Three uniformed officers with flashlights were on the roof of the building adjacent to the old bank.
“Where does he live? Emma’s beau?”
“A small flat behind his research laboratory. Third floor of the old bank building.”
“That could be directly across from the roof they’re taping off. Is there access from his place to the roof?”
Alan tried to recall the layout of Ethan’s research laboratory. “There might be some windows that face in that direction.” He gazed up at the roofline. “Those that are next to the roof where the cops are? I think they would go into the lab. His flat is behind that, above the alley.”
“We have a choice to make here, Alan. We could get out of the car and walk over there and start asking questions and stick our noses into whatever investigation is going on in that building. If we do, the police will immediately recognize our interest in—what’s this man’s name?”
“Ethan Han.”
Cozy was silent for a moment. “Really? Ethan Han?”
“Yes, have you heard of him? He’s a medical technology entrepreneur who—”
“I know who the hell he is. Is there anyone involved in this case who isn’t on People magazine’s A-list?”
“Just you and me and Lauren, Cozy. We’re the only regular folks.”
“Yes, and I’m Daffy Duck. Well, anyway, if we go out there, the cops are going to learn about our interest in Ethan Han and very soon somebody is going to mention to them that Ethan and Emma are an item and the cops are going to realize that we are also concerned about Emma.
“So our decision right now is this: Do we play the Emma card and mosey over and see what’s going on? Or do we make a tactical retreat? The police aren’t stupid. It may take them an interview or two to sort it out, but they are not going to misread our interest in this crime scene, whatever it is.”
Before Alan could answer, he was distracted by a loud noise.
This time the car was Alan’s Land Cruiser and not a fancy lawyer’s BMW so Sam Purdy didn’t even ask before he yanked open the back door and let himself in.
Both Alan and Cozy were startled and turned around. Purdy was delighted at the surprise on their faces.
“Hello, again, you two. Alan, you have a new hobby? You started listening to scanners or something? You’re showing up at way too many crime scenes for it to be a coincidence.”
“Hey, Sam. Too many for my taste, too. But we just stumbled on this one. It’s been a long night, how are you holding up?”
“I’m beat. The way the world is supposed to work is that when the snow starts falling in buckets, the felons hibernate, and detectives usually get to sleep in, or catch up on old business. Not this shift, I’ll tell you. First Lauren’s troubles and now this.”
“Good evening again, Detective.”
“Hello, Mr. Maitlin.”
“What is this, this new situation?”
Sam ignored the question. “What brings you to the Mall at this hour? Shortcut across town from the hospital I don’t know about?”
Cozy spoke before Alan had a chance to say something Cozy didn’t want said. “Actually, no, Detective. We were on our way to my office—which is there,” he pointed south, “just across the Mall on Fourteenth—when we saw the hubbub.”
Purdy figured that a defense attorney as good as Cozier Maitlin could manage to lie to him with seamless facility, so Sam stared at Alan’s face for clues as to whether or not Cozy’s story was anywhere near true. Alan turned away from Sam.
Purdy looked back at the lawyer. “Let’s say that’s true, Mr. Maitlin. Let’s say that.”
“But it is,” Cozy assured him with a face as straight as the Republican National Committee. “So what is going on in my quiet neighborhood that requires such a large police response?”
“Discharge of a firearm.”
Alan swallowed. “A shooting?”
Emma? Ethan?
Sam loosened the three top buttons on his overcoat. He relished his advantage. “Two in one night. There have been some years I can hardly remember two shootings in this burg. Go figure.”
“Anyone injured?” Alan asked.
“Let me think, it’s been a hell of a night. Is there anyone you’re particularly concerned about?”
Cozy considered warning Alan not to respond, but decided to see if Alan could recognize the trap and handle the big cop on his own. He wasn’t going to be able to baby-sit Alan forever.
“In particular? No, I don’t like to see anyone get shot.”
