Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  Grace chose that moment to ask if she could have some coffee. The timing of her request—oft made, always rejected—I had to admit, was excellent.

  I told her “No” in the most indulgent tone I could manufacture. She scowled.

  I was determined to keep my head down and to avoid confrontation.

  Jonas ambled into the kitchen appearing as oblivious as any other morning.

  He sat down, poured milk onto his cereal, and surrounded the bowl with both arms as though he were protecting it against an assault from cavalry on his flanks. He began shoveling food as he read a graphic novel.

  If I were an involved parent I would have asked him what the novel was. If I were an involved parent, I might even have already read it myself.

  Lately I had not been an involved parent. I had faint memories of the night before and Sam’s drunken promises about being a better father to his kid.

  In between the third and fourth mouthfuls—and well before any measurable chewing had occurred—Jonas looked up, right at me.

  I froze.

  He said, “So what was last night about?”

  I was not actually in a position that I could admonish him about speaking with his mouth full.

  56

  I GOT THE KIDS TO SCHOOL.

  As I dressed for my Denver meeting I tried to calculate a way I could scrape together a sum of money that might constitute a respectable retainer. Respectable being the minimum amount that would transform my new attorney’s cursory interest in my legal problems into a level of concern that approximated my interest in my legal problems. I didn’t see a way that I would swell the dollars into an enticing five-figure number without either selling some major assets on eBay or convincing one of Lauren’s life insurance carriers to write an insurance benefit check sooner than it intended.

  No probate judge would permit me to start selling property I owned jointly with Lauren. The life insurance companies? They didn’t care what I wanted. The moment they heard the growing whispers that the DA considered me a potential suspect in my wife’s death was the moment their payout departments would completely forget how to write checks.

  I PLANNED TO PICK up 36 in Superior to get to Denver, thirty or forty minutes away. I was in sight of the on ramp when my phone rang. A quick glance told me it was my new lawyer. I pulled to the shoulder before I took the call.

  It was actually my new lawyer’s assistant. The lawyer’s sixteen-year-old daughter had just taken a lacrosse ball to her eye socket in her algebra class. I told the assistant I could, unfortunately, see that happening. She laughed and said she could, too. My lawyer was on his way to the emergency department at the Children’s Hospital. The assistant was eager for me to convince her that my legal jeopardy would remain subacute for the next few hours until she could get back to me about rescheduling.

  I said it would, though I had no idea if it would.

  I took stock of my circumstances.

  I was dressed well. I was heading, roughly, out of town. My calendar was free. I saw a chance to begin to move the needle on the meter that was measuring whether or not I could trust Sam Purdy.

  I powered off my phone. The tracker. I booted up my burner. I imagined that on some screen, somewhere, I disappeared from the digital view of someone’s prying eyes. The moment felt empowering. I didn’t even bother to consider what it said about my paranoia.

  That RV had departed the campground.

  I phoned Izza Kane from my burner.

  “We should talk some more,” I said after I identified myself.

  “About what?” she said with defiance—or maybe defensiveness—in her voice.

  “Espíritu,” I said. The connection went silent. I thought the call had dropped. My cheap burner probably wasn’t cutting-edge cellular technology. “Izza?”

  “I’m here. I don’t know what that means. Espíritu.”

  “I think you do, but if you need some reminding, I will do that for you.” I could hear her short breaths. “You pick the place.”

  “It has to be now?”

  “Only if you wish to be the first one to hear what I have to say about espíritu.”

  “I’m in Frederick.” I was relieved that she wasn’t in Greeley.

  “Frederick is fine. Thirty minutes? The cottage?”

  “I have new tenants in the cottage. Two women. They are great. My new favorites. Please don’t get them killed.” I coughed to disguise the choking sound I made. “Come to the house. I live there now.”

  57

  SAM AND LUCY

  SAM PURDY DIDN’T LOOK up from his desk. He knew the cadence of Lucy’s approaching footsteps like he knew the scent of his mother’s bath soap.

