ANGELINA WOKE US UP very early Monday morning, but in the most pleasant way possible.
“Listen to her,” I said. “She’s singing.”
“It’s not really a song,” Melissa said. “She’s just happy.”
We listened to Angelina coo and say nonsense words over the monitor. Melissa’s face, as she listened, was a picture of momentary serenity.
“Did you get any sleep?” I asked Melissa.
“Not much,” she said.
“Me either.”
THE COURTROOM OF JUDGE John Moreland in the Alfred A. Arraj United States Court house on 19th Street was spacious and blond- wood paneled and lit with recessed lighting that created an atmosphere of serious decorum. I got to the crowded courtroom and found a seat in the second-to-last row, just in time to see Detective Cody Hoyt take the stand. Large faded murals done in the Depression era depicting Colorado history-silver and gold miners, railroaders, Pikes Peak-lined the walls. The scenes reminded me that Colorado had a go-go, get-rich-quick beginning that was being replicated by the most recent wave of newcomers-like me-who came here not because of family ties or culture but because there was opportunity.
The acoustics inside the courtroom were amazing. Despite the size of the room and the number of spectators, I could hear the muffled clicking of the court reporter’s fingers on her keyboard from her desk near the bench, the shuffle of paper as the Assistant U.S. Attorney reviewed her notes on a yellow legal pad, and the labored breathing of the defendant, Aubrey Coates, forty-three, accused of the kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of Courtney Wingate, age five, who went missing from a playground area at the Desolation Canyon Campground where Coates was employed as a campground host. Because the campground was located within a national forest, the trial was taking place in federal court.
Although I’d spent some time in courtrooms in Billings as a journalist-I covered the infamous trial where the two Crow Indian brothers and their meth-addict girlfriends went on the weeklong crime spree across southern Montana and northern Wyoming and murdered a ranch couple along the way- Judge Moreland’s courtroom had a slick sense of process about it that probably came from the no-nonsense, clipped way he moved things along. He didn’t shout, or gesticulate, but when he spoke, everyone listened. He was charismatic and in total command. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him in the way one can’t keep one’s eyes off a great actor-Denzel Washington, say-even when he isn’t speaking or the focus of attention. I wasn’t the only one so afflicted. If Moreland raised an eyebrow while a lawyer asked a question, that lawyer got the vapors, and the opposing attorneys acted smug. Of course, I observed him to see if I could learn anything about him, to size him up, to find a weakness. If he saw me enter the room, he showed no sign of recognition. I was still buzzing from the events of the night before. There was a black ball of dread in my belly that seemed to be pushing upward into my lungs, leaving me short of breath.
I was seated next to a large and well-dressed black woman in a floral-print dress and with a fleshy wide face who seemed unrelated to the players. I continued to survey the courtroom. Cops, reporters I recognized from local television and cable news, plenty of observers attracted by the lurid nature of the case itself, including, I assumed, my new companion next to me. Then I found myself staring at the back of the head of Aubrey Coates himself, sitting at a table facing the judge.
“That there’s the Monster,” the woman next to me said, leaning my way. Her bare chocolate arm radiated heat as she pressed into me, and her breath smelled of mint and cigarettes. “He turns around and looks back every once in a while, seeing who is here,” she whispered. “I think he likes the attention because he is a sick, sick man. When he looked at me I gave him one of these…” She instantly sat back with attitude and gave me a wicked dead-eye glare. “That look usually freezes folks where they walk. But he just kind of smiled at me.”
I’d seen photos of Aubrey Coates in the newspaper. Of course, the photos were prior to his haircut and shave. Now he sat slumped, small, in an ill-fitting suit jacket. He had tufts of gray hair over large ears, and when he turned his head to whisper something to his lawyer, I saw a hawkish and heavily veined nose, protruding lips, and a pointy chin. When he turned back, his bald dome reflected the light from the walls in a checkerboard pattern on the side of his head. I thought of the nature of evil, how sometimes you could just see it and sense it.
“He did it,” she said, nodding. “No doubt in my mind. And he did a lot more, too.”
I held out my hand. “Jack.”
“Olive,” she said, her large hands enveloping mine. “Ask me anything. I know everybody in this room. This is what I do-observe trials.”
“Do you know Coates’s defense attorney?” I asked, looking at a rotund man sitting next to Coates with an easy smile and manner.
She nodded, and her eyes widened. “He’s got the best- Bertram Ludik. I don’t know how that little worm can afford him. I think if Charles Manson had hired Bertie Ludik, he’d be out there sticking forks into people to this day!”
“Come on,” I said.
“You watch,” she said. Then: “Luckily, Judge Moreland won’t allow Bertie to be Bertie.”
“That guy I know,” I said, chinning toward Cody, who was approaching the stand.
“Detective Hoyt,” she whispered sympathetically. “I’d like to take that man home and hug him and tell him everything will be all right.”
“Why?” I asked, perplexed.
“He’s a troubled soul,” she said. “Look at him. A great detective, but a troubled soul.”
He’s just hungover, I thought.
Cody was wearing a dark blue suit that gathered under his arms, a white shirt, and a solid but faded red tie. He looked courtroom savvy but disheveled at the same time. He shambled when he walked and raked his fingers back through his hair, messing it up. When he sat down in the witness chair, his eyes took in the room in a world-weary way that said “I’M A COP. JUST LET ME DO MY JOB.” I nodded at him, but I’m not sure he saw me.
Judge Moreland said, “The witness is reminded he is still under oath.”
“I understand, Your Honor.”
“Miss Blair,” Judge Moreland said to the Assistant U.S. Attorney, an attractive redhead who had been huddled in conference with the U.S. Attorney at the prosecution table, “you may continue to question the witness.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said, standing, holding the legal pad at her side as she approached the podium. “I have just a few more questions.”
Moreland gestured impatiently for her to begin.
“Detective Hoyt,” she said, flipping back the pages on her pad, “you said Friday before the weekend recess that when you apprehended the defendant on the morning of June 8 last summer, he was in the process of destroying evidence…”
HERE’S WHAT I KNEW about Aubrey Coates, the Monster of Desolation Canyon.
Every summer, children vanish. Over the last decade children had gone missing while on vacation with their families in the Mountain West.
It happens quite a lot in the mountains. Often, the families are having picnics and reunions and suddenly someone realizes that one of the kids didn’t show up for dinner. Sometimes the children got lost, sometimes they got washed into rivers, sometimes they got mad at their siblings and “ran away,” and sometimes they climbed into the wrong car. Most are found. I remember when my dad and I volunteered to search for a missing little boy who’d wandered away from a campsite near the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness north of Helena. We took horses, and I remember it as a great and serious adventure combing the trails and riverbanks calling out “Jarrod!” for two days. Until Jarrod was found less than a mile away from where he’d vanished and confessed he’d gotten turned around in the forest and fallen asleep. He admitted hiding from volunteer rescue people as they walked and rode by because they were strangers, and he had been taught not to talk to strangers-even those calling his name.
But in some isolated instances the children were never found. These children vanished from isolated locations in Colorado (Grand Junction, Pueblo, Trinidad), Utah (Wasatch, St. George), Wyoming (Rock Springs, Pinedale). Boys and girls, all under the age of twelve. In nearly every instance, the parents said the child was there one minute and gone the next. The places the children were last seen were playgrounds, near streams, on hiking trails. Then poof-they were gone.
In retrospect, when one looks at the instances of these particular missing children over the years, you can see a pattern, and the authorities are blamed for not seeing what should have been in plain sight. But that’s unfair, as Cody explained to me. The children went missing in three states over ten years. The only “pattern” was that they vanished from campsites or in undeveloped areas. There were no calling cards left, no evidence of where the children were taken, and nothing left behind. All occurred in different jurisdictions, with different sets of law-enforcement personnel. The FBI was never called in because linkage wasn’t discovered until after the fact. None of the parents were ever contacted for ransom or taunted. No one confessed or implicated others. And none of the bodies was ever found.
