The Edge of Reason

by Melinda Snodgrass

“I’m impressed.” A glance at his watch sent him out of his chair. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go by the apartment for a change of clothes before I go to work.”

  “Okay. See you tonight.”

  “Right.”

  As he drove down Montgomery, Richard reflected on how odd human beings were. He was defensive because of his family’s money and social position. Rhiana was defensive for the exact opposite reason. Maybe nobody was ever content and secure.

  The stink of wet, burned carpet caught in the throat as Richard pushed open the door of the apartment. He stepped in and froze at the sight of the slender man seated on the couch.

  Justice Robert Oort looked up over the rims of his half-moon glasses. The dark blue eyes were cool and emotionless. He set aside the book he had been reading. A year’s absence made Richard aware of how his father’s iron-gray hair had turned to silver. He wondered if it was him or his mother who’d caused that, or could he not feel guilty and assume it was just the passage of time?

  “Sir,” Richard said.

  “The manager let me in,” the older man said in answer to a question that hadn’t been asked.

  “But why are you … ?” Richard began.

  “Your lieutenant informed us you’d been hurt. I flew out on the red eye and went to the hospital only to find out you had checked yourself out.”

  “Sorry, sir.” It was stupid and inane to apologize but that was the nature of the relationship.

  “That was not wise.”

  “Yes, you’re right, sir.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Friends,” he almost said automatically, but he caught himself. He didn’t want an inquiry into the identity of the friends. “Hotel,” he answered instead.

  The judge checked his Rolex. “You’re going to be late if you don’t start changing.”

  Richard walked into the bedroom. His father followed. Richard selected a coppery brown suit and a dark gold shirt. His fingers were trembling as he flicked through the dozens of ties hanging on the electric racks in the closet.

  “Your lieutenant also told me that you were promoted.”

  “Yes, sir,” Richard said as he pulled shoe trees out of a pair of brown loafers.

  “You didn’t think that deserved a phone call?”

  He turned to face his father, and found himself unable to meet the judge’s intensely dark blue eyes. Instead he studied the ugly Berber carpet. “It …” He paused to clear his throat. “It happened very suddenly.”

  “So I gathered. I talked with Captain Murphy in Newport and he indicated that it was almost unheard of for a young officer with so little experience to be promoted to detective without strings being pulled.” The judge’s voice provided the interrogatory.

  Richard’s stomach began to ache. He forced himself to relax his fingers, which had clenched tightly around the material of his shirt.

  “You’d have to ask my captain,” Richard said.

  “You have no idea why you were promoted?” his father pressed.

  Richard considered the events of the past three days and the conversation he’d had last night with Kenntnis and shook his head. He also realized that his father’s arrival had little to do with concern over Richard and a lot to do with distrust of the mysterious patron.

  “I’m concerned that you’re mishandling this career as well.”

  “I thought you didn’t approve of my becoming a policeman.”

  His father sighed. “It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but you lacked the …” He paused and then resumed. “Temperament for law or medicine, and after your … illness you chose to quit Drew’s firm rather than return. You needed to do something.”

  His stomach was pressed up hard against his lungs and Richard felt as if he had only inches with which to breathe. “I was good at music.”

  “You told us that only one tenth of one percent actually succeed in having a professional career. I didn’t like those odds. And you told me yourself you weren’t certain you had the talent. I wanted you to have something secure to fall back on. So I got you the job.”

  “But you seem to be objecting when someone makes an effort on my behalf in this career,” Richard said, and felt the breath freeze in his chest at his father’s look.

  “I don’t know who’s acting on your behalf, and I want to make certain you’re not doing anything that could blow back on me. I’m on the Federal bench. I have to be careful, and your judgment hasn’t always impressed me.”

  Richard knew the force of his father’s personality and will. Captain Ortiz would tell him who had made the request. “He’s a businessman named Kenntnis. He owns a company called Lumina Enterprises.”

  “I find it disturbing when you lie to me. Did you think I would actually believe that you accomplished this on your own?”

