Dry Ice (41 page)

    "I don't know," he said. "I think it was a full deck."

    "It's, um, important. Can you check and call me on my cell?"

    "You found something," he said. It wasn't a question.

    I bought two bottles of water and walked back to the car.

Most of the way out Highway 36 from Boulder Kirsten and I spoke like colleagues who were catching up after not seeing each other for a while. We pretended I hadn't once been her therapist and that she hadn't once fallen in love with me. The pretense was weird, but in my life weird was the new black. I tried to make like Grace and roll with it.

   As we crossed over Federal Boulevard she fumbled in her satchel and pulled out an envelope. Inside were two copies of a three-page agreement. "Elliot has requested that you sign this prior to seeing Michael McClelland."

    I flipped through the document. The letterhead was from the Boulder County DA's office. "What does it say?"

    "It says you'll tell the . . . interested parties about your conversation with McClelland. It specifically denies you the right to claim doctor-patient privilege."

    "That's not my privilege to renounce. The privilege belongs to the patient."

    She audibly swallowed a sigh. Kirsten knew to whom the privilege belonged and had been hoping to avoid an argument with me about the document. "In the agreement you acknowledge he is not a current patient. That's all."

    "You think I should sign it?" I asked. I didn't want to read the damn thing.

    "The agreement includes a release of all liability should you be injured. You should think about that. Informally, Cozy and I were able to negotiate . . . certain considerations. If you want to talk to McClelland, yes, I think you should sign it."

    I took a pen from my inside coat pocket and scribbled a signature on the last page of each copy. I refolded them and returned them to the envelope. I rested the envelope on top of her satchel.

    "You want to know what the considerations are?" she asked.

    "Not really," I said. "I would have driven all night in a blizzard and talked to McClelland for nothing. Elliot knows that."

    "That's why you have attorneys," she said.

    "That, and keeping me out of jail."

    She found that amusing. I didn't. I was too distracted wondering why Michael McClelland and J. Winter B. had chosen the six of diamonds.

    We pushed down I-25 through Douglas County at the pace of a fast-food drive-through. A few flurries were falling along the Palmer Divide. Wet flakes. Nothing unusual, nothing serious. Springtime in the Rockies.

    Kirsten said, "Snow."

    I said, "Yeah."

    The skies were gray on the back side of Monument Hill but the storm stayed confined to the ridgeline. Traffic had thinned.

    We were approaching the Air Force Academy north of the Springs when I said, "I don't want you in the room, Kirsten."

    "With Elliot? That's a mistake."

    "With McClelland. That needs to be just me and him. No recording devices. No witnesses. I'd like you to make sure that there isn't any one-way glass, or any cameras into the room. Just McClelland and me."

    "That's my understanding of how it's arranged, Alan. But later, when you speak with Elliot and whoever is there representing the Department of Corrections and the Institute for Forensic Psychiatry, I think I should be in the room."

    My phone vibrated. "That's fine," I said to Kirsten. The screen read PAY PHONE.

    I flipped it open. "Yeah."

    "Can you talk?" Sam asked. He'd apparently heard the tentativeness in my "Yeah."

    "Not really."

    "Deck doesn't have jokers. Does that change anything?"

    "Nope. I appreciate the irony though."

    He said, "Hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades. A, B, C, or D?"

    "B," I said.

    "Shit. I'm going to count. Tell me when to stop. Ace . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six—"

    "There you go."

    "Shit," Sam said. "We didn't catch there was a missing card in the deck. We should've caught it."

    "Some things are hard to notice," I said.

    "Where is it now? The card?"

    "Can't say."

    "Call me later? There's some stuff cooking here, too."

    "Count on it." I folded the phone. Traffic in Colorado Springs was almost as coagulated as it had been in Denver's suburbs. "You don't mind if I sleep the rest of the way down, Kirsten? I'm kind of . . . tired."

    "No, go right ahead," she said.

    I eased the seat back and closed my eyes. I said, "Sam's the one who's been feeding all the information from the investigation to you and Cozy, isn't he?"

    Kirsten didn't answer right away. For some reason Sam wanted his generosity to me to remain a secret.

    "The lab info? The other evidence?" I asked. "You know what I mean."

    She said, "I don't want to lie to you."

    "And if I press this you might have to?"

    "Something like that." Kirsten softened her tone from the attorney range into the friend range and added, "You know you might feel better if you tell me what happened." She paused. "When you were a child."

    She emphasized "child."

    "Want to bet?" I said. I immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry, Kirsten. That wasn't kind. Maybe later."

    
Then again, maybe not.

    I opened my eyes to the sign for the huge correctional complex. "No," I said. "You?"

    "In Louisiana and Florida? Plenty of times. Here, no. This is a first."

    I began to get anxious. I wasn't accustomed to homicidal impulses. But as we drove into the small parking lot outside New Max, I felt them. I could imagine beating Michael McClelland to death. I could imagine strangling him. I could imagine stabbing him. I could imagine shooting him.

    All with my eyes wide open.

    Kirsten sensed something. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?" she asked.

    "Here?" I said. The modern complex looked less like my fantasy of a penitentiary than like some supersecret industrial facility with plenty of safeguards to keep visitors out. The most visible barriers were the redundant lines of concertina wiretopped fences, miles of them, it seemed.

    "Good," she said. "I don't want to make the drive back by myself."

GETTING THROUGH security was laborious. Kirsten warned me to leave any sharps and metal—pens, keys, coins, whatever— in her car, but even stripped of anything resembling contraband the searches and scans that we endured to get inside the prison were much more thorough than anything I was accustomed to at the airport.