Aubrey Coates, who worked as a temporary replacement for campground hosts, was questioned on four different occasions because he had his trailer parked in the areas where the children went missing. In each instance, Coates answered all questions asked and was cooperative. More than once, Coates volunteered to help search for the missing children. He had no arrests, and his name didn’t exist on any sexual-predator lists. National Forest Ser vice staffing personnel in all three states knew him to be a kind of eccentric loner with his battered Airstream trailer that bristled with television and Internet satellite dishes and antennae, but he was considered experienced and reliable. Whenever a host got ill, or went on vacation, Coates was contacted to fill in. His job consisted of collecting overnight fees, keeping the campgrounds clean and neat, making sure campers didn’t overstay their limits, and providing advice and assistance to campers in states where camping is part of the common cultural fabric. In twenty years of being a campground host, only two complaints had been filed against him. The complaints-parents in one instance felt he leered at their children, and someone accused him of being rude because he angrily refused to come outside his trailer (“What was he doing in there?”) when a camping family wanted to borrow a tire pump-were minor and filed in two different states six years apart.
Coates covered his tracks very well. Three of the missing children were taken after the regular campground hosts had returned, so his name never came up.
Worst of all, Cody told me, was that the seven children prior to Courtney Wingate was an arbitrary number. The actual number of children Coates took could be ten, or twenty, or fifty. In the three decades across the West-years Coates has not accounted for-Cody said there were over seventy missing-children cases open from Nebraska to California. And dozens more in western Canada.
Why just seven? Because the police found photos of seven missing children on Aubrey Coates’s laptop computer. If there had been others-and Cody thought Coates had been successful in destroying electronic records on a server located in the trailer as well as most of the laptop-Cody and the computer specialists brought in on the case couldn’t find them.
After initially filing charges against Coates for the disappearance of all seven children in the hope Coates would bargain with them-lesser charges in exchange for a confession or the locations of the bodies-the federal prosecutor ran into a brick wall because Coates admitted nothing and proclaimed his innocence. After a few months, the charges were pared down to the disappearance of Courtney Wingate, who vanished most recently, in Desolation Canyon, where Coates had served as temporary campground host. Several digital photos of Courtney were found on Coates’s laptop, and her parents identified him as lurking around their campsite the night before she disappeared.
As Cody and the prosecutor walked the jury through a PowerPoint pre sentation of the photos found on Coates’s computer-evidence Coates had been targeting the little girl for some time, including shots of her riding a big plastic three-wheeler and outside at an unidentifiable location with pine trees in the background-I found her parents behind the prosecutor’s table. It was painful to imagine what they were going through. Crystal Wingate, Courtney’s mother, was thin, pinched, hard, with the wizened face of a woman who’d seen tough times, none tougher than this. Donnie Wingate, who worked construction, had a big mustache and muttonchops, and he looked very uncomfortable being indoors. He was so tense as the photos were shown that I could see cords in his neck popping out. Donnie looked big enough and capable enough to step over the rail barrier and snap Aubrey Coates’s neck before the bailiff could stop him. I wished he would. He glared at the back of Coates’s head as Cody explained the other photos he’d found on the laptop and the extensive-but sabotaged-array of electronics they’d discovered in Coates’s trailer.
Cody testified for another hour and a half, much of it a summary and recap of his all-day session on Friday. I was riveted. In unambiguous language and with a manner that had been honed doing exactly this in years of courtroom appearances, Cody let himself be led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Blair. The U.S. Attorney himself-tall, bald, athletic-looked on with obvious approval.
Cody built his case methodically from the initial missing-child call from the Wingates to his suspicion when he arrived at the scene at the request of the county sheriff and first saw the campground tender’s trailer with so much electronic capability.
He said, “Coates’s trailer reminded me of one of those communications units our military uses overseas. You know, the ones that can transmit audio and visual data to some commander all the way in Florida or Nevada, so they can give orders on the battlefield in real time. There were dishes and antennae all over the trailer, and a generator outside if his campground power source wasn’t enough. So I asked myself why a man who wanted to be so connected to the Internet in such an immediate way would choose to be in an isolated campground when he could be in Denver, or any city. It started with that.”
Without consulting his notes, Cody told the jury how, with that question in mind, he started his investigation of Aubrey Coates. The more he learned about Coates’s habits and travels and the missing children that corresponded with his locations, the more he suspected Coates of taking Courtney. The records of Coates’s satellite Internet provider showed patterns of massive activity, sometimes thousands of megabytes of data being uploaded and downloaded. Most of the activity took place from 2:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M.
“The Internet activity fit the profile of someone involved in child pornography,” Cody said. “And he was not only receiving streaming-video files and other high-density material, but he was transmitting it-uploading it-as well.”
Aubrey Coates himself sat stock-still during Cody’s damaging testimony. He didn’t shake his head or roll his eyes but seemed to watch and listen carefully. It wasn’t Coates who bothered me, though. Bertram Ludik seemed to behold Cody with amusement and barely disguised scorn. And as Cody built his case-convincingly, I thought, and so did Olive-the more agitated Ludik became. Once, when he sighed loudly, Judge Moreland shot a look in his direction that shut him up.
Blair read from her pad. “So when you entered the defendant’s trailer on June 8 with the federal search warrant, what did you observe?”
Cody said, “We found the defendant in the process of destroying his electronic files. The video camera had been wiped clean, and the memory sticks for his still cameras were missing. He’d already burned a bunch of magazines in a trash barrel next to the trailer, material which through analysis was later identified as photos and magazines containing graphic child pornography. Obviously, he had somehow learned of the raid in advance, but we were still able to find enough evidence to arrest him.”
Blair introduced the exhibits-charred photos and magazine pages in plastic envelopes. Members of the jury passed the evidence from one to the other. Several jurors looked visibly sickened by what they saw, and one lowered her glasses to the tip of her nose and glared at Coates with undisguised contempt.
“And the computers?” she asked, returning to her podium. “What did you find?”
“The photos of Courtney Wingate we showed to the jury,” Cody said, “and photos of six other missing children.”
When Cody said it, there were audible gasps in the courtroom. Heads of jurors swiveled toward Coates, who still sat impassively. It was a defining moment. How Donnie Wingate restrained himself is a mystery to me.
Blair concluded her questions but asked the judge for the right to follow up with Cody later, which the judge granted. As she walked to her table, there was a noticeable spring in her step. I think at that moment if the courtroom were polled-jury included-the vote would have been unanimous to find a rope and hang Aubrey Coates right there and then.
That is, until Bertram Ludik stood up, cleared his throat, shook his head sadly at Cody as if admonishing a child, and walked to the podium stiff-armed and stiff-legged, like a bear.
AT FIRST, I couldn’t understand where Ludik was headed, and I didn’t listen closely. Cody’s testimony had taken everyone in the room up a roller coaster and plunged them down, me included. My mind wandered. Ludik’s questions were procedural. When the search warrant was applied for, when it was granted. The exact time of the raid. How the items found inside Coates’s trailer were cataloged. How many officers were present and the duties of each. Several times, Ludik messed up names of officers, and Cody had to correct him. Cody’s patience with Ludik was impressive, I thought. He was gentle and professional, and I could see that the jurors liked him. Ludik seemed confused and disorganized. His questions bounced all over the place, and he paused after Cody’s answers as if searching on his note pad for what to ask next to fill the time. When I looked to Olive with amusement, wondering what she had seen in the past of Bertram Ludik that so impressed her, she looked back and shrugged.
I looked at my watch, wondering how long it would go before Judge Moreland concluded the session for the day. I reconstructed my meeting with Julie Perala and the black ball of dread returned. My mind drifted back to yesterday.
I was jolted back to the courtroom when Blair bolted to her feet, saying, “Objection, Your Honor! Mr. Ludik’s line of questioning is without foundation.”
I looked to Olive. She had heard his question and was straining to hear more.
“What?” I asked her.
“Bertram asked Cody something about the laptop.”
“Approach the bench,” Judge Moreland said, clearly irritated with Ludik.
The discussion between the attorneys and the judge was heated. Judge Moreland covered his microphone with his hand while they argued. The U.S. Attorney heard enough from the table that he joined in the discussion. I had no idea, of course, what was being said.
Because Cody was in the witness box, he could obviously hear snippets of the argument. Although his face didn’t change expression, it drained of color, and he seemed to be staring at something over our heads as if watching his life pass by. I recognized the look, and it scared me because I’d seen it before. When we were in high school together, Brian’s father gathered the three of us, sat us down in his den, and asked which one of us had broken into his wet bar and taken two bottles of bourbon. I knew it wasn’t me, and I guessed it wasn’t Brian. Cody was the guilty party and looked it and finally confessed.
