Dry Ice Page 24

The cops in Lauren’s office saw his gesture, too, and they followed his gaze out the door. A couple of the cops turned and spotted me at the glass, staring right back at their prisoner. Without hesitation they closed ranks so that their thick torsos again blocked me from seeing McClelland. And him from seeing me.

  Elliot Bellhaven used his voice well, forming crisp consonants and resonant vowels. His vocal skills made him a formidable courtroom orator. When I heard someone behind me begin to address the room, I knew that it was Elliot.

  “We’re going to clear this office,” he said in a louder than necessary voice. “Everyone move downstairs to the first floor, please. Calmly. No need to rush. No need to go to your desks.”

  I neither turned to watch him nor moved to obey him. My eyes stayed focused on the doorway to Lauren’s office.

  The people beside me did turn. Elliot was their boss. He wasn’t mine.

  Elliot waited a few seconds before he repeated, “Everyone.”

  With that I figured he was talking directly to me. Ten seconds later I heard his voice again. He had moved so that he was right behind me.

  “Come on, Alan,” he said, just a trace of conciliation in his tone. “She’s fine. You’ll meet up with her downstairs after she’s debriefed.”

  “Why is he here, Elliot? Why did he turn himself in?”

  He had a ready reply. “Cons get comfortable inside. They want to go back. Happens all the time.”

  “Not McClelland. He could be in Mexico by now. Or on his way to Peru. Why give up?”

  “He’s crazy. Right?” Elliot shrugged. He wasn’t interested in why.

  “People with mental illnesses don’t have judgment? That’s your explanation?”

  He snorted. “What’s yours, Doctor? You were so good at understanding him last time around.”

  Although I would have preferred to hit him, I answered him. “For most of us freedom is an overriding motivation. For some of us it’s not. We need to know what’s more important to this guy than his freedom.”

  “He’ll be interviewed.”

  “He wants to talk with me.”

  “You and I both know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?” I asked, fighting to keep my exasperation under wraps.

  “He won’t be rewarded for this stunt. McClelland’s not calling the shots here. He’s a fugitive. He’ll be treated like a fugitive.”

  “You’re not curious?” I asked in a conversational tone that I was pleased remained in my repertoire. “What he might want? What he’s been up to for the past few days? Why he chained himself to her desk instead of running for his life?”

  “He wanted to taste freedom. Found it overwhelming. How complicated is that?”

  Whatever conciliation had occurred between us was fleeting; I tasted a fresh undertone of condescension. It bit at my palate, like too much salt in the soup.

  “He’s not going to talk to you,” I said.

  “How can you be so sure of that?” he asked. He thought I was challenging him. Perhaps I was.

  I turned and faced him. “Because I know him.”

  “That’s all you got? You know him?”

  Elliot had given up any pretense of disguising his condescension. I said, “He’s not going to talk to anyone from your office or to any cops. He hasn’t spoken to a single member of the hospital clinical staff in Pueblo in years, Elliot. Not a syllable. He’s been playing the system like a virtuoso.” I was tempted to use Thibodeaux’s Hendrix analogy, but I resisted.

  “How do you know…that?”

  I was pleased again. Elliot didn’t know that McClelland had gone electively mute in Pueblo. I liked the advantage his ignorance gave me. Not because it would mean anything beyond the moment. I liked it because it allowed me a temporary petty perch just a little bit above him. In reply to his question I simply sighed. Telling Elliot how I knew about Michael’s treatment progress in Pueblo, or lack thereof, wouldn’t help my cause and it would be a betrayal of Tharon Thibodeaux’s generosity.

  “He’s not done, Elliot. He didn’t walk away from the state hospital so he could have a holiday at the Boulderado or spend a weekend enjoying the pleasures of the Pearl Street Mall. He had something he wanted to accomplish, and he’s not done.”

  “What?” he asked.

  I tasted derision, not curiosity, in Elliot’s question. Condescension was one thing; derision was something else entirely. I was being viewed through a translucent screen of contempt. Things were worse than I had imagined. I wondered what they had on me.

