I didn't tell either of them that I was planning to go to Reggie Loomis's house again.
Reggie had told me that he delivered breakfast to his shut-ins on Monday; Wednesday, and Friday: supper on Thursday and Sunday. Since this was Saturday morning, I hoped to find him at home on his day off.
I pulled up to his deceptively modest house a little after nine, a late summer— or early autumn— monsoon had drifted up from Mexico, and cold drizzle blanketed the Front Range, the hogbacks were almost invisible in the low clouds.
I knocked and waited long enough to get pocked with rain, after a minute or so the front door opened. Reggie Loomis was dressed in worn corduroys and a flannel shirt, he wore no shoes on his stockinged feet.
He said. "I figured you'd be back."
"May I come in?"
"You alone?"
My heart pounded in my chest. I actually looked over my own shoulder to see if I'd been followed. I said. "Yes."
"Come in then."
We settled in at the same two stools at the kitchen counter. I smelled cinnamon and my mouth watered. But Reggie didn't offer me any refreshments, he may have expected my visit, but he wasn't happy to see me.
"Three more people have died." I said.
He nodded. "The fire in Kittredge?"
"Yes, the fire." I wondered how he knew. "You've been thinking about this some more, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"There was an attempt made on someone else's life, as well."
"But it failed?"
I thought his voice was registering surprise. "Yes. It failed."
He looked at me across his body; suddenly curious. "Tell me about it, the failure."
I relayed the details of Sawyer's near miss. Reggie asked me to clarify a couple of points. Finally; appearina relieved at my story, he offered me coffee and an apple cinnamon muffin.
"That would be wonderful." I said. "You even bake on your days off?"
"If you love what you do, you don't have days off." He busied himself with his espresso machine.
I watched his practiced movements for a minute, then asked. "How did you know? About the fire?" I was trying hard not to sound accusatory.
"I have a lot of free time. I read all the papers. You said three more people had died, that was the only recent incident I've read about where three people died. Simple deduction."
"You weren't surprised at all when I said three more people had died."
He shrugged and moved his gaze toward the greenbelt. His back was still to me when I asked. "You know who it is I'm looking for, don't you?"
He placed the two demitasse cups on saucers and turned and walked in my direction. "I have an idea, a good idea."
I waited, hoping he would be forthcoming. Instead he asked me for more information. "You think he's killing people? This person you're looking for. This old employee of mine."
"Yes."
"How many; so far?"
"Maybe as many as eight or nine before the fire."
"Why aren't the police interested?"
"Who says they're not?"
"If thev were, you wouldn't be here, thev would."
J * J J
Reggie was no dummy. "Until recently, the killing has been accomplished by an almost invisible hand, the crimes have been flawless. No one has even suspected that the deaths were homicide."
"But recently?"
"He's grown impatient, and sloppy."
Reggie stood back up from the counter, he'd forgotten the muffins, he shuffled across the room and placed one on a dessert plate for me. "I don't think you'll need butter,” he said as he served me. I didn't doubt him, the muffin before me was the size of a softball and smelled like it came from heaven's bakery.
I waited again. My silence was lost on Reggie Loomis. It seemed to provide no impetus for him to disclose anything, the muffin was delicious. I told him so.
He smiled self-consciously and said. "Thank you."
"You seemed to react before when I said that this man I'm looking for has grown impatient and sloppy."
"Yes. Perhaps I did." He finished his coffee. "The man I've been thinking about would never— never— exhibit sloppiness, and there is not an untidy cell in his entire body, we must be talking about different people."
"People change."
"Do they? Honestly? You're a psychologist, right?"
I nodded.
His tone became challenging and slightly sarcastic. "So how malleable is character, dear Doctor? How often do you effect lasting changes on the architecture of the personality of your patients? I'm not talking behavior, mind you. I'm asking you to reflect on alterations in the underlying structure."
I considered the question while I chewed. "Some would argue that character can be altered, there is certainly evidence to support that point of view. But I admit that there's controversy."
