The Theresa Lofton murder was inevitably compared to the Black Dahlia case of fifty years ago in Los Angeles. In that case, a not so All-American Girl was found severed at the midriff in an empty lot. A tabloid television show dubbed Theresa Lofton the White Dahlia, playing on the fact that she had been found on a snow-covered field near Denver’s Lake Grassmere.
And so the story fed on itself. It burned as hot as a trash-can fire for almost two weeks. But nobody was arrested and there were other crimes, other fires for the national media to warm itself by. Updates on the Lofton case dropped back into the inside pages of the Colorado papers. They became briefs for the digest pages. And Theresa Lofton finally took her spot among the little murders. She was buried.
All the while, the police in general, and my brother in particular, remained virtually mute, refusing even to confirm the detail that the victim had been found in two parts. That report had come only by accident from a photographer at the Rocky named Iggy Gomez. He had been in the park looking for wild art—the feature photos that fill the pages on a slow news day—when he happened upon the crime scene ahead of any other reporters or photographers. The cops had made the callouts to the coroner’s and crime scene offices by landline since they knew the Rocky and the Post monitored their radio frequencies. Gomez took shots of two stretchers being used to remove two body bags. He called the city desk and said the cops were working a two-bagger and from the looks of the size of the bags the victims were probably children.
Later, a cop shop reporter for the Rocky named Van Jackson got a source in the coroner’s office to confirm the grim fact that a victim had come into the morgue in two parts. The next morning’s story in the Rocky served as the siren call to the media across the country.
My brother and his CAPs team worked as if they felt no obligation to talk to the public at all. Each day, the Denver Police Department media office put out a scant few lines in a press release, announcing that the investigation was continuing and that there had been no arrests. When cornered, the brass vowed that the case would not be investigated in the media, though that in itself was a laughable statement. Left with little information from authorities, the media did what it always does in such cases. It investigated the case on its own, numbing the reading and television-watching public with assorted details about the victim’s life that actually had nothing to do with anything.
Still, almost nothing leaked from the department and little was known outside headquarters on Delaware Street; and after a couple of weeks the media onslaught was over, strangled by the lack of its lifeblood, information.
I didn’t write about Theresa Lofton. But I wanted to. It wasn’t the kind of story that comes along often in this place and any reporter would have wanted a piece of it. But at first, Van Jackson worked it with Laura Fitzgibbons, the university beat reporter. I had to bide my time. I knew that as long as the cops didn’t clear it, I’d get my shot at it. So when Jackson asked me in the early days of the case if I could get anything from my brother, even off the record, I told him I would try, but I didn’t try. I wanted the story and I wasn’t going to help Jackson stay on it by feeding him from my source.
In late January, when the case was a month old and had dropped out of the news, I made my move. And my mistake.
One morning I went in to see Greg Glenn, the city editor, and told him I’d like to do a take out on the Lofton case. That was my specialty, my beat. Long takes on the notable murders of the Rocky Mountain Empire. To use a newspaper cliché, my expertise was going behind the headlines to bring you the real story. So I went to Glenn and reminded him I had an in. It was my brother’s case, I said, and he’d only talk to me about it. Glenn didn’t hesitate to consider the time and effort Jackson had already put on the story. I knew that he wouldn’t. All he cared about was getting a story the Post didn’t have. I walked out of the office with the assignment.
My mistake was that I told Glenn I had the in before I had talked to my brother. The next day I walked the two blocks from the Rocky to the cop shop and met him for lunch in the cafeteria. I told him about my assignment. Sean told me to turn around.
“Go back, Jack. I can’t help you.”
“What are you talking about? It’s your case.”
“It’s my case but I’m not cooperating with you or anybody else who wants to write about it. I’ve given the basic details, that’s all I’m required to do, that’s where it stays.”
He looked off across the cafeteria. He had an annoying habit of not looking at you when you disagreed with him. When we were little, I would jump on him when he did it and punch him on the back. I couldn’t do that anymore, though many times I wanted to.
“Sean, this is a good story. You have—”
“I don’t have to do anything and I don’t give a shit what kind of story it is. This one is bad, Jack. Okay? I can’t stop thinking about it. And I’m not going to help you sell newspapers with it.”
“C’mon, man, I’m a writer. Look at me. I don’t care if it sells papers or not. The story is the thing. I don’t give a shit about the paper. You know how I feel about that.”
He finally turned back to me.
“Now you know how I feel about this case,” he said.
I was silent a moment and took out a cigarette. I was down to maybe half a pack a day back then and could have skipped it but I knew it bothered him. So I smoked when I wanted to work on him.
“This isn’t a smoking section, Jack.”
“Then turn me in. At least you’ll be arresting somebody.”
“Why are you such an asshole when you don’t get what you want?”
“Why are you? You aren’t going to clear it, are you? That’s what this is all about. You don’t want me digging around and writing about your failure. You’re giving up.”
