“What category? Blue was home. Red was work. Yellow was … ?”
“Yellow was … work, but not quite work. Okay? If you see it, please let me know. I don’t think she would want it missing.”
Andrew’s visit that day was followed by a group visit from most of the infield of Lauren’s old softball team. The hospital chaplain interrupted that gathering. He was certain he could be of some help to Lauren. I wasn’t. So certain.
On another day, with less on my mind, Andrew’s missing Field Notes puzzle might have stuck in my brain as important. That day it didn’t.
Not much was sticking in my head those days.
Herding visitors felt really, really important.
7
SAM HAD BEEN WITH ME at Lauren’s bedside the first night, the one that the doctors initially expected her to die. The doctors had been wrong. It happens.
He came by to visit again a few days later. During Sam’s first visit at the hospital he was my friend, in all good ways. During the second visit he was my partner in crime. As we hugged—so not Sam’s thing—he whispered, “Let’s walk and talk. Come on. Follow me. Shhh.”
We walked corridors, then up two flights of stairs. When I would begin to speak, Sam would shake his head. We’d walk a little more. I would try again. He would indicate not yet.
Like my wife, the old hospital was waiting to die. Like my wife, the old hospital felt, even smelled, like it was waiting to die. A new facility was being constructed across town.
I was aware that, unlike my wife, Community Hospital would have a second life.
Sam and I finally found our way into an empty room at the end of a long corridor. The rooms in that wing were mostly occupied by elderly people with recently replaced hips or knees. He closed the door. We walked into the adjoining bathroom. He closed that door. He turned on the water in the sink, then opened the faucet inside a shower that was spacious enough to wash a motorcycle, and then he flushed the toilet.
The toilet flushed as though it were tasked to evacuate a large swamp in a single flush.
The cacophony of mini-Niagaras around us created a curtain of white noise. Sam said, “The DA knows something. A little of it? Almost all of it? I don’t know. Is he guessing? I don’t know. I’m hearing things second-or thirdhand, but I don’t have any eyes on this. I’m pretty sure the DA has a subpoena out, maybe even a warrant, and—”
“Which DA? Elliot? Or Weld County?”
“Our DA. Boulder. Elliot.”
Figured. Shit. “For Frederick?”
“Yeah. I guess. Sure. What else?”
“You said ‘warrant’? Are we going to be arrested?”
“A warrant would be for surveillance, though a subpoena might suffice, depending. One of us, both of us, I don’t know. My guy didn’t know. But he thinks it’s our phones. That would be the warrant, but it may just be electronic communications, which we—I mean cops—can do with a subpoena, or even less. We have to assume that Frederick isn’t dead.”
He flushed the toilet again. The suction created back-pressure in my sinuses.
The Frederick Sam was alluding to wasn’t a guy. It was a town. The town where Sam had staged a murder so that it looked like a suicide over three years before. The victim, a woman Sam had dated, was planning—imminently—to kill our kids. Sam’s. Mine.
I had been a willing conspirator after the fact. As the ensuing months became years, Sam and I grew complacent, thinking we’d gotten away with it. Our complacency was long gone. The possibility of fresh surveillance underscored our vulnerability.
He went on. “We—you—have to assume they’re listening to us when and where they can. Phone, email, text? Possibly. With your mobile? If you don’t want them to be able to track you with GPS, you have to turn that function off on your phone. If you don’t want to be tracked by triangulation from cell towers, you have to turn your phone off completely. Power it down, or pull the SIM card. At least put it on airplane mode. If you’re feeling completely paranoid, yank the battery.”
I was suddenly feeling pretty close to completely paranoid. I said, “Really? They do that? They track people that way?”
“‘They’ is me,” Sam said. “And, yes. We do. It’s not complicated. What you call your smartphone, we call our target’s ‘tracker.’ If your particular provider is cooperative when we request information, we can know things about you that you don’t know about yourself. Where you’ve been, who you’ve talked to, who you text. How many times you stop at Liquor Mart, or go to McDonald’s. GPS tells a lot of stories.”
