Stephen White - Cold Case

"What about shooting her in the closet? That was adlibbed I take it?"

Ray shook his head.

"No, we worked that part out together. Brian wasn't an eager participant. Even at the end, he wasn't at all sure he could look Gloria in the face and kill her. I understood; I don't think I could have done it either. We had to come up with an alternative."

"Why did he do it?"

"I convinced him that no one would really blame him, that everyone would think he just snapped from all the stress. It was a sacrifice for his family."

I considered Brian's desperation.

"A cop friend of mine thought the closet was suspicious. The fact that he shot her through the door. He had a whole lot of trouble with it."

"You know, when Phil first came in the house he had trouble with it, too. If I had to do it over again, I would have insisted Brian shoot her face-to-face."

He broke into a broad smile.

"And look!" He waved the gun at me.

"I do have to do it over again. I need to remember my lesson. Let's go find a good place for you to die. No closets for you."

It was time for me to do something. Trying to run seemed absurd. Ray Welle was standing seven or eight feet away from me with his handgun leveled at my chest.

He might not miss. That left the Kimber option. If he was to be of any help, I had to pray that his panic episode had abated.

I said, "I didn't come here by myself, Ray. You and I aren't alone in the house."

He barely heard my words. He was looking out the big windows of the great room, gazing toward the lane. Two vehicles were approaching the house. One was a Steamboat Springs police vehicle driven by Percy Smith. The other was a familiar Ford Taurus driven by Russ Claven.

Ray said to himself more than to me, "Sylvie must have called them. They think you're holding me hostage." I wasn't about to remind Ray that Sylvie didn't know he was on the ranch. I was certain Ray didn't know who Flynn and Russ were; he probably figured that they were officers who had accompanied Percy Smith and the other uniformed officer.

I had reached a different conclusion about my arrival of the police than Ray had. I was thinking that Kimber must have realized what was going on and called the police. They know that Ray is about to kill me.

The cars stopped about a hundred feet from the house, and the four occupants all exited on the far side of their vehicles. The solitary uniformed officer had a rifle with a scope. Percy Smith was armed with a cell phone.

The telephone rang inside the house. The peal seemed to clang around the cavernous space like a church bell.

Ray said, "If I'm a hostage, I don't answer the damn phone, right? Right. Let it ring, let it ring." He turned to me.

"Back up. We're going into the hall so they can't see us through the windows."

He backed me up into the hallway that led to the master suite and ordered me to stop just opposite the powder room. He said, "Sit."

I did.

The phone finally stopped ringing.

Ray said, "What were you talking about before? About not coming to the ranch alone?"

"I'm terrified. I was just trying to buy some time. You know, distract you."

He stared at me while he tried to cinch his robe tighter without interfering with the aim of the gun.

"I don't know whether or not to believe you."

Good, I thought.

"And I can't exactly go wandering through the house searching for someone, now can I? I can't. The police would see me moving around and know that I'm not really a hostage."

I was beginning to recognize my leverage. It was paltry, but it was something.

I said, "But neither can you risk the possibility of there being a witness already here in the house. Someone who might see you murder me in cold blood."

The phone rang again.

"I have to ignore it, don't I?"

I didn't respond to Ray's question but I counted the rings. After twelve rings, the sound stopped. I waited an inordinate time for ring number thirteen to begin.

Ray Welle narrowed his eyes and said, "I wonder if that someone else you're talking about picked it up." Keeping the gun aimed at my chest, Welle backed into the master bedroom and lifted a cordless phone from its charger. He was walking back toward me as he touched the button that would open the connection.

I half expected that Kimber's indelicate whisper would carry right back down the hall.

But all I heard was dial tone.

Ray lowered the phone back to its cradle. Looking down at the lights lit up on the base unit, he said, "Someone's on the other line." I said, "What?"

"You weren't lying before. The second line's lit up. Someone's on the second phone line."

Kimber, what on earth are you up to?

"Where is he?" Welle demanded.

"I don't know."

"Bull. Doesn't matter. I'll find him. There aren't that many places in the house with extensions on that line."

His eyes took on an evil cast.

"Get up. Come with me. I know just where to put you while I sort this out."

I opened my mouth to scream a warning to Kimber.

The closet. The guest-room closet.

As Ray marched me closer to the wooden door I felt repelled by it as though it and I were magnets with opposite charges. My steps shortened the way my dog Emily's do when I'm leading her somewhere she doesn't want to go. My weight rocked back on my heels.

Ray Welle said, "Open it." I said, "I can't." I was as helpless as a four-year-old being asked to volunteer an arm for a shot.

He said, "I know a little something about the psychology of motivation," and shoved the barrel of the gun between my shoulder blades.

His strategy worked. I reached down for the knob and opened the door.

Instantly, an overhead light lit the small space. The switch must have been built into the doorjamb.

Ray said, "Look at that shelving, that detail, the edge work. Even in the damn closets. That was Gloria's thing. Detail."

"It's very nice," I stammered.

"Get in"

"I…"

"Get… in" I stepped in. The gun in my back was, once again, a significant inducement. Ray slammed the door behind me. The light blinked off. I heard him fumble with a key. As he turned it in the lock, I felt as much as heard the bolt throw.

What, I thought, no chair?

Would the gunshots come immediately?

I didn't know. One argument I was making to myself was that Welle couldn't really afford to shoot me through the door. If he did, he could hardly argue that he was protecting himself or his property from an intruder. He'd have to come back and get me, then march me someplace else before he shot me.

The closet was large enough for a chair but not quite big enough to get a running start to bust the door down. I tried three or four times to no avail.

Each time I rammed against the door with my lowered shoulder I bounced harmlessly back off the pine. With the heel of my stockinged feet I managed to crack one of the door's raised panels, but I couldn't get it to bust out.

I needed to warn Kimber that Ray had gone looking for him. I started screaming, "He locked me in the closet! He's by himself in the house! He has a gun!"

I repeated the refrain twice, then a third time, pausing between warnings to listen for the sound of gunshots in the distant parts of the house.

I heard nothing.

The shelves in the closet held little. Some folded linens. A down pillow. The built-in drawers were empty, awaiting Rays next guest's clothing. I climbed the lower shelves to run my hand along the upper ones. On top I found two empty shoeboxes and a tied bundled of satin hangers.

The phone rang again.

It rang and rang. This time no one answered.

Kimber?

With a foot on a shelf on each side of the closet, I felt along the ceiling for the light fixture to see if there was something up there that I could break off to use as a tool to get out of the closet or, if Ray Welle came back, as a weapon. But there was no light fixture; the closet bulb was enclosed in a recessed can. A few inches behind it I felt a ridge of wood, a strip of molding.