“I forget sometimes what a humanitarian you are. It’s one of the things I guess I like about you. Hanging with you is like slumming around with Amnesty International.” He cracked open the door next to him and prepared to get out of the car. “Gentlemen, it’s been sweet. Alan, you might reconsider exactly who you should be trusting, who really cares about who in this situation. And you, Mr. Maitlin, you can continue on your way to your office, and I’ll pretend that I believe that was ever your destination. Is that benevolent of me or what? People moan about police brutality, but they never write poems about sweethearts like me.”
Beyond the overt warning and the obvious sarcasm, Alan heard an edge in Sam’s voice, an I-helped-you-out-earlier-didn’t-I-and-this-is-what-I-get? tone. Alan wondered if Cozy heard it. He was inclined to think not.
“I was at a party there once, Sam. At the old bank building.”
Sam rubbed his forehead with one gloved hand and pulled the door closed against the frigid air with the other. “We talking recently, Alan, or we talking, like, during the storied days of The Good Earth?” During the seventies, the top floor of the Citizens Bank Building had been the home of one of Boulder’s more notorious nightspots.
“The Good Earth? You’re talking before my time. No, more recently. The party was at Ethan Han’s flat or lab or whatever he calls it.”
“Lauren on your arm that night?”
Cozy was beginning to worry about the direction of the conversation. Sam was sketching out lines that would eventually connect dots. Soon, he would find the short line that connected Emma and Lauren. Until he and Casey understood that relationship a lot better, Cozy didn’t want Sam Purdy tracing it. Cozy decided to allow just a little more line to play out before he reeled his client back in.
“Actually, Sam, I was on her arm during this particular soiree.”
Sam smiled at that thought. “Figures. Then you probably know Han is the only actual resident of the bank building. The rest of the space is commercial.”
“That’s the way it looked to me that night.”
“Big party?”
“Big enough. Catered.”
“Meet somebody there…tall guy, looks like he’s got an armadillo on top of his head?”
J. P. Morgan, Alan thought. How does Sam know J. P.?
“Yes, I think I remember seeing someone like that. Was he involved in the shooting?”
Sam ignored Alan’s question. “Maybe remember a name to go with it?”
“Can’t be sure about that.”
“Well, as luck would have it, it probably won’t surprise either of you to learn that it is indeed Ethan Han’s place that is our second crime scene tonight. Coincidences are piling up deeper than the drifts around here.”
“Was Ethan hurt?” The concern was Alan’s.
Sam stretched his big neck from side to side. “First name basis? Is Mr. Han a buddy of yours?”
“No, just an acquaintance. I met him at one of Lauren’s softball games.”
“And the next thing that happens is he invites you to a fancy dinner? You must have really charmed the guy.”
“We have some mutual friends.”
“Ah.” Sam was trying to decide whether he could believe Alan, whom he had never considered to be an accomplished liar. He couldn’t decide. “This shooting’s not my case. Lauren’s shooting’s not my case. But what I’m hearing is that it doesn’t look like Ethan was injured in this latest fracas.”
Alan exhaled involuntarily. He desperately wanted to ask about Emma Spire’s whereabouts and her well-being, but knew he shouldn’t reveal the connection if Sam didn’t already know about it.
Cozy ran interference. He said, “Has the ambulance already departed?”
Sam Purdy hesitated, then said, “Don’t remember saying that we ever needed one.”
Damn, thought Cozy, but this cop’s coy. Cozy still didn’t know whether the ambulance wasn’t needed because the victim was dead or because there wasn’t a victim.
“I don’t see any vehicles from the coroner’s office, either.”
Sam tried to suck free a poppy seed that had been lodged in his teeth since he’d eaten a midnight bagel and cream cheese, his meager dinner. He turned his head to face the cars on the Mall and said, “Nope, me neither.”
Cozy was thinking of ways to pry some more information free from Detective Purdy and was coming up blank. He thought that he would probably enjoy a game of chess with this man.
Sam interrupted the silence by saying, “My guess is that we could help each other here. That’d be my guess, if everyone were so inclined.”
