The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Let her clip to me. Then you can go. Go wherever you want,” I lie, trying to mask my rage and work a scared plea into my words.

  Heller chuckles. “Sorry, but Lynn's a little tied up right now, if you know what I mean.” He tips her a little to one side, away from the edge. For the first time I see that her hands are bound with the familiar pink cord. “I got it perfect with her, man—climbing and fucking, then dying. I didn't think it could get any better, then you show up.” He grins again. “You ready to fly?”

  Just then a gust of wind fills the tent, billowing its nylon walls with a sudden whoomff. Heller whips his head around and half turns his torso. The wind bounces me off the wall and it knocks Heller in the same direction, out of his crouch. As his hands slap the granite for balance, I slip one hand inside my anorak and come out with the gun I'd borrowed in Buffalo. I try to point it at Heller's head but another gust stings my eyes with blowing spindrift.

  Then in a blink Heller's gone. He's ducked back into the tent.

  Not knowing what else to do, but with only the fear of ricochets keeping me from filling the nylon with holes, I step forward quickly and grab Lynn's shirt. I need both my hands to pull her away from the edge. The gun goes back in my pocket for just a moment. I crouch between the tent and Lynn, my left shoulder to the abyss, and as fast as I can I clip a sling of webbing from the harness Lynn wears over bare legs to mine. At least now she's tied to me. And through me to the safety line Heller had run along the wall side of the ledge.

  When the carabiner snaps shut I stand and turn toward the tent while fumbling in my pocket with numb fingers for the gun.

  The tent fly erupts as if a bull is charging through it. His speed and power are unreal as he hurtles along the narrow ledge toward me. The gun is caught on some fabric—it won't come free. I've just enough time to take a step forward and lean in.

  Heller comes at me, bellowing like a berserker, with an upraised ax in one hand. He rears up and drives into me with his hip and churning knees. I plant my arms against his chest and shove forward to keep from being blown back off the edge. With the ax Heller chops—but not at me. The ax comes down on the safety line, parting it with a single stroke. With a mental jolt as powerful as the impact of Heller's body, I realize Lynn and I are now tied to the wall only through the skinny rope I'd used to ascend. And that rope is only connected to the rock twenty feet down where I'd placed the single cam. I have no idea what Heller is tied to, or if he's tied to anything at all.

  For a moment we're caught in a snarling embrace on the narrow ledge. I push forward with all the strength in my legs but I'm no match for Heller's muscle and weight. I feel myself being forced back over Lynn, back over the edge. He's going to throw us off. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The adrenaline rips through me—I try to bite his throat but can't get my teeth through his parka.

  Then a thought comes to me as I'm forced a step back, my rear foot just inches from the edge. The thought is so simple. So clean. It's like a revelation. Try it, a voice whispers from somewhere inside me. Try it. You'll be dead anyway—why not have some fun?

  Still shoving forward with all my strength, I wrap my arms all the way around the big man. The Rat in my chest shrieks with delight as I suddenly shift my weight. I throw myself backward, off the edge, letting Heller's momentum drive him with me. I pray he's not tied in to anything but the cut safety line. I pray that my single skinny rope will hold my fall. I pray that God might listen.

  For a moment we float in the sky as Lynn's dragging weight slows the drop, then begin to plummet as she slides over after us. I see us fall past the small cam I'd placed twenty feet down. It looks ridiculously small and fragile. And the rope whipping through it looks as soft and delicate as wet spaghetti.

  Heller's body is jerked out of my arms, upward, when his own unseen rope catches him. The big man is yanked back up into the dark sky as if he's a yo-yo on a string. Then my teeth snap together as my own rope finally pulls tight on the cam. That one tiny cam halts my plummet. Miraculously, the rope doesn't break. A fraction of a second later I scream soundlessly as Lynn's weight hits the webbing by which she's tied to the back of my harness. It feels as if I'm being cut in half.

  Because of the overhang beneath the ledge, I'm floating out more than six feet from the wall. Looking down, I can see her hanging limply, a body length below me. Her back is arched at a sharp angle, her bare belly pointed toward me. When I look up I see Heller's massive form swinging just ten feet above. A moan is squeezed from my lungs by the weight on my harness. I hear Heller's answering groan, which turns into a choked laugh.

