"And what was in it for Brian?"
"I promised to convince the coroner that he was no longer suicidal the day that Phil's boys shot him dead on the ranch. That way his family would get enough life insurance money to start their life over again. Without my intervention with the coroner the insurance company wasn't about to pay on his policy. No way. Brian understood that. Basically, he killed Gloria for me and I agreed to make sure his family was taken care of."
"Your idea or his?"
He lifted the gun so it aimed at my gut. I could feel my bowels pucker.
"Brian wasn't the brightest bulb in the scoreboard, if you know what I mean. He didn't have what it would take to come up with this."
"What about shooting her in the closet? That was adlibbed I take it?"
Ray shook his head.
"No, we worked that part out together. Brian wasn't an eager participant. Even at the end, he wasn't at all sure he could look Gloria in the face and kill her. I understood; I don't think I could have done it either. We had to come up with an alternative."
"Why did he do it?"
"I convinced him that no one would really blame him, that everyone would think he just snapped from all the stress. It was a sacrifice for his family."
I considered Brian's desperation.
"A cop friend of mine thought the closet was suspicious. The fact that he shot her through the door. He had a whole lot of trouble with it."
"You know, when Phil first came in the house he had trouble with it, too. If I had to do it over again, I would have insisted Brian shoot her face-to-face."
He broke into a broad smile.
"And look!" He waved the gun at me.
"I do have to do it over again. I need to remember my lesson. Let's go find a good place for you to die. No closets for you."
It was time for me to do something. Trying to run seemed absurd. Ray Welle was standing seven or eight feet away from me with his handgun leveled at my chest.
He might not miss. That left the Kimber option. If he was to be of any help, I had to pray that his panic episode had abated.
I said, "I didn't come here by myself, Ray. You and I aren't alone in the house."
He barely heard my words. He was looking out the big windows of the great room, gazing toward the lane. Two vehicles were approaching the house. One was a Steamboat Springs police vehicle driven by Percy Smith. The other was a familiar Ford Taurus driven by Russ Claven.
Ray said to himself more than to me, "Sylvie must have called them. They think you're holding me hostage." I wasn't about to remind Ray that Sylvie didn't know he was on the ranch. I was certain Ray didn't know who Flynn and Russ were; he probably figured that they were officers who had accompanied Percy Smith and the other uniformed officer.
I had reached a different conclusion about my arrival of the police than Ray had. I was thinking that Kimber must have realized what was going on and called the police. They know that Ray is about to kill me.
The cars stopped about a hundred feet from the house, and the four occupants all exited on the far side of their vehicles. The solitary uniformed officer had a rifle with a scope. Percy Smith was armed with a cell phone.
The telephone rang inside the house. The peal seemed to clang around the cavernous space like a church bell.
Ray said, "If I'm a hostage, I don't answer the damn phone, right? Right. Let it ring, let it ring." He turned to me.
"Back up. We're going into the hall so they can't see us through the windows."
He backed me up into the hallway that led to the master suite and ordered me to stop just opposite the powder room. He said, "Sit."
I did.
The phone finally stopped ringing.
Ray said, "What were you talking about before? About not coming to the ranch alone?"
"I'm terrified. I was just trying to buy some time. You know, distract you."
He stared at me while he tried to cinch his robe tighter without interfering with the aim of the gun.
"I don't know whether or not to believe you."
Good, I thought.
"And I can't exactly go wandering through the house searching for someone, now can I? I can't. The police would see me moving around and know that I'm not really a hostage."
I was beginning to recognize my leverage. It was paltry, but it was something.
I said, "But neither can you risk the possibility of there being a witness already here in the house. Someone who might see you murder me in cold blood."
The phone rang again.
"I have to ignore it, don't I?"
I didn't respond to Ray's question but I counted the rings. After twelve rings, the sound stopped. I waited an inordinate time for ring number thirteen to begin.
Ray Welle narrowed his eyes and said, "I wonder if that someone else you're talking about picked it up." Keeping the gun aimed at my chest, Welle backed into the master bedroom and lifted a cordless phone from its charger. He was walking back toward me as he touched the button that would open the connection.
I half expected that Kimber's indelicate whisper would carry right back down the hall.
But all I heard was dial tone.
Ray lowered the phone back to its cradle. Looking down at the lights lit up on the base unit, he said, "Someone's on the other line." I said, "What?"
"You weren't lying before. The second line's lit up. Someone's on the second phone line."
Kimber, what on earth are you up to?
"Where is he?" Welle demanded.
"I don't know."
"Bull. Doesn't matter. I'll find him. There aren't that many places in the house with extensions on that line."
His eyes took on an evil cast.
"Get up. Come with me. I know just where to put you while I sort this out."
I opened my mouth to scream a warning to Kimber.
The closet. The guest-room closet.
As Ray marched me closer to the wooden door I felt repelled by it as though it and I were magnets with opposite charges. My steps shortened the way my dog Emily's do when I'm leading her somewhere she doesn't want to go. My weight rocked back on my heels.
Ray Welle said, "Open it." I said, "I can't." I was as helpless as a four-year-old being asked to volunteer an arm for a shot.
