272 deadtime

. nice , the bitch whispered .
stevie was in determined mea - culpa mode . "i want you to know . i'm sorry . okay ?"
"thank you , i appreciate it . that was a stressful night for both of us ." i rewinded and went back to the start ." what's going on ?"
styevie said ," i may have heard  that fronm lisa ."
holy effing- i inhaled so that i could scream in relief that lisa was alive . and if she was alive , that my baby was alive too . but i stifled the scream as i spotted the caution clouding stevie's words  . she'd said "may"
i had questions for her . where ? when ? with whom ? why ? why did she run away ? i locked them up . i blurted ," she 's okay ? the baby is -"
"i got amn email . it must be her . i don't know who else could have sent it ."
"go on ," i said without inflection . i wanted to hear what else . i dreaded hearing what else .
"it was just an - email . that's all . the e-mail says that eric might have killed that girl;.i'm guessing that's why lisa ran , why she can't let him have the baby ."
"the baby ." my baby . my baby must be okay .
i mouthed thank you to the sky , if eric's god heard me , o be it .
i said ," the email is from lisa ?"
"that's what's confusing . i don't recognizthe address . it's not lisa's e-mail address."
can't ....have the baby ? what ? wait . eric might have killed that girl?
what ?
i paused to allow stevie to say more .maybe two seconds , that's all . alan would have allowed the silence to last much longer ,i couldn't do it ." that's it i asked . the impatience in my voicewas by then , undisguised .my alan esques calm had deserted me . icould wear the halo for a while . but not indefinitely . i waited for the bitch to chime in . even wanted her to . she had nothing .

271 deadtime

   forty six
his exi thought eric was calling whereever  he was . poartland > sacramento ? he wpuld that i might still be up that late
.eric and i ke[pt two club chairs in front of the only window in our apartment that had a partrial view of the opark . my butts was on one of the chairs . my feet were on the windowsill .
my mobile came alive .thought eric was calling whereever  he was . poartland > sacramento ? he wpuld that i might still be up that late . no one else would guess . okay . maybe some of my girlfriends would know what i was going through .
it wasn't eric , or my girlfriends . it was stevie .
"i'm sorry ," she said ." are you up ? this is stevie ." she didn't wait for me to reply ." i haven't been ....kind....to you aboutt all this . and i'm so sorry ."
i tried to imagine what alan would say tright the . for many years i had used him as an internalithe bitch was of no help  ; she was no better at compassion than i was . and she wasn't her sharpest in the wee hours anyway .zed model for how to act with compassion , especially at those moments when i wasn't feeling  much compassion . i ended up channeling that side of him more frequntly than i would like to admit .; she was no better at compassion than i was . and she wasn't her sharpest in the wee hours anyway .
i lifted the alan halo into place . i used a softt voice with stevie .
a nonconfronttaational voice , yes , an alan voice ." what's going on . stevie ?"

270 deadtime

. i waited for noises that indicated that sam had figured out merideth's shower before i phoned europe . i got lauren's voice mail . i told her i loved her and i that i would try again later .
i sprad out some of the linens from eatrlier in the eveing and sacked out on merodeth;s sofa .i expected to find sleep elusive . just after midnight my ex-wife  proved me wrong .
when my cell rang i was sound asleep .

268 deadtime

. my philosophy is this ," he said . he finished his beer with a flourish , standing the bottle straight up above his tongue to catch the final drops . for a moment, i thought i was going to have to guess how finishing a beer amounted to a philosophy . my brain , i knew , wasn't up to the task . sam bailed me out with a more easily disgest ible explanation ." you solve the big puzzle , the little ones tend to fall into place . nicely ."
"ypu're still working on the big puzzle ?"
"i am ." he pointed the beer label my way ." my first japanese beer ever  . i like it ."
"you don't it eat sushi ."
"so ?"
"is that's when most americans drink japanese beer . at sushi bars ."
"is that  a dig ?"
"just saying ," i said ." i could take you to one ."
"no, thanks . i think i'll just pick up a six pack of these " -he displayed the empty -" at liquor mart ."
"it's from canada ," i said ." it's not really from japan."
he sighed a you can't trust anyone sigh ." one other bit of news from ranger ramona - jaana's girlfriend from estonia . the one that nick said was going to go with her when she had that abortion ?"
"yeah?" sam was finally about to tell me what hre'd been tantalizing me with earlier .
"her info is in the original file - she was jaana's emergency contact for work . after i asked about her her , ramona ran her . the girl went missing six , seven months after jaana did . circumstances were kind of like lisa . clothes gone . suitcases gone . her friends were clueless , her boss had no idea ."
he had my attention ," she didn't go back to estonia ?"
"state department said no . passport wasn't used , at least not in the old US  of A . lease on her place was almost up when she left .local cops decided she left on her own ."
" wgere was she living ?"

267 deadtime

he wanted me to be patient . i wasn't feeling patient  " what are yoou thinking , sam ?"
"i'm thinking that if i were a real copp "- he turned his head and smiled an ironic amile =" and if this were my case , i'd wanted to take a peek at lincoln oden 's financees back then . see if he had a rich aunt die or somethging . won the lottery . came into some cash ."
" you think he was paid off ?"
"nick paulson 's family has money ," he said ." a lot . oden quit the park service a few months after all this came down . that surprised everyone , ramona says . none of his colleah=gues saw his resignation coming . guy ran the investigation . have to think it's possible oden fingured out what happenned down there with jaan . let's say he had something , confronted nick with it . maybe they cut some kind of deal . crazier things have happened ."
"oden intervi=ew nick back up at the rim ? yopu're sure ?" i said .
" iread his rep[ort . remember , he left out the parts aboput jaan being pregnant . oops ."
i said ." and that's the part that might have given nixck paulson a motivre ."
"yueah ."
i thought about sam's theiry . " if you're right about thhis , sam , and if they were smaert about how they did it , it could be very hard to trace . we're talking vehas , oden could havre been paid in chips  , cash ...."
"druggs ," sam addeded ." some of those around too ."
"ranger ramona share your suspicion about  oden being involved ?"
" hard to tell . she's had her monewy on nick for a long time .if oden cut a deal with him , it'll turn out she was right . indirectly ."i took a deep breath . i was tried . i was thinking i wanted to call lauren . i asked ," see any way this is going tp help merideth find lisa ? or wallace feel any better about how his daughter is doing ?"

266 deadtime

 the way he reluctant;y admitted to me one night on the roof of the west end that the president had mishandleed certain aspects of the iraq war . " could be oden knows what really happened to jaana down there and has reason to want itr to stay secret . or could be that oden knows she made it back out of the canyon ,  and he has reason to want that fact to stay secret ," he took a long slug of beer ." just about covers all the possibilities i'm m considering . got anything to add ?"
" why would he go back down ?" i asked ." does ramona have a theory ?"
"ranger ramona doesn't like nick paulson . she recognizes the timing of oden 's rim to rim as peculiar . but she says rangers explore the canyon all the time on their the time on their days off  gambling , wh . once they can't get enough of the place , did say that the faxct that he went down that section of canyon , and he did it from the south rim , was surprising , guy worked on the north rim . that section of the canyon is heavyly trafficked by  visitors and tends not to be terribly interesting to rangers , usually they go to more remote parts of the canyon ."
he was being tantalizing , i'd seen him dio it before ." you got more , sam . i can tell ."
he made a face ." i i had to press her , but ranger ramona admitted she always thiought oden was kind of creepy , she's heard stories about his trips to vegas .ganbling , whoring ." he shrugged ." and he used to hit on park visitors . there had been some complaints . she thought he had recressive stalker gene ."
"her words ?"
"my words ."
i asked , " men or woman ?"
" good question . i didn't think to ask ," sam said . " i assumed women . romana wouldn't said something if it it was men ."
i had a feeling sam's theorizing was mioore advanced than he was leetting on .