  There's a flash of motion above me. Dimly I see the arc of the ax still in Heller's hand. “You fly . . . like shit . . . the two of you. . . . Better try again.” I watch, transfixed with pain, as Heller, who is hanging free like some terrible spider, takes the taut line of my rope in one of his hands. He pulls it toward him. The glint of the ax in his other hand slashes toward it. He misses with the first strike; only the ax handle bounces off the line. Not the sharp point. It's awkward for him to chop at the rope as he spins in the wind.

  With another involuntary groan, I slap at my jacket. The pistol is still there, hanging halfway out of the pocket, caught by the trigger guard. I grab at it with both hands, trying to find the grip, as my vision begins to grow dim around the edges. I can't breathe—Lynn's weight is strangling me, cutting off my air.

  I see the flash of metal above a second time. Again the ax handle bounces off my rope. I see Heller's white teeth for a moment and then the back-and-forth sawing motion of one of his hands. He's using the tiny serrated edges that droop from the pick to saw through the rope. I find the gun's butt, lift it out, hear its roar and see its flash break the dawn wide open.

  For a long time I simply hang, fighting to breathe. It feels as if I'm pinned to a wall by a truck, its bumper pressing into my damaged waist and ribs while some demon presses on the gas pedal. I feel a stream of liquid spray across my face and head. It stops for a second and then comes again in a sort of regular rhythm. It runs down the back of my neck, hot and viscous, like oil. When I look up, it splashes my face. In the faint light the fluid is a cherry red. Heller hangs limply, head down, just a few feet above me.

  I let my head drop again to where Lynn sways below me, stretched out in the wind. The pistol slides out of my hand on its own and simply disappears beyond her without a sound. Her cutting weight persists in the small of my back and leaves me without strength, without will.

  So I let the wind and the dawn take me. The warm stream from above spills on me as I swing, as if I'm penduluming back and forth under a waterspout. A bright light seems to envelop me. Brighter than the sun. The spindrift no longer stings my face—it starts to feel more like the warm caress of a kind hand. I can hear nothing but a smooth, steady heartbeat that grows closer and closer, coming for me.

  All those times I've cheated Death—that I've felt him climbing just beneath me in his swirling black robe—that I've laughed and kicked him in his face as he's reached up with bony fingers to grab at my ankles—and now he's just swooping in, surprisingly tender, to finally carry me away.

  THIRTY-TWO

  NOTHING IS AS I expect. I had imagined soothing light and quiet, then a slow fade into blackness. I'd expected my soul to be drawn out of my battered shell of a body as gently as silk from a spider's belly. Instead there is a tremendous vibrating noise. And the sound of men shouting. My body, sensed only vaguely, is pummeled, pulled, and dragged. The realization comes to me slowly, at first in the form of a question. Rescue?

  I lapse in and out of consciousness on the short helicopter flight to the Estes hospital. The medics of the Search-and-Rescue team have bundled me in coarse wool blankets. After checking my pulse and respiration, they ignore me. They must realize the blood that covers me belongs to someone else. Instead they hover around Heller's huge form, pressing, shouting, injecting. Lynn's blonde hair is sprayed out on the cargo bay floor not far from me. One of the men is bent low
over her, monitoring her breathing.

  Trying to figure out what happened, I dimly recall the beat of that giant heart coming closer in the bath of a light far brighter than the sun. It had been poised somewhere above me, and then a phantom shadow came soaring out from beyond the light. The phantom thudded against the wall above me and flew away again. Then it came back, and I thought I heard a curse. There was a violent tug on my rope but I was beyond feeling pain. There was the sound of a stranger barking commands. The phantom moved down the ropes, then gripped my harness. It shouted something in my face before it moved down past me.

  The phantom climbed back up using my ankle, my clothes, and my shoulders as hand- and footholds. Suddenly I was flying again, soaring out off the wall, back into the dawn. The cutting weight falling from my back as I took my first deep breath. The next thing I felt was a multitude of arms grabbing me, dragging me up, into that giant beating heart.

  Pondering all this, I slide away again.

