Last Lie (22 page)

I wished I didn't need to ask Diane the next question, but I did. "You know how to use your voice mail, right? You would know if . . . your friends had tried to call you on your cell?"

"Yes," she said.

"I had to ask," I said.

"Whatever." She pecked me on the cheek, I thought to indicate her forgiveness, and lowered herself into the car.

At that moment, I was facing down the lane, toward the north.

"Diane, look," I said.

Emily began barking ferociously inside the house.

My guess was that Lauren still had the Glock nearby.

30

S
omeone was walking toward us on the downhill portion of the lane between the two bends of the S-curve.

Diane had pulled herself up to standing on the frame of the car door so she could see more clearly. She said, "It's Mimi. That's her coat."

Even in scant moonlight, even from that distance, I could tell that the coat was dark, with a zebra-print collar. Distinctive enough to be recognized.

"So much for your theory," I said. "It appears that your friend did indeed take a walk."

Diane shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. Since Diane doesn't like to be corrected, it would have been easy to write off her reply as defensiveness. I suspected there was more to it, though. She was struggling to make sense of an anomaly. She continued. "There's some other explanation. This wasn't an evening jaunt on country lanes. That's not Mimi. She does not do that."

"Okay," I said. Despite the evidence to the contrary, I was trying to make it clear to Diane that I wasn't arguing with her.

She said, "Why don't you let me wait for her, Alan? I'll stay with her tonight if she needs me to. I think it would be better." She paused briefly, looking directly into my eyes. "If you, well, weren't here."

I laughed. I was appreciative of Diane's bluntness. And not only did I have no dispute with her judgment, I was relieved that my compassionate duty was ending. I gave Diane a quick hug, told her it had been fun, and hurried inside the house.

Lauren, of course, wanted to know what had just happened outside that I'd found alarming enough to call for firearm backup. Before I filled her in on my misadventures, I asked her for any news about Raphe. Or Mattin.

She shook her head, leaned forward, and kissed me lightly on the lips. She pointed at her laptop on the kitchen counter. It was open to the
Camera
website. "It's not good. He's apparently been hurt pretty badly."

That I knew from the cyclist grapevine. "Mattin?"

"My assistant just e-mailed me that Elliot is still at the police station. So is Casey. Investigators are still at the scene. Nothing's been resolved."

"Is it a national story?"

Lauren nodded. "Drudge, E!, Huffington Post, TMZ. It's out there."

"Shit."

She smiled warmly and put an arm around my waist. "So, really, why did I need to be armed tonight? You find it kind of hot when I'm packing?"

It was the first sexual tease I'd heard from Lauren since I'd learned of her liaison in the Netherlands. Was it possible that the froth from that wave was finally receding into the sea? I kissed her, tracing her lower lip with my tongue. "Try me. But feel free to lose the clip first. My kinkiness has a limit."

"But it's so much more interesting when it's loaded," she murmured.

From down the hall, Gracie said, "So gross. Sooooo gross. Jonas!"

Lauren and I both laughed. I said, "I think I'm just spooked lately. Since Mattin and Mimi moved in, it hasn't felt right up here. The whole Spanish Hills vibe is different. My world is off balance. I miss Adrienne."

"I know," she said. "I know."

THE KIDS SENSED the change in affective tone in the house. Jonas lived with his most personal grief almost every minute of every day. I was curious how it felt for him to see it up close in someone else. But he didn't ask what was going on, or wasn't quite ready to kick open that door.

Gracie asked, of course. She went through life with no query unasked, no comment unmade. I told both kids that a friend of mine had been hurt badly in a bicycle accident. I didn't mention the fact that our new neighbor was involved.

Gracie wanted details. Lots of them.

Jonas had only two follow-up questions. He asked if the guy on the bicycle had died, and if he had kids. I answered, my heart breaking for him a little more.

To my relief, both kids were cooperative about getting ready for bed.

I joined Lauren in our bedroom shortly after ten. She raised herself so she was sitting up against the headboard and stroked my neck while she ran her fingers through my hair. She didn't know Rafael. He was someone I saw socially only when he and I were both on the road with a hard saddle between our legs. She asked some questions about him. Got me talking about Rafa, and about Kari, and their two kids.

