Trapline (15 page)

thirty:
wednesday, late afternoon

“He's a fugitive,” said
Jerry. “You can't harbor a fugitive. I don't know why they call it
harbor
but, you know, protect. Hide.”

“It doesn't sound like any kind of justice system I know,” said Trudy. She was ready for him, had predicted this reaction. She tried to stay calm. “He needs a few days of hot soup. He's banged up.”

Jerry sat in the office like he ran the place, which he did. It was his desk, his chair, his place to be comfortable.

“I can tell that much,” said Jerry. “And you know it hurts me too, to see him like this.”

Even in fresh jeans and a new blue Down to Earth T-shirt, anyone could see Alfredo was a beaten man. He kept his left palm over his left eye and his head was drooped. This was a brief stopover on the way to the Flat Tops and her house, where Alfredo could get well and where Duncan Bloom would come soon for the full interview. Diaz had negotiated every detail and had talked Alfredo out of catching the next ride south.

“Whoever they are,” said Jerry. “You don't want these folks to find Alfredo at your place. Or here.”

Jerry's tone was relaxed. He understood the need to make Tomás feel unthreatened.

In bits and pieces, Trudy had picked up the story of Alfredo's terrifying day and night. Before she told Jerry the whole story, Trudy took a moment to corral her emotions. If she showed too much, she knew Jerry would be all the more likely to stay on the fence or, worse, disagree with her plan. But she thought his empathy would grow once he heard the details.

Alfredo had been plucked from the street on the way back from fishing with his brother. He was blindfolded, shoved down low on the floor of the van. He was cuffed. They had driven at high speeds, certainly on the highway. Not too long after they slowed down, maybe ten minutes, they put him inside a windowless room, removed his cuffs and told him he could take off the blindfold only after he heard the door shut. He was given water and three small slices of American cheese. When he needed the bathroom, he was blindfolded again. One of his jailers spoke fluent Spanish. After dusk, they told him he would be released. It was all a mistake. They had checked his background and he was fine. But Alfredo knew he was not legal, had no green card. Their claim made him nervous. On the trip back, the van blew a tire on the highway. He was still blindfolded, but not cuffed. He was sure it was night. When the van stopped for the flat, he half wondered if it was some sort of trick. He had heard the van's sliding door open, but not close. From the voices, the three men were all outside the van and even with the blindfold he risked wriggling out from the back seat and running for it. He slammed into the guardrail and fell over and rolled down a long hill. He ended on some rocks, heard the men shouting and thought he'd landed on a riverbed. He guessed he was between New Castle and Glenwood Springs. He remembered the train tracks. The men came down the hill with flashlights and Alfredo had to make his way downstream until they gave up. He waited an hour in a riverbank bush, soaking wet and growing colder until he felt safe to start working his way back to Glenwood, occasionally waiting for a freight train to pass.

“Sounds like a bunch of vigilantes,” said Jerry. “He never got told anything official, was never shown an immigration badge, an ICE ID, nothing?”

“Blindfolds?” said Trudy. “Secret rooms? I have this friend with the
newspaper and he called every official agency out there and there was
no report of an escape. Nothing.”

Alfredo was their employee. They were responsible. She couldn't flush him from her mind. Stray dogs and cats were treated better than Alfredo.

“Did Alfredo tell them where he worked?” said Jerry.

“He told them he was here on a visit, that he was a legal visitor and could produce his passport if needed,” said Trudy. “It was a lie, but that's what he told them.”

“So you don't think they can put two and two together, ask around, and come for you?” said Jerry. “They might know where he lived.”

“Crossed my mind,” said Trudy. “But then they would have to show
their faces.”

“And if they are legit—you know ICE powers seem to shift every few weeks. What then? I'm only trying to think this through.”

He was the logic. She was the instinct. It was a successful balance, though at times she translated his “help” as stiff reluctance to change. It was easy to see he wasn't enthusiastic about any of this.

“All I know is he needs my help,” said Trudy. “He's agreed to tell his story to a reporter—”

“A reporter?” There was an edge this time. “The same one?”

“Yes,” said Trudy.

In reality, Duncan Bloom had heard all the details. He was going to come up for a more formal interview and review all the details. Alfredo had final approval on what went in print. She might need Juan Diaz to help as interpreter, although maybe Bloom would bring his own.

“Using his real name?” said Jerry.

“No names,” said Trudy. “Or identifying pictures.”

Jerry found a loose paper clip on his desk, started torturing it.

“Big leap of faith.”

“The reporter is a good guy,” said Trudy.

“Sometimes the reporter has editors who aren't so hospitable.”

“We'll see,” said Trudy. “You've got to trust at some point. Don't you?”

“I trust the reporter more than the government,” said Jerry. “But that isn't saying a whole heck of a lot. So how long are you going to take care of him?”

“Until he gets his legs back under him,” said Trudy. “It's like he's been dragged by a truck down a rocky road.”

