Oh, God, no! He’s already shot something! He’s murdered an animal on my land. That bastard! That shit!
I had seen plenty of carcasses and dead animals up in these woods, but this was my land, my private property, and I thought
of it as a sanctuary away from the world’s madness.
“Hey, you,” I shouted. “Hey. Hey, there!”
I was halfway across the front porch, in a full, huffing rage, when he stepped away and opened the Jeep door. I realized that
what I thought was a body was the wrong color to be an animal.
It was maroon. More like a duffel bag.
He turned to face me at the sound of my voice. He half waved, smiled that nearly irresistible smile of his, which I answered
with a seething look that ought to have set him on fire on the spot, burnt him right to the ground.
“Morning,” he called. “God, it’s beautiful up here. This is heaven, isn’t it?”
Clutching my robe closed, I bent down, and grabbed up the “mourning” paper, as I call the
Post,
since it’s always so full of bad news.
Then I turned heel in my cocker spaniels and stomped inside.
D
ISCRETION was critical.
It was a very warm and sticky afternoon in Boulder, but not under the tall and stately fir trees that lined the spacious and
orderly backyard of Dr. Francis McDonough’s house. And certainly not in the sparkling blue twenty-five-yard pool, which was
around seventy-two degrees, as it almost always was.
The pool was surrounded by white wrought iron, curlicued leaf furniture, big comfortable ottomans, a settee covered in floral
Sunbrella fabric. Urns of seasonal flowers were spotted around the pool as well as canvas-topped market umbrellas.
Frank McDonough was doing laps, and it astonished him that almost twenty years after he’d been a Pac-10 swimmer at California-Berkeley
he still loved to swim against the pace clock.
Dr. McDonough enjoyed his life in the Boulder area tremendously. His sprawling ranch-style house had an indelible view of
the city as well as the plains to the east. He loved the bite and crispness of the air, the exquisite blueness of the sky.
He had even gone to the National Center for Atmospheric Research to try and find out why it was so, why the sky out here was
so blue? He had moved from San Francisco six years ago, and he never wanted to go back.
Especially on a day like today, with the Flatiron Mountains towering in the near distance, and his wife, Barbara, due home
from work in less than an hour.
He and Barbara would probably barbecue black bass on the patio, open a bottle of Zinfandel, maybe even call the Solies over.
Or see if Frannie O’Neill could be pried away from her animals out in Bear Bluff. Frannie had been a college swimmer, too,
and Frank McDonough always enjoyed her company. He also worried about her, since David’s tragic death.
Frank McDonough stopped swimming in midstroke. He halted just as he was about to reach the south end of the pool and make
his ninety-first flip turn of the afternoon. He’d seen a flash of hurried movement on the patio. Near the Weber grill.
Someone was out there with him.
No, more than one person was on his patio. There were several people, in fact. He felt a twinge of fear. What the hell was
going on?
Frank McDonough raised his head out of the water and flipped off his dripping Speedo goggles. Four men in casual dress—jeans,
khakis, polo shirts—were hurrying toward him.
“Can I help you guys?” he called out. It was his natural instinct to be nice, to think the best of people, to be polite and
courteous.
The men didn’t answer.
Odd as hell. A little irritating.
Instead, they continued walking across the deck toward him. Then they started to run!
A table went over on the deck. Votive candles broke, newspapers and magazines flopped on the deck.
“Hey!
Hey!
” He looked at them in total disbelief.
All four of them had jumped into the pool’s shallow end with Frank McDonough.
“What the hell is this?” McDonough started to yell seriously at the intruding men. He was confused about what was happening,
frightened too.
They were on him like a pack of dogs. They grabbed his arms and legs, pinned them, twisted hard. He heard a sickening
crack
and thought his left wrist had been broken. The fast, powerful movement hurt like hell. He could tell how powerful they were
because he was strong, and they put him down as if he were a ninety-pound weakling.
“Hey! Hey!” he yelled again, choking on a noseful of water. They had his head pushed back so that he was looking straight
up into the infinite blueness of the sky.
Then they were forcing his head under. He tried to catch a quick breath, but got a mouthful of water and chlorine, and gagged.