  Lucy said, “You look like shit.”

  The clock said seven thirty. “Alan got me drunk last night. Whiskey. I’m in pain. It’s too early. Way too early.”

  Lucy said. “Early? I’ve been up since three thinking about the bungee. Are you too hungover to talk about it? I keep going back to why Doctor Doctor wanted the gun to disappear. What was he trying to accomplish? I can’t make sense of it. After all this time, I still don’t get it.”

  Sam said, “I know. But I don’t know. He may have been screwing with us, the cops. Or he may have been hoping to leave doubt that it was suicide so we would point fingers at somebody for killing him. If his intent was to mess with us, it worked. Look at you and me, a decade later, still doing somersaults about the damn disappearing gun. I don’t know. The bungee makes me crazy.”

  Lucy sat. “I finally got that death certificate from Iowa. The woman who owned the gun in the chimney? I’ve been dueling with a brand-new county clerk who is deplorably ignorant about how the world works. I was thinking about taking a day off to drive to Iowa and threaten to shoot her if she didn’t give it to me.”

  Sam smiled at the image. He said, “I thought we already had that.”

  “No, we had it verbally. This has been dragging. It’s the last document.”

  Lucy was trying to pull reading glasses out of the tangle of hair she had pinned on top of her head. It became a process. Sam began losing interest. “Anything?”

  He waited while Lucy situated the frames near the end of her nose. She missed with the first attempt, as though she didn’t know where the end of her nose was. Sam passed on the obvious opportunity for ridicule because he couldn’t recall even knowing that his partner wore reading glasses. He hoped the development was recent, that he hadn’t missed it for, like, months.

  Lucy said, “Cancer, like we thought. And 1993, like we thought. You want to see it?” She knew he did. He always did. She slid the paper across his desk.

  He glanced at the name on the death certificate. “Beulah Baxter,” he said aloud. “She of the shoplifted fancy panties, if my memory serves me well.”

  Sam spotted the anomaly in the second line. His eyes went wide.

  Lucy had seen the same expression on Sam’s face often enough to know something important was coming. “What? Does Beulah Baxter suddenly ring a bell for you?”

  “Is the gun registration in that file?”

  Lucy dug the form from the folder. She examined it before she handed it to Sam. “What?” she asked. “You’ve already seen this.”

  “Baxter’s her married name. That’s what’s on the gun registration. That was our problem.”

  “Why was it our problem?”

  “Look at the maiden name on the death certificate.” Sam handed it to Lucy.

  She read. She closed her eyes. She opened them and read it again. “No. Well. But … so what? Is he even from Iowa?”

  “He doesn’t have to be from Iowa. He just had to have a relative named Beulah who lived in Iowa. He was living in Boulder on 9/11. You already told me that. And you said his name showed up in the case file. I’m remembering all that right?”

  “Yes. He was here. He was a new baby deputy.” The composition of the DA’s office was a slice of civic history she knew well. “And his name is in the case file�
��he was in the deceased’s address book. The old made-out-of-paper kind of address book. This death certificate means his family name is in the case file twice. Twice, Sam.”

  Sam was allowing his doubts to sprout. “May not mean anything. There are thousands of people out there with that last name.”

  Lucy and Sam knew their assigned roles when the band started playing devil’s-advocate songs. One of Lucy’s jobs was to question Sam’s nascent doubts. She did. She challenged him, “It’s not the most common of names. Don’t kid yourself.”

  Sam sat back on his chair. “Twice in one file? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said. “His relative’s gun in that chimney? Not a coincidence. His name in the vic’s—in Doctor’s address book? Not a coincidence. Could Elliot have known the gun was in the chimney all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “But it’s feeling more possible than it did when I woke up wishing I was dead this morning.”

  “I don’t like this. I’m going back to the file, see if I missed anything.”

  Before she made it to the door, Sam said, “Luce? Go neutral. Don’t try to prove anything. Please. Fresh eyes.”

