Last Lie (30 page)

43

A
fter the wonderful experience of having the inside of my lungs filmed with a bronchoscope, the first familiar face I saw in the treatment room in the ER was Sam Purdy's.

"God, you look awful," he said. "You're going to live, though. That's the rumor around here."

"Hey," I rasped. "How's Emily?"

He nodded. Made a fist, raised his thumb. "Good. Well, fair. Actually, probably rotten leaning toward critical--I don't know much about dogs--but the vet thinks she's going to make it."

I mouthed
thank you.
I put my fist on my chest.

"Quite the scene up at your place. Quite the mess," he said.

I nodded. Messy in many ways.

"Your friend's house is gone. You know that?"

By "friend" I assumed Sam was talking about Adrienne, not Mattin Snow. "I saw the roof collapse before they brought me here. Guessed it was gone. Arson?"

"Arson guys will be there in the morning. Arson's another one of those things I don't know much about. Why does it seem that just about every day of my life that list gets longer?"

I didn't have an answer. "Right now?" I asked, waving my hand between us. "You a cop or my friend?"

Sam stuck his tongue between his front teeth for a second or two while he considered the question. "Best for you to think of me as a cop right now. But a cop . . . with some discretion. How's that?"

Sam was telling me he would cut me some slack. "Jonas is okay?" I asked.

"Yes. Docs cleared him. Kid is like a trauma magnet, you know. You better keep an eye on him. He just lost his house. You wonder how much a kid can take."

"That's the truth. Grace? You see her?"

"Didn't actually see her, but I heard she got a few stitches in her head from being a kid. All reports are she's fine."

"Lauren?"

"Still sorting that out." He lowered his voice. "Guy she shot was definitely not a firefighter, but he didn't have ID on him. Whether the shoot was justified . . . ? It's gonna be complicated."

"Guy is . . . dead?"

"Very. She shot him in the leg, which is good from a was-it-deadly-force perspective. But she hit his femoral artery, which is not so good from a surviving-a-gunshot perspective. He bled out at the scene."

"He had a gun, Sam. I saw it. He shot at her."

"Well, the sheriff hasn't found it."

"I know where it is," I said.

"If it's there, they'll find it."

"Diane told me that you guys went to her house with a warrant. True?"

Sam shook his head in dismay. He said, "Such a small town." Then he nodded.

"What kind of warrant?" I asked even though I didn't think he was going to tell me.

"Sheriff's business. Not up to me to say."

"But you know?"

"I know."

"Blink if it was a search warrant."

Sam didn't blink.
No shit?
"Who?"

"I'm not answering," Sam said.

"Mattin Snow?"

"I'm not answering, Alan."

"Makes no sense," I said. I wanted to explain to Sam about Mattin's private DNA analysis, but I couldn't.

"From where I sit, none of what happened tonight makes sense. Tomorrow or the next day? It's all going to make sense. You wait. That's how it works."

"You think?"

Sam grinned. "Okay, maybe the day after that."

"Does this all have to do with the damn housewarming?"

Before Sam could answer, an ER doc I'd seen earlier marched into the treatment room. She was holding a piece of paper. "Your pulse ox is steady. Low end of where we want it, but steady. Your blood work is improved. And this"--she shook the paper--"is decent news from the bronchoscopy. So we're going to let you go home, Mr. Gregory. You will need to follow up with a pulmonologist tomorrow or the next day, but we'll let you go. The nurse will go over your discharge instructions. You have someone available to take you home?"

"It's Doctor Gregory, actually," Sam said to the ER physician. Why he said it, I had no idea. I could hardly wait to find out.

The ER doc glanced at me, raised her eyebrows. "I did not know. Excuse me,
Dr.
Gregory."

I opened my mouth to speak but couldn't think of anything to say that would undo the damage that Sam seemed intent on doing. The moments that Sam chose to become mischievous came out of nowhere. I rarely saw them coming.

