Friday Edition, The (3 page)

His glasses reflected in the screen as he began to text his message.

Your sister’s death …

He smiled in spite of himself. But why, he wondered, had he been unable to clear his thoughts of Robin? He had expected it to be easy to erase those memories of Christmas Eve. Was it the fact that he had to grab her arm to force her out to the balcony? That wasn’t in the plan. That had been a mistake.

He would have to make no more mistakes. And, he decided, he would clear his mind of those memories of the night he’d killed her. He’d take a long walk in the park. He’d let the bright sun, now breaking through the thick clouds, clear his mind. Yes. And then this evening he’d take a long drive—after making that one stop to explain.

He looked at the almost-completed message on the screen.

Your sister’s death was no accident

He remembered Robin’s hopelessness when she pleaded with him. Then her desperation when she finally realized his intentions. When he knew she was helpless.

He programmed the message to be sent to the cell phone he knew Sam kept clipped to her waistband, and entered the number from memory: 555-2159. He entered the time he wanted her to receive the message.

No more mistakes, he said to himself, and read the message once more to check for errors. There were none. The message disappeared from the screen like a magic trick.

To get to the 10-foot-by-10-foot room hidden beneath the Grandview home, he had to enter through a trap door concealed in a closet. Once through, he used both hands to pull the door shut tightly. He turned and looked at the man who had been sitting in the small room waiting for him.

“What happened to the girl?” the man asked. “Did you screw up?”

Robin’s killer removed his black leather jacket in silence and placed it over the back of a small chair. “No, not exactly.”

“What then?”

“I touched her.”

“You touched her, Captain?”

The nickname for Robin’s killer was ‘Captain.’ That’s what he was called whenever he was in the small room.

“You touched her? Why?”

“It was an accident,” Captain replied coolly.

“Where did you touch her?” the man asked and stroked his chin with long pencil-like fingers.

Captain stared a moment at a fold in the man’s face that ran from under his left eye to the jaw line of his olive skin.

“On the arm.”

The man in the chair sat silent and sullen staring at him.

“I touched her on the arm,” Captain went on. “It happened so fast. She wouldn’t come outside on the balcony like I asked. I sort of lost my temper and grabbed her by the arm to pull her outside.”

“You sort of lost your temper?”

“Yeah, Juan, but there’s nothing to worry about,” Captain said. “Nothing will come of it.”

“Not good. Not good at all,” Juan said, with all the authority of a man in charge of what went on this hidden room.

His name was Juan Garcia. At least that’s what everyone called him. He wanted a common, unassuming name, not one that would stand out as did his given name: Alajandro Luis Barraza. He was a diminutive, thin man with a shock of jet-black hair. Captain avoided looking Juan in the black holes that were his eyes. He knew he had a reason to fear Juan, but he tried to look collected and unconcerned. Juan finished a cigarette, dropped the butt on the floor and stepped on it. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook it until one emerged. He secured the cigarette between his lips and pulled it from the packet. He left it to dangle.

“Don’t worry,” Captain said. “Like I said, it won’t amount to a thing. Trust me.”

“Do you have the autopsy report?” Juan asked.

“Not yet.”

Juan was persistent. “Do you know when?”

“Maybe a day or so.”

Juan Garcia looked at Captain, considering what he had said. They had come too far for everything to go wrong now.

“Follow me,” Juan said.

Captain grabbed his leather jacket and went with Juan to another room similar in size, windowless with barren walls. They held their breath, trying to ignore the putrid odor that assaulted them as they stood in the doorway. They looked down on the backs of two men hunched over a small table, engrossed in their task. One man turned to look at Juan and Captain, but offered no greeting.

Captain saw that everything they needed to manufacture the drug was within arm’s length. There was such a large supply of chemicals that some of them had to be stored in barrels located near the back of the room. Captain recognized the red phosphorus and ephedrine, but there were other acidic chemicals that were unfamiliar to him. The chemicals were used to make meth in a time-consuming method that produced a smell similar to cat urine. Masking odors was part of the motivation behind these hidden rooms. The room also included a ventilation system designed to eliminate suspicious smells.

“They seldom speak while they’re working,” Juan said, keeping his eyes fixed on the two men at work on the small table. The scant light came from a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Their focus, however, was centered in the bright circle of light from a small, high-intensity lamp that sat on the table between them.

They continued to work in silence. Juan turned to Captain, his coal-colored eyes registering little emotion.

“Do you know, Captain, that those men are surrounded by enough chemicals to make us rich. Very rich.”

Captain nodded and sighed deeply.

