Stephen White: Missing Persons

The volume of that soliloquy drew virtually everyone’s attention to the cruiser, including Jaris Slocum’s. He was up on the front porch and immediately began a march toward the car with long strides, his hands tightened into fists. Cozy must have felt him coming. He spun away from the patrol cop and greeted Slocum with, “A pleasure seeing you, as always. Is my client actually in custody, Detective?”

Slocum stopped five feet from Cozy. I don’t know why he kept his distance-maybe so that he wasn’t close enough to shake Cozy’s outstretched hand. Slocum’s mouth opened and closed about a centimeter as he tried to process the latest developments: A large, imperial criminal defense attorney had penetrated the perimeter and he seemed to be making speeches for the benefit of the dozens of gathered citizens.

Not good.

“Haven’t decided? Is that it? Perhaps I can help,” Cozy taunted. His words were polite, his tone was even doing a clever masquerade as respectful. But everyone, especially Slocum, knew it was a taunt.

Slocum opened his mouth again, but still no words came out. Finally he was able to mutter, “I’m trying to investigate a suspicious death here.”

Cozy’s reply was immediate. “Good for you. As a taxpayer, I applaud your… conscientiousness. But that is neither here nor there at the moment, is it? The question at hand is, you see, quite simple.” Cozy leaned over and smiled at Diane in the backseat of the cruiser before returning his attention to Slocum. “Is my client in custody? Yes or no?”

Cozy’s voice carried through the heavy December air as though he were a thespian center stage at the Globe.

“She is not under arrest.”

“Ah, but I didn’t ask you that, did I?” He was doing his best to sound like Olivier doing Henry IV. “I asked you if my client was in your custody-yes, or no.”

I could barely discern Slocum’s response. I thought he said, “For now, she is… um, being detained for questioning.”

“I appreciate that clarification. As of now she is officially declining your invitation for further questioning, so I assume, then, that she is free to go.” Cozy leaned over and made quite a show of staring into the backseat of the cruiser. With mock horror he added, “Has she been handcuffed, Detective Slocum?” He included Jaris’s name so that the assembled citizenry would know who was responsible for the travesty. Had he next recited Slocum’s badge number-had Slocum been wearing a badge-I would not have been surprised. “Is that possible? Is she really handcuffed and locked in the backseat of a police cruiser? Are you planning on taking her to the jail and booking her?”

“She was not being cooperative.”

Cozy held out his own wrists and used the full power of his baritone. “Was she? Like my client, I too am planning to be uncooperative if this is the way the Boulder Police Department is choosing to behave toward its law-abiding citizens.”

“Mr. Maitlin,” Slocum implored.

At that moment I actually had just the slightest sympathy for Jaris Slocum. Cozy’s performance had gone more than a little over the top.

Cozy ignored Slocum’s plea and made a great show of holding out his French-cuffed wrists to see if Slocum would dare put a slightly less elegant pair of cuffs on them. “Would you like to handcuff me, as well? Is that the current policy of the department when citizens exercise their constitutional prerogatives to grieve silently?”

I could tell that Jaris Slocum would have loved nothing better at that moment than to handcuff Cozier Maitlin, but the presence of fifty or so civilian witnesses served to deter his more primitive impulses.

Darrell Olson’s primary role in his detective partnership was, apparently, to sense what was about to go wrong between Slocum and one of Boulder ’s citizens. Once again, Darrell did his job with aplomb. He rushed up, grabbed Slocum’s arm, pulled him closer to the house-and much farther from Cozy-and went nose to nose with him for about half a minute. I couldn’t hear a word of their argument but my respect for Darrell C. R. Olson expanded exponentially as he barked whatever he was barking. When the tête-à-tête between the two detectives was over, Slocum climbed the porch and marched into the old house where Hannah lay dead.

Olson returned to Cozy. He used a low voice to address him, modeling for him, hoping to reduce the inflammation. As he spoke he spread his hands in conciliation, palms up, like a don trying to pacify a peer. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but it took him a minute or more to get through it.

Cozy’s reply wasn’t a whisper; his tone remained floridly oratorical. “No, Detective. Not in a few minutes. Right now. I want the cuffs off my client and I want her released. Now. There is no point whatsoever in prolonging her agony. She is despairing over her friend’s death. I guarantee you that this interview is over for tonight.”

Olson dipped his head a little and spoke again. It was apparent that he was still determined to try to be deferential, to try to lower the temperature of the conflict a little, but that he was also trying not to roll over to Cozy’s demands.

Cozy listened to Darrell’s continued plea, thought for a moment, and decided that he wanted none of it. He said, “Now, Detective.” Cozy gestured toward the old house and Jaris Slocum, and in a much lower, tempered voice added, “That man is your problem, not mine. You have my sympathy, but nothing more. Now, please.”

Olson shook his head, scratched his ear, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and mumbled something to Officer Leamer. Without so much as a nod, the detective walked away from Cozy and the patrol car.

Leamer opened the back door of the cruiser, helped Diane to her feet, and removed the handcuffs from behind her back. The fire in her eyes, if focused, could have ignited candles across the street.

Cozy introduced himself to his client and said something to her so quietly I couldn’t discern a word. Diane had fresh tears on her face. She said, “Thank you, thank you.” Then, as though she’d somehow forgotten, she cried, “My God, Hannah’s dead.”

Raoul said, “That’s it?” Actually, what he said was, “C’est finis?”

I said, “For now.”

Diane and I didn’t make it to Vegas.

Hannah Grant’s ashes were interred the following Tuesday after a sentimental service in one of the downtown churches. I had never before seen so much of Boulder ’s mental health community present in one place.

I was in a pretty good position to know that the police were flummoxed by the case. The local media was already reporting that the cops had no active leads. Lauren confirmed to me that after a week the investigation was spinning its wheels. My friend Sam Purdy, the Boulder police detective, usually wouldn’t talk out of school about important cases with me, but he did roll his eyes when I mentioned Hannah.

That told me a lot.

During one late-night phone conversation he went way out on a limb. “We got crap,” was what he said.

Lauren swore me to secrecy but revealed that Slocum and Olson had located no witnesses to anything that supported a finding of homicide. No one had seen Hannah leave her south Boulder condo the morning of her death, but she’d arrived at Rallysport Health Club early enough to work out before driving away just before 8:30. The time was almost certain. Two different witnesses recalled an incident in the locker room-Hannah had tripped over another woman’s gym bag on the way back from the shower and both women had fallen hard to the floor. The witnesses were confident that they knew what time Hannah had dressed after her workout before heading to her car.

They were confident about one other thing, too. As she fell, Hannah had definitely hit her head on the tile floor. Someone had offered to go get ice. Hannah had declined; she said she was fine and had to get to work.