"But don't worry about getting all professionally courteous and deferential with him," Sam said. "He's a Ph.D. That kind of doctor. History, sociology, economics. Something. Nothing to concern yourself with, doctor. Ask me, one of the problems with Boulder is that it has more Ph.D.'s than it has parking spaces. What good does that do any of us? Imagine what Boulder would be like if every spare Ph.D. suddenly became a meter-free space near the Mall."

He smiled at her, I thought, kind of flirtatiously.

She stared back at him, I thought, kind of astonished. I couldn't tell if Sam was flirting to flirt, which would be news, or if he was flirting only to mix things up, which would be Sam being Sam.

He said, "I'll be taking him home. I'm Detective Sam Purdy. Boulder Police."

"Wonderful," she said. She completed a graceful pirouette as she left the room.

Too bad for Sam, but it seemed that I had enjoyed his act much more than the doctor had.

SAM DROVE ME BACK TO SPANISH HILLS SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT.

Everything on the eastern side of the valley smelled like fire.

Phyllis--Grace's friend Melody's mom--had agreed to stay with the kids until Lauren or I got home. Phyllis fussed over me a little. I thanked her profusely for her help with our kids and finally got her to agree to go home to her own.

The kids were asleep. Grace was, anyway. Jonas may have been pretending. I no longer had any confidence in my judgment about that.

Sam stayed while I showered away the soot and found fresh clothes.

I called the emergency vet. No news on Emily.

I collapsed on the sofa. Sam said, "You want me to stay?"

I shook my head. "I'm all right. Thanks. Go home to Simon." Simon was Sam's son.

"He's with his mom. So you know why you're getting a bill for a billion dollars, give or take, I called Cozier Maitlin for Lauren. Turned out that he'd already been retained, apparently, by Jonas. Cozy's with Lauren now, with the sheriff. The meter is running."

"Thank you, Sam." He took a step toward the door. I said, "Your parable the other night, your Kobe Bryant story, wasn't only about lessons lawyers learned from what happened. It was also you lamenting how lawyer wizards are managing to hijack the criminal justice system. How they lock out detectives like you and prosecutors like Lauren. How they scoot past judges. In the end, Kobe Bryant and his accuser reached their own plea bargains, found their own version of justice."

"Yeah. Go on."

"The last victim of rape be damned. The next victim of rape be damned. Am I right?"

Sam looked back over his shoulder with eyes narrowed to read my face like it was a document with fine print and he was determined not to miss a word. Finally, he said, "Something like that."

I waited. He waited. I thought he smiled a little bit before he headed home.

THE PHONE IN THE HOUSE RANG as I was looking out the window at the space where the ranch house had stood for over a century. All that was left was a pile of charred rubble. Two of the three chimneys were intact. The top half of the third one had tumbled over. A wide perimeter around the rubble was marked off by crime scene tape. Caller ID read "Maitlin LLC."

"Hi, Cozy."

"You guys should think about keeping me on permanent retainer. It's a better deal."

"I wish that were funny. My son now has you on speed dial."

"Smart kid, by the way. Basically, I went down and told Lauren to shut up. She should have known better. But I'm going to have to hand this off to another firm. I have some conflicts, unfortunately. Things you are better off not knowing."

I already knew about Cozy's conflict. I also knew what I was better off not knowing. I said, "That's disappointing, but I understand. I appreciate your stepping in tonight. Do you know who Lauren shot?"

"You don't know?"

"I don't."

"ID isn't certain, but we think it was your new neighbors' son. Her son, his stepson. Which means that Lauren shot a homeowner on his own property. Technically. Juries, especially out west here, tend to frown upon such things. It could get ugly, Alan."

"If the man is who I think it is, he tried to kill us inside the house. Jonas and me. He tried to shoot us. Like twenty rounds. Then he set the house on fire. He shot at Lauren, too. Outside."

