Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  I nodded. “She and I had discussed that forever,” I said. “The question of why he came to Boulder was a parlor game for us. Why did Elliot—a guy who was Harvard squared—choose the Boulder DA’s office?”

  “Harvard squared?”

  “Harvard Harvard. Undergrad and law? Harvard Square? Harvard squared?”

  She didn’t get it. She asked me if it was important. I kind of thought it was, but I said it wasn’t. I was still being agreeable.

  “Lauren was thorough. She found some of his old Harvard Law academic records. Had spoken with a few of his classmates. She even had a copy of the application materials he sent to the firm he summered with when he was a 2L.”

  I admitted that I didn’t know what the last part meant.

  Kirsten shook her head. “Elliot was a top student at Harvard Law. Top ten percent easy, maybe top five. He made Law Review. Didn’t try for the editorial board. He summered at a Vault top-five firm in New York City after his second year. He had a clear shot at a clerkship with a feeder judge in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but he took a lesser clerkship in the First Circuit instead. Did she ever say why he passed on clerking for a feeder judge? It’s not in her notes.”

  Lauren had taught me how to identify the rungs of the legal ladder that ambitious law students have to climb. Elliot Bellhaven had scampered up near the very top of the ladder. Feeder judges are the ones whose clerks have a chance to end up working at the Supreme Court.

  “She didn’t,” I said. I was thinking, I need to tell Sam all this. He’s been wondering.

  It was not until I thought about telling Sam about Elliot’s legal heritage that I recognized that whatever Sam wanted to know about Elliot, and why he wanted to know it, might have something to do with whatever Lauren had been investigating about Elliot, and why she wanted to know it. The Venn diagram of our mutual interests had some overlap. Were I sober I would have had a reasonable chance of making sense of that overlap. Having consumed all that rye, my chances were a mite lower.

  Kirsten’s rendition of Lauren’s research findings didn’t provide an answer to the underlying question my wife and I had puzzled about over the years—why Elliot chose Boulder. Lauren’s discoveries only eliminated the possibility that Elliot chose Boulder because he lacked options.

  I said, “Elliot was a big deal in law school. Yes?” Kirsten nodded. Without apparent segue I said, “Where’s the First Circuit?” I could tell that my question had been off by a few degrees; I’d asked her about the home of the First Circuit in a voice that approximated that of a game-show host announcing that we were starting the final round.

  Kirsten smiled. She said, “Kids are asleep, shhh. It’s in Boston.”

  My phone vibrated. Kirsten heard the buzz. “Boston,” I said. “Text.”

  “Sam?” she asked. I thought it an interesting guess. Was she accustomed to late-night texts from Sam?

  “Probably,” I said. But I was thinking LA Amy.

  “You’re not going to check?”

  “The kids are here. This is more important,” I said. “I don’t know how much effort Lauren put into her investigation, but what you told me should be in Elliot’s CV.”

  “Lauren was trying to confirm that his CV was accurate. Curriculum vitae should be nonfiction but sometimes they’re short stories. She didn’t trust his.”

  “That sounds like her,” I said. I recognized the risk I ran getting lost musing about Lauren and trust.

  “In the same envelope is evidence that feels unrelated to the history of Elliot’s background. Lauren was also looking into the possibility that Elliot had interfered with a criminal investigation soon after he arrived in town. Do you know anything about that?”

  It rang no bell. “I don’t. She never said anything. I would remember.” I recognized that my declarative sentences were getting brusque. I was distracted by my own staccato rhythm.

  “Do you know anything about Elliot and 9/11?”

  “In 2001? I do not. I thought he was living here by then.”

  “He was. Did she ever say anything about Elliot and a suspicious death in a house near Eldorado Springs?”

  “A long time ago, she’d talked about a death in Eldorado. A psychologist, whether I knew him. Elliot’s involvement? No.”

  Did I think it odd that I was having my second conversation of the evening about Eldorado Springs? I did. But my mind was drifting. I was thinking that the flesh on Kirsten’s neck was as smooth as corn silk. I was fighting ancillary impulses: To ask Kirsten if she had heard the stories about Ivy Baldwin and his high wire. Or if she enjoyed Kumamotos.

