Cold Case Page 4

  "Definitely," I concurred.

  "Has to be custom. Can't get one of those at Walgreens."

  Without turning back to face me, Lauren said, "You know, I think A. J.'s MS is worse."

  "The cane?"

  "Sure. Her balance is bad, she's holding on to chairs when she walks. Something else is going on, too. I see it in her eyes."

  Both Lauren and A. J. lived with multiple sclerosis. Although we had never discussed it with her, we both suspected that the form of the disease that A. J. struggled with was more virulent than Lauren's version.

  I asked, "You still thinking she may have progressive disease?" I was describing the most dreaded form of the illness, the one that causes rapid deterioration without remission or recovery.

  Absently, Lauren caressed a stretch of skin on her shoulder that had recently gone numb.

  "God, I hope not. But she's lost weight, don't you think?" Without waiting for my reply, she asked, "What do you think about the case?"

  I shrugged.

  "It's interesting. The forensics seem fascinating. I'd be more comfortable with my part of it if it didn't involve my needing to interview Raymond Welle. How well did you know him? Did you and Jake spend much time with him and his wife?"

  "You know, we didn't see them very much. Jacob's family wasn't… close… and Raymond and Gloria were up in Steamboat most of the time we were in Denver.

  Jacob's father wasn't very tolerant of Raymond, so he and Gloria tended to stay out of the city. Jake and I skied with them once for a long weekend, but I spent more time with Gloria than I did with Raymond."

  "What was your impression of him?"

  "Raymond? He was as shallow as they come. Always trying to pump himself up so he'd have some stature in the family. Given Jake's family, and all they've accomplished, that wasn't easy. Being around Raymond was painful for me. Gloria was self-absorbed in her own way, but at least there was an underlying generosity about her. She wanted to be kinder than she really was-you know what I mean? But she always did seem to manage to have enough energy to taunt her father. I think Raymond was part of that."

  "What are you saying? She married him to spite her dad?"

  "Jake's father is a Kennedy Democrat. Has always played the family wealth thing very low-key. Gloria made loud Republican noises at family gatherings and was as visible with her trust fund as she could manage while she was out on the gilded-horse-show circuit. It made her father uncomfortable. I always assumed that was her intent."

  "And Raymond?"

  "He had a certain charisma, I suppose. Not charm, but charisma. The thing that made it so uncomfortable to be around him was that he was always cooking up some scheme or another to try to look large. With Gloria, he married into the big leagues, Alan. I did, too-by marrying her brother-so I know what it was like to try to function up in that rarefied air. And I can tell you that as unprepared as I was, Raymond certainly didn't have the tools to play at that level."

  "Well, he's not underachieving now."

  She chuckled. " I don't know about that. Ever take a close look at the current makeup of the House of Representatives? Most of those people wouldn't stand a chance of winning a second day on Wheel of Fortune. You have to admit that Congress has fulfilled the founding fathers' dreams and become the ultimate equal-opportunity employer."

  "But before he was elected, Raymond Welle had his own nationally syndicated radio show. Not too many people get that far."

  "And the ones who do? Whom exactly are we talking about, sweetie? Howard Stern and Don Imus? Rush Limbaugh? Dr. Laura?" She smiled at me in a way that was, at once, both patronizing and enormously affectionate.

  "Are you going to try to make an argument that the cream has floated to the top of that vat?"

  The premise was distasteful.

  "I'll grant you a point on that. But you do have to admit he's made a name for himself. Raymond."

  "Sure he's made a name for himself. What did he call himself on that stupid radio show before he was elected? America's therapist? And his campaign slogan, what was it?

  "Colorado needs to get Welle." But I don't think he did it all himself. Raymond's where he is because he was smart enough and slimy enough first to marry Gloria, and second, to capitalize on the fact that she was brutally murdered.

  They used each other while they were alive. He got the last laugh though: he used her after she was dead. The man took his grief and vengeance onto his radio show like he was the one who'd invented the Greek tragedy."