deadtime

. " ilooked at sam ." yeah ? cover his tracks for what ?""
"if he was involved ."" good guess , but no . this linciln oden guy . the ranger who coordinated the search . he went
"if he hurt her while they were down there ? that's your theory ?"
"hurt her . killed her . but nick's name wasn't on ramona 's list . doesn't mean he didn't go back down . just means he was smart enough to send somebody else or to used a pseudonym if he did it himself . but yopu know who did go down on one of the south rim trails six days before laana's boots were found under that brush ? a one-night trip , rim-to rim ?"
"eric ?" i guessed . por merideth . despite the rotten first impression eric had made earlier in the eveving , i didn't want it to be true .but no . this linciln oden guy . the ranger who coordinated the search . he went ."
i didn't se the significane ." so ? yoy think he was he was following a lead ?"
"maybe he had a hnch , but it was his day off . ramona checked .if he had a lead , he could've grabbed a seat a seat in a chopper , saved himself a long , hot walk ."
sam's " maybe " sound suspicious , but i didn't see the relevance of oden 's presence on the canyon floor ." oden wasn't down there the night jaana went missining , was he ? you don't thjink he-"
" no , he wasn't . he was up tp something . he could have used a fake name ."
"too many people knew him . don't know what i think . just talking it uout .it's one of those things that doesn't lined up right . been thinkingabout it since i got back on the road withg my belly full of grease . could be a coincidence , of corse .that happpened ... sometimes ."sam said :" that happens  " grudgingly ,

264 deadtime

sam wasn't done with his designb critique ," place is kind of modern for my taste . but that's better than girly . nice TV  , big flat screen covers a lot of sins . bet they don't teach that in decorator school . maybe they should . is that plasma or  LCD  ? you know ? in case you hadn't noticed , there's only one bed here ."
i sipped the beer , wondering when sam's cafferien overdose would wear off ," the bed's yours , sam ."
"i wouldn't want to sleep in sherry's bed either ." he shivered . i couldn't tell whether the shiver was real or a dramatization . sherry was sam's ex. either way, it was clear he understood the whole ex-wife pheromone thing .
he said ," that was ranger ramona who called me  earlier , just  before i stopped for the patty melt ."
"yeah ? just staying in touch ? women love you , sam . that cop ay the duplex ? she was all over you .i admit i don't get it . just for record ."
he drove over my opinioon as though it were an incosequential speed bump . he said ," i'd asked ramona to check a few things for me . the park service keeps a log of who goes down what trail in the grand canyon when . so the rangers know if someone's overdue . missi g . whatever . what suppliers they have with em , like that ."
i wasn't surprised by what sam was saying , the forest service used the same voluntary procedure to track hikers in colorado 's mountain parks and natinal forests , but sam didn't have my full attention parks and national forests . but sam didn't have my full attention . i remained preoccupied with what had happened in mt , washington . i was increasingly worried that i hadn't heard back from amy and mel . i'd called them again while on he way back to the condo .
sam didn't notice my distraction ." specifically , i'd asked ramona to check the logs for thedays before jaana's hiking boots were found and for a while before tjhat sneaker showed up downriver .i had  theory that the nick guy from vegas , jaana 's companion , mighthavegone back down to cover hidtracks somehow when he realized the shoes were a probvlem."

263 deadtime

.     forty five
sam asked me how to get to merideth 's condo . i explained about the peculiar gift of chloe the watercolorist - my GPS  avatar . he was amused . he agrreed to follow chloe and me back to west hollywood .
chloe knew the way , of corse . hector was gone for the night . his replacement at the first  floor desk a guy in his fifties who 'd recently lost of weight . the man 's clothes didn't fit . his skin barely fit . unlike hector , he was looking for neither drama nor trouble . i told him i was the guest who was staying inm erideth's unit .
he said ," fred . nice to meet ya ." the man galnced at sam , but didn't give him an apparent second thought .
the on-duty sign on the carrea marble counter read FREDRIC . fred was a fredric like i was a doctor . the tag was all part of LA 's alternate reality .
what was surprising to me was how okay i was with it .
sam was impressed with his boss's condo .
 he did quick self guided tour , returned to the kitchen , grabbed two ashis from the fridge , and jioined me out on the balcony . more  fog had infiltrated the almosphereic mix . i could still smell refinery fart .
"never seen a shower like that ," sam said , handing me a beer ." looks like a car wash . i might need directions from you on how to "keep turning knobs . you won't want to get out ," i said .

262 deadtime

cell TV WOULD BE ANADVANCED LESSON . FOR ME , MOBILE TELEPHONE graduate school . i returned the phone to my pocket .
i was thinking how much i liked sam ourdy , i couldn't think of anyone i would rather be loitering with at that hour on that street conner in los engeles. when i looked up , i caught his eye . he took a step my way .
 i said ," you 're3 a good friend , sam . thankyou ."
he looked at me as though i were something he'd just steooed in that he wished he hadn't just stepped in . he said , : we're only visiting socal , aln . don't go all lefyt coast on me . deal ?"
i could tell that he was all left coast on me . deal ?"
i could tell  hat he was trying to kep from smiling while he said it .

261 deadtime

. after a brief exchange , they both ended up laughing . he came back over to me ." kanyn's probably at county ." he laughed back the patrolwoman .
she smiled at him in a way that made me grin , partly in disbelief . partly in admiration . she was indeede flirting with him .
sam was the most unlikely for sex machines . they've all been cops , ui thought . even ramona .
"well , i can't find the girls , " i said ."they haven't called back ."
you said that ./"
sam's rejionder took me back to sitting on the front steps of the duplex with amy - script supervisor amy - earlier that day as i watched her dissect the bird - of paradise blossom she's deadheaded i said ," i've ben repeating myself a lot lately ."
"you're getting old . what's next ?"
"i was hoping you would tell me ."
before sam had a chance to scoff at whatever i suggested . my phone buzzed . sam took the opportunity to saunter back over to the patrol cop . i looked at the screen , where i saw an unfamiliar icon . guessed it mean i had a new text message . or maybe an attachment to something . if i did nothing , i fingured whatever it was would find a good temporary home - digital foster care - alongside the map to A.O.C  that amy had sent me before dinner .
i didn't know how to open attachments . the instruction for the ohone were in boulder . jonas , my teacher , was sleep - i hoped - in white plains .
texts and attactments would have to waite until our next char .
i longed for my old phone . the one i knew how to use . the one that the taxi had obliterated . during our electronics shopping trip intimes square , janas had explained to me that he'sd picked out for me . he thought that was a pretty cool feature . at the time , i'd beren dubious about the usefuless of watching television on my phone . standing behind the police line in mt. washington , i must admit i gad begun wondering if i might be a good time for an eposide of CSI .

260 deadtime

the panlty for crossing the line ? i didn't want to know .
"i've been looking for the girls ," i said ." can't find them . are they inside with the police . ?"
sam shrugged . he repeated my question to the patrolwoman standing on the othere side of hbim . she shook her head , raised , raised herself on her toes , and whispered a couple of words toward his ear . damn , i thought , she 's flirting with him .
"don't know ," sam said to me .
i said ," what's going on inside the house ? you learn anything ?"
he put a hand on my back and led me a few steps away from the patrol officer ." that friend of carmel 's ? she had an LAPD  detective call me with a status report on this . RP - older lady next door on the left - saw an intruder at the back door . that's how it started - she thought she saw a man go in a window in the back . the first explosion was from a gas wall heater near the front of the house . could have been deliberate - somebody may have screwed around with it . the second explosion was a flash bang from SWAT  . the uniforms who responded to the initial call thought they might have a hstage situation and went in after the first explosion ." he shrugged ." they're no longer sure about the introducer theory , but they're thinking a woman inside maty have tried to kill herself . she was taken away by ambulance . she's okay . some minor burns , that's it ."
"that might be kanyn , sam . the grand canyon alummus . she has a history of dysthymia ."
he glares at me ." that's like a secret shrink code word for depression ? how do you know that ? "
"her roommates ." if the word "dysthymia " othered him. i wasn't about to tell him about the trichotillomania .
his jaw tensed ." something's up ," he said ." that's what i think ."
i gestured toward the cop ." would your new friend know where they took kanyn ?"
he walked over and said something to the officer in voice enough that i couldn't hear him.