"Example. Can an obsessive-compulsive character ever be free of the desire for perfection? Really; truly? I'm not talking about merely lassoing impulses here. I'm wondering about effecting basic changes in human temperament."
"This man, the one you've been thinking about, he was obsessive-compulsive?"
"No, no, no. My point is that he is obsessive." He hesitated. "He was then.., he is now." Reggie gestured in front of me. "Your coffee cup isn't centered in your saucer, he couldn't tolerate that asymmetry. You've dropped muffin crumbs onto my counter. It would leava him apoplectic."
I brushed at the crumbs and said. "I'm sorry."
Reggie said. "You're a supplicant. You'll always apologize for your messes. Rand... ? No."
Rand? That name resonated in my memory. Was that his name? Was D.B, really Rand? And what the hell did he mean by calling me a "supplicant"?
I said "Rand, that's his name?"
"Yes. Corey Rand. Ring a bell?"
"Oh yes." I said. "It does."
It surprised me that hearing his name unlocked so much of what I'd forgotten or buried about Corey Rand.
After causing a disturbance at work. Rand had been brought by ambulance to the psych ER, where Sheldon Salgado saw him briefly, arnie Dresser was on call that Sunday; and Sheldon paged him and asked him to the ER to evaluate a possible admission, that piece of administrative trivia was the red light Corey ran that caused his collision with Arnie Dresser.
Arnie was the second person to hear Corey Rand's proposal about D. B. Cooper, arnie decided that the offer was compelling evidence of delusional thinking, he admitted Rand to the adult inpatient unit and took out a seventy-two-hour hold-and-treat after a frustrating attempt to assess Rand's suicide potential.
Sawyer and I had stolen that Saturday night to get away to a Grand Lake cabin that was owned by Mona Terwilliger's family, we both worked most of Saturday and drove up to the mountains and across the Divide in the dark, we got lost trying to find the cabin, and ended up staying up so late talking and screwing that I remembered watching the sky brighten in the east before I drifted off to sleep on the sofa in the living room. I woke up in time for a late lunch or early supper. Sawyer was in the shower. I joined her there, we ate, we packed up, and then we drove back down to Denver in time to squeeze in a little more sleep prior to Monday.
For a medical school trainee, this interlude constituted a vacation.
Amie Dresser was not a good therapeutic match for Corey Rand, amie was an aggressive diagnostician, he probed, he palpated, he theorized, he confronted resistance wherever he spotted it, intent on stamping it out like nasty vermin in the kitchen. His style could not have been much more different from the one I was working hard to adopt, one I watched Susan Oliphant model almost daily on the unit, her wonderfully effective style seemed to be based on patience, and listening.
But fate dictated that Arnie Dresser was Corey Rand's doctor, and by the time Sawyer and I heard about Rand at rounds on Monday morning. Corey was beina portrayed by his doctor as a severely obsessive man with a teeming reservoir of anger and an underlying thought disorder, after a few questions from Susa
n, amie's supervisor, it became clear to me that most of the venom that Corey Rand was demonstrating was directed toward his doctor, arnie would call this transference.
A more objective observer might call it something else.
Community Meeting was an interesting affair that morning, too. Census was low for the holiday weekend, the patients who could be trusted outside the unit were all out on pass, as the meeting was coming together. Corey Rand loitered by the heavily screened windows until everyone else was seated, ultimately choosing a location far from any of the other patients and far from Arnie Dresser.
As soon as Susan Oliphant started the meeting. Corey asked to address the group. I remember that his clothing seemed to have been pressed, an unusual sight on a psychiatric unit. I wondered how he had managed it. His hair was combed neatly and his face freshly shaven. His posture would have delighted an orthopedic surgeon.
She asked him to wait.
When his time came, he said that his admission had been an unfortunate combination of misunderstandings and that he would like to be released immediately, ha stressed the word "immediately."
