Alex Barclay: Time of Death

Ren pulled up outside Annie Lowell’s house. It was eight p.m., she had taken a break from the office. There were appointments you could bend or break, but calling on a beloved eighty-year-old woman was sacred.

Annie welcomed Ren with a hug that brought a rush of memories from a time when their height difference went the other way. Annie was five feet tall; Ren was five seven.

Everything about Annie Lowell was warm and pastel-colored and soft-focus.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you before now,’ said Ren.

‘Sweetheart, do not give that a second thought,’ said Annie.

‘Thank you,’ said Ren. ‘I am so honored you asked me to do this. The motel is killing me.’

Ren took in the house: a William Lang, designed in the late 1800s. One of Denver’s most famous architects, he had built the homes of the rich and famous until the Silver Crash swept their wealth away. Lang fell from such a height that he never recovered and died a pauper, a thousand miles from the city where he had made such a mark.

Annie led her into the formal living room and sat on the hardbacked sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands in her lap. Ren smiled.

What a lady. And what an uncomfortable sofa.

Annie had bought the tumble-down house and restored it with money from a life insurance policy she didn’t even know her late husband had. She had been widowed as long as Ren had known her and in all that time she had never looked at another man. On her ring finger were the same three beautiful rings she had always worn — engagement, wedding and eternity.

‘Did you know that this home was Edward’s last gift to me?’ said Annie. ‘I feel as though he led me right to this door. In the jacket pocket he was wearing when he died, there was a little ticket for a yellow tie he had left at the laundry. I loved that yellow tie, so I went to pick it up. I know that sounds a little silly, but I didn’t want to leave it there. On my way back to the house we had been living in, I took a wrong turn and I ended up outside here.’ She stared off into the past. ‘It looked as broken as my heart.’

‘I never knew all this.’

‘I think messages are around us every day — you just have to be open to them.’

‘I must have been sending one out to you from my motel room,’ said Ren.

Annie smiled. Her gaze wandered to a spot on the wall opposite them.

‘Oh my goodness,’ said Ren, getting up and walking over to the faded photo. It was Ren, her parents and her three older brothers, Matt, Beau and Jay.

‘You must have been five years old there,’ said Annie. ‘Look at you.’

‘Look at the boys,’ said Ren. ‘All sandy brown like Dad. And then me. Do you know, when I was in school, the kids used to tease me. Not in a bad way — it was funny. They’d say, “So…your mother obviously had a visit from the mailman — Big Chief Little Stamps.”’ She pointed to her mother in the photo. ‘I mean, even Mom hasn’t really got my eyes.’

Ren was an ethnic mystery to most. She had passed for Hispanic, Italian and French. But in the shape of her striking brown eyes, the one heritage no one could deny was Native American — from a distant Iroquois past somewhere on her mother’s side.

‘You were such a cutie,’ said Annie, ‘and those boys adored…adore you.’ She squeezed Ren’s hand.

‘We always loved coming here.’

‘And I loved having you.’

Ren’s cell phone rang. She glanced down. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Annie. It’s work.’ It’s always work.

‘Go ahead, take it,’ said Annie.

Ren went into the hall and took the call. She came back in to Annie. ‘I am so sorry. I wanted to spend more time with you.’ I always want to spend more time with the people I care about. ‘But I have to go,’ said Ren. ‘There’s this guy we’re trying to track down, he’s a nasty piece of work and-’

‘Ren, you’ve an important job, you’re a busy woman. I wouldn’t expect you to have the time to spend here.’

‘But you’re being kind enough to give me your house, and I feel I’ve just come in and out.’

‘Oh, it’s only me,’ said Annie. ‘I understand. You are so dear to me. I would be happy to have five minutes with you.’

‘Good Lord, I can’t think why.’ Ren squeezed Annie tight. As she was pulling away from the embrace, she could see two places set for supper on the table behind her. Her heart sank. She hoped it wasn’t meant for her. But she saw a brand-new bottle of her favorite hot chili sauce. Annie pressed the keys of the house into Ren’s hand and hugged her again. Tears welled in Ren’s eyes as she rushed to the Jeep and drove to a part of town that hadn’t quite got the same kind of history.

Five Points stands where the diagonal grid of downtown meets the rectangular grid of East Denver. It’s one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods, known more for what it had been — the Harlem of the West — and what it wanted to be — a triumph of gentrification — than what it actually was — a neighborhood that fell between two stools. The high crime rate had fallen since the nineties, but it still struggled with gangs, drugs, and convincing people that its beautiful Victorian renovations and stylish lofts were in a safe setting.

Robbie and Ren were parked outside a Five Points’ alleyway dive, waiting for Francis Gartman. He had been drinking there from noon until six p.m., but had left. The barman’s girlfriend had called in the tip, and said that she expected him back.

Ren looked at the time. ‘This has been a most pleasant five hours, thank you for coming, but y’all are going to have to make your way home now.’

‘I know,’ said Robbie. ‘This feels a little…over.’

‘He’s not going to come back,’ said Ren. ‘He sat in that bar watching the pretty snowflakes pile halfway up that tiny barred-up window and that was his cue to leave.’

Robbie’s cell phone rang. ‘Gary,’ he said.

‘Let this be our cue to leave.’

Robbie listened as Gary spoke. ‘Gartman,’ he mouthed, then shook his head slowly. He nodded, took down an address. ‘We’ll be right over.’ He started the engine and turned to Ren.

‘Aw, fuck Gartman,’ said Ren. ‘What did he do?’

‘He shot dead a fourteen-year-old deaf girl who didn’t drop to the floor when he tried to hold up a convenience store. And shot her ten-year-old brother a few aisles down who, with his hands in the air, tried to explain why she didn’t.’

‘God, why were those kids out so late?’

‘So early. The family were on their way to the airport to catch a flight. The girl was going for surgery to-’

‘No, I can’t even hear that,’ said Ren. ‘That is just too much.’

‘And,’ said Robbie, ‘when Gartman walked in to the place, he was already soaked with blood.’

The Safe Streets team were back from the convenience store crime scene by eleven a.m. Ren sat at her desk with a half-full coffee pot. Coffee pots are half-full. Beer bottles are half-empty.

‘Gartman does not give a shit,’ said Ren. ‘He just walks right in there, covered in blood from God knows what, kills a little girl, puts her brother in the hospital…and does not really care who sees his fucked-up face.’

‘When this gets out, there’ll be a bunch of people he’s screwed over who’ll want to hang him out to dry,’ said Cliff.

Ren’s computer pinged with an email. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, turning to her screen. ‘I just got my email from El Paso on the Sarvases.’

She clicked on the jpegs first. Rows of photos popped up in iPhoto under her brother Matt’s wedding photos.

A beautiful day that happened under black clouds and rain.