Cold Case

PART FIVE. The Houseguest

I wasn't too surprised that Kimber Lister didn't immediately return my call after I'd left him a message asking for an update about A. J."s health. I knew from experience how reticent she was to discuss her illness, and Kimber had already informed me that she wanted the facts of her current condition handled with discretion.

When Kimber finally did phone, he didn't mention A. J. at all. The purpose of his call was to inform me that he was coming to Colorado to coordinate Locard's search of Gloria's Silky Road Ranch. He understood that we had a pleasant guest room and wondered if he could impose upon Lauren and me to stay in our home for one night before he headed into the mountains.

Initially, I was surprised by his request. After a moment's contemplation, I was shocked by it. Kimber Lister did not strike me as the guest-room-of-an-almost-complete-stranger type of traveler. I would have suspected him to be someone who assiduously counted guidebook stars prior to choosing his hotels.

I stammered out an invitation and told him we would be delighted to have him as our guest.

He thanked me, said he would be arriving late in the afternoon on Thursday, and asked that I send him directions to our house. I promised I would and wondered aloud if anyone else from the team would be coming to Colorado.

"Yes," he said.

"Others will be arriving. Given the political ramifications of our next move, we are proceeding with utmost caution."

"Because of the potential involvement of Dr. Welle?"

"Yes, because of the potential involvement of Dr. Welle."

Kimber arrived via Lincoln Town Car about a half hour after I got home from my office. The car was a deep navy in color and the windows were tinted as dark as the law allowed. A driver in a polo shirt and khakis deposited Kimber's luggage-two small honey-leather cases-on our tiny front porch. No money changed hands. The Lincoln kicked up a lot of dust as it exited the lane.

I'd prepared for Kimber's arrival by depositing Emily at Adrienne and Jonas's house. The sounds of her determined barking nevertheless pierced the quiet lane.

I concluded that I had been wise in deciding to introduce the dog to our guest later in the evening.

Kimber's handshake was meaty and moist. I noticed that he was sweating; tiny beads of moisture dotted his upper lip and his brow. He kept raising his chin into the air as though his collar were too tight. It wasn't. The top button of his denim shirt wasn't even closed. I worried that he was having an acute reaction to the altitude change.

"Do you mind if…?" he asked, swallowing.

"Maybe we… can-would it be all right if we moved inside your home?" He forced a smile. His usually sonorous voice was oddly hollow.

"Of course," I said.

"Please come in." I led him to the western side of the house and settled him onto a chair in the living room. The weather was putting on a show that afternoon. The sky directly to the west was a brilliant blue, but immense thunderheads had flared near the Continental Divide and were flanking Boulder to both the north and the south. Lightning jumped up from the mountainsides and lit the gray walls of the storms as the rumble of thunder shook the house.

Kimber didn't seem to notice any of it. He actually rotated on his chair so that his back faced the glass. I excused myself to get him a big glass of water.

Dehydration is often a major factor inhibiting altitude adjustment. By the time I returned to the living room Kimber was breathing through his open mouth, his chest rising noticeably with every inhale. One of his eyelids seemed to twitch as he blinked.

I sat down across from him and placed the water close by.

"Kimber," I said softly in my office voice, "are you all right?"

He raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

"No. Not really." He swallowed again.

"I'm wondering, although I hate to impose further… but… do you have a room where I can rest for a… few minutes.

Someplace that's maybe… oh… not quite so bright? Darker would be great.

Ideal even." I stood and asked him to follow me. I led him downstairs to the guest room, where I pulled the curtains across the windows. His bedroom was now cool and dark. I could almost feel his sense of relief as the room fell into shadows.

"This will be fine. I think I'll, um, I'll just rest for a little bit. The travel? I'm not accustomed anymore."

"I'll be upstairs, Kimber. No rush. Please rest as long as you would like.

Later we'll discuss dinner."

"You're so kind," he said. As I pulled the door closed I saw that he was already flat on his back on the bed, a pillow plopped over his face.

I wondered about migraines.

As Lauren arrived home from work, her car was being tailed by a Ford Taurus driven by Russ Claven. His front-seat passenger was Flynn Coe. The patch on Flynn's eye that day was egg-yolk yellow. From a distance I thought it looked like corduroy.

I'd been outside on the lane playing a game with the dog and Jonas that involved my alternately throwing tennis balls for Emily to run after and not retrieve and for Jonas to jump at and not catch. At the sound of the cars I scrambled to corral both the child and the dog.

Lauren was out of her car before russ and Flynn got out of theirs. She hugged me quickly and asked, "Were we expecting Flynn and Russ?"

I whispered back, "No. And Kimber's already arrived. He's downstairs resting.

He looked terrible when he got here. I'm afraid he's not well." "Okay," she said, and hustled over to give Jonas a kiss and help restrain Emily, who was not pleased at the arrival of strangers on her home turf.

Flynn picked up the vibes before Lauren and I had a chance to explain.

"Russ just admitted to me that he never got around to calling you to let you know we were coming. I'm so sorry to burst in on you like this. Just point us to a motel. We'll be fine." I said, "We'd love to have you stay with us, Flynn, but Kimber Lister is already here. He's resting down in the guest room."

"What?"

Flynn's reaction surprised me.

"Lauren and I didn't know you and Russ were coming, Flynn. When Kimber asked, we agreed to let him stay with us." She spun and said to Russ, "Get this: Kimber's here, Russ. Right now. As we speak."

Russ was leaning down in the driver's seat, fumbling with levers that he hoped would pop the latch on the trunk. He stopped what he was doing and said, "What?

You're kidding. Colorado, here? Or here, here?" He pointed at the dirt by his feet.

"Both."

"No shit? I never thought I'd see it."

Flynn turned back to me.

"I never thought I'd see it, either."

"See what?" Lauren and I asked in unison.

"See him leave the neighborhood where he lives in Adams Morgan. He hasn't been outside-what would you say, Russ?-a three-block radius of that place of his since he moved in."

"No more than three blocks. Maybe only two," Russ agreed.

Lauren said, "You have to be kidding."

I recalled the sweating, the nervousness, the agitation, the change in his breathing. I realized that I hadn't been witnessing altitude sickness or an incipient migraine headache. I'd been witnessing a panic attack.

I asked, "Agoraphobia?" Russ said, "Bingo."

Jonas and I consumed a few minutes in a heated negotiation over custody of Emily. I wanted to take her home with me right then. Jonas wanted to keep her at his house forever and ever. Our compromise? Jonas could have the dog until dinnertime.

After I turned Jonas back over to his nanny, Lauren, Flynn, Russ, and I moved inside to the living room.

"That's why Kimber founded Lo-card?" I asked.

"Because he has agoraphobia?"

Russ answered my question.

"After Kimber's illness progressed-I mean after it got severe enough that he was a virtual prisoner to it-he obviously couldn't continue working in the field, so-"

"Working in the field as what?" Lauren asked.

"What's his specialty?"

"Kimber was the head of the FBI division that uses computers to assist investigations. He's considered the top forensic-database guy in the country, maybe the world. He's also a wizard on the Internet."

I was impressed.

"Anyway, he wanted to continue his work after he got sick. Because of his reputation in the field he had already been invited to be a member of Vidocq, in Philadelphia. You know Vidocq, right? After he went on medical leave he went ahead and joined, became a full-fledged VSM-that's a Vidocq Society Member.

But soon enough he discovered that the train trips from D.C. to Philly for the Vidocq luncheons were impossible for him to manage-again, because of his phobias-and he was forced to resign his membership. That's when he and A. J, and a couple of others began to develop the concept of Locard." "Which," Lauren said, "always meets in Washington. In Adams Morgan. In Kimber's loft."

"Right," said Flynn.

"And to my knowledge Kimber hasn't done a day of fieldwork since the organization started assisting on cases in the mid-nineties. Until today. Which says something about how seriously he views the progress of this particular investigation."

Russ agreed.

"He knows that Locard can't afford to be wrong if we're about to accuse Raymond Welle of complicity in the murder of two teenage girls. If we blow this one, we're toast. Kimber knows that."

Flynn raised her bottle of beer.

"To Kimber, I guess. And us. I hope we don't screw this up."

We toasted Kimber. And not screwing up.

The sound of the downstairs toilet flushing alerted me that Kimber might be joining us soon. But then the clarion call of the plumbing let us know that he had started using the downstairs shower. By the time he'd climbed upstairs a pizza delivery had just arrived and I was setting out beer and opening a bottle of wine. The sun was completely obscured by the mountains and the end-of-the-day thunder-and-lightning show had changed venues and was illuminating the eastern plains and not the foothills. Kimber appeared rejuvenated, the tension in his manner greatly diminished. But the confidence he'd displayed in Washington was absent-in our house he was obviously awkward and out of his element.

I walked the western perimeter of the living room and, one by one, lowered the window shades that we occasionally employed to block the searing rays of the late-afternoon sun. The big room upstairs quickly grew even duskier.

At Kimber's urging, Flynn, as case manager, reviewed the progress of the investigation of the two dead girls for Lauren and me, highlighting the forensic findings that had focused attention on the Silky Road. The key pieces of evidence, it turned out, were eight minute grains of rock that had been removed from the skull wound of Tami Franklin.

"That was the first wound she suffered that night," Russ said.

"It would not have been fatal on its own, not immediately, though it was a bad injury. It crushed bone"-he stood between Lauren and me and placed his fingers on a spot about three inches behind our right ears--"right about here. The wound was eight centimeters by eleven centimeters. The grains were recovered during the initial autopsy. They'd been examined back in 1989, but no progress was made on identification at the time."

Flynn took over again.

"But we enlisted a geologist-actually, a petrologist-and he's been able to confirm that that the grains were from a relatively unusual form of imported limestone. There were, in addition to the rock fragments, grains of a man-made mortar. We assumed we were looking for a rock wall made out of limestone. So we began -looking for commercial and residential installations that might have used that specific rock for ornamental walls in Routt County. The building department records in Routt County weren't much help. Chief Smith began checking with local contractors and masons. He finally found a place that recalled using some of this imported limestone for a series of rock knee walls." Lauren said, "The Silky Road Ranch."

Kimber pursed his lips and nodded.

"Right. But even that information wasn't enough to justify a search. Not when the target happens to be the private property of a prominent member of Congress" Flynn looked at me.

"We'd been hoping that the case file you got from Welle-Mariko's?-might offer some support for Welle's involvement, but so far the results from the documents examiner have been inconclusive. Still, the fruit of your interviews, Alan-especially the information about Joey and Mariko's sister, Satoshi-kept leading us back to the Silky Road. Eventually, with Satoshis testimony that her sister took her to see Welle, we could even place Mariko at the ranch the night she disappeared."

"But not Tami," I said.

"Right. Not Tami. And it was Tami's skull that produced the rock fragments.

Reluctantly, we concluded that we needed more evidence to justify asking for permission to search the ranch. We wanted to have enough evidence to proceed to the district attorney if Welle denied us access on a voluntary basis." Flynn said, "When Russ and I came out here to visit a couple of weeks back, we reviewed all the lab samples that were taken back in 1989. We went back over the girls' clothes looking for trace. Russ looked at the original autopsy photos and reexamined the wounds from the amputations. We used techniques that were unavailable back then to look for latents on all the physical evidence."

Russ made a noise with his lips and said, "Nada."

"Until we got to the splinter."

"What splinter?"

"A postmortem splinter in Mariko's left arm, just below her elbow. The splinter was large-over a centimeter-and was totally embedded beneath her skin. Like the rock fragments removed from Tami's skull wound, the splinter was removed and cataloged during the original autopsy, but its significance was never appreciated."

"The splinter is of a hardwood with a polyurethane finish. It's sanded flat on one side. We assumed it had come from a hardwood floor or a finished piece of furniture, like a tabletop."

The phone rang. Lauren jumped up to answer it in the kitchen.

Flynn took over the story.

"I sent it out for more analysis. Turns out the wood is ebony. An unusual wood for furniture, a highly unusual wood for flooring. For us, that's good. We went back to the contractor who built the new buildings at the Silky Road and asked him if the flooring sub used any ebony." "The doorways," I said.

"There's a dark border on each side of all the entry-door thresholds. Is that ebony?"

Flynn nodded.

"That's right. According to the contractor, that wood bordering each door is ebony," Flynn said.

"We've concluded that there's a high degree of probability that the girls were killed at the Silky Road."

Two minutes later Lauren rejoined us in the living room and said, "Excuse me.

Everybody? Percy Smith is on the phone. There's a fire burning at the Silky Road Ranch. He wants to talk to Flynn."

Before he'd called my house trying to track down Flynn Coe, Percy Smith had already interviewed Sylvie Amato.

Sylvie had first smelled smoke while she was watching ESPN, hoping for some late coverage of women's tennis, which was her main summer thing. Skiing was her main winter thing. Sylvie had been killing time while waiting for her boyfriend, Jeff, to get home from his bar tending gig in town. They rented the old frame house that the two lesbian housekeepers had occupied when Gloria Welle was still alive. Sylvie also earned a few extra bucks by working as resident caretaker on the ranch and by acting as loyal gofer for Welle and his entourage during their infrequent visits to the Elk River Valley. I recalled that Sylvie was the one who had fetched me coffee in the Dilbert mug while I was cooling my heels with Phil Barrett waiting for Ray Welle to return from hitting nine with Joey Franklin. I imagined that her two jobs left Sylvie plenty of time to play tennis in the summer and to ski in the winter.

The smell of smoke on a warm early-summer night had been sufficient to yank Sylvie's attention away from the tube. She lifted her strong body from the floor in front of the TV to an open north-facing window and sniffed enough dry mountain air to conclude that the source of the smoke was probably an illegal campfire. She guessed the trespassers were somewhere down by the river or maybe even farther east, along the banks of Mad Creek. God, she hoped that nobody was camping on the ranch. She'd catch hell from Phil Barrett if he discovered that the perimeter of the Silky Road was being violated.

Sylvie pulled on some shoes and stepped from the kitchen out onto the covered porch that wrapped around three sides of the old ranch house. She was hoping to see the flicker of campfire flames someplace down-valley to reassure herself that whoever had pitched a tent had done so well outside the fences of the Silky Road.

She scanned the western sky and searched the wooded banks of the Elk River. She didn't see any sign of a fire down there, but the smell of smoke was even stronger than it had been before. As she turned the corner of the porch to check in another direction she couldn't miss the fact that the sky to the southwest was lit up like a carnival midway. Sylvie was certain that she was looking at a forest fire that was burning dangerously close by.

She ran inside and called 911.

The volunteer fire department from the tiny up-valley town of Clark arrived at the Silky Road Ranch minutes before the professional firefighters made it up the hill from Steamboat Springs. Both companies had steeled themselves for the grueling task of trying to contain an incipient forest fire that would immediately threaten life, property, and some of the most beautiful wilderness in the state. But what they discovered instead was a building fire that had fully engulfed the bunkhouse at the Silky Road Ranch. The roof of the adjacent stable was just starting to smolder. The closest woods were at least two hundred yards away though, and so far, no embers had drifted over to ignite the trees.

Since the bunkhouse was unoccupied, the firefighters sacrificed it and concentrated their attention on the stable, which they saved. They also managed to keep embers from igniting the drying grasses or the nearby trees.

Percy Smith harbored no doubts that the cause of the fire had been arson.

Lauren decided to stay in Boulder.

I could tell that she was eager to go to Steamboat with her, Flynn, Russ, and me, and I assumed that she was staying behind in order to conserve her strength for the baby. It was one of the first of countless sacrifices she and I would make for someone we had not yet met.

Kimber and I drove up to Steamboat in my car, with Flynn and Russ following in the rented Taurus. Kimber donned dark sunglasses and stretched out in the backseat with headphones from a CD player over his ears and a big felt hat resting on his face. Every twenty minutes or so he said something reassuring like, "I know you're worried about me and I'm fine." I was worried and I appreciated the reassurance, but the three-hour-plus drive passed slowly. With him in back acting dead, I thought it was kind of like driving a hearse.

Kimber had been dreading checking into a big hotel in Steamboat, and when I described the B and B Lauren and I had stayed at near Howelsen Hill he seemed enamored of it. I used my portable phone to call Libby, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast, and reserved the last three rooms she had available. Once again, it appeared that Flynn and Russ were going to need to come to some sleeping accommodation. I told Libby not to expect any of us until midafternoon.

She wouldn't let me off the phone until she had told me everything she knew about the fire at Glorias Silky Road. The whole town was apparently already talking about the arson. She said word was that the accelerant had been gasoline. Everyone was still working to come up with a satisfactory motive. She was pretty certain she'd hear something good by the afternoon.

The midday sun burned through a cloudless sky. Tourists packed the sidewalks along Lincoln Avenue in Steamboat Springs, wandering aimlessly from shop to shop. Traffic crawled stoplight to stoplight behind an endless parade of construction trucks. The combination of the heat and the mindless tourism was discouraging to me. I was grateful to make it the entire way through town and begin the gentle climb up into the valley that ran along the banks of the Elk River.

I told Kimber we were entering some beautiful country that he might want to see.

I had to yell to be heard above his music. He groaned back, equally loudly, "Don't worry about me, I'm fine." He remained supine on the seat with the hat still planted over his face. I knew at that moment that if my clinical practice fell apart I wasn't likely to make it as a chauffeur.

Russ and Flynn had passed us at a light in town and were waiting at the closed gate of the Silky Road.

"We haven't buzzed anyone yet," Russ said.

"Figured you would be along soon. Where's Kimber? In the trunk?"

"Kimber's right here," Kimber said, raising himself to a sitting position in the backseat. He fumbled with his headphones.

"Of course there is no way that Beethoven could have imagined it, but his symphonies provide a remarkable accompaniment to a long automobile ride. I wonder why that is."

Flynn pressed a button on the stainless-steel panel that was recessed in the stone pillar supporting the gate. Nothing happened. To no one in particular she said, "Percy said he'd meet us here. I hope he wasn't kidding" A voice projected loudly from the speaker. Someone wanted Flynn to identify herself.

She did. The gates began to swing open as though they didn't know a thing about hurrying.

Kimber stuck his hands on his hips, spun on his heels, gazed to the north and then to the east, smiled broadly, and said, "This is an incredibly pleasant valley."

I bit my tongue.

We climbed back into the cars. Kimber once again chose the backseat. But this time he didn't lie down.

I preceded Russ and Flynn through the gate. Near the ridge that climbs up from the creek bed toward the house I turned right onto a dirt track that I guessed would lead across the meadow to the stable and bunkhouse. Russ followed right behind me.

