Dry Ice (15 page)

    I hadn't even allowed myself to guess how Kol would react to my entreaty. I could have predicted the reaction of some of my patients. But not Kol. I didn't know him well, and what I knew I didn't quite trust.

    The dogs joined me on the deck. I paused to observe the carefully choreographed canine dance—Anvil waited for Emily, the resident alpha female, to plop down somewhere before he edged up close by and settled beside her so that some part of his body was in contact with some part of hers. As he aged, Anvil had chosen to make Emily his security blanket. To his queen Anvil had adopted the role of eunuch. In its own pathetic way it was quite adaptive. In seconds the dogs' waltz was complete.

    I punched in the phone number that I had filed under the initials "K.C." in the section of my address book calendar that I reserved for current-patient contact info. Given the unfamiliar prefix of the number I assumed that it identified Kol's mobile phone and not a Boulder landline. I thought I had only ever called the number once—on the day I'd returned his call requesting an initial appointment.

    After less than a complete ring I heard a female voice begin the familiar drone of "The number you have reached is no longer in service. If you think you have reached this number in error—" I hung up. Tried again. Same result.

    How long had it been since Kol's first call to me? A month? Sounded about right. Apparently, Kol had changed his phone number in the interim.
No big deal,
I thought.
Happens all the
time.

    I checked my records for Kol's Canyon Boulevard address and called directory assistance to get a home number. The operator said that they had no listing for that name and address. I asked him to try an alternative spelling for his first name: CO-L-E and to please check anywhere in Boulder. Ten seconds later, he told me that he had no listing for that name anywhere in Boulder. I then asked him to try just the last name, without any first name, anywhere in Colorado.

    He informed me that I was only permitted two searches. If I would like to call back, someone else would be happy to assist me.

    I called back and got the additional searches. My luck didn't improve.

I felt the best of my bad options was to drive downtown and ask for Kol's permission face-to-face. After failing to find any street parking on the east side of Broadway near downtown—no surprise on a sparkling Saturday in the spring—I parked my wagon at the office in front of the pile of rubble that had once been the garage. The cops had actually placed a ring of crime-scene tape around the heap of cracked boards and broken shingles. A second ring marked the spot where the purse had landed in the back of the yard.

I walked down Walnut to the building where Kol's mother

had purchased him his loft. Depending on the size of the unit, but given the prime downtown location, I had no doubt that Kol's mother had invested a good-size chunk of Pemex change in her son's home. His building, and its neighbors, had been recently erected in the Boulder Creek flood plain between Canyon and Walnut adjacent to the Downtown Mall. They were mixeduse structures with retail and commercial space on the first floor and offices or condos upstairs.

    The little residential lobby of Kol's building was sterile. Expensive sterile—stone floors, heavy nickel hardware, two stainless steel benches—but sterile. Diane wouldn't have liked it. She might have appreciated its organicity but would have had trouble with its serenity, or maybe vice versa.

    I checked the list of residents' names on the short roster beside the security phone for the correct number to push to connect with Kol's unit—his patient information sheet said he was in unit 307—but beside that number was a single word and an embarrassment of exclamation: "AVAILABLE!!!!!!!!!!!"

    
Available?
I lifted the receiver and pressed the black button that followed the last of the exclamation points. A phone started ringing. Three rings. Four. I was about to hang up when I heard, "Marty Driver." Pause. "Hello, Marty Driver."

    "Hi, um," I stammered, not expecting to be speaking with Marty Driver. "I was trying to reach a resident in this building, um, in unit number three-oh-seven and—"

    "You're in the lobby? Three-oh-seven? Three-oh-seven? That contract fell through. Long story. Great unit, though. Calls to all the unsold units get forwarded to me. You interested? Terrific views. Seriously. Flatirons, Chautauqua. The developer is willing to do some upgrades on the last two units. Granite in the kitchen? Motorized shades on those southern windows? Extra hardwood? Tumbled marble? You like bamboo? It's all possible. I'm the exclusive listing agent for the property and I am happy—"

    "I apologize, Mr. Driver. I must have hit the button for the wrong unit number. I'm not in the market; I'm looking for someone who already lives in the building."

