“Are you sure he's dead?” she asked.
“Everything didn’t go according to plan.”
Sharon smiled. “You look like you’re in one piece,” she said.
Gary shrugged, his attitude remarkably casual for a man who’d just killed another. “I got some bumps and bruises.”
He reached deep into his pocket and brought out a circle of gold. It was Glen's wedding ring, taken off the bedroom bureau as proof that he had been in the house and done as he had promised.
Sharon took the ring and regarded her lover with mock skepticism.
“Are you sure he was dead before you started the fire?”
“Yes. There was smoke coming from the windows, I didn’t see any flame, but I wasn’t going back in.”
He also returned the key and the map. Sharon put the key back on her key ring and threw the map into the fireplace, a small flash of light illuminating their faces as the slip of paper burned to ash.
Gary said that he made it look like a burglary by scattering some coins around her dead husband.
He even remarked that he had to change a tire on the way up to Thornton.
Sharon wanted to make love. She said she wanted to hold her mountain man, the Adonis of the Rockies, the sipper of her special sauce. She pulled Gary closer and ran her tongue over the salty areas of his muscular body. But nothing happened. Nothing stirred. Nothing stood to attention. Gary couldn’t get it up. Their passion had been extinguished like a birthday candle attacked by a fire hose.
Gary muttered how tired he was. He kissed Sharon and put on his Levis and shirt. They’d make love tomorrow.
And every night after that.
When Gary went back down to the Dude Ranch, he told his son he’d been out with friends. He was tired and he went to bed, the images of what he had done for love haunting him as he drifted off to sleep.
Jayne Schindler reached over to stifle the ringing of the telephone. She and her husband were still in bed when Ron Motley, a firefighter from Station 26, phoned to speak with her husband. The time of day and the brusque seriousness of his voice made it clear that his call was business-related.
Jayne sat up while she watched Jim's face.
“It can’t be,” he said. “Glen died in a fire…at his house?”
He repeated the words so that his wife could hear, but also so that they could sink into his no-longer-slumbering consciousness. His mind flashed to his last conversation with a troubled Glen. What had he wanted to say?
In a minute he got off the phone and faced his concerned wife.
“Suicide,” they both said. “Glen must have killed himself.”
A few minutes passed, and their dual first reaction went by the wayside as reason began to set in.
“No,” Jim said, “Glen wouldn’t do that. Something is wrong.”
Jayne agreed.
Both knew that the odds of someone trained in fighting fires actually dying in one had to be extremely remote. Motley had said that Glen had been found in the crawl space.
Perhaps he had changed his mind and had tried to get out?
“A seasoned firefighter doesn’t die in a fire in his own home,” Jim told his wife as he began to dial Chief Bob Snyder. “You crawl your way out. It's your house, you know where you are.”
Chief Snyder, who had been in on the early stage of the investigation, agreed with Jim Schindler's growing skepticism. The two conferred by telephone that morning.
“This doesn’t ring true,” Jim persisted. “Something is wrong. Investigate this thing.”
The chief assured him it was already being done. The arson squad was at Columbine and a meticulous examination of every inch of the charred house was underway.
Jim made another phone call to the police department; they agreed that something was up. In fact, they did not want it released that Glen's body had been discovered. Information that might lead to an arrest would be kept close to their vests.
His last call would be to Glen's first wife; the mother of his son and daughter.
It was the last person Andy Harrelson expected to connect with, but it was a nice surprise. When Jim Schindler phoned out of the blue that morning, Andy thought he was calling to catch up. She took a seat at the kitchen table and prepared for a leisurely chat. The couples had drifted apart after the divorce and Andy had missed the Schindlers.
“Have you heard about Glen?” Jim asked abruptly. His tone was soft, suggesting something had happened.
Andy felt a jolt. She braced herself. “What?” she asked, her heart sinking to a place lower than she thought possible. Something terrible had happened. She knew it, even before he said it.
“There was a fire in his house…”
The rest of the words would escape Andy Harrelson, but their meaning was clear. She gripped the phone and asked what hospital Glen was taken to.