As soon as we cleared the ridge it was apparent that the bunkhouse was a total loss. The structure was little more than a blackened framework of toasted timbers. The glass had burst from the window frames. Waves of sticky ash had oozed through the busted-out doorways, carried along by rivers of water from the firefighters' hoses. A three-foot-high stone wall that supported the exterior walls acted like a dike, containing the rest of the muck inside. The adjacent stable stood intact, mocking the ruined bunkhouse like a prizefighter who has just vanquished an opponent.

Flynn jumped out of the car and took long strides toward the ruins. Without hesitation she dropped into a catcher's crouch and began to finger the sooty stone knee wall that had once supported the post-and-beam walls of the cowboys' living quarters.

Kimber, Russ, and I congregated around her. She said, "I need to get some of the samples of this stone and mortar to the petrologist so she can put them under a microscope, but I would guess that this rock wall might be what we're looking for. Although I'm no expert, I think this is limestone, and the petrologist said we're looking for limestone. For now we certainly can't rule it out."

I gazed inside the building. A section of the floor structure had collapsed into the crawl space below. The top of an incinerated refrigerator poked back up into what had been a kitchen. The beam structure was blackened and blistered into huge reptilian scales. I asked, "But what about the wood we're trying to find-the ebony? Maybe someone knew about the splinter and they were trying to hide evidence of the ebony by doing this." Flynn said, "Whatever it was they were hoping to destroy might still be here.

We'll get plenty of wood samples. Fire doesn't destroy evidence as well as most people think."

Kimber spoke, his voice suddenly rich enough to fill the horseshoe canyon.

"We need to remain cautious. The fire may indeed have been intended to destroy evidence. It may also have been intended to mislead us into believing that this was the site where we should be focusing our attention. We must proceed with our search as originally planned.

Agreed? Sheriff Smith is waiting for us at Dr. Welle's home, correct? Why don't we join him there now?"

Percy Smith was waiting on the front porch. He was perched on the arm of one of the two Adirondack chairs. Pork chop Phil Barrett completely filled the other chair. As we got out of the cars Flynn whispered to Russ, "Look. They used the exact same stone to build the knee walls and chimney trim for the house up here.

Damn-that will make our job more complicated." Phil said, "Hi, Alan. See you already stopped to check on last night's fire.

When I first saw it, it reminded me a little of the hash browns I made the last time I tried to cook myself breakfast." He laughed at his own joke. No one else thought he was funny.

I nodded.

"Hello, Phil. Percy. Yeah, we just saw the ruins-I'm learning my way around the ranch pretty well. Surprised to see you here so early, Phil-I got the impression from Percy that no one was at the house last night."

"I sure wasn't. I've been visiting with my mama at the old folks' home she lives in down in Hay den. Drove up to the ranch with Percy this morning after I heard about the fire." He smiled at Flynn.

"Want to introduce me around?"

I didn't like the fact that Phil and Percy seemed so chummy. But I proceeded with the introductions. Phil was definitely distracted by Flynn and her eye patch du your. This one was hand painted to look exactly like her other eyeball.

It was my favorite one of her patches so far. Phil sneaked his attention away from Flynn long enough to acknowledge Russ and to pander to Kimber.

"The famous Mr. Lister. It's a pleasure. My friends on the Hill speak highly of you, sir.

I'm sure you know that Congressman Welle sits on the committee that oversees the FBI. You are quite a legend in those halls, sir. Quite a legend."

"The pleasure is mine, Mr. Barrett. We at Locard are grateful for your assistance with our work. I'm sure it was an inconvenience to fly here from Washington just to supervise our search. We are also appreciative of all that the congressman has done to help us to keep this inquiry from the eyes of the press."

Kimber was warning Phil about the stakes that had already been anted up in the investigation.

Phil hesitated long enough to capture everyone's attention.

"One thing I've learned over the years is that Ray Welle protects those who promote justice the way a mama bear protects her cubs. Which is to say, wholeheartedly."

Phil was saying, Don't screw around with me.

So far I was enjoying myself. I wished Lauren had come along. She would have enjoyed this, too.

Kimber asked, "Is it possible that we could move this meeting inside?" His voice wavered a little, and I noticed that a couple of dozen tiny beads of sweat were dotting his upper lip.

Flynn noticed, too.

"Yes, let's go in," she said.

Phil said, "Doesn't get any prettier than this porch. I'll get us some more chairs and have the girl bring us all some iced tea. Maybe some sandwiches."

The girl? I wondered whether Phil had learned about Kimber's discomfort in wide-open spaces and was trying to take advantage of it.

Flynn pressed.

"You know, Phil, this light-it's so bright-it's kind of hard on my eye.

Sunglasses aren't really an option with the patch. I'd be grateful if we could meet indoors."

Phil stared at Kimber and pulled himself from the confines of the Adirondack chair.

"Done," he said. I thought I saw him swallow a chuckle.

We moved into the massive living room with its post-and-beam framing. I grabbed a leather side chair close to a sofa that was as big as a car and wondered if I was sitting precisely where Brian Sample had sat as he sipped tea with Gloria Welle. I said a silent prayer that Sylvie didn't serve Girl Scout Cookies.

A knock on the front door brought a plainclothes investigator from the Routt County sheriffs office into the mix. Her name was Cecilia Daruwalla-I guessed that she was of Pakistani or Indian heritage-and I assumed she was there to ensure the chain of evidence of everything that would be collected. Kimber and Phil Barrett retreated with her to the dining room to review the written agreement that authorized the search of Glorias Silky Road Ranch and stipulated the ground rules under which the search would be conducted. The search would not include the right for Locard to view or retrieve any documents or personal belongings other than those in plain view. The agreement was intended to allow Flynn to retrieve samples of soil, rock, brick, mortar, paint, lumber, carpet, flooring, cabinetry, countertops, and other materials used in the construction and maintenance of the primary and secondary structures of the ranch. The details of the agreement had already been hammered out via fax and E-mail. The jousting at the big dining-room table was proforma.

As Kimber preceded Phil back into the living room, he said, "Alan, remember, you're here only as an observer. Russ will assist Flynn with the collection of samples. Flynn, where would you like to begin?"

"Right here is a great place to start, Kimber. I need to collect my evidence kit from the car and then I'll get started." Kimber said, "I have some work to do, Phil. Is there a room with a phone I might use? Someplace private, perhaps?" And dark, and small, I thought.

"How about Ray's study?"

"I'm certain that would do quite nicely. If you would be so kind as to show me the way." He displayed the case that held his laptop computer.

"I'll be on-line much of the time. That won't cause any inconvenience, I hope."

Phil Barrett said, "Shouldn't. The house has plenty of phone lines. Before I help get Mr. Lister settled, just a word for you, Ms. Coe. Per the agreement between Dr. Welle and Mr. Lister, I'll be videotaping everything you do."

She cocked her head and smiled coquettishly right at him. The expression of her painted eye refused to flirt along with the rest of her. The effect was totally disconcerting.

"The camera loves me, Phil. Please go right ahead."

I spent the next ninety minutes with my hands in my pockets doing what the sheriff's investigator was doing: following Flynn Coe as she methodically collected samples of the various materials that had been used to construct the house. Flynn began by photographing each room and then plotting the dimensions.

Russ charted the progression of the photographs and sketched the rooms while Flynn proceeded to collect the approved samples. Russ assumed the role of forensic assistant with remarkable aplomb. Phil Barrett hung back, his tripod-mounted video camera recording Flynn's every move.

I quickly grew bored and found myself using my time in Raymond Welle's home to familiarize myself with the key places in the drama that had occurred between Brian Sample and Gloria Welle in 1992. I imagined Gloria greeting Brian at the front door and I made a guess as to which telephone Gloria might have used to call her husband and warn him that one of his patients had invaded their home.

I guessed she would have used the kitchen phone.

I examined the small window that Brian had busted out with the butt of his gun so that he could shoot at the assembled sheriff's vehicles. The window was an eighteen-inch square mounted above pecan cabinets in the butlers pantry. In order to reach it to shoot out the window Brian would have had to kneel on the countertop. I considered the selection of that particular window an odd choice in a house that had enough glass to construct a commercial greenhouse. I also thought that I recalled reading news reports that Brian had broken out the laundry-room window. I walked from the butler's pantry to the adjacent laundry room to check it out. Sure enough, Brian would have had a much easier shot from there. But the window in the laundry room was a narrow double-hung. It was not the one that Brian had chosen to bust out.

I couldn't resist a ghoulish peek into the guest-room closet where Gloria had been murdered, so I followed Flynn and Russ into that room with interest. The guest suite was decorated in the ruggedly stylish manner that Ralph Lauren and Robert Redford were eager for the world to accept as the authentic portrayal of American western design. Tasteful?

I wasn't sure, but probably. Expensive?

Without a doubt.

Flynn photographed and measured the room, and I waited impatiently until she finally got around to opening the closet door to take photographs in there. I peered over her shoulder into a closet that was quite a bit larger than the one that Kimber was using downstairs in the guest room of our house in Boulder. The closet at the Silky Road was a U-shaped walk-in with shelves outfitted like a fine haberdashers display cases. The open center area of the closet was only about three feet square-just enough room for the chair that Brian carried in for Gloria to sit on. The day of the Locard search there was no wine stored on the closet shelves. I checked. Nor was there evidence of Gloria Welle's blood or Robert Mondavi's red wine on the floor. I checked for those, too.

Besides the master and guest suites, the house had two other bedrooms. One, apparently, was set aside for Phil Barrett's occasional stays at the ranch. Although the bed in that room was made-I assumed by Sylvie-it was clear that Phil was a slob. Although he'd only arrived at the ranch that morning, his suitcase spilled clothes as though an inconsiderate thief had ransacked it after breakfast.

The second of the spare bedrooms had never been decorated. The windows lacked coverings and the floor space was used for file storage. I saw one box marked "Demo Tapes." At least a dozen boxes held copies of Toward Healing America:

America's Therapist's Prescription/or a Better Future.

The architectural layout convinced me that when Gloria Welle was designing this house she was planning for a family with at least two children. The knowledge saddened me.

The master bedroom was at the eastern end of the house at the end of a long hallway that was lit with a clerestory. By the time Brian Sample had walked this hall, I thought, Gloria Welle was already dead or dying in the closet in the guest suite. The master bedroom at the end of the hall was vast, with a sitting area as large as most people's living rooms and a four-poster bed the size of an uninhabited island. An alcove near the bathroom contained a compact desk topped with a laptop computer. The far wall, the one that would catch the morning sun after it had cleared the Continental Divide and then lifted itself over the tops of the fir and aspen groves, was nothing but a series of wide glass doors. I counted six of them.

The deck outside the bedroom windows stepped down twice from the house until it ended above two final stairs that led down to a narrow lawn that abutted the forest. A redwood railing, alternately carved and straight in two-foot sections, lined the north and south sides of the deck.

By all reports I'd read and seen, Brian Sample had leapt that rail on the way to his death.

I wondered why he hadn't just taken the stairs.

Sylvie showed up around two o'clock with a couple of six-packs of soft drinks and a big bag of deli sandwiches from the general store up the hill in Clark.

She was dressed in tennis clothes. Flynn and Russ immediately cornered her to question her about the fire in the bunkhouse. I was ready for a break, so I carried a pretty good ham sandwich on sourdough outside to my car and used the cell phone to call Sam Purdy in Boulder. I wanted to talk about Gloria Welle's murder, and he was the only one I could think of who I thought would share my interest in the subject. I found him at his desk at the police department.

I told him why I was at the Silky Road Ranch. He listened patiently to my explanation before he said, "Raymond Welle's no fool, Alan. If he was guilty of something he certainly wouldn't give a world-class forensic investigator the run of his place. Your search is going to be a dead end. Nice try, though."

"Flynn already seems confident that she has reason to hope for a match."

"We'll see. If you're right, I'll buy you a beer. Hell, if you're wrong I'll buy you a beer. But don't get your hopes up."

"Sam, the reason I called isn't because of the two dead girls. While the Locard forensic people have been doing their things here, I've spent my time walking through the house trying to re-create exactly what happened the day that Gloria Welle was murdered. You remember that you thought that the whole story was goofy, at least the way the police presented it?"

"Yeah, I remember I thought that. It was goofy. Still is goofy."

"Well, I have two more goofy things for you." I reminded him about the window Brian had busted out to shoot at the sheriff's vehicles and explained what an odd choice of windows it had been. That earned me a bored "hmm" from Sam. I said, "Well? What do you think?"

"I think it's been a lot of years since she died, maybe the landscaping outside the windows has changed. Maybe there was a big bush in front of that laundry-room window back then. Maybe Welle changed the cabinetry in that other room-what did you call it, a butler's pantry? Who knows?"

It was possible. I'd go back and look at the news footage again to see if there was a bush in front of the laundry room back in 1992. "What about this, then?

You remember the television news reports said that when Brian was trying to escape from the master bedroom he leaped over the deck railing and started running toward the woods? That's when he shot at the cops the second time.

Remember that?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I was just out there, on that deck. The center section of the deck-the part closest to those woods-doesn't even have a railing. It steps right down onto the lawn. I'm wondering why Brian Sample didn't just take those two stairs down to the grass and head straight for the woods. Why did he jump the railing, run toward the cops, and fire at them first?"

Sam was silent for a moment before he responded.

"That's a decent question. I'm thinking… that… who knows? Maybe… maybe he wanted the cops to kill him. It happens sometimes. We call it suicide by cop. There's this story-happened recently-of one guy who led this cop on a high-speed chase, and after he was pulled over he got out of his car holding a handgun. He slowly raised it up and pointed it right at the cop. Wouldn't drop it. The cop Cook cover and warned him. Guy still wouldn't drop it, so the cop fired till his pistol was empty. The guy died. Turns out the handgun the guy was carrying was a toy and there was a suicide note on the front seat of his car apologizing to the cop. Guy said he was too much of a coward to kill himself."

"Psychologists have a name for that, too."

"Which is what?"

"Victim-precipitated homicide."

Sam digested the awkward phrase.

"I think I like 'suicide by cop' better. There's no homicide involved when somebody does this to himself. The guy just uses the cop as a loaded gun."

The theory that Sam was offering about the shooting was relatively cogent but didn't cover all the facts. I asked, "Then why not the front door? Why didn't Brian Sample charge the cops directly?"

"Why didn't he wear blue jeans instead of corduroys? I don't know."

Nor did he sound particularly interested.

"You're not being very helpful, Sam. I thought you would find this stuff fascinating."

"Sorry. These new inconsistencies of yours all have possible explanations.

Simple enough things. Me? I still mostly want to know why he shot Gloria Welle through the closed closet door. And I want to know how the cops knew he was going to be running off that deck and not out the front door. Those are still the most interesting parts to me."

"I don't have anything to add to those questions." "Well, then," he said, laughing.

"I gotta run. If you can believe it, I actually have some new crimes to solve."

After we hung up I hesitated for a moment while I considered Sam's theory about suicide by cop and then called Winston Mcgarrity at his insurance agency. I got past Louise, his gatekeeper, in record time.

"Winston, are you allowed to tell me if the insurance company paid death benefits on the life insurance policy that Brian Sample bought from your agency? I'm talking about the first policy, the one for two hundred and fifty thousand."

"Yes, I can tell you. That claim was settled. There was some contention at the time that Brian's acts that day were the acts of a suicidal man and that the policy shouldn't pay because his death was really suicide and the waiting period hadn't ended. But the coroner ended up ruling the death to be a homicide-that basically means death at the hands of somebody else, in this case a cop-so the company paid the death benefit."

"Do you know how the coroner came to that conclusion?"

"It was mostly, I think, because of Dr. Welle. He sent a letter certifying that the day of the shooting Brian Sample was no longer suicidal."

"Really?"

"I thought it was a gracious act on Ray's part. He could have been venomous, could've said that Brian was still suicidal even if he wasn't. Ray could've done that. I'm no fan of Ray Welle, but I thought he showed a lot of class during that time. Said in the letter, if I remember correctly, that he'd seen Brian for treatment just the day before and that he assessed his suicide potential at that time and it was negligible. I thought the gesture was especially kind to Brian's wife and to his boy."

"Kevin and his mother got a quarter of a million dollars?"

"They did."

I thanked Winston and turned my attention to the rest of my sandwich. It left a better taste in my mouth than did the story of Gloria Welle's murder.

Kimber didn't emerge from Ray Welle's study all day. Once during the morning I saw Russ go in to talk with him. The visit lasted about five minutes. Later, Flynn carried lunch into the study.

After the midday meal the search at Gloria's Silky Road moved from the big ranch house to the old frame house where Sylvie lived with her boyfriend. The routine employed by Flynn with Russ assisting her was becoming so familiar it was almost mind numbing. She photographed, measured, collected. He sketched, noted, and labeled. Phil Barrett videotaped every step without complaint.

Cecilia Daruwalla stood silently, observing.

The day dragged toward dusk. Flynn was indefatigable and pressed Russ to agree to take samples from the stable and burnt bunkhouse before they stopped for the day. Russ held up his hands in abject surrender.

"Tomorrow, Flynn. I'm so tired I'm afraid I'm going to start making mistakes."

She eyed him compassionately and agreed to finish the job the next day. Her last task of the afternoon was to assemble all the evidence they had already collected and organize it in a single large cardboard box. She sealed the box with tape, labeled it, and handed it over to Percy Smith, who signed something and turned the box over to Daruwalla.

Kimber was the last of the Locard group to get in a car to leave the ranch.

When he finally emerged from the front door, he walked quickly from the house, his head down, his hands in his pockets, and slid beside me on the front seat.

He avoided eye contact as he smiled.

"A productive day," he said, tapping his laptop case.

"Really?" I said as I began to ease the car onto the lane.

His voice filled the car.

"I've been trying for two weeks to find a data trail for the two housekeepers who were working at the ranch the day the girls disappeared. Dr. Welle terminated their employment, with a generous severance, approximately one month after the death of his wife.

Available database records permitted me to track them only through early 1996.

I've been assuming that their romantic relationship terminated at that time and they went their separate ways. Today, at last, I succeeded in finding where they have been." "Ranelle and Jane," I said.

"Very good. Yes. Ranelle Foster Smith and Jane Liebowitz. Today I think that I found them both." I said, "Congratulations." But I was confused as to why the news was important.

"When I interviewed Satoshi, she said she didn't see the housekeepers the afternoon her sister and Tami disappeared."

"True. But that is… only half the story. I would like to know if the housekeepers saw Satoshi. Or Mariko. Or anyone else."

I hadn't considered the possibility that Ranelle and Jane might have had a different perspective on the events of that day than Satoshi did. Which goes a long way toward explaining why Kimber Lister was a world-class forensic expert and I was a clinical psychologist in a college town.

We were approaching the gate at the bottom of the hill. It remained open from the previous car. I asked, "Did you reach them today? Ranelle and Jane."

