Dry Ice (14 page)

    Sam kept his distance until the sheriff's personnel were getting ready to leave. As the tech packed up, Sam sidled up beside me and asked, "You know what the note means?"

    "On the card? Some kind of taunt."

    "Why 'the second'? What was the first?"

    Sam didn't miss the obvious. "I couldn't say," I replied.

    Sam probably knew I was lying. If he did, he let it go. The

only reason he let it go was because he knew he shouldn't have been talking to me without my attorney present. He said aloud what I'd been thinking: "They're not going to find anything. The index card will be clean. Latents on the door won't be his. Footprints and tire tracks won't be worth shit." He added a sarcastic afterthought: "Just like on TV."

    "Yeah," I said.

    "It's like me and ice-fishing. I drank a lot of beer and lost a lot of bait. Hardly ever got a pike. I was a legendarily bad icefisherman. But if you don't raise the shanty, if you don't drill the ice, if you don't hang the smelt, if you don't drop the line, you know you're never going to get a pike. That's for sure."

    I'd never been ice-fishing. Sam grew up in northern Minnesota. He had been ice-fishing. "And the beer?" I asked.

    "Made losing the bait more tolerable."

    "I was surprised to see forensics at all. This is pretty minor league."

    "McClelland almost killed a cop. Doesn't matter how long ago it was—we don't forget. Lauren see any of this?" he asked.

    He meant the card. I shook my head. "No." I held up my cell. "I was on a bike ride when she left with Grace for a soccer parents' meeting. I talked with her while you were on the way here."

    "They're all right?"

    "So far. A deputy is with them."

    He pointed across the lane at the big farmhouse that was slightly uphill from my home. Our house had originally been built as a caretaker's cottage for the farmhouse. I'd rented the shack while I was in graduate school and later bought it from the woman who lived in the farmhouse and owned the surrounding acres.

    Sam asked about the current owner of the big house. "You said Adrienne's gone. No house sitter? No chance anybody saw anything?"

    Sam knew our friend and neighbor Adrienne well. She was a urologist who had once helped him with a plumbing problem of some kind. I shook my head in reply to his question. "They're just off to Israel—she has a second cousin in Tel Aviv. I'm keeping an eye on the house."

    The forensic tech finished loading the van. Sam said something to him that I couldn't hear before he turned to me and said, "I'm going." He walked over to his dusty Cherokee and climbed in. He pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed someone. I guessed he was checking his voice-mail. The van pulled away.

    Once the forensic vehicle was over the rise on the lane, Sam stepped back out of his Cherokee, put his arm on my shoulder, and said, "Get the dogs. Let's go for a walk."

    "Do I need my attorney?"

    He glared at me. "You think
you
shouldn't be doing this? I'm the one who shouldn't be doing this."

    Since I'd discovered the purse behind my office and unwillingly inserted myself into the grand jury investigation I knew it was a risk for Sam to be seen talking with me in any nonofficial role. "It was a joke, Sam."

    "Oh. I'll call the forensic guys back to search for the funny part."

    I switched my bicycle cleats for a pair of beat-up tennis shoes before I used the side door to collect Emily, our big Bouvier, and Anvil, our faux tough-guy foster dog. Anvil, a miniature poodle, had been in our temporary care since Carl Luppo, Kirsten's mob hit-man guardian angel, had been whisked out of town by WITSEC years before.

    Carl had been Anvil's second owner. At some point I would have to accept that Lauren and I were his third owners. I had promised to take care of him until Carl got back. So far, Carl hadn't gotten back. Anvil was getting old. Carl was too.

    After our odd posse had ambled about a hundred yards

from the house we moved from the dirt lane to one of the trails that ventured uphill into the dried grasses on the rolling hillside above Adrienne's house. Anvil stayed close but once I freed Emily from her leash she lunged into the tallest grasses, looking for something willing to be herded. She preferred mammals of the bovine persuasion, but would try to herd just about anything that moved. Fortunately, her familiar hopping lope made it easy to spot her as she progressed through the grasses in the open fields. The fine Front Range spring day was growing lovelier by the hour, the air so clear that I felt I could reach across the valley and finger the rough surface of the vaulting Flatirons.

