Dry Ice Page 25

  Sam was examining the interior of the door jamb and the moldings, and checking the integrity of the lockset. He was wearing green latex gloves. I hadn’t seen him put them on. “Amiss? That’s a good one. I’ll put that in the report I’m not going to write: ‘Homeowner saw nothing amiss.’”

  “Do you see something?”

  “No.” He inhaled and exhaled in a rhythm that was at once unnatural and familiar—in his nose, out his mouth through pursed lips. Yoga? Maybe. Sam?

  He asked, “What about now—does it feel right down here?”

  Everything feels right but the nature of your questions and the fact that you’re breathing like the Sultan of Iyengar, I thought. But I nodded. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  We did a quick perusal of the other downstairs rooms and climbed back up to the main floor. Emily raced to be the first to join Anvil on the landing. Anvil hadn’t bothered to make the initial descent. He was getting old. His hips could do the stairs in an emergency if he had to. This trip hadn’t been an imperative for him.

  “Bedrooms?” Sam said. He was deferring to me.

  I went down the hall first. I started with the master. Our bed wasn’t made, but that had nothing to do with the linens being tossed by an intruder. The clutter on each side of the bed seemed more severe than I recalled, but I knew it wasn’t. Lauren and I were both capable of being serious slobs. The territory surrounding our bedside tables and the limited countertops in the master bathroom tended to display that tendency more radically than other surfaces in the house.

  I spotted Sam standing near the door. “This is how it usually looks,” I said in explanation. I probably sounded a little defensive.

  “Mine too. It’s odd having somebody in your bedroom, isn’t it? I think it is. Maybe that’s just me. Living room? Kitchen? It’s cool. But my bedroom, that’s…”

  I let my eyes cover the room. I walked over and opened the drawer in the dressing table where Lauren kept her nicer jewelry. She wasn’t big on bling. I didn’t do an inventory, but what I expected to be there—a little gold, a little silver, a gaudy platinum ring from an aunt—was there along with costume pieces that made up most of her collection.

  Sam said, “Sherry used to have this neat-freak devil that she let out of a cage once in a while, but since she split this is how things look in my room. Stuff doesn’t ever get put away. Sometimes I think what’s the point, other times I think I’m just a lazy fart.”

  “If you weren’t here I wouldn’t give the mess a second thought,” I said.

  “Nothing catches your eye as being out of place? Missing? Just…odd?”

  “Nothing, Sam,” I said.

  “Smells? Any aroma that doesn’t fit?”

  “What?”

  “People smell, Alan. They leave scents behind after they’ve been in a room. B.O., perfume, deodorant, whatever.”

  I sniffed the air. It smelled like our bedroom. “Nothing.” Emily still wouldn’t settle. She was definitely thinking something was amiss. “Emily’s not herself. That’s for sure. Ask her about aroma.”

  He scratched the dog’s neck. “I have something to show you,” he said. “Can I come in?”

  I remembered the innocuous question that had led to the standoff about the purse in my office. I almost laughed. I said, “Sure.”

  He walked across the room until he was standing beside me. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and handed me a couple of four-by-six photos. Grainy. Bad focus. Low light.

  “That’s my bedroom,” Sam said.

  “You keep these with you for moments like this?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  I was having trouble figuring out what I was supposed to be seeing in the images. A rectangular flash of brilliance centered near the top of each snapshot was apparently a window. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.”

  He reached over my shoulder and pointed at a silhouette slightly off center on the left side. Not much resolution. The outline of the person was dark on darker. He said, “That’s me.”

  I felt as though I were interpreting a Gestalt puzzle, sorting out what was figure and what was ground. It took me a couple of seconds to make sense of the profile of Sam’s body in the photo. He was sitting on a bed facing in the direction of the camera, but not quite at it. One foot was on the floor, the other leg bent at the knee, up on the bed. It was a queen bed, I thought. The sheets were stripes in light colors. Since the bed was unmade, the stripes went every which way.