259 deadtime

the street and number in mt. washington remained on the screen of the GPS  . thank you , chloe . i read them to him .
"i'll meet you there ," he said ," wait , what are you driving ?""i got upgraded to a camry . it's a hybrid ."
"shit . figures . what color ?"
sam arrived in mt.washington before i did . i spotted him almost immediately - he was the only person on the scene wearing a colorado avalanche sweater . the old school kind .sam didn't tile toward svelte . the sleeves were pushed up to his biceps . his forehead - as prominent as the grill on an old buick - was mottled with sweat . he was overdressed for a summer evening in LA .
sam was behind the tped off perimeter almost a block away from the duplex . he was chatting with a woman cop . his hands were in his pockets .the fleet of SWAT  vehicles that i'd seen on the news less than a half an hour earlier had departed .i couldn't hear any helicopters overhead. only one ambulance3 remauned nearby . the paramediscs were killing time . iniformed cops were  doing sentry duty ,
feet apart , arms crossed over their chests . the firefighters were  more industrious . they had hose to retrieve . equipment to pack up .
i tried to spot mel and amy . they weren't in the crowed that had gathered at my end of the street . bfore i approached sam , i hiked the long cblock that ran paralled to the one the duplex was on so that i could search for the girls behind the perimeter tape at the other end of the street . they weren't part of that group either .
i called mel's cell phone , no answer . i left a message .
i called amy 's cell phone . no answer . i left another message .
i retraced my steps to the other end of the block . i tapped sam onthe shoulder .
"took you long enough to get here ," he said . he barely glanced my way .
i had an urge to give him a hug , something i wasn't sure i'dever done with him as a greeting . sam's reluctance inhibited mycontanerity .

258 deadtime

i reconsidered , and added ," maybe not for LA  , but it would be a big deal in boulder ."
the girlfriend sam had broken up with in the wake of the disclosure of his sexual affair with the young boulder cop was a detective with the lanuana beach police . langua was in orangecounty , not LA  county . i didn't think sam and carmen were on speaking terms anyway . i held out hope that sam had met someone through carmen who might be able to shed some light on all that was going on , but i wasn't counting my chickens .
"maybe ," he said . the intimate timbre i'd been enjoying during our last few phopne calls had evaporated ," carmen has a friend wgo's LAPD  . another riders fan . i can try her . you've thought this through , aln ? you think it's wide ? for those girls to go home ? given what might be going on ?"
i hadn't considered that it might not be wise . my instict would have been the same as theirs was when they saw the televised live shots of the explosions at their house : get home as fast i possibly coul;d to check on my roommate .
i said ," there are a lot of cops there , sam . your colleagues will keep the girls at safe distance from trouble . i'm sure they'll be fine ." i didn't bother to tell himm that i didn't think the girls really  cared what i thought was wise .
" trhat conclusion ," he said evenly ," is based on an assumption that my colleagues recognize that they may need ..... some attention . and that the girls aren't mixed up in .....whatever this is ."
"you mean jaaan ?" i said .
"i mean jaanb going missing when all of these people were  together .the girls were there. that's means and it's opportunity .and now there's jack . where the hell's jack ?"
"you're right . i have been assuming that the girl had nothing to do with any of that . for right now , they 're worried about kanyn their roommate ."
"kanyn -k-a-n-yn was on the damn trip too ." samsaid wasn't a question . he had read the file ." what 's their address ?"

257 deadtime

sometimes the locals triop me up and used the name of the freeway instead . the san diego . the pasada . i haven't figured out why they do that . any hoo , i am on the 10 somewhere in the vast suburban wasteland between opomona and LA . i can already see glow of the big city on the horizon ."
sam blew through his entire speech without an audible inhale . i was pretty sure he had topped off his personal  tank with a few cups of nasty truck stop coffe to wash down his sublime truck stop patty melt .
before i had a chance to tell him why i was calling , he started up again ." you make a decision whether i'm going to be allowed to bunk with you in merideth palace ? i should be in your general vicinity before too long . be nice to know where i'm sleeping ,m my butt is like , numb."
sam was still listening to contemporary country on the radio . the volume was still loud . i still didn't like it . i paused to be certain he was done before i said ," have an emergency here , sam . need to run something serious by you ."
"okay ." his tone lost all its playfuless .
something's going on with all these people . the grand canyon people . eric showed up in town . i don't think merideth knows he's here . and there's a police emergency at the place where mel lives with her friends."
"what kind of emergency ? what  kind of serious ?"
i explained to sam what i knew about the events taking place at the duplex , starting wioth the fact that the two girls had stopped by merideth's condo so i could finally have a chance to talk to mel , i stressed the part about the live TV  coverage , the hovering helicopters , the apparently determined SWAT  response , and the possibility of dual explosion s.
i added ,"i'm on my way there now . the girls are in amy's car heading home -i'm following them . or i was ..... i couldn't keepyou know anyone in the LAPD ? can you find out what's going on? it's a big deal , sam ."

256 deadtime

     forty four
the plan was for me to follow mel and amy to mt . washington .
execution turned out to be a problem . amy was more inclined to obliterate . LA 's speed limits than i was . her speed , or my lack thereof , caused me to lose track ofthe solitarey working taillight of her car - she drove an aging honda CR -V  - before i was five blocks from merideth 's condo . i wasted a few minutes waeving through traffic trying to once again spot her car before i pulled to he curb on beverly bpul;evard . i pushed tiny buttons until i had communicated my pathetic situation to chloe's , the GPS lady .
chloe was cool
i'd elaborated on chloe's avatar life . she was a work at home single mom sitting in a pleasant , quirky room lined with northg-facing windows . she was mildly agoraphobic . when she wasn't busy responding to my electronic queries about road life in los angeles . she did watercolors .
chloe said ," turn left in ....three ...blocks ." i was grateful that she delivered her geographical counsel without either irony or sarcasm .she was the perfect shot gun .
i speed dialed sam while i was stopped at the next red light.
"hey ," i said . " where are you ?"
"i'm on the 10 heading into LA  ..," he said . his voice was bright." that's california talk , by the way . they don't say "i-10' or interstate 10 , or even plain old '10' like we do . here it's got to bedamn article and the damn freeway number. you needtoremember that if you don't want to sound like a tourist .

254 -55deadtime

the reporter at the scene screamed ." oh shit ! " as she ducked out of the frame . the person holding the camera at ground level his balance . the shot jumpefd to the sky before it resettled on the front of the duplex .
dark gray smoke billowed out and up , obscuring the view of the porch .
one of the anchors in the TV  studio , a taciturn woman whose manner reminded me of an assistant principal , said , " was that an ...exposion ? jannifer ? jennifer itou is our reporter on t he scence , live .
 do you have jennifer ? jennifer ?"
i found myself hoping we still had jnnifer . and that she was still live on the scene .
amy said ," that was a bomb . my god ."
i looked at mel . her lips were parted . she wasn't blinking .
i turned to find eric . he was standing on the far sisde of the room . near the entry hall . his arms were crossed .
a second explosion rattle the font of the duplex .
jannifer itou had one hand covering her earpiece in a way that was almost a parody of a reporter at scene full of chaos . she said ." brett and carl ? my cameraman , tony , is telling me the second explosion was a flash bang . repeat , we think the explosion was a flash bang . tony was a marine ."
kanyn hadn't picked up her p[hone . the ringing finally stopped . voice mail kicked in ." hey , it's me ," her recorded voice announced "leave a message , or even better send me a text . a nice one . afi ."
"adi ? i said .
amy said ," adios , oh my jesus ."
mel lowered herself to the floor in a single , languiled , motion that was as fluid as  a dancer 's . it was as though she felt the long bones  in her legs dissolving ar=t a measured pace and she was determined  to get her torso to the ground before the bones disintegrated .
amy said ," we have to go home m, mekl , get up . comeon . now we have to check on kanyn ."
my eyes returned to televesion scren . asthe smokefromexplosion drifted away from the front  of the building , it wasn't ap[parent to me which side of the duplex was the focus of all the law-enforcement attention .
eric said ," does anyone know what is going on ?"
amy said ," that's our house ."
he turned and walked out the door .

253 deadtime

the right half of the split screen was a live , streett level view of heavy armed officers moving away from large police vans . i guessed SWAT .
shit . i wondered if it was some kind of hostage situation .
mel said , " oh my god , that's our -" her tone had an old hollowness to it that caused my clininical antennaae to perk .
"yeah, it is ," amy said . she said on the edge of the coffee table , gripping the remote in both hands , the same way she'd grasped the spent flower bud earlier that day on the steps in front of the house .
" what is -" mel stepped closer to the screen ." why are they .......is that the police that's -"
the same hollow affect continuted to invade her voice . shrinks call the tone "flat." i suspected that her recognition of the crisis at her home wasn't the only precipitant  for her sudden affective vaccuuum . eric's presence was certainly  a contributing factor .
amy stood then she sat again ." some kind of shooting - that's what they said when it first came on . they broke into jimmy kimel . then there was .....another woman came on and called it a home intrusion , not a shooting . i don't think they really know ."
the ground -level side of the split screen refocused to become a grainy shot of the front of the duplex . the heafds of the two anchors ibn the studio popped up in a box in the lower left corner of the busy screen .
"it couldn't be our house , could it ? it must be the addams family . rights ? don't you think ? amy said ." i wonder what they did . wait , are they backj in town , mel ?" mel " we have to call kanyn . see if she's okay . she could be home from work .
in seconds , amy had her cell phone on speaker , the call to kanyn placed , and the phone was ringing ." pick up , baby . pick up ." amy pleaded.
the center of the left side of the television screen flashed brilliant .

