Missing Persons

50

Mary had to get back to the demands of the triplets, and the clock said it was almost time to get Grace home for some lunch and a nap. But something Mary had said convinced me to risk squeezing one more errand into our outing. I didn’t even try to explain to Grace exactly what business was conducted at the office of the Boulder County coroner; all I told her was that Daddy had another short meeting.

Years before, during my brief stint as a coroner’s investigator, my supervisor was a good man named Scott Truscott. I’d always liked Scott and had felt that once I wasn’t working for him he’d grown fond of me, too. Grace and I tracked him down at his desk in the Justice Center on Canyon Boulevard. I introduced him to Grace and he and I spent a moment catching up before he asked, “So what’s up?”

“I’m hoping I can help you a little with the Hannah Grant thing.”

“Yeah?” He seemed interested, but just the slightest bit skeptical. “I’d love to get that one out of the ‘undetermined’ column.”

The words he used-genteelly chosen without overt reference to death or murder-told me that he was happy to edit his part of the conversation for Grace’s tender ears.

He added, “Why me and not the detectives handling the case?”

I could’ve finessed my answer, but with Scott it wasn’t necessary. “I have issues with Jaris Slocum.”

“Gotcha.” Scott wasn’t surprised, obviously.

“Will you answer some questions for me, too?” I asked.

“Depends what they are.”

That was fair. I said, “Hannah was a diabetic. Type 1. We both know that. How was her blood sugar when, you know?”

“Blood doesn’t actually tell us anything about sugar level during a post; natural autolysis renders the numbers meaningless. But because we knew she was insulin dependent, the coroner checked the vitreous fluid.”

“From her eye?” I asked, a shiver shooting up my spine. I didn’t know what autolysis was, natural or otherwise, but feared that asking would either tug Scott down a blind alley, or leave my daughter with nightmares.

“It’s the only way to get a reliable post mortem sugar. I don’t have it memorized, but she was within normal limits.” His hand reached for his computer mouse. “You want me to check for the exact number, I can pull the labs.”

“It’s okay. Did the detectives recover a syringe that night?”

“You mean with insulin in it? No. They found fresh supplies in the kitchen. Nothing already prepared for injection though, and nothing recently used.”

“Did you hear anything about an open roll of LifeSavers in her coat pocket?”

His shoulders dropped, and he frowned. “No, nobody mentioned LifeSavers to me. It wasn’t in any of the reports.”

“It was there; I saw it. The package was open, the wrapper was curly-cueing out of her pocket.”

Scott appeared perplexed. “She must have thought her sugar was low. Considering her normal levels, though, that’s odd.”

“It is odd. Did you collect her… that night?” I skipped a word intentionally. The omitted word could have been “body” or “remains.”

He filled in the blank and said that he had. One of the tasks of coroner’s investigators is to visit death scenes to begin collecting data, and to prepare bodies for transport to the morgue.

I said, “Her shirttail was tucked up under the front of her bra when I found her.”

“When I got there, too. Same.”

“Ever run across that before at a death scene?”

“Never,” he said.

“A good friend of hers just told me that Hannah did that when she was preparing to do an insulin injection in her abdomen. To get her shirt up out of the way.”

Scott crossed his arms and sat back. “I didn’t consider that, but I should have. Slocum was already thinking homicide when I arrived.” He made a sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “You’ll make a statement about the LifeSavers?”

“Of course; I bet the crime-scene photos will show that wrapper.”

“I’ll take a look. Will her friend give a statement about the shirt tail?”

“Can’t see why not. Why would a diabetic be eating sugar one minute and preparing to take insulin the next?”

“It makes no sense to me. That’s one of the things I’m going to have to think about.”

We said good-bye. I bundled Grace back up. On the way out to the car she asked, “What are LifeSavers?”

We stopped at a convenience store on the way home and I bought her a roll. I guessed she was a Butter Rum kid.

It turned out that I guessed right.

When we finally weaved across the valley Viv was almost done cooking up a pot of macaroni and cheese. As the three of us were finishing lunch, Virginia Danna, the Realtor whom I’d tricked into showing me the interior of Doyle’s house, phoned me on my cell.

After reintroducing herself she proceeded without any further niceties, her tone full of conspiracy. “The rules have changed. They always seem to in situations like this, don’t they? With Mr. Chandler dead, buyers are going to come out of the hills looking for a fire sale. Act fast and you might be able to get that house for a…”

Song? What house?

I walked out of the kitchen. “Mr. Chandler is dead?” I said.

“Yes! Can you believe it? This world! Sometimes…” She sighed. “A detective called me today to find out when I’d last spoken with him. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he told me Mr. Chandler was dead, maybe even murdered. Who knows what happened to him? The poor man! Murdered? It gives me gooseflesh, right up my thighs. Now, I will admit that I’m not privy to the estate situation in this particular circumstance, but sometimes people-heirs-at times like this are truly eager to settle things after a… especially after a… So if I could persuade you to make…”

An offer?

