Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  “Did he get the medal?”

  “No. The country wasn’t in the mood for heroes then, apparently.”

  Sam sighed.

  “Aunt Beulah—the fancy panties lady—was Elliot’s father’s fraternal twin. She married a farming equipment dealer—the big green ones, what are they called?”

  Sam said, “John Deere.”

  “Them. Rory Baxter sold John Deeres in southern Iowa. He is only recently retired. I couldn’t determine how he met Beulah. You are free to create a romantic story that’s to your liking. Still following?” Sam said he was. “Rory has been a widower since Beulah died. I pulled her funeral notice from the local paper. Rory apparently called his wife ‘BB.’ I think that’s cute. Rory continues to live in the home that he shared with BB.

  “He has an active presence online amongst a certain group of numismatists. He has a reputation as a collector with discerning and expensive tastes in Civil War–era coins. Union only.” She paused. “Numismatists are coin collectors, by the way.”

  “I know that,” Sam said.

  “Of course you do. I’m pulling up to the building. I will be inside in a minute.”

  SAM LEANED BACK ON HIS CHAIR when he saw Lucy. The desk chair was almost as old as the driver’s seat in his Jeep, and had put in almost identical time cradling his big butt. When he put stress on the chair the hardware moaned like an old man doing a squat.

  Sam opened his mouth to speak, closed it. Lucy suggested an interview room. They found an empty. Sam picked up the earlier conversation as though it hadn’t been interrupted. He said, “The gun that ended up in the house on Prado was Aunt Beulah’s.”

  Lucy says, “I can see a variety of ways that it gets to Boulder. After Beulah dies the gun ends up in Elliot’s hands. Maybe she gave it to him. Maybe he took it. Whatever. Rory’s alive; he may know the answer. But somehow Elliot has the gun when he moves to Boulder to join the DA’s office. The true mystery is how the hell it ends up on a bungee inside the chimney on Prado.” She looked up at Sam. “Right?”

  “Could be a red herring,” Sam said. “Can you see if Elliot reported any burglaries, or muggings, or car thefts, or anything else while he’s been in town? Especially the first couple of years. I want to see if there is any record of a crime occurring during which someone could have taken the gun from him.”

  Lucy said, “Would he have reported the gun stolen? Technically it wasn’t his.”

  “He may not have, though there’s nothing illegal about possessing your dead aunt’s handgun. I don’t expect to be able to prove the theft of the gun, only to rule out a reported theft of the gun. If it was reported stolen, or if a crime took place where he can argue it was stolen, we need to look elsewhere for an answer.”

  “Otherwise what? We proceed as though Elliot had knowledge of the whereabouts of the handgun until it got stuck in the chimney of the house on Prado?”

  “A nice dinner says we’ll never prove it. Can you think of a way to learn whether Elliot lived alone when he first came to town? Or if he had roommates?”

  “You revisiting Ophelia’s theory about a lovers’ thing at Prado?”

  Sam shifted his posture. He did it again. For some things Sam could not find the correct posture. “I am a man with an increasingly open mind. I think.”

  “You are slowly becoming that man, but it took a village of us years to pry that mind of yours open. At times we’ve had to resort to controlled demolition.”

  He put his hand on his heart. “I am grateful to all of you,” Sam said. “My gratitude comes in all the colors of the rainbow.”

  Lucy asked, “Can these new questions wait until tomorrow? I got a meeting.”

  “I don’t see why not. They’ve been waiting a long time already. Wait—did you find out if anyone else has looked at the file?”

  Lucy said, “The records clerk is being a dick. He wants me to make an official request. Getting that information off the record may cost me a blowjob.” Sam looked up at that announcement. “How important is it to you, Sam? Is it worth me giving that dweeb a blowjob?”

  Sam stared at her. He narrowed his eyes.

  Lucy said, “You asshole, you are actually deciding if you want me to do it.”

  “I was not.”

  “You were. Hell’s bells.” She turned to leave the room. “I’ll talk to Gary.”

  “Lucy, I—”

  She stopped in the open door with a smile on her face. “Bye, Sam. Gary’s not really a dweeb. Get him some Rogaine and some free weights …” She poked her tongue into the side of her cheek. “Some manscaping?”

