by Alex Barclay
‘Did you report the rape at the time?’
‘No, I couldn’t bear it. I was…’ Catherine started to sob.
‘That’s OK.’
‘It was so terrible,’ said Catherine. ‘He was waiting in the…it was so…’
Ren waited for her to finish the sentence, but she couldn’t.
‘You mentioned your husband,’ said Ren. ‘Did you tell him about the rape?’
‘Yes. He was devastated. He was always talking to me about staying safe. Our house had a lot of security. I still don’t know how that man got in…’
‘How did your husband react? What did he do?’
‘He…was so good to me,’ said Catherine. ‘He took care of me, he did everything he could. And…when I was feeling a little more up to it, I asked him to report the rape to El Paso PD. I couldn’t bring myself to do it before then. I didn’t want to be…I didn’t want doctors…anyone examining me.’
‘I understand,’ said Ren. ‘And when did he report this?’
‘The week he died.’ Catherine began sobbing harder. ‘You never think it’s going to happen to you. None of this feels like it’s my life. We’re a regular family. Greg’s a lawyer, we live in a very nice neighborhood. We have two boys who go to a good high school and have bright futures ahead of them.’
Husband – dead. Sons – missing. And she just used the present tense.
‘I think my boys are still alive,’ said Catherine, as if she was reading Ren’s mind.
Ren could sense Catherine Sarvas’ rising panic. She had just revealed her terrible secret to a stranger and had heard for the first time how her story sounded out loud. Catherine Sarvas’ surge of courage had hit its peak and was starting to waver. She was like a bird paused in mid-flight.
‘Please, can you help me?’
Ren paused. ‘Mrs Sarvas, I am so sorry to hear what you’ve been through. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you. And we will do everything we can to apprehend this man.’
‘And my boys?’ said Catherine. ‘My children. The rape doesn’t even seem important compared to getting my boys back.’
‘Are you happy to make a full statement? Would it be easier for now to get the statement your husband made to El Paso PD?’
‘I can talk now,’ said Catherine. ‘I can talk to you. I don’t know who else to turn to. I’m not comfortable going to El Paso PD.’ She paused. ‘I think they think that Luke and Michael had something to do with Gregory’s death…’
‘I’ll go through everything they’ve got.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was very brave of you to call,’ said Ren.
‘What have I got to lose?’ said Catherine. ‘But you’ve been very kind, thank you. You made it easier.’
I have no idea how.
‘Can we still do this over the phone?’
‘Yes,’ said Ren. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
‘OK.’
Thirty minutes later, Ren put down the phone. She turned to her computer and read ten different articles on Gregory Sarvas’ murder. The lead investigator was a man called Kenny Dade from El Paso PD. Ren called him and asked him to email her everything he had on the Sarvas family.
She pushed back from her desk and shouted out to the rest of the team.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I just got something on Erubiel Diaz.’
Colin put down his phone. ‘And I got a sighting on our number two, Francis Gartman: around midnight last night, waving a gun at a bar in Five Points.’
‘Any sign of Natalie Osgood?’ said Ren.
‘He was alone,’ said Colin.
‘And Erubiel Diaz?’ said Cliff, turning to Ren.
Ren let out a breath. She picked up her notes and recounted the harrowing details of Catherine Sarvas’ violation, the pages and pages of notes on what Erubiel Diaz did to a kind, gentle, mother-of-two in the walled-off courtyard of her quiet suburban home.
5
A Denver winter stretched on for months and March was its snowiest. Blizzards whipped up out of nowhere, plans were ruined or stalled or put to bed under a blanket of snow. But it could make everything beautiful. And for a place like Mardyke Street, lined with hundred-year-old homes and towering oaks, a thick layer of snow, glowing under the streetlights, created a special kind of magic.
Ren pulled up outside Annie Lowell’s house. It was eight p.m., she had taken a break from the office. There were appointments you could bend or break, but calling on a beloved eighty-year-old woman was sacred.
Annie welcomed Ren with a hug that brought a rush of memories from a time when their height difference went the other way. Annie was five feet tall; Ren was five seven.
