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photographer.”
    â€œTime was this?”
    â€œAfter I got to the office. Little after ten.”
    â€œHe was focused on the footbridge?” said DiMarco.
    â€œEverything, really,” said Bloom. “Start to finish, the whole campaign stop.”
    â€œHow long was he on the phone?”
    Bloom stood up, energy rekindled. The work phone stored records of inbound calls.
    â€œA minute, two maybe,” said Bloom. “Hard to remember but not long.”
    â€œThe voice?” said DiMarco.
    â€œDeep,” said Bloom. “But chit-chatty like an excited tourist.”
    â€œName?”
    â€œI don’t remember it or if he said.”
    â€œHang on a second,” said DiMarco.
    They had printed details of Lamott’s planned campaign stops in the paper. Not much had changed in terms of timing or logistics. Was there some other detail the caller had been after? Bloom wracked his brain. The swirl of events was thick. Bloom recalled the routine note-taking prior to the shot and his brief chat with Trudy Heath. That calm moment put the alluring Allison Coil, Trudy’s pal, back in his thoughts in delicious fashion. Then there was Lamott’s canned speech and he had followed Lamott up on the bridge. And then everything was a blur and he was swallowed whole by the whale-sized moment and plunged into a dark, busy blur of questions, digging and writing that had consumed the last eight hours. He knew it was the biggest news event he had ever covered. The steps were all the same as every other story, but the intensity factor was off the charts.
    â€œYour office closed?” said DiMarco.
    â€œI can get in.”
    â€œYou going to need us to have a warrant?”
    â€œWe’re cooperative,” said Bloom. “If there’s nobody down at the office, I’ll call and check with the upper-ups. I suppose this can’t wait until morning.”
    â€œNo,” said DiMarco. “Time is the enemy. And she’s growing fangs.”

six:
monday morning
    Morning cracked open the day.
    Allison walked the well-worn path from her A-frame across the open field to Trudy’s place, tucked next to a grove of trees but in a spot that could catch sunlight during the day, at least in the summer. Colin led the way on the narrow, winding path that cut through the field.
    A finger of smoke rose from Trudy’s chimney. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze. The agenda was simple—lead authorities to the torn-up body near Lumberjack Camp. Sulchuk and the others all had commitments and couldn’t return to the site.
    They had managed to raise a cell and contact the police around 8 p.m. The 911 dispatcher had been thorough and detailed when Allison made the report, passing her off to someone to go over all the particulars again. The cop mentioned the shooting in Glenwood Springs and that explained why they were so short-handed. Allison couldn’t imagine it. The news explained her dispatcher’s somewhat harried state. The half-corpse was bad and unsettling enough—
Allison still felt certain that the mountain lion scenario held no credibility—but trying to imagine the attempted assassination was a double whammy.
    â€œSmell anything yet?” said Allison.
    â€œBacon,” said Colin. “The fake stuff.”
    â€œI’d eat a picture of bacon,” said Allison.
    â€œI’d eat the camera before it took the picture,” said Colin.
    Regular grocery store trips had not yet become part of their domestic—Allison hated the word—routine.
    â€œOne of us is going to have to maybe settle down and get that damn little house in order,” said Allison.
    It was a running joke. Theirs was a match made deep in the woods and it worked. One of the reasons was that they both shared the notion that keeping house, cleaning house, repairing house, enjoying house, or thinking house was low on the list of priorities. It was nice to have a bed, for all