Chapter 1
Hands nipple high, palms up toward the night sky, Bruce
Collamore started talking before the cops were even out of
their car.
"I almost didn't call you guys. I was thinking that it was
all too much like the O.J. thing. Don't you think? I mean,
my dog didn't bark like that dog did, but I was walking my
dog when I heard the scream. That's pretty close to the
O.J. situation, isn't it? Anyway, that's why I almost
didn't call. I'm still not sure I should have called. I
haven't heard anything since that first scream. Right now,
I think maybe it was nothing. That's what I'm beginning to
think."
Two Boulder cops had responded to the 911. A coed team.
Both were young, handsome, and strong.
The woman was a five-year vet on the Boulder Police force
named Kerry VanHorn. She was a devout Christian who kept
her religion to herself; she'd once even confided to a
girlfriend that she thought proselytizing should be a
capital offense. She had dirty-blond hair and a friendly
Scandinavian face that put people at ease even when she
didn't want to put them at ease. Over the years she'd
discovered that if she squinted like she was looking into
the sun people took her more seriously.
She was the first out of the squad car and the first to
speak to the man who apparently remembered way too much
about the O.J. case. She tucked her long flashlight under
her arm and grabbed a pen before she squinted up at him--
the guy was at least six five--and said, "Your name, sir?"
"Collamore, Bruce Collamore." He was wearing a ragged
Middlebury College sweatshirt and an accommodating smile.
"This your house?" She gesturedtoward the home closest to
where they were standing. Jay Street was high on the
western edge of Boulder, in territory that the foothills
of the Rockies seemed to have yielded only reluctantly to
housing. If there was a boundary between urban and rural
on the west edge of town, Jay was definitely on the side
of the line that was more mountain than burg. The trees
and grasses were wild and haphazard, and the curbs cut
into the sides of the roadway fooled no one--this was one
part of Boulder where the Rockies still reigned.
"This? My house? No. God, no."
"You live on this street, sir?"
"Here? No, I live a couple blocks over on Pleasant. I was
out walking Misty. This is Misty." He reached down and
tousled his dog's ears. The yellow Lab dipped her head and
wagged her tail. Bruce Collamore and his dog both seemed
eager to please.
"So . . . you were out walking your dog and you heard
a . . ." While she waited for him to fill in the blank,
she briefly lost her focus as she entertained an unbidden
association to a crush she'd had on a junior high school
teacher she had thought was cute.
Collamore brought her back to the moment as though he were
someone who was accustomed to being in conversations where
the other party's attention was wandering. He said, "A
scream, I heard a scream. A loud one. Long, too. I mean, I
haven't heard that many screams in my life but it, you
know, seemed longer than . . . well, a normal scream. If
there is such a thing? Jeez, 'a normal scream.' Did I
really say that? What's wrong with me? Anyway, I think it
came from that house. I'm pretty sure it did. That one.
There." Collamore pointed at the gray-and-white two-story
house directly across from where they stood on the edge of
the road. "I had my cell phone with me so I thought I'd go
ahead and call 911. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do.
I don't know. I'm a little nervous. You can probably tell
I'm nervous."
She could tell. And she wasn't sure that he was nervous
only because she was a cop. That suspicion made her a
little nervous, too.
His left hand was balled around the dog's leash, so she
couldn't see if Collamore was married. When she looked
back up at him she squinted, just in case he was thinking
what she was worried he was thinking. "What time was that,
sir? That you heard the scream?"
"Nine fifty-one."
She wrote down the nine before she looked up from her
notepad and lifted an eyebrow. The expression of
incredulity interfered with her squint.
"I checked my watch when I heard the scream. You know, the
O.J. thing? I thought somebody might want to know what
time it happened. It really was that kind of scream--a
somebody's-killing-me scream. So I checked my watch when I
heard it." He exhaled loudly and ran his fingers through
his hair. "God, this is embarrassing. I shouldn't have
called, should I?"
