Harm's Reach

by Alex Barclay

She thanked the same God she had once cursed for taking away her mother and her sister before their time. Her father was a different story, he had danced with death from the moment he brought a bottle of whiskey to his lips. He was no match for even the slowest of the Devil’s quick steps.

  I am one of those people from those blighted families, my life’s journey a series of join-the-dots tragedies.

  She put her foot on the gas.

  But I’m alive. Thank you, God. Thank you. This is not my time.

  New York

  Robert Prince’s vast TriBeCa office was lit only by the antique desk lamp on his custom four-thousand-dollar desk. There was one framed photo on top – his wife, Ingrid. He sometimes Googled her, just for fun. He had been reading a gossip piece on them from two weekends previously, their ‘rumored baby news!’, and was now looking at a Tumblr page dedicated to her early modeling work, created by someone who was probably in junior high at the time. Robert wondered if it was easier for a man like that to idolize an image from the past; was the extra remove a small way of justifying why he couldn’t have her? Not because a woman like that would always be untouchable to a man like him, but simply because she no longer existed in that form. This man had described her as a woman of exceptional beauty. Robert felt a small stab of envy that it was not he who had formulated this perfect description of his wife, that he had not presented it to her himself, maybe on a hand-written card on a tray at breakfast time. He loved her like no other woman. Not that there had been many. He had never been a ladies’ man. He respected them too much. He was Ingrid’s man.

  His cell phone rang and the face of exceptional beauty flashed on the screen. He picked up. ‘Hey, sweetheart.’

  ‘It’s me!’ said Ingrid at the same time.

  Robert loved how she announced herself on the phone. Of course it was her. But she spoke every time as if it would be a surprise to him. Maybe it was something about her bouncy Nordic twang.

  ‘I just got a PDF of our magazine spread,’ she said. ‘The official announcement. Oh my goodness, listen to this: “The Baby Prince”! How pregnancy suits me. They call you my “besotted husband”; I have “tamed Robert Prince”!’

  ‘I am your besotted husband,’ said Robert. ‘But can you tame a mouse?’

  ‘Mouse!’ said Ingrid. ‘Tiger.’

  Robert laughed. ‘With you, I’m a mouse.’

  ‘Well, journalists see you in a different way …’ she said.

  ‘As they see you …’ said Robert.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘The photos are great,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘Good, good,’ said Robert.

  ‘I have to warn you, though, they’ve used that old shot of you with the Lotus—’

  ‘Well, you can get them to remove it – I presume the purpose of the PDF was for pre-approval.’ Robert had a collection of eleven historic racing cars. The Lotus Series 2 Super Seven had been his favorite. And it had been totaled on New Year’s Day, through no fault of his.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Ingrid. ‘But I love it. It just captures you so well. You look so happy.’

  ‘Well, now I feel a little sadder,’ said Robert.

  ‘It’s only a car, everyone’s alive,’ she said.

  ‘I know that,’ said Robert. ‘I know. Speaking of precious lives, is Laura back?’

  ‘No,’ said Ingrid, ‘but I was expecting her about an hour ago.’

  ‘You didn’t go to the airport?’ said Robert.

  Ingrid laughed. ‘No, Robert. You’re very sweet, though. She was getting a cab. She insisted.’

  ‘And you haven’t heard from her?’ said Robert. ‘And she’s late?’

  ‘No, but I’m sure she’s fine.’

  ‘I tried her phone; it was diverted to voicemail.’

  ‘She was probably in the air,’ said Ingrid.

  ‘I worry,’ said Robert.

  ‘I know. But there’s no need.’ Ingrid paused. ‘I miss you.’

  ‘No – you miss New York.’

  ‘What?’ said Ingrid. ‘That’s not true. What are you talking about? Are you OK?’

  ‘I am,’ said Robert. ‘Of course I am. I love you, sweetheart. Sleep tight. I’m going to finish up here shortly. Text me when Laura gets in.’

  ‘OK – sleep well,’ said Ingrid. ‘Talk tomorrow. Love you.’