  “QuickDraw, you seem to spend way too much time screwing around in hospital beds.” Jefferson Jones looms over me. “They say you're gonna live, but you sure don't look like it. Again. You're better off than Heller anyway—they say you killed the son of a bitch. Winged him in the neck—remind me to take you out to the range sometime, teach you to shoot. Anyway, he bled out. On you, the way it looks.”

  “Lynn, the girl,” I say, my throat raw and my teeth chattering. “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I talked to the doctor who was with her a little while ago. Said that little pixie should be up and about before long. She was hypothermic and had a concussion, is all. Heller probably punched her around pretty good before you showed up. There were some minor rope burns to her neck, wrists, and ankles. Sound familiar?”

  “How about me? Am I going to be all right?”

  “Hypothermia, exhaustion, and a concussion, the doc says. That makes two concussions in a week, QuickDraw. You've probably lost whatever mind you had.”

  I nod and feel the muscles spasm in my neck. “How did you get here?”

  “Your reporter girlfriend woke me up again, worrying about you. Tell her to leave me alone from now on, let me sleep. I can't spend every night chasing after your sorry ass. Anyway, I checked the hotel and the jail, then called your office and heard from the desk that you were screwing around down here in Colorado.” He shrugs and smiles. “Figured since I was already awake, I might as well see what you were up to, so I drove down here at dawn. I don't have to work that sentencing today, since I quit.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Some stern-looking guy, the head ranger or something, brought you in on a helicopter a couple of hours ago. I met them here. A Search-and-Rescue team dragged you off some mountain.”

  My brain is sluggish, but I process what he's telling me item by item. Heller's dead. Rebecca's worried about me. Lynn's going to be okay. The sentencing . . .

  “What time is it? The sentencing—I've got to get to Laramie!”

  “Ten o'clock, but it's too late, QuickDraw.” He points at the TV in the corner of the hospital room. On its screen a pretty woman is standing in front of the Albany County Courthouse talking into a microphone. Either the sound is too low or the buzz that hums in my ears and the chattering of my teeth is too loud for me to tell what she's saying. “According to that, the prosecution already started calling witnesses this morning,” Jones explains.

  I get up out of the bed, gritting my teeth against the pain that racks every inch of my body. I nearly collapse before I even get my feet on the cool linoleum floor. But I fight the sensation of a swirling room and I bat weakly at Jones's arms when he tries to push me back into the bed. Inside a grocery sack at the foot of the bed are some of my clothes, still filthy but neatly folded. I grunt and groan and start pulling on the fleece pants.

  Jones tries to argue with me. He tells me to get my ass back in the bed but I ignore him. “If they're still on the witnesses, we can make it,” I tell him. “What is it, a ninety-minute drive?”

  My friend is frowning. “Maybe in your piece-of-shit truck. It doesn't matter, though, it'll all be over before we get there. And even if we made it in time, no one's going to listen to you or me, Ant.”

  My back feels as if every muscle, every sinew, has been twisted and torn when I bend over to tie the laces. I fumble at the laces with swollen, bloody fingers. “I have to try. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try.”

  Jones grunts, unconvinced.

  “Wouldn't it be something to blow Willis and Karge out of the water in front of all those cameras? You could leave Wyoming in style, Jeff. Payback for your wasted years there.”

  I stand, giving up on the laces, stagger once, and look at him. Jones's usually frowning mouth curls up at the ends.

  “You remember me making fun of your car, and you telling me sometimes you just feel the need for speed?” I ask. “Well, my friend, I need it now. I'm feeling the need. How about it?”

  He shakes his head and grins at me. “I guess I've got nothing else to do.”

  The rest of my clothes we find in a second grocery sack in a cabinet. My shirt and jacket are stiff with Billy Heller's blood. The same stiffness is in my hair. It smells faintly of a metal like copper or iron. When I step out into the hallway, the imposing ranger is waiting along with two other men in suits.

  “Thank you, sir,” I tell him as I try to hurry past the group. “There's no way I can thank you enough. But I've got to move now—I'll call you later and tell you what's going on.”

  “Hey, where do you think you're going?” one of the suits asks as he puts a hand on my chest. I look down at his arm, feeling too weak and dizzy to swat it away, and see that he has FBI credentials clipped to his coat pocket. He and his partner stand before us, blocking our passage, eyeing Jones's now glowering face nervously.