    "I know everybody. I was the second unit to close. Who you looking to find?"

    Marty was friendly. Could I ethically answer his simple question? I could. Marty Driver didn't know I was a psychologist. I'd reveal nothing privileged by revealing Kol's name. "Last name is Cruz."

    "Like Tom?" he laughed.

    "No, Cruz with a z."

    "No Cruz. Not that building. And not the one next door, either. Same developer. I'm the exclusive listing agent for both—I said that already, didn't I? My girlfriend says I say it in my sleep sometimes. Not as many speculators bought as you'd think. A couple of tenants are renting from owners, but I know them, too. No Cruz. I have to run."

    Marty had recognized that I wasn't a prospect. "Thank you. You've been very helpful." I hung up just as someone was walking out the security door into the lobby. He was a trim guy wearing a pin-striped business suit over a gray silk T-shirt. He had flip-flops on his feet. He also had a lovely little Shih Tzu on a purple rhinestone leash. I smiled at the dog as it strutted across the stone floor like a Great Dane on the prowl. Pleased that I seemed to like his pet, the man held the door open for me. I thanked him, stepped inside, and squeezed into the elevator as the door was closing. I found my way down the third floor hallway to the door with a stainless steel plaque etched with the number
307.
The style of the etching made the sign look like graffiti.

    I touched the doorbell. I waited. I knocked. I waited some more, hoping for someone's eye to darken the small circle of the peephole in the door. Hoping that Kol would open the door and prove Marty Driver wrong. But that didn't happen.

    Before I returned to the elevator I used the interior landmarks around me—the elevators, the fire stairs, and a tall, thin solitary window that faced toward busy Canyon Boulevard—to try to ascertain the exposure that number 307 would have to the street. It appeared that Kol's unit, or his purported unit, would indeed face both Canyon and Broadway and have fine views to the west and to the south.

    Back out on the sidewalk I screened my eyes and looked up toward the windows that I thought belonged to 307. I saw nothing but glare. I crossed over to the other side of Canyon and looked up again. From that vantage, it was apparent that there was nothing about the unit that made it appear to have been occupied. No window coverings. No planters on the small balcony.

    
Shit.
Absolutely unbidden, Kol's words from our last session exploded into my head:
"I mean it's not like what happened
with . . . your dad."
Those words were immediately followed by a visual image of the note on my door—
The second hap
pened here
—and by Sam's questions from earlier that morning:
"What about your family?"

    
Oh my God—Kol
does
know about my father.

    
Kol knows.
Then, chasing it like a wolf after prey,
Does
McClelland?

I DIDN'T notice the bandanna until I got home from my unsuccessful search for Kol's loft. The kerchief may have been there when I'd driven away from the house, but if it was I had missed it.

    Adrienne, our neighbor, owned the small barn that had been part of the original ranch property. The barn backed up to the edge of the ridge at the southern end of the lane. Behind the barn the ridge dropped off into an undulating valley before rising up toward the scenic overlook on Highway 36.

    Adrienne's husband, Peter, since deceased, had expanded and renovated the barn into a shop for his carpentry studio. The new garage that Lauren and I built in the intervening years partially obscured our view of the barn from the front of our house. As I drove back in the lane from town the bright blue fabric of the bandanna that was tied in a loose knot around the handles of the sliding barn doors was hard to miss.

    My mouth fell open when I saw it. My mind made most of the connections without any conscious direction. The bandanna was a thunderstorm parked over a canyon, unleashing a flash flood from my past. But the bandanna didn't feel like a mere trigger for my memory. I knew instantly that it was also a warning.

    Before his arrest, the bandanna had become McClelland's terrorist calling card. Old feelings of vulnerability washed over me.
Cicero. Oh my God.
After he'd stolen my dog—it was his way of boasting that he could get to me at will—he'd tied a bandanna around her neck before returning her.

