She hadn't chosen a picture of Tami just before her death, either.
Cathy said, "Her smile-Tami's? It was so bright-it would make you glad that you're alive." She fidgeted and stared at her hands as she spoke to us about her dead daughter. I was thinking that the absence of a daughters smile could probably leave a mother wishing she were dead. My thoughts leapt to the life growing in Lauren's belly. I pried my attention away and my stomach flipped.
Cathy continued.
"Its been over ten years," she said as she lifted one hand and scratched behind her ear.
"Well more than ten." Her voice was disbelieving. I couldn't tell whether she was disbelieving because the tragedy still felt like yesterday, or whether she was disbelieving because she felt as though she'd already cried away enough tears to lubricate a few lifetimes.
Wendell-Dell-reached over and touched his wife on the knee. He was a bear of a man and the act seemed all the more gentle because of his mass.
His breathing grew less labored as he made contact with her. He said, to his wife as much as to us, "It's still hard sometimes. You know-it's hard to remember… and… it's hard to forget." Cathy clenched her husband's thick fingers and lifted her face to us. She manufactured a smile that brought tears to my eyes.
"We're so grateful you've agreed to help," she said.
I was fighting therapist proclivities. Cathy's arrested grief was fertile ground. But I reminded myself that this field wasn't mine to furrow. Not here.
Not now.
Lauren jumped in and explained our role in Locard. That we were consultants.
And that our participation in the investigation was limited to specific tasks that had been delineated by the permanent members of the Locard team. She explained her role as a local prosecuting attorney.
When she was finished, I spoke.
"As you know, I'm a psychologist. One of my most important tasks is to get to know your daughter," I said, moving my gaze from Dell to Cathy and back.
"When I'm done with my work, I'd like to feel that I've come to know who Tami was on that day that she died."
Dell raised an eyebrow and asked, "Don't get it. How will that help you find her killer?"
I took a moment to compose a response.
"The more I know about Tami-the better I know Tami-the better chance I have of being able to figure out what caused her to…"-I struggled to find the right word-"… to collide with whoever it was who murdered her."
Dell appeared to be on the verge of responding when Cathy said, "She was a sweetheart. No one who knew her would ever want to kill her. It had to be a stranger."
"Tami…" He shook his head a tiny bit and smiled lovingly.
"She could be kind of ornery," added Dell.
"But she was our girl. We loved her from sunrise to sunset. God, how we loved her."
Over a decade had passed and they were both still crying over Tami's death. I noticed that Lauren's hands, which had been folded on her lap, were now spread palms down, the fingers nesting protectively around her womb.
Lauren and I didn't have a plan. As things developed she spent much of the next hour sitting with Cathy at a game table in an alcove on one side of the sitting room, poring through photo albums, listening to Cathy reminisce about a daughter she had never imagined living without.
As soon as the wives retreated to the photo albums Dell invited me outside to show me some of his ranch and, it was apparent, to talk about his living child and not just his dead one. I waited while he changed his boots in a big mudroom before he led me away from the house. He had already surprised me with his openness and his sensitivity in discussing his daughter. Anticipating the visit to the ranch I'd unfairly pigeonholed him as a taciturn old cowboy. It was neither a fair nor an accurate assessment. I was beginning to see Dell as an emotionally resourceful man who didn't run from either his own pain or Cathy's.
The ranch was "a lot of acres" according to Dell.
"My father assembled almost all the land. I've added a couple of small patches over the years. Some new buildings. The technology of course, though Dad would have been the first to have that if it was available to him. But mostly I've been a caretaker of what my father imagined. I consider this place a kind of trust, you know?" I said, "I think I understand." My focus was on the expansive high prairies and the vaulting peaks of the wilderness below Mount Zirkel. Those aspen groves would sparkle like gold dust in the fall.
"Trust" felt like a good enough word.
"My part's been the animals. My addition to my father's vision. I do well with them. With the animals. I especially love just about everything that's involved with breeding. You know much about ranching?" I was a step behind him, following him down a wide asphalt lane that led from the family home to the barn with the shiny new roof.
"Not much," I admitted.
"Almost as much as I know about the economy of Serbia."
He laughed.
"Most don't. Some think they do; they think any brain dead cowboy can run a ranch. Some pretend they know. But most don't understand. Tami did. She loved it out here. Really understood what it was we were up to. What it takes to feed this monster. What it takes to tame it. We hoped-me and Cathy-we hoped Tami'd stay, marry somebody who would want to take over the ranch with her."
"Joey's not interested, Dell? In the ranch?" I assumed he wasn't but wanted to hear Dell's response.
"In this? Nah. He's got his golf. Its all he seems to need. Never seen anyone who's been so completed by one activity." Dell shook his head, apparently perplexed by his own son.
"We're blessed in Routt County. You know you can play golf up here almost as long as you can in Denver? In a good year you can play all the way from May through October. We're not as high up in the mountains as people think. Where we're standing right this minute, we're only a little above seven thousand feet. You're surprised, right? Still, don't know how Joey got so darn good at it. Golf, I mean. Some people just click with some things. You ever notice that? " I said I had noticed that.
The first two stalls on the inside of the huge barn had been rebuilt as an indoor golf driving range. An elevated tee. A huge net to catch balls. A computer to analyze and measure something. Distance? I didn't golf. I couldn't tell.
"I play a little. Been a member for years at the little golf club that's out on 40. Started as an excuse to hang out with some friends, really. I hack. It's a nine-hole and if I'm lucky, I break fifty maybe twice a summer. Never really have time to play eighteen. Lose more balls than I care to count. Joey used to like to come with me to the range when he was little, you know, like five or six. He'd hit some balls. Had a real sweet swing, right from the start. Soon enough, he wanted to play in the winter, too. Only kid I knew who would rather hit golf balls than go skiing, so one year I built this for him." Dell waved at the indoor golf setup.
"It wasn't always this fancy. At first it was just a piece of Astroturf I nailed to the floor and a net I hung to keep him from killing the animals. I added stuff to it as he got better and better during high school. After… you know… he's been… well, a kind of salvation for me. Whenever I hated life because of what had been done to Tami, I had Joey to be thankful for. I can't tell you how much it helped. Church helped, too, of course. But when life got especially rough, Joey helped me keep the ball on the fairway."
I didn't know how my next words were going to be received. I said them anyway.
"You more than Cathy though. Dell?"
He didn't flinch at all.