eleven:
monday afternoon

The police staged the media briefing at the gazebo shelter in Sayre Park, not far from where Lamott first stepped off his campaign bus before his long meet-and-greet stroll through town and his appointment on the pedestrian bridge.

Sheriff Allen Marrs handled the news conference flanked by deputies, City Council members, the mayor, and a bevy of state and federal types whom Bloom had never seen. Today, they were props. It wasn’t hard to imagine the cluster-fuck cop meetings and, without anyone in custody, the tension.

Facing the scrum of media, Sheriff Marrs looked tired. He was smart not to shave. You didn’t want to show up looking like you’d thought about primping. Marrs had a high forehead, dark eyes, and a moustache that curled down at the corners.

The main theme was reassurance. Sheriff Marrs was seasoned enough to follow the script, which was fluffier than cotton candy. He used lots of words, but added nothing new.

Every possible resource devoted to the manhunt.

We have leads but I can’t go into detail.

Glenwood Springs is a safe and caring community.

We urge anyone with information to step forward.

Reward funds have been established for the successful prosecution …

No mention of the disposable phone.

Bloom had been in big media hordes in Denver and this one was right up there—national and Denver crews, national and local print reporters, Grand Junction, Spanish-language news stations, magazine writers. On the national news scale, the attempted assassination of a U.S. Senate candidate rated a nine or ten. The immigration theme would make Glenwood Springs a trough for media feeding for weeks and months to come. Editors were making notes to do anniversary stories. For Bloom, the teeming pack of reporters brought back the old days of Denver, the occasional flare-up of news that drew the outside buzzards.

This first wave brought the high-powered reporters with access to private jets and staff to help with logistics. Waves of others were moving out, the army of grunts. Bloom wanted to work alone but also relished the challenge. This was his town, his story. It might not be a bad time to outwit his old Denver-based cohorts.

The general working theory rested on the idea of shots coming from somewhere in the first few hundred yards of trail that led up Lookout Mountain.

There was a trail to the top of a high knoll overlooking the confluence of rivers, but it was lightly travelled and mostly by locals.

The possible escape routes numbered two.

The first escape route would be the trail up and over the Lookout Mountain peak. Perhaps the shooter quickly transformed into a backpacker and walked innocently away. He might be still walking.

The second escape route would be straight down through the scrub to the streets on the eastern edge of Glenwood Springs.

If the up-and-over theory was correct, the shooter would have had a healthy head start and, obviously, he didn’t have to stay on the trail.

The cops preferred the mingle-with-civilization theory and they indicated that somebody probably saw the shooter escape, but didn’t realize it. They were urging everyone who might have been hiking or driving in the area to recall everything they had seen.

Bloom thought one other theory was being overlooked—a variation of the return-to-civilization theme. What if the shooter came down the hill but hopped over the train tracks and went down to the river to a waiting kayak or raft? Maybe there was too much exposure—the river would take the shooter right under the footbridge—but recreational kayaks and tourist rafts were common.

Distance was the big problem with Lookout Mountain as the shooter’s perch. The reports so far had settled on 500 yards. The distance would depend on the height of the shooter’s precise location on the hill, which sloped up and away to the east. For every foot of elevation the shooter might have wanted, he had to add four or five yards more distance. The shot wasn’t impossible, but it would require skill, practice, and balls the size of grapefruits.

The questions from the reporters made it clear that this was the over-arching consensus, that someone, probably a lone gunman, had known enough to plan the shot and was one helluva shooter with sophisticated military-esque or at least special hunting gear. And, most likely, a bug up his ass about immigration.

Or, at least, hated Tom Lamott.

With the media beast fed and as the questions grew lame and repetitive, Sheriff Marrs thanked everyone and walked away. Reporters tried to worm their way in for one-on-one time, but they were waved off. No individual spoon feeding allowed, only mass distribution of the dry breadcrumbs they’d been asked to swallow.

“Hey, stranger.”

“The one and only Kerry London,” said Bloom. “Don’t you have a flight to catch?”

The man hug was quick. Kerry London looked like he wasn’t used to the Colorado altitude or the summer heat. He was short and a bit tubby. He had an unlikely television face—more nosy weasel than handsome fox.

“Looks like I better rent an apartment,” said London. “Maybe a long-term lease. I didn’t hear anything that makes me think they have a hot lead. Do the local cops know their way around a case like this?”

London was the ubiquitous newshound for NBC. He could cover a messy celebrity murder in Miami one day and mudslides in Puerto Rico the next. London spent less than a year in Denver on his meteoric rise to the network, but he had been a good friend.

“They’re getting a shitload of state help,” said Bloom. “You know I’m not based out of Denver anymore, right?”

“Oh no,” said London, surprise on his face. It would have been nice to think that Kerry London would have spotted the Duncan Bloom byline on The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent front page this morning. “You’re the last reporter that should have been shown the door.”

“A kind sentiment.”

“And now?” said London.

“I can walk home in about five minutes from this spot,” said Bloom. He pointed generally to the north. “Or five minutes from the office downtown.”

They were walking back to Grand Avenue, but London stopped in overly dramatic fashion.

“Right here?” he said.