  I ignore them and speak again to the ranger, knowing that he has no real authority over the federal agents except for the kind that comes from his powerful charisma. “You checked up on me, right?”

  He nods. “I called Sheriff McKittrick up in Laramie County. But then I got a call from your office. They said you were suspended.”

  “McKittrick must have told you what I'm doing—what I'm trying to do. If I don't get up to Laramie with that girl right now, some innocent men are going to be sentenced to death. The Lee case. That dead man you brought off the Diamond, Billy Heller, he was the killer, not the Knapps. Let me have a few hours and I promise you I'll answer everyone's questions this afternoon.”

  He studies me for a long time with his hard gray eyes. It feels like several minutes. “Let him go,” the ranger finally tells the agents. “He's already done the impossible, soloing up King of Swords at night, in a storm. The boy's used up all his luck. Give him a little slack now—he'll either hang himself or come out clean.”

  One of the agents shakes his head. “He's not going anywhere.”

  The ranger's eyes turn to granite. He steps in front of the agent who spoke. “On what charges are you going to hold him? You can't detain him unless you're going to charge him.”

  The agent takes a step back. “He shot a man—”

  “In self-defense. Do you have probable cause to believe it was otherwise?”

  “But the CBI guy, Tobias—”

  “Mr. Tobias isn't here. And he has no such evidence either. I brought this man and the girl off that mountain. They're in my custody. Any crime that was committed occurred in the park—my jurisdiction. Do you understand that? If I want to allow him to go to Wyoming, then he's going.” The ranger's voice is low in the corridor but still his words have a visible impact on the agent's face.

  He hesitates a moment, then takes a cell phone out of his pocket. “We'd better talk to someone,” he says to his colleague. They step into a room, leaving Jones and me alone with the tall ranger.

  “You sure you want to join the FBI?” I ask Jones.

  “The girl's in there,” the ranger says, pointing at a d
ifferent door. “You'd better get moving. Take the stairs and go out through the emergency exit—your friend Tobias has more state officers in the lobby with him. He may not be as easy to confuse as our federal agents.”

  I thank him again quickly and promise to call him in the afternoon.

  Lynn smiles weakly when we enter the room. She lies under the starched white sheets in the hospital bed. The tan is gone from her face and has been replaced by deep yellow and blue bruises.

  “This is Jefferson Jones,” I tell her. “He was a sergeant up in Laramie. Still is, I guess.”

  “For about another week and a half. At least they're paying me for that, since I gave 'em two weeks' notice,” Jones says.

  Lynn gives him a shy, girlish smile that I know is at odds with her personality.

  I tell her to get dressed, which she begins to do without asking why, and without apparent modesty. While she pulls on her own blood-encrusted clothes, I start asking her questions. She answers as if Jones weren't there.

  Lynn explains that after she found Rebecca in my room, she was really pissed off. “Must be a fine piece of ass, you prefer her to me,” she comments bitterly. She tells me that Billy found her moping up at Vedauwoo and told her to come climbing with him. She went without giving it a second thought. Her way to get back at me, she explains. Two thirds of the way up the wall, when they settled in for the night to wait out the storm, Billy abruptly told her she'd talked too much, fucked around too much. He punched her a few times. She became sick and dizzy. After beating her some more, forcing himself upon her, he tied her hands and feet. Then I showed up.

  I ask about Heller's denial of killing Kate.

  “I was there, man. It wasn't Billy. He didn't do Kate. Well, he was fucking her, yeah. With Brad. They were doing this asphyxiation thing on her, like to make a better orgasm. Then Brad's dad showed up. All of a sudden. Don't know how that old dude got up there. He just stepped out, you know? He was screaming some shit, seeing his son and Billy on Kate, her all tied up with that funky pink cord Billy keeps in his basement. Anyway, I guess you can't blame Brad's dad. Billy got off her just as the old guy grabbed a bottle Brad'd been drinking from and came in swinging. Dad dragged Brad off her about then. Kate started to get up, get out of the way, and Dad took another swing at Heller but hit her with the bottle instead. Knocked her right off the fucking edge, man.”