Stephen White - Cold Case

Twice we reached forks in the trail. Phil didn't hesitate either time. Kimber walked behind me, and I kept checking on his progress. He wasn't losing any ground, agoraphobia and altitude be damned. Once when I looked back at him he said in wonder, "I wouldn't miss this for the world." He was smiling like a climber approaching the summit of a fourteener.

After no more than ten minutes of hiking Phil Barrett said, "Good. We're almost there. Aren't you glad you came?"

For some reason I was as surprised to see bright light in the midst of the blow down as I would have been to find a Burger King or a Mcdonald's. A pair of battery-powered lanterns illuminated a clearing that was no longer than a single-wide trailer. The light was a sultry yellow. The brilliance was disconcerting. Above us, the blown down trees seemed to have created a precarious Tinkertoy mountain at least fifteen feet high. Rising above the immense wall of timber loomed a steep hillside that appeared as foreboding as a steaming volcano. Whatever work Kimber and I were going to be performing there, we would be performing in a wooden canyon.

Phil Barrett called out, "Hello? It's Phil. I'm back with Mr. Lister and Dr. Gregory."

No one answered his call. Phil shrugged. He turned to me.

"Maybe they found something else to examine. The body's right around that bend." Kimber and I crossed the clearing. I turned and glanced at Phil. He had a bemused expression on his wide face. Kimber went ahead, entering a narrow cul-de-sac of broken trees.

I stepped into the cul-de-sac and looked at Kimber. We peered at the ground, which was littered with forest debris, then into the chaotic lumber walls, looking for a clue. Dorothy Levins body wasn't there to see. Nothing was there to see, nothing except the look of terrified acknowledgment Kimber and I recognized as we looked up into each other's eyes.

Kimber opened his mouth to speak. But before he'd formed a word, the sound of Phil Barrett's gun cocking shattered the silence. It was the single most distinct sound I had ever heard in my life.

The next thought I had was about my unborn baby.

I heard Kimber say, "This isn't good."

He was right, of course.

Phil Barrett's voice was suddenly swollen with vitriol. He barked, "Get down on your knees. Both of you. Then crawl back over here." I looked to Kimber for guidance. He nodded purposefully. We dropped to all fours and crawled the few feet back toward Phil Barrett.

I should have listened to my ambivalence about joining Phil on this errand. If I survive this, I thought, Lauren is going to kill me.

"That's far enough," Barrett said.

We stopped crawling. Kimber asked, "Where are Flynn and russ?"

"Do you mean were they as gullible as the two of you? Yes. Absolutely. As eager to help us out as a Boy Scout and a Girl Scout." If disdain were water, Kimber and I would have been drowning in the flood that spewed from Phil Barrett's mouth.

"Where are they?" Kimber actually sounded demanding in his retort to Phil.

Given the circumstances, I was surprised by the tone.

"I'm not alone in this little scenario. When I left to go get the two of you your friends were right here. Where are they now? Buried by lumber-that'd be my guess. They weren't my responsibility, but you two are."

Kimber continued to press.

"Are they alive?" he asked.

Phil ignored the question. He reached into his daypack and tossed some locking plastic bands my way. Electricians used the bands to bundle wires. Cops used them as disposable wrist restraints.

"You do Mr. Lister, Dr. Gregory. I'll do your wrists after you're done with him."

I moved toward Kimber. He offered me his wrists behind his back. I fastened the band.

"Tighter," Phil demanded.

I acted as though I were complying.

"Is Dorothy's body really here?" I asked, honestly not knowing what to believe.

"Oh yes. Close by, anyway."

"You know where she is because-"

"I'm the one who put it there. That's right."

I couldn't guess why Phil Barrett had killed Dorothy Levin. To protect Raymond Welle? That made no sense. Barrett must have known that someone else at the Post would take up Dorothy Levin's campaign-finance crusade. So why had he killed her? I offered my wrists and backed up toward Barrett. He said, "No.

First do Lister's ankles. I don't want you running off. It'll take you three bands. One around each ankle, then another one to connect those two. You got it?"

"I think so."

"Then do it. Don't try anything." As I moved toward Kimber again his eyes told me something was up. I felt incredibly stupid that I couldn't decipher exactly what. I bowed down to begin to bind his ankles with the plastic bands. The bands weren't long enough to fit around his trousers. I lifted the left leg of his pants and placed the first band near his ankle. After I'd fastened it, I moved to the right. As I lifted the trousers on his right leg, Kimber shifted his weight and kicked me gently with his left heel.

What? I didn't know what he was trying to tell me. I had just begun to pull the plastic band around his leg when I felt a two-inch-wide ballistic nylon strap stretched taut a short ways above his ankle. Heartened, I slid my hand farther up toward his calf and felt the bulge of a gun. Kimber was wearing an ankle holster.

I looked up. Phil Barrett was distracted, dividing his attention between his prisoners and the entrance to the two trails that led through the blow down and intersected in the clearing. He was clearly waiting for someone else to arrive.

Kimber felt my hesitation and started coughing. Phil looked at him and yelled, "Shut up!" Kimber coughed some more and I used the sound to rip the Velcro flap off of the holster. The small gun slid free. I raised it up the back of Kimber's leg and shoved it into his hand. He turned around and glared at me.

His eyes screamed, No/ I said, "You know, Kimber, sometimes I think I've done everything right in my life and it turns out that I still don't seem to know how to avoid danger and find… the safety."

Kimber laughed and tried to cover the sound with another cough. I hoped the outburst meant he had decoded my message-I'd been trying to tell him that I didn't know how to release the safety on his pistol.

Barrett was staring up the hillside. He screamed again.

"Shut the hell up! Both of you." From his agitation I assumed something was going wrong with his plans.

As I returned my attention to the plastic restraint that I needed to fasten to Kimber's right ankle, he tapped me on the side of the head with the gun. He was ready to hand it back to me. I took it, hoping that the safety was now off.

With some trepidation I stuffed the gun behind my back in the waistband of my jeans and got back to work on Kimber's ankles.

Kimber said, "What's the plan, Mr. Barrett? Exactly how are you planning on killing us?"

"I'm going to shoot you and then set off a charge that will bury your bodies under the timber covering that hillside. My main concern is that I don't want your bodies found. Always seems that's when the troubles begin. Without any bodies it's all so much easier. If I had it to do over again…" His voice drifted off.

"The girls?" I asked.

"You're talking about the girls." He was staring at the hillside. Meekly, he said, "It turned out crazy. The first one was an accident. The second one was just a stupid mistake. Me? I was only trying to help."

What?

He looked at me. His next words were clipped.

"I didn't kill them, if that's what you're thinking."

At that moment, that's exactly what I was thinking.

"Then why the hell… are we here?"

He looked away again.

"I… helped. Afterward. I was… involved, afterward.

I jammed up the plumbing in the bunkhouse and got all that cowboy's things moved up to Gloria's. I'm the one who moved the bodies to the lake. Had to use all back roads right up along Mad Creek and then through the wilderness. Took half the night to get there towing that damn snowmobile." Kimber said, "And your subterfuge all worked. Of course I'm sure the fact that you were running the investigation made the task a little simpler."