Cozy’s reply was suspicious. “Has Lauren told you something you haven’t told me? How can you be so cavalier about her situation? Lauren doesn’t even seem sure she didn’t do it. The police love smoking guns. Your wife handed them one.”
Alan rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Are you my lawyer?”
“Yes.”
Alan slid his hands down his scruffy face and decided he was nearly twenty-four hours into a new beard. “Have we paid you anything yet?”
“No. We’ll take care of that during business hours.”
Alan removed his wallet and handed Cozy all the bills in it. Cozy counted eighty-six dollars.
“Is this a down payment, or do you really want to hire me for only twenty-three minutes?”
Alan allowed a smile before turning his back on Cozy and looking outside at the sky. He wished Emily was home. He liked the dog’s company when he was anxious.
He said, “I know Lauren didn’t shoot that man, Cozy, because…now that I know it was Kevin Quirk who was shot, there’s a good chance that I did it.”
Cozy swallowed hard and fell back on the sofa as though he’d been pushed. In front of him, the western sky was black. His face could not have conveyed more skepticism than it did at that moment. “Yes, go on,” he said.
Alan unzipped an inner pocket of his heavy coat and, with two fingers on the wooden stock, pulled a handgun from his pocket.
He said, “I think this may be the gun that shot Kevin Quirk.”
Cozy eyed the weapon, which he pegged as a .38. His voice crisper than it had been, he said, “I’m assuming you’re too tired to bullshit me.”
“That’s true. I am.” With a loud clunk, Alan placed the weapon on the big coffee table.
“Is it yours? The revolver?”
“No. I don’t own a gun. I don’t even know how to fire one.”
“But you somehow managed?” Cozy tried to say this without sarcasm, but he didn’t quite succeed.
“I guess.”
Cozy fought an urge to move into a rapid-fire interrogation while he pondered the ground they were on. He knew he had to tread carefully. “Do you have a tape recorder we might use? I’d like to record this conversation.”
“Why?”
“To quote your lovely wife, ‘I’m afraid this is going to be complicated.’ It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any coffee, Alan? Maybe something to eat?”
“I thought you were a tea man?”
“Some things require coffee. This is one.”
EIGHT
Friday, October 11. 6:30 P.M.
26 Degrees, Heavy Snow
As Alan led the way down Arapahoe through the blizzard to Eben Fine Park, the first conclusion he reached was that Kevin Quirk was an arrogant man.
The only cogent explanation Alan could muster for someone to have arranged this rendezvous at Eben Fine Park during a snowstorm was to set up an ambush. The only explanation for Kevin Quirk agreeing to meet there was that he felt superior to his adversaries. Alan thought that Quirk’s testosterone level probably needed adjusting.
The second conclusion Alan reached during the short drive was that inviting himself along for the ride was rank stupidity. If he survived this, Lauren was going to kill him.
Alan led Quirk west down Arapahoe, then across the narrow drive to the small parking area on the south side of the park. Theirs were the only two vehicles in the lot.
Quirk pulled up on the driver’s side of the Land Cruiser and opened his passenger window.
Alan lowered his window. He asked, “Are we early?”
“No. You stay here. I’m going to go look around.”
“You sure that’s a wise idea?”
Quirk grinned. “What? Me looking around? Or you staying here?”
“At least tell me where you’re going.”
“I’m going to walk around the perimeter and approach from the other side. I think the optical drive will be stashed someplace obvious, maybe on a picnic table or something. I’ll get it and come back here.”
Alan looked beyond Kevin at the fury of the storm. “It’s snowing so hard that I don’t think you’ll find anything out there, even if there’s a bouquet of helium balloons tied to it.”
“Just wait here.”
Alan closed his window and killed his engine. He turned the key so that he could use his windshield wipers occasionally. Quirk disappeared from Alan’s view five steps away from the car.
Having nothing better to do to manage his anxiety, Alan noted the time. He was in the midst of a silent argument with himself about how long he would wait before either going for some help or doing something inane like wandering into the park and looking for Quirk when a third car pulled into the lot. The driver chose to park as far as possible from the two vehicles already there.
Alan listened, heard a door thud shut. Just one. For a moment he thought he saw a flash of yellow and then the outline of a solitary person heading toward the park, but he couldn’t be sure. He checked the clock on the dashboard. Kevin Quirk had been gone four minutes.
Alan got out of his car, told himself he would be careful. He followed a pair of fresh footprints and guessed he was about halfway across the grass center of the park when he heard someone bark a crisp order, “Don’t go down there. It’s a trap!”
Alan froze. Was that warning intended for him? Had that been Kevin Quirk? Or was someone else warning Kevin? Or warning a third person about Kevin?
Alan listened, wanting to hear the voice again. For a moment everything was hushed and insular, the special white quiet that exists only in snowstorms.
Alan took three more steps. The next sound he heard came from an area twenty feet or so in front of him, to his left. It was a dull thud.
“Get out of here! Shit!”
Again Alan stopped. Was that the same voice? He didn’t think so. He crouched down close to the snowy ground. Who was warning whom?
In front of him, he could just discern the outline of the large boulders along the creek, but he didn’t see any forms he could identify as people.
