The Edge of Justice (11 page)

“Hey, you want to climb with me sometime? Lynn knows how to share.” I wonder what she means by that but a part of me doesn't want to know.

“I won't be climbing much for a few days,” I say, but also tell her that maybe I'll give her a call sometime after I sort all this out. We both know I won't.

At the door she smiles up into my eyes and bends a little to shake my hand. Her other hand holds the folds of her robe together down near her waist. The top of it falls open, revealing one perfect white breast with a rose tattoo around the nipple. I don't hear her close the door right away as I walk back down the stairs to my truck at the curb.

I find the old ranch house far out on the west side of town across the railroad tracks that divide Laramie. The division is economic and aesthetic as well as geographic. On the east side is the small downtown area of rustic brick buildings and the tree-lined streets and nicer homes around the university. But here to the west there are fields with horses and cows that separate the homes. The streets are unpaved and without traffic signs, and the homes are made of cinderblocks and worn wood with blue tarps that sag out over patios. There is a strong odor of manure in the air. Oso intently watches the cows from the backseat, swishing his tail at my head.

In the police reports, Brad had listed this house as his address. It's also the business address of Heller Carpentry. There is a yard at the end of a dirt driveway with three cars in it. One is an abandoned-looking pickup without wheels and resting on its axles, another is an aging Jeep with stickers from climbing companies covering the back windows, and the third is a nearly new Ford van with oversize wheels. I get out behind the van and feel the strong west wind blow up and through my untucked flannel shirt. I have to hold the tail with one hand to keep my gun concealed.

The two-story house is almost as dilapidated as the wheel-less pickup in the yard. The paint has long since worn off the wooden siding, and the porch seems to dip and roll as if it's being lifted by waves. A green glass bong stands in plain sight by a camp chair. Not seeing a doorbell, I bang on the door with my fist. I can hear a phone's insistent ringing beyond it.

A few moments later the door is opened by Bradley Karge. He looks both sleepy and stoned. His blond dreadlocks are in disarray, snaking out in all directions. He stares at me without recognition. “What's up?”

“I met you the other night. At the bar, with Lynn. My name's Anton Burns.”

“Oh yeah, man, I remember. Guy who'd put up some routes in Alaska or something. Billy'd heard about you.” His eyes are glazed and shot with red. “You goin' climbing, or what?”

“I just want to talk to you for a minute. Actually, I'm a cop and want to ask you some stuff about Kate.” As I speak I give him a flash of my badge.

Brad's mouth drops open for an instant, then he whips his head toward the house's interior. He starts to close the door. “Shit, I can't talk about that right now. You better get the fuck out of here, man.” The way he says it makes me think he's more afraid than threatening.

“I'm not here to hassle you about dope or anything,” I say quickly, “I just want to talk about her and what happened that night.”

I can hear a phone slam down and heavier steps fast approaching the door, booming on the worn pine floors. Had Cindy called to warn them that I'm a police officer and asking questions? The door is jerked back open and Billy Heller pushes past Brad. He towers shirtless in the doorway, his blunt jaw pushing toward my face. I take an involuntary step back. His shoulders are the size of bowling balls and beneath them his lats stand out like the edges of some meaty fan. The skin on his chest and face is entirely hairless. Looking into the bigger man's eyes, I see the pupils are tiny dark holes. He's tweaking on something. Hard.

“Get the fuck off my property, cop. Get the fuck off now.”

“I want to talk—”

“You don't start running, I'm going to throw your ass off.”

He comes through the doorway until his chin is almost jutting against my forehead and I step back again. I feel the boil of blood start in my chest, a familiar roaring in my ears. Time slows as my concentration focuses on only the man, with the rest of the world beginning to disappear. Something about this guy really pisses me off. And despite his immense size, I have no fear. I was only scared for a brief moment. Then the thrill, the risk, it pushes through the fear. It's the same wild rush and concentration that soloing gives me, that drugs give my brother.
La llamada del salvaje,
as my mother would say. Or a call to the grave with someone as strong and crazy as Heller.