Ever so slightly, Alfredo moaned, let out a breath of pain.

“He might need a hospital,” said Jerry. “What if he has internal injuries?”

“If he gets a fever, maybe,” said Trudy.

“Okay then,” said Jerry. “What can I do?”

“Give me a few days to stay with him,” said Trudy.

Jerry sighed. “You're awfully popular around here,” he said. “You know that. People are always asking for you. They think being around you will rub off in a good way. You inspire them.”

“Couple days,” said Trudy.

Alfredo sat in the front seat of her pickup. He slumped over like he was asleep. She balled up an old flannel shirt for a pillow, went back in the office to fill a bottle with water and put it in his left hand. “
Agua
,” she said. “
Agua fría
.”

She drove through Glenwood Springs realizing that the last thing she needed would be a traffic stop for any reason, big or small. Crossing the bridge, she felt queasiness return as she drove by the spot where Lamott had been shot, now the site of a thick wall of flowers, signs, and banners. She wished she had the nerve to take Alfredo to the hot springs. He could use a soak.

Trudy pointed the pickup east, up the canyon. She drove like she had a precious egg rolling loose in the back and she couldn't afford to break it.

Which, in some ways, was exactly the case.

thirty-one:
wednesday, late afternoon

Person of interest.

Bloom hated the phrase, something so unofficial about it. Wyatt Earp wouldn't have gone looking for a
person of interest.
He would have picked up on the bad guy's trail and tracked his ass down.

Person of interest
for someone who shot a U.S. Senate candidate with a high-powered rifle from three hundred yards? The label was too wimpy. Bloom decided he wouldn't use it, no matter the headline in the police department's news release.

He had made it to the department in time for the assembled phalanx of cops to announce that they weren't taking any more questions. DiMarco wasn't there, but Bloom had tailed Kerry London back to his news truck and begged for a favor. Between the replay of the eight-minute news conference footage, the news release and a quick call to DiMarco to gauge the cops' degree of certainty about the suspected bad guy, Bloom was making up time like the cartoon roadrunner.

“Glad to help,” London had said. “That's what friends are for.” London had started to tell him about something that happened up on the Flat Tops with Allison Coil but as much as Bloom wanted to hear it, he waved him off. No time.

Now, it was all about speed—getting the sucker on the web fast enough to make Coogan feel that newspapers based two thousand miles away weren't beating them to the punch on stories in their own backyard.

Bloom finished a three-hundred word recap, four long paragraphs, in four minutes flat. It wasn't pretty, but no one would be expecting a sonnet. When he hit send and gave the news desk a shout, he looked at his watch. It had been 53 minutes since he left the mobile home park and the story of the missing Alfredo Loya. The
Post-Independent
wouldn't be the first, but it also wouldn't be the last.

Undoubtedly, Coogan would want Bloom's full attention on the ensuing
manhunt and every inch of progress—or lack thereof.

The cops were looking for a man in his mid to late thirties. He was average height, 5' 10". He was trim, about 160 pounds. He had wiry red hair that curled down over his forehead and ears. When he had been spotted at Glenwood Manor, he had been wearing a dark blue baseball cap. The man had an elongated nose. It was long and it flattened against the rest of his face like he'd run into a brick wall. In the drawing, he had a three-day stubble on his narrow, under-slung jaw. From right below his cheekbones to the corners of his forehead, an art teacher would have drawn a perfect rectangle in demonstrating how to analyze face shapes. From right below his cheek bones to the tip of his jaw, a triangle pointing down. If a drawing could convict, Bloom would have no problem with the legal system. This dude had a brooding, sinister look.

But all other details about his face were subordinated by the face tattoo. The police department news release cautioned that the rendering of the face tattoo was an approximation, but the impression on their sketch was that the man had asked the tattoo artist to draw a grid or spider web over his face. The overall look said
outcast and I know it.
Certainly somebody would recognize the drawing, unless the suspect had been in hiding for the past couple years and only now emerged for the purposes of this shooting.

The cops wouldn't say much about how the composite drawing was produced, whether it was from one eyewitness or several. Bloom had no trouble imagining it came from someone at Glenwood Manor—or several
someones
at Glenwood Manor—who had put two and two together and realized they had seen the shooter and had fallen for a repairman or building inspector ruse or a “friend of a guy on the second floor” story as his ticket into the building.

As if the drawing wasn't enough, the release said he was armed and “extremely” dangerous.

“Thank you for the helpful tidbit,” Bloom told the email version of the news release on his computer screen.

Bloom's phone buzzed with a new text—an alert from the
Denver Post
about the cops' announcement. Pulling up his newspaper website, Bloom smiled. His story, albeit brief, was already posted.

DiMarco answered on the sixth ring.

“Playing hard to get?” said Bloom.

“I'm busy,” said DiMarco. “Surprised you weren't the lead lemming at the rodent festival.”

