Alex Barclay: Harm's Reach

‘He’s coming our way,’ said Cliff. ‘Eyes on the map.’

Jefferson County stretched westward from the city of Denver up into the mountains bordering Gilpin County, Clear Creek and Park. It was seven hundred and seventy square miles of every crime and mentality that came from spanning big cities and boondocks.

The Conifer locals unlucky enough to have been present when their Wells Fargo was hit were feeling a little plagued. It was not long ago they had been hit by a wildfire that moved as if it had plans to rescale the town and bring it back to its roots. Over the years, Conifer had been expanding slowly, adding grocery stores, gas stations and charmed out-of-towners who settled in the foothills until the snow startled them out of their mountain fantasy and into Kendall Auto Sales looking for tire chains.

But the unpredictable snowfall was nothing compared to the onslaught of the wildfire. It roared and spat at them for two weeks, darkening their skies, driving them from their beds or keeping them lying awake in them, fearing for everything. And then, it was gone. The fire died before it took away a single home. The firefighters had not performed a miracle as some people saw it. The firefighters had carefully strategized, and won a war; only the charred landscape bore the scars.

Detective Denis Kohler from the Sheriff’s Office walked over to Ren, Cliff and Gary. Kohler was tall and flat-bodied, with a lean to one side and a slight bow to his legs. His brown hair flopped across the right side of his forehead and he often ran his fingers through it, even though it was too short to get in his eyes.

‘OK, our guys followed your bandits ten miles,’ he said. ‘Looked like they were headed for Bailey, but they lost them. The car was found on a service road, torched. They made off on foot.’

‘That’s new for them...’ said Ren.

‘Well, they had the full weight of the JeffCo Sheriff’s Office bearing down on them this time,’ said Kohler, smiling.

Ren laughed. She liked Kohler. ‘Did they find anything in the car?’ she said.

‘It’s destroyed,’ said Kohler. ‘Looks like they crashed first. We’re waiting for it to be towed.’

‘And it was taken from the parking lot at the spa outside the business center...’ said Gary.

‘Yup, a lady customer came out — car was gone,’ said Kohler.

Ren shook her head. ‘I don’t know why women feel the need to go to spas, said no woman ever.’

‘What about cameras?’ said Gary.

‘We don’t have a lot to go on with this route,’ said Kohler. ‘We’ve spoken with CDOT, we’ll see what they’ve got.’

‘Gary,’ said Cliff, ‘I have that appointment, so, if you’re all OK here?’

‘Sure,’ said Gary, ‘go ahead.’

Cliff hugged Ren.

‘Bye, big guy,’ she said. ‘We shall avenge another day.’

‘Take care, Cliff,’ said Kohler.

Ren stared down at the map. ‘Is this the service road?’

Kohler looked at where she was pointing. ‘Yes.’

‘Would you mind if Gary and I swung by?’ said Ren. ‘That’s right by Pine Gulch Cemetery. They could have gone through there, come out the other side and grabbed a car from that garage.’ She pointed again. ‘If they did that, they could have driven right down Pine Valley Road. They may not have been heading for Bailey after all. Or at the very least, Pine Valley Road was a panic move...’

‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Kohler.

‘Gary?’ said Ren. Earth to Gary.

He nodded. ‘Sure. Great.’

No car had been stolen from the garage by Pine Gulch Cemetery. Gary swung back around and they drove down Pine Valley Road, past where the Sheriff’s Office detectives and crime scene investigators were waiting for a tow truck to take the charred shell of the getaway car back to the lab.

‘That’s the spa lady’s...’ said Ren. ‘She probably came out of there with her little disposable flip-flops... or flaming red upper lip... mascara under her eyes, desperate to get home before she met someone.’

Gary tuned Ren out a lot. But today, the radio wasn’t even on. She stared out the window. The road was quiet, dusty, and bordered by pines, but if you looked through them, you could see where the wildfire had taken many of them away. They drove for fifteen minutes in silence; the type that only Gary could create — a very specific and dense one.

Breathe.

They rounded a bend onto Stoney Pass Road and drove a little further.

‘Hey,’ said Ren.

Gary had no reaction.

You are a very distracted man, lately. ‘Slow down,’ said Ren.

Up ahead, a white Hyundai Accent was parked at the side of the road. The passenger door was closed, the driver’s door, half open.

‘We could be in luck,’ said Ren, sitting forward.

Gary slowed.

‘Rental plates,’ said Ren. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa... what the hell? That’s a body...’

Gary cut the engine. They jumped out of the SUV and drew their weapons. Slowly, they walked toward the car.

‘It’s a woman,’ said Ren.

She had been shot in the head at close range; there was little left of her face. She had also been shot in the chest, her ruined torso half out of the car; one arm dangling down, the ends of her pale brown hair trailing in the dirt.

‘She hasn’t been here long,’ said Ren. She checked her watch. It was 15.48.

‘One to the head, one to the chest,’ said Gary.

‘Looks like whoever shot her was standing in the open passenger door. Look at the spatter.’

Gary nodded.

‘The glove box is open,’ said Ren, ‘maybe she was trying to get something out of there... a weapon... a purse... Or maybe the shooter was.’

‘They tried to wipe it down,’ said Gary. ‘Carjacking?’ he said. ‘Could be connected to the robbery. The bandits ditched their car, flagged her down, maybe... didn’t take the car because they were disturbed? Or panicked?’

‘Would a woman pull over if she was alone?’

‘Unless she wasn’t alone...’

‘Hey,’ said Ren, pointing to the ground. ‘Cell phone.’

She put on gloves and picked it up. When she stood up, she looked into the car again. All at once, she could feel her heart lurch, her legs weaken, her stomach turn.

Oh, no. No. No. No.

She stared up at Gary. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘She’s pregnant.’

Janine Hooks, Jefferson County Cold Case detective, walked into her office for the last time. On her desk was a potted plant, wrapped in tissue, a burst of pink in the dimness of a Seventies-style office in shades of brown, with half-closed vertical blinds that, even if open, would reveal nothing more scenic than the parking lot of the JeffCo government complex.

Janine often sat in the visitor’s chair at her small desk with her back to the door... and from behind, got mistaken for a man. Or worse still, a boy. ‘Son, I’m looking for...’

But it didn’t make her move. She didn’t want to watch the passing parade, she didn’t want to be watched. And now she would be; her boss had told her she had to move down the hallway to an open-plan, fluorescent-bright office with three other investigators. It felt like a step backwards and she was experiencing unpleasant cubicle memory. She wondered was he trying to force her into the world; a world to which she had been an adjunct since 2005, when she’d solved her first cold case in between her regular workload. When the sergeant who appointed her retired, he took her aside a few minutes before his speech.

‘I’m going to tell you something,’ he had said, ‘and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. Years ago, I walked into that tidy little cubicle of yours, and I see all these photos of dogs. I mean, we’d been working together a while at this stage, but it was just this particular day, I walked in and I really looked at everything you had around you, all the things that were dear to you. And there’s this one photo of a dog with a bone. And the light in his eyes was a spectacular thing. He was fierce. He was gripping this bone, no one would take it away from him, and he was so goddamn happy. And I swear to God, I thought — that is Janine Hooks.’