Stephen White - Cold Case

"Well, now he might also have been mixed up in order to cover up for whatever Joey Franklin had done to Satoshi."

I'd already traversed the same ground.

"Sorry, that doesn't work for me. Why would he cover up what Joey had done? He kills Tami to protect Joey? Why? It doesn't make sense."

She was getting frustrated.

"I don't know why. I don't think we know enough yet to know why. But every road we get on in this case seems to take us straight to Raymond Welle."

"And to the Silky Road Ranch."

"And to the Silky Road Ranch." I said, "We're neglecting Dorothy Levin's disappearance. Can it be connected to Welle, too?"

"You haven't heard anything new on that, have you?"

I shook my head.

"I'm scouring the news. Nothing either on her disappearance or on the shooting at the tennis house. And apparently the police in D.C. still can't find her husband."

My wife didn't hesitate for long. She said, "Sure, the disappearance can be tied in. She was accusing him of campaign improprieties. She was in the line of fire when someone took some shots at his campaign rally. She disappeared while she was interviewing witnesses in his hometown. Circumstances alone tie her to Ray Welle. Is there anything really there? I don't know. No one knows."

I was suddenly troubled by something Lauren had just said. But I wanted to think about it for a moment, so to keep her talking I said, "Pretend it's all related.

What's the connection? What could it be?"

She thought about it while she disappeared into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

She was still holding the toothbrush in her hand when she stuck her head back into the bedroom and said, "There's only one way that I can see for Welle to be connected to Dorothy's disappearance. Dorothy's disappearance and Tami's and Miko's deaths have to be related somehow. The investigations must overlap.

Someone Dorothy was investigating for her article would have to have been involved-somehow-in Tami's and Miko's murders."

"Are you suggesting someone other than Welle? He's the constant in all this, obviously."

"I'm not sure. I think someone other than Welle, or in addition to Welle. I'd guess it would need to be someone who was involved in whatever campaign-finance irregularities Dorothy was investigating for the Post. Someone who also has a link to the murders of the two girls."

"That should be a relatively short list of people. Dorothy's article in the Post names names, doesn't it?"

"But it doesn't list her sources. I wonder if her editor would help us out"

"Her editor won't give up sources."

It was my turn to brush my teeth and pee. When I stepped back out of the bathroom Lauren was propped up in bed, rereading the fax of Dorothy's last Post article and making a list of all the names that had been mentioned.

I said, "I don't think I even bothered to mention this to you before, but Joey Franklin was in Steamboat the day that Dorothy was murdered. I saw signs welcoming him to town."

She stopped writing and glanced at me sideways.

"He was?"

"Yeah, he played golf with Raymond Welle that morning. Welle was coming from the golf course while I was waiting at the ranch." She said, "More circumstances I don't like." Emily waddled up and placed her head in Lauren's lap. She scratched the dog's ears.

"Is Joey still up in Steamboat Springs?"

"I don't know. What are you thinking?"

"We could go talk to him."

"Just like that? I haven't cleared it with A. J."

"Do you think she'd mind?"

"No. As a matter of fact, I think she'd be pleased. But what do we ask him? If he remembers raping Satoshi Hamamoto? I don't know why, but I sort of suspect he'd deny it."

"No. We ask him things he has no reason to deny and see what he does. Did he know Tami's friends? Did he know Miko's friends? How much does he contribute to Welle's campaigns? And oh, by the way, did he know Satoshi?"

"You really want to do it?"

"We both have tomorrow off. It's hot down here. It's cool up there. And I'd really like to see what Joey has to say for himself."

"He doesn't have to talk with us."

"Nobody does. Why would he refuse, though?"

"Maybe because he's a rapist?"

"There is that." She raised the tablet she was writing on.

"You know, I don't recognize any of these names. The gist of Dorothy's article is that when Welle was financing his first run at the House seat in 1990, and again during his second run in 1992, Japanese money was tunneled into his campaign through local business interests that supported the ski area. The names in the article are mostly the Japanese who were involved."

"Not Taro Hamamoto, though?"

"No. Not him."

I tried to recall the details of Ray Welle's political career.

"Welle wasn't elected in ninety, was he?"

"No. He didn't even get his party's nomination until ninety-two. And he won for the first time in ninety-four."

"His first nomination? That was after his wife was murdered?"

"Yes. Gloria actually died during the second campaign."

"A lot of death around that man."

I climbed into bed.

"More than his share." * * *

We decided to drive up to the mountains early and make a cold call on Joey Franklin. Either he'd be in town or he wouldn't. Either he'd agree to see us or he wouldn't.

The sky above us was still dark when we left the house. The sun finally cracked the lip of the horizon over the eastern plains as we were climbing Floyd Hill on 1-70. I watched the show in my mirrors and Lauren spun on her seat to gaze as the sky transformed itself from the colors of morning coffee to the pastels of cotton candy.

We actually talked about baby names for most of the rest of the journey to Steamboat. So far our lists of favorites shared no common ground and the effort felt to me like a parlor game. Lauren compared it to jury selection. She argued that we were still at the stage where we both felt as though our preemptory challenges were infinite. Later, she assured me, push would come to shove and our discussions would get more contentious.

Twice we stopped so that Lauren could use restaurant bathrooms. She was developing a thing about fetal health and gas-station facilities.

Steamboat Springs' golfing choices are finite. There's the new Haymaker course and the proletarian Steamboat Golf Club, and there's the Robert Trent Jones-designed course at the Sheraton. Not surprisingly, the morning I'd been cooling my heels at the Silky Road, Joey and the congressman had been playing at the lovely Yampa River Valley course at the Sheraton. Lauren and I decided to try there first.

We arrived in the shadows of Mount Werner shortly after nine and tracked down the course starter at the pro-shop desk. He was busy copying names onto a log sheet. I asked if he knew where we could find Joey Franklin. Without hesitation, the starter told us that Joey's foursome wasn't due to tee off until almost ten.

He thought Joey might be having breakfast upstairs on the deck and suggested we look out there for him.

"Who might he be with?" I asked.

"I thought he was meeting you." The starter finally glanced up from his paperwork. He looked at me suspiciously and smiled at Lauren, who took a half step forward.

She said, "Oh… he is, a little later." She didn't bother to mention the fact that Joey didn't know it yet.

The starter leaned over the counter, and his eyes traveled the length of Lauren's legs until arriving down at her feet. She was wearing open-toed sandals and had painted her toes the color of the grass on the greens.

"You're not planning on playing in those, are you?"

She shook her head.

"No. Not that it would make much difference to my score, I'm afraid." Lauren, to my knowledge, had never swung a golf club in her life.

He laughed.