Everything about Annie Lowell was warm and pastel-colored and soft-focus.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you before now,’ said Ren.
‘Sweetheart, do not give that a second thought,’ said Annie.
‘Thank you,’ said Ren. ‘I am so honored you asked me to do this. The motel is killing me.’
Ren took in the house: a William Lang, designed in the late 1800s. One of Denver’s most famous architects, he had built the homes of the rich and famous until the Silver Crash swept their wealth away. Lang fell from such a height that he never recovered and died a pauper, a thousand miles from the city where he had made such a mark.
Annie led her into the formal living room and sat on the hardbacked sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands in her lap. Ren smiled.
What a lady. And what an uncomfortable sofa.
Annie had bought the tumble-down house and restored it with money from a life insurance policy she didn’t even know her late husband had. She had been widowed as long as Ren had known her and in all that time she had never looked at another man. On her ring finger were the same three beautiful rings she had always worn – engagement, wedding and eternity.
‘Did you know that this home was Edward’s last gift to me?’ said Annie. ‘I feel as though he led me right to this door. In the jacket pocket he was wearing when he died, there was a little ticket for a yellow tie he had left at the laundry. I loved that yellow tie, so I went to pick it up. I know that sounds a little silly, but I didn’t want to leave it there. On my way back to the house we had been living in, I took a wrong turn and I ended up outside here.’ She stared off into the past. ‘It looked as broken as my heart.’
‘I never knew all this.’
‘I think messages are around us every day – you just have to be open to them.’
‘I must have been sending one out to you from my motel room,’ said Ren.
Annie smiled. Her gaze wandered to a spot on the wall opposite them.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Ren, getting up and walking over to the faded photo. It was Ren, her parents and her three older brothers, Matt, Beau and Jay.
‘You must have been five years old there,’ said Annie. ‘Look at you.’
‘Look at the boys,’ said Ren. ‘All sandy brown like Dad. And then me. Do you know, when I was in school, the kids used to tease me. Not in a bad way – it was funny. They’d say, “So…your mother obviously had a visit from the mailman – Big Chief Little Stamps.”’ She pointed to her mother in the photo. ‘I mean, even Mom hasn’t really got my eyes.’
Ren was an ethnic mystery to most. She had passed for Hispanic, Italian and French. But in the shape of her striking brown eyes, the one heritage no one could deny was Native American – from a distant Iroquois past somewhere on her mother’s side.
‘You were such a cutie,’ said Annie, ‘and those boys adored…adore you.’ She squeezed Ren’s hand.
‘We always loved coming here.’
‘And I loved having you.’
Ren’s cell phone rang. She glanced down. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Annie. It’s work.’ It’s always work.
‘Go ahead, take it,’ said Annie.
Ren went into the hall and took the call. She came back in to Annie. ‘I am so sorry. I wanted to spend more time with you.�
�� I always want to spend more time with the people I care about. ‘But I have to go,’ said Ren. ‘There’s this guy we’re trying to track down, he’s a nasty piece of work and—’
‘Ren, you’ve an important job, you’re a busy woman. I wouldn’t expect you to have the time to spend here.’
‘But you’re being kind enough to give me your house, and I feel I’ve just come in and out.’
‘Oh, it’s only me,’ said Annie. ‘I understand. You are so dear to me. I would be happy to have five minutes with you.’
‘Good Lord, I can’t think why.’ Ren squeezed Annie tight. As she was pulling away from the embrace, she could see two places set for supper on the table behind her. Her heart sank. She hoped it wasn’t meant for her. But she saw a brand-new bottle of her favorite hot chili sauce. Annie pressed the keys of the house into Ren’s hand and hugged her again. Tears welled in Ren’s eyes as she rushed to the Jeep and drove to a part of town that hadn’t quite got the same kind of history.
Five Points stands where the diagonal grid of downtown meets the rectangular grid of East Denver. It’s one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods, known more for what it had been – the Harlem of the West – and what it wanted to be – a triumph of gentrification – than what it actually was – a neighborhood that fell between two stools. The high crime rate had fallen since the nineties, but it still struggled with gangs, drugs, and convincing people that its beautiful Victorian renovations and stylish lofts were in a safe setting.