"The way the story is being pieced together by the authorities has you and Jonas as intruders in the house. Under Colorado law, he was entitled to try to . . . well, kill you. Under our progressive criminal code, he's even entitled to succeed in those efforts."

"He had a gun, Cozy. He tried to kidnap Jonas. I saw it all."

"So? He's allowed to defend his home. 'Make my day' ring any bells? He's allowed to use deadly force against an intruder. The gun hasn't been recovered yet. Right now? The way it looks? You and your son broke into your neighbor's house last night. Caused some significant damage. Those are felonies."

"My son was--"

"Just warning you, if things tumble badly for Lauren, this thing could get ugly. Same could be true for you. Don't minimize this. Understand me?"

"Yes, Cozy."

"I told the sheriff's investigator they could talk with you tomorrow at noon. I'll be there for that interview. In case you plan to waste any time rehearsing your lines, we will be declining to discuss the incident. The meeting with the sheriff will be brief. In the meantime, I will make some calls, find somebody good to take over the case for you and Lauren longer term. Probably be someone from Denver."

Jesus.
"Thanks. Will Lauren be home tonight?"

"Any time now. She left here a few minutes ago. I wanted to catch you before she got there. She needs some sleep, Alan."

"Yeah. I figured."

"No, I mean it. Make her rest. I've not seen her this exhausted in a while."

I DREW LAUREN A BATH. She walked in the front door seconds after I turned off the tap.

"How are you?" I asked as we embraced.

"Okay," she said as though she almost meant it.

I continued to hold her. "You killed a man. And you're okay?"

She gave it a few seconds' thought. She pulled back far enough to look me in the eyes. "Tonight? I shot a man to protect Jonas. I didn't shoot to kill. But it turned out he died. That's how it feels to me. Tomorrow, it may feel like I killed him. Let tonight be tonight, please?"

One of my clinical mantras was not to mess with a well-functioning defense. If denial would help Lauren make it through the night, well, hallelujah.

She had just lowered herself into the bathwater when her cell phone chimed. She grabbed it off the tub deck, looked at the screen, then at me. I was sitting across the room, on the closed seat of the toilet. "I have to take this," she said.

"Need privacy? Want me to leave?" I asked.

She shook her head. Into the phone, she said, "Yeah? You have something?"

Lauren listened for a good minute. The only question she asked was, "Voluntary?" At the end of the conversation, she said, "No, I never believed it. I'm not surprised. Thanks. I mean it. I owe you one."

She turned to me. "May I have some more hot water? Please?"

"You sure?" Lauren, like many people with MS, feared the consequences of raising her core body temperature. Baths were usually warm. And brief. Long, hot soaks were for other people.

"Tonight? I need it. I'm willing to take the risk."

I turned the tap. I raised my voice over the din. "So, what's up?"

"It's good," she said.

"Really?"

She smiled. "Really. Let me enjoy my bath. Go check the kids again, please. For me? You have to wake Gracie. Make her open her eyes. See if her pupils are the same size."

"That should be fun," I said.

She laughed. "It won't be. But you have to do it. I'll tell you everything in bed."

GRACIE'S PUPILS WERE THE SAME SIZE. Let's say she wasn't exactly thrilled about demonstrating that fact to me.

Downstairs, Jonas was on his side, facing toward the wall. He was either asleep, or he wasn't. I guessed he wasn't. I whispered, "You want to talk, I'm here."

He didn't respond right away. I pulled a chair next to his bed so he would have a few minutes to reconsider. My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.

Two dark objects were resting on his bed linens.

One was a rectangular shape about the size of a paperback book. When I hefted it, it felt like it was made of wood. The other appeared to be his phone.

Even in the dim light I could tell the phone was covered with greasy soot. And that it was open.

Jonas was the kid who always charged his phone at night. On his desk.
Every
night. He never left it sitting around open. I picked up the phone. Touched a button. The screen came alive with a photograph. I rotated the phone ninety degrees
.