Line of Fire (30 page)

51

T
he intensivist was at Lauren’s bedside in the ICU. My wife hadn’t stirred during my absence. In lieu of a greeting, Dr. Craig Posner—he’d introduced himself earlier as “Dr. C”—said, “I have concerns about the trajectory of your wife’s liver and kidney functions.”

I didn’t react. I tried to react. But I couldn’t react. At that instant, I felt as though I’d just had a double dose of Botox injected deep into my soul.

When we’d met earlier in the evening Dr. C had demonstrated a frank manner, but it appeared he was taking a scenic route to get to his current point. He began explaining, again, that one of the three slugs had done virtually all of the significant harm to my wife. One of the trio had merely nicked Lauren’s stomach and lung. Those wounds were repaired without complication, though infection remained a concern. Another, the bad one, had caused potentially catastrophic damage to her liver and had messed up a long section of her bowel.

He added a new detail about compromised blood supply that caused my brain to hiccup.

I knew what all his words meant.
Serious concerns. Trajectory. Catastrophic damage. Blood supply.

I also knew the expression on his face. For me, seeing what was in his eyes was like the moment near the end of a film when I can tell that hope isn’t on the menu, that the director does not intend that the movie come equipped with a happy ending.

I tried to swallow so that I could speak, but my mouth felt like I’d been chewing rope. Dr. C’s final sentence found my ears as though he were speaking underwater.

“The third bullet,” he said, “went through and through.”

Lauren and I shared that third bullet
.
It was the one that found my calf.

The doctor excused himself to continue his rounds of the ICU. I stepped into the hall and walked in a circle because I didn’t know what else to do.

I returned to Lauren’s side and phoned Sam. He answered after half a ring.

I said, “Please ask Ophelia to bring Jonas and Gracie to the ICU as quickly as she can.”

Sam was quiet for three seconds. I imagined him processing my request.

He said he would have Lucy arrange an escort.

One of the nurses poked her head in the door. She pointed to a white plastic bag on the chair beside the bed. “An ER nurse dropped that off for you. She said it’s your things—yours and Lauren’s—from this morning.” I must have looked perplexed. She added, “Does that make sense to you?”

Nothing was making sense to me. I was lost on the edge of a Möbius strip of incongruity. My incomprehension had no beginning, no end.

I remembered how to do polite. “It does,” I said. “Thank you.”

She stepped away.

I was alone with my wife. I began to cry as I realized it was time to begin to say good-bye.

52

S
am walked in before my children arrived.

Lauren was turning yellow before my eyes.

I stood. He embraced me and held me. He whispered that he had passed Diane on the way up. She was on her way to radiology for a CT scan. He asked if I wanted to fill him in.

“Later. You were home?” I said. “Is that how you got here so fast?”

He held the whisper. “Comadoe rents a house on Hawthorn. I was there.” Hawthorn Avenue was only a few minutes away from the hospital. “His real name is David Cohen. Ring any bells?” I shook my head. “His mother is a rabbi in Saint Louis. She’s a big gay rights advocate. Go figure.”

I did not know what to say about Comadoe being a Reform rabbi’s son. I thought his mother was going to be disappointed in him. “You were visiting him at this hour?” I asked as I pulled back from Sam’s hug.

I expected more bad news. My bad-news receptacles were overflowing. I did not know where I would put any additional bad tidings.

Sam leaned right back in close to me so that his lips were close to my ear. In a church whisper, he said, “His PO is going to do a surprise visit in a few hours. I had some items I had to . . . drop off before that happens.”

I recognized the tracks that Sam was leaving. “Turnabout,” I said, “is fair play?”

“Something like that. I kind of let slip to Lucy that I’d heard about the guy still dealing, but that I heard it from a CI I didn’t really want to have to burn.” Sam kept few confidential informants. He protected the ones he valued like the Swiss Guard protects
il papa
. “Lucy got what I was saying—and she also knew that somebody had tried to set me up with IA. She put the pieces together and she let it all slip to the detective who busted Comadoe last time around that his guy was still dirty. Lucy’s discreet; she never mentioned me or my CI. The detective she talked to told Comadoe’s PO there was a rumor on the street that his guy was continuing to do business and may have been trying to take down a cop. So . . .

“The whole setup was very Kevin Bacon–ish. Many degrees of separation.”