“You touch me and I'm going to throw you down for obstruction,” I tell him, my voice distant and low to even my own ears as I stare up into the red eyes above the sweating face. I can see that his synapses are firing contradictory instructions. I watch a decision being weighed in a mind that is artificially scrambled. I wait for his conclusion to attack, ready to cut him to the floor with a turning kick at his knees. Thinking ahead, I see myself pulling my Glock out from the small of my back and ramming it into his nostrils. Then a small gleam of reality penetrates the roaring in my head. Amped from the drugs, it will take a bullet in the brain to stop him once it begins. And my gun isn't loaded—it hasn't been for eighteen months. Not since Cheyenne. So I step back again, hating it, and begin moving almost sideways down the steps and toward my truck, keeping watch on the big man in case he decides to make a move.

“We'll be talking,” I say to Brad, “and you and I too,” I say to Billy. “Whether you want to or not.”

“I'll jack you up if you come back on my land, cop,” Heller yells with triumph in his voice at my retreat. “I'll shoot you like a trespasser, motherfucker. You stay the fuck away from me and Brad.
And you stay the fuck away from Lynn.
”

I keep my eyes locked on Heller's as I get in my truck and slam the door. Oso is rumbling like a train from where he squats on the passenger seat with his snout pressed hard against the glass. I only break my gaze from Billy to back down the drive, but Oso's fierce amber eyes never waver. Billy stays on the porch, grinning now as he watches me pull away.

THIRTEEN

F
IRST OF ALL,
I want to know why you're willing to talk to me. I asked around and heard you've always refused to give interviews,” Rebecca Hersh says. I can tell that she's trying to lock me into talking about the shooting with her, as if I'd made a promise. But all I agreed to was coffee.

I first came across her on my way back to the room at the Holiday Inn. She was sitting by the pool with some other reporters in the shade of an umbrella that the wind was threatening to launch into the air. Her pale skin glistened from exercise, and her cheeks were tinged pink just below her eyes. She was dressed in a pair of Lycra shorts and a tank top. A pair of running shoes was at her side and her feet looked cool where she dipped them in the chlorinated water. I waved to her as I went by. She surprised me by walking over and asking if I would get cookies and caffeine with her at a shop by the railroad tracks called Coal Creek Coffee. She was waiting for me there, showered and dressed, when I walked into the café a little later.

She's changed into brown silk slacks and a black shirt with a Chinese collar. Her leather jacket is hung over the back of her chair. As I order a cup of pesticide-free Chilean roast and an oatmeal muffin, she studies me with mahogany eyes framed by dark hair. Once again, she takes my breath away.

Sitting across the table from her, I try to quit staring and focus on her question. Am I willing to talk with her just because she attracts me so much? That's really pathetic, I think, but it may be true. Among the other psychological injuries it inflicted, the shooting robbed me of my confidence, and I realize I'm desperate for positive attention. And lately I seem to be letting pretty girls manipulate me. But just as my spirits have been rejuvenating since my return to this part of the state, I hope to rediscover the confidence that was taken from me. For too long I've been replacing it with a bitter depression. I want to talk to her and let out the poison that still flares within me.

But I don't tell her that. Instead I just say, “I'm tired of toeing the office line, saying ‘No comment.' That just gives you reporters the chance to take the other side all the way—there's nothing to balance it with.”

She thinks about that for a minute and nods, understanding.

“So, I hear you used to live in Laramie,” she begins.

I can't help laughing. “Interrogation 101,” I say, replying to her quizzical look. “They must teach you the same things at journalism school that they do at the police academy. You know, first lock the subject into talking with you, then make him comfortable by starting with comfortable subjects. Their background and all that . . . I'm surprised you didn't bring along a partner to play the bad cop.”

She blushes a little, then laughs too. I'm pleased to see her professional journalist's mask slip a little. So I go ahead and talk to her about growing up at all the far-flung military bases my father was stationed at. About my maternal grandfather's ranch in Argentina, which from rare visits there was the only permanent home I had ever known. About my mother, who is Spanish and Pampas Indio, and my father, whose parents came to the States from Scotland. About college at Berkeley and my master's degree in criminal justice from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her technique is flawless; she reels it all out of me as easily as coiling a rope. Every now and then she fits in details about her own past as we talk. Her father became a professor of economics after he served with Ross McGee in Korea. She went to college at Smith and then journalism school at Columbia. She tells me she is an avid distance runner and asks about the risks of alpine climbing.

I explain to her that climbing isn't as deadly a sport as people think. In all of North America, only about fifty climbers died in the last year. Over the two decades of my own climbing career, I know just a half-score of friends and acquaintances who've cratered. But just because death by climbing is somewhat rare doesn't mean it's unknown or even unfamiliar. Cheating Death is the very essence of the sport; Death is always watching you when you're on the rock.

