“You’re too kind.”
The phone rang six times, then clicked over to an automated voice inviting me to leave a message after the beep. “Special Agent Zolner, this is Special Agent Parnell with DPC. I’m trying to track down a possible crossing number, 025615P. I need to know where it’s located and if you can remember anything significant about it. Please call me back. It’s urgent.” I left my cell number and hung up.
“I heard he hangs out at a bar,” Mauer said.
I put a hand to my chest. “You don’t say.”
“Smart-ass. He likes some place called the Royal. Or maybe the Crown. Some old railroaders’ bar, what I heard. My guess is it’s within staggering distance of his house. If you can’t get the information another way, you could try running him down there. Here’s his address.” Mauer scribbled on his notepad, then passed me the sheet. “If you go, take Clyde. And maybe a tank.”
I stood.
Mauer rifled through the folders on his desk, pulled one free, and handed it to me. “Before you head out, you might want to look at this, too.”
Back at my desk, I opened the folder. It was DPC’s file on Ben Davenport.
Davenport had been brought on board in 2009 as DPC’s historian and archivist. He had an office downtown in the Colorado Historical Society building and reported directly to his father.
A photo clipped to the folder showed a dark-haired, athletic-looking man who hadn’t bothered dredging up a smile for the camera. The flat wariness in his expression was one I recognized—I saw the same look in the mirror every morning. Combat will do that to you.
Ben had graduated in 2001 from CU Boulder with a bachelor of arts in philosophy, then started CU’s law program. But something—presumably 9/11—had caused him to drop out and join the US Army. He’d attended Officer Candidate School and the Basic School, then deployed to Iraq. He’d served from 2002 to 2008. Three tours, starting as a second lieutenant and working his way up to captain. A lot of medals and commendations. With a record like that, he could have gone into any number of high-paying jobs. But maybe he loved being an archivist. Roaming through history and lost in the stacks. Maybe he loved trains.
Or maybe, like me, he needed to lie low for a while.
I flipped back to the photo.
Not everyone who served in war got PTSD. Far from it. The majority were fine, or seemed that way. But across all branches of the service, 20 percent of Iraq War veterans suffered post-traumatic stress, along with another 11 percent of veterans from Afghanistan. Every day, twenty vets—from wars dating from the current conflicts all the way back to Vietnam—killed themselves.
Ben Davenport’s eyes said he knew all about flashbacks and nightmares.
I couldn’t ignore the possibility that Ben might have come apart, suddenly and violently, the way half the vets I knew worried they would. Maybe his wife had been unfaithful, he’d learned of it, and her betrayal was the final straw. There will be killing till the score is paid. Was it possible that he’d murdered his sons, tied his wife to the tracks, then gone back home to kill himself?
And if so, what had he done with Lucy?
I closed the file. With nothing more to learn about Ben for the moment, I cyberstalked Samantha Davenport and found her company, Madonna Portraits.
Madonna Portraits’ main business appeared to be taking pictures of babies. The website showed photos of smiling children along with glowing accolades from the parents. Samantha’s whimsy—lots of oversize flower pots and puppies—along with a gift for getting the best out of her subjects, created a world that promised endless, joyous romps. Everyone—the children, the puppies, even the flower pots—looked happy. Her bio page revealed a long list of awards and credentials, along with those of her assistant, Jack Hurley. Hurley was about Samantha’s age, handsome in a surfer-boy way, with an easy smile and bright-blond hair worn long. Probably great with the kids. And not bad with the mothers, either, I imagined.
Maybe his presence in Samantha’s life provided a sunny counterpoint to Ben’s dark brooding. Had his brightness been strong enough to lure her into his bed?
Next to the baby portfolios was a tab labeled NOIR GALLERY. I clicked on it and entered a different world.
Here, Samantha’s work was beautiful, even wondrous. But eerie. Bleak landscapes. Corpses from what I guessed was a body farm, where forensic scientists study how the human body decays in different environments. Children appeared in some of the photos, but they were nothing like the smiling babies in the other gallery. I quickly noticed it was always the same three children and realized with a painful stab that these were Ben and Samantha’s three. Two towheaded boys and a younger girl.
The boys, I realized with a shiver, looked exactly like the ghostly images I’d seen at the train tracks.
I found one of Lucy by herself. She sat on a tire swing, body stretched long, head tilted so she could look straight at the camera. Her soft brown hair nearly swept the ground.
I clicked to bring up an enlargement. A lively intelligence gleamed in her eyes and she had a certain boldness in the confident tilt of her chin. She looked like she’d been laughing just before the shutter clicked, her lips slightly parted and turned up.
Looking at her made me feel as though someone had reached in past my ribs to squeeze my heart.
“Lucy,” I whispered. “Where are you?”
I printed her picture, then moved on. The next set of landscapes, shown in black and white, was in a locale I immediately recognized—the Edison Cement Works. The photos had been shot in low light during a snowstorm. The date on them was from last March. Samantha’s children also appeared in some of these photos, mostly as tiny figures set against the colossal silos. In one, they stood before the kilns; their haughty expressions—something their mother must have worked hard to get from them—fit with the brooding presence of the kilns. The ovens, the snow, the children’s arrogance—all conspired to make me think of photos I’d seen of Auschwitz. It was an unsettling comparison, and one I suspected Samantha was fully aware of.
Had the killer been busy inside that fifth kiln during the time Samantha and her children had been there? Had he seen them, maybe followed them, and chosen them as his victims? Samantha’s familiarity with the cement factory could explain why she’d run off the road when she did. Maybe she’d known where the killer was taking them.
I texted Cohen and told him that the number in the kiln might be a crossing ID and that the video left little doubt that Samantha’s death was an act of murder. When he shot a text back, asking why he was hearing from me instead of Mauer, I told him Mauer was leaving town, I was on the case, and that was where I wanted to be. A few minutes went by, then he sent me a thumbs-up.