They held him under the surface, wouldn’t let him up. His legs and arms were caught in a powerful vise. He was being drowned.
Oh God, it didn’t make a shred of sense to him.
He tried to thrash.
Tried to break free.
Tried to calm himself.
Frank McDonough heard his neck snap. He
couldn’t
fight them. He felt his life force ebbing, flowing out of him.
He could see the figures in their soaking-wet clothes wavering before him in the sparkling, clear blue water. His eyes were
pinned wide open. So was his mouth. Water flooded his throat and entered his lungs in a terrifying rush. His chest felt as
if it would implode, which he actually wanted to happen. He just wanted the awful internal pressure and pain to end.
In an instant, Dr. Frank McDonough understood. He saw the truth as clearly as he could see his own approaching death.
This was about Tinkerbell and Peter Pan.
They had escaped on his watch.
I
T IS ABOUT a forty-minute drive from Bear Bluff to Boulder, if you keep the pedal to the metal, if you really fly.
I tried my best to make the drive in a semi-sane and controlled manner, but I failed miserably. Everything about the drive
and the night was a ghostly blur.
I couldn’t stop seeing Frank McDonough as I had known him for the past six years—smiling, and incredibly full of life. I hadn’t
been leaving the Bluff much lately. Not for the last 493 days, anyway. Now, I
had
to go to Boulder.
Frank McDonough was dead. His wife, Barb, had called me in tears. I couldn’t make myself believe it. I couldn’t bear the painful,
terrifying, awful thought.
First David, and now Frank. It didn’t seem possible.
I tried to call my best friend Gillian at Boulder Community Hospital. I got her answering machine and left a message that
I hoped was coherent.
I tried to call my sister, Carole, but Carole didn’t pick up at the camping site where she was staying with her two girls.
Damn, I needed her now.
I heard awful, wailing police sirens before I actually arrived at Frank and Barb McDonough’s ranch house in Boulder. They
live close to Boulder Community Hospital, which makes sense, since they both worked there. Barb is a surgical nurse and Frank
is the top pediatrician.
Frank
was
a pediatrician. Oh, dear God, Frank was dead now. My friend, David’s friend. How could it have happened?
The Boulder police sirens were blaring at an ear-piercing level, and they seemed so eerie, so personal, as if they were meant
for me.
Just hearing the police sirens brought back so many powerfully bad memories. I had spent months bothering the Boulder police
about solving David’s murder. I’d tried to solve it myself for God’s sake. I had questioned parking lot attendants, doctors
who used the lot late at night.
Now everything, all the bad memories about David’s murder, came flooding back to me. I couldn’t bear it.
I’
M DR. O’NEILL,”I said, and I pushed my way past a tall, burly Boulder policeman stationed on the familiar, whitewashed porch.
“I’m Barb and Frank’s friend. She called me.”
“Yes, ma’am. She’s inside. You can go right in,” he said, doffing his visored cap.
I barely noticed the sprawling ranch house or Frank’s beloved Xeriscaped landscaping. Instead of lush green lawns, hundreds
of small, colorful plants dotted the yard. Frank had planned everything with water conservation in mind. That’s the way he
was. Always thinking about other people, thinking ahead.
I was numb, and at least partly in denial. The McDonoughs were the couple that David and I were closest to when he worked
at the hospital. They had rushed to our house the night David was shot. Barb and Carole and my friend Gillian Puris stayed
the night with me. Now here I was in Boulder under similar circumstances.
A woman burst from the front screen door of the house as I was hurrying up the stairs. It wasn’t Barb McDonough.
“Oh, God, Gillian,” I whispered. Gillian is my best friend in the world. The two of us hugged on the porch. We were both crying,
holding on to each other, trying to understand this tragedy. I was so glad she was here.
“How could he drown?” I muttered.
“Oh, God, Frannie, I don’t know how it happened. Frank’s neck was broken. He must have tried a shallow dive. Are you okay?
No, of course you’re not. Neither is poor Barb. This is so bad, so awful.”
I cried on my friend’s shoulder. She cried on mine.
