Kimber stared out the side window at the darkness of the forest. He asked, "I wonder who discovered the reporter's body." I said, "It's a good question. Given the terrain we're about to enter, my best guess is that there's a good likelihood that the person who discovered Dorothy's body is the one who put it there."
We drove the next five minutes in silence. I decided to let someone know where we were and checked my phone. This far into the wilderness it didn't have a signal.
As the vehicles cleared a sharp ridge-top my headlights suddenly illuminated the perimeter of the blow down As far as I could see in the narrow beam of light the once majestic section of backcountry forest was now nothing more than a jumble of tree trunks and branches piled at least as high as my car.
Kimber said, "Wow" I was breathless.
Barrett pulled right off the Forest Service access road. I followed him for another quarter mile or so down a deeply rutted lane that skirted the edge of the natural disaster. The mass of fallen trees on our left was a long unbroken wall that was almost as tall as I was. At no point was the mesh of trunks and limbs less than four feet high. When Phil stopped and got out of his car Kimber and I did the same. Barrett pulled a heavy daypack over one shoulder and said, "It's a short walk from here. Have to climb over a few trees, though." He waved at the skeletal forest.
"This is something, isn't it?"
It was something.
"Where are the other cars?" I asked.
In a voice that sounded almost too natural, he said, "The others came in the hard way, from the north. We didn't discover this access until after the fact.
Once you're in there," he said, pointing at the blow-down, "especially at night, it's like trying to navigate in a box of toothpicks. Everything looks the same.
You'll see" The winding path we followed through the blow down wasn't exactly a trail. It was more like a tunnel, never more than three feet wide, at times no wider than my shoulders. In numerous places fallen logs seemed to almost cover us in a thick canopy. The aspen and fir trees hadn't just fallen where they were knocked over; instead, the ferocious winds had actually blown them like snowflakes into drifts, creating immense impassable mounds of unstable lumber. The fallen timber that carpeted the steepest slopes seemed to be staying in place despite the law of gravity.
I assumed that the salvage loggers had cleared the path we were traversing. I kept thinking of chopsticks and Lincoln Logs. I didn't have another context for what I was seeing. The terrain was as foreign and foreboding as if I had suddenly been transported to the bottom of the sea.
Our cars had disappeared from view behind us after we had hiked no more than thirty seconds. There was no opportunity at all to perceive any clues about where we were going. Phil's flashlight beam illuminated fallen trees.
Thousands.
Millions. Nothing else. There seemed to be as many downed trees around us as there were stars in the sky above us.
Twice we reached forks in the trail. Phil didn't hesitate either time. Kimber walked behind me, and I kept checking on his progress. He wasn't losing any ground, agoraphobia and altitude be damned. Once when I looked back at him he said in wonder, "I wouldn't miss this for the world." He was smiling like a climber approaching the summit of a fourteener.
After no more than ten minutes of hiking Phil Barrett said, "Good. We're almost there. Aren't you glad you came?"
For some reason I was as surprised to see bright light in the midst of the blow down as I would have been to find a Burger King or a Mcdonald's. A pair of battery-powered lanterns illuminated a clearing that was no longer than a single-wide trailer. The light was a sultry yellow. The brilliance was disconcerting. Above us, the blown down trees seemed to have created a precarious Tinkertoy mountain at least fifteen feet high. Rising above the immense wall of timber loomed a steep hillside that appeared as foreboding as a steaming volcano. Whatever work Kimber and I were going to be performing there, we would be performing in a wooden canyon.
Phil Barrett called out, "Hello? It's Phil. I'm back with Mr. Lister and Dr. Gregory."
No one answered his call. Phil shrugged. He turned to me.
"Maybe they found something else to examine. The body's right around that bend." Kimber and I crossed the clearing. I turned and glanced at Phil. He had a bemused expression on his wide face. Kimber went ahead, entering a narrow cul-de-sac of broken trees.
