Drifted

by Jeff Carson

Wolf ignored him, keeping his eyes forward.

  Patterson walked to the table at the front of the room, twisted the laptop toward her, and clicked on a file. A PowerPoint presentation lit up the screen—boxes containing names and places, interconnected with lines.

  “Overachieve much?” Rachette asked.

  Patterson ignored the laughter and pointed at the first name.

  “Chris Alamy. Alamy came to the station on the morning of Tuesday, March 18th, telling us that his boss, Warren Preston, was missing. When we pressed him on that, he told us he’d known that Preston had supposedly been on vacation in Arizona the week before. When he hadn’t returned on Monday, Alamy was concerned. When he hadn’t returned on Tuesday, he decided to go visit his home.”

  Patterson clicked. Warren Preston’s snow-buried vehicle came up onscreen.

  She pointed the laser at the car’s open windows. “Alamy told us he’d found the car this way and was worried. He went inside the house, found Preston’s personal effects, but no Preston.”

  Patterson flicked through pictures of Preston’s keys on the counter next to his cell phone and wallet. She left a picture up and paced side to side as she spoke.

  “Dr. Lorber found a single print on the driver’s-side door handle of Preston’s vehicle. We’ve yet to find a match. Doesn’t match Alamy. Doesn’t match any of the five employees at Preston Rock and Supply.” She stopped and raised a finger. “Doesn’t match the disgruntled former employee named Rick Welch.”

  Wolf knew all about Welch, though he hadn’t spoken to him during the initial investigation. Wolf had been on his forced vacation. He thought of evenings laced with nightmares, slick skin, hours on the toilet, and the shakes, and felt a sweat bead on his forehead.

  “I want to touch on Welch.” A man came up onscreen, pulling Wolf out of his memories.

  The picture had been taken from Facebook and showed him smiling with a raised beer. He was slim, with long brown hair, a short beard of the same color, and wore glasses over brown eyes.

  “When we visited Preston Rock and Supply, we were told that Warren Preston had fired Welch. Welch had worked as a mechanic at the rock yard and there were a lot of breakdowns of the large equipment and earth-movers over a short period of time. Welch said somebody was tampering with the equipment, but Preston thought he was a poor mechanic. They got into a fist fight, and Welch went home for good.”

  Patterson clicked back to her PowerPoint diagram and circled Welch’s name. “Rick Welch, our disgruntled mechanic, looks to be a good suspect, but his alibi is rock-solid.” She stopped pacing. “Sorry. Pardon the pun. Welch went to work as a bartender at Black Diamond Pizza after he was fired, and we’ve confirmed he was working all night on the Saturday in question.”

  A picture of Chris Alamy came onscreen. “We’re back to Chris Alamy. During the interview, he told us he met with Warren Preston Saturday night. Why? He says they needed to discuss the upcoming operations for the business, because Preston was going down to Arizona on a camping trip.” She clicked back to Preston’s car. “Obviously he never went. His car is filled with the snow that fell that Saturday night into Sunday.

  “When we went to Preston Rock and Supply and spoke to one Betsy Collworth, she swore she’d never heard about Warren Preston’s vacation plans. She contended that was very much out of the ordinary, and she flat-out told us she thought Chris Alamy was lying.”

  “What about the Chris Alamy interview?” MacLean said. “What exactly did he say again about what happened that night? He said he went to the Pony, late night. But his cell records show him going home earlier, right?”

  Patterson nodded. “Chris Alamy told us he met with Preston at the rock yard from around 6 to 7 p.m.” She picked up a sheet of paper from the table and read. “The records indicate he’s telling the truth there. His phone GPS has him traveling from home to the rock yard, arriving at the rock yard at 6:03 p.m., staying at there until 6:45, and arriving back home at 7:05 p.m. He stayed home until 10:36 p.m. when he drove to the Pony Tavern. He stayed at the Pony until 1:30 a.m., grabbing an Uber ride from one Matt Jenkins. Alamy left his car at the Pony that night. The next day he went back and got his car just before noon—took another Uber to get there. Comes back home. Stays there for the remainder of the day.”