She went on. “Even a lowball offer would be…”

Acceptable? Delectable?

I asked, “Ms. Danna, who exactly is Mr. Chandler?”

“What? The owner of the house I showed you on Twelfth. The one with the water features and that yummy media center downstairs? I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”

“Doyle?”

“Yes, Doyle Chandler.”

“He’s dead?”

She was growing impatient with me. “Mm-hmmm,” was all she said in reply to my last question. Then she waited while I caught up.

“What detective phoned you?” I asked. I was thinking Sam.

“I don’t recall exactly. Mr. Chandler’s body was found up near Allenspark. Maybe it was an Allenspark detective.”

Allenspark is a small town in the mountains about thirty minutes from Boulder by car, not far from the eastern boundaries of Rocky Mountain National Park. When not swollen with summer tourists, Allenspark’s population typically hovered-guessing-somewhere around two hundred people. The village was as likely to have its own homicide detective as it was to have its own traffic helicopter. Any investigator involved in a homicide inquiry in Allenspark would be part of the County Sheriff’s department, on loan from a bigger city, like Boulder, or someone assigned from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Rather than argue the point, I said, “I’ll talk it over with my wife and get back to you. The house is still a little small for us.”

“One word: cantilever. My mobile number is on the card I gave you. Call any time. When news gets out about this… situation, there will be other offers, certainly by close of business tomorrow. You can count on it. There have been four showings of that property this week alone and I don’t have to tell you how slow the beginning of January usually is. And that screen in the basement? Remember? Of course you do. I checked. It’s a Stewart Filmscreen. I told you, the best. Think hard-a house like that, a location like that, circumstances like…”

These.

“I understand,” I said. But, of course, I didn’t.

I called Lauren. She didn’t return my call until midafternoon during a break in her trial. She’d already heard through the law enforcement grapevine about the discovery of the body of an unidentified male in a shallow grave not far from a trail that meandered off Highway 7 in northern Boulder County. She said she thought the location was east of Allenspark, actually closer to Lyons and Hygiene. I asked her to get me whatever information she could and to call me right back.

“Why are you interested in this?” she asked, of course. The tone of her question made it clear she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear my reply.

“It might be related to Diane,” I said.

“Two minutes,” she said.

It took her four. “We don’t have much yet. Pending a post, it appears to be a homicide. Animals had gotten to the body. ID found at the scene indicates it may be a man named-”

“Doyle Chandler.”

“How did you know? Is he one of your patients?”

I could have said, probably should have said, “You know I can’t answer that.” Instead, I said, “No.” Were the answer yes I would have answered with stony silence. Lauren and I both knew that the silent yes would have been just as declarative as the spoken no had been.

“One of Diane’s patients?”

Well, that was a thought. What if Diane had treated Doyle? I didn’t think so. I said, “No.”

“But you know him?” she asked.

“Personally, I don’t. Doyle Chandler owned the house that’s next door to Mallory Miller’s house on the Hill. When she disappeared he’d already moved away and put the place on the market.”

“I don’t think the police mentioned that this afternoon. Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Is this related to Mallory’s disappearance?”

“I don’t know. You have to wonder.”

“Diane’s disappearance?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“But you have reasons to be suspicious?”

“Yes.”

“Then this might be important to you: Sam’s up there. He asked the sheriff for permission.”

“He’s up where they found the body?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Have you heard from Raoul?” Lauren asked.

“No. I’m still worried.”

“Keep me informed, okay?”

After we hung up, I sent Sam a text message on his pager: “I know about D. Call me. A.”

While I was waiting for Sam to get back to me, I took a call from Scott Truscott at the coroner’s office. “Try something on for me?” he said.

“Sure.”

“We know that Ms. Grant hit her head when she tripped that morning at Rallysport, right? On the tile floor in the locker room? That’s confirmed?”

Hannah Grant, okay. I fought to change gears. “Yes,” I said. “The witnesses apparently agree on that much.”

“She tells the women in the locker room she’s fine, and she drives straight to her office.”

“We think.”

“Okay, we think. On the way, or shortly after she gets there, though, she begins to feel that something’s not quite right-maybe she has a headache, maybe she’s a little confused, lightheaded-but she doesn’t put two and two together, doesn’t consider that she’s just bumped her head and that she might have a concussion, or worse. Instead she decides that after all the exercise she’d done that her sugar’s too low. She’s in her car by then, she doesn’t have any orange juice, so she sucks on a couple of LifeSavers. With me?”

“So far.”

“When she gets to her office she’s still not herself, not feeling right. The candy didn’t help-she’s not feeling better yet. How do we know? Easy: She puts her purse in the middle of the floor. All her friends say she’s a compulsive person, OCD, truly anal, so the purse? On the floor? That’s not like her. Totally out of character. At this point I think she’s feeling even worse, not better. Maybe much worse.”

“Why much worse, Scott?”

“Post showed two subdural hematomas, remember? One of those two certainly came from a blunt surface-the tile floor-at the health club, during that initial fall.”

