Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  “Hash browns. Don’t forget them. No, I don’t know what Lauren was hoping to find. And, no, I haven’t considered switching. Oatmeal is boring. I don’t like to be bored at breakfast.” He took his first bite. “Not so much at the other meals either. I eat oysters now. Did I tell you I like oysters?”

  Lucy said, “What?” She assumed he was kidding. “First suicide I ever did as a detective. Before you. Thirty-four-year-old guy lived with his mother. He stuffed—”

  “Wait,” Sam said. “Is this a stuffing story? I don’t want to listen to you making fun of my breakfast while I’m eating. Wait until I’m done.”

  “It’s a Prado story,” Lucy said. “The man stuffed his bedroom closet full of shit—I mean full-full, just about everything he owned—before he backed himself into the closet standing straight up so he could just manage to pull the door closed.”

  “You’re describing OCD guy’s worst nightmare,” Sam said, laughing. “The Acura guy over in Sombrero Acres? He of the imperfect crime and the perfect privet?”

  “Ranch, not Acres. Asshole. Don’t interrupt me. The closet—it’s a real closet, not a metaphorical closet—is so tightly packed with his shit that even after he shoots himself in his mouth his body can’t fall down. He knows damn well the person who is going to come looking for him eight hours later when she gets home from work is his mother.

  “Sure enough, Mom opens the closet door right on schedule. Rigor of the corpse is at max, which I think is no accident. His rigid dead body—by then it was white and gray and pasty and bloody, probably looked to her like Frankenstein with vertigo—falls forward right on top of her. Flattens her. Poor woman basically ends up in the missionary position frenching her son’s corpse.”

  Sam was getting bored. Trying to be polite, he said, “What? You telling me the disappearing handgun was Doctor Doctor’s way of saying ‘fuck you’ to Elliot?”

  “It was Elliot’s damn gun!” Lucy spoke too loudly. The packed room quieted as the other patrons at the Village waited to hear what she might say next.

  She sipped tea like a lady until the room volume returned to normal. “Let’s say Elliot went to Prado. Looked through a window. Or maybe he had a key. Doesn’t matter. He sees the corpse, the blood. Maybe he knows Beulah’s gun is gone. Maybe he thinks Doctor took it from him. Or maybe he loaned it to the guy for protection from all the critters in Eldorado. Mostly, Elliot is shitting bricks that it’s possible his gun shot Doctor Doctor. Maybe he knew it was suicide. Maybe not.”

  “That is one big-ass boatload of maybes,” Sam pointed out.

  Lucy expected a harsher critique. “Well, Elliot’s in a pickle. He knows the gun can be linked to him, but where the fuck is it? Who has it? Is it under the body? He can’t go in and look because he knows he’ll leave a trace behind. If it’s gone, where is it? Without a weapon, he knows that the ME won’t rule on manner. Elliot knows damn well the death will get investigated as suspicious, and that we’ll be looking for a suspect. Where will we start? With the missing gun. And that day on Prado—” Lucy paused to see if Sam was paying attention.

  Sam was trying to time the consumption of his meal so that he finished his last sausage and his last bit of egg yolk in the same bite. Simultaneously making sense of Lucy’s maybes and pacing his ingestion was beginning to feel like trigonometry.

  He forced his eyebrows up and said, “Yeah? What?”

  “Elliot had no idea where the gun was. Why? Because the damn bungee had pulled it back up the fireplace. Ever since? Elliot’s been waiting for the damn gun to show up and for somebody to put something in that file about it. He knows that eventually it will lead to him.”

  “But 9/11 had happened,” Sam said. “That week? If any of your maybes were true—if all of them were true—Elliot had other things on his mind.”

  Lucy said, “I know that, Sam. I remember 9/11. But I guarantee that Elliot had self-preservation on his mind even then. He was already worried about Beulah’s .38. Had to be. I would be. You would be. He was.”

  “Your theory, such as it is, means that Doctor Doctor was pissed at Elliot.”

  “He may have been. We don’t know. My theory is a theory. Motive remains a loose end.”

  “I like the Elliot part, Luce. But that loose end? Kind of crucial. All the maybes stay maybes without it. The roommate? That could be your motive. Maybe Ophelia was right—they had some lovers’ quarrel. Some isosceles problem with the gay triangle.”

