At 11:22 AM, the twin General Electric T700 turboshaft engines of the unmarked, midnight-blue Bell 412EP helicopter crested the jagged granite rim of North Table Mountain at one hundred and forty knots.
The aircraft rode sixty feet above the rocky scrub, its four-bladed composite rotor disc carving the thin Colorado mountain air into concussive, low-frequency pressure waves that rattled the loose gravel in the dry arroyos below: *WHUFF-WHUFF-WHUFF-WHUFF.
*
I sat in the port-side crew jumpseat, strapped into a five-point nylon harness that bit into my collarbone.
I was not wearing my torn, blood-stained dress shirt from Vanguard.
Detective Sergeant Marcus Vance had cut the fabric away from my right arm inside the hangar at Centennial Airport, swabbed
