by Jeff Carson
The dash clock read 12:15 p.m. as she parked and shut off the engine. Was it only lunch time? It felt like she’d been awake for days already.
She lowered the window and drove up to a gate arm leading to an underground garage. The air was saturated with the scent of pine and some sort of baked goods wafting from somewhere beyond the trees.
They made their way to the rear sliding glass doors, and into a quiet reception area.
Yates took the initiative, asking the receptionist for Wolf’s room, and they were directed to the third floor.
The glass elevator rose above the trees, giving them a view of the Vail Valley, and the cars sliding down the pass on the interstate into town. Just like Rocky Points, snow clung to the uppermost peaks.
“Patterson.”
The elevator had stopped and Yates waited outside.
She was in mild shock.
Their feet pattered silently on a low-pile carpet as they made their way down a long hallway toward a waiting room.
Rachette sat in a chair, looking half-asleep. He stood. “There you guys are.”
They were alone in the room. A pair of closed double doors stood at the far end.
“What’s the news?” she asked.
“The news is there’s no news. I’m about to shove my foot up the nurse’s ass, I’ll tell you that. She’s a wench.” His voice rose and he looked over his shoulder toward a window in the wall.
Patterson put a hand on his shoulder. “Can we not start a fight? Why don’t you sit down and I’ll figure out what’s going on?”
“Please do.” He sat and Yates perched next to him.
She walked to the window and saw an empty cloth chair inside some sort of records room on the other side of the counter. “Hello?”
No answer.
A moment later, a woman in pink scrubs walked past with a folder in her hand.
“Excuse me.”
The woman continued on. “You here for Detective Wolf?”
“Yes.”
The nurse studied a shelf, found a spot, and shoved the folder in. Avoiding Patterson’s eyes, she moved to her seat and sat.
“Can you tell me his status, please? We haven’t heard any news.”
“You haven’t?” She wiggled a computer mouse and clicked on her keyboard. “I told Detective Rachette out there that he’s stable. He’s visiting with the doctor now. When the doctor comes out and talks to you, you’ll have more information.”
“But … has he had a heart attack?”
The nurse looked at her without expression. “He’s stable.”
“Stable.”
“Yes.”
“So, no emergency surgery?”
The nurse blinked.
“Thanks. You’ve been a pleasure to speak to.”
The woman slid her gaze to the computer screen and began typing.
Patterson walked back to Rachette and Yates. “Yeah, good thing she’s got a big ass, cause it’s going to have to fit my foot, too.”
“Told you.”
The double doors swung open and Wolf strode out. He cinched his belt and fixed his flannel shirt, then threaded his arm through his jacket. “Hey.” Without slowing, he passed them and walked down the hallway.
“Hey, what are you doing?” She strode after him. “Hey.”
“What?” Wolf kept walking.
“What are you doing?”
“Going home.” He slowed. “Who drove?”
“I did,” Rachette said, hurrying down the hallway to them. “Patterson did. What’s going on?”
“I’ve been discharged.” Wolf held out a hand between them. “I’ll take your vehicle.”
They stood mute and motionless. Wolf’s hand was steady, his gaze relaxed, matching his demeanor.
Patterson looked down the hall toward the waiting room, then back at him. “You have to explain yourself, sir. You were just airlifted off Huerfano Pass, and now you’re walking out of the hospital? That doesn’t make any sense. They have to keep you for observation for more than …” She looked at her watch, remembered she’d stopped wearing one, and dug for her cell phone. “You’ve been here for like an hour and a half. Where’s the doctor?”
Wolf snatched a set of keys from Rachette’s hand and walked away.
“I have to get my bag out of the back,” Rachette said, following Wolf.
Her mouth dropped open as she watched Yates follow silently behind them to the elevator.
“You coming?” Rachette poked his head out of the open door.
She turned and walked back to the waiting-room window, where Nurse Human-Interaction was still typing on her computer.
“Excuse me.”
She raised an eyebrow, continuing at two-hundred words per minute.
“Did you discharge David Wolf?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“Did you see me leave my station in the three minutes you’ve been here?”
Patterson reached in and slapped the top of the computer monitor. The sound reverberated like a bomb. Immediately, Patterson regretted her action. The nurse outstretched both her arms and pushed back in her roll-chair, her face a mask of horror.
“Listen to me. David Wolf just walked out of here. It was my impression he’s had a freaking heart attack. Why is he leaving right now?”
The nurse volleyed her gaze from Patterson to the still-wobbling monitor.
“Hey.” Patterson calmed her voice. “I’m sorry. Okay? Now can you please page David Wolf’s doctor for me?”
“I should call the cops, that’s what I should do.”
“I am the cops.” Patterson was short, so her beltline was out of sight and had been since she’d shown up. Had Rachette not informed this woman who they were? Patterson picked her badge off her belt and showed it.
The nurse blinked rapidly, her eyes searching the room for an escape route.
Damn it. She was surrounded by idiots. “Never mind.”
