Earthquake Games

by Bonnie Ramthun

  Hetrick stopped in the hallway, then stepped aside to let Eileen and Rosen by. Eileen caught the stink of blood and human waste before she walked through the door. There was a dead man on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. There were murmurs of voices down the hallway, the querulous voice of a young child, a hiccuping sob.

  “Janine is with them,” Hetrick said from the doorway. Officer Janine Johnson, as fair-skinned as Hetrick was dark, had a knack for comforting victims. She was the least motherly looking person Eileen had ever met. She was thin and tall and had wispy white-blonde hair and a bony face. Her eyes were pale gray. Even her eyebrows were white. She looked like she could play the Fairy Queen in a movie, or maybe the Lady of the Lake. Yet Johnson had incredible skills when it came to negotiation. She could walk into a pile of arguing drunks and send them on their way within a few minutes. Domestic assault victims practically fell into her arms. Johnson had a knack.

  “Good,” Eileen said. “She’s doing her usual?”

  “Excellently as always,” Hetrick said with a grin. Eileen grinned back. Janine Johnson couldn’t hit the o-ring on a target to save her life, and everyone knew it. She barely made her certification each year and Eileen suspected someone was helping her out. Perhaps by turning in a faked target sheet from the shooting range? But what did it matter? As long as Captain Harben kept Johnson and Hetrick together, Janine’s shooting skills didn’t matter. Hetrick was deadly, with gun or fists or feet.

  “Where’s Washington?”

  “He’s in with Janine and Carol. He’s an old guy, good friend of Carol, plays with the kids. Apple pie grandpa type.”

  “So tell me, Rosen,” Eileen said. “Is the story a true one?”

  Rosen looked at the dead man, eyed the splintered apartment door, and looked down the hallway.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t make him talk too much, he’ll get a sprain,” Hetrick said with a teasing smile.

  “Door is splintered properly for exterior blows. Kitchen floor is not a typical place for consensual sex. Blood spray consistent with story, perp had his pants down when the neighbor shot him but he still had them around his ankles. If they were lovers, he probably would have taken them all the way off.”

  “He didn’t put a condom on,” Eileen observed, squatting by the dead man to take a look. “Sometimes they do.” She suppressed a quick, vivid shot of Teddy Shaw, with the same dead expression of surprise as the rapist, lying on the black grass in the darkness. “Did she know him at all?”

  “She says not,” Hetrick said.

  “You going to advise her on shades and dog?”

  “Yep,” Hetrick said, mocking Rosen’s laconic tones. “And, for starters, to lock her front-damn-door.”

  “Shades?” Rosen asked.

  “Shades,” Eileen said. “And dog. The shades clinch the story for me. Women who are raped by strangers overwhelmingly have no window coverings and no dog. If you have those two things, the chances of what happened to her today go down substantially. With a big dog, to practically nothing.”

  “We’ll tell her,” Hetrick said. Rosen nodded, looking at the uncovered windows, filing it away in his computer-like brain. Eileen stood up and stretched, feeling her back crackle pleasurably. She flipped open her notepad to take a few brief notes. This case was their bread and butter, the kind of homicide investigation that made up ninety percent of their workload. The victim and the perpetrator clear as glass, and only the details and the forms to be filled out. The puzzle of a Jim Leetsdale was tantalizing and frustrating, without any of the obviousness of the crime in front of her. Who had killed him, and why? Why did they take such care to make it look like a suicide?

  “Do you want to talk to Charlie Washington?” Hetrick asked, interrupting Eileen’s thoughts. She blinked and turned to Hetrick.

  “No. He’d be embarrassed because I’d kiss him right on the lips,” she said with a grin. “I don’t see any reason to impound his gun. We’ll write this up as citizen defense.”

  “Okay, then,” Hetrick said with a laugh. “Thanks for coming by so quick. Nice doing business with you.”

  As they walked back down the apartment hallway, Hetrick shouted after them.

