Last Lie (26 page)

I FLICKED MY MOBILE OFF vibrate as I packed up my things to leave the office. Ten seconds later, the phone came alive with my latest ringtone riff.

The screen announced that the call was from Hella. I realized I had never received the promised e-mail that would let me know when she was available to continue our earlier supervision appointment. "Hi, Hella," I said.

"Alan," she said, "I'm in . . . Cripple Creek." She paused for a couple of seconds, as though she wanted to allow me time to let the news sink in. "With that . . . patient."

Cripple Creek was one of three Colorado mountain towns with legal casino gambling. It's the one that's farthest from Boulder, almost ninety minutes south, in the hills behind Colorado Springs. Definitely a location that's way off the beaten path for a Boulder therapist at the end of a workday.

"Long story, but I think I am going to have to place a hold-and-treat on her. I've never done that. I didn't think I would ever do that. Have you done it? Can you walk me through it?"

"Not often, but yes, I've done it. Of course I will help. I need to e-mail you some boilerplate that you will have to find a way to get printed. You will then need to fill in the details about your concerns and describe your patient's history and current behavior. The key phrases to substantiate the hold are going to have to do with danger to herself or others and imminence of the risk. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Because of the pending criminal case, you should choose to describe the recent events, especially the precipitating events, with great care. You'll need to be circumspect and assume that everything you write will see the light of day. Does that make sense?"

"Yes. Will you review it after I write it?"

"Gladly. You have a copy of your license with you?"

"Yes."

"You may need to show it to the police to get their assistance. You want to tell me what happened?"

"I don't know very much. Why she came here, to Cripple Creek, I don't know. She got a hotel room. The police are saying she tried to kill herself. Somebody restocking the minibar in her room found her. I don't have the details, but I think it was an overdose. How they got my name and number, I don't know yet. She's stable medically, but she was almost mute with me. I've only been able to meet with her briefly, but I wasn't able to get her to tell me any details about what happened. She's being transferred to a medical hospital in Colorado Springs. I'm afraid I'm going to be left with no option but to hospitalize her in a psychiatric unit once she's stable medically."

"Until she's able to convince you she's not a danger to herself, you have no choice. It may be exactly what she wants you to do. What are your thoughts if it turns out she did try to hurt herself, or kill herself?"

Hella didn't hesitate. She said, "I'm hoping it will turn out to have been a gesture. Low intent. Suicide wasn't even in the conversation when I thought about this patient, Alan. Not even a little."

I allowed Hella a moment to live with that optimism before I asked, "And your fear?"

"My fear? That the recent developments were too much for her, that her intent was high--that she meant to die--that the lethality of the method was high, and that she knew how to do it. And that she kept it all to herself. From me."

"It's a big leap, Hella, from a gesture by a patient not even contemplating suicide to a determined attempt by a patient intent on dying."

"You asked my fear. I'm afraid I missed the signs of how the stress has been accumulating for her since the rape. The news about the accused's DNA this morning? That may have been the final straw."

"I can see that," I said. "How are you doing?"

"I feel awful for her."

"Are you angry?"

"No," she said. Too quickly, I thought. "I'm afraid I missed something. That I could have prevented this." Hella's voice turned small. She said, "Know what else? I'm afraid I am about to learn that she received the second half of the same video that I got this morning. That's my fear about the actual precipitant for the suicide attempt."

Unbidden, my mind found the frame that would have come next when the video I'd watched that morning ended. That new frame began with Three-Wood Widow's hair flying in counterpoint to her spinning shoulders and torso. In my head, the scene played on. The woman I'd never met completed the spin, her body in profile as she turned toward her therapist, surprise and recognition lighting her eyes.

One of the two women in the frame was topless, the other almost nude.

One was wearing fluorescent Crocs, the other scuffed leather boots.

The woman in the jean skirt took one of Hella's hands, and because I knew her line, I could almost hear the sound as her lips moved and formed the simple words, "Hello, Doctor Zoet."

With wonder, I recalled a recent moment when that peculiar collision of lives had seemed humorous to me.

35

I
sent the necessary materials off to Hella.

The phone rang again. It was Lauren.

"Hi," she said. I could tell from the tone of her greeting that she was about to ask me for something she would rather not have had to request. I began thinking of places I could pick up something for dinner.

"What's up?" I said.

"I know I said I would be home early today, but . . . I'm still tied up. This homicide. I planned to be home to meet the carpool, but I'm not going to make it away from here in time. Is there any way you can do it?"

"What time?"

"Six," she said. "I'm so sorry I didn't call earlier. I completely lost track of time."

I looked at the clock across the room. Five forty. "It'll be close," I said. "I'll leave right now."

"It's just Jonas," she reminded me. "Grace was invited to go home with Melody today. I'll stop by Melody's house and pick her up when I'm able to get out of here."

I had twenty minutes to get to Spanish Hills from Ninth and Walnut. On a good day, the drive took twenty minutes. But fewer and fewer Boulder rush hours offered good days. I rushed out to the car. Hoping to buy an extra minute, I crossed over to Baseline on Ninth before I headed east. The whole time I was kicking myself because I didn't have the carpool schedule with me. I didn't know who was driving that day. I would have felt much better if I was able to warn the carpool driver I might be a little late.

