The snow thing.
Christmas had been on the previous Saturday. The day had been clear and cold with a high temperature in the mid-twenties. An upslope developed and snow started falling in earnest in Boulder some time around seven o’clock in the evening. At first, it had been a steady snow; three quick inches fell before the wind shifted directions around 9:30 and the snow paused for an hour. When the upslope resumed so did the snow, which fell insistently until early morning.
“All these questions? It isn’t like you,” Sam said. “You working as a stringer for the Enquirer in your spare time?”
“Actually, I’ve been trying my hardest to keep my head in the sand about this whole thing.”
“You’re failing miserably.”
“I don’t get the snow thing. Humor me.”
“I don’t either,” Sam admitted.
Bill and Reese Miller left Mallory at home alone with her stomachache around 6:30, just before the snow started. Her cell-phone records show that Mallory made a few phone calls-all to girlfriends-in the next couple of hours, and received a few others. The first call out was at 6:39. The last call in came at 8:47. It was from her father, checking in on her from the Christmas gathering, and letting her know they’d be home soon.
Bill Miller said that his daughter answered the phone, and reported to the police that Mallory told him she was doing okay. She was all packed up for the next day’s ski trip, had a heating pad on her belly, and was watching a DVD she got that morning for Christmas.
“The snow thing isn’t important?” I asked Sam.
“I didn’t say that. I said I don’t get it. There’s always something in every case that I don’t get. Always.”
“Where are her footprints?”
“I said I don’t know. I wasn’t kidding-I really don’t know.” He popped a peanut into his mouth and pointed toward the ice. “So where do you think a place like this gets money for a Zamboni like that?”
The Zamboni that was scooting around the rink between periods grooming the ice surface looked brand-new. All shiny and painted a shade of green that was much too close to chartreuse for my comfort. It was covered with more commercial messages than the NASCAR champion stock car.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“When I retire, I think I’d like to drive a Zamboni in a place just like this. I’d do it for free, just for the fun of it. For the kids. You know about Zambonis? How they got started?”
I admitted I didn’t.
Sam did. He explained the whole history of the Zamboni as though he’d grown up with Mr. Zamboni’s daughter and lived through the experience himself. I listened with some wonder, not because of any particular fascination with Zambonis but because of the extent of Sam’s knowledge base. The truth was that Sam knew a lot of crap. He was the kind of guy with whom you did not want to play Trivial Pursuit.
“How come you know so much trivia?” I asked him when he’d exhausted the Zamboni tale.
“I just remember stuff. It’s one of the things that makes me a good cop. And I don’t consider it trivia.”
“No?”
“No. I like to think of it as information of infrequent utility.”
“It’s occasionally important to know that the first Zamboni was made from an old army Jeep?”
“That’s the thing. You never know what might be important. It’s all just information and then, out of nowhere, something becomes useful. I just store it so it’s there when I need it.”
Like the snow thing, I thought.
The Millers’ home was on the eastern side of Twelfth Street, facing the mountains that rise dramatically only a dozen blocks away. How dramatically do the Rockies jut out of west Boulder? On one side of a street you’re on a gentle hill. On the other side, you’re on the slope of a mountain.
But that’s to the west. A block to the east-in that part of the Boulder Valley “east” means downhill-and a few doors north of their home, the Millers had a new neighbor. A neighbor they had probably never met. The new family, the Harts, had moved into their brick Tudor the previous spring and within two months of unpacking their moving vans had begun diligent work on the family passion-which involved turning the facade and entire front yard of their house into a garish, illuminated, motorized tribute to the Christmas holiday.
The number of lights involved-all of the family members seemed to prefer to call them “points” when they spoke to the media, which they did frequently-ran well into five figures. Six major illuminated displays-exactly half were loosely biblical in theme-ranged from three feet to nine feet in height, and eleven different motorized extravaganzas kept elves bowing, stars shooting, donkeys walking, and reindeer flying all over the front of the house and far up into the trees. An enterprising reporter with an incipient personality disorder found 116 distinct representations of Santa Claus secreted in various locations. On the wide expanse of roof beside the center gable of the house a huge arched sign of shimmering red neon announced to all that this home was indeed “The Very HART of Christmas.”
It was something.
Families who like to make an annual trek through other people’s neighborhoods in search of the best and brightest Christmas decorations seemed to adore what the Harts had done to their home. The Harts’ neighbors, and the neighbors of the Harts’ neighbors, all of whom had to endure the endless crawl of traffic down Thirteenth Street, were probably not quite so enamored of the family’s efforts.
Boulder being Boulder, the controversy became sport, and arguments flourished about light pollution and the environmental consequences of all that electricity being used on something so, well, garish and transient. The local paper, the Camera, actually published a series of letters about the brouhaha, the first of which compared the Harts’ extravaganza to one of Christo’s installations. Follow-up missives predictably belittled the aesthetic sensibilities of anyone who could possibly think that way.
“But,” I asked Sam, “do you think the news footage shows what everybody thinks it shows?”
