LITMIR.BIZ

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my goodness,’ said Ren, getting up and walking over to the faded photo. It was Ren, her parents and her three older brothers, Matt, Beau and Jay.

      ‘You must have been five years old there,’ said Annie. ‘Look at you.’

      ‘Look at the boys,’ said Ren. ‘All sandy brown like Dad. And then me. Do you know, when I was in school, the kids used to tease me. Not in a bad way – it was funny. They’d say, “So … your mother obviously had a visit from the mailman – Big Chief Little Stamps.”’ She pointed to her mother in the photo. ‘I mean, even Mom hasn’t really got my eyes.’

      Ren was an ethnic mystery to most. She had passed for Hispanic, Italian and French. But in the shape of her striking brown eyes, the one heritage no one could deny was Native American – from a distant Iroquois past somewhere on her mother’s side.

      ‘You were such a cutie,’ said Annie, ‘and those boys adored … adore you.’ She squeezed Ren’s hand.

      ‘We always loved coming here.’

      ‘And I loved having you.’

      Ren’s cell phone rang. She glanced down. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Annie. It’s work.’ It’s always work.

      ‘Go ahead, take it,’ said Annie.

      Ren went into the hall and took the call. She came back in to Annie. ‘I am so sorry. I wanted to spend more time with you.’ I always want to spend more time with the people I care about. ‘But I have to go,’ said Ren. ‘There’s this guy we’re trying to track down, he’s a nasty piece of work and—’

      ‘Ren, you’ve an important job, you’re a busy woman. I wouldn’t expect you to have the time to spend here.’

      ‘But you’re being kind enough to give me your house, and I feel I’ve just come in and out.’

      ‘Oh, it’s only me,’ said Annie. ‘I understand. You are so dear to me. I would be happy to have five minutes with you.’

      ‘Good Lord, I can’t think why.’ Ren squeezed Annie tight. As she was pulling away from the embrace, she could see two places set for supper on the table behind her. Her heart sank. She hoped it wasn’t meant for her. But she saw a brand-new bottle of her favorite hot chili sauce. Annie pressed the keys of the house into Ren’s hand and hugged her again. Tears welled in Ren’s eyes as she rushed to the Jeep and drove to a part of town that hadn’t quite got the same kind of history.

      Five Points stands where the diagonal grid of downtown meets the rectangular grid of East Denver. It’s one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods, known more for what it had been – the Harlem of the West – and what it wanted to be – a triumph of gentrification – than what it actually was – a neighborhood that fell between two stools. The high crime rate had fallen since the nineties, but it still struggled with gangs, drugs, and convincing people that its beautiful Victorian renovations and stylish lofts were in a safe setting.

      Robbie and Ren were parked outside a Five Points’ alleyway dive, waiting for Francis Gartman. He had been drinking there from noon until six p.m., but had left. The barman’s girlfriend had called in the tip, and said that she expected him back.

      Ren looked at the time. ‘This has been a most pleasant five hours, thank you for coming, but y’all are going to have to make your way home now.’

      ‘I know,’ said Robbie. ‘This feels a little … over.’

      ‘He’s not going to come back,’ said Ren. ‘He sat in that bar watching the pretty snowflakes pile halfway up that tiny barred-up window and that was his cue to leave.’

      Robbie’s cell phone rang. ‘Gary,’ he said.

      ‘Let this be our cue to leave.’

      Robbie listened as Gary spoke. ‘Gartman,’ he mouthed, then shook his head slowly. He nodded, took down an address. ‘We’ll be right over.’ He started the engine and turned to Ren.

      ‘Aw, fuck Gartman,’ said Ren. ‘What did he do?’

      ‘He shot dead a fourteen-year-old deaf girl who didn’t drop to the floor when he tried to hold up a convenience store. And shot her ten-year-old brother a few aisles down who, with his hands in the air, tried to explain why she didn’t.’

      ‘God, why were those kids out so late?’

      ‘So early. The family were on their way to the airport to catch a flight. The girl was going for surgery to—’

      ‘No, I can’t even hear that,’ said Ren. ‘That is just too much.’

      ‘And,’ said Robbie, ‘when Gartman walked in to the place, he was already soaked with blood.’

6

      The Safe Streets team were back from the convenience store crime scene by eleven a.m. Ren sat at her desk with a half-full coffee pot. Coffee pots are half-full. Beer bottles are half-empty.

      ‘Gartman does not give a shit,’ said Ren. ‘He just walks right in there, covered in blood from God knows what, kills a little girl, puts her brother in the hospital … and does not really care who sees his fucked-up face.’

      ‘When this gets out, there’ll be a bunch of people he’s screwed over who’ll want to hang him out to dry,’ said Cliff.

      Ren’s computer pinged with an email. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, turning to her screen. ‘I just got my email from El Paso on the Sarvases.’

      She clicked on the jpegs first. Rows of photos popped up in iPhoto under her brother Matt’s wedding photos.

      A beautiful day that happened under black clouds and rain.

      She looked at the destruction of the Sarvas family.

      A terrible day that happened under a blue sky and a hot Texan sun.

      The first photo was similar to the one of the SUV that Ren had seen online. But when you looked at the driver’s side, something was clearly wrong: Gregory Sarvas’ limp left leg was hanging out the open door. Ren continued through the sequential photos and focused on the car’s interior and the melting corpse of Gregory Sarvas. He was a big man with a full gray beard; more lumberjack than lawyer. He was dressed in a pale blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and beige shorts to his knees. He was slumped across the passenger seat, his face turned toward the glove box. The gun had been fired point blank through his left temple. The hole ripped in his skull was filled with flies. The windscreen was spattered with red, like an exploded dye tag.

      The next photo was of the back seat, an eerie reminder of the two people now missing. It was an incomplete picture of a terrible day.

      Ren wondered what the chronology was. Did Luke and Michael Sarvas watch their father die? Did someone tell them to run before it happened, so that they wouldn’t have to? Did one of the boys pull the trigger? Did they plan this together? Are they lying dead somewhere else? Are they on a beach in Rio?

      The last photo attachment was of the two boys. Luke Sarvas, the seventeen-year-old, had a surfer-dude look, messy blond hair, tanned, healthy, lean, smiling. His arm was resting around fifteen-year-old Michael’s shoulder. They were so clearly related, yet styled by a different hand. Michael was brown-haired, wore metal-rimmed glasses and had a more reserved but genuine smile as he looked up at his brother. The only concession to his age was a black long-sleeved T-shirt with skulls down one of the sleeves. Luke and Michael Sarvas looked like regular, happy kids.

      Ren often wondered about mothers and whether their instincts about missing children were right. She had so often heard them say ‘I know he’s still alive’ or ‘I know she’s still out there’ even when there was no evidence, even when years had passed. Was it instinct? Was it denial? Or was it just hope? Fathers would usually stand quietly by, slow to

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