“My provider? Is it one of the cooperative ones?” Sam didn’t reply. “Are they—you—allowed to do that? Track people that way on their … what, trackers?”
Sam puffed out his cheeks. Then he said, “There are safeguards. But we have workarounds, ways around the safeguards. Let’s say there are occasional abuses. Safest thing for you? Get a burner. Use it for a while. Toss it. Get another.”
“I don’t know what a burner is. And what’s ‘a while’?”
“A burner is to a cell phone what a throwdown is to a piece. Provides anonymity.”
What? A small part of my cortex went up in flames. I thought I could smell the neural smoke. “Not a good moment for analogies, Sam.”
“A burner is a cheap prepaid phone. Cheap makes it disposable. Lie about your name when you buy it, use cash, and it’s anonymous. That defeats surveillance. It’s the opposite of a tracker. We don’t know it’s yours, so we can’t follow it. Or you.”
“Where would I get one?”
Sam scratched behind his ear. He flushed the toilet again. “I hear they’re available at convenience stores. Gas stations. Walmart.”
“Walmart? You hear? Do you have one?”
“Never mind that,” he said. “Let’s say you don’t get a burner. If we can’t meet face-to-face and you need to talk to me, call my cell three times in a row from a public phone. Hang up after one ring. I’ll call you back at that location as soon as I can get to a pay phone. Same for me if I need to reach you.”
“What about at home? Can we talk there?”
Sam’s new girlfriend, Ophelia, lived across the dirt lane from the kids and me in Spanish Hills. On nights when Sam wasn’t being single dad to his son, Simon, at his little bungalow a few blocks from the hospital where we were speaking, he could reliably be found in Ophelia’s doublewide, yards across the lane from my family.
“The scenic overlook on 36 gives them line of sight to the lane. Line of sight allows photography and maybe even directional mics. I don’t think they’ll do that, but … hell, you never know. If Elliot has a bug in his ass about this …”
“Sam, I wasn’t there—in Frederick—when that woman died. I was in New Mexico with Jonas. I can’t be a suspect in Elliot’s eyes. I have an …” My mind had latched on to the word burner and wouldn’t let in the new word I needed.
“The word you’re looking for is alibi and, no, you don’t have one.”
“I was in New Mexico with a witness. That’s the definition of an alibi.”
“The kid in Frederick? Elias Tres? Remember, he’s raised doubts about the day Currie died. There are people in Weld County who think the kid is right, that the coroner was wrong. That means that there are people who think that the date of her death is off by one day. Add that day into the equation and you were back from New Mexico with Jonas. Your alibi could evaporate.”
“Are you telling me that Elliot thinks I killed her?”
“I don’t know. What I’m telling you is that I don’t think you can count on having an alibi. Time of death—her day of death—is in flux.”
I felt bewildered. Flux didn’t sound like a real word. I repeated it a few times in my head but kept thinking it had something to do with plumbing, which made no sense. Sam asked me if I was okay. I didn’t think it wise to reveal the whole flux problem I was experiencing.
I said, “My car just happened to be in Frederick that night?” That was a cheap shot. Sam nodded his ackn
owledgment. “It was there because you drove it there, Sam.” He nodded again. I had tears in my eyes. “I don’t need this right now.”
“The grief?” he asked. “How is it going?”
I had no answer for him. I still felt more shock than sorrow.
That would change.
“Me?” Sam said. “I’m finding it’s important to pay attention to what I can see because of the void. The things that are apparent because of what’s gone.”
Those words made no sense to me either. They became part of the flux conundrum I was experiencing. I told him I was glad he was finding that helpful.
Sam said, “Remember clean hands? I got your back, Alan. Don’t forget that. I know you got mine. You start to fall? I catch you. I start to fall? You catch me. Right?”
I flushed the toilet. Swoooosh. I said, “Sure. That’s the deal. I need to get back to Lauren.” He didn’t move out of my way. I changed the subject. “Yesterday? Lauren got a get-well card from Michael McClelland. How many times do we have to stop him? What happens the one time we fail?”
McClelland was the man who had sent the woman in Frederick to kill our kids. He was in state prison. He created his mayhem by proxy.
