Cold Case Page 3

  "As we have three visitors with us today, I will briefly survey our procedure.

  The Locard Acceptance Committee has already reviewed the case we will be discussing this afternoon. After contemplation and deliberation, the committee has reached a decision to permit the entire group to hear the details of the case and to render a decision as to whether or not to offer our expertise and make our services available to assist the local authorities in accomplishing a final determination of the issues that remain unresolved in the matters that will be before us today."

  Russ Claven leaned my way and said, "He always talks like this when he's in front of groups. The man was born in the wrong century." Lister continued to focus his attention on the wall.

  "The purpose of today's meeting of the complete membership-in consort with our invited professional guests-is threefold. First, we will use this opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the specifics of the case. That is… to review what is known, and to make an initial determination of the breadth and quality of the evidence that was developed during earlier phases of the investigation-those conducted by local authorities contemporary to, and subsequent to, the crime. Second, we will make a final determination as to whether or not to commit our resources to provide assistance toward further analysis. Finally, should we decide to proceed, we will endeavor to develop and implement a strategy that will permit us to take the investigation to a more fulfilling level. To further those objectives, we will use presentation, discussion, question and answer, argument, and deduction.

  Through the process that ensues, remaining investigatory tasks will be identified and fertile forensic pathways marked. Locard members and visiting experts alike will then use these guidelines to delineate tasks so that appropriate individuals might accept responsibility for making additional analyses and inquiries that are in line with their areas of expertise. As the developing evidence dictates, of course."

  One of the effects of Lister's profundity was that I found myself attending vigorously to his words. His manner of speaking was so obtuse that it required additional concentration. He paused as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

  I tried to scan the room to find A. J. Simes. Based on my memory of her hairstyle I settled on two likely candidates who were sitting near the front of the room.

  Before he resumed his soliloquy, Lister lifted his feet from the floor and turned so that he was in profile to his audience. His feet and buttocks now rested on the stage; his knees were in the air. He still hadn't looked our way.

  Behind him, a large movie screen descended silently from a slit in the ceiling at the back of the narrow stage. Lister said, "We'll begin with a short film presentation."

  Russ Claven leaned over again and whispered in my ear. His breath was fetid.

  "We always begin with a short film presentation. Mr. Lister would much rather be Ken Burns than Sherlock Holmes."

  The first image on the screen was a close-up of the left hand of a woman. Her fingers were long and thin. Only a solitary ornament-a delicate ring of silver and amethyst-adorned the hand. The ring graced the pinkie. The fingernails on the hand were manicured but not painted, the cuticles having been trimmed with some care. From the lack of wrinkles on the skin I guessed that I was looking at the hand of a young woman.

  Lauren, sitting beside me, reached over and squeezed the wrist on my left arm.

  The gesture was a warning, a caution. The gesture said, Get ready, here it comes.

  The camera pulled back slowly, revealing the woman's wrist and bare arm. A half-inch curved scar caused a quarter moon of silver to shine smoothly two inches below her elbow. The arm was trim, the biceps firm.

  The theater was funereally quiet. I kept waiting for blood to darken the screen.

  I was sure there was about to be blood.

  But instead we moved from fingers to toes. Brightly painted, beautifully proportioned toes. The color of the nails was turquoise, and the background skin tones were a gorgeous gesso of subdued gold and amber.

  Immediately, I decided that this was a different girl.

  The camera lingered for a few moments and then pulled back from the toes to reveal an ankle of perfect proportion, a slender calf and an unbent knee, and a seemingly endless expanse of unblemished thigh. The beauty of the leg distracted me, but not totally. I was still waiting for the blood.

  The next image on the screen was a wagon wheel. Totally unlike the arm and the leg, the wagon wheel was old and weathered, the spokes radiating out from a rusted iron hub. Through the spokes, behind them, I could see the vertical shoots of out-of-focus golden grasses. Cultivated grasses. Hay.