“Jack, don’t try the below-the-belt shit. You know it’s never worked.”
He was right. It never had.
“Then what? You just want to keep this little horror story for yourself? That it?”
“Yeah, something like that. You could say that.”
In the car with Wexler and St. Louis I sat with my arms crossed. It was comforting. Almost as if I were holding myself together. The more I thought about my brother the more the whole thing made no sense to me. I knew the Lofton case had weighed on him but not to the point that he’d want to take his own life. Not Sean.
“Did he use his gun?”
Wexler looked at me in the mirror. Studied me, I thought. I wondered if he knew what had come between my brother and me.
“Yes.”
It hit me then. I just didn’t see it. All the times that we’d had together coming to that. I didn’t care about the Lofton case. What they were saying couldn’t be.
“Not Sean.”
St. Louis turned around to look at me.
“What’s that?”
“He wouldn’t have done it, that’s all.”
“Look, Jack, he—”
“He didn’t get tired of the shit coming down the pipe. He loved it. You ask Riley. You ask anybody on the—Wex, you knew him the best and you know it’s bullshit. He loved the hunt. That’s what he called it. He wouldn’t have traded it for anything. He probably could have been the assistant fucking chief by now but he didn’t want it. He wanted to work homicides. He stayed in CAPs.”
Wexler didn’t reply. We were in Boulder now, on Baseline heading toward Cascade. I was falling through the silence of the car. The impact of what they were telling me Sean had done was settling on me and leaving me as cold and dirty as the snow back on the side of the freeway.
“What about a note or something?” I said. “What—”
“There was a note. We think it was a note.”
I noticed St. Louis glance over at Wexler and give him a look that said, you’re saying too much.
“What? What did it say?”
There was a long silence, then Wexler ignored St. Louis.
“Out of space,” he said. “Out of ti
me.”
“ ‘Out of space. Out of time.’ Just like that?”
“Just like that. That’s all it said.”
The smile on Riley’s face lasted maybe three seconds. Then it was instantly replaced by a look of horror out of that painting by Munch. The brain is an amazing computer. Three seconds to look at three faces at your door and to know your husband isn’t coming home. IBM could never match that. Her mouth formed into a horrible black hole from which an unintelligible sound came, then the inevitable useless word: “No!”
“Riley,” Wexler tried. “Let’s sit down a minute.”
“No, oh God, no!”
“Riley . . .”
She retreated from the door, moving like a cornered animal, first darting one way and then the opposite, as if maybe she thought she could change things if she could elude us. She went around the corner into the living room. When we followed we found her collapsed on the middle of the couch in an almost catatonic state, not too dissimilar from my own. The tears were just starting to come to her eyes. Wexler sat next to her on the couch. Big Dog and I stood by, silent as cowards.
“Is he dead?” she asked, knowing the answer but realizing she had to get it over with.
Wexler nodded.
“How?”
Wexler looked down and hesitated a moment. He looked over at me and then back at Riley.
“He did it himself, Riley. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t believe it, just as I hadn’t. But Wexler had a way of telling the story and after a while she stopped protesting. That was when she looked at me for the first time, tears rolling. Her face had an imploring look, as if she were asking me if we were sharing the same nightmare and couldn’t I do something about it. Couldn’t I wake her up? Couldn’t I tell these two characters from a black and white how wrong they were? I went to the couch, sat next to her and hugged her. That’s what I was there for. I’d seen this scene often enough to know what I was supposed to do.
“I’ll stay,” I whispered. “As long as you like.”
She didn’t answer. She turned from my arms to Wexler.
“Where did it happen?”
“Estes Park. By the lake.”
“No, he wouldn’t go—what was he doing up there?”
“He got a call. Somebody said they might have some information about one of his cases. He was going up to meet them for coffee at the Stanley. Then after he . . . he drove out to the lake. We don’t know why he went there. He was found in his car by a ranger who heard the shot.”
“What case?” I asked.
“Look, Jack, I don’t want to get into—”
“What case?” I yelled, this time not caring about the inflection of my voice. “It was Lofton, wasn’t it?”
Wexler gave one short nod and St. Louis walked away shaking his head.
“Who was he meeting?”
“That’s it, Jack. We’re not going to get into that with you.”
“I’m his brother. This is his wife.”
“It’s all under investigation but if you’re looking for doubts, there aren’t any. We were up there. He killed himself. He used his own gun, he left a note and we got GSR on his hands. I wish he didn’t do it. But he did.”
2
In the winter in Colorado the earth comes out in frozen chunks when they dig through the frost line with the backhoe to open up a grave. My brother was buried in Green Mountain Memorial Park in Boulder, a spot not more than a mile from the house where we grew up. As kids we were driven by the cemetery on our way to summer camp hikes in Chautauqua Park. I don’t think we ever once looked at the stones as we passed and thought of the confines of the cemetery as our own final destination, but now that was what it was to be for Sean.