I didn't know Kari well, thought that I'd only met the two kids once or twice. It helped to talk, though. After a while, Lauren rolled onto her side and spoke softly in my ear. "I want to tell you what we know about the . . . problem after the party last Friday. The investigation . . . that the DA is doing."

"Okay," I said. "That's great. I would like to know. I've been worried . . . for you, for the kids."

She didn't tell me I had no reason to be concerned. She said, "This is one of those things I shouldn't tell you. Just so you're aware."

Lauren didn't often tell me things that she shouldn't tell me. I wouldn't say never, but it was close enough to never that I recognized the present moment as an exception.

"I appreciate it. I will treat it that way."

"Thank you. So far, everyone has done a remarkable job of keeping this quiet . . . while the investigation proceeds. If the fact that we're even investigating this gets out, it would be a disaster for Hake. Probably for the accuser, as well. But definitely for Hake."

If everyone else was unanimous in keeping things on the DL, I had to assume that Cozy was an advocate of keeping the investigation quiet, too. Cozy had a way of making his opinions known.

I was also recalling Sam's long parable about Kobe Bryant in Cordillera, and his insistence that in acquaintance-rape investigations involving celebrities, all interests can be served by silence. Except, perhaps, the interests of justice.

"Mattin's the focus of the allegation?" I asked Lauren, trying not to sound as disingenuous as I was being.

"Yes, he is. One of the female guests who was at the housewarming party accused him of rape."

I took note of the lack of mince in my wife's description. She didn't sprinkle any of the sweetness of
acquaintance
on top of the fire of the word
rape.

"Rape? At an open house full of people?"
Was that too much?
I wondered. I did not like the thickness, or really the thinness, of the ice I was on.

"Diane hasn't told you any of this?" Lauren said. "I thought she might . . . because of your friendship."

"And," I said, "because she's a world-class gossip. I've tried to get her to talk, to tell me what happened. But she won't. Not about that night. Does she know?"

"I'm not sure what she knows. The timeline has her and Raoul already on their way home."

"She's been interviewed?" I asked.

"I haven't seen the file. This is being done discreetly but it's being done right."

"The alleged rape was the night of the housewarming?"

Lauren said, "It appears that there was sexual . . . contact between the guest in question and . . . someone . . . after the end of the party. In the house. The rape kit confirms that. Everyone seems to agree that the accuser was the last of the guests still present. So that is not in dispute. Neither is the fact that Mattin was the last male present in the house that evening. A bartender--a woman--the caterers, one male and one female, and a private chef, a man, had already left.

"The allegations the woman made involve alcohol, and drugs, and ultimately sexual contact with someone she knows that she perceives as assault."

"Mattin? Is she accusing him directly? You mentioned drugs. She's saying that he drugged her and raped her?" I was trying to inject some wonder into my words, cognizant that were I to rank my personal talents, acting would have been below singing, and right above levitation, at the bottom of the list.

"Hake is the accused. The accuser's memory had been . . . impaired by drugs. Rohypnol, actually. That is one of the few things we know for certain. The tox screen on her blood came back today. It was positive for roofies. Her BAC the next morning at the station was barely below .04, so she had been drinking. But the investigators don't think her blood alcohol would have been sufficient to make an issue of her consent. But with a roofie? Absolutely. Consent would be a problem."

Hella had told me that her patient had an appointment to see Cozier Maitlin that morning to review some forensics; it seemed likely that the meeting had been about the toxicology screen Lauren was talking about.

I said, "If this leaked--"

"If it
ever
gets out that Mattin Snow has even been linked to a sexual assault it would be a media firestorm. Not just in Boulder but everywhere. It would make tonight's bike accident look like nothing. Guilty? Not guilty? I'm not sure many people would wait for that determination to be made."

I remained troubled by the possibility that Mattin was the accused solely because of process of elimination, because he was the last man--
standing
didn't seem like the right way to complete the idiom--present. Lauren wasn't providing much in the way of clarity on that point.

I said, "But Kobe Bryant survived similar public allegations after that thing in Cordillera. So did Ben Roethlisberger in Tahoe. Why not Mattin Snow? What's the difference?"

Lauren didn't follow sports. But I didn't have to explain what the two famous athletes had been accused of doing. "Oh," she said, "it would be different for Hake. Men follow sports. Women . . . follow Mattin Snow. The self-described 'defender of women's legal rights' accused of raping a woman? His own friend? In his own home? Athletes don't need credibility to throw their balls, Alan. But without his credibility? Hake has nothing. The allegation would consume him, and his family, instantly. His hard-earned reputation? Gone, facts be damned. That is precisely why everyone is so determined to keep this quiet until we reach a decision about prosecuting."

