Blood Runs Cold (9 page)

Ren loved the sound, the resistance, the effort of walking through snow. She made her way down Washington Avenue toward Main Street, looking out at the mountains across the lightening, early-morning sky. Four peaks from the Tenmile Range – seven through ten – made up the Breckenridge ski area and were the draw that boosted the population from three thousand to twenty-seven thousand at peak season.

The Breckenridge Welcome Center was at the corner of the Blue River Plaza on Main Street. Ren walked through the small foyer into the first room of the exhibition on gold and silver mining in the area – eight thousand six hundred acres of shiny economy. And when it all dried up, the only thing that rescued Breck from ghost-town status was the fight put up by the residents.

Main Street used to be dance halls and saloons, and the merchants had Ridge Street. Now Ridge
Street was lined with restaurants, offices, inns and homes. Ren studied a photo montage of the change – the same building and its different roles, different smiling people standing outside each time.

She went upstairs to find the display on Quandary Peak. It was the highest peak in the Tenmile Range. Jean Transom’s body had been found off the East Ridge trail, which was a recently carved route – less than ten years old. Ren pulled her camera out of her jacket pocket and took photos of the display.

She ran into Colin Grabien on her way out the door.

‘Having a tourism moment?’ said Colin.

‘I’m actually researching,’ said Ren.

‘Researching is great,’ said Colin. ‘Everything is covered. Do you use coffee as a fuel expense?’

‘I’m getting to know Breck, the …’
This sounds
dumb
.

‘You think Jean was killed by the ghost of an old prospector? Or maybe, like the Brown, a dead madam rose up for revenge against the right-minded.’

Ren frowned. ‘What?’

‘You haven’t been to the Brown Hotel? A madam was shot dead on the attic stairs. She was going to turn the place into “a house of ill-repute”.’
Air quotes
. ‘The owner vanished,’ said Colin. ‘You should go – weird shit happens in the ladies toilets.’

They both paused.

‘And can I ask?’ said Ren, ‘while you’re giving me a hard time, what that has to do with solving this case?’

‘I’m not giving you a hard time,’ said Colin. ‘Who said that?’

‘Yeah, like those people who say, “I’m not criticizing you, but …”’
Why am I having this
conversation?

‘I was meeting the owner,’ said Colin. ‘I thought if Jean had paid the place a visit, he could have something for us.’

‘I’m not feeling the whole Jean-in-brothel vibe,’ said Ren.

‘But you’re feeling the whole Jean-in-historic-Breckenridge
vibe
…’

‘I’m feeling the need to keep on working here. Gotta go.’

‘Dinner later with the guys at Kenosha. Six thirty.’

‘Great.’
I’ll be back at the inn, sticking hot needles
in my eyes
. She looked at her watch. ‘I’m giving a briefing shortly. So I’ll see you back at the Sheriff’s Office then, anyway.’

He looked at her. She smiled.

‘In Bob’s office?’ said Colin.

‘Like we’re all going to fit in Bob’s office,’ said Ren. ‘The Sheriff’s Office I refer to is the entire building. It covers all the offices, including Bob’s and the one that has been loaned out to us. Bob’s office is
Bob’s office
. We’ll be meeting in the conference room.’

‘Thanks for clearing that up so slowly,’ said Colin.

‘Aw,’ said Ren. ‘Thanks for listening so loudly.’

Ren was walking the hallway to her office when she heard Mike saying, ‘Oh, good God, she’s a train wreck.’

His voice was coming from Bob’s office. Ren knocked on the open door and walked in.

‘Are you talking about me?’ she said.

Mike turned and smiled. He pointed at the television screen in the corner.

‘Bob, turn that up,’ he said.

Bob grabbed the remote control and the voice of Casey Bonaventure filled the room.

‘… disappearance in February last year of twenty-eight-year-old Mark Allen Wilson, whose body has never been found. Wilson was last seen at the Brockton Filly, a bar five miles outside Breckenridge at the base of Quandary Peak – a mountain that in the past year has cast a shadow over the lives of two families –’

Bob shook his head. ‘Jesus, Casey is something else. I told her to go off and do some research, and she comes back with this non-story again.’ He turned down the television.

‘Hey,’ said Ren. ‘That could have been interesting.’

‘Seriously, it’s not,’ said Bob. ‘Missing guy from out-of-town, drinking all evening at the Filly, gets
loaded, gets into a brawl, wanders out in the snow, goes to relieve himself in the trees, falls over, hits his head, gets hypothermia, dies. No body, but, hey, that’s the story of our lives around here.’

‘That’s it?’ said Ren. ‘No trace of him?’

‘Nope,’ said Bob. ‘Last person he was seen hanging out with in the bar was a guy called Terrence Haggart. And when I say “hanging out with”, I mean “getting badly beaten by”. Next thing, Wilson’s reported missing. And never shows up again. So, there you have it.’

