“THAT ASSHOLE,” Cody said, seething, “showing me up like that.”
“He wasn’t thinking,” I said, “he was just talking.”
“Which is the problem with the whole fucking department. They don’t think.”
“Do you want a nightcap?” I asked.
Cody shook his head. “I’m done.”
“The connection between Malcolm Harris and Aubrey Coates,” I said. “There’s something going on here I can’t figure out. Something big and awful.”
“Sometimes,” Cody said, looking over my head, “I wish I had a license to just kill people. I’d kill a lot of them and make the world a better place. I’d start with Aubrey Coates and Malcolm Harris, and move to Garrett and John Moreland. There’s about fifty others on the list I can think of.”
“Cody…”
“Don’t ‘Cody’ me,” he said.
“Brian’s funeral is tomorrow,” I said. “Do you want to go with us?”
“It’s tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus. I still can’t believe he’s gone. It hasn’t sunk in yet.”
“I know what you mean.”
He looked at me. “No, I won’t be there.”
That troubled me.
“It has nothing to do with Brian,” Cody said. He lifted his hand and pinched his thumb and index finger together. “I’m this close to cracking this thing.”
I inadvertently took a step back. “You’re kidding.”
Cody’s eyes blazed. “Nope. I think I’ve got it. I just needed to have the time to go through those call logs and do the police work. I think I’ve just about cracked it.”
“Tell me,” I said.
He smiled. His smile resembled-unfortunately-his Uncle Jeter’s. “I’ll tell you when I’ve got it,” he said. “I can’t put you two through any more false hopes or bad plans.”
Cody grabbed his coat from where it was thrown over the couch. He gestured upstairs. “That Sanders guy is a doofus. But he’s right when he says this ain’t right, and it ain’t.”
He paused at the front door. Snow shot in. “Coates is a dead man walking, he just doesn’t know it yet. But yes, I agree with you that there’s more to it than what we know. This Malcolm Harris thing throws me for a loop, but somehow I think it all connects. I just don’t know how yet.”
“When will I see you?” I asked. “There’s only three more days.”
“Not soon,” he said. “I’m going to New Mexico.”
“Why?”
“Later,” he said, waving me off. “Keep Melissa off the booze,” he said. “I’m worried about her.”
Friday, November 23
TWENTY-ONE
THE FUNERAL FOR BRIAN took place in Capitol Hill at the largest chapel I’d ever been in, and the place was packed with mourners we didn’t know. The décor was airy and sterile, all light pine and clean lines. Oh, and a small stylized cross hanging from a chain in a corner toward the front, as if placed there as an afterthought.
“A church designed by IKEA,” I mumbled to Melissa, trying to make her smile. Didn’t work.
If Brian were in charge of his own funeral-which in some ways he likely was-I thought it would look like this. It was larger-than-life, heavy on the hubris. An alt-rock band played contemporary dirges while a PowerPoint slide show presented shots of Brian skiing, swimming, speaking at a podium, clowning around, dancing, and costumed as both John Elway and Spider-Man at various parties. His remains were in a squarish marble urn on a velvet-covered riser at the front of the church. Brian’s partner, Barry, spoke about Brian’s loyalty, creativity, affection, and “ability to light up a room.” Barry seemed like a calm counterpoint to Brian, and I could see how the two fit as a couple.
Barry was followed by Mayor Halladay, who gave not only a moving speech and tribute to Brian but vowed to those in attendance that he’d make sure the killer was caught and brought to justice. There was a swell of clapping when the mayor said Denver was no place for hate crimes, and that Brian’s death would forever be remembered as the incident that ushered in a “hate-crime-free zone.” The mayor’s assumption that Brian’s murder was the result of his cruising downtown bars revealed where Mayor Halladay’s head was. It also spoke to the lack of progress in the investigation.
I found myself looking around at the mourners as the mayor spoke. Many of the faces I’d seen in the society section of the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, and a few on television news. Brian always claimed he knew everybody who was anybody in town, and the outpouring at his funeral proved it. I was proud of him for making such an impact on this city while still remaining our small-town friend.
We sat near the back simply because there were so many people already there when we arrived. Sanders and Morales, of course, were with us but, thankfully, in street clothes. The two of them sat directly behind us at the ser vice. I heard Sanders whisper, “World-class fruits and nuts in this place,” to Morales.
Melissa whispered into my ear, “What bothers me is it’s as if I didn’t know Brian at all. Who are all of these people? The only one he’d ever mentioned was Barry. It seems like Brian had a secret life.”
“We were his secret life,” I said. “This room was his real life.”
The mayor finally stepped aside. The band, somewhat inexplicably, played a cover version of REM’s “Losing My Religion.”
“Goodness,” Melissa said. “Don’t they know they’re in a church?”
Although Cody said he wouldn’t be there, I kept an eye out for him nevertheless. He’d left me with a strand of hope, and that strand was all I had.
When the band was through, a hip pastor with long hair and a stylish half beard and open shirt told us that we weren’t there to mourn a death but to celebrate the life of an “awesome” human being. He began telling anecdotes about Brian-all from Denver, where he became public, none from Montana-that apparently had been gathered up by Barry and Barry and Brian’s friends. Some were quite funny, but they were striking to Melissa and me because they were stories we’d never heard before about a friend we knew in a totally different context, and Melissa was soon both laughing and crying hard, which in turn made Angelina cry.
“I’ll take her outside,” I said, and Melissa willingly let me. Sanders followed.
The mountains were still shrouded in snow clouds. The ski resorts, from what I’d heard on the radio, were getting hammered. Marketing and PR spokesmen tried to outdo each other on the amount of “champagne powder” that had accumulated over the night. I knew most of the spokespeople personally from my work in tourism and knew they really weren’t as breathless about falling snow as they sounded on the radio.
Angelina preferred being outside to inside, as she usually did. She pushed away from me as soon as we were outside, wanting to get down. I held her as she tried to push away. I couldn’t let her down because Melissa had dressed her in a velvet dress, pink tights, and a heavy coat. As I struggled with her I found myself directly in front of Jim Doogan, who leaned against the trunk of a leafless tree and smoked a cigarette.
Doogan leveled his gaze at Sanders, who was a few steps behind me. He didn’t say who he was but apparently he didn’t need to.
“Give us a few minutes, will you?”
Sanders turned and walked back to the church and sprawled out on a bench.
“Is the mayor done in there?” Doogan asked.
“I think so.”
“Was he good?”
I shrugged. “Good enough. He didn’t say any bad things about Brian.”
He laughed. “That Eastman guy caused us a lot of headaches. He used to drive the mayor out of his mind because he knew how to work the system and work the mayor. I always thought it was sort of personal.”
“Brian was tough,” I said.