Dry Ice (40 page)

    Sam ceased his frequent forays to pay phones.

    Adrienne called from Israel. "It's your Jewish friend," she said in greeting. "Calling from the homeland." She wanted to know how things were with the barn. I assured her she'd never be able to tell that anyone had been hanging from the rafters. She thought that was funny. Mostly she was calling to share her excitement about being in Israel, and about her newly discovered satisfaction that she and her son were Jews.

    I tried to share her joy. I didn't tell her about the mess Lauren and I were in. That could wait until she got back to Spanish Hills.

    Lauren and I talked. We were polite. Grace was good. During one call I heard my daughter singing along to Simon & Garfunkel in the background. I allowed myself to perceive it as a good sign—perhaps Lauren's aversion to music was declining.

Michael McClelland and J. Winter Brown had maneuvered each of us—Lauren, Sam, and me—to the edge of our own personal cliffs.

    McClelland was behind the most secure walls the state of Colorado had to offer.

    J. Winter Brown was nowhere to be found.

    Lauren, I figured, was about to be indicted on federal drug charges.

    Sam's relationship with Amanda Ross was likely soon to be revealed. The fact that he had failed to alert the DA about the sexual nature of that relationship prior to taking the job as the DA's investigator on the grand jury investigating her hit-andrun could prove to be a career-ending decision for him.

    I assumed that he was suffering other consequences from

the choices he'd made, specifically that he and Carmen were a romantic footnote. I didn't know how he felt about that. Knowing Sam, certainly some guilt. Knowing Carmen a little, probably some loss.

    I thought I was on the verge of the next shoe dropping in my own jeopardy. What would it be? Something awful about the missing grand jury witness? Something awful about my responsibility for Kol's death? A witness to my target practice near the Flatirons?

    Although I continued to fear the disclosure of my longestheld secret, I wasn't convinced that those concerns were anything more than paranoia.

A knock on my door startled me a few minutes after eight o'clock the next morning. Emily, as she usually did, took the sharp rap to be a clarion of an imminent assault on the castle, and she went into the kind of tommy-gun barking she'd last exhibited when we'd been up on the Royal Arch Trail.

    I was hungover. I definitely didn't need the percussion.

    Vodka wasn't the culprit. It was long gone. The bourbon bottle, too, had already spent a couple of nights in the EcoCycle bin. Historically I couldn't swallow Scotch to save my life, and gin left me with regrettable hangovers. Late the night before I'd spotted a bottle of Lanson on the top shelf of the refrigerator hiding behind a box of moldy strawberries. Lauren and I had been given the champagne at a holiday gathering at our house. We had promised each other we'd drink it like table wine—no waiting for a celebration.

    We hadn't gotten around to it.

    My drinking decision the night before had been a choice among the Lanson, the Amontillado, or Lauren's Zin port.

    It was in the table-wine spirit that I had opened the champagne. I drank it while I sat on the sofa and sewed the head back onto my daughter's favorite stuffed bear, performing the delicate surgery three times before I was content with my efforts.

    Experience had taught me that I could drink half a bottle of champagne without rude consequences. The knock on the door the next morning taught me that apparently the same immunity didn't apply to a full bottle. My tolerance for bubbly was dose specific. I would have to remember that.

    "Emily, please," I muttered. I was begging her to stop barking. She didn't stop barking. I opened the door.

    "Elliot," I said. I could hardly have been more surprised. The Chief Deputy DA was at my door in full going-to-court attire. A dark suit. A shirt starched stiffly enough to keep a wave from crashing. An orange necktie that made me think of Indonesia. Those wingtips.

    "I tried to call yesterday," he said. "You weren't home. Or you wouldn't answer. The machine was . . . off."

    Caller ID had indeed read BOULDER COUNTY a few times the previous afternoon as the phone rang. Elliot was correct; I'd ignored those calls. I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to speak with who worked for the county. I said, "Sounds about right."

    Emily had stopped barking. I released her collar. I didn't recall grabbing it.

    "May I come in?"

