Stephen White - Critical Conditions

“Are you sure it’s wise getting involved? You should let her handle this, Sam. Stay out of it. You’re too close to it. Anyway, the hockey game is tied. You don’t really want to leave.”

“Just like you let all of us law enforcement types handle Lauren’s little problem last fall? Like that kind of staying out of it? That’s what I should do?”

I zipped up and said, “Guilt works both ways. Only I’m not immune.” I looked at my watch. “Can’t you go up alone? Why do you need me?”

“I want you to be there. That’s all. Is that sufficient?”

“Why?”

“You repeat what I’m about to tell you and I’m dead, and so’s the cop who told me this. You understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Merritt wasn’t just in the basement of Dead Ed’s house.”

“What?”

“That’s right. She looked around. Prints on the banister going from the basement to the first floor, and a few locations in the kitchen.”

“What the hell was she doing wandering around his house?”

“I don’t know. The detectives don’t know. The DA doesn’t know. They figure they know how all this ended, but they’re not sure how it began, and that makes them less sure about the wherefores and the whys. Merritt’s not talking. So Dead Ed’s going to have to tell us what happened. That’s why we’re going to the mountains.”

“Okay, where’s the cabin?”

“Summit County, north of Dillon someplace. Lucy called it a ‘ranchette.’”

I looked at my watch. It was only eight-twenty. With luck, we could reach the accessible parts of Summit County in ninety minutes. “Whose car?”

“You kidding? You’re driving. My car’s getting new brakes. I took RTD to Denver. Anyway, I need to grab some sleep. I have a funny feeling it’s going to be a long night. Ever get those feelings?”

“Only when I’m with you.”

Dead Ed’s ranchette turned out to be adjacent to Highway 9, not more than five miles north of I-70. With the new rural speed limits on the interstate and with the assurance that the sleeping hulk leaning against the door next to me in the front seat was a peace officer who would put in a generous word for me with the Colorado State Patrol, I made good time on the ride up. We reached the town of Dillon on the other side of the Continental Divide at 9:45.

I said Sam’s name a couple of times to try to get him to stir. No luck. I decided to wake him by sliding the passenger door window down until his head started to fall out into the breeze.

It worked. His hair started blowing in the wind and then his whole big head just kerplunked into the night. He stiffened his neck with a jerk and pulled himself back inside.

I said, “You awake? I need directions. We’re in Dillon already.”

He said, “Shit, what the hell?” and looked at his watch. “What were you doing, ninety? Couldn’t you have driven the speed limit? This barely qualifies as a nap. I wasn’t asleep until we got to Idaho Springs.”

I scoffed, “Sam, you were snoring before I turned onto Sixth Avenue.” Which he knew was only three minutes from McNichols Arena. “Where’s the ranchette? Which way do I go?”

He flicked on the dome light and held a little piece of crumpled paper close to it. He couldn’t read it without his Kmart glasses. “Go north. Mark your odometer carefully. Lucy said the road is approximately four-point-three miles from the exit ramp.”

The cold air had refreshed me; I was feeling feisty. “Isn’t that incongruent, Sam? Wouldn’t it be approximately four miles or exactly four-point-three?”

Sam rubbed his face, trying to get some circulation going. I could hear the stubble of his beard crackle beneath his fingers. He said, “If I knew you were going to be an asshole, I would have left you in Denver.”

Four-point-three was accurate. The dirt road that led east off the highway was in good repair and after a hundred yards or so led to a gated entry below a carefully clumsy wooden sign that read, THE NOT SO LAZY 7 RANCH. From the fences that were visible, I guessed that the property comprised maybe twenty fenced acres that extended from close to the banks of the Blue River up to the borders of the Arapahoe National Forest. Maybe a quarter of the land was sparsely wooded with ponderosa pine and aspen. Dead Ed had probably been able to cross-country ski on his land much of the winter and fly-fish the Blue River all summer long. The ski and golf resorts of Keystone, Breckenridge, and Copper Mountain were only minutes away.

I found myself thinking that if I had a few extra million like Dead Ed, I might have been tempted to buy this little ranchette, too.

It was too dark to determine what animals, if any, Dead Ed had kept on his ranch, but he had strung enough barbed wire to contain quite a few head of something. We followed the dirt road up the steep slopes of the hillside, past a big red barn, through a thick stand of woods to a clearing.

Sam said, “That’s Lucy’s car,” pointing to a red turbo Volvo parked next to a Nissan something.

I parked between Lucy’s car and a four-by-four from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, pulled myself from the driver’s seat, and stretched. Sam got out even more slowly than I. I watched him raise his arms above his head and suggested he might want to tuck in his shirt.

He suggested I might want to fuck myself.

Dead Ed’s ranch house may have been made of logs, but it was definitely not a log cabin. The two-story V-shaped house sat on a prominent rise with exposures to the south and west. I guessed it contained in the neighborhood of four thousand square feet-larger than a cabin, smaller than a mansion.

The black sky above was speckled by a billion stars. I said, “Incredible view up here, don’t you think?”

Sam said, “Yeah. Where is everybody?”

“Maybe Lucy’s inside rustling you up a sandwich. You disappointed? You expected maybe she’d be waiting for you on the porch with a cocktail?”

He ignored me and lumbered up some wide front steps. He pounded on the door with a door knocker that had been constructed from an ice ax.

Lucy answered the door and smiled.

Lucy Tanner was classy, which distinguished her from her partner. Although Boulder had many law enforcement officers who did their job professionally, the city had few cops who could walk the corridors of power and be mistaken for a member. Lucy oozed confidence and grace. Although I’d never asked her, I assumed she chose to be a cop only after ruling out other options available to her, like law firm partner, investment banker, or CEO of some prominent company.

I said, “Hi, Lucy. Nice outfit.” Lucy liked clothes the way Dead Ed liked diesel-powered toys. I knew Sam wouldn’t notice how she was dressed and I knew Lucy felt good when people noticed.

The outfit I was admiring was a one-piece bodysuit of some soft flannel-looking fabric. The places where it might be too tight for a police officer on duty were hidden under a long mustard-colored four-button blazer.

“You really think it works? Sunny and I just went into Dillon to grab some dinner and we stopped at the Donna Karan outlet to look around. I wasn’t sure about this when I first saw it, but she convinced me the colors are good for me. So I picked it up. Can’t beat the price.”

“It works, Lucy. You look lovely. Don’t you think she looks great, Sam?”

Sam grunted.

She turned to face her partner but spoke to me. “He’s hopeless, Alan. Don’t bother. You guys made good time, Sam. Sunny and I just got back here a few minutes ago.”

“Alan mistook I-70 for the Bonneville Salt Flats. Listen, I appreciate the call about this, Luce,” Sam said. He hesitated, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You know I can’t have been here.”