  Lauren squeezed my arm again, released her grip, and lightly caressed my forearm. Wait, it's coming.

  Using the hub of the wheel as the center of the world, the camera pulled back again. Quickly this time. At one side of the spoke rested the hand with the silver-and-amethyst ring. Hanging beside the wheel was the exquisite leg and the foot with the turquoise toes.

  Here comes the blood.

  The silence ended and Lister's recorded voice forced its way into every cubic centimeter of space in the theater.

  "Colorado," he said as the wagon-wheel image exploded to a snapshot that showed two young women laughing deliriously, mugging for the camera. They were posing in a field on an old buckboard, the rolling mountainsides in the background dotted with stands of aspen. One of the girls was sitting on the buckboard, her legs draped over the side. The other was standing, leaning languorously against the wheel. The one whose hand we'd studied was an outdoorsy blonde. Her face was so vibrant and joyous I wanted to smile along with her. The one with the painted toes was of Asian ancestry. Japanese. On reflection, I decided that she was not quite so vibrant. I sensed some pressure in her mirth and her eyes were averted from the lens by a degree or two.

  She was the follower.

  Her friend was the leader.

  "The Elk River Valley near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Steamboat is a mountain town in the northern Colorado Rockies, founded by ranchers, but developed by skiers. Its residents call it "Ski Town USA."

  "The camera closed on the blonde.

  "Steamboat Springs was the only home that Tamara Franklin ever knew. Everyone in town knew her and everyone called her Tami." The lens moved to the young Asian.

  "Steamboat was the home of Mariko Hamamoto for only eight months. Her new American friends called her Miko. Her family… did not" The screen went suddenly white. So fine was the focus that I could make out the crystalline forms of snowflakes and ice crystals. I waited for the camera to pull back. It did. Protruding from an uneven bank of snow were a hand and, four or five feet away, a foot.

  On the hand was a silver-and-amethyst ring.

  On the foot were five toes with glistening turquoise nails.

  I stopped worrying about the blood. Now that I'd had my first view of the murder scene, I was sure that every drop would be frozen.

  The film lasted another ten or twelve minutes.

  Tami Franklin and Miko Hamamoto had been juniors at Steamboat Springs High School. They were friends who were last thought to have been together on a November evening just before Thanksgiving of 1988. Sometime in the late afternoon Tami had driven her dad's pickup truck away from her family's cattle ranch near the tiny township of dark, high in the Elk River Valley in the shadows of Mount Zirkel. Behind the truck she was towing a snowmobile on a trailer. She had told her brother that, snow permitting, she was going to meet Miko for an evening ride to one of the hot springs not far from town. Her brother, Joey, had thought she said she was heading to Strawberry Park. But he wasn't sure.

  Mariko's parents had told investigators that their daughter had left home to meet her friend after completing her homework. They didn't know anything about a snowmobile outing. Mariko's mother guessed that her daughter left right around six o'clock. Maybe ten minutes before or ten minutes after.

  That was the night the two girls disappeared. No witnesses reported seeing t
hem together that evening. No one acknowledged seeing the truck. A massive search was mounted the next morning; attention primarily focused on the trails that led to the most popular of the nearby hot springs in Strawberry Park. The search continued for the entire day. But early that evening a memorable storm blew in from the north. Skiers waiting at the base of Mount Werner rejoiced.

  Nearby Rabbit Ears Pass was closed under forty-three inches of snow.

  The girls were declared missing. A day later the snowmobile trailer was discovered in a parking lot near the gondola in Mountain Village. The snowmobile was not on the trailer. The pickup truck was found almost a month later in Grand Junction, hours away, abandoned.

  The bodies of the two girls lay undisturbed until the springtime thaw of 1989 was well under way. A cross-country skier who had moved off of a main trial in order to find a secluded place to urinate spotted one of the skids of Tami's snowmobile as it was beginning to protrude from a snow-filled ravine above Pearl Lake, high in the Elk River Valley. The location of the snowmobile was not in the direction of the hot springs that Tami had told her brother was her destination. Not even close.

