Dire

by Jeff Carson

  Patterson gestured to Rome’s picture. “According to the Denver PD report, Ryan Rome made assertions at the time of his arrest that Lauren Coulter had put him up to everything. He stuck to a story that they were working as a team and were going to take the jewels, steal a bunch of money from the family company, and run. Ryan Rome stuck with this story through the court proceedings, too.

  “Lauren Coulter painted a completely different picture, though, reporting that Ryan Rome had been cheating on her with various women. Ryan Rome worked for the family business as operations manager for the eastern US. He would go on business trips for weeks on end, and Lauren said there was more hanky-panky than work being done on those trips.

  “She said that Rome had been cheating on her. Her father, Phillip Coulter, had found out through a whistleblower at one of their eastern offices. Phillip Coulter then hired a PI, who followed Rome and got plenty of photo evidence of him with another woman. Her father took the evidence to Lauren. Lauren filed for divorce, citing said evidence of adultery as grounds.

  “Lauren said in her statement that her father was going to fire Rome the day of her father’s murder. She thinks that’s what must have set Ryan Rome off.”

  “And the email that Lauren got today?” Wolf asked. “Can you trace it back to Ryan Rome? Sterling Correctional Facility?”

  Patterson pointed at the screen with a green laser. “This email Lauren received yesterday looks like it was from Ryan Rome. But it’s untraceable. Could have been routed through a masking service online. It’s impossible to figure out where it originated.”

  “Yeah, but it’s him,” Rachette said. “He’s using the same terminology that was in the police report. He’s pissed. He wants that medallion. Wants what’s rightfully his.”

  “Pendant,” Hernandez and Patterson said in unison.

  “Whatever.”

  “Why? What use is the pendant to him?” MacLean asked. “The guy’s rotting in jail.”

  Rachette shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he owes a favor to someone on the outside. Has some outstanding debts, and some bad guys want him to pay or else they’ll take out someone he cares about on the outside. Or maybe the bad guys are threatening to take him out on the inside. You know, there’ve been six inmate murders in Sterling in the last, what, three years? I got a Nebraska buddy who works there. Place is one of the deadliest prisons in North America.”

  They stared at him.

  Rachette sipped his coffee and sat back.

  “And why telegraph what he’s going to do before he does it?” Wolf turned toward the window again. “Why send the email?”

  “The only reason would be to instill fear in Lauren,” Patterson said. “To let her know who she’s dealing with.”

  “Then why make it untraceable?” Wolf asked.

  The room went silent for a few moments.

  Flakes whipped past the lights outside. The curbs had disappeared, covered by a smooth blanket of snow.

  “The phones,” Wolf said, turning back to the room. “Let’s go over the phones.”

  “As I said earlier, I ran Lauren Coulter’s phone records.” Patterson picked up a packet of printed sheets. “She received a call from a burner phone at 7:40 this morning.”

  “Three minutes after the email she received?” MacLean asked.

  “Right. The call lasted thirty-four seconds.” Patterson glanced at Wolf. “Then Chief Wolf called her at 10:26 a.m.”

  “She let the call go to voicemail,” Wolf said.

  “And that was it for her phone activity,” Patterson said. “I can infer from the next ping cycle that she turned her cell off before 10:28, which was two minutes after your call. There’s been no activity since.”

  Wolf nodded for her to continue.

  She pulled the elastic band of her pants up onto her belly. “I took the burner number that called Lauren at work at 7:40 a.m. and then checked those records. That phone, the burner phone, made two other calls in its entire history. And those calls were made this morning to Michael Coulter, Lauren’s brother—one at 9:05 a.m. and one at 10:31 a.m.—which led me to look into him.” Patterson pushed the pointer button again, and a picture flashed up.

  The man was dressed in a suit and tie, like it was a company headshot. Wolf recognized him from the Mackery gas-station footage. His smile, the squint in his eyes, the facial features, the reddish tint to his brown hair—he looked very similar to his sister but his face was well weathered, looking at least ten years older.