  My wife was being unusually reproachful. Typically, she found a way to shadow her criticisms behind a veil of acceptance.

  "So, can I safely assume that you didn't really like Raymond very much?" I asked.

  "No," she replied.

  "I didn't. And I still don't."

  "Is it politics? What?"

  I watched her face contort into a yawn. The day of travel and meetings was taking a toll on her energy.

  "What he spouts off about, that's not politics. I'm sorry, that's dogma."

  "What then? Why the negativity?"

  Lauren picked some turkey from the side of her sandwich and slid it into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed before she responded to my question.

  "If you knew him in high school-Raymond, I mean he would have been the boy who was always between cliques. He was the kid who considered himself too good for the group he was with and he would be doing everything he could to ingratiate himself with the group he wanted to be in.

  When I met him, he'd already managed to marry into the best clique he'd ever find. I suppose I was as guilty of that sin as he was. What I never liked about him is that he felt that his marriage, and his new status, elevated him to some new exalted level. Raymond actually believed that he was a better person because he'd married Gloria."

  Lauren and I had never done a detailed tour of the marital territory she'd left behind with her divorce, so my next question to her was not uncomplicated. I couldn't foresee how she'd reply. I asked, "What was it like for you when you were married to Jake? I mean socially, I guess. You know, in the world of wealth and privilege?"

  She sipped through a straw from a bottle of herbal tea before she replied.

  "What was it like up there? Well, the food was almost always good. The sheets were always soft. The flowers were always fresh. The lines were short. But the people? The people were the same as they are everywhere else. Some wonderful, some ordinary, some despicable."

  "Raymond?"

  "He was never ordinary."

  After lunch, the group filed out of the theater and descended the wide oak stairs to the main room in Kimber Listers flat. Chairs were pulled in from the dining-room table. Large pillows were tossed on the wood floor. Lister and Russ Claven wheeled an old-fashioned schoolhouse chalkboard in from another room.

  Before everyone was settled down, Lister began to make introductions of the visitors to the proceedings. First he introduced the current chief of the Steamboat Springs Police Department, a barrel-chested man with red hair named Percy Smith was identified as the man responsible for bringing the case of the two dead girls to the attention of Locard. The next introduction was Lauren.

  Finally, me. The group pretty much ignored us.

  Lauren and I had grabbed a small chintz love seat at the back of the room. I sat enthralled as a discussion of the facts about the two dead girls slowly developed into a tornadic debate about whether the case could be closed with help from the group that was assembled. Questions were posed. Some were answered. Some were deflected or deferred. Lister outlined every advance and failure of the debate on the chalkboard with a fine hand that wasted precious little chalk.

  The woman with the eye patch, it turned out, was a crime-scene specialist from North Carolina. Her name was Flynn Coe. She quickly became the focus of much of the early discussion, which dealt with the management-or mismanagement-of the crime scenes where the two girls had been found and where the snowmobile had been recovered. I assumed that Flynn had stu
died the police reports in advance of the meetings, because her comprehension of the problems posed by the collection and contamination of the evidence was so thorough and thoughtful.

  russ Claven, much to my surprise, revealed himself as a forensic pathologist who was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins. I struggled to understand the nuances of the questions that were thrown his way about the initial autopsies, tissue preservation, and the effects of longterm freezing on human cadavers. Most of it, thankfully, was way over my head.

  I was also trying to begin to internalize a roster of the other regular members of Locard. At least three or four people in the room were FBI, including a supervisor from the Bureau's crime lab, and a hair-and-fibers specialist whose head was as bald as a baby's butt. I counted two prosecutors besides Lauren, one federal, one Maryland. Two homicide detectives. A faculty member from Northeastern University. A ballistics person who didn't look old enough for full membership in the NRA. A document analyst. A forensic dentist. A forensic anthropologist. A couple of cops whose specialties I couldn't discern. A forensic psychiatrist who looked like a game-show host, and A. J." who was a forensic psychologist. Two or three people never said enough to permit me to make a guess about their professional specialties.