  A bloodhound brought to the scene by the Routt County sheriff discovered the bodies about six hours later. The grave where the girls had been dumped was a natural hollow in the earth that had been created by the fall of a diseased fir tree as it broke free of the steep slope where it had been growing. The hillside to which the tree had tried to cling faced north. The location where the bodies were found was at least seventy-five yards from the overturned snowmobile. Due to the nature of the terrain, however, neither of the two crime scenes was visible from the other.

  To investigators at the scene there did not appear to have been any attempt to bury the girls. The only shroud over Miko's and Tami's bodies was snow. A lot of snow. At the nearby ski area that winter, the official snowfall total on top of Mount Werner had been 361 inches.

  When their inadequate graves were discovered by the bloodhound, the girls' bodies were still encased in snow and ice. Only Miko's once lovely foot and Tami's once elegant hand protruded. The exposure of the limbs to the elements had been recent; small animals had barely begun to nibble on the exposed flesh.

  The crime scenes were complex and would have challenged virtually any experienced homicide-crime-scene investigator. However, no experienced forensic personnel were available that day either in Routt County or in nearby Steamboat Springs. The personnel who did arrive at the scene didn't correctly recognize the challenge they faced.

  Especially after they discovered that the hand that protruded from the snow was the only one still attached to Tami Franklin's body. The other one was gone. As were the toes of her friend's left foot.

  The primary focus of Kimber Listers short film was to spotlight the forensic and investigatory shortcomings of the initial investigation. A litany of problems was listed. Poor crime-scene management. Careless recovery of the snowmobile.

  Possible contamination of both crime scenes by unnecessary personnel.

  Mishandling of the dead bodies at the crime scene. Incomplete laboratory analysis and mishandling of specimens from the autopsies. Witnesses who should have been interviewed, but weren't. Witnesses who should have been reinterviewed, but weren't.

  The list went on. The more I listened, the more I wondered why I'd been asked to be a member of the team that would reinvestigate this case. Laurens invitation made much more sense to me. She was a deputy DA in Boulder County with an extensive background in felony investigations. She could advise Locard on a myriad of local legal mores associated with the earlier and the current investigations.

  But me? I didn't get it. I was a clinical psychologist in private practice. I had no formal training in forensic psychology. The crux of Locards involvement in the murders of Tami Franklin and Miko Hamamoto appeared to involve the cutting edge of forensic science. I knew that I couldn't help them there.

  The lights came up at the conclusion of the film and Lister announced a short break for lunch. An anteroom off the side of the theater had been set up as a sandwich buffet. Russ Claven made a beeline for it.

  I was looking around the room for A. J. Simes when she approached us from behind.

  "Hi, you two. Thanks for coming."

  We both stood. Lauren and A. J. hugged awkwardly over the top of the seats. A. J. offered her right hand to me. I shook it. She said, "Bet you're wondering why you're here." She was looking at me as she spoke. I was trying not to focus all my attention on the four-point cane she was using for support.

  "You're right about that, A. J. This"-I waved at the screen- "doesn't seem exactly up my alley."

  "Does either of you remember the case? These two murders? You both lived in Colorado back then, didn't you? " Lauren didn't respond. I said, "I remember it vaguely. Crimes back then didn't get the coverage they do now. My memory is that there was a little splash when the girls disappeared, a big splash when the bodies were found, then the fanfare kind of faded away when no suspect was identified." A. J. said, "Well I wasn't there, of course, but that summary doesn't exactly surprise me. Do you mind if we sit?"

  Lauren said, "Let's. Please."

  A. J. moved around the seats and took the chair that Russ Claven had occupied.

  "Obviously, your participation in this inquiry was my idea. Please be assured that I wanted both of you to be involved. Lauren, your role is easier to define.