  “Hey, Rosen, good job. But you should shut up once in a while!”

  7

  Alamosa County Sheriff ’s Office, San Luis Valley, Colorado

  “I know I’ll be held for questioning,” Alan Baxter said worriedly. He and the schoolteacher, Marcia Fowler, were once again sitting in the hard plastic chairs of the sheriff’s office waiting room. Alan put his arms on his knees and leaned forward, massaging his face with his hands. His mouth tasted like milky coffee, and he realized he was going to have to find a bathroom soon.

  “I’ll be happy to help you if I can,” the schoolteacher said kindly. She had already told him her version of events. Running into the person who found the body on the sand dunes was not so remarkable considering how small Alamosa was, and how someone like Marcia Fowler would be interested in finding out the identity of the young woman. Marcia was a teacher, or had been, just like Alan. Curiosity came with the itch to teach, and it never really died.

  She was his own age, or near to it. Her body was as trim as a girl’s, although she was quite short. Her gray hair was cut close to her head and swept back, and her eyes were the dark color that told Alan her hair used to be black.

  “If they arrest me, call Sam Williams at the Williams’s Ranch,” Alan said with a sigh. Did he have alibis for the past three or four nights? He lived in Pinedale, Wyoming, and it had taken him three days to drive down. Luckily, he had stayed with friends in Laramie and Pueblo. They would be able to vouch for him. He was still trying to get his mind around the fact that he would have to identify the body as Krista’s. Alan repeatedly tried to contact her through her Internet mailbox before he gave up and drove his Bronco into Alamosa to talk to the sheriff. Krista had promised to meet him for dinner tonight. She would have contacted him by now.

  “I’m very sorry. I hope it isn’t your friend,” the woman said.

  “Marcia Fowler?” the clerk called, opening the doorway to the inner offices. She held a clipboard and she looked tired. “Sheriff Gonzalez can see you now.”

  “I think he wants to see Mr. Baxter first,” Marcia said. “I can see him afterwards, if that’s okay.”

  The clerk shrugged and wrote on her clipboard.

  “Fine by me,” she said.

  “Thank you, Ms. Fowler,” Alan said, holding out his hand to shake hers. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”

  “I hope we can talk some more later, and it’s Marcia,” Marcia said. There was a half-embarrassed, half-determined look on her face. “There’s more we need to talk about.”

  Alan was barely listening. He nodded to her and followed the clerk into the inner hallway. His gut was twisting, and he really needed to find a bathroom now. He knew what he would feel if he discovered that Krista was dead. He would feel relieved, because not knowing was worse than knowing, just like his ex-wife. He hadn’t heard from her in thirty years, and then he found out, when he qualified for social security, that she would not be getting a portion of his benefits because she hadn’t used her social security number for twenty-eight years. People changed their names, but never their social security numbers. She might be dead. She might still be alive. He would never know now.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he mumbled to the clerk. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  “Right here, next to the sheriff’s office,” the clerk said kindly, her tired face breaking into a smile. “I know how it can take you sometimes.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Just knock on Reg’s door before you walk in,” the clerk said. “I’ll let him know you’ll be a minute.”

  When Alan knocked on Reg Gonzalez’s door a few minutes later, he felt much better. He was still nervous, but at least his system wasn’t threatening to blow in all directions. />
  “Come in,” the sheriff said. Sheriff Gonzalez was sitting behind his desk typing rapidly at a computer console. He was a big man with black hair and eyes and swarthy skin. His hands were huge. He looked up as Alan approached his desk. His fingers kept typing away, as though they knew what they wanted to do and were independent of his brain. “Sit down. Alan Baxter, yes? What can I do for you?”

  “I might know the girl you found on the dunes,” Alan said. “I’m not sure, but I was supposed to meet her here tonight for dinner and she hasn’t answered her e-mail. She was supposed to contact me before today and she hasn’t.”

  The fingers stopped typing and hovered over the keyboard. The sheriff’s face showed nothing.

