She asked if I was okay. I asked about Kimber.
I could tell from her expression that she was hoping that it was I who knew about Kimbers well-being.
"We don't know," she said.
"We lost contact with him."
A large picture window looked down the lane from one end of the master bedroom.
For a split second Ray Welle stood in that window and peeked through the drawn curtains. His eyes seemed to be searching, until finally they found mine and locked. He blinked twice and shook his head maybe an inch each way.
"There he is, in the bedroom window," I said, just as the curtain fell back into place.
"I saw him. He's gone now," said Percy.
On the roof Russ Claven had started gesturing frantically toward the far end of the house. The side closest to the deck. The side nearest the woods.
My brain was working faster than my mouth.
"No!" was all I could spit at first.
"No!"
Percy Smith stared at me.
"What the-?"
In less than two seconds Ray Welle was out on the deck, firing wildly toward the police cars. I ducked from the fusillade and said, "Percy! He wants you to kill him! Don't do it!"
"What?" One of the cops said he had the target.
I yelled, "He wants you to kill him! Don't do-" The cop fired his rifle. The other cop pulled his trigger so closely afterward I could barely feel a gap between the concussions of the blasts. I watched in horror as Raymond Welle tumbled over the edge of the deck and landed with a thick thud on the lawn.
I'd imagined the scene so many times, I felt as though I'd been there before.
Percy Smith said, "Hold fire. Get the ambulance up here." To Percy I said, "Its exactly what he wanted you to do."
Percy replied disdainfully.
"What? You think we shot him? He's not dead. We fired way above his head. Just scared him half to death." To his officers he said, "Keep him in your sights."
Russ had scampered down the roof. I watched as he dropped from one of the copper gutters to the deck just as Ray Welle was struggling to his knees, searching the ground for his handgun. Russ vaulted the deck and flattened the congressman before he had a chance to retrieve the weapon.
Flynn grabbed my hand and said, "Come on. Let's go find Kimber."
I ran after her back into the house.
Flynn and I found Kimber propped up against a wall in the foyer of the house.
He'd been shot once in the left shoulder. From the mess on the floor around him I assumed he had lost more than a little blood.
When I dropped to my knees by his side he said, "I told you I was dying. I just didn't expect it to be so traumatic." He was calm as he made his joke. The symptoms of panic had evaporated.
Flynn took one of his hands and said, "You're not dying, Kimber. You hear me?"
Without turning to face me she ordered, "Alan, get Russ in here."
Kimber's voice was tentative and weak.
"God help me. She's calling a pathologist. Maybe I'm already dead."
I was encouraged that he was continuing to find humor in his predicament, but Flynn was determined in her response to him.
"You are absolutely not dying, Kimber. You just keep breathing. We'll do the rest."
As Kimber opened his mouth to reply, his head fell suddenly to his chest. The whine of an ambulance siren filled the narrow valley. Flynn mouthed, "Hurry!" I ran to fetch Russ and to guide the paramedics back to Kimber.
Once my quick errand was completed Percy Smith wouldn't let me back into the house. He left me leaning against the hood of one of the police cruisers as he explained why I couldn't go back inside. My adrenaline was spent. I had barely enough energy to stay vertical, let alone to argue with him. He moved me into the backseat. I half expected to be cuffed but I wasn't. At least not right away.
I dozed off in the back of Percy Smith's police department SUV on the drive into Steamboat Springs. Once inside the building I fell sound asleep while the local authorities were assembling the cast they had chosen to interview me for details about how Kimber Lister and I had spent the previous twelve hours or so.
When I was finally approached again it was by a Routt County sheriff's investigator who was flanked by both a Steamboat Springs police detective and an FBI agent. I shook myself from my stupor and asked about Kimbers condition.
None of the the cops answered me. I asked about Kimbers health. They declined to tell me that, either. Their demeanor convinced me that I might still be in some legal jeopardy for defending myself against Phil Barrett up in the blow down so I asked to be allowed to make a phone call. They exchanged wary glances before they assented. I used the opportunity to phone Lauren. She listened to my lengthy story with remarkable patience and restraint, inquired twice about my well-being, and ordered me not to talk to anyone until she was by my side. She promised she'd be in Steamboat within four hours.
The cops weren't happy with me when I told them that at the advice of an attorney I was choosing not to speak with them, at least temporarily. Percy Smith was recruited to try and goad me into cooperation. They could not have known that he was absolutely the wrong emissary. After I refused to change my mind, it was clear that the cops remained unhappy with me. I knew that the alternative was my wife being unhappy with me. My decision to stay silent was not a particularly anguished one; I wasn't planning on going home with any of the cops.
Before I nodded off again, I wondered about Flynn and Russ and Dell Franklin and whether they were secreted away close by. I doubted that if I asked the cops I would get a straight answer. I didn't ask. Instead I curled up and slept on the floor in the corner of the interview room until my wife arrived.
Lauren poked her head in the door around two o'clock in the afternoon.
She brought concern, a sweet smile, a little shake of her head that amply conveyed
"You are so pathetic but I love you anyway," and lunch in a bag. I was grateful for three out of four. After Lauren kissed me she informed me wryly that she should also have fetched a toothbrush and a razor.
The most important gift she bore was her legal acumen, which she feared I greatly needed.
I asked about the baby and how she felt after the long drive. As she touched her belly her eyes told me everything was fine. She explained that she had called Sam and asked him to drive her over the Divide so she wouldn't get so exhausted by the trip. Satoshi had insisted on coming along, too. I was comforted to know that Sam was close by and hoped I would get an opportunity to be the one to tell Satoshi exactly what had happened to her sister.
I was also hungry for news.
While I ate, Lauren talked. She wasn't able to provide much of an update on Kimber. All she knew was what she had heard on the car radio on the drive up from Boulder-that he had survived his gunshot and was in surgery at the local hospital.
Raymond Welle's detention by the Routt County sheriff was the day's big event.
Lauren's impression was that none of the national news organizations had pieced together the intricacies of the story. No one was yet reporting anything about the two girls who had died in 1988 at the Silky Road Ranch. And no one was reporting anything about the crazy denouement in the blow down on the Routt Divide or the discovery of Dorothy Levin's body. But having a United States congressman under suspicion in the attempted murder of an ex-FBI agent was big enough news for the time being. Lauren said that she expected dozens of satellite crews to descend on Steamboat within the next few hours. She also said that she was sure that the right-wing blonds on the cable news talk shows were already piecing together the skeleton of a "make-my-day" defense for Welle to employ for shooting Kimber. Shortly after they had all checked in for about the hundredth time on the Monica Lewinsky pathos, Lauren had decided that she wasn't fond of the right-wing blonds on the cable news talk shows.