At Least They're Committed

Sassy, blond and enigmatic, Tripping Raul could hardly be labeled excited for her Labor Day weekend alone at the Von Bitchen Mansion in a remote area of downtown Denver. She was, in fact, ecstatic. Tawdry novels, chapter writing, hot baths, wine and bad movies were all cued up. Walks in the hills on Saturday, tea and cucumber sandwiches for one on Sunday, watching the parade from the mansion balcony on Monday. It was her time. Alone.

It wasn’t until Tuesday morning that the mansion gardener found Tripping Raul’s twisted, broken body on the cobblestone below her fourth-floor bedroom window, her corpse partially devoured by the foraging wolves so prevalent in downtown Denver, her eyes — had they not been pecked away by crows — facing skyward, remnants of cloth from the curtains that flapped in the wind above her head were clasped in her dead hands.

Less than an hour after the gardener’s macabre find, Denver Police Special Investigator Lanny Johnson crouched next to the body, which lay face up and nearly 10 feet from the window from which she fell  . . . or was pushed. Two things were clear at the outset, he thought, rolling the red ash from the historic courtyard between his thumb and forefinger: the mysterious Tripping Raul had not committed suicide and, whether she knew it or not, she had not been . . . alone.