Alan kept close to the ground, scooting on his hands and feet in the snow. Suddenly, close by, though not right next to him, he heard the sounds of a scuffle.
“No! He has a gun!”
Alan stopped. That was the first voice again, the one that had warned about a trap. Who has a gun? He considered calling out to Kevin Quirk but realized he would immediately become a potential target for whoever had the gun.
After another dull thud, the muffled sounds of people fighting while wearing parkas and gloves abruptly stopped. With the suddenness of an apparition, someone came running from the direction of the noise. Whoever it was never saw Alan crouched close to the ground.
The impact sent the fleeing person flying and left Alan on his back, stunned. A handgun rested heavily against his leg. He pulled himself to sitting, tugged off a glove, and lifted the weapon.
Tentatively, he called out, “Quirk?”
From behind him, whomever he had inadvertently tackled jumped on his shoulders.
The gun went off.
The person who had grabbed him immediately let go.
Quirk, his voice so close to Alan that they could’ve reached out and touched, said, “Alan, damn you, run. Get out of here.”
Alan turned to try to find the person who had tripped over him. He couldn’t.
“Kevin?” he whispered.
“I said get out of here. Now.”
Alan looked all around him, saw only white. Still clutching the handgun, he did what Quirk ordered.
He ran.
He expected to be stopped. He wasn’t. He jumped into his car and started driving.
He felt like a complete coward.
NINE
Saturday, October 12. 4:30 A.M.
Clear Skies, 18 Degrees
When Sam Purdy and Lucy Tanner arrived at the Police Department on 33rd, Lucy parked the kid with the shitty Mazda on
a bench in the lobby and told him not to move his ass. She stared him in the eyes until he flinched and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
None of the personnel in the Police Department even said “good morning” to Sam or Lucy, not with the don’t-mess-with-me looks on their faces.
They walked upstairs to the ballistics laboratory and entered without knocking.
Sam deposited the small evidence bags containing the cartridge casing and the slug on the laboratory bench of the department’s fire-arms examiner, who was sitting on a high stool staring at the wall, wondering why the hell he had been called in the middle of the night to run tests on a handgun. He didn’t see any reason that the tests couldn’t have waited till morning.
Sam had known the criminalist for eight years but didn’t know the man’s full name. His name tag said G. Everett. Everyone in the department called him Everett. Sam figured that the guy’s kids called him Everett.
Lauren’s Glock, already worked for prints, now tagged as ballistics evidence, sat on a plastic tray on the far corner of the worktable.
Sam lifted the tag on the gun and confirmed that it was the one Lauren had been carrying the night before. He pointed to his evidence bags and said, “Hey, Everett. My question is simple. Were this shell and this slug fired from that weapon? We’ll wait for your answer.”
Everett took a quick glance at Sam, another at Lucy, and decided to forgo whatever it was that he had been planning on doing during the next half hour.
“Have a seat, guys,” he said. Neither detective took the suggestion. Sam was afraid he would fall asleep if he sat down.
Everett lifted the first envelope from the counter, opened it, peered inside, and then emptied the contents, a single brass cartridge casing, onto a clean sheet of lab paper.
“Have these been dusted?”
“No, sorry, Everett. I should have told you that. I’m tired.”
Everett pulled on fresh latex gloves, carefully picked up the casing, and squinted at the head stamp. “It’s the right caliber.” Lifting a magnifying glass, he examined the specimen more closely. “And it’s the same manufacturer as the rest of the load that I recovered from the magazine of the weapon.” He gestured toward the Glock on the table.
With gloved fingers, Everett lifted the casing and placed it on one side of his comparison microscope. He placed a control casing from a test firing he had done an hour earlier on the other side of the microscope. For almost ten minutes he peered through the lenses, adjusting dials, fiddling, and rotating his specimens.
“Tentatively?”
“Yeah,” said Purdy, who was almost nodding off in the warm laboratory.
“It’s a match. I’ll get more specific when I haven’t been up all night and I don’t have you two breathing down my neck, but given the ejector and extractor markings, I’d say it’s real likely these casings were both fired by the same weapon. You want me to get more technical about why?”
Sam shook his head. “God forbid. What about the slug?”
Everett changed his gloves and repeated the same procedure, this time placing a test bullet he’d fired earlier alongside the slightly misshapen bullet that came from the Mazda.
“Bullets are both copper-jacketed but the nose is deformed on yours. What did this impact?”
“Safety glass for sure, I don’t know, maybe a little sheet metal.”
“Did it pass through anything first?”
Sam shrugged his shoulders. The act felt like hard labor.
Everett was silent for at least five minutes as he finessed the controls of the microscope. Then he said, “Again, tentatively, another match. I have to confirm the measurements of the lands and grooves but there’re good impressions to work with in the copper. I’ll bet a Dr Pepper on a match. Both bullets from the same weapon.”
Everett stole a glance away from his microscope and eyed the two detectives. Everett didn’t know whether or not he was telling them what they wanted to hear. Scientifically, it didn’t matter to him one way or another, but he liked his job best when performing his science made the detectives happy.
He asked, “Is this good news or bad?”
“For whom?”
