married and moved away. Maybe to Denver.
She'd probably live closer to you than she does to us. And Joey would be… Joey. No matter what."
"I'm getting the impression that it doesn't help to tell Cathy that. Is that right, Dell?"
He smiled at me.
"You seem like a bright guy. You could see it in there, right?
She's still tethered to Tami. Cathy is, over all these years. I'm hoping you guys can find some answers that will set her free. You know? That's why we're going to all this trouble. That's why I'm willing to scrape the dirt off the top of my daughter's grave. I'm hoping it will set us free."
I thought I knew what he meant and I said so.
We left the barn and I followed Dell. After he plopped down in a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle with big balloon tires I climbed onto the passenger side.
"I talk better when I'm moving," he explained with admirable self-awareness.
"Why don't you tell me about her, Dell? About Tami?" Before he said a word, he started the little cart on a straight line toward some distant fields. The air was as clean as fresh water. The hay smelled sweet. The ride was surprisingly smooth.
Later on, walking through Steamboat Springs looking for a place to have lunch, Lauren and I compared notes.
Lauren started.
"Cathy thinks Dell was too hard on her-on Tami-says she thinks that he felt that Tami needed to be broken, like a wild horse. Cathy knew her daughter wasn't a saint but couldn't get behind Dell's program, so she kept a lot from him. Tami was on birth control pills, had been since just before her fifteenth birthday. Cathy said that Dell doesn't know that and that it would have caused a whole lot of trouble if he did."
"Does Cathy know if Tami was sexually active?"
"Cathy says she was. She maintains she never asked with whom, but says she did ask Tami if she knew him-the boy. Tami replied, "Mom, you know everybody." And they dropped it. Anyway, that's the story."
"Go on."
"Couple of times at least, Cathy became aware that the kids had been going out and drinking. Tami and her friends. She says that Dell never knew about it. She was working with Tami on her own to try and get her to 'moderate." That's Cathy's word: 'moderate."
" That's all the bad news?"
We were walking down Lincoln Avenue, the long spine of downtown Steamboat.
Lauren had stopped to read a menu outside a cafe called Winona's. The tables on the sidewalk along the main thoroughfare were full, a propitious sign.
"Tami had some minor problems at school. Skipped her afternoon classes once with some friends and went sking. They all got caught. Did some detention time. She got into one fight when she was sticking up for a friend in the lunchroom. Got caught again. Cathy says Dell was proud of her about that one.
Freshman year she gave a science teacher a hard time about grades. Felt the guy had been unfair.
Principal ended up getting involved. Dell was behind her on that one, too. How does this look?"
Lauren's question was about the menu. Without really assessing the offerings I said, "Looks fine to me."
"Shall we?"
"Do you mind if we walk around town a little longer before we eat? Are you up to it? My memory is that this street is pretty much it for downtown Steamboat.
We can circle back this way when you want to eat. Downtown ha
sn't changed that much, you know? But around the base of the ski area? Mountain Village? Wow, a whole new world in the last few years."
"I'm not sure I like it. The development."
I didn't either but I didn't want to get distracted from Tami and Miko.
"Walk some more?" "I feel great," she said.
"Let's go." We walked. It was my turn to report on Dell. I said, "It's funny, considering what Cathy had to say about Tami and Dell's relationship, but Dell focused on Tami's strengths. Didn't say much about any trouble they had with her. He talked about the day-care work she did at the church during Bible studies, the tutoring she did at school with the younger kids. Dell's mother was still alive then and he says that Tami was devoted to her. She lived here in town and Tami would stop by to see her and read to her and help her out three or four times a week with chores and such. Dell was real proud, too, of the way she handled the animals and skied. Hell, he was proud of her for just about everything she did." Lauren said, "I got the impression from Cathy that Dell could be real critical of Tami."
"Well, he wasn't when he was with me. That didn't come across at all. Did Cathy say anything about Tami breaking her leg when she was twelve? She was in a cast all spring?" Lauren said, "No."
"Apparently she was sking off a cornice on a dare from a boy she wanted to impress. Landed funny and shattered her tibia. Dell called it a 'damn fool thing' but I never got the impression he was mad at her about it. It was just an example he used to show me what an adventurer she was. You know-how her judgment wasn't always that sound? Not that she was a bad kid but that sometimes she didn't think things through. I think he was trying to tell me that she was capable of making bad decisions. Impulsive decisions. That he feared one of them might have had something to do with her murder. Does that make sense?"
"Sure. She was a kid. She was a risk taker."
"Yeah. Like that. Dell was real aware that she was a kid."
Cold Case Page 7
