"Just fine with me."
"We're particularly interested in a night you may remember back in eighty-eight.
Two girls disappeared from town that night. One was named Mariko Hamamoto. The other was-"
"Tami Franklin. I knew Tami from her daddy's ranch. I hired out there sometimes, too, back in those days. Remember that night real good. The next mornin' I got up and started to feed the horses-heck, must've been about five. Soon enough-couldn't have been much past six-the sheriff came by asking me if I'd join a search for the two girls. Miss. Gloria told me to go ahead and go. I spend most of the next two days trying to find those two kids in the snow. Sure do remember."
"The night before the search? The night the two girls disappeared? Do you remember seeing anyone at the Silky Road beside the Welles?"
Rat looked at Kimber with an honestly perplexed face.
"Saw the sheriff that night. Saw Mrs. Franklin. Didn't see the girls, if that's what you're wondering."
"You saw the sheriff and Mrs. Franklin at the ranch? What time do you think that was?"
"Miss. Gloria sent me to town on an errand late that afternoon. She needed something shipped somewhere is how I remember it, offered me some money to catch a movie or something while I was down the hill. I saw Mrs. Franklin's truck at the house when I stopped there on my way off the ranch to pick up the package.
Passed the sheriff's vehicle down near the gate. I'd say it was dusk, maybe a little later."
"And you got back to the Silky Road when, Rat?"
"Not till late. After the movie I had a few beers with my buddies in town." Kimber asked, "That night, when you got back, did you sleep in the same room at the bunkhouse or did you move to a new room?" Rat asked, "How did you know about that? Miss. Gloria had moved all my things that same evening. Said that a problem had developed with the plumbing in the bunkhouse. I don't recall exactly what. I slept in the guest room at the Welles' house that night. Fanciest bed I've ever been in in my whole life."
Kimber asked a few more questions but Rat had told us all he knew. We thanked him and stood up to leave. I thought Rat might like to know what had happened to the two cowboys from the Silky Road. I said, "In case you've been curious, we learned that Frank and Chuck are still working together. They're on a ranch near Austin, Texas."
Rat stuffed his hands in his pockets and lowered his head. He toed the floor of the cabin with his boot.
"Texas? Huh."
"For a while they were at a different ranch near Dallas." "You know," he said, "those two cowboys are queers." There was a good-sized smile on his face when he looked back up.
"What do we know?" Kimber asked as we climbed back into my car.
"That there was an awful lot of activity at the Silky Road the night the girls disappeared."
"Which means that if the girls were murdered at the ranch, then we have quite a list of suspects and a wonderfully long list of potential witnesses."
I added, "The bunkhouse certainly got a lot of attention during that time.
Extra work for the housekeepers. Rat being asked to sleep elsewhere that night."
"It did."
"Flynn and Russ seem to think they can tie that wound on Tami's head to the stones used to build those walls at the ranch. And if the samples from the floor are really ebony… well…"
Kimber sighed. Before he was done, he erupted into a huge yawn.
"I don't know how much longer we can keep this from the press. But I am certain of one thing:
I'd like to conclude our work at that ranch before they get a chance to begin theirs."
We drove in silence from Oak Creek and didn't pass another vehicle until we were on the outskirts of Steamboat Springs. Kimber never covered his face during the drive; he stared out the passenger-side window at the high prairies and the distant peaks, thinking I don't know what.
When we got back, the front door of the bed-and-breakfast was locked. My room key allowed us inside. An envelope addressed to Mr. Kimber Lister waited for him on the polished mahogany table in the foyer. I thought I heard Kimber mutter, "Shit," but I wasn't sure.
He slid his finger under the flap of the envelope and carefully released the adhesive. The sheet of paper inside had been folded over only once. Kimber read what was on it, folded it closed, reopened it, and read it again.
He turned to face me.
"It's from Russ and Flynn. They think they know where the reporter is. The one from the Washington Post? They'd like us to meet them at the general store in Clark. Do you know where that is?"