  54

  YOU TOLD ME EARLIER tonight, at my house, that you were hoping for some leverage with Elliot? These papers may be your leverage, Alan.”

  “The ones in the envelope for Elliot?”

  “Perhaps the envelope was for Elliot. If it was, it was a peace offering on Lauren’s part. A gift, really. I don’t think it was for Elliot. The contents are about him, but I think the envelope was intended for someone else. A colleague maybe, or you.

  “What’s most curious to me is Lauren’s long obsession with that suspicious death in Eldorado. She’s been looking at it, on and off, for years. She was sure that Elliot knew the man who died. Yet he never came forward with that information.”

  I said, “You mentioned 9/11. How is that part of this?”

  “Are you sober enough for this conversation, Alan?” I was betting that she, too, had recognized that my sentences were getting less complex.

  “I’m not as drunk as I might seem.”

  Kirsten laughed kindly. No drunk person could speak the line I had just spoken with any credibility. And no sober person would say it.

  She went to the kitchen. I checked the text on my phone. It was a photo of LA Amy’s bed in the Little Nell with the crisp sheets pulled back on both sides in neat triangles. An orange bra was draped across one of the pillows. I did not think the bra had been part of the turndown service. I checked the texting chain to be certain I had already said no to Amy.

  I had. I told myself that was good. I told myself that again.

  Kirsten returned with two glasses of water. I took a sip. She sat closer to me with both legs folded beneath her on the cushion. She took one of my hands in hers. “You ready for more?”

  I was distracted by her hands, and by the orange bra. “I’m ready.” I didn’t know if I was ready.

  “Lauren was assigned to the suspicious death investigation in Eldorado Springs on September fourteenth, 2001, three days after the 9/11 attacks. The victim was that young psychologist—a twenty-nine-year-old male. He had died three days before. His body—”

  “Marshall Doctor. He lived on Prado.”

  I couldn’t interpret her expression. She said, “I don’t know what Prado is.”

  “The road to Eldorado? Parallel to it, there are some great homes and lots that are adjacent to the open space? That street is Prado.”

  She shrugged. Apparently Kirsten wasn’t a real-estate slut. She asked me if I had known the psychologist who died.

  “He was new in town. We hadn’t met.”

  “His body had been scavenged by animals. Raccoons, maybe even a coyote, entered the property through a doggie door. It was ugly. GSR was equivocal, mostly due to the animals getting at the flesh. The ME listed cause of death as gunshot wound of the head. Although he thought that the wound was self-inflicted, he left manner as undetermined because of the absence of a weapon at the scene.”

  “Suicide by gunshot, but no gun? Problem.”

  “Exactly. The ME estimated the time of death as being between six P.M. on September tenth and noon on September eleventh. That’s a wide window, by the way. Lauren blamed that on 9/11.”

  “Where was the gun?”

  “Never determined. The most entertaining theory had to do with a well-armed raccoon, but Lauren wasn’t a proponent of the raccoon theory. It didn’t matter. The morning after she was assigned to the case the chi
ef trial deputy reassigned it to himself.”

  That got my attention. “The chief deputy put himself on a suspicious suicide involving a raccoon?” I knew well how deputies were assigned what work in the DA’s office. “No way. The chief deputy wouldn’t take that case. That week? Jesus. It was nuts for Lauren. Everyone was seeing potential terrorists and terrorist targets everywhere. The deputy DAs were running all over the county guiding investigations into this threat or that threat. Trying to get cops to remember due process and civil liberties. It was crazy.”

  “Lauren felt the same way. She didn’t understand why she was reassigned. But like everybody else, she had work up to her ears. I was still prosecuting in New Orleans that week. We saw bogeymen everywhere. I’m sure it was the same here.

  “The original detective on the case was Sam Purdy, but he was reassigned, too. Sam thought the evidence at the scene added up to suicide, but the missing gun was a major problem with his theory. When Lauren went back over the file later, she thought Sam missed some crucial facts about the deceased.”

