Found Money
Authors: James Grippando
James Grippando
For you, Tiff, always
“Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.”
—Johann Kaspar Lavater
Aphorisms on Man,
c. 1788, no. 157
It was dying. No way to save it. And Amy…
Amy wished she could go back in time. Not way…
Lazy swirls of orange, pink and purple hovered on the…
It was still dark when Amy woke. The drapes were…
Ryan spent the night in his old room, fading in…
Amy took Monday morning off, arriving at the office during…
Amy met Mr. Phelps’s unrealistic three o’clock deadline. She always…
The kitchen smelled of corned beef and cabbage. So did…
The Crock-Pot discovery had Amy in high gear. Just to…
“We’re rich!”
Two days had passed, and Amy was still working up…
Ryan ate an early lunch on Friday and drove alone…
Friday afternoon traffic was heavy as Amy reached Denver. She…
From the Mile High City to the plains of southeastern…
Stupid. That was how Amy felt. After all the mental…
Ryan hung up, then froze. He heard a creak in…
At 9:00 P.M., Amy had a date. With Taylor.
The money was burning. But only in his mind.
Panama. Until now, it had meant nothing to Ryan but…
By midafternoon, Ryan could see the Denver skyline from the…
On Sunday morning Amy called Ryan Duffy again. An elderly-sounding…
Her truck was dying at the Sand Creek Massacre.
Ryan woke at 5:30 Monday morning, Mountain Time. He reset…
Ryan Duffy, M.D., S.O.R.—son of a rapist.
It took longer than Amy had expected to fix her…
Ryan didn’t call the police. Sure, he’d been robbed—robbed of…
The Boulder police arrived in minutes. Curious onlookers gathered outside…
Ryan returned to the Banco del Istmo on Tuesday morning.
Amy drove to Denver on faith. She didn’t actually have…
At noon Ryan called Norm from the Panama City Marriott.
It was getting late on Colorado’s Front Range. Clouds drifted…
From his hotel room late Tuesday night, Ryan called his…
Ryan slept in his hotel room until noon. He’d been…
They were out of lettuce. For nine straight days, Sarah’s…
Visiting hours at Denver Health Medical Center started at 7:00 P.M.
Amy had taken her daughter to Denver only a dozen…
Ryan’s flight landed at Denver International Airport at 11:50 P.M.
On Thursday morning, Ryan was ready to call home. His…
Amy arrived in Denver a few minutes early. Traffic out…
Ryan didn’t follow her out. Numbness took over, shutting out…
Ryan sat in silence amidst a seventy-inch television screen and…
Amy called Marilyn Gaslow at her home in Denver, but…
Ryan stayed in the media room all night, studying the…
At 10:00 A.M. Joseph Kozelka reached the K&G Building, a…
The wait was going on two and a half hours.
Ryan went directly from K&G headquarters to Norm’s office. Norm…
The courthouse on Saturday was like church on Monday. Row…
The drive back to Norm’s house seemed to take forever.
Driving alone at night on Highway 287 was an exercise…
Ryan’s pager chirped just north of Eads, about an hour…
Ryan took the long way home, down the lonely gravel…
A firm knock on the door landed just after dawn.
They had never found a suicide note. That had been…
Ryan stopped for breakfast on the way home. After the…
Sunday was a workday for the presidential appointee. Marilyn Gaslow…
Liz slept late on Sunday. She’d had trouble falling asleep.
Marilyn lacked focus. That was the consensus opinion of her…
Sheila was beginning to worry. Rusch wasn’t happy with her…
It was Amy’s first trip down Holling Street since the…
Trumpets blared. Violins wept. Joe Kozelka was seated in a…
Ryan reached Denver long after dark. He’d been thinking about…
They returned to the Clover Leaf Apartments after ten o’clock.
The wrought-iron gate at the end of Marilyn’s driveway was…
Two minutes after they met, Ryan already had a name…
They rode with the headlights off, invisible in the night,…
Nathan Rusch was lying in wait. A cluster of gray…
Nathan Rusch was angry, not about to be outrun by…
Amy left before the police arrived. With Marilyn’s permission, she…
“Robert Oppenheimer,” the voice boomed over the loudspeaker. A beaming…
It was dying. No way to save it. And Amy Parkens watched with a child’s fascination.