“Like being there would have added anything,” said Bloom. “Maybe I could have experienced in three dimensions what I get electronically from your PR shop. Almost nothing.”

“You don't like our drawing?”

“You talking to tattoo artists too?”

“In this country and twenty others,” said DiMarco. “For starters.”

“The guy could scare the stink off a skunk,” said Bloom. “Who spotted him?”

DiMarco laughed. “Same thing the guy from NBC asked. You guys share a certain level of obvious.”

“Whoever spotted him got fooled by some set-up, some scheme to get into Glenwood Manor. You're trying not to embarrass.”

“We got feelings to consider,” said DiMarco. “It's true.”

“So they spotted him at the apartment building?” said Bloom. “You're confirming that?”

“What apartment building?” said DiMarco.

Bloom could hear the straight-face snicker in his voice. He let utter silence tell DiMarco he wasn't playing.

“Okay,” said DiMarco at last. “How can I help you if you won't tell me which apartment building?”

“Give me a break,” said Bloom. “Okay, on background, do you know anything more, where he's from?” The phrase
person of interest
flashed but Bloom refused to utter it. “Seems to me there aren't too many dudes on the planet that look like that.”

The shift to chat mode might work. On the other hand, DiMarco knew all the tricks.

“In order,” said DiMarco. “No. I don't know. And I agree.”

“Guess I have to go down to Glenwood Manor and talk to the residents one by one,” said Bloom.

“Knock yourself out,” said DiMarco.

Browsing the web as he talked, Bloom found an alert on the NBC web site—Tom Lamott had allegedly responded to a question by squeezing his wife's hand. The doctors were urging caution.

“But I need a favor, too,” said Bloom. “You can get my editor's bulldog teeth out of my butt.”

“Maybe I think that's a good thing,” said DiMarco.

The owner of the bulldog teeth sat at his desk behind a waist-high partition talking with a large man who now had his back to Bloom. The man's shoulders were wide. He had short, carefully-cropped hair. His shirt was blue, but more of a work shirt than business. Coogan's gaze looked submissive. Less bulldog, more puppy.

“Because you don't want me to get fired so you can continue to control the media,” said Bloom.

“Right,” said DiMarco. “Almost forgot my motivation. At your service.”

“I need you to run a license plate,” said Bloom. He pulled out his notes, including details Trudy had relayed.

“No magic word?” said DiMarco.

Bloom sighed. “Fuck you,” he said.

“That's better,” said DiMarco. “Whose plate?”

“I'm trying to find out the
who
,” said Bloom. “It goes back to this ICE thing.”

“Call ICE,” said DiMarco.

“Yeah and then call the Pentagon and ask them how many bullets they own,” said Bloom.

“Give me the context,” said DiMarco. “Where'd the plate come from?”

“Someone who saw a van in action,” said Bloom. “Moving illegals around, I suppose.”

“What are you going to do with the information? Don't you have enough to do?” said DiMarco.

“I can multi-task,” said Bloom.

“Lay it on me,” said DiMarco.

“It's only a partial,” said Bloom. “Wouldn't need you if it was a full.”

“A partial?” said DiMarco.

“The first half,” said Bloom. “CL9.”

DiMarco paused. “Could be hundreds,” he said.

“Registered in Garfield County or out here somewhere? Eagle County? Connected to a van?”

The man talking with Coogan—talking
to
Coogan—stood. He had world-class jowls and the kind of wide, proud belly that made Bloom think of steakhouses and steaming piles of heavily-buttered mashed potatoes. He had a dark moustache. He didn't smile as he shook Coogan's hand, but something about the space between them said Coogan had lost.

“Might narrow your options,” said DiMarco.

“Can you run it for me?”

“What are friends for?” said DiMarco.

“And when you corner Lamott's shooter in some back-alley hell hole, don't bother calling anyone else but me.”

“Of course,” said DiMarco. “I'm always thinking of you.”

Coogan's visitor departed and Coogan had covered half of the ten steps to Bloom's desk.

Bloom hung up.

“What's the afternoon look like?” said Coogan. It wasn't a real question.

“Big question in my mind is how'd they get the composite—who described the man they're after? Thought I'd go to the apartment building, Someone's gotta know who gave the cops the info.”

“Keep on it,” said Coogan.

“And if it was the apartment building he had to have had help, getting in and out,” said Bloom.

One of the whacky theories a conspiracy theorist might concoct was that perhaps the shooter had help diverting the cops to Lookout Mountain—delivering convincing accounts of the shots coming from farther east, up the hill.

“Everything we can get by deadline,” said Coogan. “Blow it out. Somebody must have seen this dude.”

Coogan's words didn't have the usual zing. He looked like he had been dressed down a notch or two. Bloom was dying to ask for the identity of Coogan's visitor and then thought better to leave well enough alone.

Everyone's got problems, thought Bloom.
Everyone
.