“That’s not true,” he says. “Their investigation was pretty thorough. But this guy was slick, and he never targeted two people in the same metro area. So I had to make a lot of phone calls to figure out where he’d been. I called Denver PD on a hunch, because there are so many army bases nearby. I asked if they had any cases like this. And a smart detective said no, but he’d heard about one up in Erie…”
I force more oxygen into my lungs. “Wow. That seems fortuitous.”
“It was. I’m sorry to make you relive all this, but he’s going to be prosecuted. He’s going to do time. I’ll make sure you’re kept in the loop.”
“I really appreciate that.”
“Before I go, I just need your statement,” he says. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Great,” I say. Leaves plenty of time for my breakdown.
He pulls out a pad of paper and a pen.
Forty-Seven
Perfectly Understandable
Beck
I leave the team’s elimination soccer game to take Forest’s call.
“Are you sure you’re okay to talk?” is the first thing he asks.
“Totally sure.” We’re only ten seconds into this call, but I can already hear how rattled Forest is. “Talk to me.”
“You’re not playing tonight, are you?”
“Not a chance. Not even suiting up. Tell me what happened, Forest.”
He takes a shaky breath and then gives me a disjointed data dump. The FBI agent. The photos. Army guys. A federal prosecution.
“That’s a lot,” I say quietly after he stumbles through the details. “You okay?”
“Of course I am,” he says. “They caught him.”
“I get that.” But you sound like a guy who just walked away from a car accident who doesn’t realize he’s going to have whiplash. “It’s about time.”
We talk for another few minutes, and then he goes back to his shift, and I watch the seven p.m. game against Anaheim from the press box. Zack Walcott plays brilliantly and gets a shutout. Lucky bastard.
After, we fly back to Boulder, landing after one a.m. I get into my Jeep and start the engine. My suite in Boulder is only a ten-minute drive away on empty nighttime roads, but I’m picturing Forest in his darkened bedroom, alone with all his thoughts. I turn left out of the parking lot and head toward Erie.
Beck
You still up? You okay?
Forest
Yes and yes. Just a lot on my mind.
Come open your front door.
Wait. Really?
I knock. Loudly.
The door flies open fifteen seconds later, and a half-naked lumberjack in flannel pajama pants pulls me into his brawny arms.
I gather his warm body against mine and let out a long sigh. This is already worth the pain I’m going to feel when my alarm goes off in a few hours. “You okay, really?”
