Missing Persons Read online

  “I don’t know. You have to wonder.”

  “Diane’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “But you have reasons to be suspicious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this might be important to you: Sam’s up there. He asked the sheriff for permission.”

  “He’s up where they found the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call him.”

  “Have you heard from Raoul?” Lauren asked.

  “No. I’m still worried.”

  “Keep me informed, okay?”

  After we hung up, I sent Sam a text message on his pager: “I know about D. Call me. A.”

  While I was waiting for Sam to get back to me, I took a call from Scott Truscott at the coroner’s office. “Try something on for me?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “We know that Ms. Grant hit her head when she tripped that morning at Rallysport, right? On the tile floor in the locker room? That’s confirmed?”

  Hannah Grant, okay. I fought to change gears. “Yes,” I said. “The witnesses apparently agree on that much.”

  “She tells the women in the locker room she’s fine, and she drives straight to her office.”

  “We think.”

  “Okay, we think. On the way, or shortly after she gets there, though, she begins to feel that something’s not quite right-maybe she has a headache, maybe she’s a little confused, lightheaded-but she doesn’t put two and two together, doesn’t consider that she’s just bumped her head and that she might have a concussion, or worse. Instead she decides that after all the exercise she’d done that her sugar’s too low. She’s in her car by then, she doesn’t have any orange juice, so she sucks on a couple of LifeSavers. With me?”

  “So far.”

  “When she gets to her office she’s still not herself, not feeling right. The candy didn’t help-she’s not feeling better yet. How do we know? Easy: She puts her purse in the middle of the floor. All her friends say she’s a compulsive person, OCD, truly anal, so the purse? On the floor? That’s not like her. Totally out of character. At this point I think she’s feeling even worse, not better. Maybe much worse.”

  “Why much worse, Scott?”

  “Post showed two subdural hematomas, remember? One of those two certainly came from a blunt surface-the tile floor-at the health club, during that initial fall.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we know she has a subdural from that earlier trauma. My theory is she actually already has both subdurals-one from the impact with the floor, and one from something with a sharper edge, maybe the locker room bench-and she’s actively bleeding into one or both of those hematomas. Ms. Grant was on aspirin therapy-you might not know that. Family history of heart disease.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Pressure’s slowly increasing on her brain, and she’s gradually getting more symptomatic. Half an hour passes, then an hour, and she’s more and more confused, lethargic, maybe vertiginous. Anxious, probably. Not too surprisingly, her thinking’s impaired. All she can come up with is that her diabetes is way out of whack, she has a problem with her sugar. The LifeSavers were there, Alan; in her pocket, like you said. I confirmed that with the crime-scene photos. But if she ate them, they didn’t help, so she goes in the other direction, decides maybe she needs insulin.

  “But her confusion is severe; she’s disoriented-she can’t even get her routine quite right. Instead of retrieving her kit from the kitchen to check her sugar, she tucks her shirt up under her bra the way she always does just prior to her injection.”

  I saw where he was heading. “And instead of going to the kitchen for the insulin, she’s lost and she goes to the office across the hall?”

  “Exactly. Maybe once she’s there she begins to recognize her confusion, and she sits. Maybe not. But that’s where she collapses, in that other office. Eventually, she loses consciousness. She’s still bleeding into one of those subdurals. Eventually, Ms. Grant dies from the intracranial pressure.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “That’s where you find her. Her shirt is tucked up under her bra like she’s going to do an injection, but there’s no syringe around, no insulin. It’s definitely possible she’s eaten some candy. No weapon is ever recovered that matches the second trauma to her head. What am I missing?”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing left unexplained. “Nothing, Scott. I think maybe you nailed it. No intruders, no assault, no murderer. No second blow to the head.”

  “And no more ‘undetermined.’ Hannah Grant’s death was accidental.”

  “I can’t tell you how relieved this makes me.”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Sit on this until I can run it by the coroner.”

  “Of course.”

  What was I thinking? I couldn’t wait to give the news to Diane. She’d be so happy.

  It took Sam a couple of hours to reply to my message about Doyle’s body, but he did.

  “How’d you hear?” Sam asked. Actually, it was more like a demand than a question.

  “The real estate lady. She thought I might spot a housing opportunity in the ashes of the tragedy that was unfolding.”

  “Shit. Who’d you tell?”

  “Lauren. How come you guys didn’t let the DA know that Doyle Chandler lived next door to Mallory?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  Right. “You still near Allenspark?”

  “They just wrapped things up. I’m on my way back to Boulder now.”

  “How long has your guy been dead?”

  “My guy?” Sam laughed, turning my question into the melodic refrain of the Mary Wells ditty. “My guy has been dead a while. But it’s frigging cold up here, so the body’s been pretty well refrigerated. In the meantime, wild animals have been busy doing their wild animal thing. What they nibble on first? Let me tell you, it takes away much of my faith in the natural kingdom. ME’s going to have his hands full on this one.”

  “Homicide?”

  “If it’s a suicide, he was considerate enough to bury himself first. If it was an accident, he conveniently died by tripping and falling into a shallow grave.”

  “Why’d you go up there?”