    
Here we go again,
I thought. "As an officer of the fucking court, Elliot?"

    He raised his chin a smidge to deflect my profanity. "No," he said. "As a visitor . . . to your home."

   "Do my attorneys know you're here?"

   "No. This doesn't concern any possible legal . . . jeopardy. It's another matter, entirely. If you feel uncomfortable you may call them. By all means. I'll wait out here."

    I stepped back and swept my left arm toward the family room. In for a dime . . . "There's coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself."

    I wandered away from him to collect my wits. I strolled onto the deck just long enough to learn how cold it was outside. Some weather was rolling in. I hadn't been aware a front was approaching but I could feel the leading edge and could see a tsunami of white fluff spilling over the distant Divide. I went back inside the house. Elliot was leaning against the kitchen island holding a mug of coffee.

    Emily wasn't sure she liked Elliot. Consistent with his nature, Anvil was less suspicious. Emily had always been the better judge of character.

    "We need a favor, Alan."

    I laughed. It wasn't a judicious move on my part, but in my defense I didn't deliberate before chuckling. I just chuckled. "Yes?" I said as an afterthought. I then had an afterthought to the afterthought. "Who is 'we,' Elliot?"

    "The state of Colorado."

    I lifted both eyebrows. "We talking your little chunk of it here in Boulder County? Or the whole thing, the part the governor usually runs?"

    He tensed his jaw before he replied. "Alan, I'm sorry about your situation. I truly am. Will you hear me out?"

    
My situation, baby.
As the bastardized snippet of the Who's legendary anthem ran uninvited through my brain, I placed my mug on the coffee table and used both hands to tug my sweatpants higher on my hips and to retie the drawstring.

    I felt eminently more presentable. "Of course," I said. Ever the gracious host.

    "The Colorado Department of Corrections, the Department of Human Services—more specifically the Mental Health Institute in Pueblo—and the Boulder County District Attorney's Office would like your assistance."

    For some reason my brain—insistent on reconstructing the old song by the Who—wandered to the lyric about
f-fad
-ing away
.

    "How?" I asked, determined to keep any more of the song out of my head.

    "As you predicted . . . Michael McClelland hasn't spoken a word to law enforcement since we removed him from Lauren's office and returned him to custody. He told another inmate that he would speak only to you. He also asked that inmate to relay an offer to give you permission to speak with us after the two of you talked. We are wondering if you would be willing to have such a meeting on our behalf."

    
Another matter entirely? Ha.

    I turned away from Elliot. Although I was pleased my internal dialogue had moved away from "My Generation" lyrics, I was way too hungover to manage to mount a workable facsimile of my therapist-facade and I was afraid that if I tried I would instead end up looking like some devilish Pixar villain after a bender. My back to him, I said, "Did McClelland say anything to the other inmate about
Harry Potter
by any chance? Voldemort maybe?"

    Elliot was momentarily speechless. He recovered with, "Yes. He did. How do you know that?"

    I ignored him. "Where's this rendezvous supposed to take place?"

    "In Cañon City."

    Cañon City meant the state penitentiary. New Max. I turned. "When?"

    "As soon as possible. Later today, if we can arrange it."

    Elliot was gazing across the room at the empty champagne bottle. If he was having trouble counting the number of glasses on the table he needed to use only the middle finger of one hand.

    I was prepared to volunteer one of mine.

    My anti-pettiness campaign was in tatters.

    "I'll think about it," I said.

    Elliot blinked twice. He hadn't expected reticence. He said, "That's it? I thought you would jump at the opportunity."

    The inside of my mouth felt as though someone had slathered it overnight with Elmer's Glue and covered the glue with grass clippings. I ran my tongue into the area between my front teeth and whatever it was that had replaced my gums. "I can see how you would think that," I said. "I'll be in touch in the next couple of hours. How's that? I need a shower, in case you hadn't noticed." I raised my arm and smelled my left pit. As an act of disrespect I thought it was quite, well, pithy.