  Lucy sighed. “I don’t know what the hell that means. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it if I did.” She pushed away her grapefruit. “I should have had the pancakes.”

  “Second rule of breakfast?” Sam said. He was confident he had resolved the pacing problem to his satisfaction. He would end up having just enough egg yolk for dipping his last sausage. “If in doubt you should always get the pancakes.”

  He raised his mug to Donna for more coffee.

  Before Donna arrived with his refill he lowered his voice. “Gary? In records? Did you have to, you know …” Sam stuck his tongue into his cheek, mimicking Lucy’s provocative gesture from earlier in the day. He didn’t glance at her face until he was done with the pantomime. “Back in the file room maybe?”

  “That’s any of your business?” she asked.

  “Hey, I’m trying to be a concerned—”

  “Asshole. Well, you succeeded— You are an asshole, Sam Purdy.”

  Donna splashed coffee into his mug. Donna said, “She’s right, hon. Sometimes.”

  Sam didn’t wait for Donna to depart. He said, “Rogaine and dumbbells, Lucy? Seriously? Has it come to that?”

  Lucy grabbed the last sausage off his plate.

  Sam said, “Man.”

  Donna said, “That’s one brave woman.”

  62

  ALAN

  I SAT PARALYZED. MY COFFEE was gone. I did not know what to do next.

  My burner vibrated with a text. I didn’t recognize the number.

  Kirsten getting back to me? No. It wasn’t her number.

  Then I knew. It was Sam Purdy on his burner.

  Call thisnumver

  I left the tiny café and called Sam burner to burner as I walked in the direction of the Mall. I examined every person I saw. I looked for people in parked cars. Both sides of the street. I couldn’t spot my tail.

  It meant nothing that I couldn’t. I knew that.

  “I’ve been calling your other phone. I thought I’d try this one,” Sam said.

  I was alone on an island and knew that Sam might be at the helm of the only boat. Despite the fact that I had exonerated him for killing Big Elias, I lacked the trust to climb on board. “My tracker’s off. What’s up?” I turned it back on.

  “Had a late breakfast with Lucy at the Village. She got me thinking. The Elliot questions? His background? It’s officially urgent. You have anything?”

  Do you know about my imminent arrest? “What kind of urgent?” I visualized the Venn diagram of our overlapping interests in Elliot’s professional history.

  “I can’t say, but I need whatever you have. Like now.”

  “Anything about Elliot goes both ways, or it goes no way.”

  Sam went quiet for ten seconds before he said, “There’s an old case, an unsolved death. Elliot may have some peripheral involvement. May have. That’s all I can say. This is really sensitive shit. You breathe a word and I’m—”

  “Don’t talk to me about sensitive shit,” I hissed. I regained my composure. “I will give you a date. If your unsolved death took place within, say, a week of that date, then you tell me what is going on.”

  Sam said, “Deal.” His tone was so dismissive he could have said, “Sure, guess.”

  I said, “September eleventh, 2001. 9/11.”

  Sam went silent. He exhaled in an extended whew.

  My eyes were locked on a woman sitting on a bench twenty yards away pecking on her phone. I thought she might be my tail. Or that she might be some woman sitting on a bench
pecking on a phone. I lacked a reliable way to tell the two apart.

  Sam said, “How do you know that date? What do you have on Elliot?”

  I said, “I have a guy who died on Prado on 9/11. What do you have?”

  “We need to talk. Where are you?”

  Without reaching a decision to be candid I blurted out, “I don’t trust you, Sam.”

  He said, “I know you don’t. It pisses me off. It really pisses me off.”

  “I don’t know if my office is a good idea. I think Elliot is about to have me arrested. I can’t reach my lawyer.”

  “And what? You think I’m going to report your location so they can pick you up? With what you have on me? You are the only person I trust with this. Lucy doesn’t know. O doesn’t know. I trust you with my son, Alan. My kid.”

  It was my turn to get silent. Finally I said, “I’m on the Mall near Oak. On Fourteenth. I may have a tail, or I may not. I’m too damn stupid to be able to tell. I don’t even know which phone to use for what. I am … rattled.”