Robbie and Ren were parked outside a Five Points’ alleyway dive, waiting for Francis Gartman. He had been drinking there from noon until six p.m., but had left. The barman’s girlfriend had called in the tip, and said that she expected him back.
Ren looked at the time. ‘This has been a most pleasant five hours, thank you for coming, but y’all are going to have to make your way home now.’
‘I know,’ said Robbie. ‘This feels a little…over.’
‘He’s not going to come back,’ said Ren. ‘He sat in that bar watching the pretty snowflakes pile halfway up that tiny barred-up window and that was his cue to leave.’
Robbie’s cell phone rang. ‘Gary,’ he said.
‘Let this be our cue to leave.’
Robbie listened as Gary spoke. ‘Gartman,’ he mouthed, then shook his head slowly. He nodded, took down an address. ‘We’ll be right over.’ He started the engine and turned to Ren.
‘Aw, fuck Gartman,’ said Ren. ‘What did he do?’
‘He shot dead a fourteen-year-old deaf girl who didn’t drop to the floor when he tried to hold up a convenience store. And shot her ten-year-old brother a few aisles down who, with his hands in the air, tried to explain why she didn’t.’
‘God, why were those kids out so late?’
‘So early. The family were on their way to the airport to catch a flight. The girl was going for surgery to—’
‘No, I can’t even hear that,’ said Ren. ‘That is just too much.’
‘And,’ said Robbie, ‘when Gartman walked in to the place, he was already soaked with blood.’
6
The Safe Streets team were back from the convenience store crime scene by eleven a.m. Ren sat at her desk with a half-full coffee pot. Coffee pots are half-full. Beer bottles are half-empty.
‘Gartman does not give a shit,’ said Ren. ‘He just walks right in there, covered in blood from God knows what, kills a little girl, puts her brother in the hospital…and does not really care who sees his fucked-up face.’
‘When this gets out, there’ll be a bunch of people he’s screwed over who’ll want to hang him out to dry,’ said Cliff.
Ren’s computer pinged with an email. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, turning to her screen. ‘I just got my email from El Paso on the Sarvases.’
She clicked on the jpegs first. Rows of photos popped up in iPhoto under her brother Matt’s wedding photos.
A beautiful day that happened under black clouds and rain.
She looked at the destruction of the Sarvas family.
A terrible day that happened under a blue sky and a hot Texan sun.
The first photo was similar to the one of the SUV that Ren had seen online. But when you looked at the driver’s side, something was clearly wrong: Gregory Sarvas’ limp left leg was hanging out the open door. Ren continued through the sequential photos and focused on the car’s interior and the melting corpse of Gregory Sarvas. He was a big man with a full gray beard; more lumberjack than lawyer. He was dressed in a pale blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and beige shorts to his knees. He was slumped across the passenger seat, his face turned toward the glove box. The gun had been fired point blank through his left temple. The hole ripped in his skull was filled with flies. The windscreen was spattered with red, like an exploded dye tag.
The next photo was of the back seat, an eerie reminder of the two people now missing. It was an incomplete picture of a terrible day.
Ren wondered what the chronology was. Did Luke and Michael Sarvas watch their father die? Did someone tell them to run before it happened, so that they wouldn’t have to? Did one of the boys pull the trigger? Did they plan this together? Are they lying dead somewhere else? Are they on a beach in Rio?
The last photo attachment was of the two boys. Luke Sarvas, the seventeen-year-old, had a surfer-dude look, messy blond hair, tanned, healthy, lean, smiling. His arm was resting around fifteen-year-old Michael’s shoulder. They were so clearly related, yet styled by a different hand. Michael was brown-haired, wore metal-rimmed glasses and had a more reserved but genuine smile as he looked up at his brother. The only concession to his age was a black long-sleeved T-shirt with skulls down one of the sleeves. Luke and Michael Sarvas looked like regular, happy kids.