  The signal faded and wavered. When it was strong enough to carry Sam’s voice again, I heard, “… and somebody convinced me that I should be asking this Doyle Chandler about the guy who used his garage in Boulder to store a classic old Camaro. The agent thought that since he moved away from his house in Boulder, Chandler was living out this way. I’d called the sheriff to give them a heads-up that I would be chatting with him as a follow-up to the Mallory Miller thing. When the sheriff learned that some snowshoers found what appeared to be his body, they gave me a courtesy jingle.

  “For what it’s worth, this body shouldn’t have been discovered, not during the winter anyway. Most years it would’ve stayed hidden till spring, at least. You’ll like this-want to know how it was found? A woman on a snowshoe outing with some girlfriends had gone off by herself to answer nature’s call and was finishing taking a crap when she saw part of a hand sticking out from below this log she was crouching behind. Poor crime-scene techs had to collect it as evidence.”

  “Collect what?”

  “Her… you know.”

  I knew. “What’s next?”

  “I got twenty minutes to get from here to pick up Simon from hockey practice.”

  “You want me to get him? Meet you at your house? I’m happy to.”

  “Nice of you, but I think I’m cool. I’ll make it in time. Any word on Diane?”

  “Nothing. Anything on the BOLO?”

  “Nope. Go home, Alan. Stop playing cop.”

  With that, the signal faded for good and the call dropped off into the great mobile phone ether.

  I wasn’t ready to stop playing cop. The day’s events had shaken me and I was ready to do what I’d been thi
nking about doing for most of a week. I drove downtown to my office, opened the dark-blue Kinko’s box, and prepared to read Bob Brandt’s opus, My Little Runaway.

  A run, run, run, run runaway.

  51

  The manuscript was, guessing, about a hundred pages long, but the sheets weren’t numbered so I didn’t have an exact count.

  Bob’s story started with a single provocative phrase that constituted an entire sentence, an entire paragraph, an entire page, and an entire chapter.

  It moved from there into a series of short, essay-like digressions, one having to do with Del Shannon’s childhood, another having to do with the mechanics of installing low-maintenance water features.

  A page-turner it was not.

  More than half of the sheets of paper in the box were blank.

  But that solitary phrase on page one was evocative enough that the manuscript lived up to its billing in the most important area: Bob’s story did indeed contain a version of what had happened to Mallory on Christmas night, and proposed a fascinating theory about how she’d managed to make it out of her house without leaving any marks in the fresh snow.

  I reminded myself at least five times while I read and reread the few words on the first page that Bob had told me that the work was fiction.

  Fiction. Right.

  Once I’d completed an initial pass at the manuscript, and after I’d come up with a plan on what to do next, I had some time to kill before I made my next move. I ended up driving home after stopping on the way to buy my girls some of their favorite takeout from Chez Thuy, a little Vietnamese place that Viv-part of Boulder County’s Hmong community-had turned us on to. Grace was in a terrific mood while we ate and seemed totally enamored with the way that her rice noodles stuck together.

  Over sublime catfish and green onions in a sauce that had more flavors than the sky had stars, I went so far as to tell Lauren that I had some significant news that might impact the investigation of the body that had been discovered that afternoon near Allenspark. She asked for some clarifications that I couldn’t provide. But she was kind enough to phone somebody in the DA’s office to confirm my suspicion about what would happen next: The Boulder police had indeed already applied for a warrant to search Doyle Chandler’s Twelfth Street home.

  “How long will it take to get the warrant?” I asked.

  “They’ll have it soon,” Lauren said. “Judge Heller has the request; I have no doubt she’ll comply. This one’s a no-brainer. Likely homicide? The police need to search the vic’s house.”

  “I’m going to have to go over there and see Sam in person. Tell him what I know.”

  “You can’t just call?”

  “I want to help him find something at Doyle’s that I think he might otherwise miss. If I don’t tell him what I’m expecting to find there, and then if it turns out that I’m wrong, I won’t end up having to breach privilege.”

  “And you can’t tell me how you know what’s inside this man’s house?”

  “I have a hunch based on something-a story a patient… told me. I wish I could tell you more. If I’m right, you’ll know all about it tomorrow.”

  I arrived on Doyle’s block around 9:30. In order to execute the search warrant the police department was out in force-I counted five law enforcement vehicles, mostly unmarked, in front of the house. Doyle’s neighbors were curious about the commotion; despite the cold night they were congregated in small groups on nearby sidewalks and on front porches watching events unfold. I chose to park around the corner. If it was possible, I preferred not to be spotted by Bill Miller while running this errand.

  I dialed Sam’s cell phone from my car.

  “I thought I told you to go home,” he said.

  “Yeah, well. You get Simon on time?”

  “Barely.”

  “Who’s watching him now?”

  Impatiently, he asked, “What’s up, Alan? I’m kind of busy.”

  “I have something to show you.”

  “I’m working. Maybe tomorrow.”

  I could tell he was trying hard to be nice, but that his decorum was on its last legs. “I know you’re working, Sam. That’s why I asked who was watching Simon. I’m right outside. I have something to show you.”