  “Michael Coulter is four years Lauren’s senior,” Patterson said. “Works at Luanne’s Sweets and Treats as the chief operating officer. And his DMV file shows he drives a blue BMW SUV. The car in the footage of the Mackery gas station.”

  “Okay, tell me about his phone calls. Did you learn anything from those?”

  Patterson took a deep breath and picked up a piece of paper from the table.

  “Michael Coulter was in Denver when he received the 9:05 a.m. call from the same burner phone that had called Lauren earlier. Then he called his work. I talked to his secretary. She says he called in sick. Right after Michael Coulter received that call he must have started driving up here, because at 10:31, an hour and a half later, we have him just south of Vail when he receives the call. After that, he has no activity, but his latest ping was up here in Rocky Points at 1:10 p.m. this afternoon. According to the ping cycles, his phone was shut off shortly after.”

  “Where did he shut it off?” Wolf asks.

  Patterson walked to her computer and clicked the mouse. A map flashed on the projector screen. “Here.”

  A red shaded circle overlaid a satellite view of a wooded canyon with a single road.

  “They filled up at the gas station and went up Rainbow Creek Canyon,” Wolf said.

  “That’s a quarter-mile-radius circle,” Patterson said. “Luckily there’re not many houses that far up the road. Only two houses fall into the zone, here and here.”

  “Rachette, you’re coming with me.” Wolf walked up the side aisle of the room.

  “Whoa, what about me?” Hernandez twisted in his chair.

  “I need you and Barker cracking the whip on that crime scene. Go up there, get any print samples they’ve lifted, and bring them back. You and Patterson keep us posted on what you find. Let’s move.”

  MacLean was out of his seat and coming up behind. When they reached the doors and went into the squad room, MacLean grabbed his shoulder. “I need to speak to you.”

  Wolf rolled his eyes. “Yeah, about the news story? We’ll have to deal with that later.”

  “No.” MacLean closed his mouth as Rachette came walking up.

  “What’s up?” Rachette looked at them.

  “Detective Rachette, we need a moment.”

  “No,” Wolf said. “We don’t need a moment, Detective Rachette. We need to stop wasting time and go right now.”

  Wolf grabbed Rachette by the sleeve and led him out of the squad room.

  Chapter 16

  Lauren remembered how the elevator’s excruciatingly slow pace had bothered her all those years ago. Now it was worse than torture, watching the lights climb their way toward the twenty-third floor while cooped in the tiny box with Keith Lourde. She could feel his gaze crawling up and down her body.

  “Geez, you’re really in a hurry, huh?”

  She nodded. “Kind of.”

  “Well, almost there. I swear there’s an army of goats in the basement that powers these things.”

  She managed to eke out a smile.

  Finally, they reached the twenty-third floor. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

  “After you.” Keith waved a hand.

  She hesitated for a moment and then stepped forward into the elevator lobby. Swinging right toward the glass-enclosed offices of Luanne’s Sweet’s and Treats corporate, she felt a strong déjà vu sensation, like she’d made the walk thousands of times before. Of course, that was because she had made the walk thousands of times before. First
as a daddy’s-girl underling, then as a woman who’d worked her way into senior management after her mother’s cancer, and finally as CEO of the company, taking over in the wake of her father’s murder.

  She hated the place, and given the circumstances, had the overwhelming urge to get the hell out and never look back.

  But Ella’s beautiful, smiling face kept her feet moving.

  Lauren waited while Keith swiped his magnetic card.

  The doors clicked and she pushed inside. It was just as she’d remembered it—a maze of low cubicles in the center ringed by glass-enclosed offices, only those on the west side having windows that looked out onto the world.

  “Same office, right?” she asked.

  “Of course. I’m not going to give up a corner office if it’s handed to me.”