  Robert ended the call and stared out into the night. He looked down at the letter on his desk. It was dated August 1st, 1919, written by his great-grandfather, the source of much of his wealth, copper-mining star, Patrick Prince.

  Dear Fr Dan,

  I hope this finds you in good health. Thank you most sincerely for accepting Walter into your community for the coming months. Though now just sixteen years old, he is already showing signs of acuity and I have no doubt that, in business, his efforts will bear fruit. Please do not let that blind you. I want you to put him to work on the ranch, in the barns, and tending to those less fortunate. I want him to rise with the sun, and to brighten with it.

  Please help me, Dan, please help my son. As you know, I made my fortune mining the depths, drawing forth from the earth to provide for my family and to allow others to provide for theirs. However, my keen sense of what lies hidden has failed me in matters personal. From the shadows, my reasoning would be that the reach of good men is often hindered. In contrast, I fear that harm’s reach has no bounds, and – far worse – invisible fingers.

  All the best,

  Pat

  Family was important to Robert Prince. Life was important. He considered birth, death and after-life carefully. He slid open his drawer, took out his Bible and set it on top of the letter. He let his hands rest on the black leather cover, his fingertips on the debossed golden letters. All over the world, people were reading this same text and finding different messages.

  Different messages.

  Robert opened the Bible on a random page. He wanted to find the right words. Wasn’t that all anyone wanted? To know … to feel … the right words.

  2

  Special Agent Ren Bryce leaned over the map that was spread out on a table in Wells Fargo in Conifer, Jefferson County. It was two thirty p.m., she was tired, her sleep had been haunted by the braless support-group lady with the insightful mind. She was haunted now by lunch smells – tuna sandwiches and broccoli soup. There was also a hint of gasoline in the air.

  ‘I am on a losing streak,’ said Ren. ‘I’ve never felt less deserving of the title special … or agent. Today I have been an agent of zero. We could have our own true crime show – The After-The-Fact Files.’

  ‘Harsh,’ said Cliff. ‘We’re fifty miles from base camp … we’re not The Avengers.’

  Ren made a face. ‘I like to think of us that way …’

  ‘Well, I will always assemble wherever you are,’ said Cliff.

  For twenty-five years, Cliff had been with the JeffCo Sheriff’s Office, but, along with Ren and eight others, now worked for the multi-agency Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force in Denver. Cliff had a gift for making witnesses and suspects believe he was one of them: weary, disgruntled, disappointed with life, put-upon by authority figures. He once told her that sometimes he felt they revealed their secrets to him because they believed he would bury the information out of solidarity. He managed to convince even the brightest felons that he operated under duress, and really, if he could just catch a break, he’d be running free, happy and lawless. Cliff James – warm, huggable, big-bear, chuckling, family-man Cliff, who cared about justice more than most – could have missed a vocation as a Hollywood star.

  ‘We need to assemble where the bandits are,’ said Ren. The bandits had first drawn Safe Streets upon themselves one month earlier. This was their fourth strike; always the same M.O.: they entered the bank wearing beanies pulled down to their eyebrows and snowboarding masks pulled up to their noses – the ones with graphic prints that gave them the lower jaws of sharks. Funny for snowboarding with your buddies, not so much for bank cus
tomers confronted with a blur of sharp teeth, wild eyes and gunfire. Safe Streets could have called them the Jawsome Bandits, but that was too complimentary. They were, instead, the Shark Bait Bandits.

  The first robber would spray the ceiling with bullets from a semi-automatic, then jump onto a counter or a table. He roared and growled and, as customers dropped to the floor, the second guy moved to the counter. He would show the cashier a note requesting cash, as if the gunfire was too subtle a message. The note also offered a bullet to the head in exchange for a dye pack or a tracking device.

  Cliff rested his elbow on Ren’s shoulder.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to a small little enclave of houses on the map, ‘Iroquois Heights.’

  Ren had Iroquois heritage; it gave an exotic twist to looks whose ethnic origins were a mystery to many.

  She smiled. ‘It’s a sign! Hey – you are too big to lean on me,’ she said, turning to look up at him.

  ‘I was going easy,’ said Cliff, standing up.

