I almost broke down and told her what I was pursuing. I would have liked to give her something to ease her pain. But it was too early.
“It’s hard to do that.”
“I know, Riley. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.”
There was a long silence on the line between us. I heard nothing in the background. No music. No TV. I wondered what she was doing in the house alone.
“Mom called me today. You told her what I was doing.”
“Yes. I thought she should know.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What did you want, Jack?” she finally asked.
“Just a question. It’s kind of out of left field but here it is. Did the cops show you or give you back Sean’s gloves?”
“His gloves?”
“The ones he was wearing that day.”
“No. I haven’t gotten them. Nobody asked me about them.”
“Well, then, what kind of gloves did Sean have?”
“Leather. Why?”
“Just something I’m playing with. I’ll tell you about it later if it amounts to anything. What about the color, black?”
“Yes, black leather. I think they were fur-lined.”
Her description matched the gloves I had seen in the crime scene photographs. It didn’t really mean anything one way or the other. Just a point to check, one duck put in the row.
We talked for a few minutes more and I asked if she wanted to have dinner that night because I was coming out to Boulder, but she said no. After that we hung up. I was worried about her and hoped the conversation—just the human contact—would raise her spirits. I contemplated dropping by her place anyway, after I was done with everything else.
As I passed through Boulder I could see snow clouds forming along the tops of the Flatirons. I knew from growing up out there how fast it could come down once the clouds moved in. I hoped the company Tempo I was driving had chains in the trunk but knew it was unlikely.
At Bear Lake I found Pena standing outside the ranger shack talking with a group of cross-country skiers who were passing through. While I waited I walked out to the lake. I saw a few spots where people had cleared away the snow down to the ice. I tentatively walked out on the frozen lake and looked down into one of these blue-black portals and imagined the depths below. I felt a slight tremor at my center. Twenty years earlier my sister had slipped through the ice and died in this lake. Now my brother had died in his car not fifty yards away. Looking down at the black ice I remembered hearing somewhere that some of the lake fish get frozen in the winter but when the thaw comes in spring they wake up and just snap out of it. I wondered if it was true and thought it was too bad people weren’t the same way.
“It’s you again.”
I turned around and saw Pena.
“Yes, I’m sorry to bother you. I have just a few more questions.”
“No bother. I wish I could have done something before, you know? Maybe had seen him before, when he first pulled in, seen if he needed help. I don’t know.”
We had started walking back toward the shack.
“I don’t know what anybody could have done,” I said, just to be saying something.
“So, what are your questions?”
I took out my notebook.
“Uh, first off, when you ran to the car, did you see his hands? Like where they were?”
He walked without speaking. I think he was envisioning the incident in his mind.
“You know,” he finally said, “I think I did look at his hands. Because when I ran up and saw it was just him, I immediately figured he had shot himself. So I’m pretty sure I looked at his hands to see if he was holding the gun.”
“Was he?”
“No. I saw it on the seat next to him. It fell on the seat.”
“Do you remember if he was wearing gloves when you looked in?”
“Gloves . . . gloves,” he said, as if he was trying to prompt an answer from his memory banks. After another long pause he said, “I don’t know. I’m not getting a picture in my mind. What do the police say?”
“Well, I’m just trying to see if you remember.”
“Well, I’m not getting anything, sorry.”
“If the police wanted to, would you let them hypnotize you? To see if they could bring it out that way?”
“Hypnotize me? They do that sort of stuff?”
“Sometimes. If it’s important.”
“Well, if it was important, I guess I’d do it.”
We were standing in front of the shack now. I was looking at the Tempo parked in the same place my brother had parked.
“The other thing I wanted to ask about was the timing. The police reports say that you had the car in sight within five seconds of hearing the shot. And with only five seconds there is no way anybody could make it from the car and into the woods without being seen.”
“Right. No way. Would’ve seen ’em.”
“Okay, then what about after?”
“After what?”
“After you ran to the car and saw the man was shot. You told me the other day you ran back to the shack here and made two calls. That right?”
“Yes, nine one one and my supe.”
“So you were inside the shack here and couldn’t see the car, right?”
“Right.”
“How long?”
Pena nodded, seeing what I was getting at.
“But that doesn’t matter because he was alone in the car.”
“I know but humor me. How long?”
He shrugged his shoulders as if to say what the hell and fell silent again. He walked into the shack and made a motion with his hand like lifting up the phone.
“I got through on nine one one right away. That was pretty quick. They took my name and stuff and that took some time. Then I called in and asked for Doug Paquin, that’s my boss. I said it was an emergency and they put me through right away. He got on and I told him what happened and he told me to go out and watch the vehicle until the police came. That was it. I went back out.”
I considered all of that and figured that he had probably been out of sight of the Caprice for at least thirty seconds.
“On the car, when you first ran out, did you check all the doors to see if any were unlocked?”
“Just on the driver’s side. But they were all locked.”
“How do you know?”
“When the cops got out here they tried them all and they were locked. They had to use one of those slim jim things to pop the lock.”
I nodded and said, “What about the backseat? You said yesterday that the windows were fogged. Did you put your face up to the glass and look directly into the backseat? Down at the floor?”
Pena understood now what I was asking about. He thought for a moment and shook his head in the negative.
“No, I didn’t look directly into the back. I just thought it was the one guy, is all.”
“Did the cops ask you these questions?”
“No, not really. I see what you’re driving at, though.”
I nodded.
“One last thing. When you called it in, did you say it was a suicide or just that it was a shooting?”
“I. . . Yeah, I said somebody up here went and shot hisself. Just like that. They got a tape, I ’spect.”