    Elliot didn't bite. I would have been disappointed if he had. "I was hoping for an answer before I left," he said.

    "Do you have a few extra minutes, Elliot? If you do, please have a seat—I'll give you a list of all the things that I've been hoping for lately. We can do a comparison, see how much good hope is doing each of us these days."

I SANG the hell out of "My Generation" in the shower until Townshend's and Daltrey's rebellion swirled down the drain.

Kirsten cut a deal with Elliot. I stayed out of it.

She insisted on driving me south to Cañon City. Part of the arrangement was that Cozy's law firm's fees for Kirsten's journey would be paid for by one of the state agencies so eager for my appearance at New Max.

    I put on some decent corduroys and a cotton sweater for the trip. I had chosen not to wear a tie, assuming that would be on the prohibited clothing list. The sweater I was wearing would disguise the fact that I wasn't wearing a belt for the same reason. I folded my favorite black sport jacket over the back of a bar stool in the kitchen. I hoped the relative formality of the blazer might distract attention from my bloodshot eyes.

    Kirsten called me from South Boulder Road. "Two-minute warning," she said and hung up. I'd already taken the dogs out in preparation for their long afternoon alone. I reached for my coat. A splash of color caught my eye.

    The top half of a bright red diamond.

    I stepped back. I stepped forward. I leaned over. A playing card—specifically the six of diamonds—had been tucked into the outer lapel pocket of my sport jacket.

    I hadn't put it there. It was a pocket I never use.

    Without touching the card I could see that someone with

a neat feminine hand had written on it with a felt-tip pen. By leaning way over I was able to read the message. It said, "Dr. G—you were a great help, xxxox, D."

    
D?
I wasn't so mentally impaired that I failed to recognize the implication: the missing grand jury witness's first name was Donna. It was on the prescription bottle for Valtrex that I'd found in her purse.

    The phone rang. Emily started sprinting toward the front of the house. Kirsten must have pulled up outside. I grabbed the phone and said, "Couple more minutes."

    I leaned over and stared at the playing card.

    
Bingo,
I thought.

It took longer than the promised two minutes for me to get out to Kirsten's car. I wasted most of that interval standing catatonic in the great room.

    Her dashboard clock said it was lunchtime. My stomach wasn't sure it agreed. I was still quaking from the discovery of the six of diamonds and I was repeatedly cautioning myself to act cool—for the rest of the day I knew I needed to manage a reasonable masquerade of a Boulder psychologist.

    Telling Kirsten about the playing card was tempting but it would have meant telling her about a lot of other things that I wasn't ready to divulge. The list included the ransacking of Grace's room, the gunplay on the Royal Arch Trail, Sam and Currie, and my fears about J. Winter B.

    A second consequence of the previous night's champagne indulgence—the hangover was the first—was that J. Winter Brown's name had morphed in my consciousness into the more symmetric "J. Winter B." and had apparently stuck there, which had, in turn, caused me to recall Diane's caution about the dangers of too much symmetry. At the time she had been talking about the placement of the purple rug in the waiting room. But did the lesson generalize? Shit, I didn't know.

    Although the shower had helped burn off some fog, the "My Generation" episode had convinced me that my brain chemistry wasn't sufficiently recovered from the hangover to deal with any abstract dangers presented by a sudden predilection toward symmetry. I decided to postpone giving Kirsten the latest updates until I was much more clearheaded about the potential ramifications.

    She turned right onto South Boulder Road toward Louisville. When we approached the nearest convenience store I asked her to stop. There was a pay phone inside. I'd used it recently.

    "I'll be right back," I said. Kirsten waited in the car.

    I called Sam from the store phone. "It's me," I said when he answered. I was distracted watching a teenager in a black business suit turn his back to the register and stick a bag of sunflower seeds down his pants.

    "Okay," he said. "I'm kind of busy."

    "There was a deck of cards in the grand jury witness's purse. Wound with a rubber band. I need to know—was it a full deck, or were any cards missing?" He didn't respond right away. I added, "Time is kind of tight."