  “I see.” Whoa. I see something else. I saw a second silhouette.

  “My shirt’s open,” he said. He didn’t want me to notice that on my own.

  “Yeah, I can tell. And, the woman?” I asked. “Who’s she?”

  FORTY-TWO

  THE WOMAN was completely in profile. She was facing Sam. Her shirt wasn’t open; it was off. She was sitting with her right leg crossed over the left, her arms extended toward him. Her hands were lost in the dark pigment that seemed to obliterate his torso but I thought that they may have been locked behind his neck.

  In contrast to the variegated shadows that obscured her face the crisp whiteness of the side view of her bra caused a distracting delta image in the center of the shot.

  Light from the windows reflected off her blond hair.

  Blond hair meant the woman wasn’t Carmen, Sam’s California girlfriend. And although Sam’s ex had gone through intermittent blond phases during their relationship, the woman in the photograph was way too slender to be Sherry, which meant this wasn’t some old snapshot from their distant marriage.

  “Nothing happened. We kissed. Made out, whatever. I stopped it.” Sam was embarrassed. “Her bra stayed on. Right where you see it there, exactly.”

  “Okay.” His defensiveness made the moment more awkward than it already was.

  “You can’t really tell in the picture, but her pants are on, too.”

  I looked at the photo again. He was right; I couldn’t really tell if the woman’s pants were on. If this were the only angle for an instant replay, the officials wouldn’t have changed the call. Insufficient visual evidence.

  I glanced at him. “Sam, you’re single. You’re allowed.”

  “She’s married. Currie, the woman. Separated, you know, but still married. Technically. She’s the nutritionist I’ve been seeing. I mentioned her, I think.”

  Sam seeing a nutritionist took on a fresh connotation for me. “Currie?” I said. “You met at Rallysport?”

  “At the juice bar. She didn’t like what I ordered. Her first name is Curran. It’s a family thing. Currie. She’s from Virginia.”

  “Okay.” I nodded as though I understood why any of the details—the juice bar, Currie’s name, her marital status, her profession, the fact that she was originally from Virginia—mattered to this moment. I decided they probably did not—that Sam was chattering because of his discomfort. “You did tell me about her. That you were seeing a nutritionist, I mean. I thought for…nutrition…advice.”

  A secret, I was thinking. This photo was about Sam sharing a secret. I was instinctively aware that I was seeing the secret simultaneously in two of its evolutionary forms, not only as pupa but also as butterfly. The pupa was the lingering shame Sam felt even while the knowledge had remained private. The butterfly? Butterflies always fly unpredictably—Sam was demonstrating his unease that the secret was no longer under lock and key.

  “That’s all it was,” he said. “At first.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m good at secrets.” I’m great at secrets. When it becomes an Olympic event, I will take the gold. “Who took these pictures?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. Somebody stuffed them in my mailbox last night. No note, no message. Just the photos in a plain white envelope. Unsealed.”

  “That makes no sense. Colorado’s a no-fault state. Currie’s husband doesn’t need to prove adultery. What’s his advantage? Is he picking a fight with you?” Sam was
a physically imposing guy, but it was possible that Currie’s husband hadn’t done his homework. “He might be in for a surprise if he takes you on.”

  “They weren’t delivered to Currie. I called her and asked her if she got any unexpected packages. She didn’t. But she got all excited. Now I think she’s waiting for me to send her flowers or something. Jeez.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “Shit.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “The pictures were delivered to me,” Sam said.

  “Again, why? What’s your vulnerability?” I held the photos out to him. He didn’t take them from me. “You had a woman in your bedroom? What’s the big deal? If you hadn’t told me I wouldn’t have known it was you in the photo.”

  Sam ran his fingers through the short hair on his head, but stopped when his big right palm reached the crown of his skull. With theatrical understatement, he said, “Carmen wouldn’t be thrilled, that’s for sure. But I’m not showing these to you because I’m so worried about the why of all this. I’m showing these to you because I’m worried about the how. How the hell did somebody get these photographs, Alan? My bedroom is about the size of your closet.” He finally pulled his hand down from on top of his head.