Gillian is a research doctor at Boulder Community and she’s a crackerjack. She’s so good she can afford to be a rebel “with
a cause,” always up against the hospital bureaucrats, the admin jackals and jackasses. She’s a widow, too, with a small child,
Michael, whom I absolutely adore.
She wore hospital scrubs and a lab coat with her ID badge still pinned to the lapel. She’d come straight from work. What a
long, terrible day for her. For all of us.
“I have to see Barb,” I said to Gillian. “Where is she, Gil?”
“Come on. I’ll show the way. Hold on to me. I’ll hold you.”
Gillian and I entered the familiar house, now uncharacteristically dark and quiet and somber. We found Barb in the kitchen
with another close friend, Gilda Haranzo. Gilda is a pediatric nurse at the hospital. She’s part of our group.
“Oh, Barb, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I whispered. Words never seem to work at times like these.
The two of us fell hard into each other’s arms. “I didn’t understand about David. Oh, Frannie, I didn’t understand,” Barb
sobbed hard against my chest. “I should have been better for you back then.”
“You were great. I love you. I love you so much.” It was the truth, and it was why this terrible moment hurt so badly. I could
feel Barb’s loss as if it were my own.
Then all four of us were hugging and consoling one another as best as we could. It seemed only yesterday that we all had husbands
and would get together for barbecues, swimming games, charity gigs, or just to talk for hours.
Barb finally pulled away and yanked open a cabinet door over the sink. She took out a bottle of Crown Royal. She cracked the
label and poured four large glasses of whiskey.
I looked out the kitchen window and saw a few people from Boulder Community standing in the backyard, out near the pool. Rich
Pollett, Boulder’s chief counsel, was present. He’d been a good friend of Frank’s, a fly-fishing partner.
Then I saw Henrich Kroner, president of the hospital,
Rick
to his friends. Henrich was an elitist snob who thought his narrow focus in life made him special, and didn’t realize it
made him very ordinary. It struck me as odd that Henrich of all people would be here, other than that the McDonough house
was so close to the hospital. But then again, everybody loved Frank.
I had a sudden and painful flash of memory that cut like a knife into my heart. A few years back, David and I had gone white-water
rafting with Frank and Barbara. Afterward, we’d gone swimming in calmer waters. Frank was as much at home in the water as
an otter. I could still see his powerful freestyle stroke.
How could he have died in his pool?
How could Frank and David both be dead?
As I sipped the bracing whiskey I couldn’t come up with a single answer. I felt like a top that wouldn’t stop spinning. I
had another drink and another after that until I was finally numb.
Gillian almost seemed as concerned about me as she was for Barbara. That’s the way she’s been since David’s death, especially
since I wouldn’t let the murder be. It’s as though I’m her adopted child. She reminds me of how I could imagine Emma Thompson
might be—smart, but sensitive, thoughtful, funny too.
“Come home with me tonight. Please, Frannie,” she said and made a needy face. “I’ll build a fire. We’ll talk till we drop.”
“Which would be pretty soon. Gil, I can’t,” I said and shook my head. “A hurt collie’s coming in the morning. The Inn-Patient
is already full.”
Gillian rolled her eyes, but then she smiled. “This weekend then. No excuses. You’ll come.”
“I’ll be there. I promise.”
I helped put Barbara to bed; I kissed Gillian and Gilda goodbye; and then I headed home.
T
HE FAMILIAR, WELCOMING SIGN loomed in swirling mists of bluish-gray fog: BEAR BLUFF NEXT EXIT. I signaled for a right turn,
cruised down the off-ramp, and felt the usual
two
lumps in the road.
Then I zagged onto Fourth of July Mine & Run Road, a narrow two-laner that cuts through five and a half unmarked miles of
woods until it reaches Bear Bluff. The Bluff is basically a drive-through town. It has a gas station, a Quik Stop, a video
store, and me. We all close by dark. There’s a local saying—
happiness is seeing Bear Bluff in your rearview mirror, but you better look damn quick.
I couldn’t wait to get home. I wanted to escape into blessed sleep. I felt distant, unreal. I’d also had too much to drink.
The unlit road looped around rocky outcroppings through the forest. Dense tree growth made reluctant way for the narrow, concrete
thoroughfare, and for the dancing headlights of my Suburban.