“Pretty much,” Sam said. “It shows what it shows, I guess. I don’t have much argument with Fox News. Well, that’s not exactly true. Let’s just say I don’t have much argument with what Fox News has to say about those few minutes in the Millers’ neighborhood on Christmas night.”
“So?” I said. “Explain it to me.”
“What?”
“The snow thing.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
He smiled. Not at me, exactly. He smiled as though he were enjoying my consternation. “So that’s it? You can’t explain it?”
What he couldn’t explain was the footage that had been shot by the Fox News helicopter on Christmas night. The shot was live for their 9 P.M. newscast-which had included an announcement of the three winners of Fox’s best-holiday-decorated-house-in-the-metro-area contest. The Harts’ home had been awarded a disappointing, to them, third place, which earned the earliest appearance of any of the winners on that night’s evening news. Records revealed that the live chopper footage from Boulder was aired beginning precisely at 9:16. Viewers eager to see the ultimate champion would have to stick with the newscast until the bitter end because the helicopter would have to make a trek across the entire metro area to Aurora for a shot of the grand-prize winner.
“Snow started sticking right away, yes? Around seven?” I asked.
“At my house it did.”
“And phone records show that Mallory was still home at eight forty-seven?” That tidbit of information had been leaked to the media earlier in the week. Locally, it had been played up by one of the TV affiliates as though the scoop was as important as a cure for cancer.
Before Sam had a chance to reply the kids skated back onto the ice to warm up for the next period. “For the sake of argument, yes, let’s say there was phone activity at eight forty-seven,” Sam said. “I don’t want to talk about this during the game, so make it quick. I’m getting bored.”
After the news helicopter completed its shot of the Harts’ home, it had banked away for a wide shot of the neighborhood, which included, for about three seconds-Fox timed it at 2.8614, and who was I to argue with that-the Millers’ totally undecorated house on Twelfth Street. Two days after Mallory’s disappearance, an astute Fox producer realized what the station might possess in the additional neighborhood footage that had been shot on Christmas night, and Fox launched a huge advertising blitz to promote its “crucial new information in the Mallory Miller case. Tune in Tuesday. Exclusively on Fox News at Nine.”
“Mr. Miller and Reese got home around nine-twenty, right?”
“Give or take.”
“But close.”
“Close.”
“Mallory was gone by then.”
“Correct-o. We think. Nobody actually looked for her until the next morning. People forget that little detail. She had a big head start.”
“You think she was home at nine-twenty, Sam?”
“No, I think she’d already split. But I do like arguing with you. That part’s kind of fun.”
Fox had done digital magic to the Christmas night footage. The resulting images of the Miller home were grainy, and the shadows were darker in a few places than was ideal, but the video was clear enough that the conclusions Fox reached really weren’t controversial.
“The helicopter footage from Fox shows no footprints in the snow around the Millers’ house. Not on the walk, not on the driveway, not through the yard. And no tire tracks up the driveway into the garage.” I waited for him to disagree, but he seemed to be ignoring me. Finally, I added, “And lights were on in the house, right? Both floors.”
“So what? You know any kid who remembers to turn off lights?”
“All that’s at nine-sixteen?”
The buzzer sounded. Sam said, “It was actually nine-eighteen by then. But why quibble? We’re friends.” He pointed at the fresh sheet of ice down below. “Game’s starting.”
“So are you saying you think that Mallory just happened to hustle out the door between like nine-eighteen and nine-twenty?”
Sam smiled at me pleasantly and said, “Maybe she was watching the Christmas thing on Fox News and timed her exit perfectly to confound the helicopter. We hear she’s a bright kid.”
I made a face that expressed my displeasure at his condescension.
He kneed me gently. “Hey, Alan, so far I’ve just been agreeing with you about stuff you learned from somebody else. Maybe some of it’s right. Maybe it isn’t. But I can’t tell you what I think, you know that, not if it involves what I know as a cop. But you know what else? Intruder theory, runaway theory-it doesn’t make any difference. None. The lack of footprints in the snow on Christmas night is an anomaly no matter what theory you like. The kid got out of the house without leaving a trace. How? Microclimate? I don’t know. Come on, it looks like Simon’s on the ice for the start of the second period. Let’s give the kids some support.”
Simon was indeed on the ice, at left wing. Both teams were sloppier with the puck at the start of the second period than they had been in the first. I was about to ask Sam whether the kids might be having trouble with the fresh ice laid down by the Zamboni when he spoke first.
“Reese Miller’s a hockey player. Did you know that? I’ve seen him play a few times. He’s good.”
I hadn’t seen any mention of Mallory’s little brother’s hobbies in the paper. But then I’d been making a concerted effort not to read about the more gossipy aspects of the case. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“He’s had some trouble.”
I leaned forward so that Sam would know that I was looking at him. “And you know this as a cop or as a parent?”
“The latter.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“God, you’re nosy tonight. You heard that his dad sent him out of town for a while until the commotion dies down?”
“To visit family?” I asked. I hadn’t heard.
“I shouldn’t say, but yeah,” Sam said. “I’m not sure I would have done that. Seems like a time when you’d want your kid close by.” I opened my mouth to agree, but Sam was done with the conversation. “Let’s watch the game.”