  “Wait. Why did she go back to the file later? Why did Lauren care?”

  “Her notes indicate that Elliot approached her later that fall with questions about the investigation. That got her interested again.”

  “What did Sam miss?”

  She squeezed my hand. “The deceased was gay. And—”

  “That’s important? That he was gay?”

  “Lauren thought so. He wasn’t out of the closet. Had only one sexual partner.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t convinced. The increased suicide risk for gay adolescents tends to disappear as they enter adulthood, though closeted gays have a slightly elevated risk. I told myself to recheck that data.

  “The second thing Sam missed was that the deceased knew Elliot.”

  “Knew? Met at a party? Or had sex with?” I said.

  Kirsten laughed. “Those are my only two options? Lauren thought Elliot was the one sex partner. In 2007, while she was in Knoxville for a conference, she talked to the roommate of the man who died in Eldorado. He confirmed they all knew one another. He told Lauren about his roommate and Elliot hooking up.”

  “Is the guy in Knoxville gay, too?”

  “Lauren concluded there was a triangle. Romantically, not sexually.”

  “Lauren considered the roommate reliable? Not a suspect?”

  “He’d been visiting family on the Big Island in Hawaii, was traveling back to Boulder on 9/11. He had a morning flight to Oahu, got trapped in Honolulu for days when aviation was shut down. Good alibi. Good detail. Told her a story about his dog being stuck in a kennel for all that time because his roommate didn’t like the dog. She couldn’t see why he would lie to her about it.”

  “Was Elliot a suspect in the death?”

  “Not at all. Elliot was caught out of town by the eleventh, too. He had been in Boston since the previous Friday, was on his way back to Denver from Logan on an early flight. On a normal Tuesday he would have been landing at DIA shortly after eleven, been back in Boulder after noon.

  “But it wasn’t a normal day. Elliot’s plane was in the air when the towers were hit. The plane landed in Indianapolis. He drove back in a Ryder truck. Got here on the fourteenth. Lauren has airline records. Truck rental receipts.”

  Kirsten was hoping that I would see a big picture I wasn’t seeing. My mind was wandering as it pondered all the gaps in lives that occurred when all those planes landed in all those wrong places. All those interrupted lives. When that many plans are short-circuited all at once there had to have been stunning consequences all over the globe. Then a bell went off. I closed my eyes tightly the way Gracie did after I had prodded her into tasting something unfamiliar that she was certain would prove toxic.

  “I got it. Elliot was still in the closet then.”

  “Lauren’s notes say he was, but that’s not the relevant piece of the puzzle.”

  “Damn,” I said. I was sure that was it. I wanted that to be it.

  “The first thing Elliot did after he got back to Boulder on September fourteenth? Lauren thinks he drove to the house in Eldorado. The very first thing, even before he turned in the damn rental truck and went back to the airport to get his car. She went so far as to track down the time he returned the truck. It wasn’t until late that afternoon. Why would Elliot feel such urgency to get to Eldorado?”

  I was impressed by my wife’s diligence. “Did she think Elliot knew about the shooting?” I said.

  “Lauren’s theory was that Elliot and the man who died in Eldorado had talked while Elliot was in Boston. She thought that Elliot knew he was depressed, even suicidal. Angry at Elliot? Possibly. After the planes were diverted, Elliot wasn’t able to reach him. Got worried. That’s why he went over to check on him as soon as he got back to town.”

  “Okay. A guy Elliot liked was depressed? He wanted to check on him.” It appeared to me to be a circumstance without consequence. “I don’t see any crimes.”

  “Lauren was discovering pieces that didn’t make sense to her. It’s not a complete story. If she had reached a conclusion she would have dealt with this herself.”

  “The pieces that didn’t make sense?”

  “Mostly Elliot’s continued interest. One theory was that Elliot was the RP. The original report was an anonymous 911 call from a pay phone at the King Soopers at Broadway and Table Mesa just after two o’clock in the afternoon on the fourteenth. A male.”

