She threaded her fingers through mine and pulled my hand over her abdomen. The tight bulge made my heart jump every time I felt it. I desperately hoped to feel a kick from her womb.
No.
She asked, "Could that be benign? Mariko and Welle being out together? Could that have been part of her psychotherapy?"
I thought about it.
"Could have been. Would have been unusual, but not unheard-of. Sometimes with kids, you find they talk more openly outside the office. I've done it with a couple of adolescents. It could have been that. At this point you have to give Welle the benefit of the doubt about the therapy. I keep reminding myself that Miko's parents thought he worked wonders with their daughter."
Lauren stopped and picked up a stick. She shook it in Emily's face and threw it deep into the meadow. My wife has a good arm, and the stick covered a lot of territory before it fell to the ground. Emily stared at her as though she were a moron. She laughed at the dog and said, "Take all the speculation to its most toxic conclusion, sweets, and it gives Welle a pretty darn good motive."
It was exactly what I'd been thinking since I'd waved good-bye to Kevin an hour earlier in downtown Boulder.
"You mean if we accept the proposition that he was involved with Mariko?"
"Yes. Absolutely. What if-I'm speculating here, so cut me some slack-what if Tami found out somehow that her friend was involved with Raymond Welle? Or what if Miko told Tami that she was screwing around with Welle and Welle suddenly saw some threat to this wonderful life he was building for himself? You know, his practice, his little radio show up there, his marriage even. It gives him a motive for the murders."
"That's a lot of ifs. But you're right. If he was sexually involved with Mariko, and if Tami knew about it, it would give Welle a motive."
"No one in Locard has discovered anything that gives anyone else a motive, have they?"
I shook my head.
"They haven't told us anything. But that doesn't mean they don't know something."
"So?"
I pressed.
"Who could corroborate what might have been going on with Miko and Welle?"
"Welle could."
"Yeah, and he's going to admit it. Right."
"I don't know who else would know. You have to assume that he would have been smart enough to keep it a secret."
"You know, none of this is in the records we got from Locard. None of it. The original investigation should have uncovered some of this information, even if it was just categorized as rumor. Phil Barrett and his detectives should have talked to all the girls' friends. All of them. One of them should have mentioned to the police the possibility that she had an older lover."
"Makes you wonder all over again, doesn't it? About the thoroughness of the initial investigation?"
"To tell you the truth, it makes me wonder more about Phil Barrett. And whether he was already in bed with Raymond Welle back then."
We heard a car approaching from behind us and moved off to the shoulder. I called Emily to my side while Adrienne plowed by in her Suburban. She honked.
We waved. I heard Jonas yell, "Emily, you want to come over and play?"
The dust settled around us, on us.
"You knew him back then-Raymond," I said to Lauren.
"And you've known a lot of violent criminals, right? Do you think he could have done it?"
"What? Screwed one of his patients? Or murdered two high school girls?"
"I don't know. Take your pick."
We walked a good ten paces before she responded again.
"My answer is that… he wouldn't have suffered a single night of guilt for being unfaithful to Gloria.
Would he have done it with a sixteen-year-old? I really hope not. And murder?
That's something else. I don't know." We walked a few more steps.
"And the very fact that I don't know is incredibly troubling."
"Was the marriage, Gloria and Rays… I don't know… stable?"
She shrugged. " I didn't know them that well as a couple. Gloria was a flirt, but that was just her nature. She may have said something to Jake about problems, but I think he would have told me. If they kept their problems up in Steamboat with them I'm not sure any of the family down here would have known."
The fax machine had been busy while we were out on our walk.
"Look at this," Lauren said, handing me three sheets, keeping one for herself.
"It appears that your reporter friend did exactly what she said she was going to do."
I was busy throwing together some lo mein with shrimp and bok choy. Dark, leafy greens had become as much of a staple in our diet as kibble was in Emily's. I dried my hands and examined the first page of the fax.
It was an article from that day's Washington Post. The byline was Dorothy Levin's. The headline was
"Trail of Questions Dogs Candidate's Finances." The focus of the piece was Raymond Welle. I read quickly and skimmed the continuation on the next page.
In the margin of the first sheet Dorothy had scribbled, "Et voila. Steamboat is breathtaking. Literally. There is no air up here." I nipped a page and said, "I wonder what this means?" I was reading another note from Dorothy, this one in the margin of the last sheet. It read, "Met with a guy today who couldn't help me with my stuff but seemed to know a lot about Gloria's death. Interesting… I'm going to follow up. Planning on seeing someone else, too." Lauren asked, "What?"
I pointed out Dorothy's margin note. Lauren shrugged.
"I bet there are a lot of people in Steamboat with a lot of opinions about Gloria Welle's murder."
"You're right." I smacked the paper.
"But at least Dorothy kept her word. I don't think my name is in the article," I said, smiling.
"You're much happier after reading that article than Raymond Welle is going to be." She read the fine print on the leading edge of the fax.
"This was sent from Steamboat. She's still in Colorado?" "The last time I talked with her she told me she had some interviews to do at the ski area on Monday. She was trying to decide whether to stay over or go back east for the weekend. I guess she stayed over." I shook the pages in my hand.
"How serious are these allegations she's making? Can you tell?"
"I don't really know the federal election laws very well, but if what the Post found is actually true, it will make Ray pretty uncomfortable. Especially the allegations about the Japanese contributions being tunneled through employees of the ski company. He won't want to deal with this so close to the election.
Not after what Clinton and Gore and Reno went through with those Buddhist nuns.
Remember that? And especially after he was one of the House members who was so instrumental in killing the latest campaign-reform bill."
My mind was still consumed by the possibility that Raymond Welle's biggest problem was an old murder investigation, not a new campaign-finance probe. I pointed to the sheet of paper Lauren still held in her left hand.
"What's on that last page? That's not from Dorothy?"
"No. This one's from Russ Claven. Remember our chauffeur to the Locard meeting in Washington? He and Flynn Coe are flying in tomorrow. They want to see us before they go up to Steamboat."
I spent a moment trying to remember some of the people I'd met at the meeting in Washington. " Flynn's the one with the eye patch?"
"Yes. And the great smile. She's the forensics-crime scene expert. Our case coordinator."
"What time do they get in?"
"Their flight gets in at eleven-thirty. According to this, they want directions here. To our house."
"Here? Where are they staying?"
"Doesn't say."
"Let me see that." She handed me the fax. The stationery was from Johns Hopkins Medical School. That meant Claven.
"Do you think they want to stay here, with us?"
"Doesn't say."
"We only have one guest room. Are they a couple?"
She pointed at the sheet in my hand and laughed.
"Doesn't say."
Lauren's day had fatigued her. While she went to bed early, I plopped in front of the word processor and typed a report for A. J. Simes. I wanted to bring her up to speed on my meeting with Kevin Sample and to relay his suspicions that Mariko Hamamoto might have been having an affair with an older man and that Mariko's adolescent peers considered Raymond Welle to be a likely suspect.