I stepped into the cul-de-sac and looked at Kimber. We peered at the ground, which was littered with forest debris, then into the chaotic lumber walls, looking for a clue. Dorothy Levins body wasn't there to see. Nothing was there to see, nothing except the look of terrified acknowledgment Kimber and I recognized as we looked up into each other's eyes.
Kimber opened his mouth to speak. But before he'd formed a word, the sound of Phil Barrett's gun cocking shattered the silence. It was the single most distinct sound I had ever heard in my life.
The next thought I had was about my unborn baby.
I heard Kimber say, "This isn't good."
He was right, of course.
Phil Barrett's voice was suddenly swollen with vitriol. He barked, "Get down on your knees. Both of you. Then crawl back over here." I looked to Kimber for guidance. He nodded purposefully. We dropped to all fours and crawled the few feet back toward Phil Barrett.
I should have listened to my ambivalence about joining Phil on this errand. If I survive this, I thought, Lauren is going to kill me.
"That's far enough," Barrett said.
We stopped crawling. Kimber asked, "Where are Flynn and russ?"
"Do you mean were they as gullible as the two of you? Yes. Absolutely. As eager to help us out as a Boy Scout and a Girl Scout." If disdain were water, Kimber and I would have been drowning in the flood that spewed from Phil Barrett's mouth.
"Where are they?" Kimber actually sounded demanding in his retort to Phil.
Given the circumstances, I was surprised by the tone.
"I'm not alone in this little scenario. When I left to go get the two of you your friends were right here. Where are they now? Buried by lumber-that'd be my guess. They weren't my responsibility, but you two are."
Kimber continued to press.
"Are they alive?" he asked.
Phil ignored the question. He reached into his daypack and tossed some locking plastic bands my way. Electricians used the bands to bundle wires. Cops used them as disposable wrist restraints.
"You do Mr. Lister, Dr. Gregory. I'll do your wrists after you're done with him."
I moved toward Kimber. He offered me his wrists behind his back. I fastened the band.
"Tighter," Phil demanded.
I acted as though I were complying.
"Is Dorothy's body really here?" I asked, honestly not knowing what to believe.
"Oh yes. Close by, anyway."
"You know where she is because-"
"I'm the one who put it there. That's right."
I couldn't guess why Phil Barrett had killed Dorothy Levin. To protect Raymond Welle? That made no sense. Barrett must have known that someone else at the Post would take up Dorothy Levin's campaign-finance crusade. So why had he killed her? I offered my wrists and backed up toward Barrett. He said, "No.
First do Lister's ankles. I don't want you running off. It'll take you three bands. One around each ankle, then another one to connect those two. You got it?"
"I think so."
"Then do it. Don't try anything." As I moved toward Kimber again his eyes told me something was up. I felt incredibly stupid that I couldn't decipher exactly what. I bowed down to begin to bind his ankles with the plastic bands. The bands weren't long enough to fit around his trousers. I lifted the left leg of his pants and placed the first band near his ankle. After I'd fastened it, I moved to the right. As I lifted the trousers on his right leg, Kimber shifted his weight and kicked me gently with his left heel.
What? I didn't know what he was trying to tell me. I had just begun to pull the plastic band around his leg whe
n I felt a two-inch-wide ballistic nylon strap stretched taut a short ways above his ankle. Heartened, I slid my hand farther up toward his calf and felt the bulge of a gun. Kimber was wearing an ankle holster.
I looked up. Phil Barrett was distracted, dividing his attention between his prisoners and the entrance to the two trails that led through the blow down and intersected in the clearing. He was clearly waiting for someone else to arrive.
Kimber felt my hesitation and started coughing. Phil looked at him and yelled, "Shut up!" Kimber coughed some more and I used the sound to rip the Velcro flap off of the holster. The small gun slid free. I raised it up the back of Kimber's leg and shoved it into his hand. He turned around and glared at me.
His eyes screamed, No/ I said, "You know, Kimber, sometimes I think I've done everything right in my life and it turns out that I still don't seem to know how to avoid danger and find… the safety."