  I took his word for the relative size of his bedroom. I couldn’t recall ever being in there. His house in North Boulder was tiny, though; I’d grant him that.

  I looked at the pictures again. They had been taken only seconds apart. The two images were almost identical. The brilliant window dominated both of them.

  “Through the window? Is there a mirror on the opposite wall? Is that possible?”

  “I thought of that, but it doesn’t work. There’s a cheap mirror from McGuckins on the closet door, but the angles are wrong. Someone had to set up a camera in my bedroom. Remote, or a timer, something. It’s the only way.”

  “What about someone…in your closet?”

  “I can’t even get another pair of shoes in my closet. It’s an old house. The closets are tiny. Nobody could hide in there. Door won’t even close all the way. Anyway, I checked inside. All I found in there that wasn’t mine was an old prescription for Sherry for Elavil. What is that? Elavil?”

  Sam knew what it was. I confirmed it. “It’s an antidepressant. An old one.”

  “Date on it was a couple of months before she left me.” He nodded, slid his lower jaw side to side. “Makes sense, I guess.”

  More secrets. “Why would someone take the pictures?”

  I thought he was getting exasperated with my questions. “The point was to show me that they took them. And that’s why I’m showing them to you.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He responded by looking around my bedroom, rotating a full 360 degrees. Then he shrugged and sighed. The sigh was disappointment that he had to connect the dots for me. “Just because nothing’s missing doesn’t mean no one has been here. If somebody got hold of a key—and they were careful—they could be in and out of your house in minutes.”

  “The dogs were outside today,” I said. “They’re not out every day, Sam. Sometimes they’re in.”

  “That would make it even easier for someone to pay a visit.”

  “Adrienne’s house is empty.”

  “Ditto. Nobody to keep an eye on things. Maybe they got lucky. Or maybe somebody was waiting. Picking the right time. Watching.”

  “How would someone get a key?”

  “You leave a spare outside?”

  “It’s pretty well hidden.”

  “Bet you ten bucks I can find it in two minutes. A hundred bucks I can find it in twenty.”

  I granted him the point. “You heard about McClelland? What happened at the Justice Center today?” I said.

  “We are not going to talk about him. At all. But go ahead and presume I’m up to speed. I’ll pretend for a moment you’re not changing the subject.”

  “The alarm went off here after he was in custody at the Justice Center,” I said. “He didn’t do this.”

  Sam nodded. What I was saying wasn’t news. He was trying to goad me to leap forward and catch up with him. I wasn’t able to see where he was going. As I’d felt from the moment I saw the card stuck in my front door the previous weekend, my mind didn’t seem to be able to handle the variables. I felt like I did as an undergraduate when I’d still been toying with going to medical school. I’d signed up for an advanced math class freshman year and within days knew that I was out of my league. Concepts that my classmates seemed to recognize immediately eluded me. Comprehension floated just out of my reach and I couldn’t reel it in.

  I had dropped that class. I wasn’t going to be allowed to drop this one.

  “Cameras can be tiny,” Sam said.

  “I can’t get too worked up about that possibility, Sam. There’s nothing to see.”

  “There’re people who would love to have a video of this conversation.”

  He was right. I said, “I’m more worried about who it is that’s helping McClelland, Sam. He has to have an accomplice.”

  Sam smiled. “Now we’re on the same page. Ideas?”

  “I’ve been working under the assumption that Kol was involved. They were at the state hospital at the same time.” I watched his eyes. “You must know that.”

  “Yeah, I know that. The question is how do you know that?” he asked. “No, don’t tell me how you know. What’s your theory? McClelland gets Kol to kill himself in the barn to…what? Make you look bad?”

  “As plans go it seems to have worked out pretty well. My practice is disintegrating. Because of the way it was all set up, my lawyers hear that the sheriff’s looking at the possibility of homicide, not suicide. If that happens, it would indeed make me look bad. Life-sentence bad.”