“I don't get it,” she says, repeating Jones's question from the morning. “Why risk anything at all? Why not accept the slow, easy pleasure of a long run or something like fishing?”

A hundred books and articles have been written on the subject, like Mallory's famous quote: If you have to ask the question, you won't understand the answer. The best I can do is to tell her, “Because you have to. Once you do it, once you experience the thrill of putting it all on the line with all that air beneath your heels, you can't stop. It's an addiction, really. It becomes like a hunger in your stomach.” I tell her about my mother's theory,
la llamada del salvaje.

“I think I'll stick to running. Did you become a cop for the excitement too?”

“That, and the usual cop's need for justice and order. A therapist I was made to see after the thing in Cheyenne said there's been so much disruption in my life that I have an urge to control those around me. And there's the competitiveness—I can't stand the thought of someone getting away with something, you know, hurting someone and then just walking away. I have a hard time letting it go, but that's something I'm working on.” I have never come to terms with a system based on the principle that it is better to let a hundred guilty people go free rather than wrongfully convict one innocent person. It's okay for people to be victimized again and again as long as no one is mistakenly locked up.

As we talk her hands are on the table, one holding the pen as she scribbles the occasional note, the other securing the pad. Her quick fingers look strong for such a slender woman, the nails unvarnished. “I bet some of the same things made you want to be a reporter,” I tell her. “Maybe you should try climbing.”

When she laughs she slowly shakes her head and her hair drifts back and forth across her cheeks.

After our coffee and snacks are delivered, she begins questioning me about that night eighteen months ago, and I feel the bitterness I'd forgotten over the last few minutes rising up again. She does it in a sympathetic tone, with a pretense of total understanding. We both know I'm being played, but I let it happen. I tell her everything that happened, from my confidential informant's sobs to the final gunplay itself. She murmurs, “You must have been terrified” and “How awful” at all the appropriate times.

When I have told her all I can about that night, she asks, “Will you get in trouble for talking with me?”

I shrug. “Maybe. But I guess I don't care all that much. McGee might be mad, but then again, he seems to like you.” I can still imagine him, though, roaring, “You what!” when I tell him I've given a complete interview. Then he'll chastise me, about how what I say to anyone can be used against me when I testify. I know it's good advice; these are the things my lawyer should tell me but is too inexperienced and afraid of me to say.

“I had the
Post
e-mail me all the clippings. I read that there was some talk of charging you.”

“Yeah, a few people in the AG's Office wanted to prosecute me criminally. Still do. A lot of politician types and community activists too. For murder or at least manslaughter. It would be good politics—get the minority vote, you know? If it'd happened in any other state, any state with a larger minority population, they'd have hung me out to dry from the start. Ross McGee saved my ass by refusing to do it. He even threatened to resign if the office pursued it. And thank God my mom's Hispanic.”

“So tell me about the civil suit. How did that come about?”

I tell her that I doubt it was the idea of the Torreses or the other families. They knew those three would die either from a bullet or in prison. Sure, they want revenge, especially the surviving sons and the other gang members whom I'd betrayed. But they want a more primal vengeance than just dollars. They want me six feet under and they want it to take a while. She already knows about the attack from the little brother yesterday. I tell her the suit came about as most of them do—a shark of an attorney, Mo Cash, saw an opportunity and went to the parents with it. His take will be forty percent of whatever is recovered.

Initially I hadn't cared about the money, as they were seeking it only from the office, believing a lowly state employee like me couldn't have much. I was more worried that a civil verdict against me would result in the murder charges being filed. And about the damage it would do to my professional reputation. Of course, after all the media attention there wasn't a whole lot left of it to degrade. And then Cash and his associates discovered the trust fund my grandfather had left me, and now I could lose it all. Everything, really. My job, my inheritance, and my freedom.

“In the clippings I read, it seems there's one columnist in particular who has it out for you—Don Bradshaw of the
Cheyenne Observer.
He's the one who called you all those names.”