  The nausea was increasing. If he’d just told the truth initially he might have avoided this rebuke.

  Robert Oort shook his head. “I don’t understand you at all. I raised you to be better than this.” Richard didn’t respond. “Well, it’s apparent you are determined to set your own course.” The older man turned and walked to the door of the bedroom. He paused and looked back. “You might want to instruct them to inform someone else next time you come to grief. I’m a long ways away.”

  Richard heard the front door fall closed. Dropping the shirt, he ran for the bathroom, hoping to reach the toilet before he vomited.

  The ribbing started in the parking lot outside APD headquarters and continued all the way up to the bullpen. Various officers—plainclothes and uniforms—commented about the shootout at Richard’s apartment the night before and his seeming inability to hit anything. After the encounter with his father Richard was finding it hard to maintain his equilibrium, but it was fatal with cops if you reacted. Like wolves, they sensed weakness.

  Richard kept smiling, but his cheeks were burning by the time he reached his desk. He pulled out his notebook and Palm indicating dismissal, and eventually the pack wandered away. He tried to concentrate on transferring his notes, but his thoughts returned over and over to the conversation with his father. If only he’d told him about Kenntnis initially. There was nothing wrong with having help. Why did he need his dad to be proud of him? The judge had never been proud of anything he’d done before. It wasn’t going to change now.

  A shadow fell across the desk. He looked up at Lieutenant Weber. “Could I talk to you for a minute?” Weber asked.

  Richard nodded and followed the other man into an empty conference room. Weber shut the door behind them and sat down at the round table. Richard remained standing. A hard knot formed again in Richard’s stomach as Weber stared up at him.

  “Sit down. You’re not in trouble,” Weber said, as if he’d read Richard’s mind. Richard sat cautiously on the front edge of the indicated chair. “I sent evidence techs over to your place last night.”

  “And?” said Richard brightly.

  “Whatever you shot at, you didn’t miss,” said Weber. His expression was somber, his brown eyes wary and confused. “There were no holes in the walls.”

  “He was in front of the sliding doors.”

  “I checked outside. There’s a seven-foot cedar fence around your patio. You didn’t hit that either. And we didn’t find any bullets out in the commons area.”

  “Why is this important?” Richard asked, swallowing hard, trying to force back the dread.

  Weber ran a hand through his thick mat of wavy brown hair, leaving it looking like a disturbed haystack. “Because I found out yesterday that you were at the building that got bombed. The chief had sent you over there for an interview. Who’s after you? And what have you done to set them on you?” Weber asked.

  “I’m not dirty,” Richard said, assuming that was what Weber was thinking.

  “Oh shit, I know that. You’re a fucking boy scout.” Weber left his chair and came around to sit on the edge of the table near Richard. He laid a hand on Richard’s shoulder. Richard noticed a faint dus
ting of freckles across the back of Weber’s wrist and the powerful muscles and tendons.

  “It’s pretty damn obvious that you’re in some kind of trouble, and I wanted you to know that if I can help I will. You’re a good cop and we’d … I’d hate to lose you.”

  The support and honest concern were unexpected and terribly welcome after his earlier encounter. Richard felt a glow of pleasure that this decorated officer thought well of him.

  The phone in the conference room chirped. Weber leaned over, picked up the receiver, listened and handed it over to Richard.

  “Richard Oort,” he said.

  “Detective, this is Sergeant Vallis in Denver.” Richard felt the pulse beating in his throat. “You had an APB out on some kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well we’ve got three of ’em in the morgue up here.”

  “Which three?”

  “Naomi Parsons, Dan Douglas and Alice Rangold.”

  You know how kids are, Emma Parsons had said. They all want to try their wings. Well, Naomi had tried and they’d failed her. Panic and dread overtook him as Richard realized that he’d have to break the news to this mother … to all their mothers. It had him so agitated that he momentarily lost the thread of what Vallis was saying. By the time he could focus again, he heard Vallis say, “ … got caught up in a drive-by.”

