Point of Law

by Clinton McKinzie

  “We’ve been ordered back to the meadow,” I say.

  My father doesn’t reply as we get in my truck with Oso. I maneuver the truck back and forth on the narrow Forest Service road, trying to turn around. The whole time, Deputy Timms stands close, his burnished wood weapon still in his hand. It takes four or five shifts between first gear and reverse while spinning the steering wheel before I get the truck pointed back up-valley. I pop the clutch and press the gas pedal a little too hard, sending a small spray of dirt onto the deputy’s boots and uniform trousers. In the rearview mirror, I see him giving me the finger.

  Up ahead the sun is finally rising over Wild Fire Peak, putting an end to this nightmarish night. But the day is not looking like it’s going to be any better.

  “You look like you got some more bad news,” I say.

  He looks straight ahead and grunts once in acknowledgment. How much worse could it be than having your drug-addict son arrested for a crime he didn’t commit?

  “Was it Mom?”

  Dad exhales loudly in what could be a sigh. There’s a long pause before he answers. “No, Antonio, it wasn’t your mother. It was work—they’re calling me back. There’s a situation in Bosnia. It hasn’t been released on the news yet, but a helicopter crashed behind Serbian lines with four Americans aboard. They want me at my desk today, and maybe on my way to the Balkans tonight.”

  The truck bounces over a series of ruts, filling the interior with the sounds of metallic rattling. In the backseat Oso sneezes in the dust that’s coming in the open windows. I realize I’m gripping the wheel with unnecessary tightness. I look over at my father’s rigid face.

  “Did you tell them you’ve got a situation right here?”

  He pauses again before answering. “No, son, I didn’t. Your brother’s safe enough for a few days. Safer, anyway, than on the loose.” And we both know it won’t do any good to tell his superiors about this new family problem; it would only result in another black mark in his official file.

  But even understanding that, a new anger warms my blood. Roberto needs you here. I need you here. Whatever happened to all those years of preaching that family comes before all else? That we Burnses need to stick together, support one another through hard times? It is a concept he’d drilled into us as children, the same as he’d drilled us to always double-check our knots. In these last few years we’ve all been forgetting to do what’s necessary to keep each other alive. And there’s no time we’ve needed one another like right now.

  “So you’re going?”

  “I’ve got to.”

  I don’t look his way again as we pull into the meadow.

  SIXTEEN

  THE TOMICHI COUNTY Courthouse is a rambling three-story brick building that looks as if it’s been added to as the county has grown. At both ends of the main building are single-story prefabricated additions of cheap wood painted white. According to a sign near the complex’s front, it houses a multitude of city and county offices as well as the courts and the county jail. When I circle the block looking for a parking space, I notice a small recreation area on the other side with a bent, netless basketball hoop that’s surrounded by several chain-link fences topped with razor wire. I wince when I see that sad hoop and the cracked and weedy asphalt around it. I can’t stand the thought of my brother being in such a place. I’ve got to get him out.

  Feeling irate and exhausted and a little bit scared, I find a parking spot to one side of the main building and walk bleary-eyed to the big glass doors at the front. According to my watch it’s eleven o’clock. Neither my father nor I had even tried to sleep. As dawn came, and while the deputies were still messing around with my brother’s enormous motorcycle and its saddlebags, looking for a potential murder weapon and other evidence, Dad and I brewed oatmeal and coffee. We didn’t speak much. I was gorged with recriminations I wanted to snarl at him for leaving Roberto and me. And I imagine he was probably feeling a fair amount of guilt, which was all right with me. I could tell he was also angry.

  When he threw out the last of the coffee from the pot, he flung it far out over the grass in the direction of the searching deputies. It splashed close to their boots. They started to challenge him on it but were unable to hold his silent, cold glare. My brother must have hidden his drug stash in the woods because the deputies left without any signs of excitement.