What, I wondered, was he guilty of now?
JUDGE MORELAND SENT the attorneys away. The U.S. Attorney looked furious and sat back down in a huff. Assistant U.S. Attorney Blair seemed tight as a bowstring, and she glared at Cody, her jaws clenched. Ludik, meanwhile, smiled at the jury as he walked back to the podium. I realized now Ludik’s opening act of stumbling and disorganization had been a ruse, a way of getting Cody off his guard. His questions were now crisp, and his tone contemptuous.
“Detective Hoyt, I need you to clarify something for me.”
Cody nodded. Then, before he could be reminded by the judge to speak so the reporter could hear him, said, “Yes.”
“During the raid on my client’s trailer, your report indicates 108 items of so-called evidence were taken.”
“I believe that’s correct,” Cody said.
“I need better than your belief, Detective. You can check your notes or read the file. Don’t worry, I can wait.”
I knew Cody well enough to know he was angry, but he internalized it. It was the face and attitude he used to adopt when he played middle linebacker in high school, just before he fired through the offensive line and crushed somebody. He flipped through the pages of the case file until he found what he was looking for.
“Yes. There were 108 items of evidence.”
“And these items of evidence were logged in at the Denver Police Department facility, correct?”
“Correct.”
“But this was a joint federal and local task force. Why weren’t the items taken to the federal facility, as per normal procedure in this kind of investigation?”
Cody cleared his throat and glared at Ludik. “Because the feds are nine-to-fivers. I knew our building would be open.”
“So you not only arrested my client without informing or involving your federal partners, you took the so-called evidence to your friends downtown as well?”
“Yes I did,” Cody said.
“Interesting. Now back to the evidence itself. At the DPD, each item is given a description and assigned a specific number, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Each and every item. Each piece of charred paper from the trash barrel, everything.”
“Correct.”
“I’ve looked this list over many times, Detective, and I can’t seem to find the description or number for the hard drive of the server in my client’s trailer.”
Cody looked up at Ludik.
“Did I miss something?” Ludik asked.
“No. There was no hard drive.”
“What?”
“I said there was no hard drive. Coates destroyed it or hid it before we could have it analyzed.”
Ludik rubbed his face. “Detective, I’m a Luddite when it comes to computers. My wife calls me ‘Luddite Ludik’ ”- this caused some titters from the jury-“so please forgive me if I have to ask you to explain obvious things.”
Judge Moreland, bless him, cut Ludik off at the pass. “Mr. Ludik, please get to the point or drop it,” he said sternly.
“Yes, Your Honor. Sorry. Detective Hoyt, correct me if I’m wrong, but a hard drive is like the brains of a computer, correct? Where all of the files, all of the memories, are kept?”
“Yes.”
“Without the hard drive, a computer is nothing more than a nonfunctional piece of machinery, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So without the hard drive of my client’s server, there is no way to know what the computer was used for or where my client went in his midnight forays onto the Internet?”
“Correct.”
“Same with the missing memory sticks for the digital cameras?”
“Yes.”
“So all that you supposedly have to connect my client to the disappearance of poor Courtney are photos of her not on the missing hard drive from the computer supposedly used in the middle of the night or from the cameras found in his trailer, but from my client’s laptop computer, correct?”
“Correct.” Cody’s voice was flat.
“And the photos of poor Courtney we saw earlier, they’re from the laptop?”
“Yes.”
“And the other photos of the missing children, they’re from the laptop as well?”
“Yes.”
“So did you find other things on the laptop connecting my client to child pornography? Like movies, or other disturbing photos?”
“No.”
Blair was again on her feet. “Your Honor, this is going nowhere. Physical evidence of child pornography was found in the trash barrel outside the defendant’s trailer!”
Ludik said to Moreland, “We don’t dispute that, Your Honor. But no one has testified in this courtroom that they saw my client burning anything. There are no address labels on the magazines, and no subscription or postal records have been introduced that prove my client owned or used that material. For all we know, it could have been put in the barrel outside my client’s trailer by someone else.
“Or,” Ludik said, taking a theatrical step toward Cody in the witness box, “it could have even been placed there by a third party and burned just before the raid itself.”
“OBJECTION!” This was from the U.S. Attorney himself, who until this moment had not been involved in the proceedings. “This is nothing but reckless speculation!”
“Get up here,” Judge Moreland said angrily to the attorneys. “Now!”
The conference was brief and intense. Moreland was animated. He shook his finger at Ludik and told the U.S. Attorney loud enough for me to hear to “back off.” I found myself admiring the way he ran the courtroom. And wondering what in the hell was happening.
When Ludik returned to the podium, he wasted no time.
“Detective Hoyt, back to the laptop. It is listed as ‘Evidentiary Item #6’ on the list, correct?”
Cody said, “Correct.”
“Let me ask you something as an experienced detective and investigator. Did you find anything about the photos themselves to be unusual or odd?”
Cody hesitated. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
But I did. And it had occurred to me earlier when we saw them but didn’t hit home until now. I felt sick inside. Olive, who suddenly got it as well, reached out and grasped my sleeve.
“The photos of the children,” Ludik said. “In all of them, the children are at their homes or with their families. They are the kinds of photos all parents take of their kids. We all have these kinds of photos on our desks. Isn’t that correct, Detective?”
“I’m not sure,” Cody said.
“Get to the point,” Judge Moreland said.
“I will do that now, Your Honor,” Ludik said deferentially. But he hesitated and looked down, as if gathering strength, as if preparing himself to do something he really didn’t want to do, but I recognized it as stage acting.
“Detective Hoyt,” Ludik said, “before we go back to that, let me draw your attention once again to the list of evidence gathered at my client’s trailer. Do you agree that there are 108 pieces of so-called evidence?”
“Yes.”
“Now, please turn to another document in your file, Detective Hoyt. This is the check-in sheet from the evidence room at the Denver Police Department dated June 8. Can you find it?”
Cody took his time. Finally, he grunted.
“Look at it closely, Detective Hoyt. It’s basically a copy of the other sheet, but there is a number on the right of each item of evidence where it’s been officially received by the sergeant in charge of the room. As each piece of evidence is entered, the sergeant assigns it a specific inventory number and date, correct?”
Another grunt.
“As I read the document, Detective Hoyt, there is one piece of evidence not registered by the sergeant on June 8. It’s on the list, but it isn’t noted until June 12-four days later. Do you see the item, Detective Hoyt? I’m referring to evidentiary item number 6, the laptop. It appears that the laptop was collected from my client’s trailer on June 8 but wasn’t checked into the authorities until June 12. Is that what you see as well, Detective Hoyt?”
“Yes.” Barely audible.
“And whose initials are those near the check-in entry on June 12, Detective Hoyt?”
“Mine.”
“So did the sergeant in charge of the evidence room make a stupid error, or was there really a four-day gap between when the laptop was taken and when it was checked in?”
Cody fixed a dead-eye stare on Ludik.
“Detective Hoyt, did you answer the question?”
Cody mumbled something I couldn’t hear. The whispering and murmuring in the courtroom among the spectators and the reporters drowned it out.
Judge Moreland called for quiet. When he had it, he turned to Cody, said, “Detective Hoyt, please answer the question.”
“I had the laptop in my custody,” Cody said.
“You did?” Ludik asked, false astonished. “Is that normal? Isn’t that a breach of departmental regulations?”
Cody said, “I wanted to see what was on it. I was doing my job.”
“Your job,” Ludik repeated with sarcasm. “So you’re a computer expert? You’re qualified to root through a suspect’s computer on your own for four days? Four days when real experts could have been going through it? And where were you doing this technical work-in your private Bat Cave?”
Blair was on her feet. “Judge, that’s argumentative! He’s harassing the witness.”
Olive whispered, “The judge is letting Bertie get away with stuff I can’t believe. He must be really mad at the detective, is all I can figure.”
Uh-oh. I tried to make eye contact with Cody, but he wouldn’t look up.
Cody glared at Ludik. His eyes burned red, his mouth was pinched tight.