"No, no, I did not. Sadly, Jane Liebowitz died in an abortion clinic bombing in North Carolina in 1997. Ranelle Foster Smith, fortunately, is still alive, and is residing in Sitka, Alaska. She runs a local art gallery and has apparently become quite renowned for her native basketry. It turns out that she is part Inuit."

"Will you go see her?"

He swallowed before he answered.

"Actually, I've presumed upon an old colleague of mine to do that for me. She is already on her way up from Seattle to pose a few questions to Ms. Smith on our behalf. It's apparently not a convenient trip.

Getting to Sitka, I mean. From anywhere. It involves… seaplanes." I could feel the seat shiver as Kimber Lister shuddered at the thought of being confined in a seaplane.

I pulled left onto the county road to head toward town. The shadows of the big trees close to the river provided a cool canopy.

"What about the two cowboys, Kimber? The hands who took care of Gloria's horses?"

"Actually haven't put too much energy into finding them. They were out of town the day the girls disappeared. We've already confirmed that.

But… I suppose there is something to be gained from talking with them, too.

Just in case."

I thought more about the cowboys.

"I wonder who watched the horses when the two cowboys were out of town. Maybe someone else was on the ranch that day-another possible witness."

For the first time since he joined me in the front seat, Kimber looked at me.

"I hadn't thought of that possibility. I'll have to inquire. Would Gloria have taken care of the horses herself on those days when her ranch hands were gone?

I'm afraid I'm rather ignorant about ranching and things. Would it be likely that the chores are something she might just do herself? Or would she bring someone in to help from the outside? I just don't know. That's another question that I can have my friend pose to Ranelle during their meeting."

He scribbled a note on an index card that he pulled from his breast pocket. He replaced it.

I changed the tone of my voice and asked, "How are you doing, Kimber? This has to be difficult for you. Leaving your routine like this."

"I'm doing better than I expected, thank you. So far I've been anxious, but I haven't had an actual panic attack, though I will admit that last night at your house was less than pleasant. Mostly I think I've been anxious about having a panic attack. Does that make sense?"

"Of course it does."

"The day has been long. I'm looking forward to having some time to myself at the B and B to refresh myself before tomorrow. I'm afraid it might be another grueling day. The stable and bunkhouse may turn out to be crucial sources of evidence. Need I say that I won't be joining you and Russ and Flynn for dinner this evening? I'm hoping there's a pizza place in town that delivers. I'm sure you will understand."

"Do you have energy for one more question?"

"Yes?"

"Are you confident about what we're doing here? The forensics? Will this be enough to end the investigation?"

"Once we're on someone's trail, Alan, Locard is like the big bad wolf. We'll huff and we'll puff until we blow the house down. If these forensics don't pan out, something else will." With that pronouncement he pulled his hat down over his eyes and slunk low on his seat.

Once in Steamboat, I checked in to the bed-and-breakfast for both Kimber and myself and gave him his key. Flynn and russ had already settled into their room without any apparent consternation about the sleeping arrangements.

I walked down the hall and inquired about their dinner plans. Flynn wanted to go to an early movie before she ate. Russ wanted to visit the hot springs in Strawberry Park.

I wanted to do neither.

I wanted to be home in Boulder with my pregnant wife. My presence in Steamboat, it had turned out, was superfluous. I was sorry I'd come. I was considering leaving for home first thing in the morning.

Kimber knocked on my door a few minutes after I'd settled into bed for the night. I thought it was around eleven o'clock. I was sleeping naked and the B and B didn't provide robes for its guests, so I answered the door dressed as though I were attending a toga party on a cheap cruise line.

Kimber said, "So sorry to disturb you. May I impose for just a moment? Flynn and russ haven't returned from their excursions yet." He stepped past me into the room without waiting for my assent. Kimber was someone accustomed to getting his way. He sat in a small club chair beneath the room's only window, which was a double-hung in a narrow gable. Paisley engulfed him from all directions-wallpaper, upholstery, pillows, I noticed that he hadn't changed his clothes from earlier in the day.

I sat back against the headboard of the bed and pulled the comforter over my legs.

"Sure, why not?" I said.

While he spoke I assessed him for signs of incipient panic. I didn't see any symptoms.

"My friend made it to Sitka at dinnertime in Alaska and phoned me right after speaking with Ranelle. Ranelle has no recollection of ever seeing Mariko or Satoshi at the ranch that night or any other night. Tami? She's not sure about her. Maybe, she says. Ranelle says that Mrs. Franklin was a frequent visitor of Mrs. Welle and thinks that perhaps Tami may have accompanied her once or twice." I said, "So we now have confirmation about Mrs. Franklin's visits to the ranch?"

I was wondering what about this information warranted invading my room after I had gone to bed.

"That's correct. In addition, Ranelle was able to provide my friend with some more information about the two men who took care of the horses on the ranch."

"Great," I said, without any enthusiasm. I wanted to go back to sleep. My suspicion was that Kimber had stopped by just for company.

He was trying to keep his robust voice down, but seemed physically incapable of whispering.

"Both men, Frank Jobe and Thomas Charles Charles-Ranelle said they called him Double Chuck-are living on a ranch outside Austin, Texas. I've been searching databases all evening. They continued working together after they left the Silky Road in 1992. They worked briefly at a ranch near Dallas until 1993."

I pulled the comforter all the way to my waist.

"There's more, isn't there?"

Kimber's posture was atrocious. The round-backed club chair made it appear that both his clavicles had collapsed forward.

"Yes, there's more. The man who covered for Frank Jobe and Thomas Charles when they were out of town? I located him, too. He still lives close by here. Place called Oak Creek. I found it on the map. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes. I've driven through it a few times. Stopped there once to use the bathroom at the Total station. It's not exactly a metropolis."

"How long would it take us to get there?"

I shrugged.

"Guessing? Twenty minutes. Maybe a little more."

Kimber moved toward the door.

"I'll wait for you downstairs." He grabbed the doorknob.

"I almost forgot. Ranelle said that she and Jane did some major scrubbing of one of the bunkhouse rooms the week after the girls disappeared.

Made some extra money by agreeing to paint it all themselves, too."

I tried to control my breathing.

"Whose room? Franks or Chuck's?"

"Neither. The common room, she called it. Ranelle says that there were three little bedrooms, the common room, and a kitchen in the bunkhouse. She was sorry to hear it had burned down. She and Jane and the two cowboys apparently had some good times there."

"Does she remember any blood?"

"She surely does not."

The man who lived in Oak Creek was named Robbie Talbot. Robbie Albert Talbot.

Because of the hour I half expected him to greet us with a twelve-gauge at the ready, but he invited us into his home as though he'd been expecting all along for us to show up during the appearance of Jay Leno's last guest of the evening. When Kimber called him Mr. Talbot he told us his nickname was Rat and asked us to call him Rat.

Rat lived in a log cabin a block and half from where Highway 131 knifed through what constituted downtown Oak Creek. The cabin was a solitary room, maybe twenty-five feet square, and was impeccably maintained. The linoleum floor was spotless, the curtains appeared to have just been ironed, and the split oak logs next to the enameled stove were piled with great care. I assumed there must have been a Mrs. Rat around somewhere, but couldn't see any other evidence of her presence.

Rat offered us a glass of water. We declined. He offered to light the stove to warm the room. We said we were fine. Finally, he asked what brought us to his door.

Kimber said, "If you would be so kind, we would like to ask you a few questions about the work you did for Gloria Welle out at the Silky Road before she died.

Would that be all right?"

Rat shrugged as though it didn't make any difference to him. He was a small man, maybe five seven, with a narrow waist and wide shoulders. I guessed that he wasn't forced to shave very often, but his eyebrows, which grew together at the bridge of his nose, were as thick as hedgerows.

"I loved that ranch," he said, smiling broadly at memories of the Silky Road, his grin revealing that his teeth were stained brown from tobacco.

"Used to always be bugging Frank and Double Chuck, trying to get them to take me on there permanent. But there weren't ever enough horses for three hands at the Silky. Heck, there weren't even enough horses for Frank and Chuck, but those two stuck together and Miss. Welle knew that if she wanted one of those cowboys she had to take both of those cowboys.

Ain't nobody I ever met took better care of her horses or her cowboys than Miss. Gloria. Would've been a dream to work there.

"Cept for how things turned out for Miss. Gloria, of course."

Kimber asked, "You covered their jobs on the ranch when Frank and Chuck were out of town? Is that right?"

"Yep. Moved right in. Took right over. Did the routine chores and whatever else Miss. Gloria asked."

"Moved in… where?"

"Into the bunkhouse Hilton. That's what I called it. Nice place. Had a spare room I could use when I was working. Nice big porch looking down-valley toward the river. Cupboard full of food. Always some beer in the fridge. Didn't mind those days much at all. Sometimes Frank and Chuck'd be gone for a week or more buying or selling horses or whatever." He shrugged.

"Just fine with me."

"We're particularly interested in a night you may remember back in eighty-eight.

Two girls disappeared from town that night. One was named Mariko Hamamoto. The other was-"

"Tami Franklin. I knew Tami from her daddy's ranch. I hired out there sometimes, too, back in those days. Remember that night real good. The next mornin' I got up and started to feed the horses-heck, must've been about five. Soon enough-couldn't have been much past six-the sheriff came by asking me if I'd join a search for the two girls. Miss. Gloria told me to go ahead and go. I spend most of the next two days trying to find those two kids in the snow. Sure do remember."

"The night before the search? The night the two girls disappeared? Do you remember seeing anyone at the Silky Road beside the Welles?"

Rat looked at Kimber with an honestly perplexed face.

"Saw the sheriff that night. Saw Mrs. Franklin. Didn't see the girls, if that's what you're wondering."

"You saw the sheriff and Mrs. Franklin at the ranch? What time do you think that was?"

"Miss. Gloria sent me to town on an errand late that afternoon. She needed something shipped somewhere is how I remember it, offered me some money to catch a movie or something while I was down the hill. I saw Mrs. Franklin's truck at the house when I stopped there on my way off the ranch to pick up the package.

Passed the sheriff's vehicle down near the gate. I'd say it was dusk, maybe a little later."

"And you got back to the Silky Road when, Rat?"

"Not till late. After the movie I had a few beers with my buddies in town." Kimber asked, "That night, when you got back, did you sleep in the same room at the bunkhouse or did you move to a new room?" Rat asked, "How did you know about that? Miss. Gloria had moved all my things that same evening. Said that a problem had developed with the plumbing in the bunkhouse. I don't recall exactly what. I slept in the guest room at the Welles' house that night. Fanciest bed I've ever been in in my whole life."

Kimber asked a few more questions but Rat had told us all he knew. We thanked him and stood up to leave. I thought Rat might like to know what had happened to the two cowboys from the Silky Road. I said, "In case you've been curious, we learned that Frank and Chuck are still working together. They're on a ranch near Austin, Texas."

Rat stuffed his hands in his pockets and lowered his head. He toed the floor of the cabin with his boot.

"Texas? Huh."

"For a while they were at a different ranch near Dallas." "You know," he said, "those two cowboys are queers." There was a good-sized smile on his face when he looked back up.

"What do we know?" Kimber asked as we climbed back into my car.

"That there was an awful lot of activity at the Silky Road the night the girls disappeared."

"Which means that if the girls were murdered at the ranch, then we have quite a list of suspects and a wonderfully long list of potential witnesses."

I added, "The bunkhouse certainly got a lot of attention during that time.

Extra work for the housekeepers. Rat being asked to sleep elsewhere that night."

"It did."

"Flynn and Russ seem to think they can tie that wound on Tami's head to the stones used to build those walls at the ranch. And if the samples from the floor are really ebony… well…"

Kimber sighed. Before he was done, he erupted into a huge yawn.

"I don't know how much longer we can keep this from the press. But I am certain of one thing:

I'd like to conclude our work at that ranch before they get a chance to begin theirs."

We drove in silence from Oak Creek and didn't pass another vehicle until we were on the outskirts of Steamboat Springs. Kimber never covered his face during the drive; he stared out the passenger-side window at the high prairies and the distant peaks, thinking I don't know what.

When we got back, the front door of the bed-and-breakfast was locked. My room key allowed us inside. An envelope addressed to Mr. Kimber Lister waited for him on the polished mahogany table in the foyer. I thought I heard Kimber mutter, "Shit," but I wasn't sure.

He slid his finger under the flap of the envelope and carefully released the adhesive. The sheet of paper inside had been folded over only once. Kimber read what was on it, folded it closed, reopened it, and read it again.

He turned to face me.

"It's from Russ and Flynn. They think they know where the reporter is. The one from the Washington Post? They'd like us to meet them at the general store in Clark. Do you know where that is?"

I nodded, "Clark makes Oak Creek look like Las Vegas. It's up the valley past the Silky Road Ranch. You can spit across the whole town; the general store won't be hard to find. They want us to meet them now?"

"I'm afraid so. We're supposed to page Russ when we're leaving here. They'll meet us at the store."

"Does it say whether Dorothy is alive or dead?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Are we going?"

"Do we have much choice?"

I thought, Sure, but didn't say anything.

Kimber had depleted most of his reserves coping with his illness during the long day at the Silky Road. He had apparently consumed the rest during the early evening that he'd spent scouring databases and traveling with me to Oak Creek to interview Rat. On the drive up the Elk River Valley to Clark he chose to return to his familiar pose in the backseat. In a voice that dripped anxiety he asked me to play music-anything-and play it loudly. I flipped through a stack of tapes I had in the car and offered him one of Lauren's favorites, Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey.

"Ideal," he declared.

I was a reluctant chauffeur. I held no illusions that Dorothy Levin was still alive and didn't really want to be around when her body was discovered after so many days in the wilderness. And I felt relatively certain that her body would be somewhere in the wildneress. Because, other than a few working ranches, including the one owned by the Franklins, and a couple of dude ranches for tourists, pretty much all there is around dark is wilderness. I wanted to remember Dorothy for her insouciance and her wit. I didn't want a picture of her decomposing flesh etched in my memory. I hoped that Flynn and Russ didn't expect me to identify her.

As we drove past the gate to Glorias Silky Road Ranch I decided that I would deliver Kimber to the general store in Clark and announce to Flynn and Russ that my errands were over for the evening. I would drive back down to my cozy bed in Steamboat, sleep as late as I could, and enjoy a big breakfast the next morning.

I didn't see any reason to change my plans to return to Boulder.

* * * A sign along the right side of the county road welcomes visitors to Clark, Colorado. The sign states that the town was established on September 16, 1889, that its elevation is 7271 feet above sea level, and that its population is "?"

A quick glance at the tiny village convinced me that when Flynn, russ, Kimber, and I rendezvoused at the general store we would temporarily elevate the population of Clark from the single to the double digits.

When Kimber and I arrived, the parking area outside the store was empty except for a pair of old analog gas pumps and a white Ford Econoline that appeared to have been parked in the same spot for many more days than Dorothy had been missing from her hotel room. A moment after I stopped the car Kimber sat up on the backseat. His complexion was pasty, his face was dotted with beads of sweat, and he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

"I'm not doing real well," he announced.

My clinical appraisal was that Kimber's assessment was an understatement. I asked, "How's your pulse?"

"Too fast"

"Chest pains?"

"Not yet." Great.

"Do you take any medication for this?" I'd wanted to ask that question since I'd learned about the panic disorder, but I'd been hesitant to relate to Kimber as a clinician. Many sufferers have their symptoms largely controlled by medication.

"I've tried them all. I either can't tolerate them or they don't help."

Wonderful.

"Don't worry, I'll be okay. Are they here yet?" He didn't bother to look for himself.

Panic disorder is a physical ailment more than a psychological one. In the face of no apparent danger, the body begins to prepare the organism for a potentially cataclysmic confrontation. It prepares for the coming fight by releasing adrenaline, increasing respiration, changing blood-flow patterns, and sharpening the senses. I could talk to Kimber until he and I were both blue in the face-I wasn't going to do anything to readjust his raging hormone secretion. In fact, the stimulation of my efforts might aggravate his condition even further.

I answered, "No, they're not here. We must have made good time. What would be helpful to you right now, Kimber?"

"I think I'll lie back down until they get here. Close my eyes. The dark is good for me usually. And the music helps, if you don't mind."

I didn't mind. I set the ignition so that the accessories had power and stepped out of the car. The sky was cloudless and most of the stars in the universe seemed to have chosen that night for a convention above the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. The air at seven thousand plus feet was cool, and I wished I'd grabbed a sweater from my room before leaving Steamboat.

Van Morrison crooned at me from inside the closed car.

What did I wish right then? I wished I were in a cozy cabin somewhere on the outskirts of Clark reclining in front of a warm fire with an arm around my wife.

What did I have instead? Beneath a canopy of stars I was standing sentry for an agoraphobic forensic genius who was having a panic attack in the backseat of my car while I was waiting for a guided tour to the site of the decomposing body of a woman who I wished had never died.

Either I was fresh out of wishes or my genie was on vacation.

I walked far enough from the car that I couldn't hear the music that was comforting Kimber in the backseat. Three dozen steps away I was blanketed in a quiet that was absolutely surreal. The air was still and it was as though the trees were holding their collective breath, trying not to rustle a single leaf.

I strained to hear the water rushing over stones in the Elk River a quarter mile distant, but couldn't. Even the crickets had paused from their incessant chirping. The loudest sound in the universe was the blood rushing through blood vessels near my ears. That sound seemed to roar.

I spotted headlights weaving up-valley through Clark before I sensed the hum of an approaching engine. The headlights moved toward me patiently, deliberately.

As the car slowed and began to forge a slow turn into the dirt lot in front of the Clark general store, I'd already come to the conclusion that the person driving the car couldn't possibly be Russ Claven.

The vehicle, an early Ford Explorer, approached mine in the lot. I stayed put outside the arc of lights from the store and watched as the car stopped not alongside, but rather directly behind mine. I didn't think

Kimber could hear its approach above the lyrical strains of Tupelo Honey. The door of the Explorer opened. Using both hands on the frame of the door for support, Phil Barrett pulled himself from the driver's seat and stepped out.

My mind generated quick questions. Where are Russ and Flynn? How did Phil know he could find Kimber and me up here? Why did he park his car behind my car?

The crickets resumed their symphony and the wind lifted a thousand million leaves all at once. The blood rushing to my ears quieted. I moved sideways two steps until I was hidden behind a tree.

Phil Barrett banged on the window of the car and seconds later tugged open the driver's door. The interior lights flashed on. I was afraid that the intrusion was a sufficient shock to give Kimber a coronary, but when Kimber popped up in the backseat, it was Phil who hopped back, startled. With the door open Van Morrison was blaring loudly enough to awaken everyone who lived within a hundred yards. I assumed that was no one. Phil reached into the car and killed the ignition power.

"You alone, Mr. Lister? I was told to expect to find both you and Dr. Gregory here." Who told you that, Phil?

I couldn't hear Kimber's reply. He was cupping both hands over his eyes.