Kimber laughed and tried to cover the sound with another cough. I hoped the outburst meant he had decoded my message-I'd been trying to tell him that I didn't know how to release the safety on his pistol.
Barrett was staring up the hillside. He screamed again.
"Shut the hell up! Both of you." From his agitation I assumed something was going wrong with his plans.
As I returned my attention to the plastic restraint that I needed to fasten to Kimber's right ankle, he tapped me on the side of the head with the gun. He was ready to hand it back to me. I took it, hoping that the safety was now off.
With some trepidation I stuffed the gun behind my back in the waistband of my jeans and got back to work on Kimber's ankles.
Kimber said, "What's the plan, Mr. Barrett? Exactly how are you planning on killing us?"
"I'm going to shoot you and then set off a charge that will bury your bodies under the timber covering that hillside. My main concern is that I don't want your bodies found. Always seems that's when the troubles begin. Without any bodies it's all so much easier. If I had it to do over again…" His voice drifted off.
"The girls?" I asked.
"You're talking about the girls." He was staring at the hillside. Meekly, he said, "It turned out crazy. The first one was an accident. The second one was just a stupid mistake. Me? I was only trying to help."
What?
He looked at me. His next words were clipped.
"I didn't kill them, if that's what you're thinking."
At that moment, that's exactly what I was thinking.
"Then why the hell… are we here?"
He looked away again.
"I… helped. Afterward. I was… involved, afterward.
I jammed up the plumbing in the bunkhouse and got all that cowboy's things moved up to Gloria's. I'm the one who moved the bodies to the lake. Had to use all back roads right up along Mad Creek and then through the wilderness. Took half the night to get there towing that damn snowmobile." Kimber said, "And your subterfuge all worked. Of course I'm sure the fact that you were running the investigation made the task a little simpler."
Phil pointed up the hill beside us. He was presently immune to either praise or irony.
"That hillside is steep. And the timber on the hillside above us is very, very unstable-too unstable even for salvage.
There's a small explosive charge all set up there, ready to start a landslide of tree trunks. When the charge goes off and those trees start to roll, your bodies will be down here, ready to be buried beneath the pile."
"Dorothy's body? You did the same to her?" The question was mine.
He didn't answer.
Kimber said, "We've already collected most of the evidence at the ranch, Mr. Barrett. It's in Percy Smith's custody at the police department. I assume you're planning to kill him, too."
"I was there, remember? I saw what you got today and you haven't collected the evidence that I care about. The box in Percy Smith's evidence locker doesn't contain shit. The girls died in the bunkhouse. That's why-" Kimber said, "You torched it."
"I wasn't in town that day. But that's why it was… torched." He shook his head.
"Stupid idea. As far as I'm concerned it was like putting a
"Search Here' sign on the place. Other than myself this is a cadre of amateurs." "Ray Welle?" I asked.
"Ray's no amateur… but, no, he's not involved in any of this. There're no big fish in this stream at all." He actually smiled before he stole another glance up the hill.
"Got you there, don't I? You thought this was all about Ray, didn't you? You figured that we've all been covering for the great Ray Welle." I said, "Welle's not involved with the girls' deaths?"
"He may suspect something happened on his ranch, but I don't think he actually knows, no."
"Who are you covering up for then, Phil? Who's worth it?"
Barrett suddenly looked mean.
"You think I've been silent this long just to serve you that news on a platter?" "And Dorothy figured all this out?" I asked.
"The dead girls? No, she didn't know any of it. She figured something else out, though. So… she had to go. Want to hear something funny? Dorothy? That reporter? I rescued her before I killed her. Her damn husband had showed up at her hotel to beat the crap out of her. I thought he was trying to kill her.
Turns out he was the one who took the shots during the fund-raiser at the tennis house in Denver-followed her here all the way from the District." He shook his head at the irony.