  “They were shot?” Surprise sent his voice up an octave.

  “Yeah, that’s what I just said,” answered Vallis.

  “Were they the only fatalities?” Richard asked.

  “Nah, four bangers got hit, too. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen it this bad. Will you be comin’ up?”

  “Yes, I think I better.” Richard handed the phone over to Weber to hang up.

  “Bad?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Yes.” Richard stood and started for the door. A new and unwelcome thought intruded. “Can I go to Denver?”

  “Sure, if it’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “It is. The bombing that’s now become a homicide.”

  Richard got as far as the door, then hesitated, his hand gripping the doorknob. “Do I … am I the one who tells the families?”

  “Some cops do it themselves. Me, I call the chaplain and have him deliver the news,” Weber said, trying to sound matter-of-fact and failing.

  “I … I think I’ll do that.”

  Chapter NINE

  Vallis was a heavyset man in his midfifties. He sported ostrich cowboy boots and a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate wedged up his sagging belly. He nursed a big bottle of water, and periodically he would sniff at an open jar of carmex. Richard felt like Vallis looked, after the turbulent flight up from Albuquerque aboard one of Mesa Airlines’ twelve-seater prop jobs. The plane didn’t handle the mountain updrafts terribly well. Richard took a companionable sip from his own bottle of Evian. Vallis stuck the water bottle under his arm and held out a shovel-sized hand.

  “Glad you could get up here this fast. I’ve got the parents due to arrive in the next few hours and they all want to take their kids.”

  “Understandable,” Richard said.

  “Don’t get many beat cops coming to take a look,” said Vallis.

  “I just made detective … .”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, I’ve tried to get at least a journeyman’s knowledge about various aspects of police work so I’ve read a lot of forensic books over the past few years.”

  “Well, this one is pretty damn cut and dried,” said Vallis over his shoulder as he led Richard through the office cubicles and the big double metal doors into the morgue itself.

  Vallis choked out a cough and stuffed blobs of carmex into each nostril. Richard looked at the older man curiously. There actually wasn’t much odor in the morgue. Giant exhaust fans beat out a rhythm, moving the very chilly air. Richard wondered if Vallis had gotten a whiff he couldn’t forget, and now his mind provided the stench whenever he was near a body. And there were a lot of bodies. Denver was a much bigger and richer city than Albuquerque so there were three coroners at work and a couple of assistants. A body on one table had been cracked open, rib bones starkly white against the red and yellow of the viscera and muscles. There was the sound of gurgling water running constantly down the length of the steel table carrying away the waste.

  An assistant spotted them. “Who you here for?” he asked.

  “The drive-bys,” Vallis croaked out, trying to breathe through his mouth and talk at the same time.

  The assistant nodded and led the way to the lockers set in the far wall. The drawers slid out with a rumble of metal on metal. Richard pulled thin surgical gloves over his bandages, and twitched back the first sheet to reveal the waxy pale face of a young man. Dark blond hair fell limply across his forehead. Richard steeled himself and pulled again until the torso could be seen. There were four wounds like tiny mouths in the dead boy’s chest and stomach. Richard covered the body and moved to the next.

  The girl in the next drawer had soft brown hair cut to chin length. She had a wound in the side of her neck and two in the chest. The final drawer held a zaftig dark brunette with more torso wounds. He felt ghoulish, but he checked the toe tag. The zaftig brunette was Naomi.

  “Okay?” Vallis asked.

  Richard nodded and pulled the sheet back up. The coroner’s assistant rolled the brunette back into the wall. The man’s hands closed around the end of the slab. There was a large bruise across the back of one hand and something snapped into focus.

  “Wait!” Richard pulled the sheet back down from the first girl’s body and stared at the neck wound.

  “Could you get a coroner over here, please?” he asked the assistant. The man looked bored and irritated, but he nodded and walked away.

  “What?” Vallis asked in an aggrieved tone.