“Coming up on two years.”

“You’ve got the inside track.”

“Ideas, at least,” said Bloom.

“I’m sick of parachutes,” said London. “Barely enough time to get acclimated. Speaking of which, how long does it take to get used to this thin air?”

“A week or so. It’s only 5,700 feet, a bit higher than Denver. We could go hike Mount Sopris or haul up into the Flat Tops, jack you up another six or seven thousand feet. Then you’d feel it.”

“No thanks,” said London. “Lucky you—you’re actually in town long enough to know the ins and outs and you’re completely adapted to living at elevation in an oxygen-free zone.”

London’s faux jealousy amounted to a kindness. Bloom tried not to think about London’s network salary. Deep down, Bloom knew he wouldn’t switch places. Airports, road food, hotel rooms, strangers.

“So what are the local cops really saying?” said London.

“You got something to trade?” said Bloom. Bloom was unlikely to cough up anything, but he could make a flake of fool’s gold flash in his palm if London was willing to barter.

“Me?” said London. “I’m a big zero up here. Come on, you probably owe me anyway.”

“Nothing from the feds or FBI?”

“Nothing,” said London. “Look, when I say ‘local sources tell me’ on my live shot tonight, you’ll know it was you.”

“I’m bone dry,” said Bloom. It wasn’t true, but that was Bloom’s prerogative. “The cupboard is bare.”

“I get the picture,” said London. “Hope you don’t mix your metaphors when you write.”

“Funny,” said Bloom. “A TV guy who knows the definition of metaphor.”

London smiled. “I plead guilty.”

“Speaking of prose, I’ve probably gotta get back and start writing.” The network boys always got a jump on this kind of story. With federal agencies moving in, Bloom wouldn’t know one federal face from the next. He might suddenly be disconnected to the power center of the investigation. “How long are you going to be around?”

“Few days at least,” said London. “The whole country is watching this one, you know.”

“I think the cops know it,” said Bloom.

“I covered some of that Arizona law,” said London, “about making it easier for cops to stop possible illegals. The people out there who hate illegals really fucking hate illegals.”

“We got our share,” said Bloom.

“So you think the killers are local?” said London.

“Somebody had to have known the possibility of using that hill for cover.”

“Helluva shot,” said London. “Seems they would have found something up there in the woods. Floodlights like a Hollywood premiere.”

“I’ve told the cops they need to bring in a real tracker,” said Bloom. “Someone who can spot shit, literally, in the woods. If the shooter was on that hill, they might need someone who knows the woods, not the city.”

“Or maybe Devo,” said London. “I see he’s back up there somewhere with his grubby band of devolutionists. Everyone knows he makes his home in the Flat Tops.”

“But still nobody knows exactly where. He must have some ingenious underground network to get his videos in and out, the video gear and supplies. He’s a hit, though.”

“Ever meet him?” said London.

“Of course not,” said Bloom. “Not that I haven’t tried. Wrote a whole feature about him and talked to some people who met him. It was like trying to put together a story about Bigfoot with a sit-down over the campfire.”

“If we settle in for a long siege here in Glenwood Springs, I might have to put together a quick feature on Devo. More elusive than Sasquatch, a modern throwback shunning technology. I’ve got one of my producers trying to find his pal with the ultralight that ferries the videos in and out. We’re trying to send a message that we’d like to come up and do a profile, spend some time with him.”

Bloom had a hard time imagining how Kerry London had time to do anything else. Squeezing in the Devo story was a stretch, but he had remembered hearing about a guy named Ziggy from Paonia who drove over McClure Pass once a week to fly his ultralight into the Flat Tops and make runs for Devo. The rumor was that Devo’s flock was closing in on forty fellow devolutionists. The story idea was a good one and Bloom wished he had thought of working through Ziggy.

“And if there’s time,” added London. “Between snooze conferences I gotta work on my book.”

“Book?” said Bloom. London reminded him of the old phrase, if you want something done, ask a busy person.

“Project I’ve been working for quite some time. There was this plane crash in New York, at LaGuardia. Right on takeoff. You remember it. Thirty-one passengers died, the rest were in the harbor, big mess.”

“I remember it,” said Bloom. “Who doesn’t?” He had an instant hunch he knew where this was going. How had London triangulated things so quickly?

“Lawsuits over de-icing and payouts.”

“Remember,” said Bloom.

“I’m going to publish a look back. It’s called Seven Seconds. I’m interviewing all the survivors. There was some real heroism that day, people who fished others out of the water. It was one of the first big stories I covered. Plus, there’s what happened with the legal payouts, how people fared. And one name comes right back to this area. In fact, her name popped up on a Google alert last fall around the same time as Devo’s. I’ve been meaning to get out here. She’s got an outfitting business.”

“Helluva project,” said Bloom, a bit in awe and more than a little jealous that one of the most ubiquitous reporters on television would also have a long-term project making steady progress. Smart to have several back-burners simmering.

“I think it’s going to be good,” said London. “Lots of angles.”

“Let me guess,” said Bloom.

“You know her?”

“Sure,” said Bloom. “I’ve met her. But I can’t say I know her. Allison Coil.”