The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  “So you're not one of those macho assholes who always has to be first up, huh?”

  “I'd just embarrass myself if I were.”

  We sit at the base and tape our hands while we talk about other Vedauwoo climbs I'd done many years ago with my father and brother. They'd been easy climbs compared to something as technical as this. But they were plenty exciting for me when I was ten years old. She picks through the gear that I spill from my pack and selects an assortment of chocks, camming devices, and a long, tied-off piece of cord to build an anchor at the top. Clipping all of these things to a runner she wears over her shoulder, she shimmies into her harness.

  She ties one end of the rope to her harness with a double figure-eight knot. I place her on belay by taking a bight of the rope close to her knot and shoving it through a locking device on my own harness after I find a comfortable rock to sit on. I'll pay out the rope as she climbs the rock and places cams or chocks in the crack every ten feet or so. If she falls, and if the protection is well placed and correctly clipped to the rope that trails from her harness to me, I'll be able to catch a fall by locking the rope in my belay tube.

  Feeling the warming sunlight radiating off the rock and preparing for the exertions ahead, Lynn slips out of her fleece jacket and stands clad only in a brief athletic bra and tights. She studies the crack for a minute, knowing that I'm admiring her exposed slim and strong body. Ready, she dusts chalk on her hands, then slips them into the crack. She takes a few deep breaths, releasing any thought but of hanging on and getting up into the sky.

  Twenty minutes later she's slick with sweat and panting like Oso after a hard run. I'm awestruck that she made it up without falling or even hang-dogging on the rope. It's the hardest crack I've ever seen climbed by a woman who's not in the magazines. But then I haven't been reading them lately. Near the top, where the crack broadens and flares and the entire wall overhangs several degrees, she had supported herself by just a jammed knee, a pasted hand, and an incredible display of abdominal strength while she placed my biggest cam and clipped the rope to it. She ties into the anchor she's built at the top and lets out a shout that ricochets off the towers. I lower her gently back to earth.

  “Nice going.”

  “I've done it a few times before.”

  I look at my hands, still scabbed and sore from my solo two days ago. “I'm wishing for smaller hands right now.”

  “You used to be a superstar. Don't disappoint me, man.”

  I laugh and she does too. She keeps her eyes on me as I pull off my jacket and shirt and swing my arms in circles. It's only a matter of time, I think, as I watch her watching me. I can't get over how good the cool, pine-and-flower-scented wind feels on my bare skin.

  I climb the crack too fast and recklessly, but I'm safe from cratering onto the forest floor as the rope tied to me now runs over the anchor at the top and down into Lynn's belay device. Because of my bigger hands, on the lower part where the crack is only an inch and a half wide I'm forced to use what is a painful technique compared to the straight thumbs-up method of jamming she'd been able to employ. I wiggle my fingers in over my head, thumbs pointed at the ground, and then torque my wrists straight down. Only in this way do I have the jamming power to stay in the slot. I look down at her once and she's smiling. I guess I'm living up to my former glory.

  She takes me to another climb where she allows me to lead as we continue talking about climbs we'd both done in the Tetons and the Winds and the Bugaboos.

  “Have I earned the title of Partner?” I ask at one point.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And a discount on a new rope?”

  “As long as you keep climbing with me, dude.”

  “What about your friends? They didn't seem to like me too much.”

  “They're tough to know, but you'll get to like them. And them you, man. It'll all come out in the wash, you know? But Billy's going to be real fucking jealous for a while. We split not too long ago.”

  “I've heard about him.”

  “He's a wild man, that's for sure. Dude is absolutely primal.” She looks past me as she talks about him, her eyes shining. “He just likes to run things a little too much for me. Controlling, you know? He likes being the King of Vedauwoo.” Then she looks right at me, weighing and sizing. “But you might give him a run for his money.”

  “What about the others, Brad and those other guys that were in the bar?”

  “Peons, man. They're just his fucking belay slaves. Billy's always got a crowd of kids around him. Like he's a god or something.”