  “You said ‘please,’ Sammy.” If Sam had looked up, he would have seen a big smile on her face.

  He didn’t look up. He said, “One more thing. Is there a way to determine who has looked at the Prado file since September 2001 but without leaving a trail that we checked? I don’t want anyone who has already looked at the file to know we know they looked at it.”

  “I will see what I can do,” she said.

  “No trail, Luce.”

  “My trademark.”

  “Since when?”

  “Fuck you, Sam.”

  “You too, Luce. You too. Nice glasses, by the way.”

  “Four months, Sammy. Four months ago.”

  Lucy left.

  Sam mumbled, “Damn.”

  58

  ALAN

  IZZA AND I WERE sitting on aging Adirondack chairs on an exposed ten-by-ten concrete slab at the rear of the ranch house, the side that faced the sunrise and the tilled fields. A narrow packed-dirt access road provided a distinct north and south boundary between the backyard and acres of shimmering alfalfa.

  I thought it was alfalfa. I really didn’t know.

  Izza was drinking Diet Coke. She hadn’t offered me a beverage. She was not an impolite woman; the slight had been intentional.

  “You’re not on your bicycle. And you’re way overdressed for Frederick,” she said. “You hadn’t planned to come here. Or you didn’t think I’d agree to see you. Or you’re doing something after. Or something.”

  My shirt was pressed, though not by me. I’d left my tie in the car. My trousers had a crease. My shoes were shined. “One of those,” I said. “Maybe two of those are true.” I shrugged. “I hear there’s a storm coming. Riding out here may not have been wise.”

  “They say we could get eight inches. We need it,” she said. “I’m waiting. What’s on your mind, Doctor Alan Gregory?”

  Izza was running low on hospitality. I was making up for it by running low on charm. I said, “Four people knew about ‘espíritu.’ One of them is dead. One of them is a child. We are the other two.”

  “Espíritu is?”

  Izza didn’t dissemble comfortably. I liked that about her. I think that was why I answered her question as though she was sincere. “Espíritu was Tres’s name for the ghostlike figure that he saw near your cottage on that dirt service road right there”—I extended my arm, pointing right at the road—“the night your tenant died. ‘Espíritu’ is now my shorthand for people with murderous intentions who wear Tyvek jumpsuits. ‘Espíritu’ is a fine word for that. To me the image has a Day of the Dead feel that is apropos.”

  Izza’s index finger traced the circle around the rim of her soda can again and again as though she were intent on eroding the edge by the conclusion of our meeting. She said, “The dead person on your list? That’s your wife?”

  “You know it is. She was shot right after you, or Tres, told her about espíritu.” I didn’t feel like dancing around, so I got to the point. “You know about Tyvek, Izza?”

  She continued to trace the circumference of the can. It squeaked. She didn’t.

  “Did you see it on that scarecrow? On the farm on the other side of I-25? I’m thinking you must have.” She didn’t reply. I said, “I have a fine alibi for the night Big Elias died. How about you?” I didn’t mention that my alibi involved an escort and in incall. Those details might diminish the impact of argument I was presenting.

  When Izza spoke again her voice was ice. “There was nothing big about him but his size. He was Elias César Contopo. Primero but not último.”

  First but not last. I waited to see where she would go. Her tone growing more plaintive, she said, “I have applied to adopt him. Tres. My nephew. He is my family.”

  I shifted my eyes from her face to the fields. As a breeze moved the tops of the grasses in unison, all my questions about Big Elias’s death evaporated.

  All the intensity I had carried to Frederick about espíritu began to deflate.

  Izza was telling me that Big Elias’s murder wasn’t about vengeance.

  It hadn’t been about the past at all.

  It had been about a family that was threatened by evil. It was about Izza’s future.

  More important, it had been about Izza guaranteeing Tres’s future.

  She had been protecting her own—her family included her half brother’s son—from a menace that would never go away.

  I knew that territory. The protecting-family mantle. I had been wearing that rationalization as a shawl for years. It all felt so familiar to me.