    Elliot Bellhaven was waiting on the other side of security with two people I didn't know. One was an attractive fortyish woman with an uncomplicated smile who was representing the interests of the Department of Corrections; the other was a tall, balding man with small eyes who introduced himself as "Smith." He was an assistant warden for New Max, the facility we were in. He had no soft edges. Not physically, not in manner, not in his voice. My immediate appraisal:
I would hate to be an
adolescent boy dating his daughter.

    The assistant warden led us to a conference room that was appropriately institutional. A minute or two after Kirsten and I chose seats at the table, Tharon Thibodeaux joined the gathering as the representative of the Department of Human Services and the IFP in Pueblo. I was neither pleased nor displeased by his presence.

    I took my cues from him as he introduced himself to Elliot and to the assistant warden. It was apparent from the kiss she got on the cheek that he already knew the woman from the Department of Corrections. Kirsten stood and shook Tharon's hand; I thought she seemed pleased that another Southerner was present. He seemed delighted that an attractive Southern woman with a naked ring finger was present. When she turned to sit down he looked at her ass.

    To me he said, "Nice to meet you, Dr. Gregory."

    We shook hands. I said, "Likewise, Dr. Thibodeaux."

    Elliot and Tharon got right to work, talking ground rules and goals for "the interview"—that's what everyone was calling my upcoming tête-à-tête with Michael McClelland. Kirsten seemed rapt by the minutiae of the process. In contrast, the woman from the Department of Corrections appeared to be there mostly as an observer. She was covering some superior's butt.

    I zoned out. Whatever agenda was on the table wasn't mine.

    The assistant warden brought me back to the present a few moments later. He spoke my name with an authority that was the homo-sapien equivalent of one of Emily's "attention" barks. In reality all he said was, "Dr. Gregory?"

    "Yes?" I said, my pulse accelerating.

    "The room you will be in is intended for confidential discussions. No security will be present. We will neither be able to observe you nor overhear normal conversation. If you scream loudly enough we might be able to hear you. Per agreement, the inmate will not—I repeat, not—be shackled. The table in the room is fixed to the floor. The chairs—there will be two—are not. An emergency call button—it's bright red, you're unlikely to miss it—is beside the door that is approximately six feet behind your chair. The inmate will have already been seated when you enter the room. He will have been thoroughly searched. Any questions thus far?"

    "No," I said.

    "Upon conclusion of your interview a simple knock on the door will alert the correctional officer outside that you are ready to exit. I suggest you ask the inmate to remain seated while you do that. After you knock there may be a brief delay to make sure adequate security is in place before the door is opened. Is all that clear?"

    "Yes."

    "Ms. Lord?" Elliot said. "The agreement? Has Dr. Gregory signed it?"

    "Of course, Mr. Bellhaven," she said. She withdrew the envelope from her satchel and handed one of the two signed copies to Elliot. He shuffled through the pages quickly, and pocketed the document inside his jacket. He was wearing the same suit he'd had on when he'd visited me earlier that day. The damn shirt hadn't wrinkled a bit.

    I had no idea how people did that.

    The assistant warden stood. He said, "We're set then. Dr. Gregory, right this way. Everyone else, please remain in this room."

    I followed him down a corridor, through a locked steel door, and down another corridor. We turned left. We turned left again. When we passed through yet another security door it was apparent to me that we had crossed an important line. The final security barricade we cleared was electronic and more substantial than the ones before, and the architecture on the other side revealed we had left a transitional wing and entered a correctional one. We stopped thirty seconds later outside a nondescript room with a heavy steel door. A correctional officer stood sentry.

    The assistant warden said, "The inmate is waiting inside."

    "Okay," I replied.

    "You frightened?" he asked me on an inhale.

    I said, "More nervous than frightened, but yeah, I'm scared."

    "You should be. I read his jacket. Guys like him? They're like old munitions. Designed to be dangerous, kind of unstable. They can go off at any time."

"Old bombs don't hold grudges," I said. "He does."

    He flattened his mouth into a wry smile. "Don't be a hero in there, Doctor."

    "Not in my repertoire," I said.

    "If that was the case you wouldn't be here," he said.

    
You don't know why I'm here. You have no idea,
I thought. He wanted me to reply, to reveal something.

    "Good luck," he said.

    A decent bullshit detector would be a prerequisite for a job like his, and he seemed to have one. I hoped that he had been the only one at the conference table who was questioning my motives for being in Pueblo to see McClelland.

    He said, "I'll be present later at the debriefing. See you then." He nodded at the officer. The officer unlocked the door.

    
Bingo,
I thought.

"I KNEW you'd come."

    Michael McClelland was in prison garb. The clothes made him look a little pudgier than I recalled from my brief glances at him in Lauren's office. He didn't appear villainous. I saw no lingering signs of the wounds he'd suffered during his arrest years before. All the institutional food he'd been eating over the years at the state's expense had helped him put on a few pounds. My overall impression was of a State Farm agent whose office had been stuck for a decade between a Wendy's and a KFC.

    After locating the bright-red panic button, I sat down across from him with my back to the door. Three feet of brushed-steel tabletop separated us.

    On my side of the table someone had scratched, "My mother made me a queer." Below it, a different hand had etched out a retort: "Will she make me one too?"

    "Nervous?" McClelland asked.

    I hadn't yet spoken a word. My first was not going to be a reply to that question.

    I waited. It's what I do.

    "I thought I was the one who was supposed to be mute," he said, elevating his eyebrows.

    "This is your meeting," I said. "If I'm not convinced within the next five minutes why you wanted me here, I'll knock on that door and leave. I won't come back."