Sam aided me with his laser pointer; he was remarkably adept at keeping the red dot targeted on the dark mass of Doyle’s garage. As the angle of the shot varied with the helicopter’s movement the garage would frequently shift totally out of the frame; one long absence lasted for a good half minute, another for almost as long.
I stated the obvious. “Can’t see it most of the time, Sam. It goes off the screen.”
“I know. It’s important that you can’t see it. The last few seconds are coming-watch carefully.”
Fox hadn’t enhanced the area on the footage that included Doyle’s garage-they’d focused all their technological wizardry efforts on the Millers’ property-and it wasn’t easy to discern much detail in other parts of the frame, especially with the startling bright lights that stayed mostly centered on the screen, lights that were emanating from the garish Christmas display at the Harts’ house on the next block.
The Very Hart of Christmas.
“There,” Sam said. He paused the tape and allowed the red dot to linger on the short driveway that led from Doyle’s garage to the alley. “What do you see now?”
I stood up and moved closer to the monitor. The closer I got, the larger the pixels on the screen appeared. At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, or even if I was seeing anything at all. Then I was.
I turned and faced Sam. “Are those… tire tracks leaving Doyle’s garage?” I asked. “Those weren’t there at the beginning.”
“Yeah, that’s what I see, too,” Sam said. His tone was understated and self-satisfied.
Bob, I thought. Bob had pulled his Camaro out of Doyle’s garage during the second extended period that the garage was out of the frame.
The tunnel. The damn tunnel.
The damn movie in the damn theater in the damn basement.
Did Bob really have something to do with Mallory’s disappearance?
I was shocked. “Did he help her leave, Sam? Or did he take her?”
I didn’t have to say who “he” was. He knew I was talking about Bob.
“You don’t know where he is, do you?” Sam asked.
“No, I told you I didn’t. I don’t.”
“This isn’t some therapist nice-nice secret-secret bullshit?”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“You know where to look for him?”
I hesitated for a split second. “No.”
Sam made a guttural noise-okay, he growled at me-and mouthed a dry “f” sound. It didn’t take much lip-reading skill to know what exactly he’d thought about saying.
“I really don’t, Sam. If I did, I’d tell you. Given what already happened to Doyle, Bob could be in danger, too. I would tell you if I knew.”
He wasn’t satisfied. “You know something, don’t you? You know something that could help me? Something you’re not telling me?”
“Sam…”
“Man…” He stood up quickly, almost knocking his chair over.
Five minutes later Sam walked me back to my car. He seemed impervious to the cold. I bet he didn’t even care that his Cherokee didn’t have seat heaters.
“Chinooks tomorrow,” Sam said.
“They thought they were coming today, too. They’re wrong a lot,” I replied, wondering why we were talking about the weather. “If the Chinooks do start to blow, at least it will warm things up a little. It’s too cold.”
“The media isn’t going to know what to do with those winds,” Sam said. “Should be fun.”
“What?”
“They’ll be back tomorrow. You know they will. With word of the tunnel and the Doyle Chandler situation? All the trucks and all the cameras-they’ll all be back outside the Millers’ house doing their stupid live shots. The idiot lawyers on cable will all be saying we blew it again. Us, the Boulder cops. ‘It’s just like Christmas eight years ago,’ that’s what they’ll say. But then the Chinooks will start blowing late morning and they’ll blow the goddamn experts all the goddamn way to Denver, maybe farther. It’ll be too windy to raise the antennas on their trucks. I wish I could be there; it’ll be fun to watch.”
I checked his expression. He was truly sorry he was going to miss it.
“I’m going to tell Lauren about all this, Sam. The tunnel, Doyle, Bob,” I said. “I need some advice from her.”
“Tell her to sit on it till morning. Our bases will be pretty well covered in the next couple of hours. Get some sleep for me tonight.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t think I’ll be getting much.”
“How did you put this together?” I asked as I clicked open the wagon doors with the key remote. “The Camaro? Why did you decide to go back and look at that tape?”
“This is far from together. The tunnel changes everything. One of the things it changes is which house we should be paying attention to. Where Mallory’s disappearance is concerned, we’ve had our eyes on the Miller house, not on Doyle Chandler’s house. On the way back here to amend the warrant app I remembered that you had asked me if there was a car in Doyle’s garage when we searched the house the day after Mallory disappeared. I told you I didn’t think so, but it’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask your patient Bob about if we ever caught up with him.”
“But you decided to check the Fox footage instead? Smart, Sammy. So do you have a theory to explain all this? Does tonight-the tunnel and this video-does it change your thinking about her disappearance? You still sure she’s a runaway?”
“I have a few theories,” he said. “How many do you have?”
He waited for me to answer.
When I didn’t, he added, “Thought so. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”
I left the show-and-tell right there. “You still want to run in the morning? I’m happy to bag it if you’re too busy.”
“I want to run,” he said. “No excuses. Since it’s Saturday, I’ll let you sleep in. Come outside at seven-thirty-I don’t want to ring the bell.”
60
I finally made it home from the police station, took the dogs out for a last time, climbed into bed, and rubbed Lauren’s back until she awakened. Although I left a few names and a few details out of my story, I told her enough of what I knew that she understood the magnitude of my dilemma. I finished by asking for her advice.
Her counsel was succinct. “Higher, on my neck. Right there.”
“That’s it?”
“No, that’s not it. On one hand you know a lot. On the other hand you don’t know much. You need to leverage what you have. Save Diane no matter what it takes, screw the rest.”
“It’s all that clear to you? I could get censured, lose my license.”
She rolled over and faced me. My eyes were adjusting to the dark and I could see the shimmer of her irises. She said, “You’d have to sleep with a patient, kill her, and then have sacrilegious sex with her dead body before that spineless state board would yank your license, and you know it. But what if they do? You and me and Grace? We’ll make it if you have to change careers. We will. Will you make it if you knew you could have done something that might have helped Diane and you didn’t do it? I don’t think so. You’re pussyfooting around this, Alan. The rules need to be broken sometimes. This is one of those times. Break the damn rules, save your friend, suffer the consequences. You won’t be able to live with any other choice, you know that.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
She reached a warm arm out from under the comforter, put her fingers on the side of my neck, and lowered her voice to a late-night whisper. “There’s some things I know about you, sweetie: You’re a better cook when you’re not too hungry. You’re a better dad when you’re not feeling too protective. And you’re a better lover when you’re not too horny.”
“You have a point?”