"Are there any mitigating facts?"

"There are two stories. There are always two stories."

"But . . . if he's admitting having sex with a friend of his wife's while they were all together in the house? That can't be good news for him."

"I can't tell you what Hake has or hasn't admitted."

I said, "Our visitor earlier? The one who smelled like smoke? It was one of the two caterers. She came to apologize to me about her colleague running Fiji and me off the lane. Get this--she told me they saw someone else on the other side of the S-curve before they got to the mailboxes as they were leaving the party. Does the sheriff know that?"

"Probably, but I'll check. The investigation is focused on Mattin for . . . good reasons."

Lauren and I still weren't looking at each other. My eyes were pointed toward the ceiling. Lauren remained on her side, her head near mine on the pillow.

"The bicycle accident won't help," I said. "It will draw attention to Mattin at a time when he doesn't want it."

"No, it won't help. Having his name associated with the accident will only make the possibility of a leak about our investigation more likely. The same media folks who build pedestals also dig holes. Give TMZ and the entertainment bloggers reason to start digging, and . . ."

They won't stop.

Lauren rolled on top of me and kissed me. She closed her eyes, something she had done every time we kissed since Holland. Something she had done relatively rarely before that trip to Holland. Our lips parted. I inhaled her scent as she pulled away. "You don't look at me anymore when we kiss," I said.

She rolled to her side.

"I can't," she said.

31

D
iane's car was still in the lane when I took the dogs out at the end of the evening. Another car was parked beside Diane's. An unfamiliar one. A big Audi SUV.

Emily wasn't pleased with the continued activity in her domain. She circled the cars before she trotted off to complete her patrol.

The puppy didn't care about the traffic on the lane. Fiji wanted to search for prairie dogs. I gave her rope to see where she would head. She hopped off down the lane.

After less than a minute, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Diane. "Saw you out with the dogs," she said.

"Hey," I said. "How is Mimi doing?"

"She's beside herself. Way out of proportion. I've never seen her like this. Even during her divorce, she always maintained some . . . hope. She is absolutely despairing."

"Because of the accident?"

"Apparently. She's crying more than talking. She's reached her limit, I'm afraid."

"Mattin is still on 33rd?"

"Yes."

"Has he been charged?"

"I'm not part of that discussion."

"You really don't know?"

"I really don't know."

"Who does the other car belong to? Next to yours?" I said.

"Don't ask me that, please."

"I just did."

"I'm pretending you didn't, Alan." Diane sounded tired. "I'll be grateful if you pretend you didn't, too."

My curiosity about the big Audi doubled, of course. "Are you okay, Diane? You sound--"

"I'm all right. I'm tired, I'm frustrated. I may end up needing to spend the night in this creepy house. Or, wait--maybe I can get her to come and stay with Raoul and me for the night on Lee Hill. That might be better."

"Might be," I said. "Have you and she had anything to eat? Do you need me to bring you some--"

"It's spooky here at night. You feel that, sometimes? The Bates Motel vibe? I've never felt it over at your house, but here? There's something not right in this house. An energy of some kind. I can't tell what it is."

"I never sensed anything when Adrienne was alive, but I have to admit that--"

"What about after she died?"

"I don't know. I've been feeling something lately. Like tonight, when we were inside."

"Whatever it is," she said, "I really don't like it."

I heard a loud noise in the background. "What was that, Diane?"

"Something banging in the kitchen. I heard the bicycle guy, the one Hake hit, is in surgery. That can't be good."

I agreed that it wasn't good. "I know him, Diane. His name is Rafael. He's Spanish, like Raoul. Rafa is a good guy. A respectful rider. A lot of people are hurting for him, and his family."

"I'm sorry, Alan. A friend?"

"A cycling friend. Wait." My cell was vibrating in my hand. A second call was coming in. "Hold a second, Diane? Okay? I have to get this." Before she could object--she would have objected--I clicked over to the second call. It was Lauren.

"Hi," I said. "What's--"

"Listen, please. Sorry for interrupting. A body was discovered a little less than an hour ago. I'm catching tonight. It looks like I will be going to the scene."