‘I see,’ said Ren. ‘Has the family given you guys a hard time?’

‘He was an alcoholic they had no time for,’ said Bob.

‘That’s very sad,’ said Ren. ‘An illness that seems too recreational for people to do anything about until it’s too late.’

‘Whatever,’ said Mike.

‘Has anyone seen Tiny Gressett?’ said Ren.

‘Last time I saw him,’ said Mike, ‘he was in the kitchen down the hall.’

‘Thanks, see you later.’

Gressett was on his way out of the kitchen with a coffee.

‘Tiny?’ said Ren.

He stopped, but didn’t turn around. ‘Yes?’

She walked around him to face him. ‘I know you probably didn’t have that kind of relationship
with her, and that women can be tricky to read at the best of times, right? But can I ask you about Jean’s personal life?’

Gressett nodded. ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Did she talk about boyfriends or dating? Did anyone ever come pick her up from work, or meet her for lunch?’

He frowned. ‘Not that I can think of.’

‘She never went to lunch with anyone else?’

‘She ate at the office a lot … or we went together.’

God help her
.

‘I don’t know after that,’ said Gressett. ‘She could have. I’ve seen her in Sacred Grounds a couple times with a magazine. It’s a coffee shop in Glenwood.’

‘So, alone?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Always.’

‘Did she seem interested in dating?’

‘In dating? Well, she kept to herself. Maybe she liked it that way.’

Ren nodded. ‘Did you ever get the feeling, maybe, that …’

‘That what? She didn’t like dating?’

‘Do you think there’s any possibility that Jean could have been gay?’

‘I would say absolutely not.’ He almost recoiled.

You asshole
.

‘Nothing wrong with it, if she was,’ said Ren.

He looked at Ren sideways, then tried to recover. ‘I … I know that … It’s just … she wasn’t.’

‘Maybe it was something she kept hidden,’ said Ren.
Because of your biased ass
. ‘So, just as far as
you
know, she didn’t go on any dates, that you were aware of, while she worked with you.’

‘
Our
relationship was strictly professional, if that’s what you mean.’

No, that’s not what I meant, but knock yourself out
.

‘So she wouldn’t have talked to you about her personal life?’ said Ren.

‘No. No, she would not.’

‘And to Todd?’

He snorted. ‘Does he look like someone you’d confide in?’

Tiny Gressett, your mask is slipping
.

Ren stood at the top of the conference room, waiting for everyone to make their way in. After ten minutes, her patience had taken a turn for the worse.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I don’t have time to wait for everyone, so I’m just going to start. Thank you, first of all, for the information that’s been coming through. We have Jean’s phone records from her home and office, so we’ll be working through them to see what we come up with. We have yet to locate the second cellphone.

‘From the detectives here at the Sheriff’s Office, we have a list of people in Breckenridge with priors, and we’re following those up.

‘We got a positive ID from several of the staff members at the Rifle Creek movie theater. And Jean was alone that night.

‘We also found out that she had been to Breckenridge, Wednesday, January third and had
shopped at Wardwell’s, an outdoor clothing store on Main Street, owned by Malcolm Wardwell, run by him and his son, Jason. I looked into them both, and it appears Malcolm Wardwell was locked up briefly for child pornography in the seventies. Does anyone from the Sheriff’s Office here have any more details?’

Mike and Bob shook their heads.

‘Has there been any trouble since?’ said Ren.

‘No,’ said Bob. ‘Model citizen …’ He shrugged.

‘And do people know about him?’ said Ren.

‘It’s not like people are stoning the store,’ said Mike. ‘Some of the locals know, but obviously there’s always new people drifting in and out, people moving away. And I think he was living in Frisco at the time, so that bit of distance helped him out.’

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘Jean was working on some child abuse cases – the most recent in Silverthorne and Dillon. Nothing in Breck, nothing in the last three months, and nothing to do with Wardwell – right?’

‘That’s correct,’ said Gressett.

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘What we don’t have: there was no cellphone found at the scene. It’s unlikely the unsub left either of them with her, if she was carrying them. And even if he did, the phone was probably lost in the slide. We don’t have Jean’s vehicle – a silver Subaru Forester – but we do have someone who came forward to say, among
other things, that he may have seen it in the parking lot at a bar called the Brockton Filly. His name is Salem Swade – a Vietnam vet who lives in an old miner’s cabin up on Quandary.

‘The Brockton Filly is right near the base of Quandary and is run by Jean’s one-three-seven – confidential informant. His name is Billy Waites. Gary Dettling from Safe Streets has more on Waites’ background.’