    "I'm sorry about all this," Sam said, breaking the tranquillity.

    I didn't know what he meant. "All what? The Michael McClelland thing? The grand jury thing? Or the knocking-overmy-garage thing?"

    He laughed. "I can't fucking believe what I did to your garage."

    I laughed too. "It's been a hiccup away from catastrophe since Pearl Harbor. Don't worry about it." I paused. "But the stuff you're sorry about? Does that include the my-best-friendtreating-me-like-a-suspect thing? Where's the love?"

    He pinched the crease above his nose with his thumb and index finger as though he were trying to ward off a migraine. "I'm trying right now. You want to cut me some slack? If not, let's just turn around. I don't need the aggravation any more than you do."

    "You're right. I'm sorry."

    "I don't like the position I'm in. I'm sure you don't like the position you're in. But what happened at your office is a problem. It's not going to go away because we want it to. It's serious. And that's all I have to say about that."

    "I understand."

    "Today? We both know McClelland wrote the card. Will we prove it? We won't."

    "Agreed. What's more important to me right now is convincing the sheriff it was McClelland who left it. 'Cause if he's close by—and we know he is—I'm not comfortable with the level of security the county's providing to protect my family."

    Sam took a couple of steps before he responded. "Here's the sheriff's dilemma: If he lets himself get convinced that McClelland is lurking around here, and certainly if he convinces himself that McClelland is stalking one of the county's prosecutors, it will end up costing a shitload more money than he's already spending. He has a strong financial incentive to stay skeptical."

    "The card? He'll consider that . . . what?"

    "Absent some latents or a witness? He'll conclude it's a prank. Something. Kids."

    I kicked at the dirt. Not in true frustration, just acknowledgment. I wasn't surprised. "There's no sign of McClelland anywhere near Boulder?"

    "Not here. Not in Pueblo. He hasn't been seen since he walked out of the frame on the surveillance tape outside the clinic."

    Emily came bounding back through the grasses, literally touched base with us—she put one of her big front paws on each one of my feet before she lowered herself into a canine version of the downward facing dog—and then immediately hopped back out on her determined search for a sheep or a cow or a wildebeest with wanderlust. Anvil stayed with Sam and me, oblivious to the excitement that his buddy was feeling.

    Nature wasn't Anvil's thing.

    Sam asked, "You thought about taking Grace someplace? You know, for . . . her safety? I try to imagine what it would be like to be in your shoes right now, if I thought someone had his sights on Simon . . ." His hands tightened into fists.

    I blinked a couple of times and wished I hadn't left my sunglasses back at the house. "I've thought about it. I'm still think ing about it. Lauren's sister would take Grace. But that's not a good option. Her personal situation isn't . . . ideal."

    "What about your family?" he asked. "You're an only child, right? Your parents alive?"

    
What?
My heart started pounding. When I didn't answer right away Sam said, "How come I don't already know that?"

    "I'm an only child," I said. Sam did know that.
Are my par
ents alive?
Sam may have asked once or twice; I wasn't certain. I was sure that I'd never answered directly. "My mother's alive but she's not . . . available for this. My family's not any better an option than Lauren's."

    I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to explain to Sam about the other stresses in Lauren's life, the fact that music hurt her ears, and that she was trying to manage her pain without the nightly companionship of her lemon-scented bong.

    "Carmen and I aren't exactly on the same page right now, either," Sam said.

    I felt relief at the change of subject, followed by an eruption of surprise that burned out fast. If Sam didn't volunteer something how would I know how they were doing as a couple? I rarely saw the two of them. "Really?" I said. "I'm sorry."

    
Is he thinking Lauren and I are having some trouble? How
can he tell? Did she say something?
"The long-distance thing?" I asked.

    "How 'bout we not go there?" Sam had tried to force some levity into his words. He was turned away from me, his eyes following the bouncing dot that was Emily running in the distant fields.