  After the focus shifted from Flynn Coe and the crime scene, a number of questions were directed to A. J." who had already completed a search of the FBI VICAP database looking for evidence of similar crimes in other jurisdictions. A few Locard members argued that two murders of young men-one in Arizona the year before, one in Texas the year after-that were accompanied by hand amputations warranted further analysis. To me, A. J. seemed skeptical about the connection.

  The very fact that she wanted me to assess the pre morbid psychology of the two girls argued against her having much faith in the serial-killer theory.

  My watch told me that we were almost two hours into the debate before a sedate woman who sat far off to the side in the gathering took a break from her needlepoint long enough to speak for the first time. I guessed she was in her early sixties. She wore a long denim skirt and a pale green cardigan over an eyelet blouse. Only the top of the cardigan was buttoned. Everyone in the room quieted in response to her clearing her throat. As the room hushed, she lifted her half-glasses from her nose and dropped them gingerly to her ample chest, where they hung on a beaded chain. She said, "Excuse me, please, Kimber. But I have a question. Maybe two."

  Kimber softened his booming voice as much as he could, which wasn't much.

  "Yes, Mary. Of course."

  "What consideration was given to the involvement of the brother? Tami Franklin's brother? The one who claims he knew where she was taking the snowmobile that night?"

  Percy Smith, the current chief of the Steamboat Springs Police Department, responded.

  "He was interviewed, but the boy was only fifteen at the time, ma'am."

  "Yes?"

  Her incredulity was an act intended to place Smith on the defensive. It worked.

  Smith said, "It is his family, the Franklin family, that requested that I contact Locard, ma'am. The family is underwriting a significant amount of the expenses associated with reopening the investigation."

  "Yes?"

  The chief hesitated and looked around the room for help. None was forthcoming.

  "Do you follow golf, ma'am?"

  She fielded the non sequitur with aplomb. She said, "No, I'm sorry. Should I?" as she busied herself picking some errant threads from her needlepoint that had ended up on her sweater.

  "Tami Franklin's younger brother is Joey Franklin. The golfer? Perhaps you've heard of him."

  "Actually, no, I have not. But that's very nice for him. I hope he enjoys the sport more than I do. But my question remains, what was Joey Franklin, the golfer, whose family so wants our help solving these crimes, what was that Joey Franklin doing the night his sister and her friend disappeared?"

  Excitement clear in her voice, Lauren whispered, "Alan, you know who that is? I think that's Mary Wright. She's a legend in the Justice Department. She was on the team that prosecuted Noriega. People talk about her sometimes for the Supreme Court."

  The name Mary Wright meant nothing to me.

  The police chief finally replied to Marys question.

  "In his initial interview, Joey stated that he was out riding his horse until sunset. He said that after he brushed his horse down he went inside and was playing video games after that. He maintains he went to bed early."

  Mary had returned her half-glasses to her nose and had refocused her attention on her needlepoint.

  "Were his reports of his activities ever corroborated?" The chief didn't respond. Kimber said, "No, Mary, to my knowledge his whereabouts have not been independently verified. His parents were out that night. Mr. Franklin wasn't back from a business trip of some kind. Mrs. Franklin was having dinner with a friend. Joey was home alone."

  Mary clarified, her voice mildly admonishing.

  "I'm afraid that is a slightly elastic version of what we know to be true, Kimber. What we know appears to be limited to the reality that, if young Joey was home, he was home without parental supervision, and without a corroborating witness. His solitude cannot be established with anything approaching certainty."

  Kimber grinned and proceeded to add a line to the chalkboard that read:

  Alibi, Joey Franklin??? Reinterview.

  Lauren gestured at the new line on the board and whispered, "Is Joey Franklin who I think he is? That young golfer who everyone's talking about? The one who had the playoff with Tiger at that tournament?"

  That tournament was the recent Masters. Lauren didn't follow sports much. I nodded and said," It must be him." "He's cute," she said.

  I didn't have an opinion about his cuteness.

  Kimber continued his solicitousness toward Mary Wright.