  They sat in silence, digesting the information.

  “What about Alamy’s calls?” DA White asked. “Any leads there?”

  “Potentially.”

  “Meaning?”

  Patterson sucked in a breath. “The guy spends a lot of time on his phone. According to Chris himself, he helps run the day-to-day business of the rock yard. He’s on the phone all week to a hundred different people.”

  “What about Saturday?” MacLean asked.

  “Saturday not so much. He speaks to Warren Preston in the morning and makes no other calls all day.”

  Wolf narrowed his eyes. That piece of information had been bothering him for the past month and he’d voiced it before. “That seems oddly quiet,” he said.

  Patterson nodded and flipped to a page in her packet. “The previous weekend, Alamy makes six different calls to various local friends. Our investigation shows he’s a social man.”

  “But not the Saturday his boss goes missing,” MacLean said.

  “Right.”

  “How about the weekend before that?” Wolf already knew the answer, but he was following a thread of thought.

  Patterson flipped back several pages. “February … here. He makes nine calls.”

  “So what?” MacLean asked. “Where we going with this?”

  “So, he makes numerous calls before he goes out drinking for two weekends. Why not the Saturday night Preston goes missing? He went to the Pony to meet his pals and tie one on. But he makes no calls.”

  The room fell silent.

  Wolf stood. “Lorber, can you pull up Google Maps?”

  Lorber drew his phone like a gun. “Got it.”

  Wolf paced. “We know Alamy met with Preston at work on Saturday night, then left and went back home. How long does it take to drive from Preston Rock and Supply back to his house.?”

  Lorber looked at Patterson. “What’s Alamy’s address?”

  Patterson clicked some keys and read it off.

  Lorber nodded. “Twenty-four minutes, according to the app.”

  “Okay, write that down,” Wolf said to the room.

  “Got it,” Wilson said.

  “But it’s a sunny June morning right now,” Lorber said. “Alamy would have been driving at night, with a biblical snowstorm rolling in.”

  Wolf pointed toward Patterson. “But the phone GPS data said he left work at 6:45 and got home at what time?”

  Patterson flipped her pages. “He left at 6:45 and got home at 7:05.”

  “That matches what the app is telling us,” Wolf said.

  Lorber nodded. “The storm must not have hit yet.”

  “What time did it snow that night?” Wolf asked.

  “Pffft.” MacLean flailed his arms in the air. “What color outfit was Patterson wearing? How strong was the coffee in the squad room that day? Jesus, there’s no way to know.”

  “There’re numerous websites that document weather history and observations,” Lorber said.

  MacLean’s face turned red. “Pull it up.”

  Lorber stood, walked to the laptop and crouched over.

  They watched on the screen as he conducted his Google search. He clicked on a webpage run by the state of Colorado, then on Chautauqua Valley, Rocky Points, March, and scrolled down to the eighteenth.

  Rachette cleared his throat. “There’s another website that actually documents what Patterson was wearing—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Here,” Lorber scrolled down, showing the hourly weather observations. “It’s all here. Looks like the snow hit at around 11:05 p.m.” He looked up sharply.

  “Okay,” Wolf said. “We have Chris Alamy at home at 7:05. W
rite that down.”

  “Got it.”

  “Time to get back to Preston Rock and Supply again?”

  “Twenty-four minutes,” Lorber said.

  “Time from Preston Rock and Supply to Warren Preston’s house?”

  Lorber typed on the laptop. They were all watching on the screen now. “Twenty-nine minutes.”

  “Now let’s do Warren Preston’s to the Huerfano Pass road gate.”

  “Shit. How do we do that?”

  Patterson pointed. “Do the intersection with County 707 and Huerfano Pass road. That’s no more than one mile from the gate.”

  Lorber typed it in and a line shone on the map. “That’s forty-two minutes.”

  “And now, from there back to Chris Alamy’s house?”

  “Twenty-three minutes.”

  They looked at Wilson.

