Point of Law

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Did you disapprove of Sunny going out with him?”

  “Something like that.”

  Kim looks away again and I think I catch a flicker of irritation in the way she moves her head.

  It’s obvious she doesn’t want to talk about it. Unsure if it’s because of my too-personal questions or something else, I turn up the volume on the CD player. In a minute I turn it back down to ask, “What can you tell me about David Fast and his sidekick, Alf Burgermeister?”

  Kim sighs. Apparently this, too, is a topic she doesn’t want to discuss. But she answers my question.

  “David Fast’s family has been in Tomichi for more than a hundred years. He’s thirty-five years old, born and bred locally, attended my alma mater, the University of Utah, on a football scholarship, although he certainly could have afforded to go to school anywhere. The family had a lot of money back then.” She turns to me. “Like I told you before, he’s an arrogant prick who has led a charmed life. So far.”

  There’s a tight strain of anger in her voice. I wonder if it’s due to her personal dislike for the man or a general dislike for anyone who’s led a charmed life. For a moment I wonder if my own life appears charmed to her. It shouldn’t, not after she’s met my brother and seen what happened to him.

  “I say ‘so far’ because the ranching and timber industries have taken a lot of hits lately. And Fast has been spending what his parents left him on shiny trucks and a new house. He had to mortgage everything in order to buy the White River land, which he planned to use all along for blackmailing the Forest Service into the exchange for Wild Fire Valley. And he had to borrow more from people in town. I guess about half the important businesspeople in Tomichi are investors. And more than half of the city council. If the exchange doesn’t go through, he’ll lose everything. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

  Kim’s emphasis on him losing everything is strong. I glance at her and see she’s looking out the windshield. There’s a faint smile on her mouth as she contemplates the thought.

  “What about Burgermeister?”

  “He’s the guy they call Rent-a-Riot. Alf Burgermeister considers himself a consultant, but really he’s just hired muscle for antienvironmental groups all over the country. To find clients he holds clinics on how to harass the environmentalists into leaving your projects alone. He’s quite effective—you heard the stories the other night. The Feds think he was the one who planted a pipe bomb in the car of an Earth Firster a few years back. But they can’t prove it. Anyway, Fast brought him in when we began to protest the development at the public hearings held by the Forest Service.”

  I remember the jailhouse Aryan tattoos I’d seen on his arms. I’m willing to bet he has a prison record for something serious. I’m also willing to bet his interests aren’t limited to just antagonizing environmentalists.

  “And Sheriff Munik? What do you know about him?”

  Kim shrugs. “He’s a friend of Fast’s family. A distant cousin, too, or something like that. People say he’s clean, but you never know. When all the harassment started a few months ago, when Burgermeister came to town, I had a lot of talks with the sheriff. He said he talked to Fast and told him to cut it out. He probably did, too, because the harassment slowed a little for a while. Of course then it got worse as Fast got more desperate. Sheriff Munik wasn’t exactly proactive in finding out who was doing it—he certainly never made any arrests. When I asked him to come keep an eye on things during the rally the other day, he refused. I have the feeling that in a pinch, though, he’d probably do the right thing. Reluctantly.”

  Her assessment is pretty much the same as mine. I don’t bother asking her opinion of Deputy B. J. Timms—I know my brother correctly pegged him as an asshole at first sight.

  “Let me ask you something,” Kim says. “Tell me about Leonard, your father. What happened to him? How come he isn’t here with us?”

  “Do you mean trying to find Sunny or supporting the Tribe against Fast?” I reply, trying to be a little evasive.

  “Both.”

  It’s my turn to sigh at an unpleasant subject. “He won’t openly support the Tribe because he can’t. He’s an officer in the Air Force, and to get involved in a political action, particularly an environmental action, would just cause trouble with his superiors.” Even though it sounds like I’m understanding, I’m not. The people I admire most are those willing to throw away everything for a righteous cause. And my father, with his history in the valley, certainly should have a cause in saving the valley. I don’t mention what he’d told me that first day in the meadow, after Kim had tried to recruit him with me—that he believes it’s hopeless and therefore not worth fighting for.