    "I know about the blood on my shoe, Sam."

    He snapped his attention back to me. "You do? Shit. Who told you?"

    It wasn't hard to guess what he wanted to hear. "Not Lauren."

    "Sometimes I think that this law enforcement community couldn't keep a secret if . . ." He picked up a rock and threw it halfway to the turnpike.

    "I know the blood means trouble. But I didn't have anything to do with that purse. I found it in the yard. That's it."

    "You and I can't talk about that. You need to keep Cozier Maitlin from wringing your neck. I need deniability with my bosses. No matter how this comes down, I need to be prepared to go on the witness stand, raise my right hand, and say you and I didn't discuss any of it. And I need to be able to do that without perjuring myself."

    That he was right didn't matter much to me at that moment. I wanted to hear him say that he believed me.

    "If things get any worse for you," he said, without looking at me, "things will get awkward for Lauren. Professionally. And indirectly the same is true for me, too."

    "I know."

    "If the DA decides your involvement in our investigation isn't just piss-poor luck, then Lauren's conflict of interest will be clear as a martini. She'll have to bow out, or she'll get pushed out. Given that you know almost every member of the DA's staff, including the DA herself, she'll have no choice but to bring in a special prosecutor from another district to take over the investigation."

    "It won't happen, Sam. I'm not involved."

    "God you're naïve. You can't taste the politics here? You think this is about reality? It's about perception. If it looks funny, it smells bad. If it smells bad . . ."

    The trail narrowed as we neared the crest of a ridge. I allowed Sam to go first. To the back of his head I said, "You're on loan to the DA?" He didn't say yes, didn't say no. "The same conflict-of-interest net that catches Lauren will catch you, too."

    "Assuming I'm on loan to the DA."

    We reached the top of the ridge. I cupped my hands together

into the shape of a horn and bellowed out a long, low note that Emily knew meant, "Come on home, girl."

    She changed direction in the prairie grasses and start bounding back toward us. Sam had watched me and my cupped hands as though I'd just magically levitated a few inches. "How the hell did you make that noise?"

    "As a kid I could never whistle with my fingers. I learned how to do that instead."

    "Huh," he said, shaking his head and staring at his own hands.

    I greeted Emily with a treat from my pocket. She inhaled it and immediately started nipping playfully at Anvil. "Sam?" I said. "No matter what else happens, no matter what else you learn that makes you have second thoughts, remember I have nothing to do with any of this. That's the truth, as screwy as it sounds."

    "The truth?" he said. "Don't be reassured by what you think you know. Be wary—very wary—of what you don't."

    "What does that mean?"

    He shook his head. "I got a thing I have to do in town."

    "Simon?"

    My question was about his son. "He's with his mom. I have this other thing I'm doing. An appointment."

    "You okay? Like a doctor?" Sam had suffered some serious health problems over the previous few years.

    "No, I'm good. I'm seeing a nutritionist. Somebody I met at Rallysport."

    "You're seeing a nutritionist?" I wouldn't have been more surprised if Sam had just told me he was planning to spend the weekend purifying himself in a sweat lodge with some local Lakota.

    He patted his gut. "I'm putting some weight back on. I thought I'd get some help. Make sure I'm doing the right things with my diet. I don't want to be a fat cop again. I don't want to be a fat dad again. She's been helping me out."

    Boulder changes people in ways they never suspect. Sam had to be example number one. I waited for him to tell me more. It didn't happen.

    He said, "Since I don't know who might have shown up at your house since we left, I'm going to walk to my car by myself. Give me ten minutes before you follow. I can't afford for anyone to know we talked."

AFTER A shower I carried a glass of orange juice, the portable phone, and my appointment book out onto the deck.

    I had used the brief time in the shower to reach what felt like an inevitable conclusion: I had to get Kol to admit to the police, or at the very least to Kirsten and Cozy, that he had been responsible for the trail of blood in my office. I'd also decided that I couldn't wait for his next appointment to roll around before I approached him.