  Wilson scribbled. “Twenty-five plus twenty-nine plus forty-two plus twenty-three minutes …”

  “One hundred and nineteen minutes,” Lorber said. “Two hours’ driving time.” His forehead crinkled. “So what?”

  They looked at Wolf.

  “That’s how they did it,” he said. “Alamy and our partial-fingerprint unknown. They killed Warren Preston, bashing his head in with a rock from the rock yard. From that point on, they started thinking ahead. They knew we’d be able to read Alamy’s cell-phone data, so they drove to Alamy’s and left the phone at his house.

  “The first leg was Alamy’s car. The other guy followed. They had to drop off Chris’s car and his phone, make it look like he went home. So they did that and returned to Preston Rock and Supply. They loaded Preston’s body into the back of second guy’s car. Probably a pickup. One of them drove Preston’s car up to Preston’s house. The other followed. They dumped Preston’s car, wiped it down, and opened all the windows to make sure the coming snow would wipe out any remaining forensic trace evidence. But Alamy’s friend left a partial on the handle.

  “Then they were in the truck with the body in back. They drove from Preston’s, up to Huerfano Pass to the gate. They hiked up the hill, put down the body, then drove back to Chris’s house.”

  Lorber folded his arms and put a long finger over his lips. “Chris left work and got home at 7:05. His phone was next on the move at what time?”

  “10:36,” Patterson said.

  “That’s one hour thirty-one minutes total time. One hundred and nineteen minutes gives them only twelve minutes to do their business, like loading Preston’s body into the back of the truck, wiping down Preston’s car when they drop it off at Preston’s, and burying the body up at the pass. That seems too tight.”

  “The body was dumped,” Daphne said. “There were feet of snow beneath him. They tossed him into a drift, probably kicked some snow on top of him, and then the storm buried him further. Otherwise, he would have been deeper.”

  Lorber looked at Daphne and nodded. “She’s right. That takes few minutes to carry him up the hill, a few seconds to drop him. It fits.”

  The intern looked out the window ignoring Lorber’s appraising gaze.

  “Plus, the storm hadn’t hit yet, not until around 11 p.m.,” Wolf continued, “and you’re using an app that calculates drive times by using the exact speed limit. I’d say they probably used the speed limit in town since they had a body in back, but once out on the roads they were hopped up on adrenaline and driving fast. I’d say they had at least twenty-five, thirty minutes to do their dirty work between driving.”

  Wolf looked at White and MacLean. “Chris Alamy. It was always him. It fits too perfectly.”

  White smoothed his tie, staring into nothing. “He’s lawyered up. This is all circumstantial. We need to match the rock buried in Preston’s skull with one sitting in Preston Rock and Supply, three months ago mind you.” He shook his head.

  “So, we search Preston Rock and Supply for the rock in question,” Wolf said. “We also search Alamy’s house for solid evidence.”

  “Specifically, what are we searching for at his house?”

  Wolf shrugged. “A red flagstone with blood on it. Clothing with blood. Something.”

  The DA exhaled. “Write it up.”

  Chapter 14

  Wolf looked to Patterson.

  She nodded and walked up the center stairs. “I’m on it.”

  The room burst into movement as people stood up.

  Wolf nodded to Rachette. “We’ll roll once those warrants are ready.”

  “Got it.”

  It felt good to be in motion, on the hunt again. The memory of his situation-room entrance was shrinking into the past.

  “Wolf!”

  MacLean craned a finger.

  “See you in a few.” Rachette went up the steps.

  “What’s up?”

  “I need to see you in my office.” MacLean strode out the doors to the squad room.

  Wolf followed, feeling like a kid being called to the principal’s office.

  They walked inside and MacLean shut the door.

  “Sit.”

  Wolf did as he was told and waited.

  MacLean walked the perimeter of the office, twisting shut the blinds, then exhaled hard as he sat. His eyes wandered the room for a few moments and landed on Wolf. “Panic attack.”

  The words hit Wolf like a punch in the stomach, but he didn’t move.