  “As for why he’s not with us now—well, he had a major falling-out with my brother a few years ago. It had to do with some trouble Roberto got in and the effect it had on Dad’s career.” My voice sounds bitter even though I try to speak evenly. “He got a call from his work this morning, right after Roberto was arrested. And he flew back to Washington. I guess he decided his career was more important.”

  I glance over at Kim to see if she’s noticed the anger in my voice. She’s looking back at me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says simply.

  She looks like she’s on the verge of asking more, so I say quickly, “We should be in Page at about seven in the morning. I’d like to get a room and take a shower.”

  “Let’s see Sunny’s parents first, and hope she’s there.”

  “How about you go see them while I clean up?” My eyes are bleary from staring at the dotted white lines on the road and half-blind from the occasional stab of oncoming headlights. I rub the nearly two weeks’ worth of growth on my face and stroke the long scar on my cheek. “I don’t think I’m exactly presentable. And I don’t think I’ll be too sensible.”

  After a moment Kim reaches over and touches my arm. Her irritation is gone—her voice is now just tired and sad. “Please come,” she says. “You can take a quick shower before we go.”

  I feel that same electric tingle running through my skin.

  “Are you sure? You’d be better off on your own. Sunny doesn’t even really know me.”

  “I’ll need you there” is all she’ll say.

  She drops her hand from my forearm and plumps a jacket against the window as a pillow for her head. In minutes she’s asleep. With the music low, I try to think about anything but Cal’s battered body and my brother burning himself up alone in a cell. Surprisingly, it’s not impossible. My thoughts keep focusing on the woman at my side.

  The sun’s been up for an hour already when the narrow two-lane highway releases us onto the turnoff for Page. A high-pitched whine has been coming from the tires for so long that the deeper hum of a slower speed sounds strange. The truck’s reduced momentum makes Oso stand up in the rear seat and shake out his coat in the small space. The rattle of his collar in turn wakes Kim. At some point during the night, when the truck wound down into some canyons whose gentle turns had made it difficult for her to keep her head upright against the passenger window, Kim had put the jacket in my lap and then laid her head on it.

  “Do you mind?” she’d mumbled.

  I was surprised and pleased by the intimacy. “Not at all.” That action alone had removed any risk of me falling asleep behind the wheel.

  “We’re here,” I tell her when she sits up and rubs her single eye with a knuckle. “I’ll find a motel so we can get cleaned up.”

  Using the rearview mirror, Kim combs her short black hair in place over her bad eye with her fingers, while I assess the handful of motels that are scattered down the main street. One is a Best Western with a sign that reads, “Pets Welcome,” so I choose it. Out of concern that Oso may not be the kind of pet they have in mind, I park the truck just out of sight of the office’s window. “Be right back,” I tell Kim and the beast.

  Inside the office an elderly woman with bluish hair and too-tan skin looks me over. I smile as disarmingly as I can
and tell her by way of explanation as I touch my face, “Car accident.”

  “Ouch. It must have been a bad one,” she says kindly.

  “It was. Do you have a room for two people and a dog? Nonsmoking?” Coming in the door, I’d considered asking for two rooms but determined double beds would suffice. With my lap still warm from Kim’s head, I’m a little hopeful that one of the beds will go unused.

  “What kind of dog, sir?”

  “Oh, he’s sort of a Lab mix,” I lie. There’s nothing even vaguely Labrador-like about Oso.

  She tells me the only pet room available has a single king-sized bed. I take it reluctantly, wishing I’d brought Kim with me into the office so she wouldn’t think I’d planned it this way. The matronly woman explains the rates and that I have to pay for two nights as check-in isn’t until three in the afternoon. Even though we might not be here even one night, I’m too tired and too uncomfortable about the single bed to argue.

