I saw where he was heading. “And instead of going to the kitchen for the insulin, she’s lost and she goes to the office across the hall?”
“Exactly. Maybe once she’s there she begins to recognize her confusion, and she sits. Maybe not. But that’s where she collapses, in that other office. Eventually, she loses consciousness. She’s still bleeding into one of those subdurals. Eventually, Ms. Grant dies from the intracranial pressure.”
“Go on,” I said.
“That’s where you find her. Her shirt is tucked up under her bra like she’s going to do an injection, but there’s no syringe around, no insulin. It’s definitely possible she’s eaten some candy. No weapon is ever recovered that matches the second trauma to her head. What am I missing?”
I couldn’t think of a single thing left unexplained. “Nothing, Scott. I think maybe you nailed it. No intruders, no assault, no murderer. No second blow to the head.”
“And no more ‘undetermined.’ Hannah Grant’s death was accidental.”
“I can’t tell you how relieved this makes me.”
“Do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Sit on this until I can run it by the coroner.”
“Of course.”
What was I thinking? I couldn’t wait to give the news to Diane. She’d be so happy.
It took Sam a couple of hours to reply to my message about Doyle’s body, but he did.
“How’d you hear?” Sam asked. Actually, it was more like a demand than a question.
“The real estate lady. She thought I might spot a housing opportunity in the ashes of the tragedy that was unfolding.”
“Shit. Who’d you tell?”
“Lauren. How come you guys didn’t let the DA know that Doyle Chandler lived next door to Mallory?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Right. “You still near Allenspark?”
“They just wrapped things up. I’m on my way back to Boulder now.”
“How long has your guy been dead?”
“My guy?” Sam laughed, turning my question into the melodic refrain of the Mary Wells ditty. “My guy has been dead a while. But it’s frigging cold up here, so the body’s been pretty well refrigerated. In the meantime, wild animals have been busy doing their wild animal thing. What they nibble on first? Let me tell you, it takes away much of my faith in the natural kingdom. ME’s going to have his hands full on this one.”
“Homicide?”
“If it’s a suicide, he was considerate enough to bury himself first. If it was an accident, he conveniently died by tripping and falling into a shallow grave.”
“Why’d you go up there?”
The signal faded and wavered. When it was strong enough to carry Sam’s voice again, I heard, “… and somebody convinced me that I should be asking this Doyle Chandler about the guy who used his garage in Boulder to store a classic old Camaro. The agent thought that since he moved away from his house in Boulder, Chandler was living out this way. I’d called the sheriff to give them a heads-up that I would be chatting with him as a follow-up to the Mallory Miller thing. When the sheriff learned that some snowshoers found what appeared to be his body, they gave me a courtesy jingle.
“For what it’s worth, this body shouldn’t have been discovered, not during the winter anyway. Most years it would’ve stayed hidden till spring, at least. You’ll like this-want to know how it was found? A woman on a snowshoe outing with some girlfriends had gone off by herself to answer nature’s call and was finishing taking a crap when she saw part of a hand sticking out from below this log she was crouching behind. Poor crime-scene techs had to collect it as evidence.”
“Collect what?”
“Her… you know.”
I knew. “What’s next?”
“I got twenty minutes to get from here to pick up Simon from hockey practice.”
“You want me to get him? Meet you at your house? I’m happy to.”
“Nice of you, but I think I’m cool. I’ll make it in time. Any word on Diane?”
“Nothing. Anything on the BOLO?”
“Nope. Go home, Alan. Stop playing cop.”
With that, the signal faded for good and the call dropped off into the great mobile phone ether.
I wasn’t ready to stop playing cop. The day’s events had shaken me and I was ready to do what I’d been thinking about doing for most of a week. I drove downtown to my office, opened the dark-blue Kinko’s box, and prepared to read Bob Brandt’s opus, My Little Runaway.
A run, run, run, run runaway.
51
The manuscript was, guessing, about a hundred pages long, but the sheets weren’t numbered so I didn’t have an exact count.
Bob’s story started with a single provocative phrase that constituted an entire sentence, an entire paragraph, an entire page, and an entire chapter.
It moved from there into a series of short, essay-like digressions, one having to do with Del Shannon’s childhood, another having to do with the mechanics of installing low-maintenance water features.
A page-turner it was not.
More than half of the sheets of paper in the box were blank.
But that solitary phrase on page one was evocative enough that the manuscript lived up to its billing in the most important area: Bob’s story did indeed contain a version of what had happened to Mallory on Christmas night, and proposed a fascinating theory about how she’d managed to make it out of her house without leaving any marks in the fresh snow.
I reminded myself at least five times while I read and reread the few words on the first page that Bob had told me that the work was fiction.
Fiction. Right.
Once I’d completed an initial pass at the manuscript, and after I’d come up with a plan on what to do next, I had some time to kill before I made my next move. I ended up driving home after stopping on the way to buy my girls some of their favorite takeout from Chez Thuy, a little Vietnamese place that Viv-part of Boulder County’s Hmong community-had turned us on to. Grace was in a terrific mood while we ate and seemed totally enamored with the way that her rice noodles stuck together.
Over sublime catfish and green onions in a sauce that had more flavors than the sky had stars, I went so far as to tell Lauren that I had some significant news that might impact the investigation of the body that had been discovered that afternoon near Allenspark. She asked for some clarifications that I couldn’t provide. But she was kind enough to phone somebody in the DA’s office to confirm my suspicion about what would happen next: The Boulder police had indeed already applied for a warrant to search Doyle Chandler’s Twelfth Street home.
“How long will it take to get the warrant?” I asked.
“They’ll have it soon,” Lauren said. “Judge Heller has the request; I have no doubt she’ll comply. This one’s a no-brainer. Likely homicide? The police need to search the vic’s house.”
“I’m going to have to go over there and see Sam in person. Tell him what I know.”
“You can’t just call?”
“I want to help him find something at Doyle’s that I think he might otherwise miss. If I don’t tell him what I’m expecting to find there, and then if it turns out that I’m wrong, I won’t end up having to breach privilege.”
“And you can’t tell me how you know what’s inside this man’s house?”
“I have a hunch based on something-a story a patient… told me. I wish I could tell you more. If I’m right, you’ll know all about it tomorrow.”
I arrived on Doyle’s block around 9:30. In order to execute the search warrant the police department was out in force-I counted five law enforcement vehicles, mostly unmarked, in front of the house. Doyle’s neighbors were curious about the commotion; despite the cold night they were congregated in small groups on nearby sidewalks and on front porches watching events unfold. I chose to park around the corner. If it was possible, I preferred not to be spotted by Bill Miller while running this errand.