  “Did you know that girl who fell up here a couple of weeks ago? Kate something?” I don't know why I haven't yet told her that I'm a state cop investigating Kate Danning's death. Maybe it's because she hasn't asked, and I don't know how she will react. Or maybe it's just my undercover instincts to try and see what information I can get before I reveal myself. If that's it, it doesn't work. I don't get much.

  “Yeah, she was kind of a friend of mine. Let's not talk about her.”

  And I'm having so much fun that I don't push it.

  “I promised someone I'd meet them up here for a quick climbing lesson. I've got to hang around for a little bit.” We're back at our cars.

  “Another chick, huh?” Lynn asks teasingly, but a small shadow passes over her face.

  “No, it's a guy I work with that I promised to teach.”

  I walk Lynn to her truck and throw her pack on the torn passenger seat. She hasn't gotten in yet, so I walk around and open the door for her. Metal creaks from a rusted dent in the door. She hesitates before sliding in behind the wheel, looking at me in a way that is strangely shy for a woman who doesn't seem very timid.

  I shut the door and she spins the window down. “You're something else, man. Can't you tell what a girl wants?” She smiles earnestly, showing her small, white teeth as I bend down to the open window, resting my taped hands on the frame. I look into her eyes for a long moment. Then I put my lips against hers, moving them back and forth slowly. She slides her pointed tongue past my lips and traces my teeth. I can feel the heat of her body even though only our mouths touch. The electricity radiating off her almost makes me shiver.

  After a minute I pull away. She growls at me convincingly, then says, “You know where to find me, dude.” She starts the engine, puts the car in gear, and drives away at a much slower pace through the pines but still leaving a trail of dust. The wind sweeps it to the east.

  As I watch I feel a stirring within me, but it's not what you would expect. It's more a sensation of danger. Like looking up at an alpine wall alive with falling ice and rock and comprehending both the glory and the death that resides there.

  ELEVEN

  FOR A HALF hour I sun shirtless on a flat boulder and chew a PowerBar while Oso pants in the shade of an overhang. Every few bites, I tear off a small piece with my teeth and throw it to the beast. He snatches it out of the air with a wet flash of yellowed fangs, beating his stump of a tail in the dust.

  A black sports car comes carefully nosing over the ruts in the dirt road. When it's close enough for the sound of the souped-up engine to reach me, I roll off the rock and stand by my truck. More than once I hear the oil pan slowly scrape over the rim of a hole. When the car comes to a stop, Jones unfolds his massive frame from behind the tinted windows. He's dressed in track pants that read “University of Wyoming” down the legs and a black T-shirt that's stretched tight across his torso.

  “Shit, QuickDraw, I knew this was a bad idea. I just had this thing washed.” He looks unhappily at the layer of dust that's settling on the Corvette.

  “That's a hell of a car to have in a place like Wyoming, Sergeant Jones,” I say. “A regular pimpmobile. All you need is a purple felt hat.”

  “You never know when you'll need the speed, my man. So what's up? I got a feeling you didn't invite me up here just to teach me 'bout climbing. Don't think I got the build for it.” While watching me he holds up one arm, then curls his fist to
ward his face. The bicep that juts out is nearly as big as my head. “Gotta be a wiry sucker like you. Right?”

  “Put that thing away before you scare the ladies,” I say. “And yeah, you're right. I need someone to help me out here and be a witness. But the few local climbers I know are involved, and all the other cops seem to hate my guts. So it's gotta be you, my friend.”

  “When I told my wife I was going climbing she nearly brained me with a golf club. Said she ought to be the one who gets to kill me, not my secret agent friends or some damn rocks. Hey, is that Oso hiding under those rocks like some big, ugly troll? Come on out here, dog. Remember me? I damned well hope so. Don't eat me now. Boy, you've sure put on some weight.”

  “I had him neutered last year—plus he's getting old. The vet said he was showing signs of prostate cancer.”

  “Now that's a shame,” Jones says to the dog, lifting the beast's thick tail and looking. “You used to have some big cojones, as your grandmama's people would say.”

