Line of Fire (24 page)

Then she hopped down the two steps and disappeared around the corner.

I recognized her parting line. She had used its mirror image to begin the session the last time we’d met.
I never offered him a future. That was never going to be part of what we were doing.

That first time she had been talking about her brother.

This time? I didn’t know whom she was referencing.
Her brother again? George? The Buffer?
I set it aside.

I stepped down the hall to greet Lauren. Diane’s office door was closed.

Lauren was in one of her serious suits, which meant she was scheduled for court that day. I told her she looked seriously hot. She nodded a distracted acknowledgment of my compliment as she preceded me down the hall. Her bag was on her shoulder. It was a small one that could fit inside her briefcase. The hand without the cane was empty.

No flower today. No pastry today.

She was not using her cane for support. Even as recently as the Fourmile Fire, it had been a necessity and not an accessory. Her limp down the hall was barely noticeable. I allowed myself to hope that the cane was becoming a figurative crutch—that she was, finally, showing signs of enduring recovery from her most recent serious exacerbation.

I said, “Did you walk over here? I’m impressed.”

She said, “I needed the air. I really needed the air.”

“Smoky air,” I said.

“True,” she said. “This fire has me more spooked than the last one did. They’re talking about closing the Justice Center. Evacuating everyone.” She stepped into my office ahead of me. She took my chair.

At home I didn’t feel any possessiveness about a particular seat. I didn’t have a designated daddy chair at the kitchen table or a reserved spot in the family room. But at my office, I did. My office had one doctor’s chair, the one where I sat during therapy sessions, with my back to the door and with a clear view of the clock on the wall behind my patient’s seat. My chair had a high back that was kind to my cervical spine, and an ottoman at a perfect height for pampering my lower back.

Lauren’s choice wasn’t an accident. I tried to guess how sitting in my spot fit into her plans. I drew a blank.

“Sit, babe. Please,” she said.

Her voice was sober. Not pretend sober. Not flirty sober.

Sober sober. I felt wary.

“Time is tight. There is no good way to have this conversation. So I will just begin.” Her demeanor was causing a deep chill up my spine.

“First, I need to say that I shouldn’t be talking to you. I am here out of love. I can’t stand the thought of you learning what I am about to tell you from anyone else. You can’t repeat any of this. Not a word.”

I thought,
Holy shit
. I said, “Of course.”

38

S
he paused as if she were waiting for me to say something more. I obliged. I said, “You’re frightening me.”

She shook her head, dismissing my fear. She said, “Are we good?”

Good? What?
I was moving air in and out of my chest, but I wasn’t sure my lungs were managing the processing-oxygen part of the process. I said, “Yes, we’re good.” I wondered if my words sounded as meek as they felt. “I love you.”

Lauren took the kind of deep breath that is intended to fortify. “When I got to work this morning—I was late because of the fire—a woman was waiting. She did not have an appointment. Her name is Isabel Kane. I mentioned her once. She is from Frederick, the daughter of the man who owns the rental cottage where Justine Brown died. Izza—she prefers Izza—helps her father, who is ill.”

Despite my emotional vertigo, I heard many things in that little speech. Some of what I heard Lauren said. Some of what I heard she didn’t say. Lauren had not paused after speaking Izza’s name. Her failure to pause to gauge my reaction meant that Lauren was not anticipating that I would be familiar with the name. If Lauren had not yet connected me with Izza, I wondered why she and I were having the conversation we were having. My worst fears, when I heard her mention Izza and Frederick, were predicated on Lauren having made a connection between me and Frederick, and me and Izza.

And me and Sam and Justine Brown.
If those connections remained secret, I couldn’t come up with any explanation for Lauren’s visit.

I had also heard Lauren say that Justine Brown had “died” when she could have chosen instead to say “killed herself.” Suicide had been the default descriptor the last time Lauren and I had talked about it. If the default option about Currie’s manner of death had changed from suicide and become the generic
died
, that would speak unfortunate volumes about the nature of the evolution of Lauren’s thinking about that night in Frederick. The specific direction of change in Lauren’s thinking—from suicide to died—was causing my fright to approximate terror. Died was much closer to homicide than killed herself was to homicide.

Homicide was where we were heading. Homicide was where the truth was.

Homicide would lead to Sam. And then to me.

I forced my chin down and then back up to form a nod. I hoped that Lauren would continue speaking on her own, without any prompting. I had no confidence I was capable of making sounds that wouldn’t mimic a small farm animal.

“Izza Kane wasn’t alone this morning. She was with that young boy, the one I told you I met briefly when I was in Frederick. The one who reminds me of Avi, Grace’s friend? His name is Tres. Elias Tres. Elias . . . the Third.

“He is Izza’s . . . neighbor.” Lauren shook her head as if she were clearing an errant thought. “Izza asked to go outside to talk. She has an aunt near Nederland, and she wanted to be able to monitor the fire. I suggested the Boulder Creek Trail. We sat on a bench. What was going on up Canyon was already crazy.”