  Sam said, “Let me think.” I walked west while he thought. “Head to your office. If you’re being followed, and I doubt you are, or if they’re tracking you, and they might be, that won’t raise any suspicions. Lock the door behind you. I’ll be inside.”

  “You can’t get in. It’s locked.”

  Sam laughed. He hung up. I didn’t know whether I should power up my tracker to let them track me. Or not.

  Someone experienced at being a target would know. Carl Luppo would know.

  Lauren would know. Fuck you, Lauren.

  SAM WAS SITTING CROSS-LEGGED on the floor in the short hallway between the offices and the waiting room. The interior space was dark and cool. I sat across from him.

  “You pick locks? Is that how you searched my house for the gun?”

  “People need hobbies. One of my CIs got me interested in locks. I wasn’t honest with you about Ivy Baldwin. There was a metaphor.”

  “I thought there was.”

  “You and me. Murder. Tightrope walk. You think you’ve taken every precaution. You think you made a righteous decision, but from the day the deed is done the rest of your life is a high wire. Every step matters. Can’t get distracted for a second. Any mistake is fatal. A misstep. A gust of wind. A loss of concentration. Boom. We’re dead.”

  “Do you regret it?” I asked. “Frederick?”

  “Not for a day. Want to know what I wish? I wish your wife was a better shot.”

  “I don’t follow that.”

  “Michael McClelland. That night in Aspen, right after I met you? The very first confrontation in that house Lauren owned with her ex. If Lauren had known how to handle a gun back then, McClelland would’ve died. He never would have come after us. You and I wouldn’t be out on that wire. I wouldn’t have had to go to Frederick. We wouldn’t be hiding in this hallway wondering how to keep our balance for one more fucking step.”

  He was right. But I didn’t want to tell him he was right.

  Sam said, “Wishes and horses? So tell me what you know about our DA.”

  I told him Lauren had been looking into Elliot’s background for a long time. She had documents. I provided him with an overview of the facts she’d collected and with her conclusion. “Elliot came to Boulder to establish a political base. He had great options elsewhere, all the credentials. He could have done big law on either coast. He could have gone the AUSA route. But he wanted a political launching pad. Elliot picked Boulder, and Colorado, as places where a young prosecutor—even a gay one—could make a rapid political ascent. Lauren was certain of it.”

  “He wasn’t running from anything back east? No skeletons? His political aspirations here—carpetbagger and all—made sense to her?”

  “I just learned most of this. There are papers I haven’t gone through. There’s a box from her office from the Justice Center I haven’t even opened. Andrew implied there may be more in there. But I know of no skeletons. The big question for Elliot was how gay tolerant the electorate would be. Jared Polis answered that. Elliot’s been playing a long game, preparing for statewide office. That’s what Lauren thought.”

  “Now tell me how you know about the Prado case on 9/11?”

  The hallway was tight. Sam stretched out his legs. I kept my feet flat on the floor. My knees up near my chin.

  “Lauren was assigned to a suspicious death investigation on Prado a few days after 9/11. Almost immediately she was pulled off. Something didn’t feel right to her; she never let go. She kept notes about that week in the same envelope with the materials about Elliot’s background. I assume she suspected a connection. Does that case ring any bells for you?”

  “It was my case, too. Like her, I got reassigned. Last summer, before either of the fires, Lucy and I answered a call to the same house on Prado. We collected a new piece of physical evidence that we eventually linked to Elliot. No proof of anything, just a provocative connection. We didn’t know the evidence would lead to him, so we did nothing to hide it. Elliot knows we know—he’s been routinely monitoring the file. So he’s aware of the new evidence—but he doesn’t know we’ve linked it to him. It’s not obvious. He may be praying we miss the connection.”

  I said, “Before the fires, Sam? Did Lauren know what you and Lucy found?”

  “Yes. No doubt. And Elliot knew she knew. Is any of it important? I don’t know. What Lucy and I learned on Prado might embarrass Elliot, cause him some political indigestion, but it’s nothing criminal. At worst? Bad judgment. I’ve been thinking he was confident he could survive, I mean politically survive, if the Prado evidence became public. But he’s not acting that way. He’s acting squirrelly.”