‘OK,’ said Gary, ‘In the late Nineties, Billy Waites was part of a narcotics operation, run by an ex-Navy Seal, ex-SAS guy, and a German communications expert. And then their distribution network. They were bringing drugs in from Colombia. The drugs would come in on a tugboat to whatever port; the guys who ran the operation would have already rented some luxury home in the area. They’d set up their communications, whatever they needed to do. And they’d go from there.’

‘How were they caught?’ said Cliff.

‘One of the shipments was intercepted by the coastguard and some of the guys turned. They were allowed to complete the drop – this particular time it was in Atlanta. The subordinates were all using throwaway phones so we couldn’t trace them back to anyone. Eventually, OCDEF convinced a judge they had probable cause. They did a Title III, the place was bugged. They had guys sitting on the wires every day who couldn’t get shit. The gang were using codes, talking about
their families every couple of minutes – they knew the drill. And that’s where Billy Waites came in. Waites is smart. He was the codes guy. But the code was finally cracked and we were able to take them down. And Waites turned.’

‘Was Waites a user?’ said Ren.

Gary nodded. ‘He was working as a prep chef in a restaurant. There was a lot of blow going around. That’s when he got caught up with the gang. One of the distributors brings in meth, Billy tries it, gets hooked. After a year, he packs himself off to a cabin in the mountains for two months to detox. And he did it. But came right back into the business.’

‘So he cleans up, comes out of his cabin rehab, and throws himself back into the whole scene?’ said Ren. She paused. ‘Will power.’

Gary gave her his patient look. He kept talking: ‘He was dealing again, but not using, according to Jean, who would recount her meetings with Billy Waites to her colleague, Todd Austerval.’

‘But how did she know he wasn’t still using?’

‘She’d know. Jean didn’t have a problem with him. He was relieved to co-operate. He was very grateful –’

‘Aren’t they all?’ said Colin. ‘Grateful … and manipulative.’

‘The head guy in the gang was insane,’ said Gary. ‘By the end, Waites had had enough.’

‘So … Waites and Jean,’ said Ren.

‘We have no record of her calling Waites that night, but if this Salem guy is correct, she did pay him a visit around the time she disappeared.’

‘I’ll go talk to him tonight,’ said Ren.

‘OK,’ said Gary. ‘I’ll pass his file over to you. Maybe you could go with Todd Austerval.’

‘Sure,’ said Ren. ‘I just need to go home, pick up my Jeep.’

Ren needed a ride back to her house in Golden – an hour’s drive east on I-70 toward Denver – to pick up her newly repaired Jeep and some supplies. Robbie offered to take her. She wasn’t feeling sociable enough for him, but she said yes. She threw him one-word answers, but he had enough questions to keep it going indefinitely. It had been a while since she rode with him.

‘So – big case,’ said Robbie.

Ren glanced at him. ‘Yes.’

‘Murder of a federal agent.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re heading it up.’

‘Yes.’

‘I wasn’t going to say anything, but …’

Uh-oh
.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘Colin thinks you and Paul Louderback … you know …’

‘That’s so weird,’ said Ren. ‘When Gary got
Colin to head up whatever, I thought he and Gary … you know …’

Robbie glanced at her. ‘I was just saying what I heard.’

‘Who else was in on this conversation?’ said Ren.

‘A few of the others.’

‘You’re like a bunch of old ladies in a hair salon. Christ. Paul Louderback and I did not … you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘So, how’s Vincent?’ said Robbie.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ren. She paused. ‘I might be about to find out.’

‘He’ll be home?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why don’t you call him?’

‘Why? It doesn’t matter if he’s home or not. I’m just going in, picking up clothes and leaving.’

‘Are you sure? I’m not going to sit out in the car like a loser while you have some big, emotional reunion.’

Robbie’s cellphone rang. He answered. ‘Really? Sure. OK. Not a problem.’

‘Slight detour here,’ said Robbie. ‘There’s a body in the cooler I need to check out.’

‘Here?’

He nodded.

‘Did it come in from Summit County?’ said Ren.

Robbie shook his head. ‘No – Clear Creek.’

* * *

The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office was in a government complex ten minutes from Main Street, Golden. Dr Tolman was an on-call pathologist for sixteen counties, including Summit County and Clear Creek County.

‘Male, late forties,’ said Tolman as he let them in. ‘He was found in the Clear Creek River. Some numb-nut deputy coroner brought him here, didn’t call anyone, didn’t quite pick up on the fact that this was a gunshot wound. The water had washed all the blood away.’

‘Even so …’ said Ren.

‘I know,’ said Tolman.

They walked in to where the body was laid out on the stainless steel.

Denis Lasco stood by the scales.

‘Hello again,’ said Ren.

‘Hello, there,’ said Lasco.

‘Back on the job already?’

‘With a heavy heart,’ he said, holding up what he had just taken from the chest cavity.

Ren smiled.