252 deadtime

      forty three
" mel ! mel ! " the clarion call was from inside , from amy ." come here , come in here ! quick . mel ! get in here . oh my god . that's our house ! hat's our damn house . right there . look ! .
i stood to see what eas going on . amy was standing in the middle of the living room , pointing at the television with one hand , urging mel to come back inside with the other .
i followed mel tp the living room . it took me a moment to orient myself to what was on the screen. the camera view was from a helicopter . . the shot was focused on what lookedlike a residential street on a hillside . a small fleeyt of stationary vehicles with flashing lights was clustered nearby . after a couple of seconds i was able recognize that home the the searchlight was illuminating was the charming duplex that amy and kanyn and mel were renting in mt. washington .
the sky seemed clear . the misty fog that was hovering over west LA  . apparently hasdn't drifted inland that far across the basin .
a brilliant floodlight  hightlighted  the streetide facade of the duplex . one side of the buolding was dark and curtained . one side had karge urns by the front door . in those urns , i knew , were birds of paradise .
the television screen split . on the left side was the aerial shot . a police chopper- the one with the floodlight - passed quiickly into and out frame , entering on the lower left corner , exiting on the upper right . the camera choreography  was becoming clearer- that shot we were watching had to be from a news chopper that tracking the movements of an LA  . police helicopter from a higher altitude .

250 deadtime

.      forty two
amy was standing a few feet behind eric . she had an i'm sorry what could i do expression on her face .
mel said ," oh my god . oh my god ."
eric asked ," carmel , do you know where i can find lisa ?"

" how much did you hear ?" do youi knbow where lisa is ? he repeated .
eric's tone with mel was stern and condescending . my first impression  was that although he was superficially gracious , he had some laten bully in him .i reminded myself that there was a ot ofhistory between him and mel that i didn't know .
mel was shrinking into her chair . she said ." what did you just hear ?"
" nothing . not a thing . i  jst got here . doyopu know where lisa is ? yes or no ?"
" i don't believe you eric "
" i don't care what you belive , carmel . does jules know where lisa is ?"
" i don't know what .....jules knows ."
eric slid open the screen door and stepped outsite . he walded between us and lewaned against the railing , facing back indoors  , looking down on mel . " is kanyn here ? she heard from lisa ?"
"she's at work ."

247 deadtime

"i've never spoken to eric . lisa has been staying in an apartment hotel recently in manhattan , i went there with nerideth . it looked to me like lisa hadn't used the bed . it ;s an anomaly , that's all ."
,el rolled her eyes . i winced. i'd apparently just managed to sound like her father . in an attempt to recover i said ," i don't like pieces that don't fit ."
"lisa can't sleep in beds . don't ask me - something from her childhood . i don't know . the cabins in the canyon have bunks. she never slept in hers . she slept on the floor the whole time , i think ."
lisa can't sleep in beds .
i recalled the unused bed in morningside heights . the clutter by the sofa in the living room . mel was oroviding an alternative explanation to the one merideth and i had jumped to : that lisa had been sleeping ,  or screwing , somewhere else .
i could tell that mel's patience with the conversation was diminishing . i decided to try to lower the temperature a little . i said ," jules and rice were a couple ?"
"when the trip started . by the timre we'd been down there for a day i really think lisa was..... " she didn't finish the sentence ." no ," she said to emphasize her change of heart about compkleting the though about lisa .she tightened her hands into fists ." no , sorry."
rather than try to scale the wall she completed with the brick of the final no , i instead replied to her earlier question . i said ," okay . back to my story and why i'm helping merideth . as you guessed , the woman from your trip who involved with merideth and eric is have a baby . merideth has a long history of fertility problems- miscarriages - and lisa agreed to act as their surroage . she apparently did it once before , for a relative . eric knew about that . they all came to an arrangment . did an in-vitro procedure . as of a few weeks ago lisa became pregnant with eric and merideth 's baby ."mel sat up and her mouth flew open ." no shit ! no way ! lisa ishavinng eric's baby ? that's perfect . kanyn is not goig to believe this .wonder if she 's opff work . i have to call kanyn ."

246 deadtime

things happened on the hill that most parrents of junior high school students wouldn't want their progeny exposed to  on a daily basis ," that ....made my parents crazy , easpecially my dad ," she said ." so who is merideth 's fiance ? eric or nick ? i know it's not jack , it's eric , isn't it ?"
i said ." yes , it's eric ."
"fingures."he shook her head ." it's funny . jack was sure that nick was in the ckloset .i never found out if he was right or not ." her next question : " there's something i don't get , aln . why are you helping your ex-wife ? that's kind of .... weird , isn't it ?"
good question ." i suppose it is . eric is still friends with someone from back then , anf -"
"lisa . she's the only one who woulfd still be talking to him . eric was the biggest asshole about not going back down tp help . he didn't slow down while he was climbing out , didn't even condsider it might be along like she was  leashed to him .she'd been throwing herself at him all week ." mel shrugged ,shook her head ." there were times when qwe were all together down at the cabins that i thought jules was going to kill her . all the attention lisa was paying to eric was....."
"atention ?"
"she was all over him ."
shit . i'd just officially heard something from mel that i didn't want to have to tell merideth : lisa had once been romantically , or at least sexually , interested in eric . i assumed thatfor merideth it would be a disconcerting piece of news about the woman she had chosen to be the couple 's surroage . i recalled , of corse , that both "sex" and  :lisa" had been part of a recent conversation i'd had with merideth .
i asked mel ," youi mentioned lisa had odd sleeping patterns onthe trip ? does she have problem sleeping ?"
mel narrowed her eyes ." how do you know that ? did eric you ?"

245 deadtime

it was a hanging curve . mel hit it out of the park , she said ," and what exaxtly dio  you think happened in the canyon , alan ?"
i chuckled at her reply . she joined in . she knew i had begun reaching . she was also feeling increasingly confident that she was up to the task o=f hitting my best pitches . wallace had traioned her well . oprobably inadvertenly , but still ....
she said ," you turn to tell me something . hoe does your wife know about all of this ? what's her connection to the trip ? my father told me that merideth  knows somebody who was down there . is she -"
:merideth's my ex-wife , mel . we were disvorced a long time ago , when you were still in boulder . probably when you were still in junior high , hanging out on the pearl street mall .""sayingthat made me feel old ." and yes - she knows someone who on the trip . she's enaged to a guy who was down there . at the canyon , at the river . part of this ....thing . i don't know where he fits in .
"merideth has become involved and asked for help because ....they've been - mel , will you agree to keep this next part to yourself ?merideth doesn't want it to become public .it's important to her . you'll understand why when i tell you what it is ."
she shrugged ." goes both ways . you  don't tell my parentsd anything unless i tell you it's okay ?"
it was territory that i anticipated visiting with mel during our conversation ." fair," i said .
she seemed surprised at my easy abdication about keeping hercinfidence . she'd expected a fight . i had already decided that the best i could do with wallace and cassanda would be to share myconclusions about their daughter's well being . i didn't need to betray  confidences to do that ." my friends and i didn't hang out on the mall . we hung out on the hill . . the hill was the student neighborhood close to theuniversity in boulder.

