I began my search upstairs with the room I assumed had belonged to Raya’s son when he was a child.
The small space held a bunk bed and a child-size desk. A dresser sat in one corner, and opposite it rose a set of bookshelves filled with Colorado maps and rock-hounding books and Colorado-themed merchandise of the kind you could purchase at any mountain tourist shop. Chunks of pyrite and amazonite and gold ore. Tiny glass bottles holding even tinier flakes of gold. A belt buckle covered with rattlesnake skin. Miniature animal-skin tepees and plastic horses. Perched on the very top of the bookcase was a child’s straw cowboy hat.
One shelf held books, including The Odyssey and the collected plays of Euripides—presumably the sources for the quotes Roman had left. The bottom shelf held a display of small animals, inexpertly taxidermied. A coiled rattlesnake, a hare on its hind legs, a squirrel locked—improbably—in mortal combat with a scorpion. I thought of the dead rabbits on the porch and tried to imagine what went on in a mind like that of Roman Quinn.
My wild child, Esta had called him. Was the wolf dog his? Had he been at Zolner’s house last night? Maybe he was the man who had visited Zolner, claiming to be a salesman. He might have gone in search of everyone employed by the two railroads who’d been at the scene of his mother’s death. He could still be trying to piece the story together.
I looked at my watch. By now, Jill Martin should be at the airport, safely out of Roman’s reach. I called the number she’d given me. She answered, surprised, and confirmed that she had gone through security and was at her gate. I wished her a good trip and hung up.
My mind kept circling back to the question, why now? What had sent Roman to destroy Hiram’s family after all this time?
In haste, I continued my circuit of the room while Clyde watched from the door, my anxiety mirrored in his eyes.
A dresser filled with a boy’s toddler-size clothes; a pair of child’s hockey skates in the closet. The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with maps of Colorado and postcards of local tourist attractions like Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel, made famous in Stephen King’s novel The Shining. There were street maps, topo maps, photographs of Colorado’s famous peaks along with maps of mines and quarries and popular hikes.
On the desk was a photo of Raya Quinn and a boy I assumed was Roman. He looked maybe three or four, dressed in denim shorts and a plaid shirt, his smile wide. He wore the cowboy hat that now sat on his bookshelf. The photo couldn’t have been taken long before his mother died.
What had it been like for him, I wondered, to grow up out here so far from other people, with a grandmother as drug-addled as Esta?
Clyde lifted his head, and a moment later Phillips appeared in the doorway.
“We haven’t found anything useful about Roman so far,” he said. “But I ran Esta Quinn again, digging deeper this time. Utilities, phone, property taxes, and a few other bills are paid through a lawyer who lives in Chicago, along with a monthly stipend. I called him, and he says a corporate trust was set up years ago to cover Esta Quinn’s expenses. He doesn’t know who set up the original trust, but it came from a third-party lawyer, so I doubt it was a settlement from the railroad for her daughter’s death. No other visible means of support. She hasn’t filed taxes in more than twenty years.”
“The trust was set up by Roman’s father, would be my guess,” I said.
Or maybe it was blood money. Or both.
From outside came the sound of approaching sirens. “Cavalry’s here,” Phillips said and disappeared back into the hall.
The second room Clyde and I entered must have been Raya’s. It held plain pine furniture—a single twin bed, dresser, nightstand, and a child-size desk. Movie posters were thumbtacked to the wall along with pictures of Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and Jodie Foster. There was a framed photo of Raya as Guinevere in Camelot.
And on the desk was a single sheet of paper, once creased but now spread smooth, with a chunk of fool’s gold glittering in the center.
A California birth certificate for Roman Quinn.
He had been born in February of 1979 in the city of Los Angeles to an eighteen-year-old Raya Quinn. The place for the father’s name had been blank. But in slashing black ink, the pen pressing down hard enough on the paper to have punched through in places, someone had written in a name.
Hiram Davenport.
I should have been surprised. But by this point I was so desperate to find Lucy, I was more relieved than anything. The pieces were starting to collide.
The bastard, I thought. Pretending to know nothing of Raya. A picture began to form of a lost child realizing just how much he’d lost. A picture of grief and jealousy and rage. A father who wanted nothing to do with his son. A half brother who got all the love, a job, and a fancy office. Maybe that was why Roman had tried to destroy Ben—to punish him for having what Roman longed for.
I took out the gloves I’d grabbed from the truck when we first arrived and snapped them on. Underneath the birth certificate was a stack of five eight-by-ten photographs. I spread the pictures out on the desk.
All of the photos looked recent. They were casual, unposed. In all but two, the subject of the shot appeared unaware that he was having his picture taken.
The first showed Hiram Davenport in a suit, entering a bank or office building. The next was of Hiram and Ben together at a swank restaurant, the white-clothed table sparkling with silver and crystal, a dark-paneled wall beyond them. The third had been taken while Ben Davenport stood outside the door of the Colorado Historical Society, his tall body caught in a casual stretch, his eyes squinting into the sun, as if he’d just stepped outside to get some air.
In each picture, the subjects’ eyes had been slashed with a razor.
The fourth picture showed Samantha Davenport in her studio. She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by giant flower pots that I recognized from her website. She wore blue jeans and a sleeveless white blouse and was looking at someone who stood off-camera. The camera had caught her laughing, her mouth open wide, her head tilted back and her throat exposed. It was a gesture that was both confident and vulnerable. She had her right hand up, beckoning to someone. A child, maybe—Samantha’s posture made me think she was showing her subject how she wanted him to pose.
An X had been slashed across her throat.
I flipped the picture over. At the top, someone had written, TO JACK, YOU’RE THE BEST. XO, SAM