  “This bullet went in on an angle.” Richard gently touched the ragged edges of the neck wound. “It had to have hit either the carotid or the jugular or maybe both. There should be a huge swelling from the hemorrhage.”

  Vallis bent forward, but Richard noticed that he never actually focused on the girl’s throat. His eyes kept sliding away.

  “Okay, so?”

  “Let’s see what the coroner says,” Richard replied cautiously and turned to greet the white-haired, paunchy man approaching them. He was snapping his heels down hard as if to emphasize his annoyance at the interruption.

  “Yes? Danny said you had a question,” said the coroner.

  “More of an observation,” said Richard, and he repeated what he had told Vallis.

  “Obviously it didn’t hit either the vein or the artery.” Impatience and superiority made each word hit like a dart.

  “Could you just take a look?” Richard asked, since the coroner hadn’t once glanced at the body.

  The coroner’s eyes slid off the body and focused on the far wall. “It’s what I would expect from this kind of wound. We’ve done the autopsies.”

  Richard blinked at the coroner. He looked back at the smooth, unblemished body of the girl. “But … but you haven’t,” he said weakly.

  “Are you insinuating that I and my staff haven’t done our work?”

  “Well, no … yes.”

  The man’s face was a mottled red. “If you’ll excuse me. You can find your way out.” The coroner turned and walked away.

  “There hasn’t been an autopsy,” said Richard, appealing to Vallis.

  “Of course there has,” said Vallis. “Look, I gotta get back to the precinct.”

  He walked to the door. Richard followed, his mind whirling.

  Just outside the door he caught Vallis by the arm. “Are you releasing the bodies to a mortuary?”

  “Yeah, the Davis Funeral Home.”

  “When?” asked Richard.

  Vallis looked at his watch. “Well, now that you’ve had a look, probably within the hour.”

  “Thanks,” said Richard. He waited until Vallis cleared the fr
ont doors before he pulled out his cell phone and placed a call to Albuquerque.

  Richard waited on the sidewalk out front of the Davis Mortuary. A redbrick building with white trim and wide bay windows with mullioned panes, it looked more like a house than a funeral parlor, as if the sting of death could be eased with Colonial respectability. His breath puffed white streamers in front of his face. Frost sparkled on the sidewalk where the light of the street lamps pooled. Occasionally he heard a car pass on the larger street behind him. He checked his watch. 11:43. Armandariz’s plane had been due to land at 9:20. I wonder if she’s thought better of it and isn’t coming after all, he thought. What I’m asking is completely out of line. The icy air bit at the skin of his exposed wrist. Richard quickly shook the cuffs of his shirt, suit coat and topcoat back down, and pulled up his glove. He paced a slow circle.

  A car turned the corner, the headlights sweeping across the darkened facades of the buildings. The Neon rolled into the curb and stopped. The lights and engine died and Armandariz stepped out wrapped in a bulky white parka with a fur-trimmed hood. The pale fur set off her dark skin. She had a medical bag in one hand and a Styrofoam cup in the other. The cup added its steam to their mingled breaths.

  “Okay, you told me if I came I might get some answers about the ash in the trailer,” Armandariz said.

  Richard held up a hand. “That’s not exactly what I said. I said you might find something as intriguing as the ash.”

  “So I get more questions and no answers?” asked Armandariz.

  “Possibly … probably. Or I misinterpreted what I saw and wasted your time and my money.”

  The coroner nodded, accepting his caveats. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  Richard led her around to the back of the mortuary. Two hearses and two white limos were parked in the lot near a Dumpster. “Tacky,” Armandariz opined as they walked past the limos. “They should be black.”

  They reached the double doors set in the center of the back wall. Richard knocked softly.

  “How did you get them to agree to this?” Armandariz asked.

  “I waited until the owners had gone home, and I wooed the night staff with a flash of a badge and a hint of Silence of the Lambs. Todd liked the idea of being part of something bigger than a night spent embalming.”