  I dropped my father off at the Tomichi airport before heading for the courthouse. From there he would catch a feeder flight to Denver and then on to Washington, D.C. He could be in Bosnia by the end of the day. Or stuck at his desk at the Pentagon. Both places a thousand or more miles away. His phone had rung incessantly, so much so that he had to plug it into my truck’s adapter.

  Our parting conversation hadn’t gone any better than when he’d first told me he had to leave.

  “Whatever you do, Ant, don’t bail him out,” he said to me.

  “What are you talking about? Of course I’m going to bail him out.”

  He shook his head and stared out at the other people unloading at the airport’s curb. “They’re going to set it high, you know. Because of his history.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got the money that Papa left me.” I was referring to a generous trust that my mother’s father, a prominent rancher in Argentina, had left Roberto and me upon his death a couple of years ago. It’s something I never touched.

  “Think about it, son. A condition of any bail will be no further crimes, no drug use, those sorts of things. You know that better than me.”

  In Wyoming, suspects on bail are monitored by something called “Court Services.” Defendants with histories of drug or alcohol abuse are required to take weekly urine tests. If they “drop a hot UA,” their bond is revoked. If they miss an appointment, their bond is revoked. If they get in a fight, their bond is revoked. And the bail money is forfeit. I suspect Colorado employs the same monitoring system. There’s no doubt it won’t take Roberto long to run afoul of it.

  “I’ll think about it.” I knew he was right but didn’t want to admit it. All I could focus on was how pissed I was that he was leaving us and flying back to Washington. A part of me knew he had no choice, that he must obey his orders, but I couldn’t help feeling like he was abandoning Roberto just when he needed Dad the most. Dad’s past lectures about family loyalty played over and over again in my head.

  Bullshit.

  The security guards in the courthouse lobby eye me suspiciously when I come in. I remember that my face is still lumpy from the beating I took in the meadow. When I touch my cheek self-consciously, I feel a heavy growth of whiskers from more than two weeks now without shaving. And although I’m wearing the nicest clothes I could find amid the climbing gear in the back of my truck, the rent-a-cops don’t seem to regard sandals, grass-stained jeans, and a recently unwadded flannel shirt as the sort of clothes a law-abiding citizen would wear to court. I flip open my wallet and flash my Wyoming badge at them as I walk through the metal detector without stopping, ignoring its shriek. They don’t call me back.

  According to a map on the lobby wall, there are only two courtrooms in the building. The rest of it is a warren of city and county offices, including the sheriff’s and the district attorney’s. When I ask an elderly clerk where first appearances are made, she looks me up and down for a long moment. Without speaking she points at a large pair of wooden doors just off the lobby.

  I look through a small window in one of the doors before going through. Inside the courtroom my brother sits in the jury box. He’s dressed in orange coveralls, as are the four other men he’s chained to. The coveralls resemble hospital scrubs but for the color and the stenciled legend, “County Jail,” stamped on the chest. The clothes are stretched tight across his shoulders and biceps. A thin young man with a ponytail and a polyester suit is whispering to the five chained men while frantically scribbling notes on a legal pad. I guess that he’s the public defender, or, as cops and their clients alike often call them, the “public pretender.” Th
e only other people in the courtroom are two overweight deputies who stand guard at each end of the jury box.

  Everyone looks up at me when I come in through the swinging doors. Roberto smiles broadly. “Che,” he calls to me, “nice of you to come, bro. How long till you can get me the fuck out of here?”

  As I walk into the well of the court, I study my brother’s face. His skin appears sallow and tight after just four or so hours of captivity. The lines on his face are deeper. One eyebrow is bruised and swollen. His hair hangs in lanky strands around his face. He looks awful.

  “I don’t know, Roberto. Depends on what the judge says.”

  Then the nearer of the two overweight deputies says to me, “Step away from the prisoners, mister. Everyone but the lawyers has to stay in the gallery.”

  Trying to be affable, I show him my badge. “It’s okay. I’m a cop.”

  He squints at my badge from ten feet away. “Not here you aren’t. And we’ve already been warned about you—you’re the brother. Now get back.”