“What do you have in mind?” Cozy asked. He loved horse trading, always assumed he’d end up with the thoroughbred.
“You two seem curious about the events that have transpired here tonight. I could shed a little light on that. I remain a little curious about why Lauren was firing a weapon just a few feet away from Emma Spire’s house a few hours ago. I still have a feeling that, Alan, you might be able to shed a little light on that. Personally,” he emphasized the word for Alan’s benefit, “I might consider that a fair exchange of information.”
Alan looked at Cozy.
“Seems one-sided to the lawyer in me, Detective. We give you information in a shooting with a victim. You give us information in a shooting without one. Where’s the balance?”
“Who said there’s no victim here?”
“No ambulance, no coroner. Two minus one, minus one, makes zero.”
Purdy said, “How about I start off with a little goodwill, maybe give you a freebie? Do you know where I was heading when I got the call to respond here, Alan? I was on my way to Thirty-third to drop off some evidence when I get an order from Sergeant Pons to pick up a warrant to go search your house. Which is where I’ll be heading as soon as I’m done here. You didn’t hear that from me—either of you says you did, I’ll deny it. But if I were you, I might put a preemptive call into Lew Skiles or the DA and see if you can negotiate access so that some bored detective doesn’t knock down your door and tear up your house looking for something that probably isn’t even there.”
“They’re going to search my house?” Alan was incredulous at how fast things were moving. “Tonight? What are they looking for?”
Cozy replied, “They’re fishing. It’ll be a vague warrant, probably get thrown out.” Cozy didn’t believe his own protestations; most Boulder judges were strict with warrant requirements. But when around the police Cozy loved to cast as wide a net of doubt about the propriety of collected evidence as he could.
“It was Sergeant Pons’s idea, apparently, the search. Felt that it shouldn’t wait, even though Wendell is usually a patient man. A little redundant, some say, but typically patient.”
Cozy reached over the seat and put a hand on the cop’s shoulder. Sam fought an urge to slap it off.
Cozy said, “I do appreciate the advice. I think I’ll phone the chief trial deputy as soon as we get to my office. I’m sure we can arrange convenient access for you and your colleagues.”
Sam ignored Cozy and faced his friend.
“We’re still looking for Lauren’s car, Alan. It’s a bitch finding a vehicle during a blizzard. In this much snow, an eighty-six Cressida looks exactly like a ninety-four Lexus looks just like a ninety-two Hyundai. And all the plates are totally crusted with ice.”
“Maybe I could go out and look for it, Sam, and give you a call if I find it.”
“Maybe you could just tell me where you might go to look for it and I’ll do it myself.”
“The plain view issues that we discussed earlier remain problematic, Detective Purdy. I don’t know what a trial judge or the supremes might say about sweeping snow off a car to look at it. Or in it.”
Purdy said, “Your warning has already been heeded, Mr. Maitlin. As a matter of fact, the puzzle is more convoluted than you think. See, I think the plain view problems would be compounded if the car in question was parked on private property that has not yet been linked to any criminal activity, especially if it were in a location that afforded no plain view from the sidewalk or the street.
“If Lauren’s car were someplace like that, it might really curtail my freedom to examine it. ’Course, by midmorning, after a little Colorado sunshine, plates will have all dripped clean. Be easy, then. Be able to get a warrant. Who could guess how something like this could unravel by morning. Can you imagine the press, for instance, if it turned out someone prominent was involved in this mystery?”
As he finished speaking, Sam looked at Alan. The detective’s eyes smiled. Without an additional word, he was telling Alan and Cozy not to play him for a fool. He knew where Lauren’s car was. He was waiting for someone to tell him why her car was in Emma Spire’s driveway. He was also telling Alan and Cozy that they weren’t the only ones looking for Emma.
Cozy Maitlin’s mind was racing off in a direction he hoped would be more substantive than a discussion about the search of Alan and Lauren’s house or the discovery and search of her car, both events which he knew from experience were as inevitable as the Colorado sun beginning to melt away the snow in the morning.