    I stopped the car near the garage and hit the button on the opener. The big door swung up. Lauren's car was absent from her parking space. She wasn't home. I wasn't aware that I had stopped breathing, but when I spotted the empty stall in the garage, I felt my lungs fill again. I told myself that my family was safe and I tried to believe it.

    I killed the engine and ran back toward the house. I fumbled trying to unlock the door, dropping the keys twice in the process. I finally got the key in the lock and the door open and found Emily and Anvil waiting eagerly on the other side.

    The dogs were fine. To their great dismay I left them in the house and retraced my steps toward the barn. By then I was convinced that the message of this bandanna was not about the dogs—it was about the barn.

    After her husband's death years before, Adrienne had never been able to bring herself to use Peter's studio for anything other than household storage. I knew that Peter's tools and power equipment would be in the same locations they were when he died. Discarded furniture from the house and toys that Jonas had outgrown would be piled haphazardly wherever Adrienne had left them. Most of the mess was just inside the front doors.

    I tried to remember the last time I had been in the barn. It had been years.

    I stepped up to the rolling doors. As always, they were secured together by a galvanized hook and rasp and a big brass padlock. The lock appeared undisturbed.

    The addition Peter had built on the western edge of the structure had a shed roof and a solitary window facing the lane. I cupped my hand over my eyes and peered through the dirty glass. Peter's longest workbench was shrouded in duck cloth, as it had been since his death.

    Nothing seemed out of place.

    I stepped back and tried to spot any sign of forced entry on the front of the barn. The windows were intact. All that was unusual was the bandanna loosely tying the door handles together.

    I began a slow march around the building, starting with Peter's addition. No broken glass. I peeked in each window. Stepped back to check the condition of the skylights. I saw nothing of concern. The two square windows high on the barn's southern gable were intact. I kept walking.

    The only other door into the building was on the east side, just around the south corner. When I turned that corner I saw the door was open about an inch, propped in place with a brick.

    
Michael McClelland.
He'd been there. In the barn. Through that door. He wanted me to know that he'd been there. He could have closed the door. He probably could have relocked it. But he didn't. McClelland had left it open so that I would find it. He'd left the bandanna so that I wouldn't miss it.

    Why? So that I could find whatever it was that he had left for me inside.

    Was he in there? Was this
mano a mano
time? I backtracked to the garage and pulled my favorite old softball bat from the jumble of sports equipment that Lauren and I kept stashed in a plastic bin in the far corner. I thought of calling Sam but I rejected the idea. I knew he'd take over and ultimately he wouldn't let me see whatever was inside the barn. Ditto for the Boulder County sheriff.

    My wife had a carry permit for a handgun. I wondered if I'd feel safer with her semiautomatic in my hand.

    Three things gave me pause about the gun. One, I'd never fired it. Two, given the fact that McClelland was on the loose, I was relatively certain Lauren had the gun with her. In her purse. Or in her briefcase. Certainly in her car.

    The third thing was the most compelling: my history with guns was far from illustrious.

    I settled for the bat. And a dog. I went back to the house and got Emily and put her on a lead. Bringing Anvil wasn't an option; despite his tough-guy posing he wasn't built for combat any more than I was. Bouviers with fangs bared are, on the other hand, terrifying.

    Although I have significantly more power from the right I've always been able to make decent contact from the left side of the plate. Given the location of the open door—on the far end of the east wall—I decided to walk inside the barn batting goofy. The danger, if it came, would most likely be on my right as I stepped inside. The instant I sensed any jeopardy I was going to swing at danger as though it were a high fastball.

    I was hoping Emily would be a beacon for me, would give me a little warning about what was coming. When she sensed something, she'd pull back onto her haunches as she snarled and showed her teeth. When I felt her warning I'd swing at the letters. Letter-high is where the meat would be. I didn't need a home run. Swinging high—above the level of Emily's head— would keep her safe.