Sam’s shoulders dropped. He was so concerned with dodging a current bullet, he hadn’t thought about the likely future bullets that would come our way from McClelland.
I needed Sam right then. More than ever. But I was growing concerned that the moment our interests failed to coincide about what happened that night in Frederick, I would lose him. As a friend. As an ally.
The consequences of losing him could be catastrophic. I had lost too much already.
I squeezed past him. On my way back to Lauren’s bedside I tried again to understand what Sam meant about seeing things because of the void. I got nowhere.
I feared Sam was getting ready to wash his clean hands. Of me.
I GRADUALLY REACHED AN ACCEPTANCE that Lauren’s death might not be imminent. I knew she would die. I knew she would prefer to die at home.
I moved her to Spanish Hills so she could feel some solace and some familiarity before she died. I made room in the master bedroom for a hospital bed. I used our savings to pay for twenty-four-hour care.
Kind, generous people from hospice became my angels by keeping her in comfort while she got around to dying at home.
She would die, I knew by then, at her own pace.
8
SAM AND LUCY
LUCY TOOK THE EMPTY stool next to Sam at the bar. They each said, “Hey.”
She asked, “You see Alan?”
Sam said, “He’s at the hospital almost all the time. I just left him. Lauren is waiting to die. Alan is waiting for something. It’s all so sad I don’t know what to say.”
She pointed at Sam’s pint glass. “Buy you another?” Sam was finishing his first.
“Love one.”
Meeting for a beer had been Lucy’s idea. She had chosen the bar. Sam knew immediately that Shine wasn’t his kind of saloon the way kale isn’t his kind of food. Sam figured she had dragged him to Shine to broaden his experience, which she considered her duty, or merely to irritate him, which she considered her prerogative. She nodded at the bartender, raising two fingers.
“They make their own beer, Sam. It’s pretty good.”
“In Boulder everyone but us has a Ph.D., and just about everyone makes their own beer. I may be the only guy in town who exclusively drinks other people’s beer.”
“Feeling cranky? Maybe I can help. I went back and read the ME’s Prado report. Vic had a freshly broken index finger on his left hand. A twisting injury. Spiral fracture.”
“Well,” Sam said. “That is interesting. He was a southpaw. Huh.”
“Excuse me? Spiral? Twisting? I’m thinking the damn bungee,” Lucy said. “Like his finger got caught in the trigger guard. You know, after.”
“That’s interesting, too.”
“And we got ballistics back on the handgun,” she said.
Sam said, “Took them long enough.”
“Prado isn’t exactly high priority. People are on vacation. The gun was a mess. Required rehab before they could examine it.”
“I was talking to Ophelia about Prado,” Sam said. “She thinks the roommates were gay. I didn’t give that a thought. It’s been only a decade, but it’s a different world.”
“World didn’t change,” Lucy said. “Maybe you did. Would it alter your view of the case?”
“Lovers’ quarrel? Wasn’t on my radar then. Tell me about the ballistics. Tell me something that makes me happy about Prado.” He drank a third of his beer.
“First, I got you a present. On eBay.” She placed a padded envelope on the bar.
Sam slid an old postcard in a protective sleeve from the envelope.
Lucy said, “That right there is the one and only Ivy Baldwin, on his high wire, back in the day. 1906. 1908. I’m not sure which. Early on.”
“No shit? Wow. Look at him. Look … at … him. How high up is he?”
“Almost six hundred feet. And the wire is almost the same distance across. No fucking harness. He falls, he’s toast. No, maybe more like butter. Or jam.”
“No harness? If he did that today he’d get a two-hour special on ESPN. Prime time. He’d be a sensation. Jimmy Kimmel would love him. He’d make Ivy a regular.”
“You are right, Sam Purdy.”
“This is really sweet of you, Lucy. Did this postcard cost you a fortune?”
“Your mother taught you better than to ask questions like that.”
“Thank you. I’m touched.”
“My pleasure.” She waited until he returned the photo to the envelope before she went on. She said, “Jumble Guy? Did you hear? He actually scratched his way up to the LT’s office. Turns out the guy is almost connected.”