  I try to keep a hot rush of blood from coming into my face. “Look, my brother’s in here on a bullshit charge. I’d just like a few minutes to talk to him. I’d really appreciate it if—”

  “Get back now, asshole.”

  Before I can respond Roberto rises from his seat. The handcuffs that link him to the men on each side raise their arms with him. He twists his head to look at the deputy. Although his mouth is smiling, his eyes are not. Nor are his words. “Don’t talk to my little bro like that, you fat fuck.” From the eyes and the tone, I know Roberto is on the verge of stepping over the edge again and doing something really self-destructive. The anger I’ve been feeling choking up on me drops like a bad meal to my belly and is replaced by a helpless concern.

  Both deputies have started moving across the back row of the jury box toward him. The one who hadn’t spoken to me has his radio to his lips. He’s saying something, perhaps calling for reinforcements. The public defender backs away.

  “Sit down, Roberto! Shut up,” I say to him. “Don’t make this worse. Please.”

  The deputy who’d called me an asshole slips what looks like a electric razor out of a leather holster. A stun gun. The prisoners around Roberto are grinning nervously at the deputy, unsure what to do, and unsure whether they’ll feel it through the chains if Roberto is zapped.

  “Please, bro.”

  With another smile and a short toss of his head at the approaching deputy, Roberto turns and sits.

  The deputy stands behind him with his stun gun in his hand. It’s half-raised and ready to descend on the back of my brother’s unprotected neck.

  I speak quickly to the guards, “You touch him with that and you’re finished. He’s a witness”—I point at the public defender—“and he can see that Roberto’s not resisting in any way.”

  The deputy with the stun gun looks at the young attorney, who has stopped beside me and is bravely staring back, although the pages of his legal pad flutter in his trembling hands. The deputy then looks at the other orange-clad prisoners, several of whom are twisted in their seats watching him, too.

  The guard with the radio says to him, “Don’t do it, Joe.”

  He backs off to where he’d been standing at one end of the jury box when I first walked in. “One more remark like that and I’ll take your head off,” he says to Roberto.

  My brother ignores him. Instead he smiles at me with what he intends to be an innocent schoolboy’s grin.

  I sit on a hard wooden spectator bench. The ponytailed attorney cautiously steps back up to the jury box’s rail and begins whispering again to the prisoners and writing on his legal pad while the deputy with the stun gun and I exchange glares.

  After a few moments the public defender comes over and introduces himself as Tony Allison. I immediately peg him as a True Believer, one of the defense attorneys who are certain that the criminal justice system is one of evil repression and that cops and prosecutors are its satanic minions. And for the first time in my life I’m feeling a little bit of the same.

  In Wyoming, public defenders and defense attorneys in general are my professional enemies. They’ll do anything to try to get their clients off on whatever charges I have filed against them. Even when they know I have played by the rules, they will try to trip me up on the witness stand to make me look dishonest. They’ll call me a liar to the judge or the jury even when it’s they who are doing the lying. But despite that, there are a few attorneys in Wyoming I like, even admire. They are the True Believers, the ones who are utterly convinced that every client is a scapegoat to society’s woes. I have the same pity for them that I have for all other True Believers—fundamentalist Christians, militant environmental activists, and the men and women who are devoted to climbing and nothing else. It isn’t just pity, but also a little bit of envy in that they can always be so certain they are right.

  With the True Believing defense attorneys on my cases in Wyoming, I take it as a challenge to uproot the foundations of their faith. Like many other cops I know, I go out of my way to show them just how fair and honest and nice I can be. One had even paid me what I considered a high compliment. “I hate it when you’re the investigating officer on one of my guys, Burns,” he’d said. “Give me a scumbag cop any day.”

  Tony Allison, with his cheap suit, long hair, and wispy beard, has the look of a True Believer. He’s probably fresh out of law school, where he undoubtedly spent three years being indoctrinated by radical professors about the terrible injustices of the criminal justice system. And now I like him for it, because in this case I agree.