They had been sitting in the same general location where Sam and I had been walking the day Comadoe had first visited my office.

“Tres played near the creek. Izza said that Tres wanted to speak with me—he remembered me from my visit to Frederick—but that she understood that Tres’s grandfather wasn’t allowing him to talk with anyone in law enforcement.

“I explained that Tres’s grandfather, as guardian, was within his rights—that I couldn’t interview Tres without his grandfather’s permission.

“Izza said she thought that there were exceptions to that rule. I asked what she had in mind. She said, ‘If, by refusing to let his grandson talk to you, Tres’s grandfather is covering up his own wrongdoing? Would that be an exception?’

“Izza is a criminal justice major at UNC. She knows more than a little about criminal investigation. She might be right about the exception. A guardian likely cannot obstruct an investigation that otherwise would reveal his own criminal activity, but I told her I had to do some checking.”

My dread doubled, something I would not have considered possible.

My wife,
I thought,
might be here to arrest me.

She looked at her watch. “Some quick history. Izza’s mother left her husband and daughter when Izza was a toddler. The family story has been that she ran away with another woman. Izza hasn’t believed that for a while, but she didn’t learn the actual reason her mother left until the night that Justine Brown died.

“Izza’s father, the one who’s ill? He’s been in the U.S. illegally for over thirty years. He never left the U.S. after his original visa expired in 1972. He’s from Ireland. His papers are fake. Now? He’s been fighting leukemia since 2005. Only a couple of people outside the family know his immigration status. His onetime best friend, Elias Contopo, Tres’s grandfather, knows.”

She wanted me to acknowledge my grasp of the facts. I said, “Okay.”

“The night before Segundo Contopo’s body was due home from Afghanistan—” She stopped. “You remember we talked about his funeral?” I nodded. “That same night Izza was visiting the Contopo family to pay her respects and to keep an eye on Elias Tres. She was concerned about him. She knew that Elias Contopo—she calls him Big Elias—wouldn’t be at his best while he waited for his son’s body to be delivered by the marines. Elias Contopo has a history of problems with alcohol.

“It turned out that her concern was warranted. Elias Contopo was drunk and agitated when she got to their house. Elias Tres seemed frightened. Izza got Tres to go to his room on the second floor while she tried to get Big Elias to stop drinking and go to bed. He wouldn’t. At some point he began yelling. He threw things.

“He told her to leave, to go home. She said she would if she could take Tres with her for the night. Big Elias wouldn’t agree. They went back and forth for hours. At one point, he popped the magazine from a handgun and walked around with the pistol.

“Elias Tres was watching all this from the top of the stairs. Izza kept telling Big Elias she wouldn’t go without Tres. She’d feed him breakfast and bring him back.

“At some point, Big Elias said something like, ‘You want the orphan? No! They got my son. You can’t take my grandson. I wouldn’t let your mother have him. I won’t let you have him, either.’

“Izza demanded to know what Big Elias meant. What the grandson part had to do with the comment about her mother. But Big Elias wouldn’t say. Izza told me he’s always been a provocative guy. Kind of a bully, especially when he drinks. That night, they kept going back and forth, arguing about Tres. She’d seen Big Elias agitated before. She wasn’t about to leave the boy there.

“Finally, Big Elias sat down, exhausted. He told a long, rambling story that revealed to Izza that Segundo—the dead marine, Elias Tres’s father—was her little brother. That Segundo’s son, Elias Tres, is her nephew. And then he fell asleep. Izza took Elias Tres home with her.

“At Segundo’s funeral, Izza learned the true story from her mother’s sister. Izza’s mother felt she had no choice but to leave when she learned she was pregnant with Big Elias’s baby. She knew the baby would have Hispanic features. Her Irish husband would know he wasn’t the father. He would suspect his friend Elias, who had always been a jerk around his wife. Izza’s father would never accept the truth—that his wife had been blackmailed into sleeping with Elias to protect her husband’s immigration status.

“Elias had threatened her into having sex with him since shortly after Izza was born. When she learned she was pregnant with her second child, Big Elias gave her money to leave town, told her what story to tell. Seven months after she left, she gave birth to a son. Elias showed up in Florida, confirmed that the baby was his, and took him. When he got back to Frederick with a baby boy, he told everyone in town he was still screwing his ex-wife, that she had delivered his baby in Santa Fe. The math didn’t add up, but nobody in town challenged Big Elias.”

I wasn’t sure I understood. “That baby was Segundo? Not Elias Tres?” Lauren nodded. I said, “Big Elias admitted to serious crimes that night. Rape, yes? Why didn’t Izza go to the police? Why didn’t her aunt?”

“By the time Izza learned what happened her father was already sick. In and out of the hospital. Izza believed, and her aunt believed, that Big Elias would retaliate against her father if they said anything about what Elias had done to Izza’s mother. If Big Elias went to the INS, Izza feared her father would be deported. She was sure it would kill him.”