  “What are you thinking now?”

  “He knew the men who lived in that house. The guy who died, and his roommate. That’s clear. The new evidence that links him to Prado also implies the kind of bad judgment that doesn’t reflect well on a candidate for statewide office. He may be able to finesse that, spin it. I’m not convinced it’s a fatal mistake. My instincts say I’m missing something else. His behavior—the possibility that he had something to do with getting me and Lauren reassigned back on 9/15, his longtime adversarial relationship with her and with you, this apparent determination to take you down since she died—doesn’t make sense unless there’s some other piece. That search warrant at your house? Risky. Maybe it’s something he’s afraid you’re going to discover. Could be unrelated. I don’t know.

  “But he’s confident enough about where he stands to come after you openly. That may mean that he doesn’t think you know whatever it is, or that he suspects you know but doesn’t think you’re smart enough to put the puzzle together. What’s more likely? He may be feeling bulletproof because he thinks that the people capable of making the right connections are already dead.”

  “Lauren,” I said.

  “Yeah. Elliot knew she was monitoring the Prado file. I’m sure he was worried she knew something. Suspected something. Had something. Or would see something.”

  I asked, “Would the roommate from Prado know anything important? Lauren talked to him once. A few years ago. Were you aware of that?”

  “I was not. Is he here? In town?”

  “Don’t think so. Lauren talked to him in Tennessee. Nashville, Knoxville? Knoxville. In 2007, maybe. He confirmed that Elliot was involved with the deceased.”

  “Involved involved?”

  “Yes. He told Lauren it was his roommate’s first gay sex. Did you know that in 2001? That the deceased was sexually involved with a deputy DA?”

  “Back then I didn’t have anything linking Elliot to Prado. And I didn’t know anything about anything gay. But I was pulled off the case after twenty-four hours.” He paused. “You sure know a lot.”

  I had neither the time nor the inclination to go into the story of the elly-ott envelope with Sam. “Lauren left some papers behind. I’ve only recently learned what’s in them. What’s your gut, Sam? Did Elliot commit a crime related to
Prado? Is this one long cover-up? Was Lauren onto something at the end?”

  “I’m not sure. We either don’t know everything, or we don’t recognize the importance of what we know. Elliot is acting vulnerable. But about what?” Sam shrugged. “Could it be something to do with 9/11? Long shot. The Prado death? Maybe. In 2001, he was young and single, and he was acting young and single. He was also gay. It may seem like ancient history, but remember, we passed Amendment Two in Colorado in 1992. Being gay was still a political liability here in 2001.

  “Now? Elliot is reading different tea leaves. The current political environment is as gay friendly as it’s been in his political lifetime. Yeah, Prado could be his Achilles’ heel, but I don’t see how the fact that he’s gay becomes such a vulnerability today.”

  I said, “I’m not arguing that. Elliot wasn’t involved in the Prado death, Sam. Not directly. He has a great alibi. He wasn’t in town on 9/11, or the weekend before. He’d been on the East Coast. He was in the air on his way to DIA when the towers were hit. He got stuck in the Midwest someplace, drove back in a rental truck.”

  “I didn’t know any of that. You’re sure?”

  “Lauren was. The papers she left behind? It includes his flight numbers. Truck rental info. I can get you copies.” My tracker beeped. A text from LA Amy.

  Black Cat. Boulderado. Bthere@8. BBB!!!

  I silently added a fourth B for the orange bra. LA Amy and I had both been drunk the night before. Sober? Her desires and my intentions did not coincide. I flicked the phone to mute. I used my tracker to type a reply.

  Can’t. Sorry. Maybe another time.

  Sam said, “You are a stronger man than me.”

  I didn’t want to talk about LA Amy. I said, “Here comes me trusting you.”

  Sam looked me in the eyes for a few seconds. He nodded once. He understood.

  I handed Sam the sheet Andrew gave me earlier that day. “Can you help with this? Lauren gave these notes to her assistant the morning she was shot before she came to see me. Andrew, her assistant, thinks Elliot stole the notebook these pages are from during the Dome Fire evacuation. Andrew had a copy. Elliot doesn’t know that. I assume these notes are important, but I haven’t been able to puzzle out the meaning.”