"Homicide?" I said.

"Patrol thinks so. Copious amounts of blood. Detectives are just arriving."

Although the murder rate had shown a significant spike in recent years, Boulder didn't get many murders. The investigation of an apparent homicide often meant all hands on deck. A prosecutor's supervisory presence during the initial hours at the scene was not uncommon.

I considered the practice an enduring echo of the law enforcement bell that had been so badly struck on the morning JonBenet Ramsey's parents discovered her missing from her bed. Sometimes institutions forget failures quickly. Other times institutional memory is stubborn. This was a case of the latter. The Boulder police were determined not to mishandle the front end of another important investigation.

"Okay," I said. "We'll be inside in a minute. I'm sorry you have to do this."

"You know what? I'm good," my wife said. "I'm ready to do this."

She was perceiving the investigation as a challenge, not a burden. I decided I would interpret that as a good sign.

I asked, "Where is it? How far do you have to go?"

East to west, Boulder County stretches from the edge of the Great Plains to a high mountain plateau just below the final vault of the Continental Divide, from a little over a mile in altitude on the eastern boundary of the county to well over two miles in elevation on the west. If the murder were up near Nederland at the base of the Indian Peaks, it would mean a long, treacherous drive in the dark in mountain canyons.

"Not far. A house above Table Mesa," she said. "Near NCAR." She spoke the acronym for the atmospheric research facility above south Boulder as
n-car.
The Table Mesa neighborhood below the research institute was a sprawling residential section of town almost due west of our home in Spanish Hills. For Lauren, getting to the murder scene would mean a short, straight shot down South Boulder Road. Curiously, on her way to the crime scene, Lauren would cross through the intersection near where Hake had clipped Rafa's bike.

"Is it near Devil's Thumb by any chance?" I asked, recalling Sam's irreverent analogy from the Kobe discussion. "That neighborhood right below the rock?"

Devil's Thumb was not only a prominent landmark, it was also the name of a subdivision that bordered the abundant green space that Boulder had preserved along its mountain backdrop.

"Yes, the address is in Devil's Thumb. The house backs right up to the greenbelt. Why did you ask that? Do we know anyone who lives up there?"

"Maybe a patient of mine once. Sam and I were joking about the name of the landmark, the rock. Silly thing, about its shape. That's all. It's a coincidence that it came up. Hey, at least it's not too far away and you don't have to drive the canyons tonight."

"I'll stay in touch. Count on this running late."

Lauren hung up. I hit the flash button on my phone. "Diane, you there?"

She wasn't. I called her back. She wasn't answering. With anyone else, I would have texted an apology for having abruptly truncated the earlier conversation. With Diane, a texted apology wasn't, well, practical.

Emily came running to the clarion of the bellow from my cupped hands. As we turned back down the lane toward the front door of our house I thought I saw a flash of red hair on a tall woman stepping quickly down the front hall of the old ranch house.

Well, shit,
I thought. The big Audi SUV belonged to Casey Sparrow, Mattin Snow's uberlawyer. Or lawyer wizard.

LAUREN WAS PULLING OUT the lane as the dogs and I stepped up to the front porch. She waved.

I got the kids settled. Gracie appeared to have completed whatever cognitive and emotional processing she required about the bicycle accident. She picked a bedtime story for me to read to her that was an uncomplicated fable about a tough little dog who wanted to run with the big dogs. I loved the obviousness of my daughter's choices and almost always envied her obliviousness about the obviousness.

At bedtime, Jonas was on affective simmer, just beginning to process his reaction to the bicycle incident. He asked me if he could pass on a bedtime story. I told him we could. Jonas waited until I had turned off the light before he asked me how my friend was doing.

I told him the truth. Rafa was still in the hospital, in surgery. That I didn't know more. That I was worried about my friend.

Jonas wanted to know if the surgeon was a urologist. He also wanted to know if Rafa had a wife.

I made a shrink's translation of my son's second question. The first was easy; Jonas's mom had been a urologist. With the second question, I thought Jonas was trying to discover what would happen to his family if Rafa died. Specifically, he wanted to know if Rafa's kids would still have a mother. Or if the kids would have to find new parents, as Jonas had been forced to do.