"What an asshole. When I first walked into her hotel room in Steamboat she thought I was the goddamn angel of mercy and he thought I was there to arrest him." I said, "I know why her husband was furious at her. But what about you? What did she know? Was it about Gloria Welle?"
Phil looked displeased with the question, but he didn't answer.
Kimber said, "Someone will follow us, Mr. Barrett. We're a large organization with some of the most inventive forensic minds in the world. Someone else will show up to collect the evidence, whatever it is. The fire didn't destroy it.
You can't put this off forever."
"I've put it off for over ten years. Your disappearance will give me… us… some time to confuse things a little more. I'll gladly settle for ten more years. Now finish those cuffs there. I'm done talking."
Instead of circling Kimber's ankle with the third band I threaded it through a D-ring on Kimber's ankle holster, slid it through the loop on his left ankle, and snapped it shut. I hoped that from Barrett's vantage it would appear to be a functional restraint. But as soon as Kimber removed the holster from his leg his ankles would be untethered.
I said, "There, it's done. Phil, you know that the girls were at the ranch earlier the day they disappeared. We know that Dr. Welle was there, too.
He met with one of them."
"So?" He didn't seem interested.
"Your turn to get restrained, Dr. Gregory.
Stand up and give me your wrists. Move slowly. I'm feeling a mite jumpy." I stood and reached behind my back with both hands, removing the small pistol. As I turned my left hip toward Barrett, I rested the gun against my right thigh.
Phil thought I was being uncooperative and barked, "Give me your other goddamn hand."
I did.
I swung my right hand across my body and hit him as hard as I could with the butt of Kimber's gun.
He fell to the ground like a bird shot out of the sky.
I froze right where I was standing. I'd hit him so hard I was afraid that I'd broken my hand.
Kimber said, "Good move. Now, get his gun, Alan… Alan!"
I took a step back and stared at Phil's head. Blood was oozing from his ear and dripping down over his nose. A lot of blood.
"Get the gun," Kimber repeated.
I stooped to retrieve Barrett's handgun.
"Yes. Now bind his wrists, then get me free."
I had to flop Phil from his side onto his ample abdomen to restrain his wrists.
That done, I searched his pockets, found a pocketknife on his key ring, and used it to saw thr
ough the plastic band I'd placed on Kimber's wrists. As I finished I said, "I can't believe I hit him like that."
Kimber hopped over next to Phil and began palpating the left side of his head, just back of his temple.
"You crushed his skull."
The words made me shiver. I said, "Is he dead? Did I kill him?"
"No. He's not dead."
"I shouldn't have hit him so hard. Kimber, we have to get him some medical help.
A helicopter or something. I think I remember the way back out of here. It's only a couple of turns. I have a phone in my car but I don't know if it can get a signal up here."
Kimber stood back up and wiped Barretts blood from his hands on a handkerchief he'd pulled from his pocket. Kimber Lister was the kind of guy who always had a clean handkerchief in his pocket. He said, "Help for him will have to wait. I'm not leaving without Flynn and Russ."
At some level of awareness, I'd expected Kimber's protest.
"We don't know where they are, Kimber. We only have Barretts word that they're even up here, and he sure made it sound like they're already dead. We need to get help with all this.
I've seen aerial views of this blow down It extends for miles over terrain that's more rugged than you can imagine. There's no way you and I can search it by ourselves, especially at night. The reality is that Flynn and Russ are probably already dead. And Barrett could be dying right now."
Kimber finally finished sawing through the plastic on his ankles.
"You go then.
Get out. Call Percy Smith in town. Take Phil's pistol with you." He pocketed Phil's keys and returned his pistol to his ankle holster. He checked Barrett's semiautomatic before he handed it to me.
"It's ready to go. I'm going to find Flynn and Russ."
Above us, on the hillside, we heard voices. Kimber and I both turned our heads toward the sound at the same time. A man spoke first, followed immediately by a woman. I was able to make out a couple of words, but that was all.
I whispered, "Is that Flynn and Russ?"
Cold Case Page 32