  She’d vowed to never again set foot in this office as long as she lived. But now she was here and the terrible memories were flooding back. She relived those final moments in the board meeting when she’d quit. That group of chauvinist assholes couldn’t have looked happier if she’d stripped naked and danced on the table for them.

  “There’s nobody here.” Lauren held out her hands.

  “Nope. The company has been frowning upon overtime nowadays.”

  “That’s good. Better for people to get home to their families,” she said, hiding her disappointment. She’d assumed there would be late stragglers in the office.

  They walked in silence and she checked her watch for the fiftieth time—7:03. “So how are your two boys doing?”

  “Eh.” Keith shrugged.

  Lauren got the uneasy feeling she was being marched to a torture chamber.

  Keith pulled ahead as they neared the big wooden door to the corner office. The blinds on the windows were closed, blackness bleeding through the slats.

  With another electronic chirp, his door clicked and he pushed it open.

  Taking off his coat, he walked in first. “Come on in.”

  He disappeared into the darkened interior.

  She watched his black silhouette appear against windows that looked out onto the skyline of downtown Denver. He flicked on his desk lamp, and the tiny pool of light gave her enough courage to enter.

  Stepping inside, she flinched at the wooden door clicking shut behind her.

  “So?” Keith had miraculously produced a raised glass of Scotch in his hand. “What do you think of your old office?”

  Lauren made a show of looking around. The décor was over-the-top masculinity. Her hardcover and paperback collection had been replaced with leather-bound volumes. Her white glossy table with four thin chairs had been replaced with a thick, wood version surrounded by leather seats. A matching leather settee sat against one of the windows. His desk was solid and heavy-looking, and she pitied the men who must have gotten hernias moving it in here.

  “You want one?” Keith raised his drink.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Come in. Take of your jacket. Sit.” He walked to a pair of leather couches.

  Lauren fixed her eyes on the safe, which she knew to be behind the painting of her father on the south wall.

  “Oh, right.” Keith threw the liquid down his throat and put the glass down on the table between the couches. “The money. I forgot, you’re in a hurry.”

  “You didn’t change the portrait,” she said.

  “Nope.” He walked to the painting, swung it out, and fiddled with the dial behind it.

  Lauren stared at the smiling portrait of her father, wondering whether he was watching from somewhere right now. She decided he was, because the thought gave her strength.

  Keith opened the safe and backed away. “There. Take what you need.”

  She hesitated for a second, and then walked to the open lead door.

  There was nothing inside.

  Crushing arms wrapped around her body, pinning her own to her sides.

  “Oh, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” He bit her ear and moaned, and hot breath shot out of his nostrils.

  She stiffened every muscle in her body, thinking only of the teeth clamped on her ear lobe.

  Groping one breast, then the other, he bit down harder on her ear.

  “Stop biting me,” she said, trying to sound more annoyed than alarmed. “Jesus, let’s start gentle and then get to the hard stuff.”

  Keith hesitated, letting go of her breast, and then opened his mouth and ran his lips down her neck. “Ha … you’re playing with me.”

  She put her head forward, approximated where he was, and then wrenched it back as hard as she could. There was a thud and a sharp pain, and she realized it was his teeth digging into her skull.

  He let go.

  She turned around with bared teeth, her hands pulled into fists, her arms tense and shaking.

  Blood gushed through his fingers as he staggered back. “Ah, you bitch! You fucking bitch!”

  With ferocious speed she stepped forward and kneed him in the crotch, just below his bulging erection. To lose this battle was to lose her daughter. And that wasn’t an option.

  “Ungh.” Keith doubled over onto his knees and rolled onto his side.

  She lifted her foot and stomped on the side of his head. His skull thumped against the ground, sounding like she’d dropped a bowling ball on the short pile carpet.

  He lay still, then stirred, slowly at first. Then he shook his head as if he’d momentarily blacked out and was waking up. He bared his teeth and put both hands on the carpeted floor.