  “It can’t wait?”

  He sounded both perplexed and annoyed. I said, “No, it can’t. What I want to show you is inside Doyle’s house. You’ll want to see it. Trust me.”

  “What? You’re outside this house? That’s what you meant?”

  “Right around the corner.”

  “I can’t bring you in here.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “This better be good,” Sam said. We were standing in the cramped entryway of Doyle’s house. With one deep inhale Sam could have filled the space by himself.

  “It’ll either be very good, or it won’t.”

  “That second possibility won’t leave me feeling great about bringing you in here in front of God and everybody.” He gestured toward the interior of the house. “Where do we go to find your treasure?”

  “Basement. Where’s Lucy?”

  Lucy was Sam’s longtime detective partner.

  “Cabo San Lucas. Cancun. Ixtapa. Someplace like that. Someplace I should be, but I’m not.”

  I led the way down the hall and through the kitchen to the basement stairs. “An empty house like this makes executing your warrant pretty easy, doesn’t it? Don’t really have to toss anything.”

  “We don’t ‘toss anything.’ We’re careful.”

  Sam had apparently forgotten that my own home had once been the target of a law enforcement search. I was in a position to make an educated argument about the actual neatness of police searches; I decided not to choose that moment to remind him.

  “What did you specify on the warrant?” I asked.

  Before he followed me down the stairs and into the basement storeroom he smiled wryly at my question but didn’t respond. I hadn’t really expected him to. I read his smile to mean, “Nice try.”

  Sam had latex gloves on his hands; I didn’t. “You have any more of those?” I asked, pointing to his gloves.

  “I don’t want you to be tempted to touch anything. Just keep your hands in your pockets; it’s a good place for them.”

  “Then open that door.” I pointed at the awning door that led from the basement to the adjacent crawl space.

  “Sorry. We haven’t been in there yet. I can’t go in there until it’s been photographed. You certainly can’t.”

  “My fingerprints are already on that handle. I opened it when I was here last time. You know, with the real estate agent.”

  “Terrific. I’ll pass that on. Let’s hope your prints aren’t flagged by NCIC. It’d make for a long night.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll just wait until the photographers are free.”

  Sam had an alternative in mind. “Or you could simply tell me what we’re looking for. I really don’t have time for your games.”

  “If what I think is here isn’t here, I don’t want to blow confidentiality. If it is here, I’ll find it, and you’ll know.”

  He thought for a moment about my plan. “If you’re wrong about all this you’re going to end up making me look like an idiot.”

  “No, Sam, I’m going to end up making us both look like idiots.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if you look like an idiot. I do care if I look like an idiot.” With pronounced reluctance, he called upstairs and redirected a photographer from the top floor of the house into the crawl space.

  He parked me on one of the recliners in the fancy theater where Doyle had allowed Bob to watch movies.

  “Sit here and don’t move,” Sam ordered. “I have to go back upstairs for a while. I’ll tell you when the photographer’s done doing what she needs to do. Then you can go into the crawl space and uncover your amazing secret.” Sam stopped at the door. “I mean it. Stay right here, wait for me to come back. Don’t even think about going into that crawl space wi
thout me.”

  I smiled at him. “Do you mind if I put on a DVD? I hear that projector there”-I pointed-“is a top-of-the-line Runco. And the screen is the same one that Spielberg has in his very own personal screening room. It’s a Stewart, Sam. An actual Stewart Filmscreen.”

  Sam gave me the finger and walked upstairs.

  It took me about five minutes to get bored. I’d already played with all the levers and buttons on Doyle’s fancy leather recliner. In addition to thirty-seven different reclining positions, the thing had a seat heater and a couple of recessed cup holders. All that was missing was a coin slot for a vibrator.

  I checked out the vaunted Runco projector that was mounted to the ceiling near the back of the room. Since I didn’t even know what I was looking at, that chore managed to use up no more than another twenty seconds.

  The recessed speakers? They were only good for ten. There wasn’t much to admire in a recessed speaker with the sound turned off.

  Doyle’s theater was actually rather spartan considering the big bucks that had been invested in its creation. No popcorn maker. No Old West saloon and mahogany bar to belly-up to on the back wall. No Xbox or souped-up Nintendo setup. The fancy Spielberg screen was all that was left for me to examine. I ambled to the front of the theater and gave it a thorough once-over. My impression of the screen was the same the second time as it had been the first: It looked suspiciously like a movie screen.

  I returned to my designated recliner. Where is the remote control? I bet myself that Doyle had one of those fancy programmable remotes that operated everything electronic on the whole block, including his neighbors’ toasters and microwave ovens. That would be an interesting find, right? That would capture my attention for at least a few minutes. Maybe there was a hockey game on TV. Sam would let me watch hockey.

  I couldn’t find the device. I checked the other recliners for hidden compartments and secret drawers. Didn’t spot a single cubby that was spacious enough to stash a fancy remote control.

  I began searching the perimeter of the room for a panel that might disguise a hidden cupboard. I used my elbow to put pressure on the wall every twelve to eighteen inches, suspecting that the room might have the kind of panel that you have to press on to free the latch.