244 deadtime

. it wasn't that cold on the balcony , i was nearing a concludion that whatever mel had seen that n ight in the grand canyon was part ofwhat had had left her so uncomfortable upon her return to california , what had she seen ? i didn't have a clue .
when i find myself lost in a psychotherapy session , it is because i find myself out in the lead . aware  of that tendency , i tried to allow mel to step back in front of the story wi got quite . we kept eye contact . mel was my match . or my better here she belonged . i had no business guiding this expedition . we kept eye contact . mel was my match . or my better .
" so jack knows what you and jules saw ?" i said finally . as i asked that innocuous question , i recognized that our conversation had devolved into a game of twenty questions . it's not an effective interviewing technique . if i hoped to learn anything useful from this meeting . i had to find some way to get mel talking freely .
my self -imposed deadline was five minutes away .
she shook her head in reply to my question in a manner that i cou;dn't interpret . i had no way to know if the headshake was the simple answer to my question or whether it was an indication of her refusal to tell me what i wanted to know .
"mel , do you know what jack saw that night ?"
she nodded ." you too ," she said . she punctuated the thought with a girlish giggle . " the world does ."
me too ? the world does ? huh ? what does rthat mean ?
on a busy therapy day - one with eight , nine , ten patients - ii could count on having at least one moment during the course of the day when a patient woulfd say something that feels like a complete non sequitur . as though i'd somehow missed an essential segue .that was how i left after hearing mel's " you too " -" r=the world does ."
too many facts , not enough context ." i didn't get that . i said :" i'm sorry ."
she didn't repeat it .
i said ," i'm getting the impression that what actually happenedthat night in thecanyon is different than i might be thinking , is that what you're telling me , mel ?"

243 deadtime

    forty one
reading between the lines is part of what therapists do . i like to think 'm better at it than most people . but most of the time i;m objective enough to admit that being better at it than most didn't make me good .
the dots that needed connecting were becoming more obvious to me while mel talk , like stars appearing in the night sky as layers of clounds cleard . i could draw lines between the dots , but the clarity of a constellation eluded me . i said ." you saw eric with either lisa or jaana the night before ? that's what you're saying ?"
i intentionally left a couple of things out of my conclusion .one was that the mysterious jules likely saw whatever mel saw that night . and the second wasd that whoever the two women saw with jaana agter dark had to be considered a possible witness - or worse - to whatever ultimately happened to her .
i wasn't at all clear where jack =fit into the equation . mel said he'd seen jaana too .and that he'd helped clarify what she and jules had seen .
"i didn't say that ." mel said , in reply to my question .
i was on familiar ground . i was lost .
it was apparent that mel was choosing her words with the care of a white house spokesperson . she was interested in appearing cooperative ; she wasn't interested in being illuminating ." i didn't say that " wasn't exactly a denial of what i had proposed .
as she circled the narrative wagons . mel pulled the throw tighter arounsd her .

242 deadtime

"we weren't sure . that's why ..... we didn't say anything . at the time we thought the woman we saw might be ....dsomeone else .lisa . from a distance , lisa looks like jaana . especially in dark . we thought itmight have been lisa ."
she hestitated before she said ," certain? no ."
"tell me a little qabout jules ," i said .
"no." she said again , without hesitation .
"maybe later ?"
"don't hold your breath ."
she attacted just the tininest bit of levity to the last pronouncement . just enough that i couldn't eqasily lisrt it in the coluumn marked"over hostility ."
ten more minutes of this , i sqaid to myself . then i'm out of here . :eric and lisa continuteed up to the rim , " i said." did either-"
"and kanyn ."
"and kanyn . did eric or lisa see jaan the night before ?"
"one did . i know that for for sure . maybe the other one did too .
lisa ....keeps strange hours at night ."
i decided to postpone following up on the issue of lisa's sleeping behavior . i said ," but you know one did ? either eric or lisa . did you see that persopn .....with laaana ?"
"that 's the part i'm not sure i'm going to tell you ."
that , and the part about jules , i thought .

241deadtime

. " i was thinking , you could have told me all this before i flew out here . your father said you wanted to talk with me .
" nothing makes any of us look like .... heroes ."
"is that important ? being heroes ?"
she snorted , shook her head . my question had been a therapist thing to say . mel wasn't about to fall it .
i took the bat off my shoulder and swung again ." going back down to help search for her ? in that heat ? that sounds altruistic ."
"all of us - every one of us who went back down to help search jaana- lied to each other . we ended up lying to the rangers who interviewed. when when the guy jaa was with came to our cabin looking for hr in the morning as we were getting ready to climb out , we all denied seeing her anytime aftwer dark ."
" you did see her ?"
"some of us saw her , most of us . maybe all us . not all together . but we saw her . i didn't find find about all the others that morning , but it's come out since ."
she stopped herself .
"so jack saw her that night ?"
"yes , definitely ."
"and kanyn ?"
" ican'rt say ."
can't , or won't ?and - what did you say that eric's girlfriend's name is - jules? she saw jaan tooo?"
"jules was witgh me ....when we saw hwer , it was a dark night . the canyon was in mooashadow . we weren't sure what we were seeing at the time . but we saw the same thing . later , jack nvconvinced us ut was jaa."
" but at the time you didn't know you saw her ?"
"we saw someone . we could have said something about , but bdidn't . okay ?"
i's sensed a hitch in mel's delivery of the information abouty whatand jules saw ." what did you and jules see ?"

240 deadtime

she smiled , glanced at me sideways , and quicklly looked away ." yeah ," she said ." intense ."
ml was skilled at parrying the simple thrusts of convetrsation , i said ." jack was the one who was most determined to look for jaana ?" i asked ." or was it jules ? or you?"
"i wanted .... so did jules . but i'm bnot ....jack is a stronger person than me . doesn't care so much whar=t people think . i tried to get people interested in what was going with jaana , tried to get everybody to agree to do it together - it's what i do - but people don't always take me seriously . jack and jules , they just did it . said they were going back down . turned around , hikeed back down ."
" but kanyn continuted up to the rim ."
" that surprised me . she feels bad about it still . she's not sure why she did it . it's nit like her . she has a big heart . she can seem flaky , but she has a big heart ."
i said ,"o luck when you got back to the river ?"
"nothing . somebody found a bracelet - a woven thing - that jaaana hafd been wearing . but that's it . after a few hours the rangers took over . the three of us hiked out at the end of the day . it was miserable on the climb up . unbeklievably hot . jack kept our spirits up .
 jules wasokay . i was a wimp ."
"you've all stayed friends ?"
""with jules and jack ? yeah , absolutely . jack lives in san diego ......he's in the chargers' public relation office . we go down to san diego sometimes . he gets us seats for the games . my boyfriend and i- are going down for the home opener in a few weeks , jack is so......"
she opened her eyes as wide as she could open them , trying to evaporate her tears before they could flee down her cheeks . a solitary escapeee meandetred from her left eye and tracked toward her ear .
" i haven't decided if i'm going to tell you ...... any more about  what happened ," she said ." at the canyon . not now ."
i gace her a chance tocontinute . she didn't . i wasn't surprised but i was getting frustrated ." i hope ican get you tochangemind.

236 deadtime

sincethe inside hollywood gossip was meaningless to me , in sat back and observed .
after fifteen minutes i suggested to mel that we retreat to the balcony . she excused herself to the bathroom , amy asked if it was okay wioth me if she made herself a drink .
" whatever you find in there is yours ," i said " there's some vodka , a few beers . nothing fresh ."
i sat on a plexiglas stood at the island while i watched her assemble the components for a martini . she was wearing the  outfit she'd worn to dinner .
the top still popped . the roulette wheel was still spinning . i remained begyuiled .
jesus .
amy filed one martini stem with ice tochill the glass and held up a second toward me . she said ." happy to make you one too ."
"no, thank you ." i said .
it was my night fro temptations . amy had great intution about the she winked at me as she carried her drink to the living room , wherebest bait to use.
she had made cocktails once or twice before . the refrigerator door was stocked with cndiments , including a jar of olives of indeterminate age . even tempered by the antisepic properties of the vodka i could not think of any circumstances under which i would have imbibed the juice in that jar , but amy seemed fine dribbing some of it into her vodka and vermouth . she winked at me as she carried her drink to the living room , wherebest  , where she curled up on the sofa and grabbed the remote control to merideth's big flat screen television .
" that drink ," she said without looking at me . she raised her glass ." from earlier ? didn't think i'd be having it alone , watching TV ."
with auick flick of her thumb she found sports center .
i moved outside onto the terrace .
yes, sam , fucking beguoiled .