  ‘Unlike …’ said Ren. She nodded toward the corner where Gary Dettling stood with his hands on his hips, staring over at them. He was the only man she knew who could put his hands on his hips and not look ridiculous.

  ‘He is not a happy man today,’ said Cliff.

  ‘And when you say “today”, you mean “for quite some time” …’ said Ren.

  ‘He’s coming our way,’ said Cliff. ‘Eyes on the map.’

  Jefferson County stretched westward from the city of Denver up into the mountains bordering Gilpin County, Clear Creek and Park. It was seven hundred and seventy square miles of every crime and mentality that came from spanning big cities and boondocks.

  The Conifer locals unlucky enough to have been present when their Wells Fargo was hit were feeling a little plagued. It was not long ago they had been hit by a wildfire that moved as if it had plans to rescale the town and bring it back to its roots. Over the years, Conifer had been expanding slowly, adding grocery stores, gas stations and charmed out-of-towners who settled in the foothills until the snow startled them out of their mountain fantasy and into Kendall Auto Sales looking for tire chains.

  But the unpredictable snowfall was nothing compared to the onslaught of the wildfire. It roared and spat at them for two weeks, darkening their skies, driving them from their beds or keeping them lying awake in them, fearing for everything. And then, it was gone. The fire died before it took away a single home. The firefighters had not performed a miracle as some people saw it. The firefighters had carefully strategized, and won a war; only the charred landscape bore the scars.

  Detective Denis Kohler from the Sheriff’s Office walked over to Ren, Cliff and Gary. Kohler was tall and flat-bodied, with a lean to one side and a slight bow to his legs. His brown hair flopped across the right side of his forehead and he often ran his fingers through it, even though it was too short to get in his eyes.

  ‘OK, our guys followed your bandits ten miles,’ he said. ‘Looked like they were headed for Bailey, but they lost them. The car was found on a service road, torched. They made off on foot.’

  ‘That’s new for them …’ said Ren.

  ‘Well, they had the full weight of the JeffCo Sheriff’s Office bearing down on them this time,’ said Kohler, smiling.

  Ren laughed. She liked Kohler. ‘Did they find anything in the car?’ she said.

  ‘It’s destroyed,’ said Kohler. ‘Looks like they crashed first. We’re waiting for it to be towed.’

  ‘And it was taken from the parking lot at the spa outside the business center …’ said Gary.

  ‘Yup, a lady customer came out – car was gone,’ said Kohler.

  Ren shook her head. ‘I don’t know why women feel the need to go to spas, said no woman ever.’

  ‘What about cameras?’ said Gary.

  ‘We don’t have a lot to go on with this route,’ said Kohler. ‘We’ve spoken with CDOT, we’ll see what they’ve got.’

  ‘Gary,’ said Cliff, ‘I have that appointment, so, if you’re all OK here?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Gary, ‘go ahead.’

  Cliff hugged Ren.

  ‘Bye, big guy,’ she said. ‘We shall avenge another day.’

  ‘Take care, Cliff,’ said Kohler.

  Ren stared down at the map. ‘Is this the service road?’

  Kohler looked at where she was pointing. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you mind if Gary and I swung by?’ said Ren. ‘That’s right by Pine Gulch Cemetery. They could have gone through there, come out the other side and grabbed a car from that garage.’ She pointed again. ‘If they did that, they could have driven right down Pine Valley Road. They may not have been heading for Bailey after all. Or at the very least, Pine Valley Road was a panic move …’

  ‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Kohler.

  ‘Gary?’ said Ren. Earth to Gary.

  He nodded. ‘Sure. Great.’

  No car had been stolen from the garage by Pine Gulch Cemetery. Gary swung back around and they drove down Pine Valley Road, past where the Sheriff’s Office detectives and crime scene investigators were waiting for a tow truck to take the charred shell of the getaway car back to the lab.

  ‘That’s the spa lady’s …’ said Ren. ‘She probably came out of there with her little disposable flip-flops … or flaming red upper lip … mascara under her eyes, desperate to get home before she met someone.’