Green Mountain stood over the cemetery like a huge altar, making the small gathering at his grave seem even smaller. Riley, of course, was there, along with her parents and mine, Wexler and St. Louis, a couple dozen or so other cops, a few high school friends that neither Sean nor I nor Riley had stayed in touch with and me. It wasn’t the official police burial, with all the fanfare and colors. That ritual was reserved for those who fell in the line of duty. Though it could be argued that it was still a line-of-duty death, it wasn’t considered one by the department. So Sean didn’t get the Show and most of the Denver police force stayed away. Suicide is believed to be contagious by many in the thin blue line.
I was one of the pallbearers. I took the front along with my father. Two cops I didn’t know before that day, but who were on Sean’s CAPs team, took the middle, and Wexler and St. Louis were on the back. St. Louis was too tall and Wexler too short. Mutt and Jeff. It gave the coffin an uneven cant at the back as we carried it. I think it must have looked odd. My mind wandered as we struggled with the weight and I thought of Sean’s body pitching around inside it.
I didn’t say much to my parents that day, though I rode with them in the limousine with Riley and her parents. We had not talked of anything meaningful in many years and even Sean’s death could not penetrate the barrier. After my sister’s death twenty years before, something in them changed toward me. It seemed that I, as the survivor of the accident, was suspect for having done just that. Survived. I am also sure that since that time I have continued to disappoint them in the choices I have made. I think of these as small disappointments accruing over time like interest in a bank account until it was enough for them to comfortably retire on. We are strangers. I see them only on the required holidays. And so there was nothing that I could say to them that would matter and there was nothing they could say to me. Aside from the occasional hurt-animal sound of Riley crying, the inside of the limo was as quiet as the inside of Sean’s casket.
After the funeral I took two weeks of vacation and the one week of bereavement leave the paper allowed and drove by myself up into the Rockies. The mountains have never lost their glory for me. It’s mountains where I heal the fastest.
Headed west on the 70, I drove through the Loveland Pass and over the peaks to Grand Junction. I did it slowly, taking three days. I stopped to ski; sometimes I just stopped on the turnouts to think. After Grand Junction I diverted south and made it to Telluride the next day. I kept the Cherokee in four-wheel drive the whole way. I stayed in Silverton because the rooms were cheaper and skied every day for a week. I spent the nights drinking Jagermeister in my room or near the fireplace of whatever ski lodge I stopped in. I tried to exhaust my body with the hope that my mind would follow. But I couldn’t succeed. It was all Sean. Out of space. Out of time. His last message was a riddle my mind could not put aside.
For some reason my brother’s noble calling had betrayed him. It had killed him. The grief that this simple conclusion brought me would not ebb, even when I was gliding down the slopes, the wind cutting in behind my sunglasses and pulling tears from my eyes.
I no longer questioned the official conclusion but it had not been Wexler and St. Louis who had convinced me. I did that on my own. It was the erosion of my resolve by time and by facts. As each day went by, the horror of what he had done was somehow easier to believe and even accept. And then there was Riley. On the day after that first night she had told me something that even Wexler and St. Louis hadn’t known yet. Sean had been going once a week to see a psychologist. Of course, there were counseling services available to him through the department, but he had chosen this secret path because he didn’t want his position to be undermined by rumors.
I came to realize he was seeing the therapist at the same time I went to him wanting to write about Lofton. I thought maybe he was trying to spare me the same anguish that the case had brought him. I liked the thought that that was what he was doing and I tried to hold on to that idea during those days up in the mountains.
In front of the hotel room mirror one night after too many drinks, I contemplated shaving my beard off and cutting my hair short like Sean’s had been. We were identical twins—same hazel eyes, light brown hair, lanky build—but not many people realized that. We had
always gone to great lengths to forge separate identities. Sean wore contacts and pumped iron to put muscle on his frame. I wore glasses, had had a beard since college, and hadn’t picked up the weights since high school basketball. I also had the scar from that woman’s ring in Breckenridge. My battle scar.
Sean went into the service after high school and then the cops, keeping the crew cut as he went. He later got a CU degree while going part-time. He needed it to get ahead in the department. I bummed around for a couple of years, lived in New York and Paris, and then went the full-time college route. I wanted to be a writer, ended up in the newspaper business. In the back of my mind I told myself it was just a temporary stop. I’d been telling myself that for ten years now, maybe longer.
That night in the hotel room, I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time but I didn’t shave off my beard or cut my hair. I kept thinking about Sean under the frozen ground and I had a crushed feeling in my stomach. I decided that when my time came I wanted to be burned. I didn’t want to be down there under the ice.
What hooked me deepest was the message. The official police line was this: After my brother left the Stanley Hotel and drove up through Estes Park to Bear Lake, he parked his department car and for a while left the engine running, the heat on. When the heat had fogged the windshield he reached up and wrote his message there with a gloved finger. He wrote it backward so you could read it from outside the car. His last words to a world that included two parents, a wife and a twin brother.