Boy, Laramie. The boosters liked to think of it as an all-American hometown. They weren’t wrong. Inside of a month, Sally had encountered domestic violence, murder, drug dealing, runaway real estate speculation. How much more all-American could you get?
And how much more cynical? But that wasn’t really her nature. As she made her way home from campus, Sally bounced from cynicism to worry, anguish, and fury. And in the background, all the time, was that pinprick of a feeling that she already knew something that mattered. That, at least, ought to be reassuring. But it wasn’t. Recent experience had taught her that knowing something without knowing what it was, or why it mattered, could be a very dangerous thing.
There was a Toyota 4Runner parked in front of her house. Scotty Atkins leaned against the driver’s door. He was wearing a salmon-pink polo shirt, khaki Dockers, and his usual poker face. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” he said as she approached. “Let’s go for a ride.”
She eyed him warily. “Where?” she asked.
“Get in,” he said.
Of course, she knew. When they pulled into the alley where she and Hawk had found Bradley Preston, she was not in the least surprised. Scotty Atkins believed that returning to the scene of a crime was a real good way to jog a witness’s memory. He didn’t give a damn about the feelings of the person he was dragging along. In fact, he wasn’t above exploiting strong feelings of all kinds to get answers to questions. And in fairness, why shouldn’t he? He was a cop, not a kindergarten teacher.
Scotty pulled the 4Runner to the side of the alley, shut off the motor, got out, and walked to the place they’d found the lug wrench, now trampled down by investigators, at the least, and who knew who else? What could she do but follow?
And now, despite the trembling in her chest, the visceral response to the place she’d seen violent death, she was surprised. She didn’t feel hysterical or horrified or overwhelmed. Instead, she experienced a weird combination of detachment and passionate curiosity.
Why?
Maybe it was the change of the seasons. The last time she’d stood in that alley, trying very hard not to look at a body, it had been cold and windy. Blowing dust had stung her eyes and lodged grit in her clothes, coated her teeth. Today, by contrast, was a purely gorgeous spring day. There weren’t all that many such days in Laramie, and she’d come to treasure them in a manner so bone-deep that such weather, after the long, dark winter, was simply delightful. She could very nearly feel the ice cracking in her chest, the thawing of her heart. She couldn’t help it. The return of the sun, the warmth, the green made it impossible not to feel a trickle, then a gush of hope.
Even that trashy alley bore signs of the awakening season. Where brown stalks had crackled and shaken, tufts of patchy green broke the surface. New shoots of a viny plant twined around and sprouted among the garbage can frames. She knew the vine would bloom in early summer, with delicate pink-white trumpet-shaped blossoms. She’d always thought it pretty, even though Hawk told her that the common name for it was “bindweed,” and that it was a bane to cattle ranchers and lawn lovers. But she couldn’t quite hate the plant. She’d looked it up in the Audubon wildflower guide Hawk had given her, the first Christmas they’d known each other, so very many years ago. And she’d discovered another common name for the vine, one she’d used ever since: creeping Jenny.
Despised and weedy, hardy and stubborn, sending out tentative, defiant, and all too fragile pale flowers. People did what they could to kill it. They yanked it out, sprayed it with poison, cursed and kicked, but here it came again. Creeping Jenny had something in common with Charlie Preston.
Sally thought of Charlie, still, she’d been told, under heavy sedation at Ivinson Memorial. She hoped the girl was half as tough as the creeping vine.
Sally walked up and down the alley, Scotty at her side, pretending he wasn’t staring at her, willing her to talk. She wanted to observe and to think. The feeling was familiar to her. Similar emotion came to her every time she sat down in an archive or library amid books and files and boxes of documents. She was preparing herself to search and examine and rearrange facts and impressions, to try to make sense of random things, to construct a convincing explanation.
Detectives and historians had a lot in common that way. And of course, both were in the business of dealing with the dead.
Most of the backyards bordering the alley were hidden behind wooden fences. Here and there, a loose slat revealed a glimpse of greening lawn, of bedded daffodils, a barbecue grill, a flock of plastic flamingos, a Tuff Shed festooned with antlers. Laramie homeowners, feathering their domestic nests. The fences marked the edge of order and family and prosperity, separated from the utilitarian, dirty public space of the alley.
