“Just scream. I’ll keep the motor running. We can be there in thirty seconds.”
Marilyn checked her watch. 1:30 A.M. Thirty minutes before the designated meeting time. “Let’s get me wired,” she said. “I need to get going if I’m going to get to Rusch before Duffy does.”
Amy looked at her with concern. She had definitely noticed the look on Marilyn’s face when Jeb had made the innocent comment about the submarine races. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” asked Amy.
“Sure. This will be just fine.”
Amy squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, but it unsettled Amy. The touch was very unlike Marilyn. It was remarkably weak.
“I hope so,” said Amy, her eyes clouded with concern.
Across the dam, on the opposite side of the canyon, Ryan and Norm waited in the Range Rover. The phone rang. Norm answered it on the speaker.
Dembroski’s voice boomed inside the truck. “Hey, it’s Bruce. I finished that handwriting analysis you asked for.”
Norm snatched up the phone, taking him off speaker. Ryan grabbed the phone back and cupped his hand over the mouthpiece so Dembroski couldn’t hear. “Norm,” he said in an accusatory tone, “what’s he talking about?”
“Bruce was trained in handwriting analysis when he was with the CIA. I asked him to compare the handwriting samples we have for Debby Parkens. The letter she wrote to your father. And the letter she wrote to her daughter — the one Amy gave you.”
“Great. So now he knows Marilyn Gaslow is involved.”
“No. I blocked out her name in the letter.”
“What the hell did you do this for, Norm?”
“Because I don’t want to see you get killed out here tonight, all right? I was hoping that if Bruce could tell you the letter was fake or genuine, maybe that would be enough for you.”
“I didn’t come all this way to turn around and go home.”
“Humor me. Let’s just listen to what he has to say.”
Ryan calmed his anger, then nodded once. He placed the phone back in the holder. Norm put the call back on speaker. “You still there, Bruce?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, this was pretty quick. I’d like to study them some more.”
“Yeah, yeah. What’s your gut reaction?”
“My gut says the letter is genuine. Meaning that whoever wrote this letter to Amy Parkens also wrote the letter to Frank Duffy.”
Ryan and Norm looked at one another.
“But,” said Dembroski, “I’m somewhat troubled by a couple things in the second letter — the letter to Frank Duffy.”
“What?” asked Ryan.
“The wording is a little off, for one thing. People tend to have a way of expressing themselves in letters. I see different word choices, different turns of the phrase in these two letters.”
“That’s probably because the one letter is written to my father and the other one is written to her seven- year-old daughter.”
“That’s a good point,” said Dembroski. “But then there’s the matter of the shaky penmanship. The handwriting in the letter to your father is a little unsteady.”
Norm asked, “What do you make of that?”
“Could be a lot of things. She could have been drunk. Could have been tired. Or — it could be something else.”
“Like what?” asked Ryan.
“This is a wild guess. But you take the shaky handwriting and combine it with the awkward phraseology, and I can offer one theory. She wrote the letter to your father, all right. But not of her own free will.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying somebody could have told her what to write. Forced her to write it.”
“You mean someone had a gun to her head?”
“Yes,” he said. “Quite literally.”
There was silence in the truck. Ryan glanced at Norm, saying nothing. Norm picked up the phone.
“Thanks, Bruce. If you can, stay by the phone tonight, just in case.”
He hung up, then looked at Ryan. “That sure opens some new possibilities.”
“Not really. It’s a wild theory, if you ask me. And even if she was forced to write it, that doesn’t mean it’s false. Seems to me I’m in the same place I’ve always been. The letter isn’t dispositive. Only Marilyn Gaslow can tell me if my father raped her.”
“I’m thinking beyond rape.”
“Huh?”
“Take a worst-case scenario. Let’s say Debby Parkens was forced to write a letter saying Frank Duffy was innocent. Say the letter was false, which means your father really was a rapist. Say her death wasn’t a suicide, meaning that somebody conveniently got rid of her. There’s only one person who had motive to make her write that letter. And in my book, that leaves one prime murder suspect.”
Ryan stared blankly, stunned at the thought of his father as a murderer.
Norm asked, “You sure you want to go down this road tonight?”
“Now more than ever.” He opened the door and stepped down from the truck.
Norm stopped him. “Take this,” he said, offering his cell phone. “You get into trouble up there, you call.”
Ryan gave a mock salute, then started toward the dam.
65
Nathan Rusch was lying in wait. A cluster of gray boulders offered protection and concealment. A black Nomex body suit made him part of the night. Perched on a rock formation that overlooked the dam, he had a clear view of the entire area. He could see the parking lot and both entrances from the north and south ends of the dam. With a crest length of 670 feet — 1,100 including the spillway — the dam connected the steep canyon walls that had been separated by thousands of years of erosion. Behind it was the Cheesman reservoir, a man-made vessel for over 70,000 acre-feet of rain and melted mountain snow. The glowing moon glistened on the mirrorlike surface. Rusch was close enough to hear the water flowing into the South Platte River hundreds of feet below. No water ran through the dam. Foresighted engineers had instead tunneled through the natural canyon walls adjacent to the dam to preserve the structural integrity of their man-made wonder. The highest opening was more than 150 feet above the stream. With the valve open, water shot from a hole in the granite wall like water from a hydrant, cascading down into the river. From above, it was a peaceful background noise, like a running stream in the forest.
His weapon was fully assembled. The rifle was the sleek AR-7, lightweight and accurate. It wasn’t cut for a night scope, but with a little ingenuity the ridge on top easily accepted one. The thirty-shot clip was filled with hollow-point ammunition. The silencer was his own creation, made from a ten-inch section of an automobile brake line, common PVC tubing, fiberglass resin and a few other materials that could be purchased at any hardware store. It was cheap and disposable, two priorities in a profession where ballistic markings made it advisable to use your equipment only once and then grind it into dust.
He checked his watch. Phase one of his plan should already have unfolded. Considering the short notice, the exploding briefcase had been a stroke of genius. Setting the lock to the same combination Liz had testified to in court was an especially convincing touch. His only regret was that he couldn’t be the fly on the wall when Liz and her greedy lawyer popped it open and blew themselves to bits.
Now, phase two was only minutes away.
He raised his infrared binoculars and canvassed the parking lot. Only one car in sight. Marilyn’s Mercedes. He estimated it was forty yards away, exactly where he had parked it, well within range with his three-to-six-powered