  I swallowed an impulsive, juvenile “Fuck you.” Instead I said, “I don’t know. What? You think it was an accident that he was camped out in a building fifty feet from my family’s front door?”

  “You don’t know that was him.”

  I recalled Sam’s caution about the forensic evidence collected in Peter’s barn, and decided not to press that point. “You think it’s a coincidence that he chained himself to Lauren’s desk?”

  “Go home, Alan. Your family is safe. Enjoy the good news. We got the bad guy. He’s back in custody.”

  “You got the bad guy? Maybe I’m missing something, but I think the bad guy turned himself in. And I guarantee you it wasn’t an act of capitulation on his part. McClelland has just gained some advantage. What? I don’t know yet. But don’t be naïve, Elliot. My family isn’t safe. All that’s happened is that McClelland knocked on your door so that you guys will make the mistake of thinking that’s he’s completed his sabbatical.”

  Elliot sighed. The drama of his sigh put mine to shame. “Tell you what, Alan—I’ll try not to be naïve if you’ll try not to be so damn demeaning. How’s that?”

  He was right; my condescension was coloring our interaction. If in no other way, my anti-pettiness campaign was paying off in self-awareness. That was something.

  Elliot’s condescension and derision were invisible to him—denial means that zits and gray hair are unlikely to appear in the mirror. Contempt? Not a chance.

  I allowed myself the pleasant spray of a small victory. Although it was true that I hadn’t exhibited anything resembling composure since I had made it up the stairs at the Justice Center, I had just managed to get the relentlessly charming Chief Deputy of the DA’s office to lose any semblance of his. “I’ll consider it,” I said in response to his earlier offer about killing both his naïveté and my condescension with the same arrow.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and said, “Go home right now or I swear I’ll get somebody to take you there whether you like it or not.”

  With absolutely no condescension in my voice I said, “I’ll leave after I talk to my wife.”

  He scoffed, “You think you have that kind of leverage? Any leverage?”

  “I need leverage to talk with my wife?”

  He said, “I’ve been with her. She hasn’t asked to talk to you.”

  My own biased assessment was that he hadn’t been as successful as I had been in getting all the contempt out of his delivery. I didn’t want to discuss the state of my marriage with Elliot so I made a quick decision to change the subject to something more pertinent to my well-being than how long I would get to stay in the reception area of the DA’s office. “I’m curious about something. Are you thinking of arresting me?”

  I knocked him off balance with the question. Just a little. It had been my intent to thwart the advantage he’d gained with his quip about Lauren not wanting to talk to me. He raised a finger to scratch at his eyebrow. The move was misdirection. Elliot was deliberating. If there was a way to play my query to his advantage, Elliot would find it.

  “For this? I just want you out of our way. We have work to do. Go home.”

  “I’m not talking about this,” I said.

  He touched his ear lobe, gave it a gentle squeeze. Raised his chin a centimeter. He reminded me of a third-base coach trying to set up a suicide squeeze. “You know that you and I can’t talk about…any
of the things that happened over the weekend. Certainly not without your attorney present.”

  A voice emerged from behind us. “His attorney is present, Mr. Bellhaven. But thank you so much for extending the constitutional courtesy. An often neglected gesture, but always appreciated.”

  Elliot turned to the voice. He found himself eye-to-eye with Kirsten Lord. She was in modest heels.

  Elliot, modest wingtips.

  “Kirsten Lord,” she said, holding out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure. I’m an associate of Cozier Maitlin. We represent Dr. Gregory.”

  “Ms. Lord,” he said. “I had heard that Cozy took on an associate. Don’t know whether to offer my congratulations or my condolences. Regardless, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” In most circumstances Elliot did courtesy like cornstarch did silky.

  He stepped forward and shook her hand. He then retreated to the neutral territory halfway between me and my lawyer.