Sam snapped his head in her direction. “Jumble Guy talked to our lieutenant?”
Lucy said, “Jumble Guy is demanding—demanding—that we clear his name.”
Sam found that so funny he snorted beer out of his nose. They lost a minute arguing about whether the white shit floating on top of Sam’s pint was beer foam or snot.
Lucy pulled the ballistics report from her shoulder bag. “Yada, yada. Science, science. A lot of numbers. Boilerplate. Dot, dot, dot. Drumroll.” She mimed a drumroll.
Sam thought her mimicry was more Revolutionary War marching band than anything rock ’n’ roll. He said, “Not in the mood, Luce.”
“You never are. I didn’t pick you to be my partner because you’re fun.”
“For the record, Lucy, I picked you.”
“The first time. After your suspension? I did the picking. But whatever.” She shook the pages. “The ballistics are of no help. It’s a sign from the universe.”
“What kind of no help?”
“The not-conclusive kind.”
“Really? Fu—” Sam said.
Lucy said, “Fu—?”
“This whole case is not conclusive. But what exactly? Slug fired from the revolver we recovered on Prado doesn’t match the slug from the guy’s skull?”
Lucy said, “On further review they decided the original slug is too damaged for a comparison.”
“No equivocation?”
“None.” She placed the pages in front of him with dramatic deference, as though Sam were Richard Nixon and she Rose Mary Woods in a hoop skirt. “Carson wrote the report.” She stabbed at the final paragraph. “You know Carson. The man hates inconclusive. Even when things are inconclusive. If he says it’s inconclusive it’s really, really inconclusive.”
Sam gave no indication he’d noted any irony in Lucy’s Rose Mary Woods–ish obsequiousness. He dug his reading glasses from his shirt pocket. He found the end of his nose on the first try. Then he turned back to the first page, skimmed it, and went back to the second. To himself, as much as to Lucy, he said, “We don’t even know if our gun is the weapon that killed our guy.”
“It’s a reasonable
assumption. Especially given the bungee and the vic’s broken index finger. The twisting injury? That’s great evidence. Can I summarize what I think we know?” Sam didn’t reply. Lucy interpreted his silence as license. “We know a long bungee was hooked over the top of the chimney cap. The bungee was attached to a chain that was bolted to the trigger guard of the handgun Jumble Guy found. The gun probably hung a few inches above or below the flue. Someplace the vic could reach it.”
“What don’t we know?” Sam said. He was still examining the beer foam for snot.
“We don’t know whose gun it was, why it was hanging in the chimney, or who put it there. And we don’t know how the vic got the gun.”
Sam said, “The vic, Luce? He had a name. Marshall John Doctor. He was a twenty-nine-year-old psychologist who treated children, abused kids. Worked at the Kempe Center. He had a family in Oregon. I bet they loved him.”
Lucy leaned back in reaction to Sam’s soliloquy. “Okay. Noted.” She hesitated before she added, “So the guy was ‘Doctor Doctor’? I didn’t put that together. Wonder if his patients called him that. You ever read Catch-22? Probably not your kind of book.”
“I read it. People have stories. Vics have stories. The people they leave behind have stories. He was Marshall John Doctor, Ph.D. We get disrespectful sometimes. Both of us. Usually it’s good, cuts the tension. I don’t mind. But not this time.”
Lucy waited for a punch line. One didn’t arrive. “Is this an Ophelia influence?”
“This is me talking,” Sam said. “Me.”
“Bullshit. That woman has you whipped.” Sam checked to see if she was smiling. She was. She said, “You are whipped, Sammy. Can we be done with this case? Or are you going to ask for budget to look for DNA from that revolver? A little blood or tissue around the muzzle?”
Sam couldn’t tell if she was joking. “Wait. Latents or trace?”
“Off the handgun? No trace. Only latents were Jumble Guy’s. Partials. Index finger and thumb. They couldn’t lift anything old. Too much time and exposure.”
“He touched it? I knew he touched it.” Sam sighed. “Are we done? Yeah. No. After all this time? I don’t know. Probably not. I should let this go, right?”
Compound Fractures Page 5