Finally his rotund voice crossed the dusty lot. I heard him say, "Would you close that door, please, Mr. Barrett? The lights are so bright." Phil said, "The sheriff asked me to bring the two of you along to join Dr. Claven and Ms. Coe." "The sheriff of… what?" Kimber continued to shade his face with both of his hands.

"Routt County. It's his jurisdiction. The body was found up in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. The whole blow down up there is in his jurisdiction."

Kimber was climbing out of the backseat. He asked, "What is that? What's a blow down

I knew what the blow down was. It had been big news a few years earlier. In October of 1997 freak winds, estimated at over 120 miles per hour, tore across the ridge tops on the western side of northern Colorado's Continental Divide.

In one specific area of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness called the Routt Divide, just a few miles south of Clark, the winds were so fierce that they flattened entire forests that had once extended over twenty thousand acres. Where the winds struck hardest they either felled the trees or uprooted them. Not occasional trees toppled, but every tree fell to the ground. From the air, the massive forests appeared to have been harvested by a giant scythe. Forest Service estimates had over a million trees either uprooted or sheared from the landscape in a matter of minutes. On the ground the once grand forests were reduced to immense mounds of unstable rubble.

Phil Barrett was explaining this otherworldly phenomenon to Kimber along with the news that Dorothy's body had apparently been found somewhere in the blow down I was astonished that her body could ever have been discovered there.

Salvage loggers had cleared what they could from almost two thousand acres of the rugged terrain starting in the fall of 1998, but the majority of the blow down was too dangerous and too remote to permit even salvage logging. I'd seen photographs and videotapes of the un logged areas. If Dorothy's body was hidden up there, finding it would have been like trying to find a grain of rice in a chopstick factory.

"Where are Flynn and R-uss?" Kimber asked.

"They've been kind enough to offer their assistance to Sheriff Pilander. He has his hands full up there." Barrett hooked his thumb across the road, in the direction of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness.

"Flynn is helping to secure the crime scene. Russ is doing an initial examination of the body. Pilander is lucky to have them; there aren't a whole lot of people with their skills on call around Routt County, you know." Kimber said, "There aren't too many people with their skills on call anywhere, Mr. Barrett."

"Of course. Speaking of experts, Mr. Lister, where is Dr. Gregory? I was told he'd be with you."

I used that as my cue to step out from behind the tree and walk toward Phil Barrett's wide back. Kimber said, "There he is." I said, "Hello, Phil. Heard you drive up. I needed to take a leak."

He spun on me as though he were afraid I was going to hit him from behind. I was impressed at how fast he moved. With some inventive costuming, I thought, he could have another career as the mascot at a swine farmers' convention.

"Dr. Gregory, hi. I'm supposed to drive you guys up to where the body was found." I shook my head and said, "No can do, Phil. I agreed to ferry Kimber up here to see Flynn and Russ. Now that I've done that I'm heading back down the hill and I'm going back to bed. I'm sure I'll hear all the details about finding Dorothys body sometime tomorrow. That's plenty soon for me."

Barrett stepped back and leaned against the car.

"Flynn asked for you specifically, Doctor. She even actually predicted that you might be reticent to join us up there. That's her word by the way." He smiled with his mouth closed.

"Reticent."

I thought about Flynn's request for a moment.

"She was right. I am reticent.

When you get back up there, Phil, please tell Flynn she was Prescient." I smiled.

"That's my word. Prescient."

Kimber took a solitary step forward as though he wanted to be recognized. He said, "I won't insist that you accompany us, Alan-actually I can't-but… if Flynn Coe has reason to believe your presence might elucidate something, I would beg that you reconsider your position. We've come quite far, literally.

What're a few more miles?" As he was speaking, I was assessing him clinically.

His symptoms seemed to have totally remitted.

I couldn't imagine what I could offer Flynn Coe at this particular crime scene other than a quick identification of Dorothy's body. Reluctant, I decided I would offer to do that much and then return to the bed-and-breakfast.

"How far is it from here?" I asked Phil Barrett.

"Not far, but dirt roads. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."

"Okay. I'll drive up there in my car. When I've done whatever Flynn hopes I can do, I'm leaving. Fair enough, Kimber?"

"I'm grateful, Alan. Thank you."

Phil spoke.

"Where we're going, it's not an easy drive. The last section is definitely four-wheel country. Why don't you drive up with me, and I promise I'll bring you back down to your car whenever you're done" It didn't feel right. I wasn't sure why.

"No," I said.

"I'll follow you."

The dirt road was a well-maintained public access path that wasn't much of a problem at first. The ruts were manageable and the steep sections were short.

Along the way we passed at least a half dozen ghost cabins of homesteaders whose dreams had died in the heavy drifts of long-ago Colorado winters. Phil stopped briefly at a Forest Service signpost about ten minutes from Clark. I drove alongside his Explorer.

"This is where it gets dicey," he said.

"Why don't you leave your car here? I'll bring you back whenever you're ready." I said, "Lead the way, Phil."

As soon as I raised the window Kimber said, "You don't like him."

We started downhill. I adjusted the transmission, dropping it into second.

"I not only don't like him, Kimber, I don't trust him. If we succeed in finding who killed those two girls, its not going to look very good for ex-sheriff Phil Barrett. You know exactly what I mean. And if it turns out that anyone associated with the Silky Road is implicated, which is looking more and more likely, it's going to look even worse for him."

Kimber stared out the side window at the darkness of the forest. He asked, "I wonder who discovered the reporter's body." I said, "It's a good question. Given the terrain we're about to enter, my best guess is that there's a good likelihood that the person who discovered Dorothy's body is the one who put it there."

We drove the next five minutes in silence. I decided to let someone know where we were and checked my phone. This far into the wilderness it didn't have a signal.

As the vehicles cleared a sharp ridge-top my headlights suddenly illuminated the perimeter of the blow down As far as I could see in the narrow beam of light the once majestic section of backcountry forest was now nothing more than a jumble of tree trunks and branches piled at least as high as my car.

Kimber said, "Wow" I was breathless.

Barrett pulled right off the Forest Service access road. I followed him for another quarter mile or so down a deeply rutted lane that skirted the edge of the natural disaster. The mass of fallen trees on our left was a long unbroken wall that was almost as tall as I was. At no point was the mesh of trunks and limbs less than four feet high. When Phil stopped and got out of his car Kimber and I did the same. Barrett pulled a heavy daypack over one shoulder and said, "It's a short walk from here. Have to climb over a few trees, though." He waved at the skeletal forest.

"This is something, isn't it?"

It was something.

"Where are the other cars?" I asked.

In a voice that sounded almost too natural, he said, "The others came in the hard way, from the north. We didn't discover this access until after the fact.

Once you're in there," he said, pointing at the blow-down, "especially at night, it's like trying to navigate in a box of toothpicks. Everything looks the same.

You'll see" The winding path we followed through the blow down wasn't exactly a trail. It was more like a tunnel, never more than three feet wide, at times no wider than my shoulders. In numerous places fallen logs seemed to almost cover us in a thick canopy. The aspen and fir trees hadn't just fallen where they were knocked over; instead, the ferocious winds had actually blown them like snowflakes into drifts, creating immense impassable mounds of unstable lumber. The fallen timber that carpeted the steepest slopes seemed to be staying in place despite the law of gravity.

I assumed that the salvage loggers had cleared the path we were traversing. I kept thinking of chopsticks and Lincoln Logs. I didn't have another context for what I was seeing. The terrain was as foreign and foreboding as if I had suddenly been transported to the bottom of the sea.

Our cars had disappeared from view behind us after we had hiked no more than thirty seconds. There was no opportunity at all to perceive any clues about where we were going. Phil's flashlight beam illuminated fallen trees.

Thousands.

Millions. Nothing else. There seemed to be as many downed trees around us as there were stars in the sky above us.

Twice we reached forks in the trail. Phil didn't hesitate either time. Kimber walked behind me, and I kept checking on his progress. He wasn't losing any ground, agoraphobia and altitude be damned. Once when I looked back at him he said in wonder, "I wouldn't miss this for the world." He was smiling like a climber approaching the summit of a fourteener.

After no more than ten minutes of hiking Phil Barrett said, "Good. We're almost there. Aren't you glad you came?"

For some reason I was as surprised to see bright light in the midst of the blow down as I would have been to find a Burger King or a Mcdonald's. A pair of battery-powered lanterns illuminated a clearing that was no longer than a single-wide trailer. The light was a sultry yellow. The brilliance was disconcerting. Above us, the blown down trees seemed to have created a precarious Tinkertoy mountain at least fifteen feet high. Rising above the immense wall of timber loomed a steep hillside that appeared as foreboding as a steaming volcano. Whatever work Kimber and I were going to be performing there, we would be performing in a wooden canyon.

Phil Barrett called out, "Hello? It's Phil. I'm back with Mr. Lister and Dr. Gregory."

No one answered his call. Phil shrugged. He turned to me.

"Maybe they found something else to examine. The body's right around that bend." Kimber and I crossed the clearing. I turned and glanced at Phil. He had a bemused expression on his wide face. Kimber went ahead, entering a narrow cul-de-sac of broken trees.

I stepped into the cul-de-sac and looked at Kimber. We peered at the ground, which was littered with forest debris, then into the chaotic lumber walls, looking for a clue. Dorothy Levins body wasn't there to see. Nothing was there to see, nothing except the look of terrified acknowledgment Kimber and I recognized as we looked up into each other's eyes.

Kimber opened his mouth to speak. But before he'd formed a word, the sound of Phil Barrett's gun cocking shattered the silence. It was the single most distinct sound I had ever heard in my life.

The next thought I had was about my unborn baby.

I heard Kimber say, "This isn't good."

He was right, of course.

Phil Barrett's voice was suddenly swollen with vitriol. He barked, "Get down on your knees. Both of you. Then crawl back over here." I looked to Kimber for guidance. He nodded purposefully. We dropped to all fours and crawled the few feet back toward Phil Barrett.

I should have listened to my ambivalence about joining Phil on this errand. If I survive this, I thought, Lauren is going to kill me.

"That's far enough," Barrett said.

We stopped crawling. Kimber asked, "Where are Flynn and russ?"

"Do you mean were they as gullible as the two of you? Yes. Absolutely. As eager to help us out as a Boy Scout and a Girl Scout." If disdain were water, Kimber and I would have been drowning in the flood that spewed from Phil Barrett's mouth.

"Where are they?" Kimber actually sounded demanding in his retort to Phil.

Given the circumstances, I was surprised by the tone.

"I'm not alone in this little scenario. When I left to go get the two of you your friends were right here. Where are they now? Buried by lumber-that'd be my guess. They weren't my responsibility, but you two are."

Kimber continued to press.

"Are they alive?" he asked.

Phil ignored the question. He reached into his daypack and tossed some locking plastic bands my way. Electricians used the bands to bundle wires. Cops used them as disposable wrist restraints.

"You do Mr. Lister, Dr. Gregory. I'll do your wrists after you're done with him."

I moved toward Kimber. He offered me his wrists behind his back. I fastened the band.

"Tighter," Phil demanded.

I acted as though I were complying.

"Is Dorothy's body really here?" I asked, honestly not knowing what to believe.

"Oh yes. Close by, anyway."

"You know where she is because-"

"I'm the one who put it there. That's right."

I couldn't guess why Phil Barrett had killed Dorothy Levin. To protect Raymond Welle? That made no sense. Barrett must have known that someone else at the Post would take up Dorothy Levin's campaign-finance crusade. So why had he killed her? I offered my wrists and backed up toward Barrett. He said, "No.

First do Lister's ankles. I don't want you running off. It'll take you three bands. One around each ankle, then another one to connect those two. You got it?"

"I think so."

"Then do it. Don't try anything." As I moved toward Kimber again his eyes told me something was up. I felt incredibly stupid that I couldn't decipher exactly what. I bowed down to begin to bind his ankles with the plastic bands. The bands weren't long enough to fit around his trousers. I lifted the left leg of his pants and placed the first band near his ankle. After I'd fastened it, I moved to the right. As I lifted the trousers on his right leg, Kimber shifted his weight and kicked me gently with his left heel.

What? I didn't know what he was trying to tell me. I had just begun to pull the plastic band around his leg when I felt a two-inch-wide ballistic nylon strap stretched taut a short ways above his ankle. Heartened, I slid my hand farther up toward his calf and felt the bulge of a gun. Kimber was wearing an ankle holster.

I looked up. Phil Barrett was distracted, dividing his attention between his prisoners and the entrance to the two trails that led through the blow down and intersected in the clearing. He was clearly waiting for someone else to arrive.

Kimber felt my hesitation and started coughing. Phil looked at him and yelled, "Shut up!" Kimber coughed some more and I used the sound to rip the Velcro flap off of the holster. The small gun slid free. I raised it up the back of Kimber's leg and shoved it into his hand. He turned around and glared at me.

His eyes screamed, No/ I said, "You know, Kimber, sometimes I think I've done everything right in my life and it turns out that I still don't seem to know how to avoid danger and find… the safety."

Kimber laughed and tried to cover the sound with another cough. I hoped the outburst meant he had decoded my message-I'd been trying to tell him that I didn't know how to release the safety on his pistol.

Barrett was staring up the hillside. He screamed again.

"Shut the hell up! Both of you." From his agitation I assumed something was going wrong with his plans.

As I returned my attention to the plastic restraint that I needed to fasten to Kimber's right ankle, he tapped me on the side of the head with the gun. He was ready to hand it back to me. I took it, hoping that the safety was now off.

With some trepidation I stuffed the gun behind my back in the waistband of my jeans and got back to work on Kimber's ankles.

Kimber said, "What's the plan, Mr. Barrett? Exactly how are you planning on killing us?"

"I'm going to shoot you and then set off a charge that will bury your bodies under the timber covering that hillside. My main concern is that I don't want your bodies found. Always seems that's when the troubles begin. Without any bodies it's all so much easier. If I had it to do over again…" His voice drifted off.

"The girls?" I asked.

"You're talking about the girls." He was staring at the hillside. Meekly, he said, "It turned out crazy. The first one was an accident. The second one was just a stupid mistake. Me? I was only trying to help."

What?

He looked at me. His next words were clipped.

"I didn't kill them, if that's what you're thinking."

At that moment, that's exactly what I was thinking.

"Then why the hell… are we here?"

He looked away again.

"I… helped. Afterward. I was… involved, afterward.

I jammed up the plumbing in the bunkhouse and got all that cowboy's things moved up to Gloria's. I'm the one who moved the bodies to the lake. Had to use all back roads right up along Mad Creek and then through the wilderness. Took half the night to get there towing that damn snowmobile." Kimber said, "And your subterfuge all worked. Of course I'm sure the fact that you were running the investigation made the task a little simpler."

Phil pointed up the hill beside us. He was presently immune to either praise or irony.

"That hillside is steep. And the timber on the hillside above us is very, very unstable-too unstable even for salvage.

There's a small explosive charge all set up there, ready to start a landslide of tree trunks. When the charge goes off and those trees start to roll, your bodies will be down here, ready to be buried beneath the pile."

"Dorothy's body? You did the same to her?" The question was mine.

He didn't answer.

Kimber said, "We've already collected most of the evidence at the ranch, Mr. Barrett. It's in Percy Smith's custody at the police department. I assume you're planning to kill him, too."

"I was there, remember? I saw what you got today and you haven't collected the evidence that I care about. The box in Percy Smith's evidence locker doesn't contain shit. The girls died in the bunkhouse. That's why-" Kimber said, "You torched it."

"I wasn't in town that day. But that's why it was… torched." He shook his head.

"Stupid idea. As far as I'm concerned it was like putting a

"Search Here' sign on the place. Other than myself this is a cadre of amateurs." "Ray Welle?" I asked.

"Ray's no amateur… but, no, he's not involved in any of this. There're no big fish in this stream at all." He actually smiled before he stole another glance up the hill.

"Got you there, don't I? You thought this was all about Ray, didn't you? You figured that we've all been covering for the great Ray Welle." I said, "Welle's not involved with the girls' deaths?"

"He may suspect something happened on his ranch, but I don't think he actually knows, no."

"Who are you covering up for then, Phil? Who's worth it?"

Barrett suddenly looked mean.

"You think I've been silent this long just to serve you that news on a platter?" "And Dorothy figured all this out?" I asked.

"The dead girls? No, she didn't know any of it. She figured something else out, though. So… she had to go. Want to hear something funny? Dorothy? That reporter? I rescued her before I killed her. Her damn husband had showed up at her hotel to beat the crap out of her. I thought he was trying to kill her.

Turns out he was the one who took the shots during the fund-raiser at the tennis house in Denver-followed her here all the way from the District." He shook his head at the irony.

"What an asshole. When I first walked into her hotel room in Steamboat she thought I was the goddamn angel of mercy and he thought I was there to arrest him." I said, "I know why her husband was furious at her. But what about you? What did she know? Was it about Gloria Welle?"

Phil looked displeased with the question, but he didn't answer.

Kimber said, "Someone will follow us, Mr. Barrett. We're a large organization with some of the most inventive forensic minds in the world. Someone else will show up to collect the evidence, whatever it is. The fire didn't destroy it.

You can't put this off forever."

"I've put it off for over ten years. Your disappearance will give me… us… some time to confuse things a little more. I'll gladly settle for ten more years. Now finish those cuffs there. I'm done talking."

Instead of circling Kimber's ankle with the third band I threaded it through a D-ring on Kimber's ankle holster, slid it through the loop on his left ankle, and snapped it shut. I hoped that from Barrett's vantage it would appear to be a functional restraint. But as soon as Kimber removed the holster from his leg his ankles would be untethered.

I said, "There, it's done. Phil, you know that the girls were at the ranch earlier the day they disappeared. We know that Dr. Welle was there, too.

He met with one of them."

"So?" He didn't seem interested.

"Your turn to get restrained, Dr. Gregory.

Stand up and give me your wrists. Move slowly. I'm feeling a mite jumpy." I stood and reached behind my back with both hands, removing the small pistol. As I turned my left hip toward Barrett, I rested the gun against my right thigh.

Phil thought I was being uncooperative and barked, "Give me your other goddamn hand."

I did.

I swung my right hand across my body and hit him as hard as I could with the butt of Kimber's gun.

He fell to the ground like a bird shot out of the sky.

I froze right where I was standing. I'd hit him so hard I was afraid that I'd broken my hand.

Kimber said, "Good move. Now, get his gun, Alan… Alan!"

I took a step back and stared at Phil's head. Blood was oozing from his ear and dripping down over his nose. A lot of blood.

"Get the gun," Kimber repeated.

I stooped to retrieve Barrett's handgun.

"Yes. Now bind his wrists, then get me free."

I had to flop Phil from his side onto his ample abdomen to restrain his wrists.

