She asked if Phil was drunk again.
I said he was.
She mumbled something profane and told me she'd go over and unlock the house for him. Give her five minutes to get dressed.
The gate eased open and I pulled inside and drove up the lane. I told Kimber to stay down in the backseat until I knew Sylvie was gone. I didn't want her to get a glance at Kimber. She wouldn't be fooled; Kimber looked nothing like Phil Barrett. Sylvie arrived at the front door a minute after I did and as she unlocked the door asked if I needed help getting Phil inside.
I said, "This isn't the first time, I take it."
"Hardly," she replied.
"Go back to bed. I'll get him in even if I have to use a wheelbarrow."
She laughed good-naturedly and climbed back into her car to return to her house.
"Kimber," I said as I leaned into the car, "we're here. Where exactly do you want to go?"
"The study. Same place I was today."
I supported him from the car and guided him to Raymond Welles study. I didn't know how I was going to explain this incursion to anybody. I'd already decided that the moment the panic attack abated I was going to pack Kimber back in the car and drive him down the hill to the bed-and-breakfast so I didn't have to explain the lie to anyone but Sylvie.
Once inside Welle's study Kimber knew exactly what he wanted to do. He plopped down on Ray Welle's big leather sofa, curled up in a ball, and pulled a blanket over his head. I asked him about chest pain. He waved at me from under the blanket. I asked him if he needed an ambulance. He said, "No." I flicked off the room lights and left him.
I succumbed to my fatigue the moment I was alone. I moved to the living room, kicked off my shoes, and sacked out on a couch. Within minutes I was almost asleep; in fact I was so close to sleep that I was certain the sounds I started hearing were a prelude to a dream.
A door closing gently. Water running. Someone shuffling feet on a hardwood floor. I opened my eyes. Damn. Kimber must have gotten up to use the bathroom.
Maybe, I hoped, he's feeling better already and we can go back to town. But I thought that the sounds that I'd heard had come from the other end of the house.
My heart started racing. I listened intently.
Who could be here? Sylvie was down the lane at her house. Phil Barrett was in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness with the trunk of a fir tree planted where his heart and lungs should be.
I tried to swallow but my throat was so dry that I coughed. I constricted my throat as tight as I could but I coughed again, not only failing to muffle the sound but also announcing my presence to whomever it was that I'd heard moving around the house. I stood up and moved closer to the central hallway. The clerestory skylights above my head were blue-black and the first soft gray light of dawn was filtering into the corridor. I saw no one lurking down the hall. I listened some more and heard no sounds coming from anywhere in the house. My heart began to slow.
It must have been Kimber that I'd heard. I stayed planted where I was for another long minute, heard nothing new, exhaled in a long sigh, and decided that I needed a bathroom before I fell asleep. From the forensic search the afternoon before I remembered that there was a powder room just a few steps farther down the main hallway toward the master bedroom. I went there and unzipped.
Midstream, seconds after I started to pee, I heard, "My, but this is convenient. God does answer prayers."
I tried to stop peeing but I couldn't. I was that frightened by the gun that was pointing at my head.
"After you've finished up there and tucked everything back in place, why don't you just put your hands behind your head?"
I zipped, and laced my fingers behind my neck.
Raymond Welle said, "That's right. Now come on out of there."
He marched me to the living room and sat me on a sofa directly across from him.
He was wearing a soft woolen robe over a pair of pajamas and the kind off step-in slippers that my father used to wear. He said, "So, who are you tonight?
Goldilocks? What? Were you planning on going from room to room trying to find which bed was juu-just right?" I didn't know how to respond. I said, "I can explain all this, Representative Welle."
"Save it. I don't care for your rationalization, Dr. Gregory. All I care about right at the moment is that I seem to have an intruder in my house in the middle of the night. I have a weapon in my hand. And I have the right under Colorado law to use that weapon to protect my property. That this particular intruder has proven to be one major pain in the ass for the past few weeks is just frosting on the cake."
Welle was sitting with his back to the front door and to his study. It was clear that he didn't realize I wasn't alone.
"Sylvie let me in."
"Did she? Under what pretense? I doubt this visit is covered by the search agreement I signed with Locard." He laughed.
"Makes no real difference. Sylvie didn't know I was coming in to the ranch. I didn't arrive from Washington until almost two. From my point of view, the situation is quite simple-you are a burglar. Or maybe even an assassin. You do know there have been recent attempts on my life, don't you?" He smiled at the irony.
I didn't like the direction of the conversation. I said, "Phil Barretts dead.
Ray. That's why I'm here."
"What? What do you mean Phil's dead?" He squirmed on his chair, squared the gun at my chest.
"You know the blow down on the Routt Divide?"
"Yeah. What about it? I had to pressure the Forest Service to allow salvage crews up there to clear some of those trees. Reduce the spruce beetle problems and the fire hazard. Why?"
"Phil died up there earlier tonight. Somewhere in the middle of the blow down A bunch of trees slid, one of them fell on him and crushed him."
"Fell on him? What was he doing up there at night in the first place?"
"Trying to cover his tracks. He killed those two girls, Ray. Mariko and Tami?
Phil killed them." I stared at him, trying to gauge from his reaction whether or not the words I had just spoken constituted news to him. I couldn't tell. I continued, "The girls died in your bunkhouse. Phil was having an affair with Cathy Franklin. Her daughter walked in on them. Things got out of hand."
He didn't react right away. When he finally spoke, he asked, "This happened right here on the ranch? No, I don't believe it." I thought his protest was a few degrees shy of convincing. He paused, thinking about something.
"So was it Phil who torched the bunkhouse? That was his doing?"
"I'm not totally sure. Phil denied it. If I had to guess I'd say it was Cathy who set the fire. She actually admitted to the killings, though. And she's the one who implicated Phil."
"Cathy did that?" He shook his head.
"Helped kill her own daughter? I thought she loved that girl. How does a mother do that?" He appeared to get lost in contemplation and I wondered if he was looking for a new theme to use on the campaign trail. The gun barrel wavered a few degrees. If he'd fired it right then it would have missed me.
"You know that Phil was pretty desperate for me to rescind the agreement I signed allowing the Locard people to search the ranch.
That's why I flew back here tonight, to work all that out with him. Congress is still in session. I really should be in Washington right now. But… I guess he figured you boys were about to find something that would point a finger at him about those killings." Ray continued to seem pensive. I guessed that he was trying to figure out exactly how much I knew about what. My best strategy for staying alive involved not helping him with his quest.
He asked, "So is Cathy dead, too? Another tree fall on her?" He wasn't trying to disguise his suspicion about my story.
"No trees fell on Cathy, Ray. But yes, she's dead, too."