I felt an unexpected thrill rise up in me—reward money, I could see myself offering that to someone. “And whatever we bring you,” I said, “you’ll write about it?”
“I’d have to corroborate it myself,” Carl said. “But I could guarantee anonymity to anyone who spoke to me on the record.”
I nodded, working it through. “So, best-case scenario. We find out tomorrow that Colorado does know something about what happened in Florida. How long does it take to corroborate it with other sources, then actually write the piece?” I chewed on my thumbnail, knowing whatever the answer might be, it would not be soon enough to solve my predicament.
“A few weeks, probably.”
My stomach was twisting painfully, just thinking about the impossibility of the position I was in with Roger. Press charges against him and risk people thinking they were safe, that the coed killer was behind bars where he belonged, or let Roger off the hook so he would be free to hurt someone else.
“Pamela,” Carl said, eyes soft with concern, “what is it? You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“That’s because I do,” I said, my chin abruptly puckering. I steepled my hands over my nose so Carl wouldn’t see. My mother was always telling me that not even Mia Farrow looked beautiful when she cried.
I felt Carl come nearer. “I want to help.”
I shook my head hopelessly. “You can’t.”
“Try me, Pamela.” He pulled my hands away from my face and crouched at the knees so that we were eye to eye. I stared at him, horrified, our faces inches apart. I was completely infatuated with him and completely unprepared to act on it. I blurted it out because I was afraid he was going to kiss me. “Roger did something to my sister Bernadette,” I said. “He forced her to do things…” I looked away, embarrassed and unsure of how to put it. “To him. And she couldn’t breathe. She thought she was going to die. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I glanced back at him to find him nodding, this heartbroken look on his face.
“And now,” I rambled on, tearfully, “the police need to know if I plan on pressing charges for what he did to me. If I don’t, I’m scared of what might happen, what he might do next. And if I do…”
“It’s only further proof that he’s capable of murder, and they’re even less inclined to look at anybody else,” Carl said with a heavy sigh, as though he felt every last leaden ounce of my dilemma.
I nodded wretchedly.
Carl pressed my palms together, prayer-like, and said to me: “I will do everything in my power to make sure this guy doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
“That’s why I asked you to come,” I said, a half-truth.
Carl clutched my hands to his chest. His skin was warm and slightly damp, like he’d exerted himself in making me this promise, and some long-coiled tail of desire unfurled from my throat to my inner thighs. “We should really get some sleep,” I said before I acted on it.
Carl nodded, a look on his face that told me he understood what I hadn’t said. He went over to the closet and thrust his arms into the only shirt he’d brought, hooked the strap of my bag over his shoulder, and then escorted me back to my room.
* * *
The next morning, we piled into the car and headed for the bank. Tina was more than game to wave a brick of bills at one of the prison employees, entice them to tell us what they knew. Before dropping Carl off at The Stew Pot, we strategized an approach—we’d go in and ask to speak to Sheriff Wright, who would no doubt keep us waiting out of spite, providing ample opportunity to slip a note to one of the guards.
“What do we do if the sheriff agrees to speak to us, though?” I asked.
“I very much doubt that will happen,” Tina scoffed.
“No, but it’s good to be prepared, just in case.” Carl had glanced back at me and smiled supportively. It was a clear, cold day, the bracing morning sun turning his hazel eyes jewel-toned. I smiled back and quickly looked away before Tina picked up on anything.
“My advice?” Carl said. “I’d appeal to the sheriff’s narrative that The Defendant was a force beyond anyone’s control.”
In the years that followed, I would locate back editions of the Aspen Star Bulletin and read Sheriff Wright’s gun-strapping, cigar-chomping interview, and realize how right Carl had been. How good he was at all of this.
He’s one slippery snake, the sheriff had said, thumbs hooked in his suspenders, a hint of a smile on his face, but I’m the gardening shovel that’ll chop him off at the head.
Sometimes I think it was machismo that killed Denise.
* * *
As we made the turn into the prison’s muddy drive, Tina slammed on the brakes.
“Did you see who that was?” she said excitedly, spinning the wheel while the seat belt cut into my throat. She stepped on the gas and peeled up alongside the truck that was exiting as we were pulling in; she tapped on the horn and motioned for the driver to roll down his window and told me to roll mine down too. I poked my head out to see that the driver was the blond guard who had schlepped Gerald out of the makeshift visitors’ room yesterday. I vaguely remembered Gerald calling him Sammy.
Sammy regarded us through his open window with an impatient scowl. What? he looked like he wanted to groan. What do you want?
“We were here yesterday,” Tina said, unbuckling her seat belt and leaning across me. “Visiting Gerald Stevens?”
Sammy sighed in a beleaguered way. He had purple shadows beneath his eyes. Perhaps he had just come off the night shift.
“We were hoping,” Tina said, wearing her most feminine and helpless expression, “that we could buy you a coffee and talk to you, just for a few minutes.”
Sammy’s eyes slid toward the low stone station in his rearview mirror. “What about?”
“We want to know the details of The Defendant’s escape,” Tina said. “From someone who was there.”
“I can’t help you,” he said, and began to roll up his window.
“I think he killed my friend,” I called out at the same time Tina said, “I’ll pay you three thousand in cash.”
Sammy froze, the window just below nose level. He glanced at the station in his rearview mirror once more. Then, robotically stiff, as though someone inside could possibly read his lips, “Wait five minutes. Then meet me at Dinah’s on Eighty-two.”
* * *
Dinah’s was one of those diners with a rotating pie display. When we walked in, the guard was sitting at a booth polishing off a slice of cherry.
“If this comes back to me,” he said when we sat, “I’ll tell the sheriff you stole something from the jail and set it up to make it look real bad for you.”
“Understood,” Tina said. The deal was struck, simple as that.
Sammy thumbed a crumb from the corner of his mouth and looked out over the parking lot, inspecting a Toyota pickup as it chewed up the slush and the grit. He waited until the driver climbed out before deciding he didn’t know him.
“You have to understand,” Sammy said, continuing to monitor the comings and goings of the parking lot, “that the guy never should have been in Colorado to begin with.” He sighed and went all the way back to the beginning.