Cozy said, “I’ve been thinking. This is a large police response for a noninjury shooting.”
“Huh?” countered Purdy, who despite his exhaustion, guessed instantly where the attorney was heading with this diversion.
“I count three radio cars, couple of detective cars, maybe more vehicles down on Fifteenth that I can’t see. Big response for a no-bodily-harm firearm discharge. Fascinating.”
Sam tried to recover the initiative. “It looks like it may be a ‘make-my-day’ situation. As a rule, the department’s uneasy about them, investigates them carefully.”
“Burglary then, or was it trespassing?”
Colorado’s “make-my-day” law permits a resident to protect his or her dwelling with the use of deadly force, even if the only risk is to property.
“Let’s say an attempted burglary.”
“Someone tried to break in from the roof.” There was no question in Cozy’s statement. “Lord knows there should be a good trail of footprints to follow in this snow.”
Sam Purdy realized that so far Cozy Maitlin was winning this battle of wits to see who was able to squeeze more information from whom. It really pissed him off.
“Who knows, Mr. Maitlin, depending on how things evolve here tonight, by morning you could have yourself yet another new client.”
“And who might that be, Detective?”
“There’s discussion going on among my colleagues right now about whether to arrest this latest shooter.”
“A make-my-day situation shouldn’t result in an arrest.”
“What I may have neglected to mention, given that for some reason I sometimes lean toward being retentive around attorneys—maybe I should give you a call at the office, Alan, and take a look at that mistrustful side of myself in therapy—was that the shooter was a guest of the resident of the dwelling and not the resident himself. I’m told that the make-my-day law is a little vague about the rights of visitors to use deadly force to protect property that doesn’t happen to be their own.”
A visitor? Alan’s heart was doing flip-flops. Was Emma, too, about to be arrested for firing a gun at someone? Or had J.P. been the shooter? Is that how Sam had met him?
Cozy said, “I’m happy to check the case law on that, if you would like, Detective. What was the relationship of the alleged shoo
ter to the resident of the dwelling? Family? Friend? Invited guest? Uninvited guest?”
“Those are questions we’re working assiduously to answer, Mr. Maitlin.”
“Mr. Han isn’t around to answer that question?”
Sam smirked. “I think I’m needed elsewhere. Good night, gents. Alan, make sure the bulb’s screwed in tight. Pull the switch. Maybe you’ll see the light.”
Alan said, “Sam knows a lot, Cozy. He’s sly.”
Cozy said, “He’s guessed at some things, but he’s fishing, mostly. I doubt that the police have been able to confirm very much. They’re wondering about a connection between Han and Emma Spire. They’ll have it soon, maybe by morning, then the press will get ravenous and the pressure on Lauren to talk will be even more intense than it has been.”
Alan started the car. “Do you really want to go to your office?”
“God no, I hate being there by myself. Especially at night. I’m such a wimp at being alone. You would think I would learn to be more masterful at relationships. My selfishness is actually quite maladaptive.” The sudden injection of insight surprised Alan, who was once again reconsidering his assessment of Cozier Maitlin.
Cozy pulled his portable phone from his coat pocket. To Alan, he said, “Why don’t you start driving east, toward your house. I think we should try and impede this search any way we can. That is assuming there is a search, and Sam Purdy isn’t sending us off after the proverbial wild goose.”
Cozy’s call went through.
“Erin, listen—oh, did I wake you?…No it’s not Trevor, who the hell is Trevor? This is Cozy. Remember me, I’m tall, we were married once? I need to ask you something. Is there a chance that Emma Spire was at home tonight hiding out in the dark? What did your nosy witness have to say?”
Cozy listened patiently to Erin’s response and finally said, “No. Nothing much new at our end, she’s going to spend the night in the hospital…. It’s complicated. Go back to sleep, I’ll talk to you tomorrow and fill you in. Alan said you’re going to get a videotape. I want to see it as soon as you have it.” He flipped the phone shut.
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