“There’s a half-pound of methamphetamines on their table,” Juan said, smiling coolly, “Worth more than fifteen thousand dollars on the street.”

“What’re they making?” Captain asked Juan.

“Twisters,” Juan replied.

“Twisters?”

A quick inventory of Captain’s face told Juan his words did not register.

“It’s a new drug,” Juan said and laughed calmly. “Hasn’t been out on the street long.”

“What is it?” Captain asked.

“A combination of cocaine and methamphetamine,” Juan replied. “I’ve heard that the high is unbelievable, but I wouldn’t know.”

They watched the men work a moment in silence. Juan cast a sideways glance at Captain. “So, you didn’t come here for twisters or a little space dope, then, I take it?”

Captain shook his head. “You know why I came.”

Juan nodded and laughed. “You came to reassure me that we could proceed as planned.”

Captain nodded. For the first time since entering the small, hidden room he felt relieved. Almost immediately his stomach seemed free of the knots that had entangled it since Christmas Eve.

“That’s good to know,” Juan said and patted Captain firmly on the back. “I’d hate to think we’d have to dismantle an operation that took so long to come together.”

Captain turned to leave.

“Look here,” Juan said.

Captain followed Juan’s long finger to the floor. Next to his foot sat a small bundle of methamphetamines packaged and ready for the street. He surveyed the shipment. “How much does it weigh?”

“Twenty-one pounds,” Juan replied.

“The street value?”

“Half-million dollars, give or take,” Juan said and kicked the bundle.

The men were silent a moment before Juan spoke again. “You
know what this means, don’t you?”

Captain looked from the bundle to Juan, not registering what he meant. “This year’s going to be our best yet.” He nodded and couldn’t help the smile that met Juan’s cold, dark eyes. The operation had gone along smoothly, secretly and successfully for so many years now that he had stopped counting.

Then Robin Marino emerged on the scene.

It was 6 a.m., but Sam’s bed had been cold for hours. She would bury Robin today and she had to force herself to get ready. She decided to wear a red blazer over a black wool dress. The blazer would do a decent job hiding some of the weight she had gained since a year ago when the
Denver Post
editor took her into his office and said her services ‘were no longer needed.’

“Am I being fired?” she had asked. “Well,” he’d said, “yes, you are, Sam.”

She looked at herself in the mirror. It was getting harder to spread her weight evenly over her frame. She guessed she had put on thirty pounds, but feared it was closer to fifty. She had avoided getting on the scale for fear it was actually more. But she couldn’t blame all her extra weight on getting fired. Truth was she had begun to gain weight the moment her father died.

She turned to face the mirror and was confronted with the sight of her poor posture. She thought of Robin, who had a way of standing straight and tall. Robin was shorter than Sam but it was hard to tell. Robin’s shoulders were always squared and set back, flaunting her femininity. Sam’s had a way of curling inward. Robin often accused Sam of deliberately practicing bad posture as a way of signaling people to stay away from her.
How true
, Sam thought, and straightened her back and shoulders.

To those who didn’t know them, it was hard to tell they were sisters. Robin, dark and engaging, had the olive coloring of their grandmother. Sam had the fair skin, the blonde hair and blue eyes, of their mother. Unlike Robin, there was nothing striking about Sam’s physical features that made her stand out. No high cheekbones, no deep-set eyes, or wide, inviting smile. She’d been having passing thoughts lately of going to a shorter hairstyle. She felt she was getting too old now to wear her hair as she did when she was twenty, in long layers past her shoulders.

Sam had always felt she was as plain as a farm girl, in every sense of the word. That’s what her father had called her. A farm girl. She had hated that. She stepped closer to the mirror to examine her face, a geography she knew well. She had slept very little in the last three days and it showed in her eyes. There was something in Robin’s eyes that Sam never saw in her own or in others. Robin had eyes that took everything in. Her eyes would skim, then settle on someone. They would blaze and bore in when she was speaking, then sink back and appraise when she was being addressed.

Sam stepped away from the mirror and watched herself clip her pager to her belt. She put on her coat thinking of the open bottle of wine in the refrigerator. She entertained the notion of taking a few swallows to calm her nerves. For Robin, she wanted to wait, but the temptation was too great. The first swallow burned all the way down. The second swallow calmed her nerves and she sighed deeply.

She headed for her Mustang. She drove to the church because she did not want to ride in one of those “funeral cars.” Nona and Howard wanted to attend Robin’s funeral, but Sam didn’t want April to come. So they stayed at the ranch and kept April.

The weather had improved dramatically since Christmas, which helped to lift her spirits. The sky was as big and round as a beach ball. The sun bounced off the snow, and Sam squinted behind her sunglasses.