  "Is there anything else, Mary? Before we move on?"

  She smiled warmly, her gaze wholly above the lenses of her glasses.

  "Perhaps one more thing. The location of the murders? I'm troubled that we haven't talked more about that. The initial investigation? One of the things that we don't know is where these poor girls were murdered. That's correct, isn't it?"

  Kimber's strategy all along had been to require that the Steamboat Springs cop take the responsibility for acknowledging the weaknesses in the case. The chief finally admitted, "No. The initial investigation did not reveal the precise location of the actual murders."

  Mary faced Flynn Coe.

  "Flynn, dear? You and russ have determined that the site of the murder wasn't where the bodies were found, was it?"

  "No, Mary. The girls weren't killed there. The bodies had been moved. Possibly on the snowmobile." Mary said, "It seems to me that it would be very helpful for us to find that girl's hand and the other one's toes now, wouldn't it?"

  Kimber wrote:

  Tami Franklin, missing hand. Mariko Hamamoto, missing toes. Locate.

  "That's all for me," said Mary.

  The meeting persisted through two breaks until late afternoon. Lauren was gamely trying to stay awake as the day waned. A. J. looked exhausted, too.

  Finally, Kimber Lister called for an end to the debate and then a vote about the formation of a working group. To the visitors, he explained that the creation of a working group, if approved, would indicate that Locard had reached a decision to make resources available for this investigation. The membership of the working group would be composed of those Locard regulars and invited guests whose special skills were considered essential to advance this particular case.

  The debate was brief. In short order, the formation of a working group was approved with only one dissenting vote. Kimber moved to appoint Flynn Coe to coordinate the working group, no one demurred, and he quickly listed the initial working-group membership on his chalkboard.

  Flynn Coe, crime scene, working-group coordinator Russell Claven, forensic pathology Laird Stabler, hair and fibers A. J. Simes, profiling, psychology Mary Wr
ight, prosecutor Percy Smith, guest, detective Lee Skinner, detective Lauren Crowder, guest, prosecutor Alan Gregory, guest, psychologist

  Lister asked for recommended additions. None were proffered. He gave a short speech about confidentiality and relations with the media, should they learn of our work. He explained that each guest would be partnered with an active member of Locard. Percy Smith would work with Lee Skinner, Lauren with Mary Wright, I with A. J. Simes.

  He thanked us for our time, and the meeting was over.

  My watch told me it was 4:36 in Boulder, Colorado. But Lauren's drawn face and rapid-fire yawns told me it was much too late in the day for her. She'd told me more than once that one of the most difficult things about her illness was how it shortened her days. Most people get twelve or fourteen waking hours to work and to play and to love.

  "Sometimes," she'd said, "I feel like I only get four or six" Whatever allotment she'd had today, she'd severely overdrawn the account. It was absolutely clear to me that she needed to get horizontal and she needed it quickly. I despaired for her and worried about the effects of the fatigue on our baby.

  Percy Smith approached the love seat just as I was about to go looking for Russ Claven to see what he could tell me about travel arrangements back to Colorado.

  Percy smiled at Lauren, whose eyes were closed, her fingers laced across her belly. He said, "Jet lag? Me, too."

  I didn't bother to correct him.

  He and I introduced ourselves, and managed some small talk about how nice it would be to be working together, before he said, "Listen," in a tone that was unnecessarily abrupt.

  "The three of us? We're traveling back home to Colorado together on Joey Franklin's jet. Just us. At the last break I phoned the people who coordinate the jet service. They can be ready to fly in about an hour. We'll get a cab from here out to Ronald Reagan. I assume that's okay with the two of you. The jet will drop me off in Steamboat and then take the two of you back down to Denver or wherever."

  I glanced at Lauren for some sense of her inclination. Her eyes didn't open; I suspected she had actually fallen asleep. The alternative to accepting Percy Smith's invitation was finding a hotel room for the night, arranging a commercial trip back to DIA the next day, then getting a cab to Jefferson County Airport, where we'd left our car. Smith's plan sounded better.