I called Lauren to find out the schedule. But Lauren wasn't answering. I tried Jonas. Neither was he.

As I drove south on Broadway, my eyes kept drifting to my right, easily locating the dark shape of Devil's Thumb silhouetted against the pink, striated sky. As the angle changed, the shape of the rock formation changed, too.

Sex, or rape? Thumb, or dick? Both,
I thought.
It's both.

I made it up South Boulder Road and across Spanish Hills to the mailboxes in a total of twenty-six minutes, which was later than I'd hoped, but it wasn't bad. I was consoling myself that the same traffic that slowed me down around 55th Street was probably impeding the progress of Jonas's carpool, too.

I stopped the car to collect the mail. The sun-dropping-behind-the-Rockies part of sunset was complete. That spectacle was always prelude to the final, more complex brilliance of the day, when clouds of orange and yellow and pink and gold pastels provided illuminated canopies to the lines of high clouds streaking from distant west to near west in lighter and deeper grays until the streaks disappeared into darkness. At the end of the nightly show, last light would recede inevitably in the west, like an ebbing celestial tide.

Our hilltop was already in deep shadows as I climbed back in the car and turned past the mailboxes onto the lane.

The far end of the lane was deserted when I pulled into the garage. The ranch house across the way looked quiet. I noted a different pattern of lights on inside than I'd seen the day before. An additional light was on upstairs, maybe in the main hall. Someone had been there during the day.

I peeked into our neighbor's garage as I walked to my door. The SUV was there. The Cadillac was gone.

I BEGGED THE DOGS FOR PATIENCE--they wanted out, and they wanted dinner; if possible, they wanted them both simultaneously--while I checked the carpool list that was posted on the refrigerator door. Chloe Cox was the parent who was driving Jonas home that day. Beside her name on the list, for a reason that eluded me, Lauren had penciled in "TM" and circled it.

I guessed that Chloe was supposed to pick up an extra kid on that day's route. TM, to be precise. Tamara Mendez, of course. Tamara ended up in someone's car a few times a month. Her occasional presence was causing a bit of consternation because Tamara's parents weren't part of the pool and never drove anyone else's kids. I was determined to stay out of that controversial quicksand.

I took care of the dogs while I watched for the headlights of Chloe's Pilot to appear near the top of the S-curve on the lane. After ten minutes of waiting, I began to suspect she'd already arrived and left, Jonas in tow, before I made it home. She probably called Lauren and left a message on her voice mail.

I called her. "Chloe?" I said. "It's Alan Gregory."

"Alan, hi." She sounded completely unharried. I was impressed.

"Are you caught in traffic?" I asked. "That construction near 55th is a mess."

"No, no. I'm in for the night. Just fixing dinner for the kids. Kurt's in Dayton, or Cincinnati. Someplace. Des Moines? Maybe Des Moines. I think it's going to be a mac and cheese and carrot sticks night. You guys ever do that? Gosh, you probably don't. I shouldn't have admitted that I do that.
Errrrrrr.
Oh well. What's up? These teacher meeting half days turn my world upside down. I'm such a creature of habit. You, too? Tell me yes. Please."

Teacher meeting half days? Oh. Shit. The "TM" penciled on the carpool schedule was for "teachers' meetings." Not Tamara Mendez.

I didn't have to think it through to know what we'd done. Instantly, the parade of parental errors was clear. My heart seemed to stop completely before it jumped and jerked the way manual-transmission cars do when you try to start the ignition after forgetting to first depress the clutch. I literally lurched forward half a step before I froze.

I assumed other sets of parents do it. Have moments, or hours, of mutual cross-contaminated child-rearing brain cramps. Times when assumption and routine and schedule somehow manage to supplant judgment and attention and adjustment.

Days when one parent's forgetfulness and distraction goes completely uncorrected by the other parent's mindfulness and purpose.

Lauren and I, I realized, were in the midst of one of those days. Jonas's school day had ended that afternoon at one o'clock. His after-school activities had been canceled. For teachers' meetings.

Chloe had probably dropped him off at home by one thirty or so. Jonas had probably given her a halfhearted wave as he let himself in the front door with the key that we insisted he hang around his neck. Chloe wouldn't have expected to see Lauren greet Jonas at the door. Not since she'd started using the cane. Jonas wouldn't have watched as Chloe drove away. That wasn't Jonas.

Jonas had texted me, though, when he discovered he was unexpectedly home by himself.
He texted me.
I checked my phone. He had texted me at two sixteen.

So he was home at two sixteen. The soil analysis question he'd asked me had nothing to do with his earth science class. It had everything to do with Mattin and Mimi Snow needing to know the answer to the mundane question that faces any Front Range homeowner considering foundation work. Our new neighbors were wondering if the land immediately adjacent to their house was burdened with expansive soils. If you're planning to excavate for a foundation along Colorado's Front Range, the presence of expansive soils is a crucial consideration.