  “What does she look like?” he asked.

  “I’ve never seen her in person,” Alan said, feeling his face grow red. “She and I wrote to each other over the Internet. But she sent me a picture once. She was blonde, with blue eyes. Not large, but not tiny either. That’s about all I know.”

  The sheriff looked at Alan for a few long moments.

  “Hmm,” he said finally. “The body is at the hospital morgue. Let’s go down and take a look, shall we? I’ll ask you some questions on the way.”

  Alan, who had not sat down despite the sheriff’s request, nodded and sighed heavily. Just like that, he was going to find out.

  “I hope it’s not her,” he said.

  “We’ll see,” the sheriff said. He got to his feet, and he was more than big. He was huge. He topped Alan’s own six feet by at least five inches, and he was as thick around as a barrel. “Let’s take my cruiser, it’s out the side door. I want to keep things as quiet as I can for as long as I can.”

  “Quiet?” Alan asked. “What do you mean?” Sheriff Gonzalez led him down a short hallway and into the blazing bright day. A big four-wheel-drive Ford Expedition sat next to the door. It was white with a few streaks of rust. A county seal was pasted brightly to the passenger side door.

  “Get in,” the sheriff said, unlocking the doors. Alan clambered into the big vehicle and belted in, wincing as his fingers touched the hot metal of the seat buckle. The car was explosively hot and smelled like old shoes. Litter was packed between the seats and the back floor was covered in old fast-food wrappers. A gym bag sat on the backseat, unzipped. The old shoe smell was thus revealed. The sheriff got in and started the engine. Within a few seconds, cool air blasted from the vents.

  “Ahh,” Alan said gratefully.

  “Because there’s rumors around town that this girl was abducted and killed by UFOs,” the sheriff said calmly, engaging the gears and backing out of the parking space in a swirl of gravel. “I’m hoping she’s your girl and you’re the killer, come to see if I can figure it out.” The sheriff eyed Alan, who was trying hard to breathe normally and look innocent, and smiled. “Or maybe not. We’ll just have to see.”

  Twenty minutes later, Alan stood before a white shape under a sheet, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to see Krista Lewis or the face of his wife. Nothing seemed quite real, not the cold dead smell of the brand-new morgue or the sad expression of the coroner. Sheriff Gonzalez laid a huge paw on his arm, and the warmth and gentleness of this touch was almost more than Alan could stand.

  “Are you ready?” Gonzalez asked gently.

  “I’m okay,” Alan said, and took a shallow breath. “Okay, then.”

  The coroner gently folded back the sheet and Alan let out a miserable little cry of pain. He’d never met Krista face to face, but he knew this poor, forlorn shape was her. What was left of her. She’d sent him pictures over the Net—funny poses of her with fish she was examining for her work and once a scholarly pose when she’d been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Now her face was drawn tight, showing the fine bones of the skull beneath. Her eyes were open and filled with sand, giving her a calm statuesque look, as though this were only a marble casting of Krista and not her remains.

  Alan couldn’t speak. He nodded, and bent his head, and heard the swift rustle as the coroner folded the sheet back over her.

  “Come this way,” Gonzalez said gently, and led Alan back down the hallway where they’d come in. Behind them, Alan could hear the oiled sound of the drawer sliding back into the refrigeration unit. He drew shallow breaths and tried to seize control of his horribly spinning brain.

  “What happened to her?” he asked, as Gonzalez showed him to a chair in the coroner’s office.

  Gonzalez got a paper cup of water from a bottled-water dispenser and handed it to him, then drew one for himself. Alan drank gratefully and thirstily, feeling ashamed that the water tasted so good, so pure and sweet. Krista would never drink water again.

  “Before we talk about that, let’s talk about Krista,” Gonzalez said, settling into the coroner’s office chair. The morgue was in the basement of the hospital, so the coroner’s office had no windows. He’d done something both amusing and soothing to his wall, hanging a real window frame with a poster of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range behind it. A little flower pot with silk daisies sat on the sill of the frame. Gonzalez flipped open a well-worn notebook and picked out a pen.