‘When I realized the only thing to jump my bones recently was a corpse, I knew I had to get back out in the world.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Ren. She gestured to Robbie. ‘This is my colleague, Robbie Truax.’

‘I was thinking of easing my way back into the job,’ said Lasco, ‘start with some paperwork, come down here, bring some notes to the doc. And
here I am, suited up, today’s head sawer-offer and chest cracker.’ He looked at them. ‘His assistant called in sick. Next thing two bodies require attention. We had a DWPA,’ said Lasco. ‘And then this.’

Ren was nodding when she realized she had no idea what he meant. ‘What’s a DWPA?’

Lasco smiled. ‘Death With Paramedic Assistance.’

‘Ooh,’ said Ren, smiling back. Robbie cracked up.

‘He was an old guy, heart attack,’ said Lasco. ‘I’m sorry, but these flatlander doctors run all these health checks at sea level, then give people the all-clear to go up two miles on vacation. It’s crazy. It’s sad. I just hate seeing those wives when their husbands are lying dead of a heart attack. Unless those wives are under thirty. Then I’m wondering whose idea was it to take a high-altitude holiday? “Honey, come on up where your heart is going to have to work harder. And maybe in a couple days, my bank balance won’t.”’

‘Grim,’ said Ren.

‘Totally,’ said Lasco. ‘And, natural causes, ski accidents, ODs – it’s unbelievable how mercenary the families are.
They’re
the ones with the death grip, know what I mean? I have pried credit cards and jewelry out of their hands. Can you imagine? Now I photocopy every single personal belonging that comes in with the body. It’s disgusting. It really is disgusting. I’m laying out wallets and ski passes and drivers’ licenses and
frickin’ Chapstick on my photocopier …’ He shook his head.

‘Karma will get them,’ said Ren. ‘I really believe that. You can’t live a greedy life like that without it coming back and biting you in the ass …’

Robbie nodded.

‘I hope so,’ said Lasco. He pointed to a shelf unit by the wall. ‘OK – suits and masks are over there.’

Ren and Robbie put them on. When they were done, they looked around for a box of booties. Ren noticed that Tolman’s stylish leather shoes were uncovered. Lasco caught her.

He spoke quietly. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t wear them. And I’m sorry, these are mine. I’ve no extras.’

Ren looked down at her two-hundred-dollar lace-up hiking boots.

‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

‘I’ve done the chest already,’ said Lasco, when they were standing at the body.

‘So,’ said Tolman, ‘GSW to the back of the head. Exit wound here in the lower jaw … Denis, help me out here.’

He and Lasco turned the body over. Ren couldn’t take her eyes off it. She didn’t notice the liquid draining from the chest cavity on to the floor. The men stepped back in time. Ren’s boots took a hit.

‘Aw, shit,’ she said.

Lasco ran and got her some paper towels, coming
back to hand them to her with a face that said they both knew it wouldn’t make much difference.

‘Shit,’ she said again. But she barely drew her eyes away from the body.

‘Do you want to go take them off some place?’ said Tolman, pointing to her boots.

She shook her head, motioned for him to continue.

‘Anyway, what I was showing you was this,’ said Tolman, drawing his finger down the spine. ‘The victim’s cachectic, so you can –’

‘He’s what?’ said Robbie.

‘Look at him,’ said Ren, pointing to the body. ‘What do you think it means?’

Robbie glanced at her. So did Tolman. Ren would have blushed if she was able.

‘Skinny?’ said Robbie.

‘Basically,’ said Dr Tolman.

Ren was staring at the body. ‘He’s … got scoliosis.’

‘Yes,’ said Tolman. ‘Yes. That’s what I was going to show you – how clearly you can see the curvature of the spine.’

Robbie elbowed Ren. ‘Ren … are you there?’

‘What?’ said Ren. ‘Yes, sorry. OK – so this dirtbag was found in the Clear Creek River …’

‘Yes,’ said Tolman. ‘In a foot of water. Hadn’t gone too far, no injuries from rocks and not there very long.’ He looked at them. There was hope in his expression. ‘I guess I was on high alert because of your colleague on Quandary. I don’t know any details, I’ll be waiting for Denis here’s report, but anything suspicious …’ He was talking faster to get it over with in case he was wrong. ‘’Cos of where this guy was found, I was thinking maybe he was on the back way out of Summit County. It could mean something.’ He shrugged.

‘It does,’ said Ren.

They all looked at her.

‘But my guess is he wasn’t on his way
out
of Summit County. He was leaving Denver on his way
to
Summit County, until he heard the news that the FBI and God-knows-who-else would be heading along I-70 that way too. Instead, he and his buddies went through the Canyon and something this guy did pissed off the posse.’

‘Specific,’ said Robbie.

‘A hunch,’ said Ren.