Well, maybe not all the fences. About halfway down the alley, one homeowner had gone in for chain link instead of wood, the obviously cheap option, revealing a yard that was the picture of neglect. Once there had been a lawn, judging by the presence of a rusting push mower in one corner. But the ground had mostly been reduced to bare dirt, dotted with aged car parts, festooned with cigarette butts and cans and bottles, a couple of rotting tennis shoes tied together and thrown over a carousel clothesline that looked as if it would topple over the next time the wind blew.
The house didn’t look so great either. Dirty windows, one cracked and patched with cardboard, flanking a sagging back porch.
The scene made a statement: rental.
“Hey, Scotty,” said Sally, “what do you know about Laramie real estate?”
He inspected the barren yard beyond the chain-link fence. “Judging by the state of that lawn, the landlord isn’t paying the water bill. Or maybe the tenants are just dead lazy.”
“Or maybe there aren’t any,” Sally said.
He looked at her. “There were when we went to talk to all the neighbors after the murder,” he said. “College kids.”
“But there’s no sign of life here. Let’s go around front,” said Sally, “and knock on the door.”
She watched him wipe momentary annoyance off his face. “I’ve already talked to these people, Sally. I don’t usually knock on a door unless I have a good reason,” said Scotty. “In case you hadn’t heard, people don’t like to have police officers come knocking. Especially kids.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Let me try to give you a reason. I’ve got this theory.”
“You and Charles Darwin,” said Scotty. “Plenty of people in this town wouldn’t give either of you the time of day.”
“How about you?” Sally asked.
“I brought you here,” he answered.
“Okay. Think about that eviction. Think about the fact that Charlie’s name was on the lease. Can you imagine any landlord, or landlady, for that matter, within their right mind, who’d rent to somebody like Charlie?”
“People who become slumlords don’t care if the properties they rent are maintained. They just care that some-body’s paying the rent,” Scotty said. “Did you see that place? It’d take a pretty desperate person to want to rent a hellhole like that. Or somebody so out of it, they wouldn’t even expect things like safe electricity, no gas leaks, a toilet that worked.”
“That’s enough—I don’t need the details. But look, Scotty. It’s more than that. Lots of renters in this part of town are being kicked out, because property values are exploding. Somebody’s manipulating the real estate market. And I’ve got this theory—”
“You already said that,” said Scotty.
“This theory,” said Sally, “that maybe Brad Preston was involved. There’s a whole lot of money changing hands in this town right now. I can’t imagine anybody who’d rent to Charlie, except, maybe, her father. I admit, there are a few loose ends, but what if he was here for reasons having nothing to do with her, but something to do with property?”
“How do you explain the lug wrench?” Scotty asked.
“I don’t have this all nailed down,” she shot back. “Humor me. Let’s see if we can roust a tenant at that place.”
No one there. The blinds in the front windows were closed, pulled down to within an inch of the window sash. Sally went to the window closest to the door and peeked in. No furniture. A pile of trash on the floor.
Scotty joined her. “No tenants,” he said, “but no ‘For Sale’ sign either.”
“That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been sold lately,” Sally observed, thinking back to the discussion between the yoga Realtors. “Sometimes they do deals before the house is listed for the public. In a hot market like this, I bet that happens a lot. Don’t you think it’s worth finding out if Brad had some connection to this place?”
Was that a glimmer of grudging admiration in his eyes? If so, it was gone in a second. “I’ll check it out,” he said.
They walked back around to the alley and got in his truck. But he didn’t start the engine. He turned to face her. “I also came by to let you know about those family photos of yours. They were taken with a camera phone.”
“How do you know?” asked Sally.
“The quality. Compared to other digital images, they’re pretty horrible. That won’t be true for long, I’m told, but for now, at least, there’s a big difference,” Scotty said.
“But they’re easy to take,” said Sally. “I mean, it’s getting to the point where everywhere you go, somebody’s taking a picture. Jesus, sometimes I think camera phone pictures could replace writing. I’m pretty much a throw-back when it comes to technology. Every other college professor in the country has gone to websites and Power-Point and all that stuff, or at least overhead transparencies, and I’m still scribbling all over the blackboard. But my students make up for it. Last week I did a lecture on the history of abortion in America, in my women’s rights class. I noticed one student pretty much slept through the whole thing, which bugs the shit out of me, naturally. But then, at the end of class, she woke up, took out her cell phone, and took a picture of the blackboard. She can probably Google every term I wrote down, and get enough information to pass a test on the subject.”