  It's typical for us to find a consultant in a local prosecutor's office to provide guidance for us on local legal customs. Okay?" Lauren nodded.

  "Alan, your role is less circumscribed. I suggested you for two reasons. First, it is clear to all of us on the committee that screens new cases that too little is known about the pre morbid history of these two girls. At the time the bodies were discovered the local police approached the investigation as though they were looking for an opportunistic killer, either a serial killer, or a drifter, or whatever. They never adequately explored the possibility that there might have been a reason that these two girls collided with this killer, or killers.

  My own bias is that if you don't explore something, you can't rule it out.

  "What I'm talking about, obviously, is a variant of a psychological autopsy.

  Typically, doing a psychological autopsy of these two girls would be my role.

  But I'm currently… unwell, physically unwell… and not in a position to do the traveling necessary to accomplish the tasks that are required to assemble such a profile. Based on our work together last year, I think you, Alan, have the skills and the demeanor to help me do it."

  I found myself slowly inhaling, overfilling my lungs. I wasn't sure why. I didn't speak.

  "But that's only part of it. The second reason I wanted you on board is that we already know that the background of one of the girls- Mariko-included a stint in psychotherapy with a psychologist who was practicing back then in Steamboat Springs. We're going to need to acquire permission from her family to get access to those treatment records. And someone is going to need to interview the psychologist who treated her to see what he can tell us about this young girl."

  Lauren was a step ahead of me. She said, "And you would rather that be somebody local?" A. J. said, "Exactly."

  During the sojourn the prior year when she was trying to protect me from a killer, A. J. and I had gone a few rounds over the necessity of the confidentiality of treatment records, so I pressed her on that issue.

  "Do you have any reason to expect that her family will deny us access to their daughter's treatment records?"

  "We don't really know. Locard's assistance on the case was requested by the new police chief of Steamboat Springs and by the family of Tami Franklin. The Hamamoto family no longer lives in the area-in fact they no longer live in the United States. Obviously we're anticipating cooperation, but those contacts are yet to be made."

  I remained confused.

  "Why do you want a local psychologist to make the inquiries? I don't exactly follow.
"

  "Surprisingly enough, the answer is political." She assessed our faces to see if either of us had guessed what she was referring to. When neither Lauren nor I responded, A. J. continued.

  "Why politics? Because it turns out that the psychologist that Mariko Hamamoto was seeing for psychotherapy in Steamboat Springs was Dr. Raymond Welle. That's why this thing is so damn political." I said, "Representative Raymond Welle? That Dr. Welle?"

  Before A. J. had a chance to respond Lauren's hand jumped up to cover her mouth and she emitted a little squeak from deep in her throat.

  I explained, "She knows him. Raymond Welle."

  My wife swallowed, exhaled once, inhaled once, and said, "Actually I was related to him. Kind of. Well, briefly."

  A. J. looked my way before turning back to Lauren.

  "We know about Lauren's first marriage. It came up when we were vetting the two of you. Welle was your brother-in-law, right?" Lauren said, "Yes My first husband's sister was married to Raymond Welle."

  "So do you know him intimately?" A. J. asked.

  "Does anybody?" Lauren replied. Before we had a chance to talk any further, A. J. was called away by Kimber Lister. Lauren and I grabbed sandwiches and drinks and returned to our seats.

  Russ Claven didn't come back to join us. He was across the room, near the stage, his attention consumed by a woman with short, radiant bronze-red hair and a gold lame patch over her right eye. She was juggling a bottle of iced tea and a plate that was piled high with a sandwich and potato salad. She accomplished the buffet waltz with admirable agility. Claven said something that made her laugh and a narrow flash of teeth erupted into a wide smile that lit the room in a way that reminded me of the infectious smile I'd just seen on the snapshot of Tami Franklin.

  Lauren was looking toward the woman, too. She said, "Cool patch, don't you think?"