Everett shrugged, he’d said enough. Sam Purdy, one of his favorite detectives on the force, was acting as though he were in serious need of a root canal.
“It’s good news for you, Everett, because we’re going to get out of your face. Thanks for your help.”
Everett said, “Are you leaving these with me?”
Lucy said, “Absolutely.”
“You have to sign for them. I need to get the casing dusted for prints.”
Lucy scrawled her signature on the tracking forms.
The detectives walked out of the laboratory
Everett exhaled as though he’d been swimming underwater for five minutes.
Sam brought Lucy a cup of coffee. She was sitting with her feet up on his desk in his cubicle. He slouched back on a nearby chair.
“Now what?” she asked.
“We have to find Scott. Tell him he’s made a little mistake.”
Lucy said, “I’m glad this disaster is his, not mine. Imagine—falsely collaring a DA? Not on my tour, shit. This is going to smell for a long time.”
“Scott’s a good cop.”
She raised a hand in self-defense. “No argument. I like Scott. I feel bad for him. Based on what you’ve told me so far, I would’ve brought her in, too. I just don’t envy the shoes he’s in.”
“Lauren’s not going to be vindictive.”
“Woman has an acid stream in her blood sometimes, Sam. I’ve seen her on fire. You have, too.”
Sam shook his head hard from side to side and rubbed his eyes. “Lauren’s mellowed, Luce. She doesn’t piss fire like she used to. She appreciates cops who do their jobs. Scott’s been doing his job all night long. When she sees that, they’ll kiss and make up. Listen, what do you say we arrange to get her released? I want to go home and get to bed. Let’s find Scott.”
Before Sam had a chance to pick up his phone, Scott found them. He was returning from the search of Lauren and Alan’s house. He seemed jacked up about something.
He leaned over the divider between his cubicle and Sam’s and said, “Searched her house, found nada. Nothing. Did get to watch Fuchs get chased around by a giant pink bunny rabbit on a John Deere, which was almost worth the price of admission. You know that annoying little doctor from the hospital? The one whose husband was diced at the Boulder Theater? She’s a matinee all by herself. But we didn’t find anything during the search.
“This shooting on the Mall, though, it’s fishy. Han’s alarm company receives a silent warning about an intruder a good twenty minutes before this Morgan guy says he fired at the burglar. I’m wondering if Morgan wasn’t the burglar himself, staged the whole thing, and fired the gun to cover his entry. And we have a solid lead that Ethan Han has been dating Emma Spire. Too many coincidences for me, I think I’m going to—”
“Scott, sit.”
“Like I said, I have some calls to make, Sam. I have to track down the chief trial deputy. And I want to find Han. I’m thinking maybe he changed the security code on his alarm to trap one of his employees. Maybe later.”
“Scott, sit.”
The tone of Sam’s directive caused Scott to focus. He walked around the gray partition and took the chair next to Lucy. The three people filled the narrow confines of Sam’s cubicle. Scott Malloy felt his tired muscles begin to ache.
“Hi Luce,” he said in a belated greeting. “You’ve been shanghaied on this, too?”
“Yeah. Understand it’s been a long night.”
“That’s the truth. What’s up, Sam? I’m kind of busy.” Just then, Scott Malloy recognized the expression on Sam Purdy’s face. “Oh God, you’re about to tell me something that’s going to make me wish I was dead. Are my kids okay?”
Sam sighed. He felt awful about adding to the young cop’s burdens. Scott Malloy already looked like compost.
“It wasn’t Lauren who shot your John Doe last night, Scott.”
“What?” Whatever color was left in Malloy’s face drained away.
“Lucy and I found the slug that came from her gun. It was a block and a half away. It hit a car. Given the trajectory, there’s no way it went through the John Doe first. We have to cut Lauren free.”
When Scott finally spoke again he had slumped way down on his chair. “Tell me, go ahead. Go slowly, my brain is mush,” he said.
Sam related the events around the asshole kid and the bullet-pocked Mazda and the vandalism complaint and the subsequent discovery of the shell casing by Emma Spire’s driveway.
“What about ballistics?”
“Everett’s already tentatively confirmed that both the shell and the slug were from Lauren’s weapon.”
Scott puffed out his cheeks and exhaled loudly. “Does Pons know yet?”
“Nobody knows but us.”
“I’m roadkill. The brass is going to fry me up and cover me with gravy. My first capital and this is what I do with it. I collar a deputy DA and then I’m forced to cut her loose twelve hours later.”
Sam looked at his watch. “More like ten, but who’s counting?”
Scott was reviewing the night, replaying his treatment of Lauren, looking for anything she could use against him. He was busily convincing himself that he had been reasonable, even accommodating to her. He remembered, though, not letting her see the doctor before he took her to the jail. And he remembered she was kidnapped from the ER when he left her unguarded. That wasn’t good.
“I’m roadkill. I’m a dead skunk.”
Lucy said, “Sam will talk to Lauren for you, Scott. She’ll understand what you had to do.”
Sam glared at Lucy for offering his help without talking to him first. He knew she was right, though; he would talk to Lauren on Scott’s behalf.
“Sam has a gut feeling about where we should look next.”
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