He nodded and tried to hide a quick glance at his watch.
“I just have a few quick questions. You were inside there when you heard it? The shot?”
I spoke quickly, not giving him the chance to stop me.
“Yes,” he said. He looked like he was trying to decide something and then he did. He continued. “I was locking up just like tonight, ’bout to go home. I heard it. It was one of those things, I kinda knew what it was. I don’t know why. Really what I thought was that it might be poachers after the deer. I came out pretty quick and the first place I looked was the lot. I saw his car. Could see him in there. All the windows were fogged up pretty good but I could see him. He was behind the wheel. Something about the way he was leaning back, I knew what happened. . . Sorry it was your brother.”
I nodded and studied the ranger’s shack. Just a small office and storage room. I realized that five seconds was probably a long estimate from the time Pena heard the shot until he saw the lot.
“There was no pain,” Pena said.
“What?”
“If it’s something you want to know. There was no physical pain, I don’t think. I ran to the car. He was dead. It was instant.”
“The police reports said you couldn’t get to him. The doors were locked.”
“Yeah, I tried the door. But I could tell he was gone. I came back up here to make the calls.”
“How long do you think he was parked there before he did it?”
“I don’t know. Like I told the police, I don’t have a view of the lot. I’d been in the shed—I got a heater in there—oh, I’d say at least a half hour before I heard the shot. He could have been parked there the whole time. Thinking about it, I guess.”
I nodded.
“You didn’t see him out on the lake, did you? You know, before the shot.”
“On the lake? No. Nobody was on the lake.”
I stood there trying to think of something else.
“Did they come up with any reason why?” Pena asked. “Like I said, I know he was an officer.”
I shook my head no. I didn’t want to get into it with this stranger. I thanked him and started back to the lot while he locked the shack door. The Tempo was the only car in the plowed lot. I thought of something and turned back.
“How often do they plow?”
Pena stepped away from the door.
“After every snow.”
I nodded and thought of something else.
“Where do you park?”
“We’ve got an equipment yard a half mile down the road. I park there and walk up the trail in the morning, down at quitting time.”
“You want a ride?”
“Nah. Thanks, though. The trail will get me there quicker.”
The whole way back to Boulder I thought of the last time I had been to Bear Lake. It was also winter then. But the lake wasn’t frozen, not all the way. And when I left that time, I felt just as cold and alone. And guilty.
Riley looked as if she had aged ten years since I had seen her at the funeral. Even so, I was immediately struck when she opened the door by what I hadn’t realized before. Theresa Lofton looked like a nineteen-year-old Riley McEvoy. I wondered if Scalari or anybody else had asked the shrinks about that.
She asked me in. She knew she looked bad. After she opened the door she casually raised her hand to the side of her face to hide it. She tried a feeble smile. We went into the kitchen and she asked if I wanted her to make coffee but I said I wasn’t staying long. I sat down at the kitchen table. It seemed that whenever I visited we would gather around the kitchen table. Even with Sean gone that hadn’t changed.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m going to write about Sean.”
She was silent for a long time and she didn’t look at me. She got up and started emptying the dishwasher. I waited.
“Do you have to?” she finally asked.
“Yes. . . I think so.”
She said nothing.
“I’m going to call the psychologist, Dorschner. I don’t know if he’ll talk to me, but now that Sean’s gone I don’t see why not. But, uh, he might call you for permission. . .”
“Don’t worry, Jack, I won’t try to stop you.”
I nodded my thanks but I noted the edge to her words.
“I was with the cops today and I went up to the lake.”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Jack. If you have to write about it that’s your choice. Do what you have to do. But my choice is that I don’t want to hear about it. And if you do write about Sean, I won’t read that, either. I have to do what I have to do.”
I nodded and said, “I understand. There is one thing I need to ask, though. Then I’ll leave you out of it.”
“What do you mean, leave me out of it?” she asked angrily. “I wish I could be left out of it. But I’m in it. For the rest of my life I’m in it. You want to write about it? You think that’s a way to get rid of it? What do I do, Jack?”
I looked down at the floor. I wanted to go but didn’t know how to exit. Her pain and anger radiated toward me like heat from a closed oven.
“You want to know about that girl,” she said in a low, calmer voice. “That’s what all the detectives asked about.”
“Yes. Why did this one. . . ?”
I didn’t know how to phrase the question.
“Why did it make him forget about everything good in his life? The answer is I don’t know. I don’t goddamn know.”
I could see anger and tears welling in her eyes again. It was as if her husband had deserted her for another woman.
And here I was, as close a flesh and blood approximation of Sean as she would ever see now. No wonder she was venting her anger and pain at me.
“Did he talk about the case at home?” I asked.
“Not especially. He told me about cases from time to time. This one didn’t seem that different except for what happened to her. He told me what the killer did to her. He told me how he had to look at her. After, I mean. I know it bothered him but a lot of things bothered him. A lot of cases. He didn’t want anybody to get away. He always said that.”
“But this time he went to see that doctor.”
“He’d had dreams and I told him he should go. I made him go.”
“What were the dreams?”
“That he was there. You know, when it happened to her. He dreamed he saw it but couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
Her comment made me think of another death a long time ago. Sarah. Falling through the ice. I remembered the helpless feeling of watching and being unable to do anything. I looked at Riley.
“You know why Sean went up there?”
“No.”
“Was it because of Sarah?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“That was before we knew you. But that was where she died. An accident. . .”
“I know, Jack. But I don’t know what it had to do with anything. Not now.”
I didn’t, either. It was one of many confusing thoughts but I couldn’t let it go.
Before heading back to Denver I drove over to the cemetery. I don’t know what I was doing. It was dark and there had been two snows since the funeral. It took me fifteen minutes just to find the spot where Sean was in the ground. There was no stone yet. I found it by finding the one next to it. My sister’s.