Wortham had managed to maneuver the vehicle only three blocks before he ran a stop sign at the edge of town while going almost fifty miles an hour. In the intersection, the big truck demolished a bright red Subaru. The driver of the Subaru didn't leave an inch of skid mark on the road. The driver of the Subaru never saw the big truck coming.
The driver of the Subaru was killed instantly.
The driver of the Subaru was Brian Sample's son, Dennis. He had been on his way home from a Drama Club meeting at the high school.
By delivering those beers and pouring those shots of tequila for Grant Wortham, Brian Sample had effectively handed a loaded gun to the man who would soon become his son's executioner.
On the ides of March, Sample sold the bar for less than he owed the bank. Weeks after that Brian attempted suicide, overdosing intentionally on Jack Daniel's, Valium, and penicillin. When he got out of the hospital, his wife, Leigh, kicked him out of the house.
Not too many more days passed before Brian Sample killed Gloria Welle.
The last clip on the videotape was a montage of scenes from Gloria's Denver funeral. A massive procession from the synagogue to the cemetery had tied up the metro area's streets for most of an hour. To get my mind off the tragedy of Brian Sample's family, I stuffed the second of the two videotapes into the VCR. This one would tell the story of the two dead girls.
I'd already crossed whatever line of psychological defense it required to think of them-deceased-as the "two dead girls," not as Tami and Miko. And, from the detailed presentation at the Locard briefing and from all the reading I'd done of the case documents, I already knew the details of the story that the television journalists were about to tell me, so little about the video anthology surprised me. My interest in reviewing the news reports was limited.
I had, in fact, only one goal. I wanted to discover the identity of the local residents who had been interviewed by the surprisingly tenacious reporter that Channel 9 had sent to Steamboat Springs to report on the developing story. I was hoping to uncover the names of some locals who seemed to have been well acquainted with Tami and Miko.
The first few reports had been taped in the late autumn days right after the girls had disappeared. The sheriff in Routt County, Phil Barrett, was a much smaller pork chop back then. He certainly gave a lot of interviews, and appeared to enjoy acting constipated around the media. One of his first impromptu press gatherings took place in front of the snowmobile trailer that had been discovered the day after the girls disappeared. The trailer had been found in the parking lot of a condominium near the gondola at the base of the ski resort.
The base area of Mount Werner was far from the Strawberry Park hot springs and even farther from the upper reaches of the Elk River Valley.
The mayor of Steamboat spoke on camera twice without revealing a thing. I assumed that her discretion soon caused her to be removed from a list of locals deserving airtime. Mr. and Mrs. Franklin made three different televised pleas for help and mercy, young Joey a silent witness in the background each time.
The Hamamotos, in contrast, never appeared on any of Channel 9's broadcasts.
One of the television reports had been taped at the high school. It piqued my interest. As I watched I wrote down the principal's name, those of two teachers who knew both girls, and the names of three classmates who identified themselves as good friends.
It was a start.
I glanced at my watch and noted that the first of my appointments with my rescheduled patients began in twenty minutes in my downtown office. Emily needed fresh water. I filled her bowl and hustled out the door.
Our home is at the end of a dirt and gravel lane that Lauren and I share with only two other residents-our neighbor across the way, Adrienne, and her son, Jonas. By default, any traffic on the lane is either heading to one of our homes-or more likely the case-the driver is lost. Vehicles almost never park on our lane. Not only is there no reason, but there is also no room. The lane is barely wide enough for two small cars, and the shoulders are as soft as cotton candy.
So I was perplexed by the white Nissan Pathfinder that I saw parked on the west shoulder of the lane when I climbed into my car to go to my office after lunch.
I was sure the car hadn't been there when I'd ridden my bike home an hour or so earlier. I slowed my own car to a crawl as I edged past it.
I didn't see a driver at first, so I stopped just opposite the car. A man suddenly sat up on the front seat. He appeared to be as startled as I was.
I waved hello and lowered my window. So did he.
"Hi," he said through a mouthful of food. He was listening to a country station on his radio.
I wasn't.
"Hello," I said.
"Can I help you?"
He swallowed and smiled.
"No. No. Don't think so."
The man was young, mid-twenties at the most. Wide shoulders, crew cut, small silver earring in his left ear. He held a drink cup from Wendy's in his right hand and a single French fry in the other. The French fry was long, laden with ketchup, and was drooping in the middle.
Farther down the lane Jonas was home alone with his nanny. I wasn't comfortable having this stranger parked down the road from their house when I wasn't around.
I said, "This is private property." "Really?" he said.
"I didn't know that. I'll just go, I guess." Although he wouldn't look me in the eye, he could hardly have been more polite.
I wrote the license-plate number of his SUV in the dust on my dashboard as I pulled away. I waited down near South Boulder Road until I saw his car leave the neighborhood.
I was late for my one-thirty patient.
I saw two patients in succession, after which I had a half-hour break-which barely gave me time to walk over to the Downtown Boulder Mall to pick up a part I'd ordered for my bike and grab something to eat to hold me over until dinner.
I rushed out the back door of my office and down the driveway to the street. In my rush I almost missed noticing the white Nissan Pathfinder that was parked at the curb in front of the building. When I saw it I stopped in my tracks and looked over my shoulder. My heart rate jumped as I walked up to the car. No driver was sitting inside. I looked for a Wendy's bag on the seat. The car was tidy.
I walked to the front bumper and checked the license plate. It matched the one I'd scribbled in my dashboard dust earlier that afternoon.
I immediately accepted the obvious: that the presence of this vehicle first near my home and next in front of my office was not a coincidence. The echo of yesterday's gunplay hadn't quieted in my head, so I spun on my heels to go back inside to call Sam Purdy and ask him to check out the license-plate number for me. That's when I saw the young man who had been sitting in the car on the lane earlier in the day. He was perched on the rickety porch swing on the rickety front porch of the little Victorian house that contained my psychology office.
He was reading the Boulder Planet.
I hustled up the concrete walk. He didn't notice my approach. He was engrossed in the newspaper, humming something. Something country.
I stood on one of the steps and said, "Hello again. I think you may be looking for me."
"What? Oh. Darn. It's you again. Hello." He made a mess of folding the newspaper and stood up. He towered over me by at least ten or eleven inches.
Subtracting for the stair tread I was on, that made him six six or so.
Involuntarily I took a sideways step away from him. I said, "Yes. It's me."
"I didn't see you coming. I saw your car in back and expected you would come out this other door, here." He pointed at the front door of the building, then proceeded to wipe his palms on the thighs of his khakis. Before he spoke, he swallowed.
"Hello, then. I'm, I'm Kevin." He held out his hand for me to shake.