  “Okay,” Alan said huskily, suddenly feeling afraid. Just because he was innocent didn’t mean he wouldn’t spend time in jail. His brave words to Marcia the schoolteacher now sounded foolish.

  “I know you talked to Miz Fowler, the lady hiker who found Krista on the dunes. Did she tell you how she found her?”

  “Yes,” Alan said. “Was that incorrect?”

  Gonzalez smiled unexpectedly. “You sound like a teacher. What do you do?”

  “I was a professor at Laramie County Community College, in Cheyenne, Wyoming,” Alan said. “I retired two years ago. I taught English.”

  “Where do you live now?” Gonzalez asked. He led Alan through name, social security number, address, phone, and all the other identifying tags that would tell the world who Alan Baxter was. Alan explained how he’d driven down to see Krista and fish the Rio Grande, and who he’d stayed with in Laramie and Pueblo. When he described the earthquake, Gonzalez straightened up in surprise.

  “The rest stop’s gone?”

  “Half of it,” Alan said. “The half I wasn’t standing on.”

  “Well, shit and shinola, that’s in my jurisdiction,” Gonzalez said. “I haven’t had any reports, and I’ve been working this goddamned homicide. Come with me, Mr. Baxter. We need to get back to my office.”

  Gonzalez gave a wave and a shout down the hall to the coroner, who mumbled something back, and he and Alan worked their way out of the basement and back into the moldy shoe smell and the icy blast of the Ford’s air conditioner. Gonzalez got on his radio immediately and sent out a deputy to the rest area. He ordered the man to bring a camera and some police tape to rope off the site so no silly tourists would kill themselves by looking at the damage.

  Gonzalez then blew a deep sigh and swiped a hand across his forehead.

  “What a hell of a mess,” he said, putting the Ford in gear. “We’re going back to my office, Alan. We’ll finish up there and check your alibis.”

  “Okay,” Alan said humbly.

  “You’re going to come clean, I think,” Gonzalez muttered. He looked furious. “At least we know who she is now. I got a strong feeling you weren’t the one to end her life, Mr. English Professor. Although I’m still hoping I’m wrong.”

  The Ford scattered gravel as they left the parking lot, and Alan leaned back in his seat and let Gonzalez, and events, carry him.

  8

  Briargate Subdivision, Colorado Springs, Colorado

  When Joe Tanner opened the door, he looked surprised. Eileen smiled at him over the computer she held.

  “For me?” he asked, putting a hand theatrically to his chest.

  “Kinda,” Eileen said. “Quick, take these Zip disks.”

  Joe snagged the toppling little pile of disks from the top of the computer and put them on the table by his door. He then lift
ed the computer from her arms.

  “Thanks,” she said with a sigh.

  “I’ll take this to my office,” he said. “Get the disks.”

  The television was on in the background and the smell of quesadillas was in the air. Joe thought that quesadillas, flour tortillas folded in half with cheese inside, were the world’s most perfect food. He put various things in: cheese, mushrooms, chicken, and spinach, and whatever happened to be around.

  Joe’s house was a three-bedroom family home, a place he’d bought for tax purposes. One spare room was empty and bare and the other one held Joe’s sport’s equipment—camping gear and skis and bike parts. The basement, never used, was full of dust and empty boxes. The study off the master bedroom was a bewildering array of computer equipment spread over four desks and a series of small tables. This is where Joe brought the computer he’d taken from Eileen. He set the computer on the carpeted floor since there was no room on the desks or the shelves.

  “What did you bring me?” he asked, turning to Eileen and putting his arms around her. She laughed and shifted the Zip disks so she could put her arms around him. She kissed him briefly, then sagged against him as he refused to break the kiss. He forced her lips apart with his tongue and cupped a breast with one hand. His other hand slipped deliciously to her bottom and pressed her against him. He was already most of the way to an erection.