Nobody could remember when the Grand Canyon had been so hot. For six days the daytime temperature hovered near 120, and at night, 100 degrees was as cool as it got.
Many hikers, who had prized reservations at a place 4,000 feet below the rim and close to the Colorado River, decided to go elsewhere.
Before the sucking heat had descended, a group of six has gone down — a couple and four single friends. They had all been put in an eight-bunk cabin and soon became friends. After days of swimming, hiking and partying, the group decided to come out of the canyon together, at first light.
As they are about to leave, they’re approached by a shirtless young man in flip- flops, asking if they have seen the girl he had been with. A few members of the group had talked to her the night before — she was gregarious and very pretty — but they haven’t seen her this morning. The man said they had pitched a tent; when he woke up, she was gone.
There is some uneasiness about whether the group should stop and search. She couldn’t just disappear, they said. There was no place to go except some treacherous paths hugging the river, and those were reserved for “the reckless, depressed, or self-destructive. Or drunk.”
If they wait around, it will be sweltering, and there is no fresh water available on this route. The default leader of the group, Eric (a new lawyer), pressures everyone to move along. One of the women tells him she had seen him talking to the missing girl the night before, and asks what the deal is. Eric denies the encounter, leaving that a mystery.
During the camping trip, Eric’s girlfriend had become quite aware that a woman named Lisa was flirting (successfully) with Eric. Eric starts the climb, but the group soon splits — some want to look for the lost young woman.
That little perplexing drama is the beginning and the ending point for Boulder author and former psychologist Stephen White’s 16th novel, “Dead Time.” Each novel features Alan Gregory (also a psychologist) to some degree. This outpouring of mysteries certainly qualifies as a series, but each book can be a stand- alone. During the course of the books, Gregory courted Lauren Crowder, a deputy district attorney, married her and they had a daughter.
In this latest book, their marriage is a little shaky, and they are questioning many things. One of their ongoing challenges is that Lauren has multiple sclerosis; it can quickly drain her energy, but both of them try hard to be sure she’s rested, and she’s usually her spirited self.
In “Dead Time,” the couple is apart most of the time. Lauren decides to take their daughter to Holland to search for a daughter she had given up at birth. Her name only comes up when Gregory finds himself attracted to several women and wonders what he’s doing.
His narcissistic ex-wife, Meredith, a glamorous TV producer, takes center stage. She returns to Boulder because Adrienne, a friend who lived across the road from them when she and Gregory were married, had been killed in a bombing in Israel. After the memorial service in Boulder, Meredith pulled Gregory aside and told him she was pregnant and engaged to a rich and rather famous man named Eric. The diamond she flashed at him was as large as an extra-strength Tylenol, he noted.
Adrienne’s will specified that Gregory and Lauren be guardians for her son Jonas, a youngster they had watched grow, and whom they adored. He had been with his mother when she was killed, and Gregory flew to Israel to bring the boy and his mother’s body back to Boulder. Jonas was truly an orphan; his carpenter father had been murdered a few years before.
Adrienne’s brother Marty challenges the custody arrangement. Lauren and Gregory dig in — they love Jonas and know him as well as anyone. Marty pushed, but the two finally agree Jonas can spend a few weeks in the summer with his aunt and uncle, who lived in New York. Gregory, in his typical caretaking way, flew out with Jonas and stayed nearby to be sure everything was OK.
One day, during the visit, Meredith calls and asks for a favor. She wants Gregory, and his friend and detective Sam Purdy, to do some sleuthing. She explains that she lost the baby she had been pregnant with and the couple decided to use a surrogate. Eric had come up with Lisa’s name, from what he always called “the Grand Canyon incident,” because she had been a surrogate for her half-sister and he apparently had kept in touch with her.
With a little hesitation, no real knowledge of what that incident had been about, and much investigation of Lisa’s activities and past, Meredith agreed. The pregnancy was going well, and Meredith was keeping close tabs on the woman who would have their baby. One morning, when Meredith arranged to have brunch with her, Lisa didn’t show. By the next day, after calling everyone she knew, Meredith was frantic.
Lisa had vanished and nobody knew where she was.
Most chapters are from the viewpoint of either Gregory or his ex-wife, and there’s much delving into their psyches — and flashbacks to their marriage. This is obviously a book that focuses on the “inside” as much as it does the action. Gregory is a psychologist, after all, and we see what’s going on through his trained eyes. Everyone has a story-behind-the-story, motives that Gregory needs to ponder, mixed messages that must be sorted out, or a past with secrets.
Plenty of strings are left dangling for a next book. You can’t beat this for both psychological delvings and for tearing-around excitement, where something else is always about to happen. And even though Gregory always has mixed feelings about Boulder, he returns there to find peace.
Diane Hartman is a principal in hartmanand , a media-consulting business.
Fiction
Dead Time, by Stephen White, $25.95