  “Mr. Burns, I’m not likely to handle anything but the preliminary stages of your brother’s case,” he says a little shyly. “Although I’ll probably get to sit second-chair. With a murder charge and all, my office will bring in someone with more experience for the hearings and trial. And that’s only if your brother qualifies.” He means that the Public Defender’s Office will only represent him if there’s no way for Roberto to borrow, beg, or steal the money to pay for his own lawyer.

  While my grandfather’s trust had been released to me, Papa had wisely put conditions on my brother’s before he passed away. My father and mother have to cosign for any release of funds. I don’t mention any of this to Allison, though. If I can clear my brother’s name quickly, it will never come to a trial, and for the time being I’m happy to have this eager young lawyer representing him.

  “He’ll qualify,” I say, knowing it’s unlikely Roberto will ever even mention the trust because he’d been so offended by its terms. “What exactly are they charging him with?”

  Allison shows me the affidavit for the warrantless arrest of my brother. The statement is brief, and signed by both the sheriff and the district attorney. It alleges that Roberto Burns, a man with a long history of violent behavior, fought and tried to flee when first approached by the sheriff and two deputies in close proximity to a murder scene in Wild Fire Valley. It continues to read that he had blood on his hands, and that his brother and father, Antonio Burns and USAF Colonel Leonard Burns, had both made admissions that the defendant had been away from their campsite for several hours near the time of the murder.

  My face reddens when I see my name on the paper. I’ve incriminated my own brother.

  Allison notices my mortification. He points at my printed name. “That doesn’t help, you know.”

  “I know.” I explain that he’d been right there in the camp, though, when we’d heard the scream. I also tell him that I didn’t have any choice but to tell the sheriff about Roberto’s absence earlier because I knew the sheriff would ask my father the same question, and that my father wouldn’t lie.

  “You don’t have to talk to anyone, Mr. Burns. You and your father don’t have to tell them anything.”

  “I know. I know.” I shouldn’t have cooperated with the sheriff. But I didn’t know they were going to finger my brother at the time. And for the three years I’ve been a cop, I’ve been outrag
ed every time a citizen has refused to cooperate with me. We’re all just after the truth, right? I think bitterly. But the worst part is I don’t really think the sheriff is consciously trying to frame my brother. If I’d been in his oversized cowboy boots, I probably would have done the same thing based on the evidence at hand.

  “The blood’s going to be a problem, isn’t it?” Allison asks.

  I realize he thinks my brother did it. And why not? Ninety-nine percent of his clients are guilty.

  “No, the blood is what’s going to exonerate him. He didn’t do it, Tony. We were rock climbing yesterday. His hands got cut up. How long does it take to check the blood around here?”

  He looks at me kindly but disbelieving, used to hearing protestations of innocence from a client’s relatives. “Well, they have to send the samples to the state lab in Grand Junction. And that’s once they get a sample from the victim’s autopsy. A couple of days to a week. But it really doesn’t matter, because even if the blood on his hands doesn’t match, they’ll still hold him until the preliminary hearing, which could be weeks or even months away. Because he resisted, and because of his record.”

  I sink back on the hard wooden pew. The thought of my brother in jail for weeks to months brings back that claustrophobic pressure I’d felt earlier. Trying to gather my thoughts, I explain to the lawyer about the argument I’d seen Fast have with Cal prior to the brawl in the meadow. I tell him about Cal getting punched in the nose and the fire he’d almost certainly lit at the structure Fast was building on Wild Fire Peak. And I tell him that Fast had to have a good idea it was Cal who’d done it, the way Cal had strode defiantly out of the trees flicking his lighter just as Fast was leaving the meadow. “Fast has all the motive in the world to kill this guy. My brother has none.”

  Allison doesn’t look convinced. “Look, Mr. Burns, I know you’re a cop, and that I probably don’t need to tell you this, but motive doesn’t mean anything. It’s not an element of any crime. The only people who care about motive are jurors, and believe me, the state will think of some motive to tell them in a year or so when this thing goes to trial.”