That done, I searched his pockets, found a pocketknife on his key ring, and used it to saw through the plastic band I'd placed on Kimber's wrists. As I finished I said, "I can't believe I hit him like that."

Kimber hopped over next to Phil and began palpating the left side of his head, just back of his temple.

"You crushed his skull."

The words made me shiver. I said, "Is he dead? Did I kill him?"

"No. He's not dead."

"I shouldn't have hit him so hard. Kimber, we have to get him some medical help.

A helicopter or something. I think I remember the way back out of here. It's only a couple of turns. I have a phone in my car but I don't know if it can get a signal up here."

Kimber stood back up and wiped Barretts blood from his hands on a handkerchief he'd pulled from his pocket. Kimber Lister was the kind of guy who always had a clean handkerchief in his pocket. He said, "Help for him will have to wait. I'm not leaving without Flynn and Russ."

At some level of awareness, I'd expected Kimber's protest.

"We don't know where they are, Kimber. We only have Barretts word that they're even up here, and he sure made it sound like they're already dead. We need to get help with all this.

I've seen aerial views of this blow down It extends for miles over terrain that's more rugged than you can imagine. There's no way you and I can search it by ourselves, especially at night. The reality is that Flynn and Russ are probably already dead. And Barrett could be dying right now."

Kimber finally finished sawing through the plastic on his ankles.

"You go then.

Get out. Call Percy Smith in town. Take Phil's pistol with you." He pocketed Phil's keys and returned his pistol to his ankle holster. He checked Barrett's semiautomatic before he handed it to me.

"It's ready to go. I'm going to find Flynn and Russ."

Above us, on the hillside, we heard voices. Kimber and I both turned our heads toward the sound at the same time. A man spoke first, followed immediately by a woman. I was able to make out a couple of words, but that was all.

I whispered, "Is that Flynn and Russ?"

Kimber shook his head emphatically. Even his most hushed whisper would be too robust for their circumstances.

I said, "You're sure?" He was.

The woman's voice again, more distinct this time. She said, "I don't want to wait."

"What?" the man replied, loudly. I knew the voice. The man was Dell Franklin.

Tami's father.

The woman said, "Shut up." Was that Dell's wife, Cathy? I wasn't sure.

I took a step in the direction of the voices and Kimber grabbed my left wrist, almost yanking me off my feet. He was pointing in the direction of the trailhead opposite the way we had entered the clearing. He grabbed one of Phil Barrett's ankles and I took the other. We had managed to tug Phil's body halfway to the trailhead when an explosion erupted on the hillside to my left.

I tried to make sense of the sudden noise and the brutal concussion.

Kimber and I paused. The ground below our feet started to shake as though heavy trucks were passing. The vibration soon became a rumble, the lights from the two electric lanterns flickering around the clearing. Kimber yelled, "The trees are coming down! Run! Leave him!"

Kimber was closer to the trailhead than I was and he made it to the entrance to the path in two long strides. I tried to follow him but my left foot caught on Phil Barrett's huge body. I tumbled over him. Above me, the falling trees had started to roar as they spilled down the hillside.

Momentarily, the roar quieted and the air rumbled the way it does as a big thunderclap is starting to build. Beneath my feet the ground shook as though from an earthquake. Desperately I tried to scramble to my feet. Across the clearing Kimber was screaming something at me, but the words didn't register.

The sound was swallowed by the rumble.

Pieces of trees began to cover the ground. A huge piece of an aspen trunk catapulted over me-finally coming to rest near the trail where we had entered the clearing. Others flew above my head like missiles. I was transfixed, staring at the flying trees as though they were a circus act or an athletic performance.

Two feet from me the dry trunk of a long-dead fir impaled itself in Phil Barrett's chest with a thump that sounded like death. The sight sucked the air from my lungs. I looked away. When I looked back the image of the dead tree growing out of Phil Barrett's body cavity was right where it had been. I tried to scream, but I don't think I was able to force any sound from my body. If I did, it was swallowed by the tumbling trees.

When I looked up I could barely see the trailhead where Kimber had sought safety. All around me the clearing was filling with the skeletal remains of the forest. I crawled to my left, hoping for some shelter along the wall of the clearing that was closest to the hillside. Above me, the stars had been extinguished by the tumbling trees and by thick clouds of dust.

I stepped past Phil Barrett and felt along the wall of trees, edging closer to Kimber and, I hoped, safety. Each tree I touched vibrated in my hands. My eyes were filled with dirt and the air was thick with debris. I couldn't see more than a foot or two and I could barely breathe. I thought of Lauren and the baby as I groped along the wall. Inanely, I tried to conjure baby names. I wanted to know his or her name when I died.

My hand touched human flesh.

Kimbers hand clasped around my wrist and pulled. I tried to stay with him, but between us were obstacles I couldn't even see. I tried to climb and lost his grip. I poked all along the wall trying to find his hand again. I yelled his name at the top of my lungs and couldn't even hear my own voice.

A tree blocked my way at waist level. I climbed over it and frantically prodded the air to my left. No wall of trees! I moved another step in that direction.

There were still no trees.

Was this the (railhead?

I forced another step and ran headfirst into the trunk of a tree. The bark was hard and brittle and a piece broke off in my mouth and mixed with my blood. I spat and poked my hand into the air to my right. Nothing. I stepped around the tree trunk I'd banged into and walked right into Kimber. He captured me in a bear hug and without hesitation carried me at least twenty feet down the trail.

When he released me we started dodging and skipping as fast as we could away from the tree slide.

Behind us the cacophony continued for another twenty seconds or so. When the noise had quieted enough that I felt I could be heard above it, I said, "Kimber, stop." He did. I pointed behind me.

"Phil Barrett's dead. A tree pierced his chest. Right next to me. I saw it."

Kimber nodded, touched his finger to his lips, and raised his eyes toward the hillside. Whoever had just tried to kill us was still close by. Kimber leaned down and touched his ankle holster, then raised his palms to the sky. He wanted to know if I still had Phil's gun with me. I felt in my waistband, back and front. I didn't have the gun. I'd apparently lost it during my frantic escape from the clearing. Kimber looked disappointed.

He proceeded down the trail. I followed him until we reached a fork. One leg of the trail went uphill, the other down. I pointed toward the uphill trail.

That's where we went.

We climbed. After five minutes the tunnel of fallen trees on each side of us was only a pile thigh high, then shortly after that, knee high. Another hundred yards and we were standing in a lush, living forest of healthy green aspen trees. The air was cool and the sky above the treetops was brilliant with stars. I felt as though we'd been adrift at sea and had finally floated ashore.

We'd escaped the blow down

We both sank to the ground. I was slightly downhill from Kimber. I tried to say something to him, something to express my gratitude to him for staying close enough to help me out of the clearing. But my throat was so parched that I wasn't able to free my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

I was surprised when Kimber said, "Stay right where you are." "What?" I said, coughing the word as much as speaking it, and turned to look at him in order to puzzle out the meaning of his words. Behind him stood Dell Franklin holding a big old shotgun that he was pointing right at us.

I felt like kicking someone.

It just didn't seem fair.

Dell killed Tami?

From the moment I'd heard his voice on the hillside before the explosion that set the trees moving it just hadn't made any sense to me. Seeing the sadness in his eyes as he took Kimber and me hostage didn't make it any easier to understand.

Dell had us sit back to back. He stayed uphill from us, leaning against a pair of aspen trees that were growing from the same root ball. His finger rested close to the trigger guard of the gun. From where I sat the big gun looked like a howitzer. Dell couldn't look us in the eyes as he mumbled, "You two should be buried down there. Where's the sheriff? Is he dead?" I said, "You mean Phil?"

"Yes sir."

"I think so. I saw a tree hit him." I spread my hand across my chest.

"I think that it crushed him." Kimber asked, "Where are my friends?"

Dell shook his head. Was he telling us that he didn't know or was he refusing to answer the question? I couldn't tell.

Dell was staring at the sky. I couldn't see Kimber's face, didn't know how he was reacting to the awareness that his good friends were probably already dead.

I thought about the little gun that was strapped to his ankle.

In my only previous opportunity to be with Dell, he and I had managed some connection that had allowed him to talk with me openly. I decided to try to reestablish that connection.

"Dell?" I said. I had to repeat his name before he'd look at me.

"You didn't kill Tami, did you?"

He looked hurt.

"Oh no. Dear Lord, no," he said.

"Be like killing one of God's own angels."

"Then what are we doing here?"

"What I should have been doing back then, maybe. Protecting my family. It's all I have left that's worth protecting."

"Joey?"

Dell knew what I was asking.

"Joey did a lot of stupid things when he was young.

But, no, he didn't kill his sister."

By my count we were running out of Franklin family members.

"Cathy killed Tami?"

"By accident." The word came out "ax-ee-dent."

"Want to tell me what happened?" "No. He doesn't," Cathy Franklin said from farther up the hill.

"He wasn't there that day. He didn't know about any of this until recently. But I was there when those girls died. I can tell you what happened if you want.

Because this night's going to end the same way that one did-with bodies in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. See, it doesn't make any difference. You're both going to die tonight, too."

Kathy voice started off shaky and high-pitched. It reminded me of water flowing rapidly over stones in a shallow stream. "You've probably met everybody by now, haven't you?" She was directing her words to me.

"You've been busy. I know you talked to Joey, figured you talked to Dr. Welle.

I bet you probably talked to Mariko's parents, too, didn't you?"

"Yes. I spoke to her father, Taro. Her mother is in Japan."

"So you probably know about the girls being picked up for smoking marijuana?"

"At the hot springs at Strawberry Park."

"Right. Well, that's when it all started." She shook her head, disbelieving.

"With a couple of damn college boys on spring break giving a couple of country girls some free marijuana. And now look at us." She waved her hands out toward the blow down

"Over ten years have passed, and there's still dead bodies as far as you can see. Who would have predicted this?" "No one," I said. I was guessing at my lines, reading the cues from her eyes.

"No one," she agreed.

"No one would have predicted it."

Dell nodded in agreement. Kimber barely moved.

Cathy asked, "Did Phil Barrett ever tell you why the girls weren't arrested that night after he picked them up at the hot springs? Did he tell you that?"

She sounded almost defiant.

"Yes," I said.

"He did. He suggested he was being magnanimous. Didn't want them to suffer their whole lives for one small mistake."

She snickered as she walked from the heart of the woods to stand beside her husband.

"Magnanimous? Phil? Let me tell you something. Phil Barrett was being a prick.

There's only one reason that those girls weren't arrested. Want to know what that is? It's because I agreed to have an affair with him. That's why the girls got off that night." Dell took one hand off the shotgun and slid it to the small of his wife's back. She looked up at him with an expression that I could easily mistake for love.

"Dell didn't know. He didn't know any of this until recently. I did everything else on my own. I did it to protect Tami."

I had an image of an old model train I'd had as a child. Of placing the individual cars on the track. Of aligning the wheels. That's where we were in the story. The cars were on the track. Some of the wheels were aligned, some weren't. I couldn't guess where the train was going to go.

"Phil Barrett was blackmailing you?"

She seemed to like the sound of that. She said, "I guess."

"It sounds that way to me."

She glanced up at Dell again, this time plaintively. His eyes stayed fixed on Kimber and me. We remained still at the end of his shotgun. Cathy said, "Then. you know what Joey did to that girl? The Japanese one. Mariko's little sister?"

Now, Cathy was looking right at me. I nodded in response to her question. She continued staring, hard. I said, "Satoshi. Her name is Satoshi. Yes, I know what Joey did to her."

"After I found out about the… thing with Joey and that girl, I knew that I suddenly had another child to protect." I asked, "How did you know what Joey had done to Satoshi? Did he admit it to you?"

She appeared surprised at my question.

"Joey? Joey wouldn't admit to me that he'd passed gas in a lift line. No, Ray Welle called and told me. You know he'd been Joeys therapist?"

I nodded.

"Thought you knew. That whole thing with Joey having to go see Ray for therapy had started right after the last time Joey had gotten in trouble. Anyway, Ray phoned me that afternoon-the one, well, you know-and he said he'd gotten a call from Mariko asking for his help for her little sister. She'd told him what Joey had done to her, why her sister needed his help."

"The earlier incident with Joey was the one in the girls' bathroom at school?" I asked.

Cathy snorted.

"My. You do know everything." "No," I said.

"I don't." I still don't know where this train was heading once it made it around the bend.

Ray Welle had danced lithely through a slender crack in the rules that govern confidentiality. When Mariko had informed him that her sister had been raped by Joey Franklin, Mariko was no longer his patient. Her psychotherapy had terminated. Therefore, the information she shared on the phone about Satoshi being raped wasn't technically confidential. By any ethical standard, Ray Welle should have kept the news private, but legally he wasn't required to. And he didn't.

"After I heard what Joey had done, I immediately called Phil. I assumed that he and me were going to have another problem-like the one we'd had with Tami and the marijuana. I assumed I was going to need Phil's help again to keep one of my kids out of trouble." Her tone conveyed a combination of defeat and disgust.

"Phil agreed to meet me at the Silky Road. To talk about it."

"That's where you-"

"That's where we usually met."

I tried not to look at Dell, could only imagine his outrage at this story. I asked, "Did Ray know about the meetings on his ranch?"

"I doubt it. Gloria and I were friends… She was helpful to me. She and I worked out the details, and Phil and I met during the day times when Ray was in town. Gloria would always let me know when those two gay cowboys of hers were going on the road."

"But there was a problem that day. You and Phil arrived at the ranch before Mariko and Satoshi had left. They were still up at the house meeting with Dr. Welle."

"Yeah, that was a problem. I expected they'd be gone already. Didn't see how it would make much difference, though. Boy, was I wrong." She turned away from us, moving close to her husband. Almost inaudiblly, she said, "I don't want to talk about this anymore, Dell."

He shook his head, touched her hair.

"They should know, hon. They've come a long way for the truth."

"But I don't want you to have to hear it again."

He shook his head once more.

"That's not what's important right now."

I waited for Cathy. When she didn't continue on her own, I tried to prompt her.

"But Mariko saw you arrive at the ranch or she saw your car, or something.

Later she told Tami what Joey had done to Satoshi and told her that your car was over at the Silky Road. Tami probably wanted to confront you about Joey. Is that what happened?"

Cathy looked at Dell. He nodded to her to continue. Her voice was much flatter when she resumed her story.

"Yes, basically. The two girls came back to the ranch a while later. I'm sure Tami wanted to yell at me about her brother.

Knowing Tami, she would have wanted me to string him up by his toes right then and there. When she and Mariko got to the bunkhouse, I guess they saw my car. I was still… visiting… with Phil."

I watched Dell's eyes narrow. He swallowed twice. His finger caressed the trigger guard on the shotgun. I wondered exactly where and when he was planning to kill us.

I also wondered exactly what Kimber was planning to do with his little handgun.

Cathy stretched her neck, her chin as high as she could force it.

"Tami walked right in on us. Me and Phil. She didn't even knock, just walked right on in to the room." She said it as though the big sin of that day was Tami's failure to knock before she entered.

"Me and Phil were… whatever. We were… in the middle of things. I jumped right up from the sofa to try to calm Tami down. She was… upset, real upset. But she stepped back from me too fast and she tripped right over Phils boots. She stumbled and she fell over backward. That's when she cracked her head against the stone wall that runs around the base of the room. I still hear that sound. That thud. It was a wet sound and it was hard and oh, my, it was loud. I hear it in my dreams still. I hear it on the ranch. I hear it mostly when it rains. Don't know why that is, exactly."

I sensed self-pity creeping into Cathy's story. I wanted to snuff it out before it established a firm footing. I said, "But Tami wasn't dead, Cathy. The autopsy showed she didn't die from the blow to her head."

She changed her posture so that she was looking up at her husband.

"None of this was supposed to happen, Dell. You know that, don't you? It was all just a stupid tragedy. Just a tragedy" She waved her hand toward Kimber and me.

"I really don't want any more of this, Dell. What happened, happened. It's time to be done. Let's get it over with."

"All in good time, hon. Finish. Do it for me."

Cathy sighed and looked at her feet.

"Anyway, we thought she was dead. Tami. I felt her, her, um, arm. I couldn't find a pulse. Phil checked her, too. He said she was dead." Kimber asked, "Then why "

"Mariko." Cathy hissed the name.

"Mariko came rushing into the room looking for Tami. Saw her on the floor. Saw all the blood. And, dearest Lord, there was a lot of blood. Some of the stone wall where she'd hit her head. Most of it on the floor. Mariko saw it all, saw Tami, and she started screaming. Phil grabbed her.

She tried to run away, break away from him. But he caught her. He was holding her from behind, his arm around her neck. I could tell that he was squeezing her too hard. I told him he was choking her. She kept fighting him though. I guess he thought she was going to run but I could see she wasn't getting any air. I told him to let her go. When he finally did let her go, she just fell to the ground like a rag doll."

I said, "Phil told us he didn't kill anybody."

"Phil Barrett's a damn liar. He killed both of them." I noted that she looked sideways at her husband when she accused Barrett.

"What do you mean 'both of them'? You just told me that Phil said Tami was already dead."

"Right after… Mariko… fell, Tami moaned. It was just a weak little cry, but it was enough to tell me that my baby wasn't really dead. Phil said it couldn't be, told me I was hearing things. But I knew what I heard and I, I wanted to call an ambulance. But Phil, he pushed me out of the way, wouldn't let me go help my daughter. I fought him to get to her or to get to the phone but he held me back and made me look at Mariko's… body. He unplugged the phone cord from the wall. He kept saying, "Look at her. She's dead. What are we going to do about that? I can fix a lot of things. I can't fix dead, Cathy." He made me think through what we'd done. He wanted me to put a pillow over my baby's face until she stopped breathing. I fought him I did but finally he told me he'd kill me, too, if I didn't shut up and cooperate. When I wouldn't do it myself, he threw me down on the other side of the room. That's when he smothered her with a pillow from the sofa."

"You saw him do that?" I asked.

She looked away and tightened her hands into fists. Her lips moved twice before the next words came from her mouth.

"No. I couldn't see from where I was on the floor. But when he stood back up he was still holding the pillow. Phil was. And he was breathing real heavy."

I didn't believe her. I suspected that she had indeed smothered her own daughter. The horror I was feeling was mirrored in Dell's eyes. In that instant I was certain he hadn't yet crossed whatever bridge he needed to cross in order to accept his wife's rationalization.

Cathy's story wasn't complete, though. I asked, "And the mutilation, Cathy? How did that happen?"

She slid her hand up Dell's arm until it came to a stop above his elbow.

"All the rest was Phils idea. He planned it all in his head for half an hour or so.

