Smart move. He wouldn’t enjoy sleeping on his couch.
Next, I called Denver Health. I played the police card, identifying myself and asking to speak with a nurse regarding Detective Frank Wilson. While I waited, I went to stand by the window overlooking the parking lot. Sunlight glowed through the windows, a cool, white light. As if we’d leapt from July to January.
A nurse came on the line. “He’s in surgery. Just started. The surgeon estimates five hours. We’ll know more after that.”
“What’s his status?”
“Critical.” Somewhere behind her, an alarm chimed incessantly. “We’ll know more later.”
I thanked her and hung up. I stared out at the white light, thinking about what the Sir had said about grace and acceptance. An old rage, as familiar as heartache, wrapped itself around me. There was no grace in Wilson’s suffering, nor acceptance. His wasn’t the kind of pain that forged you into a better person. It was needless torment.
I grabbed my bag and called Clyde just as Mauer came out of his office with a cardboard box holding the CDs, the video stills, and the information he’d collected for Cohen. I added Ben’s personnel file to the box.
“Thanks for the intel,” I told him. “I’m going by Zolner’s now. Maybe I’ll catch him sleeping off a drunk.”
“Just be careful.” At my look he added, “I know. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Come on, I’ll walk you to your truck.”
Outside, the sky was a chalk-gray dome. The temperature hovered around seventy—unseasonably mild. In the west, lightning flickered across the gray expanse.
Mauer frowned. “The meteorologists say floods are coming. Damnedest summer I’ve seen.”
At my truck, I unlocked the doors and Mauer set the box on the floor in the back. I dug out my spare sunglasses from the glove box, then pointed for Clyde to hop into the passenger seat while I got in on the other side. I rolled down the window, and Mauer leaned in.
“Hell of a hornet’s nest going on upstairs with that hazmat train indefinitely delayed.”
I nodded. “All velocity, all the time.”
“TSA. Homeland Security. It’s gonna be more red, white, and blue around here than the flag. What if this guy really meant to blow up that train?”
“He can’t now.”
“Train’s gotta run sometime. And I’m heading off to a wedding. I should stay. That little girl . . .”
“There’s nothing more you can do here, John. And it really is priorities. Take care of your own daughter for a couple of days.”
He ran a finger under his collar, like a man afraid of a hanging. “I know. But it doesn’t mean I feel good about it. If you get a date for the Death and Dismemberment forms, let me know. I’m going to haul some of the boxes out of the vault and take them to Estes Park. Not like Kimmy and Dot will need me. Father of the bride is more about signing checks than anything else.”
“You’ve got the wedding. And the dance.”
“Yeah.” His eyes misted. He drifted away for a moment, and I let him go. Finally he drew a deep breath. “You need anything, you call. I’m less than two hours away. You got Fisher, and we’ll get backup from the other guys if you need it.” He gave me a searching look. “Promise me if you find yourself in a jam or you aren’t feeling good about this, you’ll call.”
“I will.” I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. “Now let me get on this.”
He slapped my truck. We were done.
I backed the truck out of the parking space and headed toward the gate. He was still standing there when I turned onto the street, and he and DPC headquarters fell from view.
CHAPTER 7
How well we think is the best edge we’ve got.
—Sydney Parnell, ENGL 2008, Psychology of Combat.
Bull Zolner lived in a part of town that made Korea’s demilitarized zone look like a nice place for a family picnic. Years ago, Vietnamese gangs had turned three blocks into a turf war that landed more bodies on the autopsy table than most people had fingers and toes. Since then, Denver Metro Gang Task Force had gone in and cleaned it up. Now the killings only happened once a month or so. Progress.
Why, I asked myself, had a racist like Bull chosen to live there? Bull hated everyone, but according to what I’d heard, he especially hated Asians. Maybe he’d sunk so far into the bottle that gang turf was the only real estate he could afford. Or maybe he was one of those ornery types who preferred living in a war zone, especially one of his own making. Nothing like a purpose-driven life.
I turned onto his street. Halfway down the block, his house was immediately identifiable as the only one with an American flag and a colossal red F650 super truck parked in the driveway. I double-checked the address, then pulled up to the curb to take the lay of the land.
The truck, along with its fiberglass skirts and custom hubcaps, suggested where Bull’s retirement money had gone. More than a hundred grand for a vehicle like that, I figured. It was clean, despite the recent rains, and freshly waxed and buffed. Clearly, Bull cared about something.
The house was a different story. Two stories, with curling shingles and broken gutters, the entire structure listed to the left as if preparing to lie down and rest. What was left of the paint was long past any hope of being assigned a color. The yard was packed dirt—indeed, the only spots of green were the weeds sprouting in the cracked driveway and the trash bin on the side of the house. With the drapes drawn, lights out, and the promise of rain in the air, the place gave off the gray-white pallor of something six feet under.
“Nice digs,” I said to Clyde as we got out.
Clyde—ears perked—looked ready to rumble, regardless.
At the front step I pushed the bell, found it broken, and knocked on the aluminum screen door.
The house seemed to hunker into itself, brooding in silence.
I stepped back to the edge of the porch. Overhead, the sun broke free of the clouds with a blinding burst of light; the crumbling window sashes and every crack and fault in the clapboards popped in sudden relief. Hoping against hope that Bull would be passed out on a chaise lounge in the back, I walked with Clyde around the side of the house and let us into the back through a gate set in a chain-link fence. The packed-earth backyard was empty of anything except a length of chain hooked to a steel stake driven into the ground and surrounded by mounds of dog shit. Clyde sniffed the nearest pile disdainfully. None of it looked fresh—wherever Bull had gone, he’d taken his dog with him. The curtains were drawn on every window. Even the sliding glass doors were shrouded. My knocks on the glass also went unanswered.
Clyde and I looked at each other.
Somewhere on the drive over, my heart had begun to throb in my chest, as if it were a clock tracking each second Lucy had been gone. Now, in Bull’s squalid, weedy yard, it gave an anxious hop, threatening to go into triple time. I sucked in air.