five:
monday, early morning

Duncan Bloom stared at his newspaper’s website. The first bit of instant history was in the books.

“Dem. Senate Candidate Lamott Shot Downtown.”

It was 2:38 a.m., a grueling fourteen hours since the shooting. The cops had so little information that most of his first piece was all from eyewitnesses inter-mixed with reaction from political and civic leadership.

The newspaper had thrown everything at it that they could, but the big boys from New York and L.A. were already here or on the way, landing now at Eagle-Vail or DIA, speeding along the interstate with all their presumptive access and armies of producers, fact-checkers, investigators, and sources.

A bottle of red wine served as dinner and drinks in one convenient container, supplemented by a package of gas station peanuts, hours ago, and a granola bar grabbed from the abundant stash of supplies where the police set up shop at the train station. Given the paucity of edibles in his carriage house, rented from an active, bright-eyed widow, the wine would have to do.

It was three blocks straight up Lincoln Avenue to the scene that was now putting Glenwood Springs on the national news map. Bloom lived at 10th Street and Lincoln. The floodlights and police were buzzing around 7th Street, by the river, and up in the woods to the east of Lincoln Avenue on the base of Lookout Mountain. From the window over the kitchen sink that faced north, the glow that rose from the police encampment looked like premiere night in Hollywood. The people who lived in the houses smack next to the scene would need sleeping pills tonight. For Bloom, sleep wasn’t on the agenda.

Bloom scrolled to a number on his cell phone and hit redial. The big boys were coming, but Bloom wasn’t about to choke on their exhaust. This was his story, this was his town. He’d been right there for Chrissakes.

The moment Lamott fell defined surreal. He stewed about those split, fragmented seconds over and over. He had already played them in his mind a thousand times. He relived them as he interviewed witnesses. He relived them as the cops interviewed him. He was treated like any other witness put through the drill at the train station. Bloom knew four shots for sure, but there might have been more. How did he know if the first shot didn’t miss the bridge? He didn’t. Trudy Heath was at a nearby interview station, being grilled at the same time.

“Officer DiMarco,” said the voice, no tinge of excitement.

“How ya doing?”

“Better question for you. Not every day you’re kneeling over a man with bullet holes.”

“All instinct,” said Bloom. “Who’s running the show?”

Deputy Sheriff Randall DiMarco was the nephew of Bloom’s landlord and had been an even-tempered source. In Denver, it had been a challenge to get to know cops as individuals. Up here, it was possible.

“State moved in—CBI, FBI, governor’s office, you name it. We ran the show for about the first six minutes.”

“Are you where you can talk?”

“In my cruiser, taking a break,” said DiMarco.

“Out at the scene?” said Bloom.

A radio squawked on DiMarco’s end. “Does it matter?”

“I’m sure it’s a cluster fuck,” said Bloom.

On the TV, one fuzzy, over-enlarged video from a cheap camera caught the attempted assassination. A teenage girl had been standing on the train station platform and accidentally recorded the moment. She’d been shooting a video of her sister. You could make out Lamott and his entourage on the footbridge, then a minute of posing for pictures and then the ugly inevitable. Some video editor had highlighted Lamott with a circle of light and Bloom could see himself, a vague figure moving toward Lamott as he went down.

“What about the photographer?” said Bloom.

“Which one?” said DiMarco.

“The professional.”

“You think you’ve thought of something we haven’t?”

Bloom sipped his wine. It was his fourth glass but he felt oddly sober.

“Did those shots have anything interesting in the background? Are you looking at those?”

DiMarco slurped a drink, likely a Diet Mountain Dew, snapped his nicotine gum. “I gotta get back to looking around in the dark for nothing.”

“So they showed something.”

“I don’t know every detail of the investigation.”

“You would have heard a tidbit if it was good,” said Bloom.

“It’s possible,” said DiMarco. “But I didn’t. Are we off the record or on?”

“Off,” said Bloom. “If I need something to quote, I’ll tell you.”

The Garfield County Sheriff’s office seemed competent and most of his encounters with individual cops had been civilized.

“If anyone has picked up a trail, I haven’t heard,” said DiMarco.

“Don’t you think you’d have something to go on by now, some breadcrumbs?”

“Don’t mention food to me,” said DiMarco. “And I’m not exactly in the inner loop.”

Bloom pictured the Lookout Mountain trail in mid-August. It was no hot spot like Hanging Lake, halfway up Glenwood Canyon. No signs drew tourists. The barely-marked trailhead started behind a house with a clothes line and small flower garden.

“That trail heads up over the top,” said Bloom. “To the east.”

“Don’t try to play cop,” said DiMarco. “Right now the cops and detectives in Glenwood Springs outnumber the citizens of this hamlet about two to one. We’ve got angles coming out the wazoo.”

A jolt caught Bloom like one of those flash headaches that make you wince and then goes poof.

Through the mayhem of the last twelve hours, he had forgotten the phone call.

“Hang on,” said Bloom.

“I’m hanging,” said DiMarco. “But actually, I’ve gotta go.”

“No,” said Bloom. “I might have something.”

“Don’t jack me around.”

“I’m not,” said Bloom, his mind flashing back and his whole body coming alive like he’d touched an electric fence. “I had a wacko on the line this morning. This guy wanted to double-check the times of Lamott’s schedule for the day. Said he was a freelance photographer.”

“Time was this?”

“After I got to the office. Little after ten.”

“He was focused on the footbridge?” said DiMarco.

“Everything, really,” said Bloom. “Start to finish, the whole campaign stop.”

“How long was he on the phone?”

Bloom stood up, energy rekindled. The work phone stored records of inbound calls.

“A minute, two maybe,” said Bloom. “Hard to remember but not long.”

“The voice?” said DiMarco.

“Deep,” said Bloom. “But chit-chatty like an excited tourist.”

“Name?”

“I don’t remember it or if he said.”

“Hang on a second,” said DiMarco.

They had printed details of Lamott’s planned campaign stops in the paper. Not much had changed in terms of timing or logistics. Was there some other detail the caller had been after? Bloom wracked his brain. The swirl of events was thick. Bloom recalled the routine note-taking prior to the shot and his brief chat with Trudy Heath. That calm moment put the alluring Allison Coil, Trudy’s pal, back in his thoughts in delicious fashion. Then there was Lamott’s canned speech and he had followed Lamott up on the bridge. And then everything was a blur and he was swallowed whole by the whale-sized moment and plunged into a dark, busy blur of questions, digging and writing that had consumed the last eight hours. He knew it was the biggest news event he had ever covered. The steps were all the same as every other story, but the intensity factor was off the charts.

“Your office closed?” said DiMarco.

“I can get in.”

“You going to need us to have a warrant?”

“We’re cooperative,” said Bloom. “If there’s nobody down at the office, I’ll call and check with the upper-ups. I suppose this can’t wait until morning.”

“No,” said DiMarco. “Time is the enemy. And she’s growing fangs.”