Stephen White: Missing Persons

I recognized Slocum’s partner, too, though until that moment I hadn’t known he was a cop. He was, like me, an avid recreational bicyclist. We ran into each other a few times a year on Boulder ’s back roads or in the nearby mountain canyons. The previous September we had ended up in an impromptu posse that had done a couple of memorable training climbs together up Four Mile. He was a pleasant, not-too-competitive guy who had legs and lungs that were designed for steep inclines. He was younger than me, stronger than me, and better looking than me. I knew him simply as Darrell.

The two detectives ambled across the sidewalk and checked in with the patrol cop who was manning the log. I watched him point at me seconds before the detectives climbed the slope of the front lawn toward my solitary aerie on the neighboring building’s front porch.

Remembering Sam’s caution about Slocum, I greeted the bicyclist detective first. “Hi, Darrell. What a night.” I held out my hand. “Alan, Alan Gregory. Remember me?” He didn’t. “We climbed Four Mile together a few months back? I see you occasionally when you ride.”

It took Darrell a second but he finally recognized my face. “Alan? Yeah, hi. You’re, um, part of this?” He waved his left arm in the general direction of Hannah Grant’s dead body.

“Unfortunately. I was the one who found her. Hannah. She’s a colleague. Was. I’m a psychologist.” The last sentence felt like a complete non sequitur to me. I imagined that it did to Darrell, too. I added, “Hannah was a social worker.”

“You’re the RP?” He caught himself using cop vernacular and added, “The one who called this in?”

RP. Reporting party. “Yes.”

Slocum stepped up and took charge. His intrusion had all the subtlety of a belch during grace at Thanksgiving dinner. “Sit right there, sir. Yes, on those steps behind you. Don’t speak with anyone until we’re ready to interview you. Do you understand my instructions, sir?”

For some reason-possibly the vice-principal tone in his voice-I found myself questioning the sincerity of his repeated use of “sir.”

Jaris Slocum either didn’t recognize me, which wouldn’t have been surprising, or-and this was a more worrisome possibility-had recalled our prior introduction and decided that any friend of Sam Purdy’s deserved an additional bolus of hard-ass attitude.

Fifty feet or so away from me a damn good woman lay dead. During traffic lulls I could hear Diane weeping from the backseat of the patrol car where she had been stashed. The Cheetos lady was still looking like she’d just lost her only friend in the world. The sum of those parts? I was in absolutely no mood for any I’m-the-boss-and-you’ll-do-what-I-say cop crap from Detective Jaris Slocum.

“And you are?” I said. My tone wasn’t exactly a model of I’d-love-to-cooperate-Detective.

Detective Darrell’s badge wallet was hanging on his belt for all to see. Slocum’s wasn’t. Wisely, Darrell chose to answer my question even though it had been addressed to his partner. He was busily trying to douse the lit matches that Slocum and I were slinging at the kindling in each other’s pants. To me, he said, “This is Detective Jaris Slocum. And this is Alan…?”

“Gregory,” I said.

“He and I ride together sometimes,” Darrell explained to Slocum.

“That’s nice. Now sit, Alan Gregory. We’ll be back to talk to you. Wait for us, understand?”

“I still haven’t seen a badge,” I said. I shouldn’t have said it. But I did.

Slocum couldn’t find his badge wallet. He checked all his pockets, and then he patted them all a second time. Finally, after an exasperated exhale he barked, “It must be in the car.”

If Slocum had wanted to transport the annoyance that he packed into those few words he would have needed a wheelbarrow, or a tractor-trailer.

“I can wait,” I said. “Go ahead and get it. I’d like to see some ID. I think that’s my right.”

Slocum and I both knew he wasn’t about to slink back to his big Ford and fish around for his detective shield at my behest. He gave me an icy blue-eyed stare. “I said to have a seat.”

I said, “I’m fine standing.”

He took a step toward me. “And I said to sit.”

I came so close to saying “fuck you” that my lower lip actually came together with my bottom teeth.

Darrell sensed what was developing as though he knew either Slocum or me real well. I knew the person he knew real well wasn’t me.

“Enough,” he said.

He was talking to both of us.

I had to cool my heels for almost an hour before the detectives got back to me. From what I could see, they’d spent most of the time either singly or together with the Cheetos lady and with Diane. For a while I was perplexed why they didn’t go inside the offices and start detecting in there where Hannah and the evidence were, but then I realized they were probably waiting for a search warrant to arrive at the scene.

In the meantime, I was cold and exhausted and hungry and sad and angry and impatient and would have been much more comfortable sitting on the stoop than walking in circles on the front porch.

But I stood. It was a point of honor. Or a badge of stubbornness. One of those things.

The story I had to tell about discovering Hannah’s body wasn’t complicated and once things had calmed down a little bit between Slocum and me, it was simple to discern from the detectives’ questions that Slocum and Olson-his cop ID had revealed not only bicyclist Darrell’s last name, but also a double dose of middle initials, C. and R.-were primarily interested in two specific areas of my narrative.

The first? Why had I decided to reach across the hall and try to open the door to Mary Black’s office? I stuck with the truth on that one-I didn’t know. I just didn’t know. It was one of those things that I had just done.

The truth, however, didn’t set me free. One of the detectives-either Darrell Olson playing good cop, or Slocum naturally taking on the role of bad-revisited the question of me opening Mary Black’s door at least five times during our relatively brief discussion. They seemed as dissatisfied with my fifth reply as they had been with the first. I told them I wished that I had a better explanation, but I didn’t.

The second focus of the detectives’ interest was more concerning to me. They wanted to know what I had been doing the rest of the day-minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour-up until the moment Diane dragged me from my office to her Saab to drive to Hannah’s office.

“What? You mean from the moment I got out of bed? That early?” I asked in a futile attempt at levity when Slocum pressed me on my day’s itinerary for the second or third time.

“Sure,” he replied. “Assuming you have a witness for that part of your day, too.” His cold eyes weren’t smiling at all but his cheekbones had elevated just enough to let me know that he was enjoying whatever temporary advantage he thought he had.

Not for the first time that evening I thought, God, Sam, you’re right. Slocum is an asshole.

“As a matter of fact, I do have a witness. I want you to be sure to write this name down. Are you ready?”

He glared at me as though he’d rather beat me with a long stick than do what I suggested, but he brought his pen down so that the nib hovered just above the page in his notebook.

Stressing each syllable for his benefit, I said, “My witness, for this morning’s events, is Deputy DA Lauren Crowder of the Boulder County District Attorney’s office.” I slowly dictated the ten digits of our home phone number, and then added Lauren’s office number for emphasis. “Give her a call. Please. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to tell you what time her husband crawled out of bed this morning.”