  Sam had been in psychotherapy in Boulder the night that Elias Contopo died.

  Izza was likely the one who had been on Tatonka Trail. Wearing Tyvek.

  She knew horses well enough to make it happen.

  She knew Big Elias’s habits well enough to make it happen.

  She could see in my eyes that I knew the difficult truth about what she had done. She asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  I stood. “I think nothing. Nothing at all. I wish you and Tres well, Izza. Take good care of him.”

  “That’s it?” Izza said. She stopped circling the rim of the can with her finger.

  “I think so,” I said. “The more I think about it, the more I believe that the death of Elias Contopo, primero but not último, was an accident.”

  Her expression was a muddle of relief and of suspicion. Her suspicion remained on life support.

  I had another thought. “That morning? In Boulder? During the meeting you had with the assistant district attorney—my wife? You gave her a drawing from Tres. Did Tres draw just the one, or were there others?”

  She examined my eyes. She focused first on the left, then on the right. I could watch her suspicion flicker, then diminish. Finally, she said, “More.” She swallowed. “Quatro. Tres más.”

  “Three more. He drew them all the same night?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Lauren had given me only one drawing. I had given it to Sam.

  I asked, “Did you give my wife the others? Or do you have them?”

  Please please don’t tell me you gave them to Lauren.

  Izza’s suspicion flickered again. She narrowed her eyes and parted her lips. She stood.

  I thought she was about to tell me it was time for me to go.

  Without a word she disappeared into the house. Two minutes later she returned with the other three crayon drawings.

  One was of a stick-figure man on the road, walking. The man was as big as a car.

  I knew the man was Sam. No one else would know. The drawing meant nothing.

  One was of the same man walking in a field, farther away, but now inside the outline of a child’s image of a ghost.

  Espíritu. This, I thought, is Sam Purdy wearing Tyvek.

  That one meant someth
ing. In a prosecutor’s hands? It could mean a lot.

  The third drawing was of a man pointing a gun at a woman. The gun was half the size of the woman. The man was twice as large as the woman.

  Izza touched the paper. “That is me. That is Elias César Contopo pointing his gun at me. Tres was on the stairs. He watched it all.”

  “Tres did this picture the same night as the others?” I asked. The morning she was shot Lauren had told me the story of Big Elias’s drunken provocation with Izza as he awaited the return of his son’s body from the war in Afghanistan.

  “Yes,” Izza said. She spoke the word on the inhale, as though she couldn’t wait to spit it out. On the exhale she said, “But other nights, too. He was a … mean man.”

  “I am so sorry,” I said. “For Elias Tres. For you.” I pointed to the drawings. “Has anyone else seen these?”

  “No.” She held out the drawing with the ghost. Her voice shook. Her hand didn’t. She said, “You may take this one.”

  I did. I held the drawing to my heart. I said, “Thank you.”

  She hugged me.

  I walked around the house to my car.

  I hoped I was leaving Frederick for the last time.

  59

  SAM AND LUCY

  SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER LUCY gave Sam the death certificate from Iowa she called him from her car. “This is from public records on the Internet. Most of it was free, but I had to pay for one search, which I put on my sister’s PayPal account. I did the searches at a computer in the branch library in Gunbarrel while I was wearing those yellow sunglasses and that big hat you hate.”

  “It’s an awful hat.”

  “Thank you. Elliot grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with one sister, younger, and one brother, older. His mother was an only child born and raised in Grosse Pointe. His father is a fraternal twin, who met his wife at U of M, and married into his wife’s family business, something about railroad maintenance. Train cars? Tracks? I don’t know. But that’s why Grosse Pointe.

  “Elliot’s father’s side of the family is military as far back as I looked. Patriotic and conservative to the core. Elliot’s grandfather was a two-star general. An honest-to-God hero in Vietnam. I found two different testimonials that he deserved a Medal of Honor for how he handled a surprise assault on his firebase near Cambodia in 1975.”