“Those camera phones can send pictures anywhere in a second,” Scotty said.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Sally. “Hawk finally got a digital camera, and he has to plug a chip into the computer in order to send photos to his dad. But you’re saying you don’t need that extra step with these phones?”
“Nope. And that makes them even more of a problem for us. Whoever took the pictures can just send them out, with messages, from a car, or a gas station, or sitting on a park bench. They’re completely mobile. Virtually impossible to track, if they don’t want to be found.”
Sally frowned. “You’d think, by now, I’d have noticed somebody taking pictures of me, even with a cell camera. But then again, I guess if they wanted to be sneaky about it, they wouldn’t make a big deal of holding out the phone, framing the shot, all that. They’d just act like they were making a call.”
“Take another look at the pictures,” said Scotty. “They aren’t exactly award-winning shots. They’re framed all crooked, off center, like that.”
“And the photographer’s purpose,” said Sally, “isn’t to make art. It’s to let Hawk and me know we’re being watched. It’s to intimidate us.”
“Especially you,” said Scotty.
“It works,” said Sally, “but it pisses me off too. I mean, whoever it was followed me down to the mall in Fort Collins. I was looking for Charlie, and they know it. They want me to stop trying to help her.”
Scotty was silent.
“I guess you know about the drug dealing that was going on at Billy’s place,” Sally said.
Scotty’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know about it?” he asked.
“Let’s just say that since I’m a university professor, certain information comes across my path now and then,” she replied. “Which one of the tenants was in the business?”
“Which of your students was looking to score?” Scotty asked in turn.
“Somebody who had nothing to do with anything, Scotty. Don’t hammer at me for a name—he’s not involved. He’s just a guy who’s trying to stop being a slacker and start being a grown-up, and along the way he happened in on one of the parties at that place. He described the scene to Hawk and me—lots of drink and drugs, predatory older guys, and underage kids there, getting drunk and stoned.”
“As your slacker students would say, duh,” Scotty said. “Why do you think we bother busting parties? It’s not because cops hate fun.”
“Right,” said Sally. “Take you, for instance. You practically invented fun.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Scotty, and their gazes met and glanced off each other, and she managed not to let him see her shiver.
“Um. Yeah. So anyway, this guy told us he’d seen Charlie pitch a fit when one of the guys started hitting on some young girls in a very aggressive way. Sounded like Billy dragged her away before she got herself punched or worse,” Sally told him.
“You never know,” Scotty mused. “Girls who’ve been treated like shit sometimes respond by leading other girls into bad situations. Sometimes they want to play savior. Sometimes both. They swing back and forth. It’s part of the pathology that leads them into trouble. And make no mistake, Sally, Charlotte Preston is in big trouble.”
“When hasn’t she been?” Sally asked. “Poor Charlie. Even if—when—she comes to her senses, she’s way too fucked up to be able to defend herself. It’s a good thing she’s got a smart lawyer.”
Scotty looked at her. “She does?” he asked.
“Yeah. Dave Haggerty’s associate. I called him right after they took Charlie to the hospital, and he got in touch with the lawyer. I saw her myself.”
“I was at the hospital that afternoon,” said Scotty. “I wanted to see if the kid was conscious enough to give us a statement. She wasn’t.”
“And she shouldn’t have, even if she had been,” Sally said. “That’s what lawyers are for.”
“There wasn’t any lawyer there,” said Scotty. “The only person there was Bea Preston. And she’d given the doctors strict instructions that nobody was to be allowed to see Charlotte. Nobody.”
Bad, bad news. “She must have fired the lawyer. I talked to Bea, Scotty. And Charlie too. Those women hate each other. What if Charlie needs to be protected from her?”
Scotty’s lips pressed together. He gripped the steering wheel, stared straight ahead, and then looked over at Sally with as much intensity in his icy green eyes as she’d ever seen him display. “We have a deputy at the hospital all the time, and we’ve let the doctors know we’re to be kept informed on the girl’s medical condition. When she’s able, we’ll talk to her. This is a murder investigation, Dr. Alder,” he said. “Even somebody who’s got a direct line to Jesus can’t mess with us.”