  Either I was getting sober quickly, or I was deceiving myself about my sobriety more effectively. The timeline fit. The supermarket wasn’t far from Eldorado, and it was on the only route between Prado and downtown Boulder, where Elliot lived. I said, “King Soopers must have had security tape. What did it show? Who made the 911 call?”

  “When Lauren went back to examine the file later that first year, she couldn’t find any record that anyone ever asked King Soopers for the security footage.”

  “Sam’s a good cop, Kirsten. He would have asked.” But it was the week of 9/11.

  “Sam was ordered off the investigation almost immediately. He may not have had a chance. We have to remind ourselves what 9/11 was like. Nothing was normal.”

  “I admit I’m confused. I don’t understand why Elliot would call in the dead body anonymously. What was the risk to him? He had the alibi of the century.”

  He’d had an interrupted life.

  “Exactly,” she said. “That’s what Lauren couldn’t get her arms around. People in the office already suspected Elliot was gay. She didn’t think that would be an issue. Even if Elliot had been involved with the guy who died, so what? Elliot was unattached. No big deal. She was sure there was another piece to the puzzle.”

  “Did she think Elliot had anything to do with removing the weapon before he called 911?”

  “Crime scene techs did not think that a human had compromised the scene. Just animals.”

  “It is a puzzle,” I said.

  Kirsten leaned into me then as though she was too exhausted to remain vertical. I felt the weight of her head on my shoulder. I smelled her hair.

  I said, “Why was Elliot in Boston?”

  Kirsten murmured that she didn’t know.

  I began to smell mercaptan.

  I started wondering if Sam had really missed Elliot’s involvement in the death in Eldorado. Or if, maybe, he had been complicit in ignoring it.

  Or even covering it up.

  Does Elliot owe Sam a favor? A big favor?

  Jesus.

  It could turn out that my clean hands were of no consequence after all.

  55

  GRACE WOKE ME THE next morning by poking me on my cheek. I opened my eyes to discover that I was on my side on the edge of the sofa facing the family room windows. From a mental-status perspective I was not well oriented. My head hurt. A lot. I had whiskey and oyster breath that had aged overnight in a warm, moist cavern.

  There was not a remotely pleasant thing about that.

  I felt
the pressure of a body behind me. Not in a spoons position, but a butt against my butt. Heels of feet against soles of feet.

  Uh-oh. I felt instant trepidation that I couldn’t identify everyone on the sofa.

  Grace had her hands on her hips and her shoulders were rolled forward. It was a posture that made her look about thirty. In my experience with my daughter that was never a good sign.

  I glanced down. I had clothing on. That was the first good news of the day.

  In my woken-up-by-a-poke-in-the-cheek fog, with my head pulsating from the tympanic consequences of my night before, I wasn’t sure whom I was going to see behind me. Seared on my corneas was an image of an orange lace bra on a crisp white pillowcase. Candidates? LA Amy. Kirsten …

  I was worried I might be forgetting someone. I glanced over my shoulder.

  The person behind me was Kirsten. She was clothed. And the clothing she was wearing was her own. That was all good news.

  Kirsten stirred. One second, two. And then, a mumbled, “Oh shit. Oh … shit.”

  I didn’t know if she was cursing at the circumstances. Or perhaps she was cursing because this could be a most compromising situation regardless of the circumstances because she was, after all, seeing someone.

  Grace wasn’t concerned with such grownup questions. She saw profit to be made. “That’s two bucks for the cuss bucket.” She stomped her foot once before shuffling away.

  I mumbled that I would pay Kirsten’s fines. It was the least I could do.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER KIRSTEN had been gone for eighteen minutes. I had already reread the texting histories on both my phones to be certain I had been lucid with LA Amy. The photo of the orange bra troubled me. I had no context for that.

  I was worried I had missed something.

  I showered. I went to the kitchen. The day was starting for my family.

  In one hand Grace held a waffle she’d toasted and slathered with peanut butter. In the other hand she held a banana, half peeled, a quarter consumed. She continued to appear to be some multiple of her actual age.

  I knew I continued to be at a significant disadvantage.