Ren often wondered about mothers and whether their instincts about missing children were right. She had so often heard them say ‘I know he’s still alive’ or ‘I know she’s still out there’ even when there was no evidence, even when years had passed. Was it instinct? Was it denial? Or was it just hope? Fathers would usually stand quietly by, slow to comment but reluctant to hurt their wives by focusing on the facts.
Was Catherine Sarvas right? Were her boys still out there? Or was it the talk of a woman desperate to believe that, in the space of a few minutes on a beautiful summer’s afternoon, God would not choose to wipe out her entire family?
Ren went through the rest of the email. There was something missing.
She dialed Kenny Dade’s number. ‘It’s Ren Bryce again from Safe Streets in Denver. Thanks for that email on the Sarvases. Just one thing – I can’t see the original report on the rape, filed by Gregory Sarvas. All I’ve got here is the statement taken from Catherine Sarvas after he was killed.’
Dade paused. ‘Uh…’
Uh, what? ‘Yes?’ said Ren.
‘There was a slight problem with that request,’ said Dade. ‘See, Gregory Sarvas never filed a report.’
‘What?’
‘There was no rape reported.’
‘But…I spoke with Catherine Sarvas yesterday and she told me that her husband had reported the rape.’
‘I know,’ said Dade. ‘But the first we heard of Catherine Sarvas was when we found her dead husband. Then, when we were interviewing her, out of the blue she asked could his murder have been anything to do with her rape. We were kind of confused at this point. She said that her husband had reported it to Detective Juliana Hyde in our office. We kind of all looked at each other, because Juliana had been on maternity leave for three months at that point. So…well, I figured we would just get the details of the rape from Mrs Sarvas all over again, which we would have done in any case. She would have been able to give us more details than her husband.’
WTF? ‘Does Catherine Sarvas know that her husband didn’t report the rape?’
‘Well, we didn’t tell her,’ said Dade. ‘What was the point? He was dead. She couldn’t get any answers from him.’
‘Jesus, didn’t you find t
he whole thing a little strange?’
‘Of course we did.’ Dade sounded irritated. ‘But at least we knew he hadn’t reported it. We could factor that into our investigation. We weren’t the ones in the dark about it. So, yeah, we’ve been looking into whether there was any connection between the two things.’
‘Or the three things,’ said Ren: ‘the rape, the non-reporting of the rape and the murder.’
‘Well, we haven’t been able to connect them, either way.’
‘I’m going to have to tell her.’
‘What?’ said Dade. ‘And she’ll know we all lied to her? No way. No way.’
‘Trust me,’ said Ren. ‘She really won’t give a good goddamn about that. This is a woman whose two teenage sons are missing right now. She will want to know everything that has gone on, so that she can do everything she can to get those boys back. If they can be gotten back.’
‘Do you have to give her this information?’ said Dade. ‘Her whole family is gone. She—’
‘I have no choice,’ said Ren. ‘Because if she realizes that her husband did not report her rape, her brain might take another route, she might start thinking why and maybe we’ll all get something we want out of this.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You want to get your guy. I want to get mine,’ said Ren. ‘And Catherine Sarvas wants her boys.’
‘Your guy – is that the Erubiel Diaz you mentioned yesterday?’
‘Yes. Catherine Sarvas ID’d him.’
‘Any idea where he’s at?’
‘Not yet,’ said Ren. ‘We’re working on it.’
‘If you know anything more about the Sarvas family, I’d like to know,’ said Dade. ‘Our case dead-ended.’
‘I’ll keep you posted.’
‘OK,’ said Dade. ‘I appreciate it.’
Ren put down the phone.
Gregory Sarvas did not report his wife’s rape? WTF?
7
Ren re-read everything she had on the Sarvases. How did this all work? She thought again about the good neighborhood Catherine Sarvas said she lived in, the security at their house. Why would Erubiel Diaz choose to rape someone with those odds stacked against him and – of all the houses on that street – why did he choose the Sarvases? Had he been watching her? And could it really be a coincidence that, two weeks later, her husband is killed and her teenage sons go missing?