  The room is in the back of the building, overlooking a swimming pool. Despite the early hour the pool is already swarming with kids and watchful mothers. Their husbands and fathers are probably out powerboating or fishing on the lake. When I lead Oso to the room’s door on the short leash, the children are suddenly silent, awed. One young mother even stands and steps in front of her child as if to protect him from the sight of such an intimidating beast. My battered appearance probably doesn’t help, nor does Kim’s eye patch. I try my disarming smile again and say to her, “He’s harmless, really,” before hurrying Oso into the room. It didn’t look like she’d believed me.

  The room is large, spacious, and clean. As promised, there is an enormous bed as well as a long couch beneath the window. I toss a duffel bag onto the bed. Oso immediately shambles into the bathroom to drink from the toilet, but I call him back. Kim drops her small backpack on the bed beside the duffel. She gives my dusty bag a curious glance.

  Looking up, she sees me watching her in the bathroom mirror as I fill Oso’s bowl with water. She gives me an awkward smile. “In your dreams, kid,” she says, and then picks back up her pack and tosses it on the couch. “You’re paying, so I’ll take the couch.”

  I laugh. “Hey, I’m a gentleman. I always defer to my elders. I’ll take the couch tonight, if we’re still here.”

  Her smile fades, replaced by a look of concern. “Do you think we’re going to find her here?”

  “I don’t know. You know her a lot better than me. I’m just wondering if Fast and Burgermeister are here, looking for her, too. If they are, then it should confirm that they killed Cal.”

  “What will we do if we see him? I’d like to let Oso tear his lungs out.” The fierceness in Kim, what I’d seen that first time I’d met her in the meadow, makes a brief appearance. And I’m glad to see it. Her spirit is getting stronger. Just twenty-four hours earlier she’d appeared on the edge of a total breakdown. As much as I’d been touched by her grief, shock, and sorrow, I feel more comfortable with her when she’s acting tough. It makes me feel less guilty for wanting to kiss her every time I look at her damaged face. I wonder if I’ll ever get her mind on other things so that I have the chance. I wonder if she’ll kiss back.

  “I don’t know. Try and look inconspicuous, I guess. Follow him and see what he does. Call and tell Sheriff Munik, too.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be real inconspicuous,” she allows herself to joke. “A scar-faced man, a one-eyed woman, and a freaking bear.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  A SHOWER LATER we’re back on the road. I get my first glimpse of the huge man-made body of water when we turn off Lake Powell Boulevard and onto a smaller street that leads into the residential neighborhoods. The water is a brilliant blue beneath red and white sandstone cliffs. Islands, really massive buttes, rise directly out of the water. The lake’s surface is alive with the wakes of powerboats, Jet Skis, and the leaping acrobatics of water-skiers. From staring at a map in the motel room while Kim showered, I know that what I’m glimpsing is only the tiniest portion of the lake. It winds and twists through hundreds of sheer canyons for two thousand miles of shoreline. The climbing potential here is astounding. The thought of being belayed from the deck of a boat makes the corners of my lips raise a fraction in an involuntary grin. It gives new meaning to the climber’s term for falling—“decking out.”

  Beside me, Kim seems less pleased with the view. She barely gives it a glance. Instead she flips restlessly through her address book, staring at it for a moment, then at the street map we’d torn out of the motel’s phone book, then at me, then out the window at the signs on each corner, and then starting all over again with the book. Every now and then she tells me to turn right or left.

  “Are you all right? You seem tense.”

  She starts at my words and puts the book back in the nylon bag she uses as her purse. “I’m worried about Sunny, is all. What if she’s hurt? She must be scared out of her mind.”

  I simply hope she’s here, that she’s alive, but don’t say that.