  “God, Lucy, you know I hate it when you’re crude.”

  She laughed. “I do know that. We still having lunch?”

  “Late breakfast.”

  “Whatever you want to call your feeding time at the Village trough is fine with me.”

  60

  ALAN

  I DROVE FROM FREDERICK TO my office as though I had a reason to be there. I didn’t know what else to do. I powered up my tracker in case the kids were trying to reach me.

  I had all of Lauren’s work papers in my messenger bag. My plan was to get them into my new lawyer’s hands. As soon as I could. I sat at my desk for a while as I leafed through the contents of the elly-ott envelope to begin the long-postponed process of getting some insight into Lauren’s thinking about Elliot’s past. Around twelve thirty I locked everything in my file cabinet. I walked over to the Mall as though I’d had a busy morning at work and it was time for lunch.

  I was trying to feel normal. The pretense wasn’t working.

  The day felt like spring but the calendar insisted it was very much winter. The forecast said winter would win out before night fell.

  I crossed Broadway, scoping out places I might have wanted to eat back in the days when I experienced routine hunger. I convinced myself that something at Cured would be good. Some salume and cheese. Some olives, maybe. Just before I reached Fifteenth Street a man brushed into me from behind. He apologized.

  He had dropped a few index cards. Three-by-fives. I bent to corral them before a breeze blew them away. I said, “Excuse me, you dropped these.” The cards were blank.

  “Oh, thank you,” he said. He squatted beside me. I recognized his scent before I saw his face. Lauren’s assistant, Andrew, said, “Shhhh, please. I’m hoping anyone who might be following you doesn’t recognize me. I overheard one of Helliot’s loyalists talking yesterday. I think he is coming for you.”

  That news left my major skeletal support bones feeling as though they were turning to dust. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I was on my way to your office. Saw you leaving. Thought this would be better than having someone see me walk into your building. I’m improvising.”

  We both stood. I handed him the cards he’d dropped. He handed me back a folded sheet of plain paper. He said, “The missing Field Notes—the yellow one she gave me before she went to your office that last morning? When I couldn’t decipher Lauren’s scribbles I would copy the page I couldn’t read and then return the notebook to her. She didn’t like to be without them. The next time we talked I’d clear up the confusion with her handwriting or her abbreviations or whatever. The yellow Field Notes book that is missing had a few lines of things I couldn’t understand.”

  I didn’t understand what he was telling me. “I don’t get why—”

  “No time. Lauren’s notes about her project were getting more cryptic because she thought Elliot was looking through her things. I could decipher most of what she wrote, but that day’s notes were too cryptic for me. I think what’s on the paper I just gave you has to do with an old case and her ongoing feud with Helliot. You know about that?”

  I feared I didn’t, but I said, “The feud, maybe. The old case? I’m not sure.”

  “The building was evacuated while she was with you. Because of the Dome Fire? When we were ordered out I had already copied the pages but the copier was out of paper. When we got the all-
clear to go back in, the yellow Field Notes book was missing from my desk, but the copy I’d made of that page printed as soon as I reloaded the tray with paper. I never got to ask her what these notes meant. I hope you can make some sense of them, and I hope that it helps you. With Helliot. And go through that box of personal things I gave you. Carefully. There might be something there, too.”

  “Andrew, please. The yellow Field Notes. What were they for? I don’t know that. I don’t understand.”

  “She called them her puzzle books. Long-game notes about cases that didn’t make sense to her. Stuff she couldn’t let go of, some of it involving misconduct and mistakes by cops and other staff. All things she didn’t want anyone to know about.”

  “Old? New?”

  “Both.” He made a motion that was both nod and shrug. “I need to get back. Good luck, Alan.” Andrew walked away. I stuffed the sheet of paper into my pants pocket.

  Helliot was Lauren’s private diminutive for her adversary, and boss, Elliot Bellhaven. Andrew had just warned me that Helliot was coming after me. I assumed he meant soon. He’d also warned me that it was possible I was being followed. I assumed he meant presently.

  I called out, “You missed one.” Andrew stopped. I hustled to within a foot of him.