“Why is Izza talking now?” I asked. I wanted to know the answer. Badly.

“She says there is nothing left to lose. Her mother is dead. Her father is dying. He just began receiving hospice services in his home. That’s the main reason. Another? After I visited Frederick, Elias Tres told her about things he saw the night of Justine Brown’s death. Izza decided it was time to get everything in the open.”

“Elias Tres?” I asked. “He is Izza’s . . . half brother’s son?”

“Her nephew,” Lauren said. “I think she would like to raise him.”

I began to trace the new version of the family tree in my head. I got lost as I sketched new branches that wound up and down that little lane outside Frederick. I am notorious for lacking the brain structures necessary to identify distant relations. Lauren knew that about me.

“I tried to buy time with Izza this morning. I told her I had to consult my boss before I could talk to Tres. Izza told me that it was my one chance to hear Tres’s story. She couldn’t guarantee she would have the resolve to do it all again. I decided to go ahead and speak with Tres about what he remembered about the night that Justine Brown died. If it turned out I overstepped—legally overstepped—a judge would throw out what I learned. I might get censured. I can live with that.” She shrugged before she crossed her arms, each hand grabbing the opposing biceps hard enough that her knuckles whitened.

“Tres sat between us on the bench. He is a smart boy—verbal—with a vivid memory. He confirmed the story about the argument inside the house. What he heard about his grandmother. And then he told me what was happening outside his window as he waited for his father to come home that night.

“Mostly I listened.” Lauren’s voice cracked. “Izza and Tres left, went back to Frederick. I went over the story Tres told me, and then I tried to decide if I had any choice about what to do next. I decided I didn’t. Have a choice.” My wife looked at me with eyes as sad as I’d ever seen on her face. “That’s when I texted you.”

Again she seemed to want acknowledgment. I was too paralyzed to offer it.

“I’m here to tell you that when I leave, I am going to provide information to Elliot, and to the Weld County DA, implicating Sam Purdy in the death of Justine Brown. Sam will be picked up today.”

By then I’d guessed what was coming. “Sam? Arrested?” I said, barely getting the words past my lips. I didn’t wipe away the tears bulging in my eyes. I said, “Sam? Really? What did that boy see that could . . . involve Sam?”

My questions were frauds. I knew it was Sam. I knew it was real. And I knew why. Disingenuous? Damn yes. Sitting with my wife, the prosecutor, I felt like the most transparent fraud in the world.

By word, and by my behavior, I had promised Lauren honesty in our marriage. I was either breaking that promise, or I was living an unless.

My unless was this:
unless my honesty will leave my children without their mother.

I considered confessing but realized my confession would not only compromise Lauren’s position at work, but it would also needlessly put both of our children’s parents in legal jeopardy. My rationale? One parent in prison was better than two parents in prison.

I was trying to convince myself that there was room to find doubt in Tres’s story. I needed to hear exactly what he thought he saw that night. I couldn’t accept that the three-year-old eyewitness testimony of a small boy would be sufficient to put a decorated detective behind bars.
Never.
I was sure I could find a crack in what Lauren thought she knew.

The Tyvek? God, did Tres have Sam’s Tyvek?

Lauren said, “Tres heard all the yelling. He shut it out as best he could by sitting at the window, waiting for his father. Tres knew his father was dead. Big Elias had told him that. But he didn’t believe his father was dead. He sat in the dark at his bedroom window on the lookout for a proud, solitary marine who would march in his dress uniform down their country lane, enter their gate, and salute his son at the window.

“That’s what Segundo had done the previous time he came home from a tour. Tres was too young to understand that it would be different, that his father’s homecoming would be nothing like the last time. That there would be no reunion. That his father would be in a box.

“Tres finally spotted someone parking a car on the road between his house and town. The car came from the west and did a U-turn before it stopped. He thought it was his dad, of course. He seems to remember everything that happened after that like it’s a favorite video he’s watched a hundred times. The man got out of the car. Grabbed a gym bag from the back. It was an Avalanche bag, Alan.” Lauren paused. She allowed the Avalanche part to sink in. The Colorado Avalanche play hockey.

“The man was wearing a baseball cap. Tres knows baseball, plays second base in Little League. The cap was a Minnesota Twins cap.”

Sam Purdy was an Iron Ranger by birth, born and raised in the rugged mining country of northern Minnesota. His allegiance to the sports teams of his native state was mitigated only by his ardor for Colorado’s franchises. Especially for the Avalanche.

Why couldn’t you wear a Rockies cap, Sam? Even a damn Broncos hat. Dime a dozen around here.

“Segundo was a big Rockies fan. Tres didn’t understand why his dad would wear a Twins cap. The man walked past Tres’s house to the east. Then he cut down the dirt path that leads to the cultivated fields behind the cottage where Justine Brown died.”

Lauren kept her eyes locked on mine. She was, I feared, searching for signs of recognition. For familiarity. For guilt. I didn’t know if she saw what she hoped she would see, or if she saw what she feared she would see.