Arnie responded that they could discuss that issue in their individual session late that afternoon. I thought Arnie's tone was condescending. From the look on Corey's face, I thought it was pretty clear that he considered his doctor's tone to be contemptuous.
Corey said something like "You can't hold me here and you know it. I'm no danger to anyone. I'm not gravely disabled. My lawyer will have me out of here before I have to spend another hour with this cretin." He raised his chin at Dr. Dresser. "Save yourselves some trouble and some embarrassment. I have some information that the legal authorities want, allow me off this unit in time to make my next shift at work, and I will divulge that information."
Arnie looked at Susan and rolled his eyes in a "Here it comes, what did I tell you?" look.
Corey continued. "I will trade the identity of the hijacker. D. B. Cooper, for my immediate release."
Susan suggested we move on to other business.
As promised, an attorney retained by Corey challenged the hold-and-treat that afternoon, at Susan's advice— and over Arnie Dresser's objection— the university attorney chose not to contest the challenge. I wasn't around when Corey Rand left the unit that day, and I don't recall ever seeing the man again.
"What happened at work? What was the disturbance that day that got Mr. Rand hospitalized?"
"More coffee? I'm going to have another cup."
"Sure," I said.
He busied himself. "Remember, we were security analysts at a nuclear weapons facility, we were protecting national defense secrets, and we were protecting plutonium. I was senior to Corey. This was, what, ‘982? Those days the facility was under constant assault by protesters, and there was a persistent fear of terrorist intrusion, we took our jobs seriously, we had to."
Reggie turned his head to face me as he said, "Corey was good at what he did. So was I, we anticipated potential weaknesses in security, we developed scenarios that outsiders might use against us.
"Corey wasn't well liked, he had a holier-than-thou attitude and thought nothing of reporting other employees for security lapses. Some major, most minor, he caused a lot of people a lot of trouble, made himself a lot of enemies, although I couldn't prove it at the time, I think most of those guys set him up that day, they laid out a trail of cookie crumbs for him, let him think he'd discovered that a plot was afoot to infiltrate one of the labs that handled plutonium.
"He reported it to me, in great detail. I followed up immediately., of course, the plan seemed quite plausible. When I did begin to investigate what had happened, all the evidence was gone. Vaporized, the whole setup made Corey look like a fool, he lost it, accused everybody in the division of being involved in the conspiracy. Our boss. His coworkers. Everybody, the plant medical officer took one look at him, heard his story about all this imaginary evidence he'd discovered— at the time. I admit. I thought it sounded crazy: too— and had him transported to Denver."
He brought me my coffee and sat back down.
I said "That's it?"
"Yes, that's it. Except for the sequelae."
"The sequelae?"
"The fallout. His security clearance was suspended pending review of his mental condition, he was transferred to a nonsensitive position, he couldn't tolerate the demotion, he quit."
"Then what happened?"
"I don't know. I never heard from him again. When I was promoted. I learned that he'd sued the Energy Department for damages. But that was as quixotic a quest as there ever was, he was suing a top-secret branch of the U.S, government, the damn case never went anywhere."
"What year would that have been?"
"Let me see. I imagine it would have been around ‘988."
"I don't know if it means anything, but the first of the murders took place the next year. ‘989."
"Was it planned carefully?"
"Meticulously. You think it might be him?"
"Who am I to say?"
Reggie stood up and walked to the back windows of his house, he stared out toward the hogback and said. "I think it's clearing a little."
"I hope so." I said.
"You have a name now— you should be able to find your man, we'll chat some more after you do."
"Why after?"
"We will, that's all."
I stood to leave, he didn't turn to see me out.
"Do you think he really knew?" I asked.
"Knew what?"
"Who D. B. Cooper was? I mean, if he was such an obsessive guy, why would he make that claim if he couldn't substantiate it?"
Reggie shrugged and faced me. "Do you think anybody would really care anymore?"