I wiped my eyes, though I wasn’t trying to hide my tears. “What’s the PO going to find during the search?”

Sam embraced me again. “An unregistered thirty-two reported stolen in a burglary in 2009. Eighteen hundred and sixty dollars in hundreds and twenties. And an ounce and a half of crystal meth.”

“Comadoe goes away this time?”

“Comadoe goes away.”

I saw loose ends. “He’ll reveal what he heard that night in the ICU, Sam.”

“Nobody will believe that shit. Asshole was in a coma.”

“You’re sure?”

“DA will have him as the guy who tried to set me up.” He shrugged. “Has to work. Has to. It’s all I got. That, and South America.

“Know what? I’m much more worried about Izza and Trace, what they might say. They can still bring me down.”

Us down,
I thought. “Yeah,” I said. “They can. They probably will.”

He raised his phone. “I missed your earlier call. Long message. Important?”

I couldn’t face explaining the last hour of my life to Sam. “Probably a butt dial,” I said. “I need to sit.” I sat. I realized that my blood sugar was probably the kind of low that an endocrinologist might find alarming.

Sam went to sit down across from me, but the bag of belongings from the ER was on the other chair. I reached out. He handed it to me.

I put it on my lap. I gasped. The sound from my throat surprised me. I thought I had used up my allotment of gasps.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

I raised a hand, shook my head. “I need to think for a second.”

Sam checked his phone. “Not too long. That was Lucy. They just turned onto South Broadway. Ophelia and the kids.”

Sam was telling me how much time I had to think. The kids were five minutes away. Maybe less, given the hour and the police escort.

I used up one of those minutes before I reached into the plastic bag. The bloody clothing was neatly folded. On top of the pile was a beat-up sheet of construction paper, creased into fourths.

I handed it to Sam. He unfolded it. His eyes grew wide.

“Tres drew this, that night. What you’re looking at,” I said, “is your—our—Get Out of Jail Free card. Weld County edition.”

53

S
am was wise enough not to speak.

I said, “I think—I admit I’m not sure—that Lauren had just handed this to me when Diane walked in with the gun. I figured it was there, in my office, when the crime scene techs showed up. That they collected it. That Sengupta would see it. Izza would come forward, say something. They’d eventually make the connection. It would be over for us.”

Sam’s wide eyes were red. He said, “But it’s here. We have it. And without it, if I’m reading this right, Weld County has no case. No reliable witness to corroborate Elias Tres. A three-year-old memory of a five-year-old boy? Won’t fly in court. Doesn’t matter if Izza backs him. That’s hearsay. The kid’s testimony about an old memory? Will not stand without this drawing. This piece of paper is the ball game for the prosecution.”

I said, “I must have been holding it when . . . I must have stuffed it into my pocket.”

Sam looked at me. Back at the drawing. Back at me.

I said, “Out in the hall. We should finish this out in the hall.”

We stepped outside Lauren’s room. I said, “Clean hands, Sam? For our kids. It’s all about clean hands.” I looked through the glass at Lauren. “And it looks like we may be about to lose our last pair of clean hands.”

Sam nodded. His eyes were full of tears. He said, “We’re it, now. You and me.”

I had to force myself not to turn my gaze toward my wife. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs that she was still here, too. I swallowed it.

What would she want?
I knew there was another vulnerable kid she wouldn’t want left behind.

I said, “Here’s the deal. The drawing is yours. But you need to make me a promise. You need to try—try—to find a way to make Big Elias pay for what he did to Izza’s mother and to Elias Tres’s grandmother. To Tres. You need to find a way to make things right for Elias Tres. That means giving him a chance to grow up with his aunt.”

“That’s Izza?”

“Yes. That is Izza. You need to try to figure it out. To make it happen.”

Sam scuffled his feet on the linoleum. First one, then the other. He said, “Bad idea. We need to stay away from all that.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll care next week. You’ll be thinking clearer.”

“Promise me.”

He stared at me as he slid his lower jaw from side to side. “If I do it, I do it my way, Alan. You stay out of it. If it gets too risky, I back off.”

I nodded.

“Then I promise to try,” he said.

Unless,
I thought. There’s always a goddamn unless.

Sam’s phone buzzed. He showed me the screen. It was a text from Lucy.

We’re pulling up.

I took a deep breath.

Sam put a hand on the side of my neck. He said, “You ever heard of something called Gaia?”