  I said, “The child’s drawing from Lauren’s meeting that morning? Helliot looked for more when he searched my house. Do you know anything about that? Had he seen—”

  Andrew looked over my shoulder with wide eyes. He said, “I thought you—” He spun and walked away from me. I looked behind me. I saw nothing alarming.

  The look on Andrew’s face was further confirmation that he believed Elliot had me in his sights. I felt relief along with fear. I wondered if the surveillance Andrew was warning me about was electronic, keeping tabs on me via my tracker, or if some poor soul on the public payroll was following me around downtown Boulder as I pretended to have a life.

  I kept walking down Pearl until I spotted what I hoped was an opportunity to thwart either kind of tail. I went into the hole-in-the-wall café near Frasca. The place was about the size of a restroom at Starbucks. An actual tail would be forced to observe me from outside. Or sit in my lap.

  I ordered an espresso and took the only open table, nearest the solitary window. I read Andrew’s note, a photocopy of two side-by-side pages from one of Lauren’s notebooks. The page on the left had clear references to Marshall Doctor’s death on Prado, some of the same information that Kirsten had shared with me from the elly-ott envelope. Below those notes, the number 38 and the word bungee were underlined twice and followed by five question marks. She had also written frac ind fing —> twist?? At the bottom of the page was FREDERICK I/E and A4BCOP in double-size letters.

  On the right-hand page she had written:

  ALIBI GOOD. 90801 —> HB&HBL BG —> Tog?? NoE IND. DEAD END??

  Whose alibi was Lauren assessing? The mention of the alibi came right after the Frederick note on the prior pages. Was it my alibi, when I was in New Mexico with Jonas during the murder in Frederick? Or was it Sam’s? She and I had talked about the Los Alamos trip that morning. Had she jotted down a reminder about it before our meeting?

  What were I/E and A4BCOP? Internet Explorer? A4B COP? A4BC OP? A4 BCOP? A 4BCOP? I didn’t know. Or the number 90801? The obvious candidates for the number were a zip code or a date. Possibly an address. I focused on the right-hand page. HB? My gut said that Andrew was correct—HB would be Lauren’s sardonic initials for Helliot. The good alibi might have been Elliot’s. I knew I was reaching. Why would Elliot need an alibi?

  I muttered, “Who the heck are HBL and BG? What are Tog and NoE?”

  The man next to me—our tables were ten inches apart—was reading something on his iPad. He raised his index finger from the screen. He said, “Just a second.” Then, “I thought I had something for you, but … nothing. Want me to Google any of it?”

  “No. Thank you,” I said. Boulder, I thought.

  Boulder. Boulder. BCOP. Could BCOP be Boulder cop? I knew that Lauren had her investigative eye on Sam before our meeting that morning. If BCOP was Sam, what was A4? Our car is an A4. Lauren had scribbled these notes after seeing Izza and Elias Tres, but before coming to my office. A4BCOP could have been her shorthand notation for Sam using our car in Frederick. I/E? That had to be Izza and Elias Tres. Or did it?

  Okay, did the B in BG stand for Boulder, too? Boulder G … ? Boulder G … ? I had no idea.

  I shut down my tracker. I immediately wondered if doing that was a mistake because my tail, if I had one, would witness my digital disappearing act in real time on his smartphone. I assumed there was an app for following trackers like mine. If my tail had that app, then my tail had just learned that I was attempting to confuse my surveillance. Perhaps. Or not.

  Was attempting to thwart surveillance something that an observer would perceive as a good thing, or a bad thing? I couldn’t decide. I wasn’t cut out for this. Countertransference was my thing. Counterespionage? Not a demonstrated skill.

  I had to get in touch with my new lawyer, but I couldn’t decide whether to use my burner or my tracker for the call. Plan C was a pay phone. Oh hell. I used my burner. My lawyer’s assistant said he was at the hospital with his daughter, who was in surgery for an orbital fracture. I expressed my sympathies. The assistant and I spoke about our kids, and all their odd injuries. For thirty seconds I forgot I was a fugitive.

  Then I remembered I was a fugitive. I explained to my defense attorney’s assistant that my jeopardy seemed to be growing more acute by the minute. I asked about my lawyer’s partners’ availability. “They are both in trial all day,” she said. She promised to talk to someone soon and get back to me with guidance.