I nodded, "Clark makes Oak Creek look like Las Vegas. It's up the valley past the Silky Road Ranch. You can spit across the whole town; the general store won't be hard to find. They want us to meet them now?"
"I'm afraid so. We're supposed to page Russ when we're leaving here. They'll meet us at the store."
"Does it say whether Dorothy is alive or dead?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Are we going?"
"Do we have much choice?"
I thought, Sure, but didn't say anything.
Kimber had depleted most of his reserves coping with his illness during the long day at the Silky Road. He had apparently consumed the rest during the early evening that he'd spent scouring databases and traveling with me to Oak Creek to interview Rat. On the drive up the Elk River Valley to Clark he chose to return to his familiar pose in the backseat. In a voice that dripped anxiety he asked me to play music-anything-and play it loudly. I flipped through a stack of tapes I had in the car and offered him one of Lauren's favorites, Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey.
"Ideal," he declared.
I was a reluctant chauffeur. I held no illusions that Dorothy Levin was still alive and didn't really want to be around when her body was discovered after so many days in the wilderness. And I felt relatively certain that her body would be somewhere in the wildneress. Because, other than a few working ranches, including the one owned by the Franklins, and a couple of dude ranches for tourists, pretty much all there is around dark is wilderness. I wanted to remember Dorothy for her insouciance and her wit. I didn't want a picture of her decomposing flesh etched in my memory. I hoped that Flynn and Russ didn't expect me to identify her.
As we drove past the gate to Glorias Silky Road Ranch I decided that I would deliver Kimber to the general store in Clark and announce to Flynn and Russ that my errands were over for the evening. I would drive back down to my cozy bed in Steamboat, sleep as late as I could, and enjoy a big breakfast the next morning.
I didn't see any reason to change my plans to return to Boulder.
* * * A sign along the right side of the county road welcomes visitors to Clark, Colorado. The sign states that the town was established on September 16, 1889, that its elevation is 7271 feet above sea level, and that its population is "?"
A quick glance at the tiny village convinced me that when Flynn, russ, Kimber, and I rendezvoused at the general store we would temporarily elevate the population of Clark from the single to the double digits.
When Kimber and I arrived, the parking area outside the store was empty except for a pair of old analog gas pumps and a white Ford Econoline that appeared to have been parked in the same spot for many more days than Dorothy had been missing from her hotel room. A moment after I stopped the car Kimber sat up on the backseat. His complexion was pasty, his face was dotted with beads of sweat, and he was on the verge of hyperventilating.
"I'm not doing real well," he announced.
My clinical appraisal was that Kimber's assessment was an understatement. I asked, "How's your pulse?"
"Too fast"
"Chest pains?"
"Not yet." Great.
"Do you take any medication for this?" I'd wanted to ask that question since I'd learned about the panic disorder, but I'd been hesitant to relate to Kimber as a clinician. Many sufferers have their symptoms largely controlled by medication.
"I've tried them all. I either can't tolerate them or they don't help."
Wonderful.
"Don't worry, I'll be okay. Are they here yet?" He didn't bother to look for himself.
Panic disorder is a physical ailment more than a psychological one. In the face of no apparent danger, the body begins to prepare the organism for a potentially cataclysmic confrontation. It prepares for the coming fight by releasing adrenaline, increasing respiration, changing blood-flow patterns, and sharpening the senses. I could talk to Kimber until he and I were both blue in the face-I wasn't going to do anything to readjust his raging hormone secretion. In fact, the stimulation of my efforts might aggravate his condition even further.
I answered, "No, they're not here. We must have made good time. What would be helpful to you right now, Kimber?"
"I think I'll lie back down until they get here. Close my eyes. The dark is good for me usually. And the music helps, if you don't mind."
I didn't mind. I set the ignition so that the accessories had power and stepped out of the car. The sky was cloudless and most of the stars in the universe seemed to have chosen that night for a convention above the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. The air at seven thousand plus feet was cool, and I wished I'd grabbed a sweater from my room before leaving Steamboat.
