Headlights(22)

“Ramona Lopez,” Tillman says.

“Have we gotten anything from her family or friends?”

“Her mom, Angela, she can come in tomorrow. Then with the chat rooms … This Wizdumteller definitely seems to have a lot of support. We’ve been lookin’ into it, but we can’t find ’em, and that seems significant to me. But for today, I think we should go to the cabin,” Tillman says, snapping the file closed. Then he looks around and furrows his brow. “I mean, uh, of course, if that’s what you think.”

I exhale a long breath, wish for a fucking lobotomy. Jack stands behind me, puts a hand on my shoulder, and says, “Let me know if you find anything.”

I say to Tillman, “Be downstairs in five.”

I walk to Frazier’s desk before Tillman can respond.

“Hey,” I say when I get within a few feet of her. She has bright red hair and a birthmark on the side of her face I didn’t notice before. She’s knocking back a coffee and reading something on her computer. “Great work this morning. Thanks for getting that together.”

She looks up, surprised, and smiles. “Thanks,” she says, a bit of an accent I can’t place.

“You up for a hike by any chance?” I ask. Be my buffer with Tillman, please.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Going up to her cabin?”

I nod. She pushes back her chair and bends to lift up her pant leg. There’s a prosthesis there. She’s young, under thirty. She smiles apologetically. “I’m fine in the field, but once it comes to the mountains, long climbs”—she shrugs—“I’ll be more useful to you down here.”

“Military?”

“Cop. Boston.”

Ah, there’s the accent. “When did you get here?” I ask instead.

“Finished up training a few months ago, got assigned here first thing.”

“Well,” I say, “good work so far. Where’re they holding Everett Brown?”

“County, for the moment.”

“Tillman already interviewed him? When I was out?”

She nods slowly.

“Call ’em and tell them I’m coming this evening, just me. Ask for Ray.”

“You got it.”

I write down my cell and hand it to her. “Text me with whatever you have, doesn’t matter time of day, night, the second you get something I want to hear about it. This case is … I’m glad to have a good team on it. We need it.”

She nods. Then I exhale, brace myself for the hike.

She clears her throat. I realize it’s been a moment, and I still haven’t moved. She says, “Uh, whatever it’s worth, sir, and off the record, of course. But … he’s really shit at Ping-Pong.”

“What?”

“Special Agent Tillman. We play sometimes, all of us. They put a table downstairs to, like, boost morale or something. He’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”





2



The Indian Creek trailhead route is closed indefinitely for maintenance, so we have to access it from the South Platte River Trailhead for the Colorado Trail off County Road 97. Which means a longer hike.

Boots crunching on gravel. I haven’t been out in nature in a long time, or at Colorado altitude. Salt Lake isn’t far behind, but it’s different here. I forgot how much I love it, the burn of the thin air in my lungs. Muscles flexing and stretching as we climb.

Tillman stomps behind me. “Can you imagine livin’ out here? How’d ya get your groceries?” He hasn’t brought up the whole me-sleeping-in-his-bed thing, but I can feel how badly he wants to, the conversation practically a third party with us on our hiking date. “What a frickin’ glorious life,” he says, up to the sky.

I keep walking. We still have four miles to go. I try to watch the trail, the trees, for signs, clues. Try to listen in. But there’s nothing. Just birds and woods and mountains and views. Just nature. It’s beautiful.

After a while, Tillman’s throat clears.

“So, uh, about…” he says.

I close my eyes. There it is.

“You know it’s no big thing, you crashin’ at our place. You’re welcome to stay longer too, long as you want really. Though Josie did say you’ve got some big place out in Cherry Hills. I know someone who was at your parents’ wake, said it was a great place, real big—”

“Hey,” I say, turned back to him. “Could we just … walk in silence?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I pick up my pace.

“All I’m sayin’ is if you don’t wanna stay in your big ol’ fancy mansion that was left to you in the nicest part of town, you’re welcome to crash at our place. Just maybe next time you take the guest room. Main bedroom was the easiest to drag you to, but the guest bed gives me a real crick in my—”



* * *



It’s only eight miles from the trailhead, but it feels so remote up here. Green grass on either side of a well-maintained thin dirt trail. Pines, flowers. We pass a moose at one point. Start to gain elevation, the trail taking an upward turn.

Hannah Lawrence.

Solitary life, at least mostly, I’d imagine. To Tillman’s point, I want to look into how she gets supplies up here, how often she goes down and where she goes when she does. Obviously the location of the crime was significant, significant to me, anyway. Which is what I think it was meant to be. But what about Hannah? Why this girl? Why bring a third person into this at all?