  Again, she kicked him. The top of her foot connected upward against his face and she stomped down with her heel on his temple. Then again. And again.

  Better not keep us waiting longer than that, or else.

  The words repeated in her head, and the hatred boiled over—for the man in Rocky Points, and for the man at her feet.

  After Keith Lourde had attacked her that night three years ago, she’d taken her two-year-old daughter and slunk away from her life. Along with nursing school she’d taken self-defense classes, picturing this very moment three nights a week for two and a half years.

  And here she was, getting her revenge.

  The thought stopped her, and she backed away from Keith, who was now motionless and bleeding from every hole in his head.

  “Shit.” She bent down and felt for a pulse.

  It was there, rapid but weak under her fingertips.

  She turned to the safe, staring into the vacant space for a few precious seconds.

  Pulling out the burner phone, she closed her eyes and steadied her breath. She dialed.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi. It’s me.”

  “I know. I’m not expecting any other calls on this phone but you, Lauren.”

  “Right. Listen, I got the money and I’m on my way up.”

  “You’re stationary at 17th and Curtis Street in downtown Denver. A big difference from being on your way up.”

  Her nerves fired all at once.

  “That’s right, Lauren. I can see exactly where you are.”

  “I’m leaving now. It might take some time with the snow.”

  Silence.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  “Call the phone number the second you get into Rocky Points. You’d better drive fast.” The line clicked dead.

  She took off running, out the heavy door of her old office, which used to be her father’s, which now had a dying man lying on the floor.

  “Dammit.” She stopped at a cubicle and picked up a phone. She dialed 91 and hesitated. How fast would they get here? Seconds? Would the security manager in the lobby be alerted and stop her if she called 911? But if left untreated Keith Lourde might die.

  She hovered her finger over the 1, and then pushed down on the plunger. Dropping the phone back in the cradle, she ran back to the slowest elevator on earth.

  Chapter 17

  “Damn, this guy is crazy.” Rachette gripped the ceiling bar.

  Wolf watched the twirling red lights
of the snowplow pull ahead and disappear into the swirling mist.

  “He’s my kind of crazy,” Wolf said, watching the needle pass forty-five miles per hour.

  They were on their way up Rainbow Creek Canyon and had recruited the help of Greg Nanteekut, a Rocky Points resident who had gone from local plowman in a beat-up truck to official plow driver for the local division of the Colorado Department of Transportation.

  At least a foot of snow had accumulated on the road over the course of the afternoon and evening, and with the twists and turns, many of which had hundred-plus-foot drop-offs into a shallow rock-strewn river, Rainbow Creek Canyon would have been impassible without Nanteekut’s help.

  The dash clock said 7:35 p.m. and Wolf had a nagging feeling that Lauren Coulter and her daughter’s lives depended on his pushing the envelope. Then there was the niggle in the back of his brain that they were already too late.

  Outside, an angry blur of snow had been kicked up by the plow ahead. Any gains from the cleared roads were lost in poor visibility, so all Wolf had to follow were the cut marks on either side of the road and the flashing red lights. Dangerous, to say the least, but he kept his foot placed firmly on the accelerator.

  “Okay, we should be coming up on a gradual right turn.” Rachette’s face glowed from the display monitor of the on-dash computer, which he’d commandeered and swiveled toward himself.

  “Shit, wait. It just, like, skipped. It’s gonna be a left.”

  The red lights stayed directly in front of them.

  “What the hell? But it looks like he’s just going straight, so just—”

  Wolf reached over and slammed the laptop lid shut.

  Rachette lifted his hands.

  The red lights of Nanteekut’s plow veered right and disappeared.

  “Whoa.” Rachette pressed his back into the seat.

  Wolf let off the gas and pumped the brakes.

  Keeping his eyes on the left side of the cut, he turned the wheel gradually, then cranked it hard right to keep off the deep stuff.

  The rear end slid out and he let off the brake and corrected the slide.