235 deadtime

i asked ," how did you get past hector downstairs ? i find him kind of intimidating ."
she grinned ." he called you about letting us come up here . you didn't answer the phone . we ytried yoyu on your cell phone ,but i didn't answer that , either ."
i heard the "we"- if cara knew where i was staying in LA  , she had learned it from amy , her roommate . i looked across the room and saw the missws call indicator light flashing on my mobile . i had indeed recieved a recent call .
" i was in the shower . long shower ."
she shrugged ." amy kind of distracted the doorman . that's hector ? i slipped by hhim . rode up elevator with a guy who lives on fifteen . he said he works at CAA ," she rolled her eyes ." i told him i was surprising my boyfriend on our six month anniverary . hector 's probably pissed ."
i agreeed that hector wassdprbably pissed . i didn't know what CAA was .
mel shrugged again .her attitude ? hector wold just have to get over it .
i pointed to merideth 's phone ." should i call downstairs and tell hector to send amy up ? or do you want to talk in private ?"
"no, invite her up ." mel said ." she's cool ."
i callled hector .he pretended he wasn't annoyed . i was wasd becoming more enamored of doorman all the time .
merideth would learn the whole story from hector breakfast . what would she make of it ? only god knew . merideth had more important things to worry about .neither sam nor i were getting any closer to finding out what had happened to lisa or to the baby she was carrying .
once amy made it upstairs , the three of us sat around in the living room / the girl talked shop - a cuious mix of industry -speak and watchingwas that probably no diffirent from the kind of unwinding taht two nurses might do after  a day in the OR .

234 deadtime

. forty
 i asked her to wait . after i threw on some clothes - the spicy pickle t-shirt and pair of jeans i'd stripped offf before the shower - i invited her inside .
"mel ? i saiod .
" dr . gregory ."
"alan . remember ?" i offered my arms for a hug . se leaned into me . i thought gratefully .
she took a step back , nodded , kicked off her shoes , and glide across the room . she perched cross legged on the sofa right beside the pile of linens , immediately pulling the pillow to her chest ." nice."
she said , looking around .
" that 's what i hear . guy downstairs ."
she had a flck of a diamond stud impaled through the othetwise pristine skin of her left nostril . the wavy brown hair she'd had as long as i'd known her was streaked with maroon highlights in unexpected places . her wardrobe seemed to designed to feature her surprising - to me , at least : i hadn't seen carmel; in many years - curves in ways that i had no doubt would make my old friend wallace lose sleep at night .
" should i call you mel ? cara ? what works ?"
"mel . i guess ."
i sat across from her ." something to drink ?" she shook her head.

232 -233deadtime

   thirty nine
it rang anew every few minutes .
i kept my butt planted on the terrace . the fixed ass solution was proving an effective strategy for hobbling the urge to chug chilled vodka , that night the process took about ten minutes , and more willpower than i considered ideal .
i spent most of that interlude musing on sam's provocative suggestion that i needed to be more honest with myself about what i had been risking with ottavia and amy . the whole time , some primeval part of my brain kept insisting that the introspection could be better accomplished with increased levels of ethyl alcohol circulating in my blood .
i covered a lot of ground during my musing , but i reached no conclusion other than that laurence and i had aot of work to do when ashe got home from europe .  in the meantime , i had to find a way to deal with my temptations . all ofthem.
when i finally felt it was safe to go back inside the condo , i switched off the ringer on merideth's landline .
i indulged in one more long shower .it was a sybaritic , not a hygienic , act . all those heads . i was aware it was a less than ideal substitution for the cocktail - in its broadest denotation - that i had not alone afterward .
i found some spare bedding in the linen closet and gotready convert the long part of the sleek sectional sofa in the living room into a makeshift bed . i knew exactly how the bed in merideth's bedroom would feel - the perfect mattress would be encased in linens so soft i would swear the threads gad been spun from clouds , but i was determined not to spend a night with any of merideth's pheromones banging around like pinballs in my brain .
aight rapping sound distracted me from the bedmaking , i paused and listened . the sound wasd repewated five seconds later . i threw down the sheeyts and checked the peephole .
a young woman . red eyes .
carmel .
it turned out i did recognize .

230 deadtime

" is that what we're doing now ? you're looking over y shoulder spotting the card i'm not playing , pointing out my mistake ?"
"" hope not . nobody likes the wiseass looking over their shoulder while they're playing solitaire . i'm not therapist . i'm a schlub ."
sam turned up the sound on his radio . the twang of a countyry ballad - female , contemporary , and completely indistinguishable from fifty other laments i'd heard involuntarily in recent years , often in his company - blare in my er .
for the first mnth after adrienne's death my personal musical tastees were stuck in an edith oiaf rut .if malaiose had a soundtrack , at least one or two tunes would be from ms . piaf's opus . i was relieved when i'd emerged from the extnded edith piaf runnel. but i still wasn't ready for sam's country tastes .
"i like this song ," sam said , apparently entertaining the delusion that i had devolved musically to share his dubiousd fondness for contemporary country ." know what ? i need to pee . maybe i'll top off the tank . get some ethanol; , or whatever the hell they sell in this state . know what else ?"
wih that prelude , i didn't want to know what else .
"i'm craving a party melt , you like patty melts ?"
i was having trouble keerping up with him . the truth was that my mind was still stuck on kirstn and amy - okay, both amys - and ottavia and thousand oaks and erosion and cataclysm and WMDs and roulette and temptations and solitaire and whoever the hell it was singing the song that was playing on sam's radio that i wished would just stop .
"rye bread , fried onions , good old american cheese , and a cheap hamburger - all smashed together and toasted up golden brown on a griddle that tastes a little bit like morning 's pancakes . i like it best if the rye has seeds in it . know what i'm talking about ? is there a better meal to have on the road ? imean , if you're not in the  south if you're in the south , then ...." his voice turned wistful atsome gustatory memory of a dixie roadtrip ." turns out there's a truth stop ahead that seems like it's just what the doctor ordered.
as the doctor in question is neither my internist nor my cardiologist we'll rtalk tomorrow . alan , oh shit , gotta go ."
" what ?"
" i have another call . you take care . don't do anothing i wouldn't do ."
i coul;d hear him laughing before the call went dead .
behind me , on the other side of the screen door , merideth 's phone started ringing .

229 deadtime

" no urge to jump in the sack with her ? deja vu ? old time's sake ?"
"no."
" that would be significant ."
" nothing ."
he disgested my denial ." sometimes something happens even when nothing happens . other times nothing happing is exactly what it sounds like . i have a friend in the mental health field who would tell me that at toimes it cabn be difficulfft to tell tose two things apart ."
i was that friend . sam eas good at this . i might have been surprised . but i wasn't .
he said ."forget everything i just said if you 'd like . really . i'm no genius about this shit .i've screwed up everything that matters in the oast couple of years."
"xcept simon ."
"except simon ."
i said ." maybe you're wisher than you know ."
" this is easy . listenningto your problems . doing color commentary on your situation ." he paused ." i ever tell you how i think this ?"
he didn't care whether i wanted to hear it ." seems to me doing psychotheray is like looking over somebody's shoulder while they play solitaire .you point out shit that they miss , simple shit , stuff they can n't see for some funnyreason even though they're staring right at it ." you need to put the black ten on the red jack ." like that ."
"okay."
"solitare 'slways easier when it's somebody else's game . evernotice that? it's not hard to see what card somebody else isn't playing ."

227 deadtime

. " you did ?" no judgment in his question . maybe aittle wonder , but no judgment .
" we didn't go ."
" she turned you down ?"
"she said yes. i could tell what was on the desert menu ."
he went quite again .  i could hear him breathing until he said , "lemon meringue pie?"
i laughed ," something like that ," i said .
"so you stood her up ?" when i didn't answer immediately , he added ," you can make me ask a ton of questions here , alan , or you can just tell mw what the hell happened , i got nothing but time . my tabnk's half full , you're on speaker , and there's paved highway in front of me as far as i can see ."
"i canceled . but i wanted to see her . i'm trying to honest ."
"can i interject a thought ? maybe i've been missing something , hanging with you all these years , but it certainly seems to me that you're suddenly much more willing to walk up the roulette wheel and bet your marital future on red/blacvk than you used tio be , you aware of that ?"
i recalled his grand canyonmetaphor . the drip drip of erosion versus the drama of cataclysm . the last year of my life had taught me about erosion . i was toying with lesson about cataclysm . i said , " at some level i was tempted ."
"you're focusing on what's tempting , not why you're tempted . that's the trap . been there , doesn't work out ."
"go on ."
" you might be the relationship expert , but i'm the fucking up mean . and lessons are what they are .god , they are . but it sounds tome like yyou're looking for solutions in places where you ain't got no problems ."
country song ? i thought ." which means what ?"
"from where i sit , your problem is at home . if that 's the case , youcan't solve it in new york or LA . by letting the WMD  out of the  bunker with some hottie . that's when things go south . fot tonight at least , you avoided that . you did > alan ?" without offering me much latitude for a timely response , he added ," right ?"
"i did ."
""got to feel good about that , yes ?"
any initial reticence that sam might have felt about having this kind of conversation with me had evaporated . he was officially into it .

