Colorado has a frontier-justice “Get Out of Jail Free” law that permits citizens to use deadly force to protect personal property. Intrude on a Coloradan’s homestead-and raise enough of a ruckus while you’re at it-and you had better hope that the homeowner isn’t armed, because he or she has every legal right to blow you to smithereens, even if you’re not threatening any imminent bodily harm. The law is popularly known as the “Make My Day” law.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “He is. Loudly. Was it?”
“I’m not a lawyer, but probably. Glass broke, power went out, suddenly the guy is there in the basement. Bill shot him. Three times, I think.”
“Three?”
“Yeah. I think three. He kept shooting.”
“Was the guy armed?”
“It was dark. After the lights were back on, I saw a gun next to him on the floor.”
“All sounds pretty convenient.”
“Maybe, I don’t know. Bill’s been through a lot.”
“The broken glass? You see it?” Sam asked.
“No.”
“Wasn’t a window. Somebody put a couple of clear vases or something on the sill in the basement window well. Anyone who opened the window would have knocked them off. I find that kind of… suspicious.”
“People put stuff on windowsills all the time.”
“Window was unlocked,” Sam said. “No sign it was forced.”
“A lot of people have been in and out of this house lately.”
“You sticking up for him?”
I didn’t want to go there. “Bill said the guy he shot was Doyle, Sam. Is that possible?”
“Yeah, I heard. Maybe he has a twin,” he said. “Only thing I know for certain about this whole mess is that there are way too many Doyle Chandlers around for my taste.” He stood up. “Tell me again, why were you here?”
I looked him in the eye and told him it was privileged, which told him almost all he needed to know.
Diane wasn’t in danger anymore. I had secrets to keep.
“Figured.” He ran his fingers through his hair while he continued to stare at me. His next sentence surprised me. “Scott Truscott says you solved the Hannah Grant thing.”
I shrugged. “I had a thought; I shared it with him. He put it all together; I guess the coroner agreed.”
Sam’s raised eyebrows mocked me more than his words did. “A thought? You had a thought? You seem to have a lot of thoughts.” He paused. “And a lot of sources.”
I took the comment exactly as Sam intended it-as an accusation.
A patrol cop stuck her head into the room and said, “Detective? That Cadillac? The BOLO? We got it.”
“Where?”
“CU. Parking lot near the stadium. SWAT’s responding.”
He looked at me, waiting to see if I was going to be obstinate. I surprised him, I think. I said, “Duane Labs. Plasma physics. Fourth floor.”
Sam repeated the location into his radio as he rushed from the room, leaving me alone.
I walked to a beat-up mahogany secretary, picked up the telephone, and called my house. Lauren and Grace were safely home from a wonderful dress-up afternoon, enjoying high tea at the Brown Palace in Denver. Turned out that Gracie loved scones and clotted cream and peppermint tea in china cups, and was absolutely over the moon for cucumber sandwiches. I gave Lauren a concise version of what was going on in Boulder and assured her I’d be fine. After we hung up I dialed a second number from memory.
“Cozy?” I said. “Hate to ruin your Saturday, but someone I know needs a lawyer.”
74
Bob had indeed told Mallory about the tunnel.
She’d used it on Christmas night to get away from the bad guy she had convinced herself was waiting to do to her what had been done eight years before to her young friend. She’d discovered Bob watching movies in Doyle’s theater, and had asked him for help in getting away.
Bob had complied.
Mallory had stayed in Bob’s flat for the first few days after she’d left home. Once she’d recovered from her Christmas night fright, she ended up mostly terrified about the ruckus she’d caused by running away, and fearful of the repercussions she was sure she would face when she surfaced. She never was quite sure what to make of the fact that the therapist from whom she’d sought help had died.
Out of boredom as much as anything, she finally cajoled Bob into a road trip to see “our mothers.”
Their first stop was Las Vegas, where they picked up Rachel. The second stop was the assisted-living facility in southern Colorado where the trio paid a brief visit to Bob’s mother. That’s where Bob switched the Camaro-it had developed a problem with its clutch-for his mother’s pale-yellow ’88 DeVille, which was almost, but not quite, as cherry as Bob’s ’60s muscle car.
After the real fake Doyle was killed by Bill Miller in his basement, the police didn’t have too much difficulty piecing together the identity of the fake fake Doyle.
The man whose body had been discovered in the shallow grave near Allenspark turned out to be a homeless man named Eric Brewster whom Doyle had apparently hired to be an unidentifiable corpse rotting in the woods. That probably wasn’t the job description he’d offered Brewster when he’d recruited him off the streets of Cheyenne, but that was the job the poor man got. Doyle was ready for the Doyle Chandler identity to die, and he’d picked Brewster carefully, choosing a man about his size and coloring. He gave Brewster some of his own clothes before he led him out into the woods and shot him in the head. Doyle planted his ID on the body, reasonably figuring that a winter and spring in the elements would destroy any clues, except DNA, as to who the dead man really was. Without a sample for matching, he knew the DNA wouldn’t do law enforcement any good.
Doyle Chandler would be dead for at least the second time.
Raoul brought Diane home on a medical jet charter on Monday, the day after he rescued her. Medically she was going to be okay. Psychologically? We held our breaths; time would tell. She’d have love and support, all she needed. Would it be enough? I hoped it would. Diane was tough.
She used Scott Truscott’s assessment that Hannah Grant’s death was a tragic accident as a crutch to help herself get back on her feet. I wasn’t too surprised that Diane was back to work within a week. The first patient she saw on her initial day back?
Fittingly, it was the Cheetos lady. We passed each other in the hall as Diane led the woman from the waiting room to her office. She smiled at me as though we were buddies.
All, apparently, was forgiven.
With Diane safe, and Bob safe, and Mallory safe, I went back to keeping secrets. I was well aware that had Raoul found Diane even half a day later, I probably would have spilled all the beans I had on Bill Miller. With my friend out of harm’s way, though, I knew that revealing what I’d learned from my patients would have been nothing more than a self-destructive act of reprisal.
Still, believe me, I had considered it.
I didn’t reveal what I knew about Bill and Walter and the orthodontist. I’d initially learned all those things in my role as a psychologist, and couldn’t rationalize revealing them. Did I feel good about keeping those secrets? No, I didn’t.
Deep down, I’m quite fond of the idea of justice. But, as fond as I am of justice, it’s not the business that I’m in.
Walter’s family soon reported him missing, but I kept my mouth shut about the location of his body. Raoul did, too. I wouldn’t have known anything about Walter if I hadn’t been treating Bill, so I considered that information privileged. Was I haunted by the fact that I had knowledge that could help end a family’s fruitless search for a missing husband and father?
Yes, I was.
Nor did I ever publicly share my suspicions that Bill had enticed Doyle back to his house so he could murder him, once and for all, or that I thought he’d arranged for me to be there as his hapless witness. I couldn’t prove any of it, but I believed it all to be true. I think Sam did, too. He told me that the police had some phone records that provided circumstantial support to the theory.