  I laugh and tell Jones about the get-well package my father sent from Argentina after the surgery. It contained several dried pig's ears and a catalog that advertised prosthetics for dogs. “None of them looked large enough,” I say proudly, “not even the ones for Great Danes.”

  “You got the machismo of your mother's people, all right,” Jones says, chuckling.

  While Oso presses against his thighs and groans as Jones thumps him on the hips, I take out from the mess of crates in the rear of my truck a separate pack that holds a camera and evidence bags. I hand the pack to Jones, explaining what's in it and asking him to be careful with it. I checked it out of the office in Cody on a hunch and will have to pay for it if it's damaged.

  Jones fumbles with the pack playfully before he follows me down a trail through aspens that are just starting to turn. The leaves are yellow and gold and their smooth bark is as white as the crosses in a cemetery against the bright blue sky. Every time I look back to see if Oso is with us, I catch Jones staring around him as if he's in another world. There's a small smile taking the place of his usual scowl. Vedauwoo is working its magic on him. As we walk I explain what a half-assed investigation Bender had done. Jones grunts noncommittally but doesn't look surprised.

  After a few minutes of walking I realize we're on the wrong trail. I sit down on a log and consult the guidebook while Jones rolls his eyes.

  “Great,” he says. “It's not a fall that's gonna kill me. We're going to starve to death in this fucking wilderness.”

  I find the proper path in the book and tell him so. He's looking up at a predatory silhouette that's gliding effortlessly across the sky.

  “I got to bring my wife up here sometime. She digs this nature shit. What is that—an eagle?”

  “Vulture,” I say.

  We reverse our tracks back past the cars and I get us started on the correct path. “Tell me, what's going on in the Sheriff's Office? Are you going to be top dog when Sheriff Willis follows Karge to the capital?”

  I don't really expect an answer from him. Jones isn't the type to complain about his colleagues. Team loyalty is something that has been ingrained in him from years as a football player—two years as a pro. I've always known that he is ambitious too, and will not say anything that might denigrate his career or office. He once told me when we were in the law enforcement academy together that he wanted to be Wyoming's first black sheriff. That would probably make him Wyoming's first black elected official. He came to the Cowboy State on a scholarship from the hopeless despair of Compton and somehow fell in love with the place. He is something of an exotic here, amid the yuppies, hippies, and rednecks.

  So I'm surprised when he answers my question with anything other than a platitude.

  “The place sucks, man. Between you and me, they're a bunch of scumbags from Willis on down.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Your buddy Bender is getting the nod from Willis, who'll go up with Karge when he's elected governor. Bender told me that just a few days ago . . . after the sheriff didn't bother to let me know. And in Laramie, the resigning sheriff's endorsement is as good as an election. Jesus Christ, that cracker Bender is a nasty, dumb redneck fuck. You know he's Willis's nephew, don't you? And he's going to be the Man, protecting and serving the citizens of Albany County,” he says angrily. “And by the way, thanks for not filing those charges on him last year when he kicked the crap out of that Mexican guy. That would have been the only way of taking him out.”

  I stop walking and turn to face him. My fingers are curled into my palms. “You don't know what you're talking about, Jones,” I say quietly, looking up into his face. “I recommended he be charged with felony assault. I pushed it all the way. But Karge went screaming to the AG about it and they cut a deal. The best I could do was to get him an official reprimand.”

  Jones holds up his hands, “Whoa there, QuickDraw. Okay, I didn't know that. Anyway, to answer your question, the place is fucked. Willis's only interest is to get Karge elected governor, then ride his coattails to the mansion in Cheyenne and wherever he goes from there. Bender is going to be the next sheriff, at least until the next election, but by then he'll be established and it'll be too late. And me, I'm thinking about splitting. I've got applications in with the feds. DEA, DOD, and FBI—any old acronym will do.”

  Things must really be bad if Jones is going to desert the career he has put so much time and effort into.

  After a while I ask, “How well do you know that rookie Knight? He was up here that night with Bender when they found the body.”