  I phoned Kirsten. Voicemail. I explained about the orbital fracture and the canceled appointment and the shit that seemed to be hitting the fan from Elliot’s office. I asked her to text me back any guidance at the number she had just captured.

  I didn’t tell her it was a burner. I didn’t want her to think I was paranoid or something.

  61

  SAM AND LUCY

  SAM HADN’T READ THE menu at the Village since sometime in the eighties.

  He and Lucy scored a table on the wall opposite the griddle. Sam told Donna he wanted the usual. Then he told her to bring him a short stack, too. Donna reminded him that his usual had included a short stack since the day Obama was inaugurated.

  “Really?” he said.

  “Yeah, babe,” she said with a hand on his shoulder, “it’s come to that. You’ve been drowning those sorrows in syrup for that long.” She smiled at Lucy. She said, “I got you, hon. Breakfast or lunch?” Lucy said she wanted breakfast.

  Sam told Donna to hold their order for a few minutes. He whispered, “Cop business.”

  Donna laughed. “Five?” she asked. Sam had overtipped her about a hundred times in his life. She probably would have sent somebody out to wash his car if he asked nicely. He told her five minutes would be plenty.

  Lucy whispered, “Are we really going to talk cop business now? Here? Around the public?” She sat back. “You are such a flirt.” Sam considered it a compliment. “Ever notice how Donna treats every man in here like he’s an ex-husband she doesn’t hate?”

  Sam said he could see that. “Did Gary give you the history of the Prado file?”

  “Hold your horses. Jeez. The file has been pulled for the usual periodic open-case reviews. And it was part of the 9/11 look-back the department did in 2003.”

  “That man-hour thing the chief wanted? God, that was no fun,” Sam said.

  Lucy poured more hot water into her mug. Redunked her tea bag. “My advice hasn’t changed. Let this go, Sam. It was a despicable week. I’ll write up the new stuff, add it to the file. Bellhaven will see it when he pulls the record next year. We move on.”

  Sam leaned across the table. “Remember the OCD guy with the Acura? Waiting for his Kindle in Serape Ridge? Our decision tree conversation?”

>   Lucy said, “Sombrero Ranch. Full-size candy bars.” She was not surprised that Sam had ignored her advice about moving on, nor was she surprised that his segue—if one existed in his head—was opaque to her. “We talked about this two hours ago.”

  “What if it was Elliot? The person Doctor Doctor expected to find his body?”

  “Because of Beulah’s gun? That’s why Elliot?” Lucy gave Sam’s theory some thought. “That day was September eleventh. Let’s say Doctor expected Elliot to be the first one there after he shot himself. There are fifty fine reasons why Elliot wouldn’t have had time to keep a playdate in Eldorado. Sure, Sam, I could see it being Elliot. But I can see it being people we haven’t thought about, too.”

  “How many times has Elliot pulled that file?”

  “I was about to tell you. The early years? Three, four times a year. Then once a year, always near the anniversary. But last year, four times again.”

  “Why the sudden interest last year?”

  Lucy checked for stray ears. “Lauren Crowder checked out the file during the middle of March last year. Gary said the records staff had instructions to notify the DA if anybody pulled it. He’s sure someone made the notification. Lauren pulled it again after Labor Day, weeks before she was shot. If you’re keeping score, that was after Jumble Guy found the bungee gun. That means Deputy DA Crowder knew about the bungee and the gun in the fireplace when she died.”

  “Those standing instructions were to notify the DA’s office? Or the DA?”

  “The man himself,” Lucy said.

  “The four times Elliot checked the file last year were all after mid-March?”

  “Yes. It’s reasonable to assume he was monitoring his deputy’s interest in Prado.”

  Donna returned with more coffee for Sam. She told Sam his food was coming off the griddle. He smiled and offered a thumbs-up. She winked at him.

  Sam’s usual was a mess of food. It came on two platters.

  Lucy’s usual was a grapefruit and dry wheat toast. It came on two little plates.

  Lucy said, “Do you eat any fiber? Ever? Do you even think about switching to oatmeal, Sam? From sausage and eggs and white bread and pancakes and—”