Camelback Falls

Chapter Twenty-three

The airport seemed halfway to Kansas, it was so far from downtown Denver. When I spent a happy summer here years ago teaching twentieth century American history at the University of Denver, the city’s airport had been Stapleton International, a five-minute drive from downtown. Now it took five minutes just to get from the car rental garage to Interstate 70.

It was definitely not summer in Denver. Inside our cramped, ugly rental Chevy, the heater struggled against the 10-degree High Plains blast. Lindsey and I both wore sweaters and leather jackets, an unheard-of combination for Phoenix in January, but barely adequate for Denver. As we hit the freeway and sped west, Lindsey asked me if I’d ever been in an orgy. That was easy. I told the truth and said no. Then she asked if I’d ever wanted to be in one. And I could be a guy and still be truthful to the woman I loved. I said, “Not now.” Maybe I’m too clever.

“I’m not sharing you,” Lindsey said decisively. “Do you think Marybeth-I’d better start calling her Beth-was a willing participant?”

I didn’t answer right away, because I was really thinking: Should I ask Lindsey if she’s ever been in an orgy? I tamped down my primal male insecurities, which could be concealed underneath my urbane academic bullshit exterior. I said, “Why not?”

She was driving, and didn’t turn her head as she talked. “I don’t know,” she said. “Jonathan Ledger looks so creepy in that photo. So damned self-satisfied.” She whipped to the fast lane to avoid the sudden braking of a minivan. “The girl looks…”

“Coerced?”

“Oh, no,” Lindsey said. “She looks more lucid than some of the others. Nixon looks bombed out of his mind. But she has this look that’s very cold, very nonsensual. And yet very much aware. Way adult for, what was she, eighteen?”

“I guess the prosecutors thought she looked innocent enough, if they let her skip out on a cop killing with just probation.”

I remembered the terrified young woman with the cheerleader looks, begging me not to shoot her and Leo as they crawled out of the backseat that night in Guadalupe.

“That smells like daddy’s money,” Lindsey said. “But how does she go from sucking off Jonathan Ledger in a Kodak moment to being in the middle of a gunfight between two prison escapees and the Sheriff’s Office? I know one of the escapees was Leo’s cousin, but Leo’s not in any of those photos. There’s no connection between Leo and Camelback Falls.”

Denver suddenly embraced us with warehouse rooftops and a massive traffic jam. I said, “Hell, how did she get to Camelback Falls from her safe little upper-class life as a Tulsa teenager?”

The trail to Beth Proudfoot led us into the old neighborhood north of the Denver Country Club and the booming Cherry Creek shopping district. Mamie Eisenhower grew up in the neighborhood, which still boasted neat bungalows built before the First World War. They had been gentrified into the half-million-dollar range by Denver’s ascent into the New Economy. Unlike Phoenix, the landscape here was a winter palette of bare, black tree limbs, livened by the occasional evergreen. No snow was on the ground, but the gutters were full of brown leaves and everything had the stiff countenance of winter. Denver and Phoenix had different histories, too. Denver was a city when Phoenix was still a dusty farm village. Now Phoenix had long since outgrown Denver, but Denver still had more of the feel of a city. I liked it.

“There.” Lindsey spotted the numbers on the porch of a small but lovingly restored cottage, framed by cedars. She pulled past the house and parked. “That’s the most recent address we have. Should we make a courtesy call to the Denver Police?”

“We should,” I said. “But I don’t particularly want anyone to know we’re here.”

“Agreed,” she said. She reached into the backseat, pulled open her backpack, and retrieved her Glock. She snapped the holster onto the right side of her jeans. Then she slipped an extra magazine into her left pocket. Then she covered it all with her jacket. She said, “Is it better if I check alone while you wait here?”

“You think she remembers me after all these years?” I asked.

“I think you’re unforgettable.”

“Pardon the unprofessional behavior,” I said, leaning over to kiss her. Her lips were warm. “I think I’ll go with you.” I opened the door to the cold street.

Thirty paces up the sidewalk and five knocks on the door, and there she was. The young blond girl from Guadalupe, right down to her tie-dyed top and tight bell-bottoms. I just looked at her, feeling an odd, out-of-place disorientation.

“We’re looking for Beth Proudfoot,” Lindsey said.

The girl cocked her head and fixed a look on us with her fine, wholesome features. She said, “And who the fuck are you?”

“Sheriff’s deputies,” Lindsey said in her hard voice, flashing her badge with a swing that made the girl involuntarily have to follow her hand.

“You got a warrant?”

“Do we need one?” I asked.

The girl gave a heavy sigh and fell into bad posture.

“She’s not here,” she said. “She’s never here.”

“She’s your mom?” Lindsey asked. She received a semi-affirmative shrug.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She mumbled something that sounded like “Paige.” I looked past her into the house. It was fashionably spare, with a few colorful objets d’art, large plants, and a Navajo rug. A highly polished string bass sat against one wall, positioned with just the right savoir faire. No books.

“When do you expect your mom to be back?” Lindsey asked.

“How the fuck would I know that?” Paige said, with a heaviness as if we had asked why war is a constant of the human condition.

“You and your mom don’t get along?” I asked. She looked at me with a contempt that only beautiful young women can bestow on the mortal world. She didn’t have to say anything. I was as vanquished as if I were a pimply seventeen-year-old asking for a date. I tried again, “Where does your mom work?”

Paige looked down at the sidewalk. We were at a standstill and I was freezing. Finally, Lindsey handed her a business card. “Let her know we came by. We’ll be back.”

We started down the sidewalk when we heard the girl’s voice again.

“You’re from Phoenix. What’s in Phoenix?”

“Your mom used to live there,” I said. She just stared at us and shook her head, an older person’s shake, sad and knowing, Then she closed the door.

In the car, we ran the heater on high and didn’t speak. Lindsey stared back at the house. I ran the zipper of my leather jacket all the way up and still shivered. “What?” I asked finally.

“She reminds me of me at that age,” Lindsey said, and she unconsciously gave the same shake of the head.