Alex Barclay - Harm's Reach

Where were you going? What were you hoping to do? Had you named your baby, had you picked out clothes, painted a nursery?

Stop.

Ren stared up at the sky, but the clouds were moving too quickly, morphing into strange shapes, drawing her eyes left and right, making her head spin. She lowered her head and let out a deep breath.

She looked into the car. There was an iPod on the floor, some candy wrappers. She looked into the back. There was a pair of women’s shoes behind the passenger seat. Ren glanced down at the victim — she was wearing silver and blue sneakers, but she had nice black pants on, ones she could have dressed up with different shoes.

Maternity pants...

‘She either had a passenger or was about to have one,’ said Ren to Gary. ‘A lady driver would keep her change of shoes in the passenger well, unless she didn’t want them in the way of a passenger. Where was the purse?’

‘Behind the passenger seat,’ said Gary.

‘Someone was about to join her very soon,’ said Ren. ‘Driving alone, she would have that beside her otherwise.’

Ren looked around the car, the trees, the road. She walked out into the middle of the road and did it all over again.

‘So,’ she said, ‘the car was parked. If this woman had arranged to meet someone... she could have chosen this spot, where the trees are diseased... there’s just one short stretch of reddish brown along this part.’

They turned as a Jeep came toward them.

‘It’s Dr T,’ said Ren.

Barry Tolman was the Medical Examiner for Jefferson County. He was quiet and unassuming, a dignified pacifist of a man who got to see the results of the violent happenings of Jefferson County and sixteen other counties. They met him by the victim’s car.

‘Hello, there, Ren, Gary.’

‘Hi, Dr Tolman,’ said Ren.

‘You’re going to have to start calling me Barry.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ren. ‘I know. My parents drilled respect for doctors into me.’

‘You can say “elders”,’ said Tolman.

Ren laughed.

‘This is what I’m talking about...’ said Tolman, looking down at the body.

‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘I read your interview in the Post .’

‘I am a tired old man,’ he said. ‘No one is listening. “People kill people, not guns”, “Take the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill”. It’s always the crazy activists with the catchphrases. Like the mere act of repeating their mantras legitimizes them. Hell, a sane guy buying a gun is not necessarily going to be sane ten months later when he walks in on his wife sleeping with his best friend... or when he’s up to his eyeballs in debt and his employer throws him out on the street... Do we hand this person a weapon that can kill sixty people? The voices inside are the loudest.’

‘New World Order,’ said Ren. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’

He smiled. ‘What is the sorry tale here?’

More cars began to pull up: Sheriff’s Office investigators, and Kohler.

Gary waited until they had all gathered before he filled them in.

Crime scene investigators arrived and began processing the scene.

‘We’ll leave you guys to this,’ said Gary. ‘Ren and I will pay a visit to the abbey...’

‘Would eight a.m. tomorrow morning work for you?’ said Tolman.

‘An autopsy,’ said Ren, ‘always a bright start to the day.’

The temperature was rising and the sun beating down as they arrived at the abbey, deepening the rich brown of the clay roof tiles, making the white stucco walls glow. Evergreen Abbey was Spanish Colonial Revival; a protruding porch, curved gables and parapets, and a vast arcaded entrance under an arched window of similar size. The rest of the building was set back, spreading out on both sides, with perfect rows of arched windows. The building was simple, elegant, welcoming, but austere.

‘Wow,’ said Ren.

‘Everyone should work in a building with a little history,’ said Gary.

‘I thank you for that every day,’ said Ren. Though the main FBI building in Denver was a dazzling new office on 36th Avenue, the Safe Streets team, at Gary’s insistence, worked out of a building that was only ten minutes, but a world away in The Livestock Exchange Building, built in 1886.

They walked up the abbey steps to the huge wooden door. Ren rang the intercom bell and they were buzzed in to a cool, dark foyer, tiled in an ornate pattern of rich blue, yellow and white. There was no office, just two battered leather sofas and a door with pin code access.

‘I think we’re in some kind of delousing chamber,’ said Ren. ‘They know where I’ve been.’

The internal door opened and a woman in her late fifties walked through. She looked more bohemian gallery owner than head of a retreat for women. She had short, springy black hair with a narrow, off-center band of gray curving through it.

‘Eleanor Jensen,’ she said, shaking Ren’s hand first. ‘You’re very welcome.’

‘SSA Gary Dettling,’ said Gary. Gary’s tone had fallen on the right side of confident, the side that didn’t make him sound like an arrogant asshole, which he wasn’t. Ren had seen how some people reacted to him if his tone was off.

With Eleanor Jensen, she saw a flash of something different across her face. Ren sometimes forgot how Gary fit so well with how women imagined an FBI agent to be: tall, fit, serious, in control. He was the handsome hero who made them feel safe. And made them want to sleep with him.

He had never made Ren feel she wanted to sleep with him. Sleep with? No. Fuck hard all night? Yes.

But he was her boss. And he was a loyal husband, with a teenage daughter. And he had no interest in her. And he gave nothing sexual away.

Which makes you sexier. Which annoys me when it occurs to me.

She and Gary had been alone together many late nights — in the office or in some strange bar in a strange town during a boring investigation... and she sometimes felt that, after the tip-you-over final beers, they almost bounded off to their separate beds in relief.

Disaster averted...

I. Am. In. An. Abbey. Jesus.

I haven’t had sex in nine days. Nine!

Ben Rader, come back.

Give my roaming filth a destination.

Eleanor Jensen led them through a beautiful carved wooden door into a white marble hallway.

‘We’ll go up to the library,’ she said.

‘Well, that’s an offer we can’t refuse,’ said Ren.

‘It is rather beautiful,’ said Eleanor. ‘The first abbess here was a well-known author. She wrote many books on the Benedictine life. We pretty much live by those principles.’

You are babbling for comfort. You came to this remote place for a reason, to shelter from the cruel outside world, and now it has crept in after you.

Ren’s cell phone rang, startling her, a violation in the quiet hallways. It was Janine.

‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to take this,’ said Ren. She stopped.

‘Ren? Apparently, there was a second call from The Darned Heart saying that they had the burning vehicle under control, that there was no need to involve the fire department or the Sheriff’s Office. I just called them there to tell them, under the circumstances, that we would be sending investigators.’

‘And whose vehicle was it?’ said Ren.

‘A car belonging to Burt Kendall — from Kendall’s Auto Sales and Auto Parts. He also provides machine operators for his vehicles. They’re digging foundations for building work at the ranch. They don’t work Mondays. They had left some vehicles and machines there over the weekend.’

‘OK,’ said Ren. ‘See you in a little while.’