“So you’ve had revenge in mind from the start.”
“Yes, if by revenge you mean justice,” Waverly said. “My goal is to ruin this guy’s life and get him off the streets. If that can be done through the cops, then great. That’s my route of choice. If it has to be done through alternative means, though, then I’m prepared to do that as well.”
Su-Moon let the corner of her mouth turn up.
“Don’t let me get on your bad side.”
Waverly frowned.
“You know, from the beginning I’ve really had no second thoughts about killing the guy if it came to that,” she said. “Now that I’m getting close, I’m not so sure I’m up for it.”
“What we need to do is figure out a way to trap him,” Su-Moon said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. There must be a way, though, if we think hard enough.”
They walked in silence.
“Why didn’t Emmanuelle meet you in San Francisco? Is she dropping out?”
“No, she’s playing a role.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we had two murders to cover at the same time,” Waverly said. “I went to San Francisco, Emmanuelle came to Denver.”
“She’s here?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she doing?”
“She hired a dick named Bryson Wilde to investigate the murder here,” Waverly said.
“Why would he take the case?” Su-Moon said.
“Money.”
“I know, money, what I’m say is, why wouldn’t he scratch his head and say, What’s your interest in all of this? What do you care about who killed someone?”
“Okay, I see what you mean,” Waverly said. “She made up a cover.”
The words hung.
“Which is what?”
“Which is she pretended like she saw it from a distance, pretty much like what actually happened to her in Chicago. She’s hoping that the investigator will crack it. If that happens, her plan is to view the guy from a distance, without him knowing it, and see if he’s the same guy she saw in Chicago.”
Silence.
“If she saw him back in Chicago, maybe he saw her too.”
Waverly nodded.
“That’s possible. So?”
“So, what if he sees her by some random happening while he’s out walking around?” Su-Moon said. “What if that happens and she doesn’t know it happened?”
The city was full of life.
Cars moved.
People moved.
Everything made its own special little noise.
Su-Moon stopped, then looked into Waverly’s eyes. “Have you ever considered that maybe Emmanuelle is the killer?”
Waverly laughed.
“Good one,” she said. “How do we trap Bristol? That’s what I want to know.”
Su-Moon grabbed Waverly’s elbow.
“I’m serious,” she said. “She was in the vicinity when Carmen got killed. After you found out about her, she got you to promise not to tell the police about her.”
Waverly started to open her mouth.
Su-Moon cut her off.
“Hear me out,” she said. “Another murder happened in New York, where she was-again. She paid all the bills for all the investigations, including the investigators themselves. Maybe that was her way of being sure they didn’t find anything, or if they did, they only told her about it and not you.”
Waverly wasn’t impressed.
“We need to trap Bristol,” she said. “That’s what we need to focus on.”
Su-Moon frowned.
“Maybe she’s been tagging along not to help you but to be sure you don’t get anywhere,” Su-Moon said.
“Stop it.”
“I’m just saying-”
“And I’m saying I heard you,” Waverly said. “So stop saying. Enough’s enough. Emmanuelle didn’t kill anyone. She couldn’t hurt a fly.”
123
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Fifteen miles west of Denver, where the flatlands collide with the Rockies, a frothing whitewater river snakes out of the mountains into Clear Creek Canyon. Next to the river is a twisty, dangerous road. With a dead body in the trunk, River took that road west between vertical rock walls, deeper and deeper into the mountains.
Ten miles into it he turned right on 119.
Eight miles later, an abandoned road appeared on the left. The mouth was barely recognizable as something other than overgrown vegetation. The guts of the road disappeared over a jagged ridge into thick lodgepole pines.
River headed down it.
He hadn’t been this way in years.
Five miles down that road was a long-abandoned gold mine, filled with thirty or more dangerous vertical shafts that disappeared straight down into the belly of the world.
River used to come here as a kid.
He and Butch Bannister would dare each other to jump over the shafts. Some were narrow and easy. Others were a whole different world.
River pulled next to one of the wider shafts and stepped out of the car.
The thin mountain air was ten degrees cooler than Denver, maybe fifteen.
With the clouds and the wind, it was almost cold.
He opened the trunk and pulled the body out, tipping it over the lip and letting it drop to the ground with a thud. He grabbed the feet and dragged it towards the hole, stopping two yards short.
He looked at January.
“I’ll bet she’s not the first to be dropped down here,” he said. “I’ll bet she lands on ten more just like her.”
“Be careful. Don’t get too close.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I used to play here as a kid.”
He got behind the body and pushed it with his foot, closer and closer to the opening, then in.
The body banged against the sides on the way down.
It was a familiar sound.
River had dropped five hundred rocks down the shafts.
The sound was always the same.
In spite of the chill, his brow was moist. He wiped it with the back of his hand and looked around.
The world was silent.
Not a sound came from anywhere.
“She’s in China,” he said. “There’s one thing we don’t have to worry about, and that’s anyone ever finding her.”
January wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m sorry we had to do this.”
River shrugged.
“It was her fault,” he said. “She was the one who got all fancy with the binoculars. She’s the one who fought back when she shouldn’t have. Screw her. She got what she deserved.”
January picked up a rock and threw it in the shaft.
“What’d you do here as a kid?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you used to come and play here as a kid. What did you do?”
“We jumped over the shafts.”
January smiled.
“No way.”
“Yeah, I’m serious,” River said.
“Show me.”
“Show you?”
“Yes.”
He tilted his head.
“And what’s my reward, if I do?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Be careful because there won’t be any take-backs.”
“Stop stalling and show me.”
River looked around. There were a good dozen shafts in sight, all smaller than the one in front of him, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of three good-sized steps, ten or eleven feet.
“This one will do,” he said.
“Go for it.”
He walked back, judged the distance until it burned into his brain, then sprinted for it with everything he had. At the very last inch of ground, he planted a foot and then catapulted his body high and twisting, not in a way to land on his feet, only in a way to clear the mark.
He landed on the other side with a thud and rolled.
He got up, brushed the dirt off his pants and walked towards January with a grin.
“I never did that one before,” he said. “It always scared me too much as a kid.”