The night was perfect. No city lights, not even a moon to brighten the cloudless sky outside her bedroom window. Billions of stars blanketed the vast blackness of space. Her six-inch Newtonian reflector telescope was aimed at the Ring Nebula, a dying star in the constellation of Lyra. Amy liked that one best. It reminded her of the smoke rings her grand father used to blow with his cigar—a faint, grayish-green ring puffed into outer space. Death was slow in coming, over many millennia. It was irreversible. Astronomically speaking, the Ring Nebula was light-years beyond Geritol.
Amy peered through the eyepiece, pushing her hair aside. She was a tall and skinny eight-year-old with sandy-blonde bangs that dangled in her eyes. She’d often heard grown-ups say she was destined to be the Twiggy of the eighties, but that didn’t interest her. Her interests were unlike those of most third graders. Television and video games bored her. She was used to spending time alone in the evenings, entertaining herself with books, celestial maps, her telescope—things her friends would have considered homework. She had never known her father. He’d been killed in Vietnam before Amy could even walk. She lived with her
mom, a busy physics professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. A passion for the stars was an inherited fascination. Long before her first telescope, Amy would look into the night sky and see much more than twinkling lights. By the time she was seven she could name every stellar constellation. Since then, she’d even made some up and named them herself—distant constellations, beyond the reach of even the world’s most powerful instruments but not beyond her imagination. Other kids might stare through telescopes all night long and never see Orion or Sirius, because the stars didn’t line up exactly right for them. For Amy, it all made perfect sense.
Amy switched on her flashlight, the only light she needed in her small pink bedroom. With colored pencils she sketched out the Ring Nebula on her notepad, her own makeshift coloring book. She was the only kid in her class with no fear of the dark—so long as her telescope was nearby.
“Lights out, sweetie,” her mother called from the hallway.
“Lights
are
out, Mom.”
“You know what I mean.”
The door opened, and her mother entered. She switched on the little lamp beside Amy’s bed. Amy squinted as her eyes adjusted to the faint yellow glow. Her mother’s smile was warm but weak. Her eyes showed fatigue. She’d looked tired a lot lately. And worried. Over the last few days, Amy had noticed the change, had even asked what was wrong. Her mother would say only that it was “nothing.”
Amy had gotten ready for bed hours ago, well before the celestial sidetrack. She was dressed in her yellow summer pajamas, her face washed and
teeth brushed. She climbed down from the chair and gave her mom a hug. “Can’t I stay up a little longer? Please?”
“No, honey. It’s way past your bedtime.”
Her face showed disappointment, but she was too tired to argue. She slid into bed. Her mother tucked her in beneath the sheets.
“Tell me a story, then?”
“Mommy’s really tired tonight. I’ll tell you one tomorrow.”
Amy frowned, but it didn’t last. “A good one?”
“I promise. It’ll be the best story you ever heard.”
“Okay.”
Her mother kissed her on the forehead, then switched off the lamp. “Sweet dreams, baby.”
“’Night, Mom.”
Amy watched her mother cross the dark room. The door opened. Her mother turned as if to bid a silent goodbye, then closed the door.
Amy rolled on her side and gazed out the window. No more telescope tonight, but this was one of those incredibly clear nights when the heavens were awesome even with the naked eye. She watched for several minutes until her vision blurred and the stars began to swirl. She was getting drowsy. Twenty minutes passed. Maybe longer. Her eyes closed, then opened. Her head sank deeper into the pillow. The strip of light from the hallway disappeared beneath her bedroom door. Mom was apparently going to bed. It comforted Amy to know that. The last few nights, her mother hadn’t been sleeping.
She glanced out the window again. Beyond the trees, she saw the lights go out in the house next door. With eyes closed, she imagined the lights going out in house after house as the neighbor
hood, the city, the entire country went to sleep. The lights were off all around the world. But the stars burned bright. Amy was nearly asleep.
A loud crack pierced the night—like thunder, but it wasn’t thunder. Amy jackknifed in her bed, as if kicked in the belly.
The noise had come from
inside
the house.
Her heart raced. She listened for it again, but there was only silence. She was too frightened to scream. She wanted to call for her mother, but words wouldn’t come. It had been an awful sound, enough to make her fear the dark forever. Yet it took only a second to pinpoint the source. She knew the sound. There was no mistaking it. She’d heard it before, far from the house, the time her mother had driven her out to the woods and Amy had watched her practice.
It was the echoing clap of her mother’s loaded handgun.