He just sat there and planned it all out. When he said he was going to cut off. my Tami's hand, I said I couldn't be a part of it anymore. That I wanted to turn myself in. He said if I said a word to anybody about what had happened that he'd make sure Joey was arrested for the rape and he'd make sure Dell knew about the affair."

"What did you do?"

"What was I supposed to do? What would be left for me if I didn't go along? I mean everything that had happened was just a terrible, terrible accident. If I didn't go along with Phil I'd have nothing-and I'd have nobody. I didn't really have a choice, did I? My Tami was already dead. If I told anybody what I knew, I'd lose my son, my husband, my whole family."

Kimber voiced what I was thinking, what I was certain Dell must be thinking.

Kimber said, "She was your daughter. How could you?"

Cathy exhaled deeply and coughed as she tried to refill her lungs. I expected to hear another verse of the "terrible-terrible-accident, what-was-I-supposed-to-do" song, but she couldn't get any words out. Dell finally spoke.

"Why did I want you to hear all this? So you would understand what Cathy did back then. In her mind what she did, she did to protect the kids.

First she was helping Tami. Then, later on, Joey. With what he's done with his life since then, I think Joey has made all her sacrifice worthwhile." I was stunned by the words. For such a self-aware man, Dell Franklin had just engaged in a world-class rationalization of horror.

"Dell," I said, "you… agree… with what she did?"

"No," he said firmly.

"I do not. I don't condone what Cathy did. But she did what she did to protect the family. I can live with that knowledge. I can." He looked down at her and handed her the shot gun.

"Now, honey need to tie these boys up so we can take them down to join the others in the blow down he said.

"You hold 'em here while I get some line to tie 'em. I'll only be a couple of minutes. We can't afford to mess up anymore; we're almost out of dynamite."

"Dell, I'm tired. Let's just shoot them here."

Cathy looked tired to me.

Dell wanted none of it.

"And then have to drag their bodies all the way back down that hill into the blow down No way. I won't be gone but five minutes."

The second Dell turned his back I felt movement in Kimber's shoulder. He was going for the handgun.

Dell walked away from us slowly. His shoulders were hunched forward and the incline of the slope made every step he took seem a monumental effort. Not once did he look back our way.

Cathy didn't have the arm strength to keep the barrel of the shotgun pointed right at us. It kept drifting down and she kept lifting it higher. Each fresh cycle of effort lasted a shorter time than the previous one. Her muscles were fatiguing.

Kimber turned his head away from her and whispered, "On three, roll away from me."

Cathy heard him speak but probably couldn't understand the words. She raised the gun once more and said, "Don't you try anything. Killing doesn't bother me too much anymore. Killing you now rather than later is nothing more than an inconvenience. This is loaded with birdshot. I don't even have to aim."

Cathy couldn't maintain the angle of the gun barrel. Kimber tapped me with his elbow once, paused, tapped me again, paused, and finally tapped me a third time.

On the last tap I somersaulted forward and started rolling down the hillside. I kept rolling while I waited for a blast from the shotgun, but all I heard was a hollow click. I hoped Kimber was getting away but couldn't risk the time it would take to look back toward him.

I heard him say, "Drop it, Cathy!"

I rolled once more before I crouched behind a boulder. Kimber was kneeling behind an aspen tree that wasn't mature enough to protect him from a blast from the shotgun. He held the pistol in both hands, pointing it right at Cathy Franklin. Her shotgun was leveled at Kimber.

I wondered whether it was actually loaded. It was a twin-barrel over-and-under model. At most, Cathy had only one shot remaining.

I picked up a rock the size of a lemon. Found a second. Cathy yelled, "Dell, I need some help here!"

My cover behind the boulder was better than Kimber's was behind the spindly aspen tree. I threw the first rock at Cathy. It landed near her feet.

She kept her focus on Kimber.

"Dell Franklin, you get over here, now!" she screamed.

I threw the second rock. It thudded hard against her upper arm. She yelped and swung the barrel of the shotgun toward me. I tried to disappear behind the rock as I waited for the roar of the second barrel. Instead I heard three quick claps from Kimber's pistol bounce off the hillsides. The blasts were so close together that the echoes made them sound like a single shot.

I looked up in time to see Cathy fall. She didn't fall backward. She didn't pitch forward. Her knees softened, and a second or two later she crumpled right where she had stood. Her lips were moving as though she was in silent prayer.

The shotgun reached the ground before she did.

I said, "Kimber, are you all right?"

"Fine. You?"

"Good, I think. What do we do now? Dell's probably on his way back."

Before I had a chance to reply, I heard, "How about we do this now? Why don't I take you two to see your friends? I think they'll be more than happy to see you." Dell Franklin was walking back down the hillside toward us. One of his hands was raised above his head like a prisoners. The other one gripped a big chain saw. He took a path down the hill that let him pass at least ten feet from Cathy's body. Not once did he glance over at her. Kimber kept his gun leveled at Dell's chest but Dell didn't seem to notice it.

He looked first at me and smiled ruefully. Turning to Kimber, he said, "Thank you. Thank you both. I didn't have the heart to do that to her. But… I'm afraid that it needed to be done."

Kimber moved over to Cathy's body and rested his fingers against her neck. He craned his neck to look up at Dell.

"Cathy thought the gun was loaded?"

Dell shrugged.

"Not sure what she thought." He didn't expect us to believe him.

We didn't.

"How did you know I had a gun?" Kimber asked.

"Didn't know for sure. I was afraid Cathy had managed to kill the two of you when she toppled those trees down the hill on top of Phil. Since you escaped I kind of hoped you had Phil's gun with you, but if you didn't, I figured I didn't have much more to lose, no matter what. I'd go get some line and tie you up.

Work on plan B." I said, "Flynn and russ? They're okay?"

"I can't be sure, but they were when I left them. Lets go check. We might need this." He hoisted the big saw.

Kimber was still kneeling next to Cathy. He said, "Your wife, Dell? She's still alive."

Dell looked over, down at the mother of his two children, the blood pouring from below her sternum. His eyes were dispassionate as he said, "That's a bad wound she has. She won't be alive for too long." Kimber said, "He's right."

I was the only one who kept looking back at Cathy. The callousness of the decision to leave her there to die made me feel hollow and cruel. Finally, near the boundary of the blow down I yelled to Kimber and Dell that I'd wait with Cathy until help arrived, and I jogged back up the hill. When I got next to her, though, I saw a pool of her own blood that was floating dust and forest debris.

The quantity of blood she'd lost was immense. I lifted her wrist but couldn't locate a pulse. I lowered my ear to her face but couldn't hear any breath sounds.

I trudged back down the hill and rejoined Kimber and Dell, who had waited for me. Neither of them met my eyes. We reentered the dead forest. I never thought I would voluntarily enter the perimeter of the blow down again. The web of dead trees terrified me as we descended into the deepest drifts of lumber. Dell led us. I followed Kimber. After walking for ten minutes, Dell stopped and looked us in the eye one at a time and said, "It was important to me that you hear the story from Cathy's own lips, just the way I did a few days back. If I had to tell it on my own, I don't think I could do it justice." He shook his head.

"Right about here is where Phil said the reporter and her husband are buried.

Somebody should know that, look for them. Bury them properly."

He pointed up the hill.

"It's too dark to see, but Phil brought an entire hillside of trees down into this ravine on top of their bodies."

So Phil Barrett had killed Dorothy's husband, too. What was his name? Oh yeah, Doug.

We walked on. I felt numb. What had Dorothy learned that warranted her murder?

Another ten minutes passed. We weren't covering much ground. The path wasn't clear; broken trees and stumps littered the way. Kimber said, "Dell? Earlier?

You were supposed to kill Flynn and Russ?"

"Yes. That's the way Phil had it planned. I was supposed to take care of the two of them and he'd take care of the two of you. We'd let the forest bury the bodies. While he was down in Clark picking you up though, and while Cathy was busy setting the charges on the hillside, I tied your friends up, moved them someplace I thought would be safe, and fired a few shots into the air. Even though Cathy set off the charge, they should be okay where I put them. We'll see real soon. We're almost there."

It took thirty minutes of the deafening roar of the chain saw to free Flynn and Russ from the spot where Dell had sheltered them from the cascade of broken trunks and limbs that the explosives had sent down the mountainside. The lacy web of timber that had imprisoned them in a crevasse at the base of a high rock face was almost eight feet deep. Each time the saw quieted I told Flynn and Russ another part of the story we'd just learned from Cathy and Dell.

Flynn and Russ finally crawled up through the narrow opening that Dell created with his saw. They were both filthy but neither of them appeared to be injured.

Flynn climbed out of the cavern first, then Russ.

Flynn went to embrace Kimber. During the frantic effort to free Flynn and Russ I hadn't noticed his withdrawal from our activity.

"Alan," she said.

"Look at Kimber."

I turned toward him. His arms were crossed over his chest. His eyes were orbs of pure fear.

"I can't breathe," he said.

"I think I'm having a heart attack." His hands were shaking. Despite the chill of the night, beads of sweat dotted his upper lip and brow. He was gasping for breath.

"I can't stay here. I've got to get out of here."

I climbed closer to him.

"It's a panic attack, Kimber. This will pass. You're going to be okay. They always pass, right?"

"No, no. I'm not going to be okay this time! This is worse. I feel like I'm going to die up here. I have to get away from this place. Right now, please. I have to go." His eyes scanned the hillside, searching for imaginary dangers.

I knew I had to grant him whatever control I could.

"That's fine, Kimber. Where would you like to go?"

He didn't hesitate.

"Back to your car. I like it in your car. Right now I want to go to your car."

I needed a helicopter to locate my car. I didn't even know which way to look for it.

Dell Franklins mouth was open as he stared at Kimber. Finally, he said, "We're not too far from it, actually. Your car."

"Can you show us?"

"Sure." Kimber said, "I'm dizzy. I can't feel my hands."

"You'll be okay, Kimber."

"No, no. I won't. I'm afraid I won't."

Dell led us to my car. At times Kimber jogged through the narrow paths between the fallen trees. At times he cowered and waited for Flynn or me to steady him.

The relief I felt at finally clearing the perimeter of the blow down was enormous.

I kept waiting for Kimber's panic attack to abate. But it showed no signs of lessening.

I fumbled for my keys. Kimber climbed into the backseat, begging, "Music! I want music. More Beethoven. Boz Scaggs. Somebody. I don't want to die back here."

I turned to Flynn and Russ.

"We shouldn't all pile in there with him. He needs space. I'll drive him down to town and try to get him stabilized. Dell, where are the other cars?"

"A quarter mile from here, around the edge of the blow down That's all. You go ahead. The three of us will follow you in my truck."

I turned to Russ and Flynn.

"You're sure?"

Russ said, "Go. You're the best one to be with him right now."

I, Dell said, "The closest place you could take him would be my ranch. It's the first ranch past Clark. You're welcome to take him there."; Kimber yelled, "No! No place new. It will make it worse. Turn the:: music up. Drive, please, drive" I offered a sad smile to Dell before I climbed behind the wheel. I said, "Thanks for the offer. You need to finish telling Russ and Flynn the story and get the local sheriff involved. I'll get Kimber to town and try to calm him down."

PART Six

Welle Done

By the time Kimber and I descended from the edge of the blow-down and reached the town of Clark I figured that his panic attack had exceeded an hour in duration. As far as panic attacks go, sixty minutes is a long time. I asked Kimber if that was typical for him. In a voice as cold and sharp as an icicle he told me that it didn't matter, this time was different, he was sure he was dying.

I was starting to worry. Although panic attacks are terrifying for the victim and scary enough for anybody in the vicinity, they are usually, ultimately, harmless physically. But that isn't always the case. Occasionally the physiological stress that an attack places on the body can cause severe consequences-heart attack, stroke, even in rare instances, death.

Ten minutes farther down the hill toward Steamboat, Kimber sat up suddenly in the backseat and said, "Alan, I don't think I'm going to make it to town." I had to admit that he appeared ready for death. He was ghostly white and his respirations were rat-a-tatting like a machine gun. He looked out the window and asked, "Are we close to Welle's ranch?"

I was perplexed by the question. I replied, "Reasonably. A couple of more minutes."

"Go to the ranch, then. Please. The Silky Road. I liked it there today. I think maybe I'll feel safer there. Maybe I'll get better there. Please."

Although familiarity sometimes has an ameliorating effect on panic episodes, I wasn't convinced returning to the ranch was the wisest course of action.

"We're only fifteen or twenty minutes from town, Kimber."

"I don't think I can make it twenty minutes. My chest."

I started to argue that there was no one at the ranch who could let us through the gate. He told me he didn't care. We could break in. He'd explain it all later.

"I've lost feeling in my toes and fingers. Just try it." He was begging.

Remembering that this man had helped save my life only a couple of hours earlier, I drove to the gate of the Silky Road and hit the buzzer. While I was waiting for a response I checked my watch. It was almost dawn. The only thing that was keeping me awake was the adrenaline rush I was having in reaction to Kimber's panic attack. Sylvie finally answered my beckon after a minute or two.

She had obviously been awakened from a sound sleep. I couldn't imagine that she would grant us entry if I told her the truth, so I identified myself and said that Phil Barrett had asked me for a ride home from town and explained that he'd lost his keys and couldn't recall the security code for the gate.

She asked if Phil was drunk again.

I said he was.

She mumbled something profane and told me she'd go over and unlock the house for him. Give her five minutes to get dressed.

The gate eased open and I pulled inside and drove up the lane. I told Kimber to stay down in the backseat until I knew Sylvie was gone. I didn't want her to get a glance at Kimber. She wouldn't be fooled; Kimber looked nothing like Phil Barrett. Sylvie arrived at the front door a minute after I did and as she unlocked the door asked if I needed help getting Phil inside.

I said, "This isn't the first time, I take it."

"Hardly," she replied.

"Go back to bed. I'll get him in even if I have to use a wheelbarrow."

She laughed good-naturedly and climbed back into her car to return to her house.

"Kimber," I said as I leaned into the car, "we're here. Where exactly do you want to go?"

"The study. Same place I was today."

I supported him from the car and guided him to Raymond Welles study. I didn't know how I was going to explain this incursion to anybody. I'd already decided that the moment the panic attack abated I was going to pack Kimber back in the car and drive him down the hill to the bed-and-breakfast so I didn't have to explain the lie to anyone but Sylvie.

Once inside Welle's study Kimber knew exactly what he wanted to do. He plopped down on Ray Welle's big leather sofa, curled up in a ball, and pulled a blanket over his head. I asked him about chest pain. He waved at me from under the blanket. I asked him if he needed an ambulance. He said, "No." I flicked off the room lights and left him.

I succumbed to my fatigue the moment I was alone. I moved to the living room, kicked off my shoes, and sacked out on a couch. Within minutes I was almost asleep; in fact I was so close to sleep that I was certain the sounds I started hearing were a prelude to a dream.

A door closing gently. Water running. Someone shuffling feet on a hardwood floor. I opened my eyes. Damn. Kimber must have gotten up to use the bathroom.

Maybe, I hoped, he's feeling better already and we can go back to town. But I thought that the sounds that I'd heard had come from the other end of the house.

My heart started racing. I listened intently.

Who could be here? Sylvie was down the lane at her house. Phil Barrett was in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness with the trunk of a fir tree planted where his heart and lungs should be.

I tried to swallow but my throat was so dry that I coughed. I constricted my throat as tight as I could but I coughed again, not only failing to muffle the sound but also announcing my presence to whomever it was that I'd heard moving around the house. I stood up and moved closer to the central hallway. The clerestory skylights above my head were blue-black and the first soft gray light of dawn was filtering into the corridor. I saw no one lurking down the hall. I listened some more and heard no sounds coming from anywhere in the house. My heart began to slow.

It must have been Kimber that I'd heard. I stayed planted where I was for another long minute, heard nothing new, exhaled in a long sigh, and decided that I needed a bathroom before I fell asleep. From the forensic search the afternoon before I remembered that there was a powder room just a few steps farther down the main hallway toward the master bedroom. I went there and unzipped.

Midstream, seconds after I started to pee, I heard, "My, but this is convenient. God does answer prayers."

I tried to stop peeing but I couldn't. I was that frightened by the gun that was pointing at my head.

"After you've finished up there and tucked everything back in place, why don't you just put your hands behind your head?"

I zipped, and laced my fingers behind my neck.

Raymond Welle said, "That's right. Now come on out of there."

He marched me to the living room and sat me on a sofa directly across from him.

He was wearing a soft woolen robe over a pair of pajamas and the kind off step-in slippers that my father used to wear. He said, "So, who are you tonight?

Goldilocks? What? Were you planning on going from room to room trying to find which bed was juu-just right?" I didn't know how to respond. I said, "I can explain all this, Representative Welle."

"Save it. I don't care for your rationalization, Dr. Gregory. All I care about right at the moment is that I seem to have an intruder in my house in the middle of the night. I have a weapon in my hand. And I have the right under Colorado law to use that weapon to protect my property. That this particular intruder has proven to be one major pain in the ass for the past few weeks is just frosting on the cake."

Welle was sitting with his back to the front door and to his study. It was clear that he didn't realize I wasn't alone.

"Sylvie let me in."

"Did she? Under what pretense? I doubt this visit is covered by the search agreement I signed with Locard." He laughed.

"Makes no real difference. Sylvie didn't know I was coming in to the ranch. I didn't arrive from Washington until almost two. From my point of view, the situation is quite simple-you are a burglar. Or maybe even an assassin. You do know there have been recent attempts on my life, don't you?" He smiled at the irony.

I didn't like the direction of the conversation. I said, "Phil Barretts dead.

Ray. That's why I'm here."

"What? What do you mean Phil's dead?" He squirmed on his chair, squared the gun at my chest.

"You know the blow down on the Routt Divide?"

"Yeah. What about it? I had to pressure the Forest Service to allow salvage crews up there to clear some of those trees. Reduce the spruce beetle problems and the fire hazard. Why?"

"Phil died up there earlier tonight. Somewhere in the middle of the blow down A bunch of trees slid, one of them fell on him and crushed him."

"Fell on him? What was he doing up there at night in the first place?"

"Trying to cover his tracks. He killed those two girls, Ray. Mariko and Tami?

Phil killed them." I stared at him, trying to gauge from his reaction whether or not the words I had just spoken constituted news to him. I couldn't tell. I continued, "The girls died in your bunkhouse. Phil was having an affair with Cathy Franklin. Her daughter walked in on them. Things got out of hand."

He didn't react right away. When he finally spoke, he asked, "This happened right here on the ranch? No, I don't believe it." I thought his protest was a few degrees shy of convincing. He paused, thinking about something.

"So was it Phil who torched the bunkhouse? That was his doing?"

"I'm not totally sure. Phil denied it. If I had to guess I'd say it was Cathy who set the fire. She actually admitted to the killings, though. And she's the one who implicated Phil."

"Cathy did that?" He shook his head.