Sam reached St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, a sanctuary situated beneath the foothills near Golden. Her attention flicked to the pews as she reached the church doors. The church was packed. As Sam followed the pallbearers carrying her sister’s casket, she saw Jonathan sitting a few rows from the altar. Wilson Cole Jr., her publisher at the
Grandview Perspective
, was sitting directly behind Jonathan. Sam felt herself smiling, grateful that Wilson had taken the time to attend Robin’s service. She wanted to sit next to him, but since he was sitting near Jonathan, she decided against the idea.

As the service began Sam found herself staring at the altar, feeling empty. None of that sanctuary-induced “peace” that Robin claimed she felt inside churches. None of that “higher power” stuff that AA used to program (
brainwash
as Sam liked to tell Robin) recovering alcoholics. Sam lowered her head, ashamed that she had scoffed at Robin for her beliefs. They, and maybe the “higher power,” had helped Robin through difficult times during her first years of sobriety.

Her emptiness abated when Judie Rossetti slid into the pew beside her. “Sorry I’m late,” Judie whispered. “Last minute stuff at the office.”

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Sam said and hesitated a moment before she asked, “any news on the autopsy yet?”

Judie shook her head. “Not yet.”

When the services were over, Sam and Judie walked the short distance to Golden Cemetery. Sam remembered what the priest had said during his sermon about how each life lived eventually becomes a book. How a single letter becomes a word, becomes a sentence, becomes a paragraph, before finally becoming a chapter and on and on and on until the cycle of life ends and the book has been written. “What kind of book will people read when all is said and done?” the priest had asked.

Wilson joined Sam and Judie and they walked slowly to Robin’s grave and sat in folding chairs before the gaping hole beside her casket. Judie tapped Sam on the shoulder and pointed. Sam followed Judie’s finger and saw Todd Matthews walking toward them. Sam motioned for him to sit beside them.

Todd nodded at Judie and Wilson and took Sam’s hand and squeezed it. When Sam looked at him, he nodded and smiled slightly. It was the kind of smile she saw often coming from him, easygoing and soft. She felt her own smile starting to form.

Todd Matthews was a thirty-three-year-old prosecutor. He had been working for the Truman County District Attorney’s Office for three months when he was assigned to assist Robin with a hit-and-run case.

He was tall, and slender, and handsome in a kind, quiet sort of way. His soft-spoken personality matched hazel eyes gently framed by glasses that were nearly invisible against his face. There was nothing about him that could be called flashy. He wasn’t pushy, or forceful, or obtrusive. He was as sincere, as he was faithful. And Sam knew that Robin had a deep, abiding trust in him.

Todd leaned over and whispered to Sam. “Where’s Brady? I didn’t see him at the church.”

She shrugged. “I expected to see him too. I was surprised that he didn’t come with you.”

“I called to take him, but he said he was going with his father,” Todd said.

Sam knew Brady Gilmore would not be able to get to the church on his own. But for Robin, she was certain that, despite his limitations, he would attend her funeral. Sam stared at the gaping hole before her that would soon be consumed by Robin’s casket and let her mind linger on Brady Gilmore and the day that changed everything between him and her sister and the relationship they once had.

Robin called in a panic and told Sam to come to the hospital. Her voice was rising and falling with each breath she took that Sam could hardly calm her down. “Which hospital?” Sam asked.

Robin told her and Sam was there within the hour. She found Robin in the emergency room standing against a wall. Head back. Eyes closed.

“Robin,” Sam called softly. Robin opened her eyes and looked at Sam and fell heavily into her arms, heaving great sobs. “What happened?” Sam asked.

“B … Brady,” Robin managed between gasping breaths. “Brady.”

“What about Brady?” Sam said trying to encourage her sister to continue.

“He … he dived off the platform into the water but didn’t come up.”

They both had just graduated high school with honors. Their futures were in front of them, both eager to tackle it. They had been planning the outing with friends at the Boulder Reservoir for weeks. To this day, no one really knows what happened to Brady under the water. Only that he was without oxygen for twenty minutes, maybe more before they could get him to the surface.

Sam remembered watching Robin those first few weeks after his accident. The days, the long days Brady spent in ICU. Then the rehab, which was painstakingly slow, if some days it came at all. He was so frustrated with his progress that he asked Robin to stop coming.

“I don’t want her to see me like this anymore,” he told Sam in a halting voice one evening.

And Robin did stop going to see Brady.