TWENTY-NINE
Lauren and I were supposed to rendezvous downtown for lunch and then drive over to Spanish Hills to see how Dresden was doing with the renovation. I wanted to talk with Sawyer about what I learned during my meeting with Reggie and see if she had any ideas on how to locate Corey Rand.
But I had at least two complications to overcome.
My first problem was that Sawyer was not only temporarily rooming with A.J, but was also being baby-sat by Custer. I couldn't figure out a ploy that would let me separate her from that formidable herd.
My second problem was that the only two people I knew who had access to public records that might actually help me track down Corey Rand were my wife, an assistant district attorney, and Sam Purdy, a cop. But I couldn't reveal Corey's name to either of them because it would violate the confidentiality of his hospital admission. I reminded myself that Sawyer and I had been totally off base in our suspicions about Chester and that prudence dictated avoiding overconfidence regardina Corey Rand.
Baffled. I stopped by ray office on Walnut and checked the Boulder phone book, hoping to get lucky, there were three Rands in the local directory, but no Coreys or names with the first initial C. I tried the Denver metro book, at least two dozen Rands, easy, again, no Coreys or initial C's.
I picked up the phone and called Reggie Loomis. "It's Alan Gregory. Sorry to bother you again. But he was married, right? I need to know his wife's name. Corey Rand's."
I heard Reggie exhale, the sound almost a whistle. "She was a beauty, a little feather of a thing, her name was Valerie."
I dragged my finger over the column of Rands in the phone book and spotted a listing in Wheat Ridge for a Valerie Rand. I said, "Thanks, that helps."
Reggie didn't say good-bye, he just hung up.
I punched in the number and heard a gravelly "Hello," followed by a hacking cough.
I asked for Valerie Rand.
"Speaking," she said, coughing once more, a bark as sharp as a knife.
"I'm not sure I have the right Valerie Rand. I'm actually trying to reach a man named Corey Rand, who used to work near Boulder. Could you be of any help in
finding him?"
She cleared her throat in a most unattractive manner and said. "You're as
king after my husband. But I'm afraid Corey is dead."
"He's dead? When did he die?"
"Labor Day ‘995."
"Would you mind if I... ? Could I ask, please, how did it happen?"
She was silent for a moment, then broke into a series of deep hacks that must have caused her significant discomfort. "He, um, had a blood clot and a, what do you call it, a hemorrhage in his brain. It happened while he was driving, he drove into a parked bulldozer."
"I'm sorry."
"Were you a friend?" she asked through another deep cough, she placed the emphasis in such a way that I thought she would have been surprised if I was.
"No." I said. "I wasn't his friend. Good-bye. Thank you."
Lauren and I had lunch at Lick Skillet before driving east to see what was going on with our house. I wanted to talk to her about Corey Rand but couldn't think of much more to say than to tell her that I'd gone back to talk with Reggie Loomis that morning hoping he could tell me more about his ex-employee.
She wanted to know if he could. I explained that the lead on the patient we'd called D.B, hadn't exactly panned out.
She wasn't surprised by the news, she'd been assuming all along that the killer would be someone who Sawyer and I never really suspected could be responsible for all the deaths and assaults.
Our friend and neighbor Adrienne— Sam's doctor— had left word for Lauren and me that she and her son were going to be out of town at a urologists' meeting in Florida, so we expected the lane to our house to be quiet, and it was.
The overflowing dumpster had been emptied and parked back in place and was already half full of debris again. I frowned as I looked at it; to all appearances we were throwing away much of our house.
Work had not progressed much inside the structure since my visit the previous morning, the foundation walls for the addition and the new garage were still curing, so the framing hadn't started. Our walk-through took only minutes, we were both careful about where we stepped and we both kept looking up at the joists, but neither of us said anything.
Lauren's shoulders dropped as we stepped outside, she turned back around so she was gazing toward the front door, she said. "It's going to be nice, isn't it?"
I thought, Uh-oh.
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