Ludik apologized, then: “I’ll rephrase, Your Honor. Detective Hoyt, where were you on the weekend of June 9 and 10 immediately following the raid in Desolation Canyon? And where were you Monday, June 11, when the Denver PD log shows that you didn’t report for duty?”
Cody broke his glare from Ludik and looked to Blair and the U.S. Attorney, expecting something, help maybe. None came. The two of them were glaring at each other, obviously wondering who had missed this detail if it were true.
“Detective Hoyt?” the Judge prompted.
“Evergreen,” Cody said. The town of Evergreen was in the mountains via I-70.
“In a hotel in Evergreen?” Ludik asked innocently.
“No,” Cody answered.
“Where, then?”
“Where do you think I was?” Cody asked, baring his teeth at Ludik. “You seem to know everything, and you like drawing it out.”
“You were in jail, weren’t you, Detective Hoyt? Arrested for public intoxication Friday night, June 8. You were in the Evergreen town jail until Monday morning, weren’t you?”
Cody said, “I was. I was celebrating our arrest of Aubrey Coates, and things got out of hand, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“They got out of hand.”
Olive whispered to me, “My God. They didn’t know!”
Blair stood and asked for a recess. Moreland denied it.
Ludik shook his head sadly, as if it troubled him that the prosecution’s case-all those hours of preparation, all those press conferences announcing the capture of the Monster, all of the witnesses leading up to this moment-were an unfortunate waste of time.
“So where was the laptop while you were in jail, Detective Hoyt?”
“In my car. Locked in the trunk.”
“Are you sure? Could you somehow see your car out the window of the jail cell?”
“Your Honor!” Blair said, standing up, her voice high-pitched. “He’s once again harassing the witness.”
“It’s a legitimate question,” Judge Moreland answered, disappointment in Cody written across his face. He seemed the most let-down of all. “And one the witness will answer.”
Not “Detective Hoyt,” but the witness.
“Of course I couldn’t see it,” Cody said.
“So,” Ludik said, “for two and a half days the crucial piece of evidence in this case-the piece of evidence the prosecution is counting on to send my client to prison for the rest of his life-was in the trunk of your car in a parking lot outside of a bar in Evergreen, Colorado?”
Cody tried to swallow, and it looked like it hurt. “No one tampered with it,” he said.
“Oh? And how can you be sure?”
Cody looked away. “It wasn’t tampered with,” he said, without emotion.
Ludik moved in for the kill. “Detective Hoyt, let me follow up on a question that I brought up earlier-something that’s been bothering me ever since I saw the evidence against my client. You say you’re an expert in pedophiles and their behavior, that’s why you targeted my client. But don’t you find it strange that the photos he supposedly had on his laptop computer of the seven missing children were not pornographic or suggestive in any way? That they were candid shots taken mainly by their parents? That, in fact, the photos were the same ones circulated by the various police departments in their missing-persons alerts?”
Blair, despite herself, let out a little gasp. The U.S. Attorney turned sidewise in his chair, away from Cody. Aubrey Coates slowly leaned back in his chair and looked over his shoulder at the Wingate family, as if saying, “See?”
“Detective Hoyt,” Ludik asked, after the judge hit his gavel to once again quiet the room, “did you download those photos from your own police files onto my client’s laptop?”
“No!” Cody nearly jumped from the witness stand. The bailiff took a step toward him, and the judge ordered Cody to sit down.
“Maybe Monday afternoon, after you were released from the Evergreen town jail and before you transferred custody of the laptop in question to the evidence room?” Ludik asked.
“I said no,” Cody growled.
“But you can’t honestly tell the jury that someone else might not have taken the laptop from your car and done it during the weekend?”
Cody shook his head.
“What, Detective Hoyt?”
“I can’t say with certainty, but…”
“Detective Hoyt, can you recall an important case where the chain of custody of the key piece of evidence was broken quite so badly?” Ludik asked.
Cody sputtered. “We’ll find that hard drive,” he said. “And when we do, it won’t matter. That man,” Cody said, rising again, pointing at Aubrey Coates, who smiled back at him, “kidnapped and killed at least seven innocent children. You can’t turn him loose to kill more!”
Judge Moreland, furious, said, “Detective, sit down and shut up, or you’ll be arrested right here for contempt of my court.” Turning to the jury, the judge said, “Please disregard what the witness just said. He was out of line, and what he said cannot be considered in your deliberations.”
“No more questions at this time, Your Honor,” Ludik said, flipping back the pages of his pad.
Judge Moreland said, “Miss Blair, redirect?”
Blair appeared stunned and angry. Her voice was weak. “We may have some more questions later, Your Honor. Right now… well, it’s getting late in the day.”
Moreland snapped, “I’ll make the decisions to recess for the day, if you don’t mind. I don’t need your help to read the clock. Now, do you have any more questions for the witness?”
“Not at this time.” Cowed.
“Bailiff,” Judge Moreland said through gritted teeth, “please escort this witness off the stand.”
As Cody was led through the courtroom with the bailiff at his shoulder, all eyes were on him. As he passed me our eyes met, and Cody angrily shook his head.
“Mother of God,” Olive said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
I followed Cody out into the hallway. A few of his fellow cops were approaching him, trying to console him. He brushed them aside barking “Leave me alone!” and charged toward the glass doors. A couple of reporters shouted questions, which he ignored.
I caught the door as it closed and pushed it back open.
“Cody!”
He didn’t turn around, just kept stomping down the stairs toward the street.
“Cody!”
On the sidewalk, he paused, and I caught up with him. I’d never seen him so furious. The skin of his face was pulled back, slitting his eyes and making his mouth a snarl.
“That motherfucker!” Cody hissed. “I’d like to go back in there and cap him!”
“Ludik?”
“No,” Cody said, shaking me off as well. “Moreland. He fucked me. He just fucked me. And he fucked the families of all those kids.”
“Cody,” I said, as my friend knocked my hand off his sleeve. “It was Ludik…”
“You don’t understand anything,” Cody said. “You don’t know how these things work. The judge could have steered it back my way or granted that recess so the prosecutors could regroup. He let it go when he could have stopped it. The prosecution was so stunned they couldn’t think of anything to say. The judge can do anything he wants, and he let it go on.”
I found myself in the ridiculous circumstance of wanting to defend the man who was trying to take our baby away.
“Leave me alone!” Cody barked as I reached out for him again, and for a moment I thought he was going to cap me. I watched him walk into the street without even glancing at the oncoming cars, who braked so they wouldn’t splatter my friend, the suddenly disgraced detective, across Bannock Street.
IT WAS DARK and spitting hard little balls of snow when I arrived home. I’d called Melissa and started to tell her what had happened in the courtroom when she cut me off, saying, “It’s all over the news. They say he’s being suspended.” She said Brian had been at our house most of the afternoon, and they’d been following the case for hours, switching from channel to channel. Cody’s de mo lition had become a sensation.
I parked in the driveway next to Brian’s Lexus and killed the motor. The falling snow sounded like sand as it bounced off the hood and roof of the Jeep. I sat for a moment, suddenly exhausted, very much confused.
I felt a hundred years old as I willed myself to open the door and get out. The snow stung my exposed face and hands. I was numb, and not paying attention to the rhythmic thumping of hip-hop music from the street and the sound of a motor that should have been familiar and should have warned me.
As I reached for the handle on our front door the hiphop suddenly rose in volume. Later, I realized it was because the car had stopped at the curb, and the passenger rolled down his window and aimed the gun out.
The popping was muffled by the snow, and I was hit twice in the back. I turned on my heel and was struck in the face, hot liquid splashing into my open eyes, blinding me.
I could hear laughing over the roaring in my ears as the car sped away.
PAINTBALLS. I’D BEEN SHOT four times with a paintball gun. The color of the paint: yellow. The people who shot me? Garrett or Luis or Stevie, I couldn’t be sure.
Melissa called the police while I wiped paint off my face with a kitchen towel. It took several minutes for my heart to slow down, for the adrenaline that had coursed through me to dissipate. My hands shook as I wiped the paint from my eyes and ears. My terror faded and was replaced by anger.
The police officer who responded, who was in his midtwenties, Hispanic, with a wisp of a mustache and a belly straining at the buttons on his uniform shirt, wrote down my statement and took photos of the paint hits on the back of my coat. He shook his head while he did it, saying I wasn’t the first.