  Sam countered, “Nicole Cruz is dead. We can say with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that she didn’t break into your house today.”

  “Which means there’s an additional accomplice.” I said. “Any candidates come to mind?”

  “If I had anywhere to look I’d be looking. I wouldn’t be here risking my career talking to you.”

  I sat down on the edge of the mattress on Lauren’s side of the bed. I could smell her scent on the sheets. It reminded me that my current problems didn’t start, or stop, with McClelland. I walked myself through the recent events trying to figure out who might be helping him. It was like looking for an unfamiliar trailhead in the fog.

  “You think this is a message? Like those pictures from your bedroom?”

  “Go on.”

  “The timing is impeccable. Minutes—literally minutes—after Michael McClelland is taken into custody somebody breaches my home-security system.”

  Sam took over. “The message being that whatever is going on isn’t over because McClelland’s back in custody.” Sam yawned. “You got any coffee, or a Coke? I need some caffeine.”

  My associations skipped along from his yawn to the coffee to the caffeine to Kaladi. Without any sense of “eureka” I said, “I have a thought about the accomplice.”

  Sam looked skeptical. “Yeah?”

  “It’s a long shot. And it isn’t going to be easy to get the confirmation I’ll need.”

  “Why?”

  “Goddamn doctor-patient privilege,” I said.

  “I take it you’re not the constipated doctor in question?”

  “I’m not.”

  Sam laughed. “Sometimes life is very unfair,” he said. “And sometimes it seems like the most just place imaginable.”

  FORTY-THREE

  SAM GRABBED a Pepsi from the kitchen before we searched the rest of the bedroom. We couldn’t find a camera. We couldn’t find a microphone. I couldn’t identify a single thing that might be missing from the master bedroom.

  “Not finding anything doesn’t mean shit,” Sam said. “Could just mean that somebody is better at hiding than we are at seeking. I could get a forensics team back out here but…”

/>   “No,” I said. I knew Sam could be correct—it was possible someone had left something in my house. But I wasn’t convinced there was any margin in bugging my bedroom. I was much more concerned about my continuing vulnerability regarding the missing grand jury witness—if someone had left something in the house, I thought it would be incriminating evidence, not a camera.

  We finished up. Sam reminded me not to forget to check Grace’s room. As I preceded him down the short hallway to her door his cell phone rang. He usually kept his phone on vibrate; I was surprised to hear it chirp. He glanced at the screen and walked away from me, toward the western windows of the great room.

  He wanted to take his call in private. I wondered if it was Currie. Or Carmen. I opened Grace’s door.

  Her bedroom looked like it had been attacked with a chain saw.

  I felt Sam move into the space right behind me. At my feet was the torso of Grace’s favorite stuffed bear, the one that spent each day reclining on the pillow of her bed, each night snuggled in the crook of her arm.

  I couldn’t see the head anywhere in the cluttered mess that had been my daughter’s private haven. Grace’s things were tossed all over the room, but the most obscene part of the destruction was the amount of cutting and ripping that had been done. Bedding, mattress, curtains, toys, books. All shredded.

  Straight edges on many of the cuts.

  As though someone had used a machete, I thought. I shuddered.

  I said, “I need to call Lauren. Tell her not to bring Grace home to this.”

  My reaction to the profanity of this assault? It surprised me.

  Fight or flight? I found comfort that at that moment I didn’t feel much like running.

  Sam’s strong hands clenched hard on the bicep of each of my arms. He was holding me back from entering Grace’s room. “Can’t go in there. You know that.”

  “Grace can’t see this,” I said. “Ever. There’re some things a kid should never see. She’d never forget this.”

  I’ll never forget this. He pulled me back from the door. I said, “Let go of me.”

  He stepped around me so that he was standing between me and the entrance to Grace’s bedroom. “Come with me. I can’t leave you here. God knows what you’ll do. And God knows that I don’t want to have to stop you.”