“No. Sorry.” The nurse scooted back to her computer. “I just don’t do very well with confrontations. Apparently … you do.”
Patterson felt heat rising in her cheeks. “No. I’m sorry.” She closed her mouth and breathed, letting her impatience dissipate with each exhale.
The nurse clicked the keys, then leaned in, studying the screen. “He’s not on the discharge list. Which means he hasn’t been discharged. This list shows recently discharged as well as scheduled estimations. He’s not even on here yet.”
“Is he in the system?”
She nodded. “I entered him when he arrived.”
“Thank you.”
Patterson went down the hallway and rode the elevator down to the garage. When the doors opened, Rachette and Yates stood like a couple of abandoned dogs outside the door. She caught the side of an SBCSD vehicle climbing out of the ramp and disappearing into the daylight outside.
Rachette turned to Patterson. “I think he just ditched out on the doctor.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she read the screen. “Ah. It’s MacLean.” She pressed the button. “Hello, sir.”
“What’s going on?” MacLean was yelling over a lot of background vehicle noise. “Damn cell reception’s been shot for the last thirty minutes. How’s he doing?”
“He’s … stable.”
“Stable.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what’s that mean? He had a heart attack?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened? What are the doctors saying?”
She looked at Rachette and Yates, who stared sympathetically. “We haven’t talked to the doctor yet.”
“Okay. I’m just driving past Eagle now. I’ll be in there in a few minutes.”
The line went dead.
“Great,” she said.
Chapter 13
The drive home to the ranch took all of an hour and forty-five minutes, but it felt like a full day had passed.
/> It was dark by the time he parked in his carport. His hands ached from clutching the wheel. He stepped out into the calm night and stood, staring into the cloudless sky and the spray of stars sparkling above.
He walked back to the vehicle, opened the rear driver’s-side door, and searched for his phone. After ignoring the fourth call from MacLean, he’d thrown it in back. The first mile he’d listened to the radio chatter. It was all about him so he’d shut it off.
There were three new missed calls from the sheriff, two from Patterson, two from Rachette. He stopped reading and shoved the phone in his pocket.
Now he knew what a criminal felt like fleeing the scene of a crime. And he, too, felt no remorse.
He could stretch his hands but not his chest—it still felt like a large man was sitting on him.
His boots swished through the grass as he stepped to his front porch and took a seat on a metal chair.
Visions of a girl playing with a dog danced across the moonlit lawn, so he stood and went inside.
The living-room electronics hummed. Strips of moonlight streamed through the open blinds. He sat on the couch and got comfortable for the night ahead. His eyelids grew heavier, but his willpower was stronger.
Nobody came to visit him. Which meant they knew. Meaning it was going to be a long day tomorrow. But he’d never been one to shy away from a challenge, so why was he ignoring his phone as it chimed like a Cripple Creek slot machine?
Because this was different.
Six and a half hours later, as the valley outside started to glow, he stood up from the couch.
He shaved and showered, and made a vegetable smoothie and a bowl of steaming oatmeal with bananas. By 6 a.m. he was out the door and back in Rachette’s vehicle.
At 6:24 he pulled into the rear parking lot of the County building and parked. People were streaming in for the early day shift and flowing out from the night shift. Wolf and his team worked on their own schedule and Wolf was a full thirty-five minutes early, but he noticed Patterson’s unmarked at the far end of the lot.
As he climbed out, Patterson’s car jostled and lit up as she opened her door.
She bee-lined him, flicking her eyes between him and the ground.
“What’s up?”
She looked around. “I wanted to catch you before you went in.”
“Okay.”
“MacLean knows you left without being discharged. Everyone was worried about you and wanted to come out to your place last night, but he stopped them.”
Wolf walked.
“I think I know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you left the hospital. Why he stopped everyone from going to your house.”
He slipped to the left, putting a car between them.
“Sir.”
He said nothing.
“Remember when I quit?” Her voice bounced as she walked next to him. “I’d just been drugged and shoved in a trunk with Charlotte. I’d been flown on a helicopter to County. When the memories came back, they haunted me.”
She grabbed his arm and stopped him.
He looked down at her hand.
“I know what it’s like. Because it happened to me.” She let go.
He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out so he walked inside the automatic doors.
A group of deputies sipping gourmet coffee waited at the elevators.
“Hey, there he is.” Deputy Nelson turned toward him. “Geez, what are you doing here? I heard you had a heart attack on …” He looked at Patterson and his voice trailed off.
Wolf felt heat blossom in his face. He stepped over to the stairwell and pushed through. No one followed.
He climbed the stairs with ease, propelled by strength in his legs that he’d built over the past three months. At the third floor he pushed through the doors, his breathing relaxed as he walked down the hallway toward his office.
As he unlocked the door the elevator opened, and he slipped inside before he had to face Patterson and the elevator-goers a second time.
He leaned against the wall and took some deep breaths. The same heaviness clenched his chest, but this time it dissipated with each exhale. There was no clamp of a giant’s palm, no swirling vision, no searing poker pain in his sternum.