“There were quite a few similar instances this past summer,” he told us. “Kids compete by seeing how many citizens they can ‘kill’ in a given amount of time and tally it up. They get more points for a ‘kill’ in a good neighborhood, like this one. We’ve caught a few of them. Some are gangsta wannabes, but mostly they’re just normal knuckleheads.”
I bit my tongue, and Melissa and I exchanged glances.
He continued, “But you didn’t actually see them, right? Or get a description of the vehicle or a license plate?”
“I was blinded by the paint,” I said. “I told you that.”
“We’ll follow up and let you know if we find anything,” the officer said in a tone that meant we would never see him or hear from him again.
WHILE WE ATE-Brian had fetched Chinese takeout-Brian slid his chair back and drew his cell phone out of his breast pocket. “I called Cody earlier and left a message for him to call or come by. He’s not answering.”
“I hope he doesn’t do anything to hurt himself,” I said, “or anyone else.”
I rehashed the trial for them, and Melissa shook her head sadly. “Poor Cody,” she said. “Do you think Ludik really thinks Cody set up the Monster?”
“Hard to say,” I said. “But he injected enough doubt into the proceedings, I don’t see how they’ll get a conviction now. He even had me wondering if Cody or some of his fellow cops might have planted some of the evidence. Not that I don’t think Coates is guilty of something-I’m sure he is. I just don’t know if they’ve got enough evidence that isn’t tainted to convict him.”
Melissa shuddered. “If he goes free, no parent in Colorado will be able to sleep at night.”
“And everyone will hate Detective Cody Hoyt,” Brian said, not without a vicious little note of glee.
“I doubt Coates will be able to infiltrate himself again, though,” I said, ignoring Brian. “Everybody will be on the lookout for the guy.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Brian said. “If he is found innocent, there’ll be nothing in his record. He might even be able to sue to get his job back. You can’t prevent a man from getting a job because the cops may have set him up, you know.”
“Cody didn’t set him up, I’m sure,” Melissa said, scoffing. Brian steepled his fingers on the table and gazed over them at her. “Cody is capable of doing things you might not approve of,” he said. “In fact, I would say it’s possible they targeted this Coates guy and maybe did some things to make their case stronger. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s ever happened. And we know our Cody isn’t pure as the driven snow.”
“Brian!” Melissa said, angry.
“He isn’t,” Brian said. “I’m sorry, Melissa. But Cody takes pride in putting bad men in prison, and he doesn’t mind cutting corners if he needs to. He’s told me that. Once, he showed me what he called his ‘throw-down’ gun. It was a pistol with the serial numbers filed off he would have handy if he ever needed it.”
Melissa shook her head and looked to me for support.
I shrugged. Cody, in confidence, had told me as much before.
Things happened on the street, on both sides, that were under the radar. Cody had told me about some of them. According to Cody, since Mayor Halladay had been elected and had started building housing for the homeless and declared Denver to be a Sanctuary City, we’d been flooded with the indigent and illegal workers, mainly undocumented Mexicans. The gangs preyed on the new populace and sold them drugs and protection. The police, according to Cody, did their best to keep a lid on the situation without calling attention to the sharp rise in crime. When Denver was named host for a major political party convention, word came down from the mayor’s office to “get those people off the streets.” An unofficial crackdown was under way. The level of tension between the newcomers, the gangs, the police, and the mayor’s office was rising. The police, if Cody was an indication of the rest of the force, felt the mayor was “embracing diversity” on the one hand and issuing under-the-table orders to clear out the riffraff on the other. While acting on the mayor’s wishes, individual officers knew that if a brutality accusation was made or an incident captured by a ubiquitous cell-phone camera of a cop pounding on a homeless man or a minority, the mayor would side with the alleged victim because Mayor Halladay was a champion of the downtrodden, according to his spokesmen. Brian had once been very close to Halladay, before he was mayor. They’d been involved in business ventures together, but they’d had a falling-out, and their relationship was no longer cordial.
“Cody might bend the rules,” I said, “but he’d never set up an innocent man. And he’d only cross the line in this case if he thought he was punishing a monster who might do it again. That’s why he was so mad at Moreland. It wasn’t about Cody. It was about the fact that Coates might go free and hurt more kids.”
“Speaking of Judge Moreland,” Brian said, withdrawing a sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket, “Melissa and I have been doing some detective work of our own.”
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“I’m going to go put pajamas on Angelina,” Melissa said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
While she was gone, Brian said, “It’s amazing what one can find out using Google and a few well-placed friends in the right offices. Plus, there are a couple of wonderful high-society gossips who love to dish.”
With that, he outlined Moreland’s professional and marital history:
“In 1980,” Brian read, “John Moreland graduated from Ridgeview High School in Asheville, North Carolina. He was an outstanding student, first in his class. President of the debate team, quarterback, yadda-yadda. An only child, from what I could find. His parents are deceased.”
“Really? He doesn’t seem that old.”
“He’s forty-five. His parents died in a car accident when John was eighteen. I read the clippings. The police said John’s dad must have fallen asleep while he was driving home and drove head-on into a tree. Both parents were killed on impact, and Mrs. Moreland was thrown thirty feet through the windshield. There was some speculation that someone might have forced them off the road, but no one was ever charged.”
“Was Moreland a suspect?”
“My first thought. But he didn’t appear to be. He was at home with his girlfriend, waiting for his parents to get there. His girlfriend’s name was Dorrie Pence, and she confirmed his whereabouts. Remember that name, Dorrie Pence.”
I nodded.
“I’m still looking into this,” Brian said. “All I can get from the newspapers was it was a tragic accident. The whole community came to the funeral, and there were fund-raisers for Moreland, that kind of thing. I’ve got some real estate contacts in North Carolina, and I’ve put out some feelers to them to find out if they ever heard anything. In my experience, real-estate folks have their fingers into everything in the community-who might be moving, who might be divorcing and selling, that kind of thing. A lot of times they know more about what’s going on than the local cops. I mean, I know more about what’s going on in Denver than that doofus cop who was here, if you know what I mean.”
“Go on,” I said, seeing Brian was still clearly enjoying this.
“Okay, well, he came to Colorado right after he left North Carolina. He attended the University of Colorado on academic scholarships but he had plenty of life-insurance money from the deaths of his parents. He was never a poor college student, that’s for sure. He graduated with a major in political science. Then off to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude-of course. He was twenty-four, and he married his high-school sweetie, Dorrie Pence, in Denver.”
“Ah,” I said. “Dorrie provided the alibi, and he married her.”
“Right-o,” Brian said. “Garrett was born in 1989. No other children. An only child, like his daddy. Anyway, Moreland was in private practice in Denver for the next few years. He was a very highly regarded criminal-defense attorney before switching over to civil litigation. He was named one of the ten best litigators in the nation, yadda-yadda. From what I can find out, he was one of those men who just shines at everything he does. He was appointed United States Attorney and held that position for the next five years. But here’s where it gets interesting.”
Melissa came back downstairs with Angelina in soft yellow pajamas with feet in them. She looked darling, and seemed to be mimicking Brian with her chatter. I took her and held her while Brian went on.
“In 2001, Dorrie dies tragically in a hiking accident in the mountains. John and Garrett were with her, and they were apparently hiking a trail in a canyon when the path gave way. She fell sixty feet and bashed her head in on some rocks. John and Garrett saw the whole thing, but they weren’t able to save her. And it turns out she was six months pregnant at the time with their second child.”
Melissa and I exchanged looks.
“Were they sure it was an accident?” I asked.
Brian nodded. “There’s nothing in any of the news articles about it that suggested anything otherwise. In fact, Moreland is described as distraught and devastated. There isn’t much about Garrett, but he would have been only twelve at the time. Big funeral, lots of city fathers and politicians in attendance. Yadda-yadda.”
“So both his parents and his first wife die in accidents,” I said. “How strange. How many people do we know who’ve died in accidents? I can’t think of any.”
“Your uncle Pete,” Melissa said. “Didn’t he die in a boat accident? Drown or something?”
“There’s one,” I said.
“Do we know anything about Dorrie?” Melissa asked. “Did anyone know her very well?”