226 deadtime

" i came close to saying yes ."
" that 's not an answer."
"i'm telling you what wasoing on in my head."
"the part of your anatomy we're discussing is not your head . you either did or you did not have that drink."
we were officially talking sex , not beverages ." we didn't ."
" you were tempted ?" sam asked .
i hadn't allowed myself to explore the temptation equation - i found confort  in the illusion that deeds and desires were the most distant of relatives . i said," i was tempted , sam ."
confessions , i nkew from years of listening to them in psychotherapy , often come in bunches, the first is only the initial splash that springs from a siphon as the vacuum gets sealed . from then on , new admissions of guilt tend to keep cascading until the source vessel is empty.sam, no doubt , had learned the same lesson in his years of interrogating perps .
he waited . once i'd finished spitting out the first mea culpa i went on to the next . i said ," not for ther first time lately . i was tempted in the distant past and whole most recent role in my life was as my defense attorney caused sam to go silentt for a proracted mment . then he said , " can't relate to that . kirsten .don't gety me wrong - she's ....lovely girl . but i've nver found myself attracted to a defense lawyer . not weven once , not even a little .it's almost liker a cross species thing for me . has to be something god never intended . don't ever recall actually seeing one naked , but i'm not even a hudred percent sure the parts would fit ."
sam, was giving me room , making it clear that any confession by me was not going to be coerced by him ." there was a woman in new york . couple weeks ago . i sublet her apartment . she letme know she was ....avaible ......the night before left on vacation.... i kind of asked her out ."

225 deadtime

   thirty eigth
i opened my mouth . nothing came out .
sam waited an additional ten seconds before he said ," was i right on with my little summary ?"
it was as though he'd forgotten that he'd just callled me a fucking idiot ." when you put it that way , i admit it makes my evening sound kind of sleazy ."
" hey ....no criticism intended . not from me . despite all my recent scar tissue from tangling with women i had no business tanglig with , it took alll my willpower to decline ranger ramona's invitation of mdnight recreation and a hot breakfast.. mostly i was trying to highlight the complication factor you're attempting . my assessment ? the degree of difficult you're considering for this dive may be well beyond your demonstrated ability ."
i didn't want him to be right , but suspected he was . i said ." for what it's worth , merideth 's place is in west hollywood , not beverly hills . and lauren and grace are in holand , not denmark ." as soon as the words were out of my mouth , i regretted them .
he said ," as though the first part is consequential to anyone whodoesn't work for fedex , and the last part matters to anybody butthe dutch = or on a slow news day . maybe the frigging danes . i got two question . why didn't merideth tell me she had a damn condo ?that's one . two is , did you have that drink?"

223-224 deadtime

silence at first . then ," i was doing prewtty welll ignoreing that aspect of this trip . until you brought it ut . thanks for that ."
" sorry ," i said ." i was trying to be sensitive . in case you were having some ....feelings about being so close to -"
" save it for someone who likes bachrubs , alan . you know damn well that's not me ."
the edge in his tone convinced me of the wisdom of a a tactical retreat ," i hear you ."
" tis girl you were with got a name ? the one nothing happpened with ?"
"amy ."
" no amys on that canyon hike . i have the whole damn roster in my head . like the seven dwarfs ."
" i'm counting the guy from vegas ."
" after we finished dinner , amy invited me to invite her to come back here for a drink ," i said .
" a drink ? her word or yours ?"
" i knew what she meant , sam . i don't get out much , but i hear stories about stuff like this from my patients ."
" and here is where ? your hotel ?"
" the motel was ....full. merideth offered to let me stay at her condo ."
" there's only one motel in LA ? damn , i didn't make reservations ."
i laughed again . i could have embellished the earlier rationalization i'd concocted about my aborted plan tp stay at the holiday inn express , but even with extra buffing , the tale wasn't going tpo pass sam's bullshit sensor .
"i'm staying at merideth 's condo , sam . let's leave it there ."
" well ," he said ." let me see if i have this right . you went out for a spontaneous . LA  on the town dinner with a woman , aoung woman , someone you just met . it turns out  that she finds you so .....what ? charming ? yeah , so charming that she was dying to join you for late night cocktail and ...... whatever might come next . and you suspect that whatever might come next was going to take place on the clean sheetes of your ex-wife 's beverly hills condo while your current wife is off with your child looking for her long lost daughter in denmark ."
i swallowed aigh at his synopsis ." amy is .....beguiling , sam ."
" did you just sayu ' beguing '? sam said ." i hink you're a fucking idiot ."

222 deadtime

222 dea dtime" i would n't have been happy ?" he said  with a laugh .
" orobably not , earlier ib thed day i drove out to the san fernando valley looking for wallace poteet's kid ,she and i were supposed to meet , but she was with her boy=friend because she was upset about this guy jack not showing. one i was in the valley , i ended up not being too far from .... the town where i was raised , lots of memories ."
sam knew about the family tragely in thousand oaks  in my youth . he understood that my prodigal visit to southern california wouldn't be uncomplicated ,
" you wanted some company ?"  he said , offering me a cushion ." went out with aretty girl ?"
"yeah ."
" anything happen?" he said , younow an official member of the axis of evil ?"
i laughed . it felt good , considering the coplicated  emotions of the day .
" she 's fun . she's prety . she'as smart ." i i ffreckles by her nose ." cute , people  her age are diffirent from us , sam ."
the cop that sa ghad been involved with in boulder - the friend with benefits , the one who helped him earn his suspension - was youg too .
" yeah ? he said ." i 've already been across that bridge . warning for a friend ? it dangerous over there , people on the other side don't view things the way we do ."
sam's sexual fling with the young cop in boulder had cost him dearly ." coming back to  LA  can't be uncomplicated for you .either ," i said ." you spent a lot of time here with carmen ."

221 deadtime

.     thirty seven
i watched an immense translucent pillow of creep inland from the pacific . the slippery mass seemed to be losing forward momentum on the far side of the 405 .
i replayed the conversation with sam . his initial openness aboput tranger left me regetting that i might have done something to poison the interlude of intimacy i'd been enjoying with him . i called him back .
he said ," you de3cide to be my wingman after all ?"
i tokk aleap of faith . i said ," i was out with a ....woman tonight ," trying nor to sound as  through i'd just dropped to my knees in a confessional . when sam didn't reply instantly to my disclosure , i added ," she didn't say as much as a word about suspecting that i was an unreliable lover "
a few seconds of silence preceded sam's next comment . which was delivered in a slightly sardonic timbre ." they usually don't , is my experience . ranger ramona was iunique in that fashion ," he said ." was this part of that  favor you're doing for your friend in boulder ? or was it ....something else ?"
he was offering me an out , a rationalization for my indiscretion - if it indeed consitituted an indiscretion - with may . it felf like a small gift , but neverthless one i was disinclined to accept ." seeing this wowman was tangentially related to wallace . she's his daughter's roommate . i had a good reaodn to talk with her , but it didn't have to include us having dinner in some palce in west LA  that's so rendy  it doesn't have a name , only initials . but that's what we ened up doing ."
" good food ?" he asked .
i laughed . was he offering me another exit ? i weighed the possoblility thta he wasn't eager to hear what i i had to say . i said ." nothing uoyou couldnt get in boulder . the people were very aLA

220 deadtime

he didn't give me a chance to reconsider . " i'm on merideth 's dime . i'm thinking i shoukld live a little . know a nice palce in berly hills ? someplace trendy ? i'd like to maybe have a cocktail or two , sitting a couple stools away from a star ."
sam wouldn't cross the street to meet a celebrity unless he had a reason to ibterrogate him . i considered how sam and hector would get along . cou;dn't predict iy , but decided it it would be fun to watch .
then i tried to guess  how merideth would feel about sam staying at  her condo . once sam spotted my ex- wife's empty bed , he would not share my reservations about inhaling the aromas emmbedded i nher zillion - thread count sheets .
merideth would not be thrilled with the idea of papa  bear sleeping in her bed . she's be much haooier springing for a room for sam at the comfort inn on la cienega .
" let me think about it ," i said .
in a voice laden with sarcasm , he said ." call me back when you're domne with that .i'll stay close to the phone ."
he hung up .