While Jonas was trying to figure out why he was alone in his new house, he had been observing someone doing a soil analysis near his old house. The process of doing soil testing at depth required a drilling rig. A small rig. All the analyst had to do on-site was extract a deep core of dirt and clay, twenty feet, maybe more, for later assessment in a lab. The whole coring apparatus could probably fit in the bed of a pickup truck. It could certainly be towed by one.

Jonas wouldn't have intuitively known what the equipment was for. The truck must have had lettering on the door, or a sign. Something that included the words
soil analysis.
That's how he'd known what was going on. When he asked me about it, I had basically blown him off.

A fine piece of parenting on my part.

His second texted question to me, only minutes later, had been:
Lauren at work.
I had missed the meaning of that one completely.

My current translation? Jonas had thumbed that text just as he was beginning to get concerned that he was indeed home by himself and that his new parents had screwed up. He had been asking me for some guidance or some reassurance. Mostly, probably, he had been asking for some company.

Jonas didn't ask for much. My response to him? I had asked my son if he was cool. Four-hours-plus later, I was not feeling terribly reassured by his texted reply:
Yep fgw

I searched the house, calling his name. Jonas didn't answer. His favorite sneakers weren't by the front door or anywhere down in his room. They were on his feet.

I called his phone. It went to voice mail. I texted him. And waited.

He didn't text me back.

I stepped out to the front porch and yelled Jonas's name. I did it again even louder.

I called Lauren. Her tone of voice, and her rushed, "Yes," told me how distracted she was by whatever was keeping her late at work. I assumed it had something to do with the homicide of Preston Georges. I forced my tone to float somewhere in the normal range as I asked, "Was today some kind of half day for Jonas?"

I was hoping--begging, praying--that she'd forgotten some other arrangement she had made to account for Jonas's free time that afternoon. A bowling party. A movie. Paintball. For one of his friends' mom or dad to pick him up, or . . .

As she heard my question, I could tell that Lauren had stopped breathing midexhale. In a fraction of a second her quick mind covered all the territory it needed to cover to understand the situation: "TM," Chloe, Lauren's own half day of work becoming a full day, plus. Jonas, alone.

"Oh no, Alan. Oh my God, is he okay? I totally for--Oh my God, what did I do?"

"I just talked to Chloe. She dropped him off around one thirty. She watched him go in the house, like always. I got home a few minutes later than I hoped, but I can't find him, Lauren. He's not around. He hadn't turned any lights on inside our house, which means he probably hasn't been inside since the sun went down. He's not answering his phone. Do you have any ideas where I should look?"

"Did he leave a note?"

"No."

"His dad's barn? Jonas likes it there."

"That will be my next stop."

"Should I tell the police?"

"That sounds . . . premature. Let me look around a little. I'll let Emily out to go after him, too."

"I'm on my way home."

"Please call Ralph and Topher. Ask them to keep an eye out on the lane for him. In case he's walking somewhere or coming back here. Topher is working from home these days. See if he saw Jonas at all this afternoon."

Ralph and Topher were the quiet couple who lived in a modern home at the other end of the lane, near the junction with the mailboxes. Ralph had been the listing agent for Adrienne's home sale. They'd known Jonas since he was a baby.

"Of course. I'll call them. I'm walking out the door right now."

Even if she were turning onto 6th as we spoke--and she wasn't--during late rush hour she was still a good twenty-five to thirty minutes from our home.

"And ask Ralph if he can find out what company might have been out today to drill a core sample for a soil analysis. The buyer's agent may have given Mattin the name of a company to do that work."

"Why is that imp--"

"I'll explain later. But it might be important. I'm halfway to the barn. Emily's there already."

"Is Jonas--"

"It looks locked. Dark. I can't see much through the windows. Hardly anything." I called out Jonas's name again. "Padlocks are on. I don't think he's in there. He has to know that I'm looking for him."

"Oh my God. Where's our son, Alan?"

"Emily just started circling down toward the ravine."

I never liked it when she headed that way. That's the direction that the cats and bears came from. Surprisingly, my heart didn't jump at the prospect of big cat and brown bear intruders. My muted sense of alarm informed me that wild predators weren't my biggest fear at the moment.

"Can you see her?" Lauren asked.

"Not anymore. It's way too dark down there."

"Oh my God."

I said, "I promised Adrienne I would keep Jonas safe. How could I . . . How the hell did I . . ."

"I'm at my car," Lauren said. "I'm going to hang up so I can call Ralph and Topher. Alan?"

"Sure," I said. I closed my phone. I was staring down into the blackness at the bottom of the ravine. The white noise of late rush-hour traffic on 36 provided the only auditory accompaniment. I had nothing to see, nothing to hear, and nothing to say.

I turned around to walk back toward the lane. After a few steps, I tripped over something. I caught myself. I didn't fall.

Right behind me, only twenty feet or so away from the southwestern corner of the old house, a series of four thin wooden stakes were taped together to mark off an area about two feet square. The stakes had been placed precisely where the foundation wall of the pioneer turret would be if it were ever built. I dropped to one knee to feel the ground between the four stakes. The dry Colorado clay inside the boundary was recently broken. The stakes had been set to mark off the spot where a drilling rig had taken a core soil sample earlier that day.