Van Morrison crooned at me from inside the closed car.
What did I wish right then? I wished I were in a cozy cabin somewhere on the outskirts of Clark reclining in front of a warm fire with an arm around my wife.
What did I have instead? Beneath a canopy of stars I was standing sentry for an agoraphobic forensic genius who was having a panic attack in the backseat of my car while I was waiting for a guided tour to the site of the decomposing body of a woman who I wished had never died.
Either I was fresh out of wishes or my genie was on vacation.
I walked far enough from the car that I couldn't hear the music that was comforting Kimber in the backseat. Three dozen steps away I was blanketed in a quiet that was absolutely surreal. The air was still and it was as though the trees were holding their collective breath, trying not to rustle a single leaf.
I strained to hear the water rushing over stones in the Elk River a quarter mile distant, but couldn't. Even the crickets had paused from their incessant chirping. The loudest sound in the universe was the blood rushing through blood vessels near my ears. That sound seemed to roar.
I spotted headlights weaving up-valley through Clark before I sensed the hum of an approaching engine. The headlights moved toward me patiently, deliberately.
As the car slowed and began to forge a slow turn into the dirt lot in front of the Clark general store, I'd already come to the conclusion that the person driving the car couldn't possibly be Russ Claven.
The vehicle, an early Ford Explorer, approached mine in the lot. I stayed put outside the arc of lights from the store and watched as the car stopped not alongside, but rather directly behind mine. I didn't think
Kimber could hear its approach above the lyrical strains of Tupelo Honey. The door of the Explorer opened. Using both hands on the frame of the door for support, Phil Barrett pulled himself from the driver's seat and stepped out.
My mind generated quick questions. Where are Russ and Flynn? How did Phil know he could find Kimber and me up here? Why did he park his car behind my car?
The crickets resumed their symphony and the wind lifted a thousand million leaves all at once. The blood rushing to my ears quieted. I moved sideways two steps until I was hidden behind a tree.
Phil Barrett banged on the window of the car and seconds later tugged open the driver's door. The interior lights flashed on. I was afraid that the intrusion was a sufficient shock to give Kimber a coronary, but when Kimber popped up in the backseat, it was Phil who hopped back, startled. With the door open Van Morrison was blaring loudly enough to awaken everyone who lived within a hundred yards. I assumed that was no one. Phil reached into the car and killed the ignition power.
"You alone, Mr. Lister? I was told to expect to find both you and Dr. Gregory here." Who told you that, Phil?
I couldn't hear Kimber's reply. He was cupping both hands over his eyes.
Finally his rotund voice crossed the dusty lot. I heard him say, "Would you close that door, please, Mr. Barrett? The lights are so bright." Phil said, "The sheriff asked me to bring the two of you along to join Dr. Claven and Ms. Coe." "The sheriff of… what?" Kimber continued to shade his face with both of his hands.
"Routt County. It's his jurisdiction. The body was found up in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. The whole blow down up there is in his jurisdiction."
Kimber was climbing out of the backseat. He asked, "What is that? What's a blow down
I knew what the blow down was. It had been big news a few years earlier. In October of 1997 freak winds, estimated at over 120 miles per hour, tore across the ridge tops on the western side of northern Colorado's Continental Divide.
In one specific area of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness called the Routt Divide, just a few miles south of Clark, the winds were so fierce that they flattened entire forests that had once extended over twenty thousand acres. Where the winds struck hardest they either felled the trees or uprooted them. Not occasional trees toppled, but every tree fell to the ground. From the air, the massive forests appeared to have been harvested by a giant scythe. Forest Service estimates had over a million trees either uprooted or sheared from the landscape in a matter of minutes. On the ground the once grand forests were reduced to immense mounds of unstable rubble.
Phil Barrett was explaining this otherworldly phenomenon to Kimber along with the news that Dorothy's body had apparently been found somewhere in the blow down I was astonished that her body could ever have been discovered there.