“Not many,” Brian said. “Judge Moreland was-and is- at all of the Denver society events and fund-raisers. I’ve seen him myself-he’s a fixture. But apparently she didn’t like the limelight, according to my gossips. She went back to the church big-time, apparently. She was a Catholic when they married, and she became very involved in the church here. Going to Mass every morning, that kind of involved. She was, well, very plain-looking from the wedding photo in the newspaper. John looked like some kind of movie star, and he married a homely girl on the heavy side. Later, she got very heavy. My best gossip described her as shy, overweight, and uncomfortable in a crowd. She and the judge were a mismatched pair.”
Melissa snorted. “She sounds inconvenient to a man on the make.”
“It gets better,” Brian said. “John Moreland married ex-model and heir to a cosmetics fortune Kellie Southards almost twelve months to the day Dorrie died. It was a massive wedding. And that same year-2002-he was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.”
“One year seems a little quick to me,” Melissa said, “for a man who was distraught and devastated.”
“Interesting,” I said, my mind racing. “But don’t forget that all we’re doing is speculating here. And we are talking about a judge who seems incredibly well liked and well connected. We might be jumping to conclusions.”
“And now we get to Garrett,” Brian said. “I’ll let Melissa take it from here.”
“GARRETT MORELAND SEEMS LIKE a very bright and a very troubled young man,” Melissa said. “I don’t think that information will come as any surprise to us. I also learned it is very difficult to get any background on a juvenile through official channels.”
“How did you get what you got?” I asked, impressed.
“A friend of a friend I used to work with downtown is a counselor at Garrett’s high school in Cherry Creek. We had coffee this afternoon while you were at the trial. At first, she was very coy about talking specifically about Garrett because she’s not supposed to, you know. But when I told her the situation we’re in”-she nodded toward Angelina in my arms-“she started telling me things. I’m sworn to secrecy, of course. But what she told me about Garrett makes me even more determined to fight them, Jack.”
“Not that you were wavering before,” I said.
“No. But I think we’re dealing with a very sick boy.”
“What did you find out?” I asked, chilled.
“Garrett had a reputation before he even got to high school,” she said, digging the pad she used for grocery lists out of the diaper bag near her feet. “He wasn’t an unknown quantity. There was an incident in middle school that made the rounds and she heard about it from a fellow counselor. Apparently, the middle-school counselor knew Garrett quite well because he’d talked to the boy after the death of his mother the year before. He said he thought the boy was hollow inside, and he couldn’t get through to him to get him to grieve properly. Anyway, since Garrett knew the counselor, he went to see him one day to complain that his friends wouldn’t have anything to do with him anymore and he wanted the school to punish them. He gave the counselor a list of four boys who should be punished.”
I shook my head.
“The counselor asked why the friends should be punished, and Garrett told him they wouldn’t walk to school with him anymore, that they ditched him whenever they could.”
“Kid stuff,” I said, remembering how casually cruel young teenagers could be.
Melissa said, “Next to each of the boys’ names Garrett had written suggested punishments. He said two of the boys should be branded with a hot iron. He said one of them should be forced to wear girls’ clothes for a month. And the last should be castrated.”
Brian whistled.
“The counselor was alarmed and took the list to the vice principal. Keep in mind this was two years after the Columbine massacre, so school officials were ultrasensitive to anything that resembled a threat. But apparently the vice principal knew Garrett’s father, and they agreed to handle the situation quietly. John Moreland and the vice principal gathered the four boys and Garrett together in a conference room and asked them to talk it out, to work out their problems. What it came down to was the four boys thought Garrett was weird and scary. Garrett was reprimanded for making the list, but he wasn’t disciplined in any way. The counselor was furious at the outcome, and told his colleague-the woman I had coffee with-about it when Garrett moved on to high school.
“In high school,” Melissa said, “there were disturbing writings. Garrett was-or is-interested in creative writing, and he wrote several fantastically violent plays and short stories. The counselor I had coffee with had read them and agreed with the English teacher that they crossed the line. Torture, beheadings, that kind of thing. He was very interested in criminal behavior. She talked to Garrett about this, but Garrett said he had the right of free speech, especially since he was an artist. He said he would get his father involved if the school tried to stop him from being an artist.”
I said, “I thought these were the kinds of things that got kids bounced out of school these days,” recounting stories I’d heard and read about students who were expelled for things like bringing a plastic butter knife to school in their lunch sacks.
“They do,” Brian said, “but apparently it depends on who you are. And who your father is.”
Melissa said, “The counselor said Garrett brought in books he’d found in the school library filled with violence and violent images, and movies he’d rented at Blockbuster which were just as graphic as what he’d written. He built a case that his work wasn’t any worse than what anybody could get their hands on just about anywhere.”
“A future criminal defense attorney,” I said, thinking of Ludik’s performance that day.
“So nothing was done with Garrett,” Melissa said. “This empowered him, according to the counselor. And so did his money, which he flashed around the school constantly. He always has the best car, the best clothes, the best computer. He was the first kid at Cherry Creek to have an iPhone- that kind of thing. Other kids resent him for it, but they also want to be around him because he was always willing to pay for lunch, or give them rides, or buy them alcohol.”
“This is where his gang connection comes in,” Brian said.
Melissa nodded. “The counselor said when Garrett was a junior, he started showing up to basketball and football games with gang members from downtown. They were like his posse. Garrett played it up. The gang connections gave him power. So here was a kid who had both money and power in high school and nobody-including the teachers or the counselor-took him on. The school started having some serious drug problems that year as well, and the counselor suspected Garrett’s gang pals of selling crystalmeth and other drugs to students.”
“A criminal-defense attorney and a gang kingpin,” Brian said. “That’s a deadly combination.”
“Can we prove this?” I asked.
Melissa said, “In a court of law? Like in front of a judge if we could get a custody hearing to keep Angelina?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling hopeful for the first time.
“There have to be quite a few students in that high school who would say the same things the counselor told me,” she said.
Brian nodded, excited. “With the right bulldog lawyer and a parade of kids and teachers who know Garrett, I could see a judge ruling that you should keep Angelina for her own well-being and safety.”
I wanted to believe him.
“Think about it, Jack,” Brian said. “You’ve got a man whose parents and first wife died mysteriously and a son who comes across like Little Scarface. What court would rule they should get a baby girl because of a ridiculous technicality?”
“And maybe it doesn’t even have to go that far,” Melissa said. “Maybe we talk with Judge Moreland and tell him what we know. I’m sure he doesn’t want this all aired in a courtroom. It might be enough to make him go away.”
WE STAYED UP LATE after Angelina was put to bed and Brian kept us optimistic and hopeful. He was able to get Melissa to laugh at his jokes, and it was a wonderful sound to hear. It was as if days and nights of built-up terrors and fears were being released.
BRIAN WAS PULLING ON his coat to leave when there was a knock on the door. Melissa and Brian froze and looked at me. I glanced at the clock: 1:20.
A combination of fear and rage not far under the surface revealed itself. Were the boys back? If so, this time I wouldn’t be humiliated. I ran upstairs and got the.45.
“Jack!” Melissa said, seeing the weapon in my fist.
“They may have paintball guns,” I said, “but I have the real thing.”
“Oooh,” Brian said, shaking his head, “I don’t know…”
But I’d already thrown open the front door, ready and willing to level the Colt at Garrett’s or Luis’s face.
Cody slumped against the threshold, his face flushed, his eyes watery. There was snow on his shoulders and head.
“Go ahead,” he slurred, “shoot me.”
I put the gun aside, and Brian and I helped him in. He could barely walk, and we steered him toward the couch. The smell of bourbon on him was strong. He sat down in a heap.
Melissa said, “Cody, you’re covered in blood. Are you hurt?”
I hadn’t even noticed, but now I saw it: dark floral patterns of blood on his pant legs and down the front of his coat. His knuckles were bloody, the skin peeled back.
“I’m just fucking dandy,” Cody said, “but that kid out there in the Hummer with the paintball gun isn’t doing so hot.”
LIKE SPRING SNOWSTORMS IN the Rockies, late-fall snowstorms often had a particular kind of all-encompassing intensity and volume that could make you slip out of your everyday life, look around, and say, “Do we have enough groceries in the house?”
But that night, when Cody showed up at our house drunk and bloody, the snow didn’t divert attention from where we were but steered it back from our brief little respite of hope, and made everything more focused and harder-edged.
