The other man’s clear blue eyes ticked back and forth, alternately searching the air above Walt’s head. His brow knotted, and he nodded slightly, and sighed. Then his eyes fell to the plastic tabletop, and he dragged his trembling hands into his lap. “I’ve known since last night. I knew in here.” He touched his chest. “She’s never not come home before. Oh, God. An animal attack?”
“A cougar possibly. Yes.”
“Was it her period?” Stuart Holms asked. “I don’t even know, I’m sorry to say. That’s when they attack women, right?”
“A thorough examination is being conducted,” Walt said.
Holms kept his head down. He mumbled, “A cat? She liked cats. Loved cats. Volunteered at the pound. Did you know that?”
“At some point I’m going to take a full statement from you, sir. No hurry, but the sooner we can get to that the better.”
Holms lifted his head, revealing teary, bloodshot eyes. “Of course,” he said.
Walt waited a moment uncomfortably. “When?” he said. “When might we get to that?”
Holms looked away at a piece of the sky. “When I feel up to it, Sheriff. And not a minute sooner.”
Twelve
I t was difficult for Walt to think of a meeting as clandestine when the sun shone so brightly and a pair of yellow warblers darted branch to branch in play. The Warm Springs tributary to the Big Wood slipped past beneath the concrete bridge connecting to Sun Valley ’s River Run high-speed quad-chairlifts and the glorious River Run ski lodge. He watched the river’s swirling currents, looking for any kind of repeating pattern, but he saw none. A kingfisher hovered low over the silver brown water, staying there for quite some time before zooming up to a cottonwood branch and taking rest.
Dick O’Brien had no place here. He was dressed like a man heading to lunch at Yale: khakis, blue blazer, white button-down shirt. Thankfully he’d eschewed the tie. It was the man’s shoes that Walt paid the most attention to: office shoes, with heels. His mind filled briefly with an image of the dissolving, muddy impressions he’d followed up the Hill Trail at Adam’s Gulch. He swallowed dryly.
O’Brien leaned against the bridge’s wide, concrete rail. He placed a manila envelope between them.
“Sorry for making the meet out here,” he said. “Just a precaution is all.”
“This is?” Walt asked, indicating the envelope.
“A DVD. Cutter’s home security. I helped design it. We’ve got eyes on the gate, exterior doors, the garages. He put half a mil into security on that place. This camera is an interior look at the front door. From yesterday morning…Friday morning, in case you’ve lost track. I have one of my guys assigned to monitoring the cameras twenty-four/ seven. He pointed this…incident…out to me yesterday. We dump anything like this to DVD for safekeeping.”
“Anything like what?” Walt asked.
“The Escalade’s got a DVD player, if you want it sooner than later,” O’Brien said. “And air-conditioning. And an electric cooler in the back. Pop. Bottled water.”
“You can’t just tell me?”
“Worth a thousand words. Right?”
“If you say so.”
A few minutes later O’Brien and Walt occupied the Escalade’s two leather captain’s chairs that made up the car’s middle row of seats. The DVD panel was flipped down and glowing blue. Walt had a cold ginger ale in hand. “What? No popcorn?”
“We got Snickers in the cooler,” O’Brien said in all seriousness. “Peanuts. Potato chips.”
“I was kidding.”
The DVD played. Walt watched as a sweating Danny Cutter, a towel around his neck, opened his brother’s front door and welcomed in Ailia Holms. Walt dialed the rear air conditioner down a few degrees-he’d warmed suddenly. A time clock ran in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
O’Brien narrated. “Once we heard about her out Adam’s Gulch, I showed this to the boss. He took her death real hard, I might add. And we had a very short discussion about sharing this with you. Just for the record, the boss never suggested blocking it.”
On the screen the discussion grew heated between Danny Cutter and Ailia Holms, but there was no sound to confirm that. Then, all at once, Danny grabbed her by the forearms and shoved her against a couch. For a moment Walt feared he was about to see a rape. Then the two settled down. Ailia clearly complained about her treatment. Danny showed her to the door, and she left.
O’Brien stopped the playback. The screen went blue again.
“Those are the same clothes we found her in,” Walt told O’Brien.
“It’s yours to do with whatever.”
“It’s not that I’m complaining, but would you turn this over if it was your brother?”
“It’s complicated between them-the brothers. Very competitive.” He paused and said, “In all sorts of things.” Then he met eyes with Walt, clearly wanting to drive home this last statement.
“It’s a big help,” Walt said, “and I appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
“It may be for Danny. And I like Danny.”
“We all like Danny,” O’Brien said.
“Does that include Patrick?”
“Like I said: It’s complicated.”
“Yes, it is.” As they were climbing out of the car, Walt couldn’t resist. “Nice shoes,” he said.
Thirteen
T he hospital morgue was located down a subterranean hallway, wedged between a door marked DANGER-HIGH VOLTAGE and another unmarked room used for storage.
Ailia Holms lay faceup on a textured stainless steel morgue table with drain slits around its perimeter and hoses coming out the bottom.
McClure pulled off the blue rip-stop nylon dropcloth, exposing her chalk white skin torn by cougar’s claws. Lacerations and puncture wounds covered her torso like unfamiliar constellations. Her pubis was shaved into a short, vertical column of red tangled hair. Walt looked away and recomposed himself. McClure had already done some cutting on her.
“You asked about any bruising,” McClure said.
“I did.”
“You know about lividity: The blood settles into the lowest part of the body an hour or two after death. It fixes, in six to eight hours.” He directed Walt’s attention to some dark bruises. “You’ll recall that we found her partially rolled up on her left side.” He pointed. “This area is an example of fixed hypostasis-lividity. Certainly six to eight hours after she was killed she was in this position.” He nodded toward the sink. “Grab a set of gloves.”
Together, he and Walt lifted and rolled the cadaver just high enough to get a look at her buttocks.
“See that discoloring?” McClure asked. “The right gluteous?”
“Yes.”
“No proof. But it suggests early lividity.”
“So she rolled and landed partially down the hill, and what…a couple hours later a coyote pulled her over, and she rolled some more?”
“Could explain it.”
“What’s the timing?”
“Eight to twelve hours ahead of discovery. Perhaps coincidental with her death.”
“May I?” Walt asked, reaching for Ailia’s left arm.
“Of course.”
Walt lifted the arm. An obvious bruise, shaped like a mitten.
“This is antemortem?” Walt asked.
“Yes. Well ahead of the attack. Maybe as much as a day or more.”
“It was early yesterday morning,” Walt told him. “That’s consistent.”
McClure lifted the cadaver’s head. He pulled back a flap of skin, exposing tissue, pink muscle, and white vertebrae. “She has a fracture to cervical number seven, just above the facet for the first rib. Another to cervical three. The tissue at seven reveals edema consistent with an earlier trauma.”
“The cat broke her neck,” Walt said. “It’s what cats do.”
“Fractures her neck,” McClure said. “She’s alive but paralyzed. Toys with her for a while.”