“Yeah,” I say, “rogue cop, QuickDraw, and all that. I really hate that guy. You know I once arrested his son for selling ecstasy to schoolkids? He went out and hired Mo Cash to try and get him off. And Cash got him a good deal too, a deferred judgment, thanks to all his connections and despite my screaming and moaning. Keep that in mind when you read Bradshaw's stuff. Tell me if you see him around—I'd like to say hello.” The asshole had even printed in one column that my brother was in prison for manslaughter, and that my father, as a Special Forces soldier, undoubtedly had taken lives himself. He'd called us a family of killers. But I suspect politeness overcomes Rebecca's journalistic, predatory instincts for a good quote and she doesn't mention my brother.

I tell her about the summary judgment hearing next week and my unrealistic hope that the whole thing will be thrown out then. My lawyer isn't promoting that hope. For a motion for summary judgment to be granted, dismissing the case, there must be no material facts in dispute. And the question of self-defense versus murder is a large one.

After a few more minutes it seems like the interview is over. She snaps the cap back on her pen and puts away her legal pad. I'm disappointed but try not to show it. I realize how much I've been enjoying her company. Although I've been through a number of women over the past eighteen months, I can't recall a single conversation. I'd used their flesh, not their minds. So I decide to give Rebecca Hersh a gift.

“In the spirit of cleansing my soul here,” I tell her, “I'll give you what might be a scoop on the Knapp brothers if you promise not to print or speak a word of it until McGee clears it.”

She promises, “Absolutely off the record,” and holds up three fingers in a Girl Scout's salute.

So I tell her about the methamphetamine connection, the bottle, and the ligature abrasions on Kate Danning. Her eyes light up like she has a fever.

Through the café's big windows I see it's thoroughly dark outside. The caffeine causes a rumble in my stomach and I ask her if she will have dinner with me. She comes back to earth with a startled look at her watch. She tells me no, she's late for a preplanned dinner with friends. For a moment, unjustifiably, I picture her telling them about how she had coffee with a murderer, one who even had the moxie to ask her for a date. But then I try to persuade myself that I see some reluctance in her eyes as she pulls on her leather coat. Before she leaves she asks if she can have a rain check.

It's Friday night. I have nowhere to go, nothing to do. For a moment I consider calling Kristi in Cheyenne, seeing what she's up to and if she would like to drive over. But I push that urge away. I like her too much.

On the way back to the motel I buy a bottle of tequila and another of lime juice from one of Wyoming's drive-thru liquor stores, then a large cheese and pepperoni from Grand Avenue Pizza. I fill a water bottle with the hotel's ice and mix in the Herradura and juice. Oso gets the pizza crusts but I don't share the rough margarita. I feel like I need the release of the liquor tonight before I drive down to see my brother tomorrow. I need to deaden my anxiety, and I know from too much experience over the last eighteen months that a tequila hangover will do that for me—put a hazy buffer between reality and me. A cowboy movie is playing on the TV but I ignore it while making notes on my laptop computer of the day's findings.

I'm well into my second quart-size bottle and the pizza is half gone when there's a hammering on the door. My face is numb from the tequila, and I have to glance down to make sure I'm still dressed. Looking through the peephole at first I can't see anyone. But then at the bottom of the wide-angled circle there is Lynn, her dirty blonde hair across her face in the evening wind. She looks angry.

When I pull the door open she shoves me hard in the chest with both hands. I hope Rebecca Hersh or her friends aren't around to see this.

“You're a fucking cop!” she says, coming in after me. “A goddamn narc!”

With a lucky snatch through the tequila haze, I grab her wrists as she raises them to push me again, and twist her onto the bed. She fights it, bringing up a sharp knee that's viciously aimed at my crotch. I turn one hip to the side just in time.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hang on, let me explain.” I try to calm her. Her breath is hot on my face. She squirms her small, strong limbs beneath me in an effort to get free.

Finally she stops struggling and I feel safe enough to get up and sit in the chair. I know the “But you never asked” explanation doesn't stand a chance. So I tell her the truth—that I climbed with her because I wanted to, not as part of any investigation. And I prove it with the evidence that I hadn't pressed her to talk about Kate. And until this afternoon, I go on, I didn't even know she'd been up there that night. There was no mention of her presence in the police reports. There's still anger in her eyes but she seems to accept what I say. “Look, I don't care if you smoke a little pot, just don't do it around me. As long as you aren't selling it, I don't care. You're an adult. I'm not going to arrest you.”

Suddenly she laughs. “You're drunk,” she says. “You reek of tequila.”