  Kirsten smiled pleasantly as though she had all the time in the world. Her Southern manners were a natural match for Elliot’s patrician ones. She said, “As far as I’m concerned, you may go right ahead and answer Dr. Gregory’s question. There is no longer any need to use my absence as an excuse not to reply. And I’m as anxious as my client is to hear what you have to say.”

  Elliot scratched that itchy eyebrow again. Then he straightened his perfectly straight eyeglasses. “Now isn’t the appropriate time,” he said. “Will you please persuade your client to clear this office? The alternative is something…I would prefer to avoid.”

  She looked at me then. Her glance was exceedingly brief, just long enough to allow her to make a determination about my disposition. Then she turned back to Elliot. “If you’ll excuse us for just a few moments, Dr. Gregory and I will talk. I’ve always preferred to do my persuading in private.”

  FORTY-ONE

  “YOU’RE NOT going to win this one, Alan. Let’s get out of here,” Kirsten said. “We live to fight another day.”

  I was back at the glass partition. Elliot had gone through the door into the interior corridor—if for no other reason than to demonstrate to me that he could and that I couldn’t. It was apparent that the bolt cutter had worked on Michael’s nylon chains. The cops were standing him up from Lauren’s desk.

  “Just a second, Kirsten. I want to watch this.” I knew he’d look for me again. I wanted to see what was in his eyes when he spotted me.

  McClelland had a bare grin on his face when he looked my way. It wasn’t glee, and it wasn’t the expression of someone who had just surrendered after a lost battle. It was the face of someone who had sacrificed a pawn to set up an opponent’s rook, the face of the guy who had marched his squadron of soldiers into the belly of the Trojan horse.

  The cops pushed him and shoved him toward the door. He lowered his head as though he was on a perp-walk trying to shield his face from the camera. At the very last moment he raised his head again, looked up directly at me, and smiled a full-toothed smile. His expression was triumphant.

  Like he’d just hit a three-pointer at the buzzer. From half-court.

  Two seconds later he was gone, whisked down the hall. Next stop? Probably the county jail. Soon enough he’d be back in Pueblo. It was possible because of the escape he’d be moved someplace more secure. I’d learn that soon enough.

  I said, “This stunt was a warning to Lauren and me that it’s not over.”

  “What’s not over?” Kirsten asked.

  I didn’t have an easy answer. Plenty of candidates to choose from. But no answer that wouldn’t require a retelling of my therapy with McClelland all those years before. I thought of saying the single word that was bouncing around in my head: retribution. Although it sounded melodramatic it had always been the defining psychological motivation in Michael’s pathetic life. I had been his therapist. I knew that he carried enough vengeance within him to fuel a lifetime of psychological terrorism.

  Kirsten put her hand on my back, between my shoulder blades. She was close enough that I could smell her. Her perfume softened me. I let it. A slap of reactive guilt diminished in an instant.

  “He’s back in custody, Alan. It should be over now.”

  It’s not. But I didn’t argue. I said, “I’m done here. Let’s go.”

  As we stepped into the elevator my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked the screen.

  It read, ALARMS INC.

  The doors closed. I flipped open my phone and put it to my ear. Nothing. The west side of Boulder’s cell-phone lottery had eaten another one of my calls.

  I was thinking, Alarms Inc. shouldn’t be calling me. I don’t need this.

  Alarms Incorporated was the local company that monitored the intrusion and fire-alarm systems at our home. When they received a signal indicating a potential problem they initiated a series of calls. My mobile phone was the first number on the list.

  Since I don’t answer my phone when I’m in session with a patient, I’d instructed them to call Sam Purdy immediately, too. If neither of us responded Adrienne’s home phone was the third option. If nothing else worked Alarms Inc. was supposed to call the sheriff or the fire department to investigate.

  By the time I managed to get a clear cell signal and return the call, the dispatcher informed me they had reached Mr. Purdy. He had assured them he was on his way to my home to investigate the breach, which involved the sensor on the door that led from our basement below the two decks on the west side of the house.