"Helped kill her own daughter? I thought she loved that girl. How does a mother do that?" He appeared to get lost in contemplation and I wondered if he was looking for a new theme to use on the campaign trail. The gun barrel wavered a few degrees. If he'd fired it right then it would have missed me.

"You know that Phil was pretty desperate for me to rescind the agreement I signed allowing the Locard people to search the ranch.

That's why I flew back here tonight, to work all that out with him. Congress is still in session. I really should be in Washington right now. But… I guess he figured you boys were about to find something that would point a finger at him about those killings." Ray continued to seem pensive. I guessed that he was trying to figure out exactly how much I knew about what. My best strategy for staying alive involved not helping him with his quest.

He asked, "So is Cathy dead, too? Another tree fall on her?" He wasn't trying to disguise his suspicion about my story.

"No trees fell on Cathy, Ray. But yes, she's dead, too."

"You kill her?"

I shook my head.

He nodded as though he understood something. I couldn't guess what.

"But the killings. It was just her and Phil? Doesn't go any farther. Dell?"

"Dell didn't know."

The politician in him had started calculating the impact of these developments on his self-interest.

"With these confessions in place-Phil's and Cathy's-I imagine Locard's work on this case is done, finished. The rest of the search of the ranch won't have to take place tomorrow, will it?"

"I imagine not, but it's not my decision."

His shoulders sagged. He rested the handgun on his knee.

"Well, it is up to me.

I'll just put an end to it myself. Nonetheless, this will be a circus for the press. Phil dead. Ancient murders on my ranch. A member of my staff involved. I think I'd better get on back to Washington. I don't want to be held captive here at the Silky Road when the media craziness starts percolating over what Phil once did. I'm going to need some professional help with this from my press people."

"If you shoot me you won't be going to Washington for a while, Ray. There'll be a few questions." He yawned. I fought not to mimic him. The room had brightened further with the advancing dawn. The brightness was disconcerting; I still wanted to sleep.

"Who knows all this?" he said.

"What you just told me? About the girls and Phil and Cathy?" I didn't want to answer truthfully. I said, "A lot of people know. Phil had lured all of the Locard people up to the blow down They all know. Why don't you just let me go? You won't have the satisfaction of killing me, but it will be much less messy for you than the alternative."

"You may well be right about that. But the truth is that this opportunity may be too good to pass up. See… there's that other problem."

I was surprised.

"What other problem is that?"

Some flaky sleep in the corner of one eye was bothering Welle. He scratched at it with the nail of his pinkie.

"I don't especially appreciate all the questions you've been asking people about Gloria. My wife? You had that boy's uncle send me a letter wanting to see the records from Brian Sample's old psychotherapy, right? That wasn't a good idea on your part, didn't sit right with me. That's one sleeping dog you should have just let lie."

I recalled Sam's warning to me after the incident at the tennis house in Denver.

"Tell you what, Ray-since it bothers you, I'll stop asking."

He laughed.

"I wish it were that easy. But I don't think you'll stop. Why? I don't think you like me. I don't think you like my politics. I don't think your wife liked having me in her fancy family. Yeah, I know all about your wife. You know what else? I don't think you even like having me in your sanctimonious profession. I don't think either of you wants to have me in the Senate. So, no, I don't think you'll stop pestering. You'll just keep digging and picking at it.

Won't let Gloria rest until you make something tragic look like something sinister."

"You have my word. I'll stop."

"Sorry." He wasn't. I could tell. The gun came back up off his knee.

I argued.

"You can't stop the questions by killing me. There are others who know everything I do."

He narrowed his eyes and rubbed the stubble on his chin with his free hand. The sound was audible.

"I don't think so. Some of this-the part about Gloria-only another psychologist would figure." He stood up.

"Now you get up, too. It won't look good to shoot you while you're sitting on the sofa."

I stayed where I was and reviewed my options. I could yell for help from Kimber.

Ray would probably consider it a diversion and shoot me anyway. The possibility also existed that Kimber remained so incapacitated by his panic attack that he might prove to be of no help. Either way I didn't see how it was going to increase the odds of my survival.

I could run for it and hope Ray was a lousy shot. An errant gunshot would probably rouse Kimber from his stupor and he'd run out and confront Ray, at which point one of them would shoot the other. Another possible lousy outcome.

"Up," Ray said.

"Might not look good to kill you there, but I'll do it. Don't test me. Now get up."

The circumstances were eerie. I was so tired that I thought I hallucinated a tray with Red Zinger and Girl Scout Cookies on the table between us. Without thinking, I blurted, "Where do you want me to go exactly, Ray? The closet in the guest room? So you don't have to watch what you're about to do?"

He blanched and a breath caught in his throat. His hand shook.

Until that moment I hadn't known what the stakes were for Raymond Welle. But suddenly I did.

My murder would not be the first one Ray Welle had planned at the Silky Road Ranch.

Ray's eyes stared past me. I was tempted to look over my shoulder to see what he was focusing on. He said, "You can't prove anything." He had started breathing through his mouth, the long exhalations coming from deep in his gut.

My feelings about the gun pointing at me were flip-flopping as much as the politician who was pointing it at me. One moment I felt totally intimidated by the threat, the next moment I felt totally liberated by the certainty of my death. During one of the liberated moments, I said, "That argument alone tells me I don't have to prove anything at all. It's as good as a confession."

He straightened his shoulders, trying to look congressional and imperious. The gun and the pajamas detracted from the image. He scoffed, "And what good does it do you? Now that you know-so what? You get to die a righteous man? Does that feel good? You fool! I'm so glad for you. Will that make your widow happy? Now stand up!"

I did stand. I needed to keep Ray talking and was rethinking whether or not to call for Kimber's help.

"Why did Brian do it for you, Ray? I don't get that part. Was it the transference? Was he that crazy?"

Ray took a step back from me. First one foot, then the other. He was gripping the pistol so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

"No, he wasn't crazy. He was the most suicidal son of a bitch I saw in my whole career. But he wasn't crazy. Not at all. Brian Sample had not only decided that he wanted to die, he'd also decided that he wanted to die a righteous man.

That's why he did what he did."

"And killing Gloria made him righteous?"

"Are you kidding? Brian knew that killing Gloria for me was only the price of admission." His mouth widened into a tight smile.

"You don't really know what all happened that day, do you? You only have bits and pieces."

"No," I admitted.

"I don't know what happened."

He tsked.

"I'm surprised at you. Phil eventually figured it out, every last bit of it.

He's not that bright a guy, so that surprised me some. But he was here that day so he had an advantage. But you? I've been guessing that you had it all."

"Phil knew?"

"Yeah, he knew I arranged to have Brian kill Gloria. And me? I'd suspected all along that he had something to do with those two girls dying back in 1988. Left the two of us in a kind of a standoff. Remember the cold war? Our nuclear policy with the Russians? The tacticians called it 'mutual assured destruction." MAD.

If they tried to blow us up we would blow them up. And vice-versa. It was a perfect stalemate. That's what Phil and I had, our own little mutual destruction pact. MAD right here on Mad Creek. When I got elected to the House, we decided to reduce the tension a little and become allies. It turned out all right, I think, for both of us. But now Phils dead. The rules are going to be different, I suppose. I should enjoy a little more freedom now that Ray has unilaterally disarmed."

"He killed Dorothy Levin for you."

Ray Welle raised an eyebrow.

"For us. He killed Dorothy for us. She comes here for one weekend and manages to puzzle out way too much of what had happened to Gloria. So Phil eliminated her. He did it for both of us-let's just say that over time our interests had converged."

I was shocked at the motive.

"Dorothy wasn't killed because of the campaign-contributions story?"

"That? No. What she had on me? Its all smoke. House Ethics Committee might have slapped my wrist. But that was no mortal sin. No, she was getting close to figuring out what happened with Gloria. She had the insurance angle down and was asking way too many questions about me and my practice. Kind of like you are, except she was a little smarter."._Ray had lowered the barrel of the gun so far that it was pointing near my feet. I scoured my memory for details of the floor plan of the house, trying to imagine a route for an escape attempt. I doubted that Ray Welle was a skilled marksman.

The more distance I could quickly put between us, the better my odds would be that he would miss when he fired at me.

His next words stunned me from my reverie like a slap across the face. He asked, "Do you know the hardest thing about getting away with murder?" I said, "Excuse me? What?"

"The hardest part of this whole experience-the whole thing with having Gloria killed?" He could tell that I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

"I mean killing someone and not even being considered a suspect? I mean never suspected at all-ever. You know what the hardest part is?"

I was flustered. He seemed to want an answer so I took a stab at it.

"I don't know, the guilt?"

Ray Welle laughed at me.

"Bad guess. I figured you for being a little more intuitive than that, Alan.

But, no, I'm not prone much to that particular reflection. Remorse isn't one of my things. So let me tell you just so you'll know. The hardest part about getting away with murder- I'm not talking about the details, mind you, I'm discussing my personal feelings here-the hardest part is not being able to talk about it.

"Me? I'm a talker. Everybody says that about me. They couldn't shut me up when I was on the radio. The Speaker couldn't shut me up when I was on the floor of the House. I was out of order more than a deck of cards. Truth be told, I even yakked too much when I did psychotherapy. But I haven't been able to talk to anybody about this. Not even Phil. We talked about lots of things over the years, but we never talked about getting away with murder. Neither of us. There was a time I needed to talk about it so badly I thought about going into therapy. You know, just to have a chance to spill the beans to someone and leave him sitting there with his mouth hanging open. But that impulse always passed.

The result? There hasn't been a word spoken in all these years, until here today, with you."

What was I supposed to say, that I was honored? The more he told me, the more certain I was that he was planning to seal my lips permanently.

On the other hand, as long as I could hear him talking, I was still alive.

There was that.

"Why, Ray?"

"Why did I have her killed? Is that what you mean? She was bailing out on me, on my dreams. She was going to pull the plug on the money I needed for the ninety-two congressional campaign. I couldn't raise the money without her name and her influence. And even that wasn't enough for a decent campaign. I needed her personal contributions-as my spouse she could spend as much as she wanted.

And soon enough, I figured, she was going to start making noise about a divorce.

When she left me I would have been sitting with my half-assed practice in Steamboat, my quirky little local radio show, and almost no money. Gloria had to die. It was the only way I could see to guarantee my future. Although I couldn't touch her trust, the rest of the assets would be mine. I hoped that would be enough."

"And what was in it for Brian?"

"I promised to convince the coroner that he was no longer suicidal the day that Phil's boys shot him dead on the ranch. That way his family would get enough life insurance money to start their life over again. Without my intervention with the coroner the insurance company wasn't about to pay on his policy. No way. Brian understood that. Basically, he killed Gloria for me and I agreed to make sure his family was taken care of."

"Your idea or his?"

He lifted the gun so it aimed at my gut. I could feel my bowels pucker.

"Brian wasn't the brightest bulb in the scoreboard, if you know what I mean. He didn't have what it would take to come up with this."

"What about shooting her in the closet? That was adlibbed I take it?"

Ray shook his head.

"No, we worked that part out together. Brian wasn't an eager participant. Even at the end, he wasn't at all sure he could look Gloria in the face and kill her. I understood; I don't think I could have done it either. We had to come up with an alternative."

"Why did he do it?"

"I convinced him that no one would really blame him, that everyone would think he just snapped from all the stress. It was a sacrifice for his family."

I considered Brian's desperation.

"A cop friend of mine thought the closet was suspicious. The fact that he shot her through the door. He had a whole lot of trouble with it."

"You know, when Phil first came in the house he had trouble with it, too. If I had to do it over again, I would have insisted Brian shoot her face-to-face."

He broke into a broad smile.

"And look!" He waved the gun at me.

"I do have to do it over again. I need to remember my lesson. Let's go find a good place for you to die. No closets for you."

It was time for me to do something. Trying to run seemed absurd. Ray Welle was standing seven or eight feet away from me with his handgun leveled at my chest.

He might not miss. That left the Kimber option. If he was to be of any help, I had to pray that his panic episode had abated.

I said, "I didn't come here by myself, Ray. You and I aren't alone in the house."

He barely heard my words. He was looking out the big windows of the great room, gazing toward the lane. Two vehicles were approaching the house. One was a Steamboat Springs police vehicle driven by Percy Smith. The other was a familiar Ford Taurus driven by Russ Claven.

Ray said to himself more than to me, "Sylvie must have called them. They think you're holding me hostage." I wasn't about to remind Ray that Sylvie didn't know he was on the ranch. I was certain Ray didn't know who Flynn and Russ were; he probably figured that they were officers who had accompanied Percy Smith and the other uniformed officer.

I had reached a different conclusion about my arrival of the police than Ray had. I was thinking that Kimber must have realized what was going on and called the police. They know that Ray is about to kill me.

The cars stopped about a hundred feet from the house, and the four occupants all exited on the far side of their vehicles. The solitary uniformed officer had a rifle with a scope. Percy Smith was armed with a cell phone.

The telephone rang inside the house. The peal seemed to clang around the cavernous space like a church bell.

Ray said, "If I'm a hostage, I don't answer the damn phone, right? Right. Let it ring, let it ring." He turned to me.

"Back up. We're going into the hall so they can't see us through the windows."

He backed me up into the hallway that led to the master suite and ordered me to stop just opposite the powder room. He said, "Sit."

I did.

The phone finally stopped ringing.

Ray said, "What were you talking about before? About not coming to the ranch alone?"

"I'm terrified. I was just trying to buy some time. You know, distract you."

He stared at me while he tried to cinch his robe tighter without interfering with the aim of the gun.

"I don't know whether or not to believe you."

Good, I thought.

"And I can't exactly go wandering through the house searching for someone, now can I? I can't. The police would see me moving around and know that I'm not really a hostage."

I was beginning to recognize my leverage. It was paltry, but it was something.

I said, "But neither can you risk the possibility of there being a witness already here in the house. Someone who might see you murder me in cold blood."

The phone rang again.

"I have to ignore it, don't I?"

I didn't respond to Ray's question but I counted the rings. After twelve rings, the sound stopped. I waited an inordinate time for ring number thirteen to begin.

Ray Welle narrowed his eyes and said, "I wonder if that someone else you're talking about picked it up." Keeping the gun aimed at my chest, Welle backed into the master bedroom and lifted a cordless phone from its charger. He was walking back toward me as he touched the button that would open the connection.

I half expected that Kimber's indelicate whisper would carry right back down the hall.

But all I heard was dial tone.

Ray lowered the phone back to its cradle. Looking down at the lights lit up on the base unit, he said, "Someone's on the other line." I said, "What?"

"You weren't lying before. The second line's lit up. Someone's on the second phone line."

Kimber, what on earth are you up to?

"Where is he?" Welle demanded.

"I don't know."

"Bull. Doesn't matter. I'll find him. There aren't that many places in the house with extensions on that line."

His eyes took on an evil cast.

"Get up. Come with me. I know just where to put you while I sort this out."

I opened my mouth to scream a warning to Kimber.

The closet. The guest-room closet.

As Ray marched me closer to the wooden door I felt repelled by it as though it and I were magnets with opposite charges. My steps shortened the way my dog Emily's do when I'm leading her somewhere she doesn't want to go. My weight rocked back on my heels.

Ray Welle said, "Open it." I said, "I can't." I was as helpless as a four-year-old being asked to volunteer an arm for a shot.

He said, "I know a little something about the psychology of motivation," and shoved the barrel of the gun between my shoulder blades.

His strategy worked. I reached down for the knob and opened the door.

Instantly, an overhead light lit the small space. The switch must have been built into the doorjamb.

Ray said, "Look at that shelving, that detail, the edge work. Even in the damn closets. That was Gloria's thing. Detail."

"It's very nice," I stammered.

"Get in"

"I…"

"Get… in" I stepped in. The gun in my back was, once again, a significant inducement. Ray slammed the door behind me. The light blinked off. I heard him fumble with a key. As he turned it in the lock, I felt as much as heard the bolt throw.

What, I thought, no chair?

Would the gunshots come immediately?

I didn't know. One argument I was making to myself was that Welle couldn't really afford to shoot me through the door. If he did, he could hardly argue that he was protecting himself or his property from an intruder. He'd have to come back and get me, then march me someplace else before he shot me.

The closet was large enough for a chair but not quite big enough to get a running start to bust the door down. I tried three or four times to no avail.

Each time I rammed against the door with my lowered shoulder I bounced harmlessly back off the pine. With the heel of my stockinged feet I managed to crack one of the door's raised panels, but I couldn't get it to bust out.

I needed to warn Kimber that Ray had gone looking for him. I started screaming, "He locked me in the closet! He's by himself in the house! He has a gun!"

I repeated the refrain twice, then a third time, pausing between warnings to listen for the sound of gunshots in the distant parts of the house.

I heard nothing.

The shelves in the closet held little. Some folded linens. A down pillow. The built-in drawers were empty, awaiting Rays next guest's clothing. I climbed the lower shelves to run my hand along the upper ones. On top I found two empty shoeboxes and a tied bundled of satin hangers.

The phone rang again.

It rang and rang. This time no one answered.

Kimber?

With a foot on a shelf on each side of the closet, I felt along the ceiling for the light fixture to see if there was something up there that I could break off to use as a tool to get out of the closet or, if Ray Welle came back, as a weapon. But there was no light fixture; the closet bulb was enclosed in a recessed can. A few inches behind it I felt a ridge of wood, a strip of molding.

I traced the molding with my fingers-it framed an opening about two feet square-and moved the palm of my hand to the recessed center of the square and pushed. The panel gave just a little. My heart jumped. This little door meant attic access.

This little door meant freedom. I climbed up another shelf in the closet for leverage.

The door proved hard to budge. I was afraid the shelves were going to yield before I was able to push it open. Finally it gave, and I poked my head into the attic.

The place was huge. The true size of the house wasn't apparent to someone walking through it on the main floor. Inside the house, walls divided the rooms and the true volume of the space was disguised. But the attic had no dividing walls; one immense cavernous vault capped the sprawling home below. And although the house was technically a ranch, with all its living space on one floor, no such limitations ruled the attic space. The height of the attic varied tremendously, not only to accommodate the vagaries of the home's roofline, but also to accommodate the varying heights of the ceilings inside the house.

What I needed was a circulation vent-a louvered opening-that I could remove or kick out to permit myself egress from the attic. To find a vent I had to get from the center of the house to the perimeter. I began to raise myself to the lip of the opening to begin my search.

In rapid order, three sharp blasts from a gun pierced into the enclosed space in the closet. Immediately all strength left my arms and legs. I fell from my perch near the ceiling and tumbled to the floor in a heap.

My fall destroyed the bottom shelf and made a racket. I moaned.

While I waited for more shots I held my breath. But the next sounds I heard were footsteps retreating and an amplified voice from outside the house. One of the cops was calling something to someone inside the house on a loudspeaker. I couldn't understand the words. Finally, I exhaled.

