Sam flashed the Cherokee’s headlights at a van coming at us from the other direction. The driver of the van responded by flashing to his low beams for half a second before he went right back to his brights. He beeped his horn to underline his aggravation that another motorist would deign to question his choice of headlamp settings. I couldn’t see the van driver through the high-intensity glare but I would have bet he was flipping Sam off, too.
I said, “Asshole’s tugging on Superman’s cape.”
“He’s lucky I’m in a good mood.”
I smiled out loud.
“There’s nothing here for me, Alan. Your guy’s been gone, what? A day or two maybe? There’s half a thimble’s worth of blood near his door-and some clothes on the floor. No sign of forced entry. No witnesses. Guy’s gone. His car’s gone. Ergo: He split. People do it all the time without warning anybody, without telling anybody. Even their therapists. I have nothing I can give my bosses that they’ll find the least bit interesting. I take this in, I know what I’m going to hear: So far this isn’t a police matter. So that’s what I tell you: So far this isn’t a police matter.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And your friend, Diane? She’s so far out of my jurisdiction it isn’t funny. I put myself in the Vegas casino’s shoes and I’m not going to give a crap about her welfare until another few days pass and the hotel needs her room for the next convention. I put myself in a Vegas cop’s shoes, I feel basically the same way. Grown-ups do what grown-ups do. But say she’s really missing? By the time people get worried enough to look for her, it will probably be way too late to do anything to help her. I pray she’s okay, but just disappearing off a casino floor like that? I don’t like what you’re telling me. That’s just the truth. I wish it were different.”
Sam pulled the Cherokee to a stop nose-to-nose with my wagon and doused the headlights. The glow from a streetlight washed into the car from the driver’s side, silhouetting Sam against the glass.
“The dots I’m connecting are actually way more interesting to me,” he said. “See, if I put on my decoder glasses I see your footprints just about everywhere I look, which shouldn’t be too surprising considering your history with this kind of thing.”
I opened my mouth to disagree. Closed it. What was the point?
Sam went on. “First? I think maybe you and your partner, Diane, have some connection to the Millers-I’m guessing Mrs. Miller, Rachel-that I don’t know about. Want me to guess? Okay, I suspect it goes back a few years, maybe more. Could I guess what it is? Yes, I could.” He paused, allowing me to digest his conclusion.
“Next? I think that the Camaro man has some connection to the guy who owns the water-park house and for some reason that connection makes you much more nervous than a simple rented garage should make you. So it’s something else entirely. I’d like to know exactly what that connection is, but experience tells me I’m not going to get shit from you tonight, so I’m trying not to give myself a headache about it. My assumption at the moment is that you think it has something to do with Mallory Miller. Frankly, that worries me. It worries me that you’re playing detective again, and it worries me just the slightest little bit that you might be on to something that we don’t know.”
The sound of Sam’s stomach complaining that it hadn’t seen a meal in a while filled the car. The growl made me realize that I was hungry, too. I wondered if Lauren had saved me some dinner.
“More? We already know that you and Diane were the ones who found that vic on Broadway. And-”
“Sam, you just called Hannah Grant a ‘vic.’ ”
“I shouldn’t have said that. She was your friend. My apologies. Habit, I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I meant. You think Hannah’s a victim? You think her death was a homicide? The coroner called it ‘undetermined.’ Has that changed?”
“It’s Slocum’s and Olson’s, not mine. I’m not the authority on that case. Manner was undetermined yesterday. Manner is undetermined today. End of story, sorry.”
In almost any other circumstance I would have pushed him. But I needed Sam to stay interested in Diane and Bob. We could get back to Hannah later. I couldn’t help but wonder, though: What do the cops have?
“What else?” I asked. “You were going to say something else.”
“Reese Miller,” Sam said. He’d forgotten which finger he’d used to keep track of his last point. By default, he chose his thick thumb to represent Reese Miller. “Why are you so interested in him? Where the heck does he fit into this puzzle?” He turned his head toward me and looked right at me. “Do you even know?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and emitted some sound that was closer to a sigh than anything else. Reese was an unknown to me. I said, “No, I don’t really know anything about him.”
“Good,” he said. “Listen, I have to get the babysitter home and I promised to help Simon with a poem he’s writing. Did you have to write poems at his age? It’s a good thing. Getting kids to write a lot. Keep me up to speed on Diane.”
I opened the Jeep’s door and was freshly surprised by the bitter chill of the January night. “Thanks, Sam.”
“Yeah,” he said. Then: “Wait.”
I leaned back into the car. Sam looked away from me for a couple of seconds before he turned back. “I know you expect me to find a way to help you. But I can’t. There’s no hook for me. There has to be something I can grab on to.”
“I don’t especially want anything to do with this either, Sam. Since the day that Mallory fell off the face of the earth I’ve tried like hell to make this leave me alone. But it keeps tracking me down. From my point of view, you get close enough to this thing and you’ll find it has as many hooks as a square foot of Velcro.”
I slammed the door shut and he drove off.
34
The clock read just shy of 8:30 when I walked in the front door of my house. Emily greeted me exuberantly, but I found my other two girls sound asleep in the master bedroom curled into the familiar big spoon/ little spoon configuration. They were surrounded by that night’s bedtime books and Grace’s favorite stuffed animals. Our not-so-stuffed poodle, Anvil, was curled into a tight ball at Grace’s knees.
I was feeling remorse that I’d been missing out on the bedtime ritual so often.
Sound asleep at Grace’s bedtime was a little early, even for Lauren, but the energy depletion that she suffered as a result of multiple sclerosis wasn’t always easy to predict. If you asked her on a day when she wasn’t suffering any of the acute effects of one of the disease’s myriad symptoms, she’d tell you that what she hated most about the illness was that it made her days so much shorter. As each successive year took its toll, Lauren had fewer good hours, fewer strong hours, fewer waking hours, fewer hours when pain or weakness didn’t drive her to bed. Ask her what she’d most like to change about having MS, and she’d tell you she wished her days were longer. She’d tell you that on most days her energy lasts about as long as daylight endures on a December day in Anchorage.
This had apparently been one of those Yukon days. That’s what she called them. I’d call her from work and find her at her desk at the DA’s office. I’d ask how she was doing. Too often she’d say, “You know, babe. It’s a Yukon day.”
I rearranged the comforter so that it provided some cover for both mother and daughter, kissed the tops of their heads, lifted Anvil from the sheets, and led the dogs outside to pee. Once the odd canine couple had done their thing and our little parade was safely inside the house, I checked for a message from Raoul or, even better, Diane.
Nothing.
I scrambled a couple of eggs, folded them into some honey wheat toast, and carried my plate into the living room. I ate standing up at the big windows that faced down into Boulder, trying to spot the house where Jenifer Donald was visiting her grandparents, trying to spot the overpriced house with the water park up near the foothills on Twelfth, trying to spot the small house on Broadway where Hannah Grant had died.