She tried to make a neutral face, but wasn't sure she'd
succeeded. She said, "No need to be embarrassed. We
appreciate help from citizens. Can't do our jobs without
it." But she was thinking that in most cities civilians
ran and hid after they called 911. In Boulder they stick
around on the sidewalk with their cell phones and their
yellow Labradors named Misty. And maybe they keep
contemporaneous records of their movements on their Palm
Pilots. For all she knew this whole situation was already
being tracked live on the Net.
Boulder.
Now she looked at the house he'd identified. The dwelling
was an oasis of orderliness at the end of the block, the
only home that looked like it could be plopped down
comfortably in one of Boulder's more sedate neighborhoods.
The owners of the surrounding houses--all of which were
shabby in the way old cashmere is shabby--were either
celebrating their good fortune at having modest homes in
such a spectacular location or they were waiting for land
values to escalate even more obscenely before they sold
their fixer-upper to somebody who'd scrape the lot clear
and start all over. She said, "You know who lives in this
house, Bruce? May I call you Bruce?"
"Sure. Here? No, I don't. Like I said, I was just walking
Misty. We come this way almost every night about this
time. Since we walk late, most of the time we don't see
anyone. Certainly don't hear many screams. Actually, we
don't hear any screams. Before tonight, anyway. We heard
one tonight, didn't we, girl?" He lowered his tone at
least an octave as he addressed the dog.
VanHorn watched Misty's tail sweep the ground. She
said, "And that was at nine fifty-one?"
"Yes, nine fifty-one."
"Well, we'll check that out. You don't mind staying here
for a few minutes in case we have some more questions? My
partner and I are going to speak to whoever is inside the
house."
"No, no. We don't mind at all. Misty and I are happy to
stick around."
The other cop, Kerry VanHorn's partner, was Colin Carpino.
He had two years on the job. He was built like a bulldog
but his creamy skin was almost hairless. VanHorn sometimes
teased him that she had female relatives who shaved their
upper lips more often than he did. She called him Whiskers.
As they moved up the brick walk in single file, she
asked, "What do you think, Whiskers?"
"I buy lunch for a week if this is anything other than a
waste of time." He shifted his long Mag-Lite from his
right hand to his left.
She laughed. "It's your turn to buy. You're getting lunch
tonight whether this is the Great Train Robbery or the
lady of the house freaking out over a spider."
Carpino hit the doorbell button by the front door. They
listened as it chimed like a carillon in a cathedral, and
they waited.
He knocked. They waited some more.
He hit the bell again. This time he said, "Boulder
Police," right after he heard the bells begin to peal
inside the house. His tenor carried in the still air. The
whole neighborhood of shuttered windows and closed doors
had to know now that the cops were here. VanHorn waited
for lights to come on, doors to open. It didn't happen.
Collamore saw her looking his way and waved at her. She
didn't wave back.
Whiskers reached down and tried the latch on the door. It
didn't give.
VanHorn responded by touching her holster with her
fingertips. The act was a caress, almost sensual in its
carelessness--and it was involuntary, like a man checking
for the presence of his wallet half a minute after he
leaves the automatic teller machine.
The two cops waited for someone to come to the door and
tell them everything was just fine.
After most of a minute had leaked into the void between
them, VanHorn said, "I'll check the back of the house."
She wasn't nervous yet, but she had definitely crossed
over the line that separated routine from everything else
that existed on a police officer's planet. The feeling was
familiar, and not entirely unwelcome. The wariness
sharpened her senses. She'd been around long enough to
know that wasn't a bad thing.
"I'll take a look at the windows up front here and over on
the other side," Carpino said.
The north side of the house was unlit, making it difficult
for VanHorn to navigate the uneven path of flagstones.
Spreading junipers clotted the open spaces between the
window wells. An avid gardener, she hated junipers,
especially spreading junipers. She alternated the
flashlight beam between the path in front of her and the
windows on the side of the house and noticed nothing that
alarmed her. She fingered the switch of the radio
microphone that was clipped to the left shoulder of her
uniform blouse and said, "Nothing unusual on the side of
the house. Just some unimaginative landscaping. But even
in Boulder I don't think that's a crime."
Carpino replied, "Yet. Hold on, I may have something up
here, Kerry." His voice betrayed no alarm. She waited for
him to continue. He didn't.