  “Don't know too much about him, 'cept that I was his field training officer for his first month. He's a good kid, coming along well. From what I hear he's a serious biker.”

  “What, like on a Harley? I can't picture that. Too clean-cut. He looks about sixteen.”

  “Naw, QuickDraw, biker as in pedaling. The guy rides in races. You'll see him out training on the empty blacktop north of town, on that road that goes up toward Roger's Canyon.”

  I ask if he knows Billy Heller, Brad Karge, and their crowd. He says no, but that he's heard Heller has a reputation for roughing up underage girls. And that he knows Brad has been a big headache to his dad, that the group as a whole is known to use a lot of drugs. “Lunatic climbers,” he adds.

  “How about a girl named Lynn White? You know her?”

  “Is this an official question or is it personal?” he says with a smile.

  “I don't know yet.”

  “Well, I don't know the chick, carnally or otherwise.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  We twist our way through ever larger rocks toward the foot of a wall. When we are close I pause and reach up to unzip a pocket on the pack Jones wears. I take out the fat envelope of the coroner's pictures. I shuffle through them while Jones looks over my shoulder and lets out a low sad whistle as I flip past the autopsy photos. I compare the photos of Kate Danning's body at the scene with the steep granite before me. With a glance I find the place where she landed, but don't look too long at the congealed black gunk that still remains pooled in the boulders' pockets. I dump my pack on the ground while Jones sets his own down gently.

  “Suddenly this doesn't seem like such a good idea,” he says. “So this is where she bit it, huh?”

  He's staring at the dried blood that no rain had come along to wash away. It's as if nature is conspiring to leave it exposed for as long as possible, in the hope that someone will notice that an outrage was committed here.

  “This is it.”

  “So how come DCI's looking into this? From what I heard, coroner said it was an accident. What's up?”

  “Who'd you hear that from?”

  “Your buddy Bender's been talking about it to anyone who'd listen. He's pissed about it, doesn't like someone checking out his work. Especially you. So how come you're doing it?”

  “Her family's connected somehow with the governor. They can't accept that she got stoned and fell.”

&
nbsp; Jones looks empathetic, his scowl gone and his eyes soft. “Accidents are the worst. No one for the parents to blame, no one to take it out on. So all that grief just wells up. Shit, I know what that's like.” At the academy I'd learned that his mother died of stomach cancer and that his sister was killed in a car wreck.

  “Crazy climbers,” he goes on. “Why do you expose yourself like that? It's like painting a target on your ass and bending over so God can have a good look, take his best shot.”

  “I'll show you in a minute.”

  He rolls his eyes, their whiteness bright against his dark skin.

  “Anyway, I'm not so sure it was an accident. She had some bruises and a fracture to the rear of her skull, but she fell on her face. Also there was some ligature marks on her neck that the coroner was eager to discount.”

  “I hadn't heard about that.”

  “It wasn't noticed by Sergeant Leroy Bender either, Laramie's own Sherlock Holmes.”

  “So what are you looking for?”

  “I'm not exactly sure,” I admit. I point up at the cliff. “But one thing I'd like to check out is whether there's anything she could've banged her head on when she was coming down.”

  Jones studies the cliff. From above the sticky black pool it's almost dead vertical to where the sky begins a hundred feet over our heads. The granite is pockmarked like bad skin, full of small ridges, crystal nubs, and tiny pockets. What looks like a fist-size crack splits the upper part of the face.

  “Doesn't look like it from here,” he says. “You fall, you aren't gonna touch anything till the ground.”

  I spill the gear and rope from my pack, then begin a brief lesson on the complexities of belaying and the use of the ATC.

  Running his hands over the small, slotted device, Jones asks, “What's ATC stand for?”

  “Air Traffic Controller. That's what you'll be if I come off.”

  “Appropriate,” Jones reasons, again studying the wall that I intend to scale.

  I go on, “Now when I yell ‘Off belay,' you pop the rope out of the ATC like this. I'll pull up all the slack to where you're tied in. Then you start climbing. Don't worry about falling—you won't go anywhere. I'll have you on tight from above.”