He said, "I know a little something about the psychology of motivation," and shoved the barrel of the gun between my shoulder blades.
His strategy worked. I reached down for the knob and opened the door.
Instantly, an overhead light lit the small space. The switch must have been built into the doorjamb.
Ray said, "Look at that shelving, that detail, the edge work. Even in the damn closets. That was Gloria's thing. Detail."
"It's very nice," I stammered.
"Get in"
"I…"
"Get… in" I stepped in. The gun in my back was, once again, a significant inducement. Ray slammed the door behind me. The light blinked off. I heard him fumble with a key. As he turned it in the lock, I felt as much as heard the bolt throw.
What, I thought, no chair?
***
Would the gunshots come immediately?
I didn't know. One argument I was making to myself was that Welle couldn't really afford to shoot me through the door. If he did, he could hardly argue that he was protecting himself or his property from an intruder. He'd have to come back and get me, then march me someplace else before he shot me.
The closet was large enough for a chair but not quite big enough to get a running start to bust the door down. I tried three or four times to no avail.
Each time I rammed against the door with my lowered shoulder I bounced harmlessly back off the pine. With the heel of my stockinged feet I managed to crack one of the door's raised panels, but I couldn't get it to bust out.
I needed to warn Kimber that Ray had gone looking for him. I started screaming, "He locked me in the closet! He's by himself in the house! He has a gun!"
I repeated the refrain
twice, then a third time, pausing between warnings to listen for the sound of gunshots in the distant parts of the house.
I heard nothing.
The shelves in the closet held little. Some folded linens. A down pillow. The built-in drawers were empty, awaiting Rays next guest's clothing. I climbed the lower shelves to run my hand along the upper ones. On top I found two empty shoeboxes and a tied bundled of satin hangers.
The phone rang again.
It rang and rang. This time no one answered.
Kimber?
With a foot on a shelf on each side of the closet, I felt along the ceiling for the light fixture to see if there was something up there that I could break off to use as a tool to get out of the closet or, if Ray Welle came back, as a weapon. But there was no light fixture; the closet bulb was enclosed in a recessed can. A few inches behind it I felt a ridge of wood, a strip of molding.
I traced the molding with my fingers-it framed an opening about two feet square-and moved the palm of my hand to the recessed center of the square and pushed. The panel gave just a little. My heart jumped. This little door meant attic access.
This little door meant freedom. I climbed up another shelf in the closet for leverage.
The door proved hard to budge. I was afraid the shelves were going to yield before I was able to push it open. Finally it gave, and I poked my head into the attic.
The place was huge. The true size of the house wasn't apparent to someone walking through it on the main floor. Inside the house, walls divided the rooms and the true volume of the space was disguised. But the attic had no dividing walls; one immense cavernous vault capped the sprawling home below. And although the house was technically a ranch, with all its living space on one floor, no such limitations ruled the attic space. The height of the attic varied tremendously, not only to accommodate the vagaries of the home's roofline, but also to accommodate the varying heights of the ceilings inside the house.
What I needed was a circulation vent-a louvered opening-that I could remove or kick out to permit myself egress from the attic. To find a vent I had to get from the center of the house to the perimeter. I began to raise myself to the lip of the opening to begin my search.
In rapid order, three sharp blasts from a gun pierced into the enclosed space in the closet. Immediately all strength left my arms and legs. I fell from my perch near the ceiling and tumbled to the floor in a heap.
My fall destroyed the bottom shelf and made a racket. I moaned.
While I waited for more shots I held my breath. But the next sounds I heard were footsteps retreating and an amplified voice from outside the house. One of the cops was calling something to someone inside the house on a loudspeaker. I couldn't understand the words. Finally, I exhaled.
The gunshots had destroyed enough of the door so that light was entering the closet. I could reach my hand through one of the openings and almost touch the doorknob, but not quite. I persisted, slicing my forearm on the splintered wood.
The key was still in the lock. My arm tendons screamed in protest as I twisted my hand to turn the key.
Through the open attic door I heard footsteps above me. Someone was running fast toward the far end of the house, above the master bedroom. More shots rang out.
The blasts seemed to follow the footfalls across the roof.
I felt blind. Activity was going on all around me and I could only guess what was actually happening elsewhere in the house.
I pushed the closet door open and prepared to make a run for safety. But before I took off I looked back into the closet. Had I not been climbing to the attic, the shots that had been fired through the door would have hit me. For sure.
I saw no one as I made my way first to the laundry room, then to the mudroom. I flung open the mudroom door and sprinted toward the police car with my hands high above my head. In what felt like slow motion, I watched two rifles rotate toward me. I dove to the ground screaming, "No! It's me! Help!"
Someone barked, "Hold fire!"
I looked up and back at the house. Russ Claven was crouching on the roof, staring down at the clerestory windows that lit the long central hall. He was tracking someone's movements below. I wondered whether he was tracking Kimber or following Ray Welle. Russ scampered catlike farther down the roof, hovering at the skylights above the master bedroom. He pointed straight down and nodded his head.