I tried not to choke up. It took me a moment to find a way to reply, but I eventually found a story in my memory that would assure Jonas that the kids had a fun mother who loved them a lot. I told him that I'd watched Kari tubing with both kids on Boulder Creek the previous summer. The helmet Kari was wearing made her look like a turtle droid. The kids teased her about it the whole time. The story made Jonas laugh.

He rolled onto his side, facing away from me. I thought he was done with his questions about the accident. But he wasn't; he'd been steeling himself to step onto even more sensitive territory. He asked me if the guy in the car had hurt Rafa on purpose.

That one gave me chills. I told Jonas I didn't think so. I thought what had happened had been an accident. They happen.

"Nobody's fault?" he asked.

"Someone was probably careless. In that sense, it was somebody's fault."

"Your friend?"

"From what little I know, it sounds like the driver of the car was . . . being careless."

"Mine weren't accidents," he said. "They were both on purpose."

He was talking about his losses. His parents' deaths. Adrienne had told me once that Jonas had gone online and read multiple accounts of his father's murder on the stage of the Boulder Theater. Afterward, he'd asked her a dozen questions about the day that Peter died. Details that weren't in news reports. A lot about the why.

Many years later, Jonas had been in Israel with her the day that Adrienne was killed by a terrorist's bomb. Since his return he had asked me dozens of questions about that. I had no doubt that he'd researched the incident online.

"Yes," I said. "Yours were on purpose. There are evil people out there." I leaned back against the headboard, with my left hand on Jonas's shoulder. I stayed there, unmoving, until his breathing convinced me that he was asleep.

I flicked off the light by his bed. On the way to the stairs, I tripped over his favorite sneaks, which he'd left strewn near the bottom of the stairs. The shoes were too small for him by far and completely worn out on one heel. His mother had bought them for him, though. Jonas wasn't ready to part with the sneaks.

Two discipline problems were apparent. One, the shoes had been tossed in the middle of traffic. And two, the kids both knew that outdoor shoes were supposed to stay upstairs by the front door. Lauren and I were in the midst of a concerted effort to sequester dirt.

In their defense, the kids argued--correctly--that most of the dirt in the house was transported inside by our dogs. The dogs, they pointed out, did not leave their shoes by the door.

Reality be damned, Lauren and I held firm, as parents do.

I made a mental note to remind Jonas in the morning about the dual transgressions. Jonas was a good kid. Probably too good a kid. He was such a good kid that I often caught myself wondering whether his occasional venial misbehaviors might be leading psychological indicators of something more significant. I paused a moment on the stairs while I pondered what the carelessly misplaced tennis shoes might be telling me. My parenting brain was as exhausted as the rest of my brain. I got nowhere with my musing.

Upstairs, the dogs were waiting for me in the bedroom. I texted Sam before I brushed my teeth.
Is Devil's Thumb yours? What are the odds of that happening now?

Thirty seconds later, a reply.
Nope, mine is bigger. Ask around.

Hardly. Is it yours?

Dominquez and Fratelli. They have Luce and me out following leads that will go nowhere. Not that I'm complaining. I like work. Work is good.

I thumbed back,
Lauren's up there. She was catching.

Get some sleep. Warrants will take hours.

I COULDN'T SLEEP.

After about an hour of restlessness, I went to my laptop and checked for updates on the
Camera
website. Nothing new had been posted about the accident or about Rafa's medical condition. A text came in canceling the pleas for B-neg. I hoped that was good news.

I went out to the kitchen. For some reason I didn't understand, I desperately wanted a piece of cake and a glass of milk--I just did--but we didn't have cake in the house.

I settled for a cookie that Gracie had baked with Lauren over the weekend. It had way too many sprinkles for my taste. Shag-carpet-quantity sprinkles. I held the cookie over the sink while I performed a sprinkle-ectomy with my thumbnail.

To my surprise, the cookie beneath the candy wasn't half bad.

I spotted a note in a sealed envelope on the kitchen counter. On the envelope was a lowercase
a,
in Lauren's hand
.

The note read, "My G is ready. You know where. Just in case."

In another world, one more responsive to fantasy, it might have been an erotic code of some kind. But it wasn't. The G she was referencing was not her spot, it was her Glock. When the hefty .9mm wasn't locked in the safe where it belonged--the location where I preferred it to reside--"where" was on top of the narrow tallboy in her dressing area in the closet.

"Ready" meant the gun was loaded, a status that made my breath go shallow, always.