BRIAN WAS IN THE PASSENGER SEAT of my Jeep as we slowly circled the block looking for the kid or vehicle Cody described. The snow was falling in white-capped vertical waves of poker chip-sized flakes. The volume of snow muted outside sound and haloed the streetlights. It wasn’t cold enough yet that the snow wouldn’t melt, but it was falling so hard and so fast that it didn’t get the chance. Cottony balls of it bunched on the hood of the car and rested on the tops of the blades of the wipers.
A few lights were on behind closed curtains in our neighbors’ homes, and three or four porch lights. Falling snow, like fat summer miller moths, swirled in the glow one second and vanished the next as the neighborhood went black.
“Uh-oh,” Brian said. “What happened?”
“Power’s out,” I said. “Maybe the storm took a line down.”
“Wonderful. The hits just keep on coming.”
“Jesus,” I said. “What did Cody say before he passed out?”
“Something about nearly rear-ending a car that was coming down the street with its lights off,” Brian said. “Then he saw who was inside and followed them.”
“Did he say where?” I asked, my voice pinched with desperation. There weren’t any unfamiliar cars on the curbs or in the driveways of my neighbors. Those that were there had at least six inches of snow on them, making the models hard to pick out in the dark.
“He was hard to understand,” Brian said. “Bombed out of his mind. What I heard was that he pulled the car over and the boys in it tried to run away but he caught one of them. He’s so out of it, though, that I can’t even be sure he wasn’t hallucinating.”
“That blood on him wasn’t a hallucination,” I said.
“But we don’t know if it happened here, is what I’m saying,” Brian said. “I still think we should have called the cops, let them look for the boy and the car.”
“And get Cody arrested,” I said.
“Maybe he needs to be arrested.”
“You heard Melissa.”
Brian sighed. “By not calling them have we already broken the law?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“But we know we should, right?”
“I guess so.”
“But we aren’t going to, are we?”
“No.”
I CRAWLED THE JEEP down the length of my subdivision street and took a left at the next block, passing under a darkened streetlight. In the dark and in the snow, my own neighborhood seemed unfamiliar. It was the same odd feeling I’d had on Sunday when Judge Moreland showed up at my home and somehow turned it into a place I didn’t know or feel very comfortable in.
“There,” Brian said, pointing through the windshield.
Halfway up the next block, Garrett’s H3 Hummer was parked with a front tire on the sidewalk and the back end angled out toward the street. The headlights of my Jeep washed across the length of the vehicle, revealing no one inside. I slowly drove on.
“I didn’t see anyone inside,” Brian said. “Where did they go?”
“Cody said one took off. But where’s the other one?”
I didn’t want to stop in the street and train my headlights on the Hummer in case any of my neighbors were looking out. In the dark, I wouldn’t be able to see them, and they might recognize me or my Jeep. I wondered if anyone had noticed the H3-it was not exactly a model that would melt into the scenery-or called the police. For sure, I thought, someone had contacted the power company by now.
At the end of the block I flipped a U and cruised back.
“Not too fast,” Brian said, “I’m looking.”
“There he is,” I said, pointing.
“Where?”
“There…”
The heap of clothing was about ten feet from the sidewalk on the lawn of an unfamiliar house. The pile of clothing was dark but substantial and flecked with snow. There was just a glimpse as we passed by, but I thought I saw a bloody face with the wisp of a mustache. A snow-covered FOR SALE sign with a local realtor name was planted in the grass. Even though there was no power, the house looked absolutely still, and there was a good likelihood, I thought, that no one was inside.
“Luis,” I said. “Not Garrett. Luis.”
“Oh man, oh man,” Brian said, grabbing my arm. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Is he dead? If he isn’t, he’ll freeze soon enough.”
“I know.”
“And where’s Garrett?”
I looked around, shaking my head. “Let me find a place to park. I’ve got to think.”
“Jeez,” Brian said, using an expression I hadn’t heard from him since we’d been in high school. “If the lights come back on… if the cops show up… if Garrett comes back…”
“I know!”
I drove the length of the block again and turned around, nestling the tires of the Jeep against the curb and killing the lights and the engine. Garrett’s Hummer was fifty yards up the street. Luis was motionless, looking like a dark sooty smudge against the snow. As my eyes adjusted with the headlights off, I could make out tracks in the snow from the driver’s side of the vehicle leading up the street, into the shadows. Where Garrett had run.
“What if he’s still alive?” Brian asked, nodding toward Luis, his voice high-pitched.
I wished I could drum up some sympathy, but all I knew of Luis was what he did in the bathroom of my home and the paintball attack. Plus, he was associated with the kid who wanted to take my daughter away from us. The very idea of him made me angry. In a prosperous city like Denver, which was booming economically and offering opportunities to anyone who sought them, Luis had opted to belong to a violent street gang that sold drugs. It wasn’t like he didn’t have choices. And I didn’t mind right then if he went away. I didn’t really mind if he died. But could I sit there and watch him die?
Yes.
But I didn’t want Cody to be implicated.
As I reached down for my door handle I noticed a glow in the snowfall down the street. I paused. The falling snow started to light up yellow like shooting sparks. Headlights. A car coming.
“Slump down,” I said, and we both slid forward in our seats.
“Man oh man,” Brian whispered. “What do we say if it’s the cops?”
“If they don’t see us, we don’t have to say anything,” I said.
“I’m well-known in this town, Jack,” Brian said. “I’ve got a lot of friends and a lot of enemies. If I get caught out here, there’s no way it doesn’t make the papers.”
“I know. Don’t forget who I work for.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?” I barked at Brian. “You’re more important? You’ve got more money?”
“Honestly, yes on both counts,” Brian said. “But I also won’t be in a position to help you and Melissa.”
Nice save, I thought.
I kept my head high enough that I could see through a slot beneath the top of the steering wheel and the dashboard. It suddenly occurred to me that the Jeep might be the only vehicle on the street not blanketed by snow, that we would be obvious. It was snowing harder. Flakes were sticking to the glass and beginning to cover the hood. Still, my Jeep was at least an inch behind in snow covering.
The approaching car appeared and swung behind the Hummer, keeping its headlights on. It was an older model low-rider four-door sedan, definitely not a police car. It was the kind of tricked-up American classic some Hispanics preferred. Three doors opened at the same time, and the dome light lit up. Garrett was in the passenger seat. The driver and occupant in the backseat were Hispanic, wearing oversized coats, trousers, big, tan, unlaced boots.
“Garrett and the gangsters,” I whispered to Brian. “They’ve come back for Luis.”
“Do they see us?”
“Not yet.”
The.45 was on the seat next to my thigh, and I spider-crawled my hand across the upholstery until I found the smooth wooden grip. I cracked my window so I could hear them out there.
The driver and Garrett ran to where Luis lay and shouted at him to get up.
“Fucking get up, man…” the driver said, nudging Luis with his boot. “Get the fuck up, Bro…”
The gangster from the backseat stood next to the car, acting as lookout. He kept his hands in his pockets, and I instinctively thought he had a gun or two. He looked up the block and down, eyes brushing over my Jeep. His face was dead, impassive, a round pie tin with a soul patch and heavily lidded eyes.
Garrett and the driver tugged on Luis, eventually pulling him to his feet. They draped his arms around their shoulders and guided him toward the car. I thought I saw Luis’s legs move under their own power, helping them, but I couldn’t be sure. His head slumped on his coat as they got him to the car. When they lowered him into the backseat I could see blood on his face and clothes from the dome light. My impression was Luis was alive-barely.
I did see Garrett’s face, though, and it was hideous, contorted with rage. He said something about a paint gun, and the lookout left the car and found it on the lawn and brought it back. It had been them, all right.
“Okay,” Garrett said, slamming the back door and stepping away.
The driver swung into his car and the lookout jumped in next to him. Garrett started for his Hummer, keys in his hand.
As he reached for his door handle he suddenly froze and turned toward me, squinting.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
“What?”
“I think he sees us.” I lifted the.45 and put it on my lap. Suddenly, stupidly, I couldn’t remember if the revolver was single-action or double-action. Did I have to cock it, or could I just pull the trigger? Christ…
The sedan made a slow turn in the snow and started down the street from the direction it had come. Its taillights looked pink in the falling snow.