  MacLean bridged his fingers and studied him. “I was shocked to hear that. But I’m sure not as shocked as you were, Dave.”

  Wolf said nothing.

  MacLean stood and turned to the exterior window. “Well, at least it makes sense why you left the hospital, stole a deputy’s vehicle, and drove away without explanation after having a heart attack.”

  MacLean turned back to him. “You know, Bonnie had these episodes for a while. A few years ago, she got stressed out by the crash in the real-estate market and went cra … shit, sorry. She had a few of the episodes that you had yesterday. It wasn’t fun to watch my wife go through that.”

  Wolf looked past him to dark clouds building in the southern sky.

  “Then she got scared that the attacks were going to keep happening, which led to more attacks. That only exacerbated her problems. But in the end, it was a pretty simple fix. You want to know what helped her?”

  Wolf studied a bird circling over the forest.

  “Talking about it.”

  Wolf nodded.

  “Not with me. With a professional.” MacLean sat back down in his chair. “So I’ve set up your first session, which starts in”—he checked his watch—“forty-five minutes.”

  Wolf shot him a glare. “We have a case cracking wide open.”

  “Yeah, and a detective doing the same.”

  They stared hard at one another.

  “I haven’t slept lately. I hadn’t eaten enough yesterday. I had hiked up the mountain behind my house when Patterson called me into the office. The doctor said it could have been physical stress.”

  “You haven’t slept in how long?”

  “I don’t know. A couple days? A week?”

  MacLean’s eyelids slid down.

  “A few months.”

  “A few months? Jesus.”

  “My point is, it’s physical. I know what I have to do—get more sleep. Eat better.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve seen your Buddhist monk diet lately, and the way you’ve been exercising, you should be sleeping twelve hours a day, not having panic attacks.”

  Wolf sucked in a breath. “Are we done here?”

  “Nope.” MacLean stood, rounded the desk and sat on the edge in front of him. “If word were to get out that a detective suffering panic attacks was walking around town with a gun on his hip, the community would want my head. Both of our heads. You know White’s already jumpy with the election. Do you think he’d willingly back an investigation where you search Alamy’s house one day after your episode?”

  Wolf said nothing.

  MacLean sighed. “Nobody knows about what happened yesterday. They thi
nk you had an unspecified heart ‘event’ and went home on doctor’s orders. Although, I think the more people talk about it, the less believable that explanation becomes.”

  MacLean tilted his head. “There are two ways this can go. One: You go to the therapy session in thirty minutes down the street at the Old Bank Building. You kick this thing and that’s that.”

  “And the second way?”

  MacLean raised his eyebrows and let silence hang.

  Wolf sat back in resignation.

  “Thirty minutes,” MacLean said. “Ten a.m. The Old Bank Building. His name is Dr. Hawkwood. Some new kid in town.”

  Wolf blinked. “Kid?”

  “Younger man. A certified psychologist.”

  “Certified. Impressive.”

  “Comes highly recommended.”

  “By whom?”

  MacLean shrugged. “The receptionist at the Old Bank Building.”

  Chapter 15

  Patterson stepped out of the elevator and walked fast down the hall, the signed warrants in hand. She slowed at Wolf’s closed office door, then spotted him leaving MacLean’s aquarium at the end of the hall.

  Her boss’s expression made her halt. He was stretching his face, trying to relax the tension in it, and with little success.

  He saw her and wiped his nose. “What’s up? You get the warrants?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. You guys go ahead without me. Take Wilson for extra muscle, just in case. Keep me posted.”

  He walked past her and went into his office.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Down in the squad room, Rachette was standing next to Charlotte’s desk at the head of the room, which meant they’d seen the interaction.

  “Got ’em. Wilson, you’re coming with us!”

  Wilson was the undersheriff, ranking a full few levels above her, but he stood from his desk and nodded without a second’s hesitation.

  Yates finished typing something on his desktop computer and stood up. “Coming.”

  “What was with that?” Rachette crowded close to her, sipping coffee and looking down the hall toward Wolf’s office.

  “He’s staying here.”