  Kim’s nervousness increases as we navigate the streets of Page toward the home of Sunny’s parents. Even for a cheap, plastic town like Page, this neighborhood isn’t a good one. It’s a mix of beat-up trailers and small, prefabricated cottages with crumbling porches and dry, weedy lawns. The yards are decorated with beer cans and cigarette butts instead of the gnomes and flamingos closer to the main part of town. Cars in a state of either regeneration or deterioration are propped up on driveways. Pickups with huge tires and American muscle cars seem to be the vehicles of choice around here. Young white men and women hang out in groups on tobacco-stained sidewalks. A majority of the men wear a haircut known as the mullet: long in back, short on the sides and top. The women have a style all their own: frizzy hair with the bangs ironed straight up, sometimes almost six inches, as if in imitation of a steeply cresting wave. Tattoos seem popular, too. I wonder for a moment if it’s the neighborhood that has Kim so upset, but realize it’s not unlike certain parts on the outskirts of Tomichi. Only the view down some streets to the blue water of Lake Powell would make me prefer this town over the ugliest of neighborhoods I’ve seen in third-world countries.

  The temperature outside the truck is visible in the blurry waves of heat rising off the asphalt as we pull up in front of the address. This particular lawn is better cared for than most of the others on the street, well watered and neatly cut. But the house itself is a perfect representative for the neighborhood: part trailer and part stucco. It appears to have begun as a large mobile home that’s been added onto with discounted materials of varying generations. The porch is lined with a variety of potted cacti.

  We leave Oso in the car with the engine on and the air conditioner blasting. I’m not concerned about some young mullet-head stealing it—not with Oso inside. Kim pauses at the start of a crumbling concrete walkway.

  “Why don’t you go to the door alone, Anton? They might have heard some things about me from Sunny, things they might not like. I think I’d really prefer to stay in the car,” she says. Her voice is quiet and sounds somehow small.

  “With my face looking like this? They’d call the police.” At the motel I’d done my best to make myself as presentable as possible, putting on a clean T-shirt with my single pair of jeans. I’d also shaved for the first time in almost a month, revealing a pale and generous length of Celtic jaw beneath darkly tanned Latin cheekbones. The two-toned effect is probably more disconcerting than it had been with the beard. The mirror showed that my eyes are still purple with bruising and the scar on my left cheek is red and vivid. It’s a colorful look.

  “I think we’d be better off if you did this alone,” I tell her. “What could they have heard about you—that you’re an environmentalist?” That makes some sense. People in towns like this usually don’t join the Sierra Club or the Audubon Society. “Besides, you said you don’t even know them.”

  “But they might know me.”

  “Kim, how about giving me a hint as to what you’re so worried ab
out.”

  She opens her mouth, looking as though she might, but it’s too late. The front door to the modified trailer swings open and an older man wearing the neighborhood uniform of a dirty tank top and Bermuda shorts steps out onto the porch. He’s chicken-necked and skinny but for a grossly protruding belly. In one hand he holds a can of beer; in the other is a stubby cigar. The screen door slaps shut behind him. Even though it’s still morning, the man is already swaying on his feet. “Help you?” he asks, his voice and stance more aggressive than the words.

  Kim doesn’t speak or move, so I smile as innocently as possible and ask, “Mr. Hansen?”

  “Never met him.”

  I remember Kim saying that Sunny’s mother had remarried. “Are you Sunny Hansen’s stepfather?”

  “Depends. Who the hell are you?”

  “This is Kim Walsh, and my name’s Antonio Burns. We’re trying to find—” but he isn’t listening to me. He’s staring at Kim with his mouth writhing somewhere between a frown and a smirk.

  “The lesbian lawyer,” he says slowly, the nasty smirk winning out. “What do you want, girl? My Sunny run off and leave you for some man?”

  I look at Kim, finally understanding her reluctance to come here. Finally understanding a lot of things. My desire for her goes from hopeful to hopeless in less than a second, and I feel a flush of anger at the man who has so crudely revealed her secret.

  Kim, on the other hand, appears to be composing herself. The man’s aggressiveness brings her out of the embarrassed trance she has been in since we left the motel. I realize that she’s a lot like me in other ways than just liking women—she’s learning to be stronger in the face of adversity.

  “Mr. Villanova, is Sunny here?” she asks coolly while moving up the walkway.