She managed a throaty “Yes,” but didn’t sound like she meant it.

“I’ll be down soon,” Sam said, planting a gentle kiss on her cheek.

She tried to force a smile onto her face before she turned and headed down the hall. I didn’t know her well enough to know whether her dread over her long march was generated more by her niece’s illness or was residue of her ancient feud with her sister.

I said, “Sherry’s lost weight, Sam.”

“She’s ripped up by this. Chaney. Merritt. Having Brenda in town. It’s been hard.” He looked down the hall at Sherry. “You said Lucy told you about the extortion attempt? The phone call?”

“Yes, she told me. Anything new on it?”

“No more calls. Let’s face it, if it was the two kids, they’ve had a little falling out since then. Brad’s a proven asshole, by the way. His last two girlfriends both say he hit them.”

I wasn’t surprised. “Brad may follow through on the extortion on his own.”

“If he’s stupid enough to do that, everybody’s ready for him this time.”

“Do they know what the videotape was? The one he beat Madison with?”

“They’re still piecing it together. So far, it looks like it was a badly recorded copy of Pretty Woman, taped straight off the network, commercials and everything. All the other videos in the RV were the commercial versions. You know, store bought. And no, I don’t know what that means.”

“Anything else?”

“No. You leaving the hospital?”

“Not yet. I have some paperwork to take care of upstairs in the psychiatric unit.”

“I’ll go with you. See if I can read something over your shoulder.”

I said, “Fine. You learn anything new about the threats that were being made?”

He puffed out one cheek and arched his eyebrows. I didn’t know what it meant. But he didn’t answer my question. I figured that he’d tell me when he had something and when he was ready. No sooner.

We had an elevator to ourselves on the way upstairs. I said, “This has to be hard for Sherry. The visit, I mean, coming here.”

“Yeah, sure is. It needed to happen, though-seeing her sister and the kids. Sherry’s been on the outside of this too long.” He paused a moment, enough to scratch under his nose. “Listen, your empathy’s real sweet and everything, but, uh, things you don’t know about are getting goofy. Nothing’s making much sense to me anymore about Merritt and…”

His voice faded as the electronic chime announced we had reached the third floor. No one entered.

Sam faced me again when the doors closed. “See, it turns out that Merritt was not only in Dead Ed’s house, she was also in Dead Ed’s RV.”

“What?”

The doors opened at the fourth floor and I followed him out. I yanked him into an unoccupied room that had two empty cribs in it and repeated, “What? She was in the damn RV? What the hell was she doing in the RV?”

“I don’t know. When we did the search of her bedroom in her house-you know, after you found the bloody clothes?-we found an earring in the trash can under her desk. Just one, a little silver cross. Didn’t make much of it. Till now. Because it turns out the other one was in Dead Ed’s RV.”

“What?”

He examined me critically. “Great questions you’re asking. You suffer some brain damage since I saw you last? I could use some thoughtfulness here.”

I realized that by my stupefied reaction to his news, I had just demonstrated clearly to him that my work with Merritt hadn’t covered the topic of any visits she might have made to Dead Ed’s Holiday Rambler. Sam hadn’t impinged on his niece’s confidentiality at all and he knew exactly what he had come to find out from me.

“Fingerprints?” I asked.

“Yep. Plenty. Not matched yet, but they’ll be hers. You know where they found it? The earring?”

“No, where?”

“It had fallen down between the mattress and the headboard in the bedroom. Damn Winnebago has an actual bedroom, can you believe it?”

“In the bedroom?”

Sam shook his head at me disdainfully. I sat down. I wanted to protest his news. I desperately wanted to tell him that Merritt had just told me she hadn’t done it. That she had just gone over to Dead Ed’s house to beg for her sister’s welfare. That Dead Ed was already Dead Ed when she got there. That it was John Trent who had been there first.

That it was John Trent who had killed Dr. Edward Robilio.

But when I calculated in all the facts that Merritt wasn’t telling me I also realized that my faith in what she was telling me was rapidly diminishing.

Sam recognized that I was in the midst of some kind of internal struggle. He said, “What? What aren’t you telling me, Alan? Has she started talking to you?”

I said, “You know I can’t say, Sam. If she has started talking, telling anyone about it would shut her up in a second. You know that.”

He slapped the wall so hard I was surprised he didn’t crack it. “God, I hate this crap. This is my goddamned niece we’re talking about.”

“I know. You’re not alone, Sam. Right now, I hate this crap, too. She’s downstairs with her sister. Go see for yourself if she’s talking.”

“This is bullshit. I’m going to go find Sherry.”

“Good luck.”

“Piss on that. I’d need less luck if you would just tell me what the hell you know.”

With that, he headed out.

Five minutes later he had himself buzzed onto the adolescent psych unit. He found me in the nursing station struggling to write a chart note that said something without saying anything. He said, “Sherry’s still with Brenda. Merritt’s talking to Chaney. I don’t want to interrupt them. You almost done here?”

“Couple more minutes.” Sam was calm, even conciliatory. I mistrusted the change I was seeing.

He said, “Good, I want to show you something. You don’t mind?”

“No.” I finished up my note and renewed some orders and followed him to the elevator. I was surprised that he hit the button that would drop us off at the hospital lobby, not the second floor ICU. I didn’t bother asking him where he was going.

His department car was parked in a fire zone near the main entrance. We climbed in and he drove in silence, south for a while, then east across Colorado Boulevard at Sixth Avenue and south again on Birch. The neighborhood we entered is called Hilltop and is one of Denver’s finest.

He parked diagonally across the street from a huge house that had been squeezed onto its lot by a giant’s shoehorn. Sam killed his engine and doused the lights.

He pointed at the big stucco house with the faux Spanish railings and said, “Why do I think I would have liked better whatever house was here before somebody scraped it off and knocked down all the trees and built that monster?”

I said, “I don’t know, but you’re probably right. It certainly doesn’t fit in the neighborhood.” Given how distrustful I was of his mood, at that moment I probably would have agreed with him even if he was contending that Darwin was full of shit.

Sam grew silent.

I was anxious. I said, “Given their meeting tonight, this might be a good time to tell me about Sherry and Brenda, Sam. I may need to know.”

He made a noise with his throat before he said, “First time they’ve talked in, what, shit, how old is Merritt?”

“Fifteen.”

“Maybe sixteen years, then. Merritt’s important because Merritt’s father, her biological father, the oil-rig guy? He was actually Sherry’s fiancé before…well-”

“Oh.”

“Sherry says Brenda seduced him, stole him, whatever. Brenda would probably say different. Doesn’t matter now. Whatever it was, it was goofy, right?”

I digested the news. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. What can I say? Sherry holds a grudge. I’ve tried to tell her that the consolation prize wasn’t so bad.”

“You mean Simon, of course.”

“Funny, Alan.” Sam’s voice shifted an octave lower. It busted into my reverie. “Homeowner’s name across the way is Terence Gusman, Dr. Terence Gusman. Ring a bell?”