The gunshots had destroyed enough of the door so that light was entering the closet. I could reach my hand through one of the openings and almost touch the doorknob, but not quite. I persisted, slicing my forearm on the splintered wood.

The key was still in the lock. My arm tendons screamed in protest as I twisted my hand to turn the key.

Through the open attic door I heard footsteps above me. Someone was running fast toward the far end of the house, above the master bedroom. More shots rang out.

The blasts seemed to follow the footfalls across the roof.

I felt blind. Activity was going on all around me and I could only guess what was actually happening elsewhere in the house.

I pushed the closet door open and prepared to make a run for safety. But before I took off I looked back into the closet. Had I not been climbing to the attic, the shots that had been fired through the door would have hit me. For sure.

I saw no one as I made my way first to the laundry room, then to the mudroom. I flung open the mudroom door and sprinted toward the police car with my hands high above my head. In what felt like slow motion, I watched two rifles rotate toward me. I dove to the ground screaming, "No! It's me! Help!"

Someone barked, "Hold fire!"

I looked up and back at the house. Russ Claven was crouching on the roof, staring down at the clerestory windows that lit the long central hall. He was tracking someone's movements below. I wondered whether he was tracking Kimber or following Ray Welle. Russ scampered catlike farther down the roof, hovering at the skylights above the master bedroom. He pointed straight down and nodded his head.

I climbed to my feet and ran like the wind to the protection provided by the parked cars, arriving just as Percy Smith was directing his officers to take aim with their rifles in the direction of the master bedroom suite. I hugged Flynn.

She asked if I was okay. I asked about Kimber.

I could tell from her expression that she was hoping that it was I who knew about Kimbers well-being.

"We don't know," she said.

"We lost contact with him."

A large picture window looked down the lane from one end of the master bedroom.

For a split second Ray Welle stood in that window and peeked through the drawn curtains. His eyes seemed to be searching, until finally they found mine and locked. He blinked twice and shook his head maybe an inch each way.

"There he is, in the bedroom window," I said, just as the curtain fell back into place.

"I saw him. He's gone now," said Percy.

On the roof Russ Claven had started gesturing frantically toward the far end of the house. The side closest to the deck. The side nearest the woods.

My brain was working faster than my mouth.

"No!" was all I could spit at first.

"No!"

Percy Smith stared at me.

"What the-?"

In less than two seconds Ray Welle was out on the deck, firing wildly toward the police cars. I ducked from the fusillade and said, "Percy! He wants you to kill him! Don't do it!"

"What?" One of the cops said he had the target.

I yelled, "He wants you to kill him! Don't do-" The cop fired his rifle. The other cop pulled his trigger so closely afterward I could barely feel a gap between the concussions of the blasts. I watched in horror as Raymond Welle tumbled over the edge of the deck and landed with a thick thud on the lawn.

I'd imagined the scene so many times, I felt as though I'd been there before.

Percy Smith said, "Hold fire. Get the ambulance up here." To Percy I said, "Its exactly what he wanted you to do."

Percy replied disdainfully.

"What? You think we shot him? He's not dead. We fired way above his head. Just scared him half to death." To his officers he said, "Keep him in your sights."

Russ had scampered down the roof. I watched as he dropped from one of the copper gutters to the deck just as Ray Welle was struggling to his knees, searching the ground for his handgun. Russ vaulted the deck and flattened the congressman before he had a chance to retrieve the weapon.

Flynn grabbed my hand and said, "Come on. Let's go find Kimber."

I ran after her back into the house.

Flynn and I found Kimber propped up against a wall in the foyer of the house.

He'd been shot once in the left shoulder. From the mess on the floor around him I assumed he had lost more than a little blood.

When I dropped to my knees by his side he said, "I told you I was dying. I just didn't expect it to be so traumatic." He was calm as he made his joke. The symptoms of panic had evaporated.

Flynn took one of his hands and said, "You're not dying, Kimber. You hear me?"

Without turning to face me she ordered, "Alan, get Russ in here."

Kimber's voice was tentative and weak.

"God help me. She's calling a pathologist. Maybe I'm already dead."

I was encouraged that he was continuing to find humor in his predicament, but Flynn was determined in her response to him.

"You are absolutely not dying, Kimber. You just keep breathing. We'll do the rest."

As Kimber opened his mouth to reply, his head fell suddenly to his chest. The whine of an ambulance siren filled the narrow valley. Flynn mouthed, "Hurry!" I ran to fetch Russ and to guide the paramedics back to Kimber.

Once my quick errand was completed Percy Smith wouldn't let me back into the house. He left me leaning against the hood of one of the police cruisers as he explained why I couldn't go back inside. My adrenaline was spent. I had barely enough energy to stay vertical, let alone to argue with him. He moved me into the backseat. I half expected to be cuffed but I wasn't. At least not right away.

I dozed off in the back of Percy Smith's police department SUV on the drive into Steamboat Springs. Once inside the building I fell sound asleep while the local authorities were assembling the cast they had chosen to interview me for details about how Kimber Lister and I had spent the previous twelve hours or so.

When I was finally approached again it was by a Routt County sheriff's investigator who was flanked by both a Steamboat Springs police detective and an FBI agent. I shook myself from my stupor and asked about Kimbers condition.

None of the the cops answered me. I asked about Kimbers health. They declined to tell me that, either. Their demeanor convinced me that I might still be in some legal jeopardy for defending myself against Phil Barrett up in the blow down so I asked to be allowed to make a phone call. They exchanged wary glances before they assented. I used the opportunity to phone Lauren. She listened to my lengthy story with remarkable patience and restraint, inquired twice about my well-being, and ordered me not to talk to anyone until she was by my side. She promised she'd be in Steamboat within four hours.

The cops weren't happy with me when I told them that at the advice of an attorney I was choosing not to speak with them, at least temporarily. Percy Smith was recruited to try and goad me into cooperation. They could not have known that he was absolutely the wrong emissary. After I refused to change my mind, it was clear that the cops remained unhappy with me. I knew that the alternative was my wife being unhappy with me. My decision to stay silent was not a particularly anguished one; I wasn't planning on going home with any of the cops.

Before I nodded off again, I wondered about Flynn and Russ and Dell Franklin and whether they were secreted away close by. I doubted that if I asked the cops I would get a straight answer. I didn't ask. Instead I curled up and slept on the floor in the corner of the interview room until my wife arrived.

Lauren poked her head in the door around two o'clock in the afternoon.

She brought concern, a sweet smile, a little shake of her head that amply conveyed

"You are so pathetic but I love you anyway," and lunch in a bag. I was grateful for three out of four. After Lauren kissed me she informed me wryly that she should also have fetched a toothbrush and a razor.

The most important gift she bore was her legal acumen, which she feared I greatly needed.

I asked about the baby and how she felt after the long drive. As she touched her belly her eyes told me everything was fine. She explained that she had called Sam and asked him to drive her over the Divide so she wouldn't get so exhausted by the trip. Satoshi had insisted on coming along, too. I was comforted to know that Sam was close by and hoped I would get an opportunity to be the one to tell Satoshi exactly what had happened to her sister.

I was also hungry for news.

While I ate, Lauren talked. She wasn't able to provide much of an update on Kimber. All she knew was what she had heard on the car radio on the drive up from Boulder-that he had survived his gunshot and was in surgery at the local hospital.

Raymond Welle's detention by the Routt County sheriff was the day's big event.

Lauren's impression was that none of the national news organizations had pieced together the intricacies of the story. No one was yet reporting anything about the two girls who had died in 1988 at the Silky Road Ranch. And no one was reporting anything about the crazy denouement in the blow down on the Routt Divide or the discovery of Dorothy Levin's body. But having a United States congressman under suspicion in the attempted murder of an ex-FBI agent was big enough news for the time being. Lauren said that she expected dozens of satellite crews to descend on Steamboat within the next few hours. She also said that she was sure that the right-wing blonds on the cable news talk shows were already piecing together the skeleton of a "make-my-day" defense for Welle to employ for shooting Kimber. Shortly after they had all checked in for about the hundredth time on the Monica Lewinsky pathos, Lauren had decided that she wasn't fond of the right-wing blonds on the cable news talk shows.

I asked what defense Welle might concoct for arranging to have his wife, Gloria, murdered by Brian Sample.

Lauren smiled and said she couldn't think of a single one.

It became clear that Lauren wasn't at all concerned about the ill-advised decision that Kimber and I had made to enter Raymond Welle's home while seeking shelter from the storm of Kimber's panic attack. Based on my rendition of events she was far more concerned about my claim of self-defense for burying the butt of Kimber's gun into the side of Phil Barrett's head. She pointed out that my only corroborating witness was unconscious the last time I had seen him. After a few more questions, our much-too-brief reunion was over. Lauren kissed me again and left. She had some negotiating to do on my behalf.

The minutes passed like a gallstone. Waiting, it turned out, had been much easier when I was asleep.

After a half hour she returned.

"I need you to think carefully," she said, her back to the closed door.

"Have you told anyone but me about Welle's responsibility for Gloria's murder?"

"No. I didn't have a chance to say much of anything before they started treating me like a criminal."

"And you're absolutely certain about what Welle told you?"

"Yes, he confessed to arranging Gloria's murder. It was an insurance scheme with Brian Sample. Ray walked me through motive, plan, everything."

"You'll testify against him?"

"Of course."

Her eyes brightened.

"Good. The police don't seem to know anything about it. I'm going to offer them a little trade. I think it will be your ticket out of here."

"Great. Any news on Kimber?"

"He survived the surgery and corroborated your account of Phil's death."

I hissed, "Yessss," as I thrust my fist into the air like Sam always did at Avalanche games.

She walked up to me and ran her fingers from the back of my head to the base of my spine and embraced me tightly.

"I don't usually do this with clients," she purred.

"But occasionally?"

"I try to take it one client at a time."

The interview with the assembled authorities lasted over three hours.

Lauren stayed with me for the duration. The discussion covered the entire previous night. The meeting with Rat. The trip to Clark. The blow down Phil Barrett's demise. Cathy Franklin's demise. Douglas Levin's stalking of his wife and shooting at her at the Welle fundraiser in Denver. Barrett killing Dorothy.

The apparent discovery of Dorothy Levin's body. Rescuing Flynn and Russ from their Lincoln Log jail. Kimber's panic attack and the decision to seek shelter at the Silky Road Ranch. The confrontation with Ray Welle and Welle's admission that he had arranged for his wife's murder. The closet.

Everything I knew. Three times.

At ten minutes after six they handed me an envelope with my car keys and my wallet in it and told me I was free to go. I'd find my car outside in the lot.

Sam was waiting for Lauren and me at the bottom of the concrete steps.

"If you were my kid," he said with a big smile when he saw me, "I wouldn't let you go out of the house without a helmet on." "Or at least a lawyer in tow," I said as I kissed Lauren on the cheek.

"Thanks for driving her up here, Sam."

He shrugged.

"Gotta keep that baby of yours happy. I take it you're free to go?"

"Apparently. I traded my freedom for that of a congressman."

His eyebrows reached for his hairline.

"Welle?"

I nodded.

"He murdered his wife, Sam."

His eyebrows reached for the sky.

"No? I told you the story of that kidnapping was goofy. You have details? You know how he did it?"

"I do. How about I fill you in a little later?"

"Sure." He pointed toward his Cherokee. Satoshi was sitting on the front seat.

She waved. Sam said, "Satoshis anxious to hear what you learned about her sister. Are you up to it?"

"Yeah. Let me get a shower, wake up a little. I want my head to be clear when I tell her what happened to Mariko. Ask her if that's okay."

Sam sauntered over and spoke to Satoshi before he returned to my car.

"She said that she's waited years and that minutes and hours are irrelevant."

While I was spending my day in custody, the bedrooms at the B and B had been shuffled. Satoshi was going to share Kimber's room with Flynn, and Sam was bunking with Russ. I was delighted to make room in my bed for Lauren.

I showered for almost twenty minutes. The shower could have been better only if Lauren had offered to soap my back and any other parts of my body particularly in need of attention. But she didn't.

Russ had made arrangements with Libby for us all to dine together privately in the breakfast room of the B and B. As barter he had offered her gossip-laden details that wouldn't be in the next mornings paper about what had transpired in the blow down Libby had made some calls to get enough food delivered for a feast and was supplying the beer and wine herself. Russ suspected that she was angling for an invitation to the repast. But it wouldn't be forthcoming. He asked me what I thought about Libby attending. I voted no. He asked me if I wanted to invite Percy Smith. I voted no again. This was going to be a very private party.

The aromas of nourishment greeted me-I thought I smelted abundant garlic and a blast of curry-as I toweled off from my shower and began to shave away the whiskers of the last thirty-six hours. I scraped my face in short strokes in an effort to keep my hand from shaking. The reality of what had transpired since the previous sundown was descending upon me with a gravity that left me fighting back tears. I felt a sense of guilt about what had happened to Kimber but found most of my compassion directed to Dell Franklin, who seemed the most complete victim in the whole tragedy.

Lauren could tell that I was taking too long in the bathroom. She finally entered without knocking and embraced me from behind.

"We're all okay," she whispered.

"All three of us." I stopped fighting back my tears, and together we slunk down to the damp floor. We huddled together on the tiny octagonal tiles until most of our fears were soothed away.

The night started in the kitchen of the B and B and ended where everything having to do with me and Locard and the two dead girls had begun-on Joey Franklin's time-share jet. The party that occurred in between wasn't a festive affair. It was more like a hybrid between sitting shivah and attending an Irish wake. There was no shortage of lives to celebrate and unfortunately no shortage of lives to mourn.

There were a lot of stories to tell.

The first thing I did after I finished dressing was search out Satoshi. I found her where she had been waiting for me in the parlor. I took her by the hand and led her into the deserted kitchen of the B and B so we could be alone.

She hopped up to sit on the Up of the granite-topped island. She said, "I have a feeling I shouldn't be standing."

I sat on a stool.

"I probably shouldn't be standing either." I caressed my tired eyes with my knuckles.

"Are you ready, whatever that means?"

Satoshi nodded.

"I've been waiting a long time."

"Okay." I started with

"I know how your sister died," and told the story of Mariko's senseless murder deliberately so that Satoshi could chew each detail separately and digest it slowly, the way she had nibbled away her carton of yogurt the day we'd first met at Stanford.

She wept almost nonstop while I spoke, but she refused my offers of comfort.

"They were both heroes," she said when she was certain I was done.

"Mariko and Tami."

"Yes," I agreed.

Her next question surprised me in the way that people often do. She asked, "What's going to happen to Mr. Franklin? Do you think there's a possibility that I can talk to him?" I said I didn't know. I said it twice. Then I added, "He knows what Joey did to you, Satoshi. He just found out."

She raised her chin, stretching her smooth neck. She lowered it, and turned her head once left, then right, before she said, "Your voice? I'm beginning to know its melodies. You're wondering if I've changed my mind, if I'm going to press charges against Joey, aren't you?"

"Yes. I am."

"I can't prove what happened back then. And if I accuse Joey, you know that he'll deny it." She examined the flesh on the palm of her left hand as though God's own advice was inscribed there.

"What I'm thinking right now is this: My parents managed to survive this tragedy with one child remaining. Perhaps so should Dell Franklin."

She smiled at me with warmth, but no mirth, and asked to be left alone for a while.

When I rejoined the group, Sam and Lauren were listening to Flynn and Russ describe how they had been lured to the blow down to help with the recovery of Dorothy Levins body. Flynn excused herself at the conclusion of that part of the story so that she could keep a promise to visit Kimber at the hospital.

Everyone but Sam was done eating before it was my turn to describe how Kimber and I had been lured to the blow down and what had happened afterward in the Routt Divide with Phil Barrett and with Dell and Cathy Franklin.

It was near midnight before Russ answered the last question about what had transpired after dawn with Raymond Welle at the Silky Road Ranch.

Lauren said, "I'm ready for bed, I think. If I'm this tired, the rest of you must be exhausted."

"I sure am," said Satoshi, who had finally rejoined the group.

Just then Russ's cell phone chirped in his pocket. He stood and carried it to the bay window before he began speaking. I couldn't hear many words of his conversation.

When he walked back to the table he held the phone out in front of him and said, "Apparently Flynn and I are going back to the District tonight. Kimber wants to be in his own fortified castle-which isn't surprising-before the press discovers everything that happened here. He apparently talked the anesthesiologist into giving him a scale the block-it's a nerve block of his arm and shoulder-so he's not going to be in any pain for the next ten hours or so.

The surgeon isn't thrilled about his leaving, but…" Russ shrugged his shoulders.

"Kimbers hired a nurse to accompany him home. Dell Franklin arranged to have Joey's jet waiting at the airport. I'm supposed to go upstairs and pack up Flynn's things and meet them at the plane."

"Is Dell out of jail?" I asked.

"Apparently on personal recognizance."

"Thank God."

Lauren turned to me and said, "We need to say good-bye to Kimber, Alan. It's important."

"And I'd really like to meet him before he goes," said Satoshi.

"I want to thank him."

We made it to the Yampa Valley Regional Airport about forty-five minutes later.

Satoshi, Lauren, and I spent the drive crammed together in the backseat of Sam's old Cherokee.

The jet was ready when we arrived. So was Hans. He stood tall at the top of the short stairs with his hands behind his back.

Flynn greeted us on the tarmac. Her eye patch was plastered with tiny iridescent stars. It looked just like the night sky above the Routt Divide. She said, "Kimbers already on board. He'd like to meet with Satoshi alone before we take off. Because of his… uh, condition… he's never had the chance to meet any family members after Locard has finished one of the investigations.

It's important to him that he talk with her."

Satoshi hesitated. She gestured toward the jet with her chin and said, "It's not really Joey's plane, right?" Russ said, "Nah, it's a rental."

She mouthed something to herself and climbed the stairs to the cabin. Hans escorted her inside.

Flynn said, "He seems fine, Kimber does. He has an IV running. But because of the nerve block the nurse said the pain won't start until after he gets home." "Is his shoulder going to be okay?" Lauren asked.

"Apparently. But the recuperation is going to be painful."

I helped Russ transfer the luggage to the plane. Sam and I promised to ferry the Taurus over to the rental car company lot and drop the keys into the after-hours box.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, Satoshi emerged from the jet cabin and asked us all on board.

"Mr. Lister wants to say good-bye to everyone."

Lauren preceded me up the steps. At the landing she paused and made a little sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a coo.

"Are you all right?" I asked, startled.

When she turned to me her face and eyes were lit with a smile. She lowered both hands to her abdomen and said, "Sweetie, the baby just moved."

It took us a minute or two-maybe three-to make it the last few feet through the door. The plane seemed much smaller with so many people on board.