  Gary tuned Ren out a lot. But today, the radio wasn’t even on. She stared out the window. The road was quiet, dusty, and bordered by pines, but if you looked through them, you could see where the wildfire had taken many of them away. They drove for fifteen minutes in silence; the type that only Gary could create – a very specific and dense one.

  Breathe.

  They rounded a bend onto Stoney Pass Road and drove a little further.

  ‘Hey,’ said Ren.

  Gary had no reaction.

  You are a very distracted man, lately. ‘Slow down,’ said Ren.

  Up ahead, a white Hyundai Accent was parked at the side of the road. The passenger door was closed, the driver’s door, half open.

  ‘We could be in luck,’ said Ren, sitting forward.

  Gary slowed.

  ‘Rental plates,’ said Ren. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa … what the hell? That’s a body …’

  Gary cut the engine. They jumped out of the SUV and drew their weapons. Slowly, they walked toward the car.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ said Ren.

  She had been shot in the head at close range; there was little left of her face. She had also been shot in the chest, her ruined torso half out of the car; one arm dangling down, the ends of her pale brown hair trailing in the dirt.

  ‘She hasn’t been here long,’ said Ren. She checked her watch. It was 15.48.

  ‘One to the head, one to the chest,’ said Gary.

  ‘Looks like whoever shot her was standing in the open passenger door. Look at the spatter.’

  Gary nodded.

  ‘The glove box is open,’ said Ren, ‘maybe she was trying to get something out of there … a weapon … a purse … Or maybe the shooter was.’

  ‘They tried to wipe it down,’ said Gary. ‘Carjacking?’ he said. ‘Could be connected to the robbery. The bandits ditched their car, flagged her down, maybe … didn’t take the car because they were disturbed? Or panicked?’

  ‘Would a woman pull over if she was alone?’

  ‘Unless she wasn’t alone …’

  ‘Hey,’ said Ren, pointing to the ground. ‘Cell phone.’

  She put on gloves and picked it up. When she stood up, she looked into the car again. All at once, she could feel her heart lurch, her legs weaken, her stomach turn.

  Oh, no. No. No. No.

  She stared up at Gary. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘She’s pregnant.’

  3

  Janine Hooks, Jefferson County Cold Case detective, walked into her office for the last time. On her desk was a potted plant, wrapped in tissue, a burst of pink in the dimness of a Seven
ties-style office in shades of brown, with half-closed vertical blinds that, even if open, would reveal nothing more scenic than the parking lot of the JeffCo government complex.

  Janine often sat in the visitor’s chair at her small desk with her back to the door … and from behind, got mistaken for a man. Or worse still, a boy. ‘Son, I’m looking for …’

  But it didn’t make her move. She didn’t want to watch the passing parade, she didn’t want to be watched. And now she would be; her boss had told her she had to move down the hallway to an open-plan, fluorescent-bright office with three other investigators. It felt like a step backwards and she was experiencing unpleasant cubicle memory. She wondered was he trying to force her into the world; a world to which she had been an adjunct since 2005, when she’d solved her first cold case in between her regular workload. When the sergeant who appointed her retired, he took her aside a few minutes before his speech.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something,’ he had said, ‘and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. Years ago, I walked into that tidy little cubicle of yours, and I see all these photos of dogs. I mean, we’d been working together a while at this stage, but it was just this particular day, I walked in and I really looked at everything you had around you, all the things that were dear to you. And there’s this one photo of a dog with a bone. And the light in his eyes was a spectacular thing. He was fierce. He was gripping this bone, no one would take it away from him, and he was so goddamn happy. And I swear to God, I thought – that is Janine Hooks.’

  Janine smiled at the memory. Later that night, he had mentioned her again – in front of the entire office, as part of his leaving speech. ‘I came in one day and Janine had her arm stuck right in to the back of the refrigerator,’ he said, ‘and she was pulling something out … I don’t know what the hell it was, but it was slimy, it was green, and it stank. And it was nothing to do with her. It wasn’t her mess to clean up. But she did it. Sure, that innocent little face of hers was looking a little screwed up, but that was it: no bitching, no whining. That is why Janine Hooks gets to wear the cold case crown. And she wears it so well.’