Garrett still stood near the door of his H3. I could see his mind work, looking over his shoulder at his friends departing and again at my Jeep. His backup was gone, and he wasn’t sure. I thought again of my car sitting there at the curb looking sleek and dark without nearly the amount of snow on it as the other vehicles up and down the street, sticking out like a sore thumb. Had Garrett paid any attention to what I drove? Had he seen the Jeep in my driveway?
He walked toward us in the dark down the middle of the street like a gunfighter. Twenty yards away. Reaching behind him for something tucked into his belt with one hand. With his other he flipped open his cell phone and raised it. I could see the glow of it shadow the handsome features of his face. Probably calling the sedan back, I thought.
I cocked the revolver, the cylinder turning, a fat bullet poised in the chamber. Aim for the thickest part of him, I remembered from deer and elk hunting in Montana, and if you need to, fire again and again.
Garrett was ten yards away but had slowed and was bending forward, trying to see into our car.
At that moment, the power was restored and the streetlights crackled and lit up. Porch lights blinked on up and down the block. Interior lamps lit up.
“It’s Christmas,” Brian whispered. Because we’d grown used to total darkness, the lights seemed more intense than they should have.
“For us it is,” I said, as Garrett wheeled, jogged to his Hummer, and roared away.
Brian sat up and took a deep breath. I could feel my heart pounding, whumping in my chest.
“Would you have used that?” Brian asked, gesturing toward the.45.
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Brian said.
I wasn’t so sure.
THE SNOW WAS STILL FALLING outside our bedroom window when I slipped into bed. I was tired, exhausted, and had taken three Advils to blunt the effects of an oncoming headache. Brian left as soon as we got back to the house, saying he hoped his hands would stop shaking so he could drive. Cody was downstairs snoring on the couch. Melissa had gotten his shoes and jacket off and covered him with a quilt.
I tried not to wake her, but of course she was not asleep. “What happened out there?” she asked. I told her, leaving nothing out.
“I hate him,” she said, referring to Luis, “but I wouldn’t want anyone to freeze to death although I’ve read it’s just like going to sleep. It isn’t painful.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Will Garrett connect Cody to us?” she asked. “Does he know Cody is our friend? Will he blame us for what happened?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it depends on whether Cody said anything to them or just started pounding on Luis.”
“I’d bet he said something.”
“We can ask him tomorrow-if he even remembers.”
“Oh, Jack, it’s gone from bad to worse.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me in the dark. She sidled over under the covers and put her warm palm on my chest.
“You showered again,” she said. “Why?”
“I felt dirty, I guess.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost three.”
“Are you going to work tomorrow?”
“I’ve got to.”
She put her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled nice. “I wish you could just stay home. We could have a snow day- just our family.”
“And Cody,” I reminded her.
“And Cody.” She laughed gently.
I glanced out the window. The snow had lightened considerably.
“We could just stay home and be a family,” she said, repeating herself.
I kissed her on the mouth. She kissed back, but broke it off.
“Not that,” she said, “not now. I just want to be held, that’s all.”
I held her.
We could hear Angelina stir and cry out over the baby monitor. Melissa was instantly alert, and she ducked under my arm and swung her bare legs out of bed.
“What?”
“She’s having a bad dream,” Melissa said, standing and pulling on her robe. “She’s been having them since the Morelands showed up on Sunday. I don’t know whether she’s sensing something from me or what. I’m going to get her.”
Melissa left, and I heard Angelina whimper and the sound broke my heart. Over the monitor, I could hear the springs of the crib mattress squeak as Melissa picked her up and cooed at her.
“I think I’ll let her sleep with us for a while,” Melissa whispered as she came back in the bedroom. I made room, and Melissa lowered Angelina between us. The baby was still sleeping. In the ambient light from the window she looked peaceful and content. Her long lashes were exquisite, and her little rosebud mouth formed a pleasant smile. Her breath was slight, little puffs of sweet air. I brushed her round warm cheek lightly with the backs of my fingers. So soft. She was just so small.
“Don’t roll over and crush her,” Melissa said.
I was always scared about that, and I edged farther away.
“We’ve got three weeks,” she said. “And you’ll be gone one of them.”
“I’ll be back sooner than that,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I have that meeting with Malcolm Harris.”
“Still…”
“I’m more optimistic,” I said, “after what you and Brian found out to night. The judge and his son aren’t so all-perfect and all-powerful after all.”
“I was talking with Cody about that while you and Brian were out,” Melissa said. “He might have just been out of it, but he wasn’t very encouraging.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed.
“I told him what we’d found out, and he just shook his head, and said, ‘Third-party gossip shit. None of it would work in court.’ ” She tried to imitate his particular sarcastic cadence of speech.
“But we’re just getting started,” I said. “We still need to prove everything.”
“What if we can’t?” she said. “Rumors are cheap. It’s different when we try to prove these things.”
“We don’t have to prove that Moreland’s parents and wife died mysteriously,” I said.
“But it’s nothing, really, when you think about it. The judge was never charged or even suspected of anything as far as we know. And Garrett just comes across as a moody teenager. What’s so strange about that?”
“Cody said this?” I asked, getting angry.
“No,” she said. “I was thinking about it. He’s right. We don’t have anything but a bunch of rumors. We can’t go up against a powerful judge and his son with just a pack of stories. Somehow, we have to prove something-anything.”
The minutes ticked by. The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. The last vestiges of the hope I’d had earlier skulked out of the room as if ashamed.
“Honey,” I said, “there is no point getting a lawyer and going to court. We may find out something about them, but now Garrett has an attempted murder on us.”
She sighed. “Maybe Brian can find out something more solid. He said he’d dig deeper.”
It was as if she didn’t hear what I’d just said.
She said, “And I can follow up on the school incidents, but all we’ve got right now is what a counselor says she heard from another counselor. If I were a judge I wouldn’t even listen to us.”
“I should have shot the son of a bitch,” I said.
“Jack, don’t say that. If you did, you’d get put into prison. This baby needs a father, and I need a husband.”
Still…
“I HAD A STRANGE THOUGHT,” Melissa said after a while. “Luis was somebody’s baby. And Garrett was a baby once, too.”
“It is a strange thought,” I said.
“Jack, I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
“What’s going to happen now?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“We’ve got to protect this child,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You were brave to night.”
I liked hearing that because I never thought of myself as particularly brave. I wanted her to think of me as a man of courage, and I vowed not to give her a reason to think otherwise. I had never before that moment thought in those terms, although every man, I think, wonders what he’d do when it comes down to a fight-or-flight decision.
“I’m going to leave you two alone,” I said, getting out of bed. “I’m still too wired to sleep. I’ll be back. I’ll try not to wake you up when I come in.”
Melissa was already falling asleep, an arm stretched lightly over Angelina. At the doorway I stopped and looked back. My wife and my daughter in my bed, both breathing softly.
I KEPT THE LIGHTS OFF in the family room and turned on the television. Since our remote had been stolen and ruined, I’d learned where to power it up on the set itself. It was tuned to CNN. I was too lazy and disinterested to surf through more channels using the buttons on the set and I sat down in my chair. The light from the set flickered on Cody under the blanket on the couch. Periodically, he would make me jump with thunderous flatulence or a racking snort. I could smell old bourbon in the room, as if it were seeping through his skin. I smiled as I contrasted Angelina and Cody, and wondered what it was about age that made the odors so much worse.
Over the news anchor’s shoulder on the screen were the graphics MONSTER OF DESOLATION CANYON and the booking photo of Aubrey Coates. They cut away to a local correspondent named Erin somebody doing a standup in front of the court-house hours earlier as the snow began to fall.
“The case against Aubrey Coates was dealt a major blow today in the Denver courtroom of Judge John Moreland,” the attractive dark-haired lady said, “when…”
I half watched, half listened. Cody was shown stomping out of the courtroom, snarling at the camera. I couldn’t help but glance over at his broad back on the couch.
The segment ended as the reporter said, “I’d bet you a bag of donuts that unless the prosecutors have something powerful and unexpected up their sleeves, Aubrey Coates is going to walk. Back to you, Anderson.”
Anderson said, “That was recorded earlier to night. And Erin, a bag of glazed donuts will be just fine.”
“Motherfucker…” Cody growled in his sleep, tossing about violently.