219 dadtime

" what ?"
" sells insurance for allstate . what do you think ? should i try that ? when i get off suspension . tell my captain i'm starting a neew carrer selling insurnace ?"
he didn't expect a reply . i said ." oden say anything interesting on the phone ?"
" he thinks jaana's in the river . makes the search sound like the highlight of his ranger carrer  has no memory of lissa , other than that her name is familiar from the file ."
" herversion of events makes sense ?"
" WHAT DO YOU KNOW  ?"
" he say anything about those shoes ?"
" the sneakers or the hiking boots ?"
" whichever ."
"i'll ask him tomorrow when i ask him if jaana was pregnant . those are look-him in the eyes questions . i also left a message   for ranger ramona , asking her if ashe could get any follow up information on jaana 's girlfriend  the one who  was going to take her for the abortion ." sam burped ."i'm coming up on the cutoff to san bernadino . you like the way i let that roll off my fat tongue like i have a damn clue who the hell little bernard was and why he was worthy of saintification ? i should be in LA  . before long . nmaybe we can connect later , go to a club ."
i laughed at the thought of sam clubbing . or me clubbing ." i think thta's where  the first mcdonald/s was , sam . san bernardino ."
"no shit ?"
"no shit ."
" it's sad ," he said , pausing wistfully ," but there was a time in my life that i would 've found that fact wortjhy od a detour ."
i was tempted to encourage sam's earlier deversion and hear  his fantasy about us clubbing in LA  , but i was more tempted to ask sam if he ever took the same route he was on right then on any of his  road trip  visits to see carmel in langua beach . his pointed unsel about not prying into sensitive ares causedddd me to hesitate .

218 deadtime

" you earn anythign from paulsonthat's going to help merideth , sam ? to find lisa ?"
" not yet but  if it turns out this jack guy is really missing  he makes three . that should get some attention from law enforcment ."
" what was your impression of nick paulson ?"
" he acts liike somebody w=tih nothing to hide . which either makes  him innocent and naive , or giulty and good ."

" you're vote it ?"
"pending , headlines ? jaaana was pregnant . she wasn't happy about it . had an appointment set up for an abortion a couple , thre  days  after she disappeared v . he said a girlfriend of hers - somebody else from estonia , the girls parties together in vegas - was going to take her to get it done ."
" was nick the father ?"
" he admits it's possible , but he doubts it . called jaana a  party girl . implied  she slept around . remember  , ranger ramona thought nick paulson consideredd jaana one of the disposable girls ."
the news was interesting , but sounded irrelevant . i said what i was thinking ." don't see how it helps merideth , sam ."
\" hard to say . paulson says je told the park service rnger  all of this in his original interview . the pregancy . the abortion . the girlfriend .but none of it's in the file . ranger ramona doesn't know anything know about it either . she would have said something to me ."
"you're sure ?
"
" i read the file cover ot cover . somebody is lying . or misremembering . ca't see  the advantage for paulson to lie about possible getting jaana pregnant . i tend to believe that part ."
" stil don't see how it helps merideth  fimd lisa."
one foot in front the other . tomorrow i'm going to dropin on ranger who was in charge  of the original investigatiion , the one who interviewed  all three people , includeing paulson name is oden . he's living near LA  . he's a good hands guy now ."

217 deadtime

." he thought  i was there following up for somebody else . see ? feel the circle closing ? he said he ' already explained everything he knew a couple , three days before . itold him if he repeated his speech , i'd be out of his hair  vbegfore he could finish his next red bull ."
" who was the somebody else ?" i asked .
" another  one of the hijers . guy named jack fargo ."
shit , i thought m, i ssaid ." carmel has a friend named jack . he didn't show last night when she expected him to . she was upset . i wondre  if it's the same huy ."
" didn't show up ?"
 i tol;d him what i kmnew.
he chided me . " that's it ? that's all you got ? the guy's missing since yesterday . you didn't go online to check it out ? find out if anything happened to him ?"
" ithiguht he was juts a friend of carmel's , sam . i didn't even have a last name until you wjust told me . i still don't know it's the same guy .as far as i knew , he was just some friend of hers who didn't show up when he was supposed to . why wold i think it had anything to do with the damn camping trip ?"  he didmn't offer  the absolution  i was hoping for ." you're a cop , asam . you look for information . i'm a shrink . people bring me information ."
" that's youe excuse ?"  he said , laughing ." nobody brought you the right information ? you're blaming your ignoreance on the help ?"
" what can you tell me about jack ?"
" nick paulson said that jack called him earlier in the week to find out what he remembered about the search for jaana . from reading file , i can tell you that no one had any suspicion  abot jack at the ime of the search .i'll lok into him some more whn i get to LA  .i'll get back to you - you know , bring you some information on a silver platter . just the was yoyu like ."

216 deadtime

. so it;s impossible to know for sure whether they just happened to end up under that brush or whether somebody stuck them there . you know , intentionally ."
" waht are you thinking , sam ?"
" let's just say i'm thinking ."
i gave him a moment to go before i said ." cN I CAHNGE THE SUJBJUCT ?"
" YOU USUALLY DON'T ASK ."
" IS VEGAS YOUR KIND OF TOWN ?"{
" SPEND AN HOUR WALKKING THE SCRIPT . I EXPERTED TAWDRY , BUT THE PLACE IS HARMLESS GLITTER , AT LEAST ON THE SURFACE . A TERRIBLE TOWN TO BE A COP , THOUGH - ALL THAT MONEY'S GOT TO BE A MAGNET FOR MAYHEM . EVERYTHING  bad on earth has to be for sale there .
" inkew i woul;d see dirt in every crack if i looked down for even a seocnd . i didn't look down . hey , not my problem , right ? wated time tying to find a five buck blackjacke table . ended up at a ten buck table at the venetian ."

" and ?"
" started with a hundred . got up a hundred . lost the second hundred . then i lost the forst hundred and half of a another hundred i didn't plan to lose ."
" how lomng did that take ?"
" twenty minutes . that's  when i  droppee in on nick paul;son . he's the guy i wanted to meet ."
jaana's hiking companion ." yeah? and ?"
" big fancy office . all glass walls  i=side .stupid design . i could watch his secretary ewalk back to tell him i was there . i could watch his eyes get big . watch him look at me to make an appoimntment , i didn't know anything about jaana's disappearance in the grand canyon . she gose and tells him what i said . i thought he might call security on me , but he knew exactly how to get ris of me . he calls me in . we talked ."
" anything ?"
 

215 deadtime

. i said ," that didn't happen ?"
" it did not ."
" you don't agree with the ranger's conclusion ?" i wasn't amart enough to guess why sam didn't agree , but i knew him well enough to read his skepticism with some precision ." or you don't think it was jaaana 's sneaker ?"
"i think it WAS JAANA 'S SNEAKER  . what i'm having trouble with is the inventory that was done of the rest of her stuff after she went missing . in the file there's a list of all the things that they found at her campsite , things  she packed down  with her from the rim earlier that day . pack , sleeping  bag , pad , food , water  bottles .... nothing out of the ordinary , typical stuff for that kind of trip . something you would expect to be there  wasn't there , though ."
" you going to tell me ?"
" her hiking boots ," he said .
 i didn't see the relevance . i said ," so ?"
" where were they ? she didn't waer those lime-green  sneaker  on the hike down . the guy she was with said  he was sure she was waering boots . people at the rim   who knew her all said in their statements that she was experience would do that  descent in  sneakers ."
"i'm sure it was chaotic in the campsite after she disappeared  sam . the boots must have gotten misplaced somehow  during the  search . or maybe another hiker stole them ."
" that 's the ranger's theory too . it's in his report . he thought somebody ripped 'em off ." sam wasn't done . i waited ." a week after  that  singer sneaker showed up downstream - it was early november by then - somebody spotted her hiking boots under some brush not fifty yards from where her campsite had been , pair of size eight solomons  , if you're wondering . good boots . the woman who spotted them picked them up before any ophpotos were taken .