"My brother fucking killed himself!"

I said it too loud. It had a quality of hysteria to it that I knew never worked with cops. You start yelling and they have a way of shutting down, going cold. I continued in a subdued voice.

"I think I am entitled to know what happened and why. I'm not writing a fucking story. Jesus, you guys are…"

I shook my head and didn't finish. If I tried I thought I would lose it again. I gazed out the window and could see the lights of Boulder coming up. So many more than when I was a kid.

"We don't know why," Wexler finally said after a half minute. "Okay? All I can say is that it happens. Sometimes cops get tired of all the shit that comes down the pipe. Mac might've gotten tired, that's all. Who knows? But they're working on it. And when they know, I'll know. And I'll tell you. That's a promise."

"Who's working on it?"

"The park service turned it over to our department. SIU is handling it."

"What do you mean Special Investigations? They don't handle cop suicides."

"Normally, they don't. We do. CAPs. But this time it's just that they're not going to let us investigate our own. Conflict of interest, you know."

CAPs, I thought. Crimes Against Persons. Homicide, assault, rape, suicide. I wondered who would be listed in the reports as the person against whom this crime had been committed. Riley? Me? My parents? My brother?

"It was because of Theresa Lofton, wasn't it?" I asked, though it wasn't really a question. I didn't feel I needed their confirmation or denial. I was just saying out loud what I believed to be the obvious.

"We don't know, Jack," St. Louis said. "Let's leave it at that for now."

The death of Theresa Lofton was the kind of murder that gave people pause. Not just in Denver, but everywhere. It made anybody who heard or read about it stop for at least a moment to consider the violent images it conjured in the mind, the twist it caused in the gut.