She stepped lightly into the backyard. A streetlight
brightened the rear of the house. She reached up and
touched the button on her microphone. "What do you have,
Whiskers? Open window?"
"No, I'm on the opposite side of the house from you,
shining my beam inside into what looks like the living
room. I make a lamp lying on the floor and some broken
glass. That's all."
After again caressing the flap on her holster with the
fingertips of her right hand, Officer VanHorn spent a
moment examining the backyard with the beam of her
flashlight. Only when she was certain she was alone in the
yard did she take determined strides across a pleasant
brick patio, past an almost new gas grill, and up two
steps to the door that led to the house. She grabbed the
knob of the metal security door and twisted it. The door
opened right up. She locked her gaze on the painted French
door behind the security panel and fingered her
microphone. "Back door's open. Not just unlocked, but open-
open. Why don't you call for backup?"
She waited for his response long enough to inhale and
exhale twice. Finally, she said, "Colin?"
He said, "Sorry. I may be looking at a person's foot,
Kerry, just someone's heel. Like there's somebody lying on
the floor. But I can't see past the heel. If it's a foot,
then the rest of the body's behind a sofa."
VanHorn sighed. "We'd better go in. Tell dispatch."
"Will do. I'll call for backup and join you back there."
Kerry VanHorn flicked up the flap on her holster and drew
her service weapon with her right hand. Her Mag-Lite was
in her left. Before she took another step she squeezed her
biceps against her upper torso to convince herself that
she'd remembered to wear her vest. She had.
Within seconds, Whiskers joined her at the back door. He,
too, had his service weapon ready. He said, "The living
room's in the southwest corner. That's where I saw the
foot." She nodded and said a silent prayer before she
nudged the French door with the toe of her shoe. She
winced as the door squeaked open.
She yelled, "Boulder Police," as she entered a big kitchen
and family room. Shadowed light from the alley street lamp
revealed an expensive recent remodel. Cherry cabinets.
Granite countertops. Big double stainless steel sink.
Appliances that disappeared into the cabinetry. One
appliance she didn't even recognize. She didn't like that
kitchens had developed in such a way that people used
appliances she couldn't even recognize.
But nothing was out of place. She could hear Whiskers's
footsteps on the hardwood floor behind her. The resonant
clap was reassuring. There was almost nothing she liked
doing less as a cop than walking into dark houses.
The door from the kitchen led to a short hallway. Again
she called out, "Boulder Police," and waited for a reply.
Nothing. Carpino repeated the announcement. After she
waited for a response that never came, she stepped past a
powder room and saw a dining room on her right. She played
the beam into the room for two or three seconds. It didn't
appear that anyone had eaten in there recently; the table
was covered with piles of mail. She gestured with her
flashlight to reassure her partner before she turned
toward the living room. At the bottom of a staircase she
flicked the beam up the stairs. She spotted nothing that
alarmed her but noticed an odd device on rails attached to
the side of the staircase. She also noted a rhythmic shush-
shush, shush-shush, shush-shush coming down from the
second floor. The sound was familiar to her but she
couldn't place it. Shush-shush, shush-shush, shush-shush.
The rhythm wasn't out of place in a house. She was sure of
that. But what was it that she was hearing?
Darn. She couldn't place the noise.
She took two steps into the living room and swept her
flashlight beam in a wide, slow arc, looking for the foot
that Whiskers had seen, praying that he was wrong or,
failing that, that there was at least still a person
attached to it.
The first thing that caught her attention was the lamp on
the floor--she assumed it was the same one that Whiskers
had spotted through the window. Then she saw the broken
glass, a lot of it. The glass appeared to be some kind of
pottery or ceramic; it must have been a big piece before
it was busted.
No foot.
Lights flashed outside on the street. VanHorn looked up
and was relieved to see a patrol car slide to the curb in
front of the house. Her partner whispered, "Backup's
here." She adjusted the grip on her weapon and, for her
own benefit, silently mouthed, "I'm doing fine. I'm doing
fine."
Copyright 2002 by Stephen White