The deputies’ footsteps passed.
For thirty minutes, he sifted through his messages and missed calls. They were all from MacLean, Rachette, and Patterson. Clearly word hadn’t gotten out to the civilian population, otherwise his mother, Jack, Margaret, Nate, and a few others would have been kicking down his door—digitally or literally.
Somebody knocked.
“Come in!”
Rachette poked his head inside. “Situation meeting in five. Lorber just got in with his report.”
“Thanks.”
Rachette eyed him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing fine. Thanks, Tom.”
Rachette gave him an unreadable look and ducked out.
The door clicked shut.
Wolf waited ten minutes and made his way down to the situation room. The squad room was still bustling, the sound echoing off the ceilings. Conversations turned hushed or were muted altogether when he strode in.
“Hello, sir,” somebody said. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”
Wolf nodded at a few other well-intentioned comments and slalomed his way into the situation room.
He took the side route, descending into the auditorium along the exterior windows. Patterson, Rachette, Yates, Undersheriff Wilson, DA White, ADA Hanson, and MacLean populated the central seats in the first two rows.
Lorber stood hunched over a laptop at the front table next to Daphne Pinnifield. The screen behind them had been pulled down and showed a blackened body entrenched in a snow grave.
The memory of Warren Preston’s body was like a confused dream. He thought about the text message and his chest seized up. He felt the cold of the snow on his face, saw the shuffling feet.
“Wolf!”
He snapped back to the present and saw everyone was staring.
His eyes went to his hand clutching the back of a chair. He was about to look up, but the afterimage of them looking at him wide-eyed was already seared in his brain.
Chairs squeaked and flapped shut as people stood and rushed toward him.
“You okay?” The question came simultaneously from a half-dozen mouths.
“I’m okay!” He raised a palm. “Sit.”
He went to the front row and sat next to Patterson. Everyone else’s chairs groaned as they sat back down, a low murmur sweeping through the room.
Lorber raised a long arm to the screen. “Okay, everyone’s here. Let’s get started.”
Daphne walked to the front row and sat next to Patterson.
The door clicked shut, snuffing out the noise from the squad room above. Motors whirred as blinds automatically lowered over the windows, darkening the auditorium.
A closeup of Warren Preston’s head glowed on screen.
“I’ve confirmed this is Warren Preston. Dental records match. DNA match. It’s him.” Lorber raised a laser-clicker and pressed the button, switching the photo to a closer angle.
Wolf pushed his inauspicious entrance to the back of his mind as he stared at Preston’s black, misshapen skull—just as he’d remembered it from yesterday. Thick gray hair twisted in different directions from the caved-in portion of his head. The two eye sockets were empty, leaving dark holes, and the mouth was agape.
“Holy shit,” somebody mumbled.
“You can see that, for three months out in the elements, he’s decomposed relatively little.”
With such a decrepit version of a man who’d been alive only three months earlier, Wolf’s mind begged to differ, but he’d seen more decay happen in much less time.
“Clear sign of blunt-force trauma.” Lorber swirled the laser. “We found evidence of four different blows to the head. Fragments of rock that do not match the surrounding s
trata on Huerfano Pass were found lodged in his remaining brain matter and skull: Sandstone composed of feldspar and quartz, arenaceous in nature, bound with iron oxide.”
“English,” MacLean said.
“Flagstone. Red flagstone, commonly quarried on the front range of Colorado or north of here near Brushing.” The medical examiner cocked an eyebrow, as if he’d just revealed a vital clue.
Wolf tilted his head toward Patterson. “Does Preston Rock and Supply have red flagstone in their inventory?” he asked under his breath.
“Good question,” she said, scribbling in her notebook.
MacLean pointedly cleared his throat. “Have you guys—”
“We’ll check,” Patterson said.
Lorber turned back to the screen and pressed the button. The next picture showed Preston’s left arm raised above his head.
“The position of the arm suggests he was either trying to reach up and out of his snowy grave to free himself, or he was deposited there after death and after the onset of rigor mortis. Daphne and I posit he was killed and laid on his side, like this, with his arm outstretched, something close to the fetal position, but with straight legs.” Lorber struck a pose to illustrate.
Wolf eyed Daphne and saw a satisfied twinkle in her eye as she watched her boss regurgitate her arguments from the pass.
Click. A picture of Warren Preston’s body on a gurney in Lorber’s County Hospital lab glowed on screen. The clothing had been cut away, exposing darkened flesh looking like wispy, opaque Saran Wrap over misshapen features.
“We don’t see any other wounds on the body so I’m declaring cause of death the head trauma. You don’t survive a hole like that in your skull.”
Click. The screen shifted to a white place-holder.
The motors hummed and sunlight blazed into the room.
“That’s it?” MacLean asked.
“For now.” Lorber walked to Patterson and handed her the laser pointer.
She closed her notebook and got up, sliding her slightly bulging belly around the fold-out table.
“You feeling all right?” Lorber asked quietly as he sat down on Wolf’s other side.