I climbed to my feet and ran like the wind to the protection provided by the parked cars, arriving just as Percy Smith was directing his officers to take aim with their rifles in the direction of the master bedroom suite. I hugged Flynn.
She asked if I was okay. I asked about Kimber.
I could tell from her expression that she was hoping that it was I who knew about Kimbers well-being.
"We don't know," she said.
"We lost contact with him."
A large picture window looked down the lane from one end of the master bedroom.
For a split second Ray Welle stood in that window and peeked through the drawn curtains. His eyes seemed to be searching, until finally they found mine and locked. He blinked twice and shook his head maybe an inch each way.
"There he is, in the bedroom window," I said, just as the curtain fell back into place.
"I saw him. He's gone now," said Percy.
On the roof Russ Claven had started gesturing frantically toward the far end of the house. The side closest to the deck. The side nearest the woods.
My brain was working faster than my mouth.
"No!" was all I could spit at first.
"No!"
Percy Smith stared at me.
"What the-?"
In less than two seconds Ray Welle was out on the deck, firing wildly toward the police cars. I ducked from the fusillade and said, "Percy! He wants you to kill him! Don't do it!"
"What?" One of the cops said he had the target.
I yelled, "He wants you to kill him! Don't do-" The cop fired his rifle. The other cop pulled his trigger so closely afterward I could barely feel a gap between the concussions of the blasts. I watched in horror as Raymond Welle tumbled over the edge of the deck and landed with a thick thud on the lawn.
I'd imagined the scene so many times, I felt as though I'd been there before.
Percy Smith said, "Hold fire. Get the ambulance up here." To Percy I said, "Its exactly what he wanted you to do."
Percy replied disdainfully.
"What? You think we shot him? He's not dead. We fired way above his head. Just scared him half to death." To his officers he said, "Keep him in your sights."
Russ had scampered down the roof. I watched as he dropped from one of the copper gutters to the deck just as Ray Welle was struggling to his knees, searching the ground for his handgun. Russ vaulted the deck and flattened the congressman before he had a chance to retrieve the weapon.
Flynn grabbed my hand and said, "Come on. Let's go find Kimber."
I ran after her back into the house.
Flynn and I found Kimber propped up against a wall in the foyer of the house.
He'd been shot once in the left shoulder. From the mess on the floor around him I assumed he had lost more than a little blood.
When I dropped to my knees by his side he said, "I told you I was dying. I just didn't expect it to be so traumatic." He was calm as he made his joke. The symptoms of panic had evaporated.
Flynn took one of his hands and said, "You're not dying, Kimber. You hear me?"
Without turning to face me she ordered, "Alan, get Russ in here."
Kimber's voice was tentative and weak.
"God help me. She's calling a pathologist. Maybe I'm already dead."
I was encouraged that he was continuing to find humor in his predicament, but Flynn was determined in her response to him.
"You are absolutely not dying, Kimber. You just keep breathing. We'll do the rest."
As Kimber opened his mouth to reply, his head fell suddenly to his chest. The whine of an ambulance siren filled the
narrow valley. Flynn mouthed, "Hurry!" I ran to fetch Russ and to guide the paramedics back to Kimber.
Once my quick errand was completed Percy Smith wouldn't let me back into the house. He left me leaning against the hood of one of the police cruisers as he explained why I couldn't go back inside. My adrenaline was spent. I had barely enough energy to stay vertical, let alone to argue with him. He moved me into the backseat. I half expected to be cuffed but I wasn't. At least not right away.
I dozed off in the back of Percy Smith's police department SUV on the drive into Steamboat Springs. Once inside the building I fell sound asleep while the local authorities were assembling the cast they had chosen to interview me for details about how Kimber Lister and I had spent the previous twelve hours or so.
When I was finally approached again it was by a Routt County sheriff's investigator who was flanked by both a Steamboat Springs police detective and an FBI agent. I shook myself from my stupor and asked about Kimbers condition.
None of the the cops answered me. I asked about Kimbers health. They declined to tell me that, either. Their demeanor convinced me that I might still be in some legal jeopardy for defending myself against Phil Barrett up in the blow down so I asked to be allowed to make a phone call. They exchanged wary glances before they assented. I used the opportunity to phone Lauren. She listened to my lengthy story with remarkable patience and restraint, inquired twice about my well-being, and ordered me not to talk to anyone until she was by my side. She promised she'd be in Steamboat within four hours.
The cops weren't happy with me when I told them that at the advice of an attorney I was choosing not to speak with them, at least temporarily. Percy Smith was recruited to try and goad me into cooperation. They could not have known that he was absolutely the wrong emissary. After I refused to change my mind, it was clear that the cops remained unhappy with me. I knew that the alternative was my wife being unhappy with me. My decision to stay silent was not a particularly anguished one; I wasn't planning on going home with any of the cops.
Before I nodded off again, I wondered about Flynn and Russ and Dell Franklin and whether they were secreted away close by. I doubted that if I asked the cops I would get a straight answer. I didn't ask. Instead I curled up and slept on the floor in the corner of the interview room until my wife arrived.
Cold Case Page 36