A quiet afternoon, more than a year after Brady’s accident, Robin and Sam were sitting on their apartment balcony smoking and drinking beer, watching the foothills cloud up with the anticipation of a late spring storm. Thunder rumbled in the distance and they could smell the thick richness of rain coming.

“Sometimes it seems,” Robin began by saying, “that I’ve gone beyond the sound of his voice, moved past his smile, and forgotten what it feels like to have his hand in mine.”

Robin cast a sideways glance toward Sam, but she said nothing. Robin went on, “I’ll hear someone utter a phrase, something like he might have said, or when I go to visit him now and he moves his head a certain way or smiles I catch a glimpse of the old Brady. And I’m back with him all over again.” She stopped and added her own smile. “His smile was the first thing I noticed.”

“Yes,” Sam said. “I know.”

“He was coming down those steps, holding his tennis racquet and wearing a baseball cap and smiling in my direction. That was the first thing we did together, you know, play tennis.”

“Yes,” Sam said again, “I know. Remember I smiled when you said, ‘I let him win.’”

Robin was in a reflective mood that afternoon as the storm moved closer. She took Sam’s attention from the foothills, which were gone now, covered by brooding clouds, when she spoke. “Now when I go into a restaurant and see a couple sharing a pizza and he’s holding her hand over the table, I want that to be us so badly that my heart aches to the point that it hurts to breathe.”

Robin stared off into the distance, unseeing. It seemed as though she had gone somewhere deep inside herself where Sam could not follow. She could do nothing except wait for her sister to return.

“I remember sometimes we’d be driving somewhere and he’d have one hand on the wheel, and the other was in my lap, doing things he shouldn’t have been doing,” Robin said and arched her right eyebrow at Sam as if to say ‘know what I mean?’

“It’s funny what stays with you over time,” Sam said and took a long drag on her cigarette, then flicked the butt over the balcony.

The approaching storm had cast the city in a premature twilight. A long, jagged streak of lightning left the sky and struck something far off in the distance. The loud crack of thunder that quickly followed made the sisters jump.

“I love a good storm,” Robin said.

“Me, too,” Sam said. “There’s something mesmerizing about them.”

Before long large dots of rain begin to cover the balcony railing, turning the light wood dark. For a long time neither spoke, caught up in their own thoughts.

And then Robin said, “I remember watching them pull Brady up out of the water. I remember standing where I was and I may have been too shocked to move, Sammie, but I am certain of one thing.”

Sam knew what that one thing was. Robin told Sam that day in the ER—she felt his pain and it had pierced her heart in a way nothing ever really had. “I realized then how much I really loved him and always would,” Robin said and her voice cracked a little. For a time she was silent.

“Todd asked me out … again,” Robin said finally without giving Sam her eyes.

“And what did you say this time?”

Todd had fallen in love with Robin the moment he saw her. It was a relationship that never developed—Robin told Todd immediately that though she did have feelings for him, her heart and her love belonged to Brady and always would.

“What could I say? You know I could never do that to Brady. The Brady I fell in love with is still in there. I see him sometimes, and that Brady knows, that Brady sees. I couldn’t do it to him. I know he would probably shrug or pretend it didn’t bother him, but deep down, I know it would destroy him to see me with somebody else. I’ll never be with another man, Sam. Never.”

The storm marched in with an instant and ferocious beauty. It raged on for almost an hour, thunder, lightning, driving rain. It took hold of their attention and sent them into stillness and silence. The storm passed eventually, leaving a gentle rain. Something refreshing, something quiet, something soothing.

Everyone’s concerns vanished when they saw the white Chevrolet Caprice roll slowly through the open cast-iron gates of the cemetery. The car looked official, with its drab hubcaps, extra antennas and high-powered spotlights mounted on each side of the car doors. Sam watched Brady Gilmore get out of the car and follow his father toward the graveside. He walked with his head bent slightly forward and looked as obedient as the child he had become. Wyatt Gilmore was the Grandview police chief and a retired Marine. He stood six feet and was a bear of a man. Nearing sixty, his physique was that of a man twenty years younger, burly with a broad back and thick chest. His belly had only just begun to protrude slightly over his belt buckle. Though he was retired military, a part of him would always be a soldier. He still kept his hair buzzed close to the sides of his head and his face, though craggy, was clean shaven.

The winter sun shined warmly on them as the priest gave the final prayers. When the funeral was over, Sam waved goodbye to Judie and Wilson and began to walk with Todd to her car. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw that Brady had stayed at Robin’s grave. Wyatt and Jonathan followed Sam and Todd from behind. The men had worked together for years and knew each other well. They were talking low enough that Sam could not hear them.