As I typed, the picture of my brother kept coming back to me. Now that sterile, lifeless photo bothered me. For I had believed the impossible. I had let him down and now felt a keener sense of guilt. It was my brother in that car, my twin. It was me.
9
I ended up with four pages of notes which I then synthesized after an hour of study and thought to six lines of shorthand questions I had to find the answers to. I had found that if I looked at the facts of the case from the opposite perspective, believing Sean had been murdered and had not taken his own life, I saw something the cops had possibly missed. Their mistake had been their predisposition to believe and therefore accept that Sean had killed himself. They knew Sean and knew he was burdened by the Theresa Lofton case. Or maybe it was something every cop could believe about every other cop. Maybe they'd all seen too many corpses and the only surprise was that most didn't kill themselves. But when I sifted through the facts with a disbeliever's eye, I saw what they did not see.
I studied the list I had written on a page in my notebook.
Pena: his hands? after-how long?
Wexler/Scalari: the car? heater? lock?
Riley: gloves?
I realized I could handle Riley by phone. I dialed and was about to hang up after six rings when she picked up.
"Riley? It's Jack. You okay? This a bad time?"
"When's a good time?"
It sounded like she had been drinking.
"You want me to come out, Riley? I'm coming out."
"No, don't, Jack. I'm okay. Just, you know, one of those blue days. I keep thinking about him, you know?"
"Yes. I think about him, too."
"Then how come you hadn't been around for so long before he went and… I'm sorry, I shouldn't bring things up…"
I was quiet a moment.
"I don't know, Riles. We sorta had a fight about something. I said some things I shouldn't have. He did, too, I guess. I think we were kind of in a cooling-off period… He did it before I could get back with him."
I realized I hadn't called her Riles in a long time. I wondered if she had noticed.
"What was the fight about, the girl that got cut in two?"
"Why do you say that? Did he tell you about it?"
"No. I just guessed. She had him wrapped around her finger, why not you? That's all I was thinking."
"Riley, you've got-Look, this isn't good for you to be dwelling on. Try to think about the good things."
I almost broke down and told her what I was pursuing. I would have liked to give her something to ease her pain. But it was too early.
"It's hard to do that."
"I know, Riley. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you."
There was a long silence on the line between us. I heard nothing in the background. No music. No TV. I wondered what she was doing in the house alone.
"Mom called me today. You told her what I was doing."
"Yes. I thought she should know."
I didn't say anything.
"What did you want, Jack?" she finally asked.
"Just a question. It's kind of out of left field but here it is. Did the cops show you or give you back Sean's gloves?"
"His gloves?"
"The ones he was wearing that day."
"No. I haven't gotten them. Nobody asked me about them."
"Well, then, what kind of gloves did Sean have?"
"Leather. Why?"
"Just something I'm playing with. I'll tell you about it later if it amounts to anything. What about the color, black?"
"Yes, black leather. I think they were fur-lined."
Her description matched the gloves I had seen in the crime scene photographs. It didn't really mean anything one way or the other. Just a point to check, one duck put in the row.
We talked for a few minutes more and I asked if she wanted to have dinner that night because I was coming out to Boulder, but she said no. After that we hung up. I was worried about her and hoped the conversation-just the human contact-would raise her spirits. I contemplated dropping by her place anyway, after I was done with everything else.
As I passed through Boulder I could see snow clouds forming along the tops of the Flatirons. I knew from growing up out there how fast it could come down once the clouds moved in. I hoped the company Tempo I was driving had chains in the trunk but knew it was unlikely.
At Bear Lake I found Pena standing outside the ranger shack talking with a group of cross-country skiers who were passing through. While I waited I walked out to the lake. I saw a few spots where people had cleared away the snow down to the ice. I tentatively walked out on the frozen lake and looked down into one of these blue-black portals and imagined the depths below. I felt a slight tremor at my center. Twenty years earlier my sister had slipped through the ice and died in this lake. Now my brother had died in his car not fifty yards away. Looking down at the black ice I remembered hearing somewhere that some of the lake fish get frozen in the winter but when the thaw comes in spring they wake up and just snap out of it. I wondered if it was true and thought it was too bad people weren't the same way.
"It's you again."
I turned around and saw Pena.
"Yes, I'm sorry to bother you. I have just a few more questions."
"No bother. I wish I could have done something before, you know? Maybe had seen him before, when he first pulled in, seen if he needed help. I don't know."
We had started walking back toward the shack.
"I don't know what anybody could have done," I said, just to be saying something.
"So, what are your questions?"
I took out my notebook.
"Uh, first off, when you ran to the car, did you see his hands? Like where they were?"
He walked without speaking. I think he was envisioning the incident in his mind.
"You know," he finally said, "I think I did look at his hands. Because when I ran up and saw it was just him, I immediately figured he had shot himself. So I'm pretty sure I looked at his hands to see if he was holding the gun."
"Was he?"
"No. I saw it on the seat next to him. It fell on the seat."
"Do you remember if he was wearing gloves when you looked in?"
"Gloves… gloves," he said, as if he was trying to prompt an answer from his memory banks. After another long pause he said, "I don't know. I'm not getting a picture in my mind. What do the police say?"
"Well, I'm just trying to see if you remember."
"Well, I'm not getting anything, sorry."
"If the police wanted to, would you let them hypnotize you? To see if they could bring it out that way?"
"Hypnotize me? They do that sort of stuff?"
"Sometimes. If it's important."
"Well, if it was important, I guess I'd do it."
We were standing in front of the shack now. I was looking at the Tempo parked in the same place my brother had parked.
"The other thing I wanted to ask about was the timing. The police reports say that you had the car in sight within five seconds of hearing the shot. And with only five seconds there is no way anybody could make it from the car and into the woods without being seen."
"Right. No way. Would've seen 'em."
"Okay, then what about after?"
"After what?"
"After you ran to the car and saw the man was shot. You told me the other day you ran back to the shack here and made two calls. That right?"
"Yes, nine one one and my supe."
"So you were inside the shack here and couldn't see the car, right?"
"Right."
"How long?"
Pena nodded, seeing what I was getting at.
"But that doesn't matter because he was alone in the car."
"I know but humor me. How long?"
He shrugged his shoulders as if to say what the hell and fell silent again. He walked into the shack and made a motion with his hand like lifting up the phone.