Salvage loggers had cleared what they could from almost two thousand acres of the rugged terrain starting in the fall of 1998, but the majority of the blow down was too dangerous and too remote to permit even salvage logging. I'd seen photographs and videotapes of the un logged areas. If Dorothy's body was hidden up there, finding it would have been like trying to find a grain of rice in a chopstick factory.
"Where are Flynn and R-uss?" Kimber asked.
"They've been kind enough to offer their assistance to Sheriff Pilander. He has his hands full up there." Barrett hooked his thumb across the road, in the direction of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness.
"Flynn is helping to secure the crime scene. Russ is doing an initial examination of the body. Pilander is lucky to have them; there aren't a whole lot of people with their skills on call around Routt County, you know." Kimber said, "There aren't too many people with their skills on call anywhere, Mr. Barrett."
"Of course. Speaking of experts, Mr. Lister, where is Dr. Gregory? I was told he'd be with you."
I used that as my cue to step out from behind the tree and walk toward Phil Barrett's wide back. Kimber said, "There he is." I said, "Hello, Phil. Heard you drive up. I needed to take a leak."
He spun on me as though he were afraid I was going to hit him from behind. I was impressed at how fast he moved. With some inventive costuming, I thought, he could have another career as the mascot at a swine farmers' convention.
"Dr. Gregory, hi. I'm supposed to drive you guys up to where the body was found." I shook my head and said, "No can do, Phil. I agreed to ferry Kimber up here to see Flynn and Russ. Now that I've done that I'm heading back down the hill and I'm going back to bed. I'm sure I'll hear all the details about finding Dorothys body sometime tomorrow. That's plenty soon for me."
Barrett stepped back and leaned against the car.
"Flynn asked for you specifically, Doctor. She even actually predicted that you might be reticent to join us up there. That's her word by the way." He smiled with his mouth closed.
"Reticent."
I thought about Flynn's request for a moment.
"She was right. I am reticent.
When you get back up there, Phil, please tell Flynn she was Prescient." I smiled.
"That's my word. Prescient."
&nb
sp; Kimber took a solitary step forward as though he wanted to be recognized. He said, "I won't insist that you accompany us, Alan-actually I can't-but… if Flynn Coe has reason to believe your presence might elucidate something, I would beg that you reconsider your position. We've come quite far, literally.
What're a few more miles?" As he was speaking, I was assessing him clinically.
His symptoms seemed to have totally remitted.
I couldn't imagine what I could offer Flynn Coe at this particular crime scene other than a quick identification of Dorothy's body. Reluctant, I decided I would offer to do that much and then return to the bed-and-breakfast.
"How far is it from here?" I asked Phil Barrett.
"Not far, but dirt roads. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."
"Okay. I'll drive up there in my car. When I've done whatever Flynn hopes I can do, I'm leaving. Fair enough, Kimber?"
"I'm grateful, Alan. Thank you."
Phil spoke.
"Where we're going, it's not an easy drive. The last section is definitely four-wheel country. Why don't you drive up with me, and I promise I'll bring you back down to your car whenever you're done" It didn't feel right. I wasn't sure why.
"No," I said.
"I'll follow you."
The dirt road was a well-maintained public access path that wasn't much of a problem at first. The ruts were manageable and the steep sections were short.
Along the way we passed at least a half dozen ghost cabins of homesteaders whose dreams had died in the heavy drifts of long-ago Colorado winters. Phil stopped briefly at a Forest Service signpost about ten minutes from Clark. I drove alongside his Explorer.
"This is where it gets dicey," he said.
"Why don't you leave your car here? I'll bring you back whenever you're ready." I said, "Lead the way, Phil."
As soon as I raised the window Kimber said, "You don't like him."
We started downhill. I adjusted the transmission, dropping it into second.
"I not only don't like him, Kimber, I don't trust him. If we succeed in finding who killed those two girls, its not going to look very good for ex-sheriff Phil Barrett. You know exactly what I mean. And if it turns out that anyone associated with the Silky Road is implicated, which is looking more and more likely, it's going to look even worse for him."
Cold Case Page 31