“Yes.”

“So we know she has a subdural from that earlier trauma. My theory is she actually already has both subdurals-one from the impact with the floor, and one from something with a sharper edge, maybe the locker room bench-and she’s actively bleeding into one or both of those hematomas. Ms. Grant was on aspirin therapy-you might not know that. Family history of heart disease.”

“I didn’t.”

“Doesn’t matter. Pressure’s slowly increasing on her brain, and she’s gradually getting more symptomatic. Half an hour passes, then an hour, and she’s more and more confused, lethargic, maybe vertiginous. Anxious, probably. Not too surprisingly, her thinking’s impaired. All she can come up with is that her diabetes is way out of whack, she has a problem with her sugar. The LifeSavers were there, Alan; in her pocket, like you said. I confirmed that with the crime-scene photos. But if she ate them, they didn’t help, so she goes in the other direction, decides maybe she needs insulin.

“But her confusion is severe; she’s disoriented-she can’t even get her routine quite right. Instead of retrieving her kit from the kitchen to check her sugar, she tucks her shirt up under her bra the way she always does just prior to her injection.”

I saw where he was heading. “And instead of going to the kitchen for the insulin, she’s lost and she goes to the office across the hall?”

“Exactly. Maybe once she’s there she begins to recognize her confusion, and she sits. Maybe not. But that’s where she collapses, in that other office. Eventually, she loses consciousness. She’s still bleeding into one of those subdurals. Eventually, Ms. Grant dies from the intracranial pressure.”

“Go on,” I said.

“That’s where you find her. Her shirt is tucked up under her bra like she’s going to do an injection, but there’s no syringe around, no insulin. It’s definitely possible she’s eaten some candy. No weapon is ever recovered that matches the second trauma to her head. What am I missing?”

I couldn’t think of a single thing left unexplained. “Nothing, Scott. I think maybe you nailed it. No intruders, no assault, no murderer. No second blow to the head.”

“And no more ‘undetermined.’ Hannah Grant’s death was accidental.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved this makes me.”

“Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Sit on this until I can run it by the coroner.”

“Of course.”

What was I thinking? I couldn’t wait to give the news to Diane. She’d be so happy.

It took Sam a couple of hours to reply to my message about Doyle’s body, but he did.

“How’d you hear?” Sam asked. Actually, it was more like a demand than a question.

“The real estate lady. She thought I might spot a housing opportunity in the ashes of the tragedy that was unfolding.”

“Shit. Who’d you tell?”

“Lauren. How come you guys didn’t let the DA know that Doyle Chandler lived next door to Mallory?”

“I’ve been busy.”

Right. “You still near Allenspark?”

“They just wrapped things up. I’m on my way back to Boulder now.”

“How long has your guy been dead?”

“My guy?” Sam laughed, turning my question into the melodic refrain of the Mary Wells ditty. “My guy has been dead a while. But it’s frigging cold up here, so the body’s been pretty well refrigerated. In the meantime, wild animals have been busy doing their wild animal thing. What they nibble on first? Let me tell you, it takes away much of my faith in the natural kingdom. ME’s going to have his hands full on this one.”

“Homicide?”

“If it’s a suicide, he was considerate enough to bury himself first. If it was an accident, he conveniently died by tripping and falling into a shallow grave.”

“Why’d you go up there?”

The signal faded and wavered. When it was strong enough to carry Sam’s voice again, I heard, “… and somebody convinced me that I should be asking this Doyle Chandler about the guy who used his garage in Boulder to store a classic old Camaro. The agent thought that since he moved away from his house in Boulder, Chandler was living out this way. I’d called the sheriff to give them a heads-up that I would be chatting with him as a follow-up to the Mallory Miller thing. When the sheriff learned that some snowshoers found what appeared to be his body, they gave me a courtesy jingle.

“For what it’s worth, this body shouldn’t have been discovered, not during the winter anyway. Most years it would’ve stayed hidden till spring, at least. You’ll like this-want to know how it was found? A woman on a snowshoe outing with some girlfriends had gone off by herself to answer nature’s call and was finishing taking a crap when she saw part of a hand sticking out from below this log she was crouching behind. Poor crime-scene techs had to collect it as evidence.”

“Collect what?”

“Her… you know.”

I knew. “What’s next?”

“I got twenty minutes to get from here to pick up Simon from hockey practice.”

“You want me to get him? Meet you at your house? I’m happy to.”

“Nice of you, but I think I’m cool. I’ll make it in time. Any word on Diane?”

“Nothing. Anything on the BOLO?”

“Nope. Go home, Alan. Stop playing cop.”

With that, the signal faded for good and the call dropped off into the great mobile phone ether.

I wasn’t ready to stop playing cop. The day’s events had shaken me and I was ready to do what I’d been thinking about doing for most of a week. I drove downtown to my office, opened the dark-blue Kinko’s box, and prepared to read Bob Brandt’s opus, My Little Runaway.

A run, run, run, run runaway.