  “That sounded ominous. What is it?” Kirsten said after I was done with the call. We were outside standing on the edge of the parking lot adjacent to the Justice Center.

  “An alarm at my house, probably nothing. It’s a sensor on a door that’s given us trouble before.”

  She put her hand on my back again. “Probably nothing? That’s not the way your luck has been running.”

  “Sam’s on his way there. I’ll wait to hear from him. Right now I need to find Lauren.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “We still need to talk. You and I.”

  She held my gaze. “If you want me off the case, I understand. Say the word and I’ll speak to Cozy about it. But right now? You do need to find your wife.”

  All I was able to learn in the next ten minutes at the Justice Center was that Lauren was “detained” by something that had to do with the Michael McClelland fiasco in her office. She sent word through Melissa—the young deputy DA who had been so pleasant during the meeting at our house the day the grand jury witness disappeared—that I should go on home. She would be in touch.

  I was five minutes from the house when Sam called my cell. “You talked to the alarm company?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “I just got to your place. I don’t see any problems,” he said.

  “Thanks, I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m crossing under Foothills right now.”

  He was leaning against his Cherokee when I pulled up to the house, his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms crossed over his chest. I hopped out of my car. “I’m sorry you had to do this, Sam.”

  “No big deal. It’s not like I have much of a caseload right now. Gives me an excuse to talk to you face-to-face.”

  “The alarm company said the signal came from the west basement door.”

  “That’s what they told me, too. I checked. If somebody went in that way they used a key. It’s all locked up. No sign of forced entry.”

  “Did you check Adrienne’s house and the barn?”

  He nodded. “I’m quick. No bodies hanging anywhere.”

  “Funny.” My keys were in my hand. I dangled them. “Check inside?”

  The April day was lovely. Lauren had been last to leave the house in the morning; she’d put the dogs in the fenced run for the day. I greeted them and set them free. I thought they seemed squirrelly, especially Emily, which raised my anxiety a notch.

  I held the dogs back as Sam walked
ahead of us down the front hall. “No sign of trouble here,” he called from the direction of the kitchen and great room. “You want to check the bedrooms or should I?”

  I thought of Lauren’s bong. “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  The dogs beat me to him. He was standing near the kitchen island. He surprised me with his next question. “Does it feel to you like anyone’s been here?”

  I weighed his words for nuance. Sam wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of cop. He didn’t often ask for affective impressions of events. I decided to answer as though he were sincere, and hope that I didn’t regret it. “The dogs are different. Mostly Emily. Could be they’re excited about seeing you, but they’re edgy about something.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Could have been a fox getting close to their run. A stray dog on the lane.”

  “Or a stranger wandering around their house, eh? Basement or bedrooms first? You choose.”

  I gestured toward the stairs. Sam went down first. Emily passed him on the way to the basement. She wasn’t about to let anyone get down ahead of her. That wasn’t unusual behavior; that was her nature. She had as much alpha in her as any female I’d ever met.

  Our basement consisted of a dark guest bedroom, a cramped bathroom with cranberry tile and pink fixtures that had been on its knees begging for renovation since the first time I’d seen it, a small sitting room that Lauren and I had set up as a makeshift home office by sticking an old partner’s desk in the middle, and some laundry and utility space. The best part of the basement was that it was a walk-out. A solitary exterior door opened to the downhill slope on the west side of the house beneath the great room deck. Lauren and I had plans for a big patio down there. Flagstone, with a hot tub and a fire pit.

  We’d had the plans for years.

  The iPod was sitting in its dock adjacent to the spot on the partner’s desk where Lauren kept her laptop. I pointed at it. “A thief would’ve grabbed that first, right?”

  “If it was a thief,” Sam said.

  I didn’t know what that meant. One of the only things that had been keeping me calm about the alarm signal was my absolute assurance that the intruder hadn’t been Michael McClelland. He had been otherwise occupied. “Nothing looks amiss,” I said.