“Yes.”

“I’m that butterfly,” he said. “In the Amazon.” His voice was breaking. I had never heard Sam Purdy’s voice break. “I did this to you. That night. To us. To Lauren. I am so sorry. Maybe there was another way. I wasn’t smart enough to see it.”

I was done wiping tears. They streamed off my chin. “You’re not looking far enough back,” I said. “With McClelland? I am the butterfly. This is on me.” I put my arms around him. I said, “I love you, Sam.”

He said, “I love you, too.”

Sam moved toward the elevators.

I slipped the little Kahr from the small of my back and stuffed it to the bottom of the bag of belongings from the ER.

I began steeling myself for Gracie to call out, “Daddy.”

I didn’t know if I had the strength.

54

T
he Dome Fire never did the kind of catastrophic damage that the Fourmile Fire had done. The winds cooperated. Ground crews and pilots were heroic. In days, the evacuees returned home.

I paid attention to none of it.

• • •

As autumn arrived in reality, and not just on the calendar, I waited for the toxic fallout in my life to settle. I took many long bicycle rides. I took them because they had always helped in the past. They didn’t help. But they didn’t hurt. On one excursion I tempted fate by riding north through Weld County, but I did not cross Interstate 25.

I did not want to see Frederick again. Ever.

The interstate loomed to my right as I pedaled toward Longmont. Just before I reached the intersection with County Road 16—a right turn would have taken me into Frederick—I passed a farmhouse adjacent to some shimmering fields of what I thought was young winter wheat. Between the farmhouse and the edge of the cultivated fields, a dormant garden was arranged in a Stonehenge-like circle, awaiting spring.

Smack in the center of the raised straw-mulched beds stood a proud, tall, fat scarecrow on a podium of twisted, welded scrap iron. The scarecrow’s left arm was raised in defiance that was intended to deter intruders and scavengers.

The scarecrow was dressed in a Tyvek jumpsuit.

• • •

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Line of Fire
is the nineteenth, and penultimate, story about Alan Gregory, Sam Purdy, and their ensemble in Boulder, Colorado.

Penultimate is a word that anticipates loss. But my feelings about this book, and about the approaching end to the series, are more about gratitude and opportunity. Many long series stall the way a car runs out of gas; I am especially grateful for Brian Tart’s guidance and support as I worked to steer this one to a more determined conclusion.

Jessica Horvath’s editorial vision is carved indelibly in
Line of Fire
; I thank her for her contributions, her persistence, and her always-level demeanor.

Sharp-eyed readers of the series might notice minor inconsistencies between this story and an anticipatory narrative I set up in an earlier book. I could have written this story within the established narrative but I prefer my recent imaginings to the alternative.

Line of Fire
is not intended to be a history of the Boulder wildfires of the late summer and fall of 2010. The devastating impact of those fires inspired me while I created the Boulder backstory, but I did not allow the facts to get in my way. Locals might also recognize that I reopened Oak on Fourteenth Street long before Oak actually reopened on Fourteenth Street—yet another fire tale that did not limit me.

Robert Barnett and Bonnie Nathan counsel me with professionalism and grace, and they do it in the manner of a friend who has my interest at heart and an affectionate hand on my shoulder. I am most grateful.

I comprehended only a scant fraction of what Peter Ossorio taught in his lectures in my graduate school days. I am left to imagine, fondly, the twinkle that would be in his eyes were he to note how I have applied what I thought I did understand. Thanks for the echoes, Pete. No unlesses.

Terry Lapid, Jane Davis, Elyse Morgan, and Nancy Hall read early versions of the manuscript while hunting for my flaws. They graciously suffered the early drafts so no one else had to. Jane’s guidance was particularly astute this time around. Al Silverman was the first publishing professional to ever take a red pencil to my work. Two decades later I continue to be blessed by his guidance. Al’s editorial acumen is without peer, and the truth is that he is as fine a friend as he is an editor, which is saying something.

I miss Enid Schantz, who died while I was writing this book. She was a crime fiction pioneer who embodied everything I have come to appreciate about booksellers. She loved the words, the writers, and the readers. But she was never fond of the heavy lifting, and she never suffered fools. If you end up in an afterlife that leaves you in search of something good to read, you know who to talk to.

And to Hank and his handlers, my thanks for being gracious about the cameo.