Badwater

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Bogey’s decided there won’t be any venue change.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “That’s none of your business. And he doesn’t necessarily share every aspect of his defense strategy with me.”

  “It’s so he can make it more of a media circus,” I told her. “Take it out of Badwater and it’s not a story anymore. He wants Jonah to get nailed, to become a martyr.”

  “And you don’t want to see him convicted?” she asked in the same contemptuous voice she’d used while impeaching me.

  “No, damn it. I arrested him because I believed he’d committed a crime. Not murder, but something else. Maybe reckless endangerment, or maybe nothing at all. I thought that would get figured out later. During the investigation. Which I sure as hell didn’t think would get assigned to me. As you just pointed out in open court, I’m considered a loose cannon.”

  “Then why did you allow him to get charged with murder?”

  “Jesus Christ. Don’t you listen? I didn’t charge him with anything. All I did was find, at the scene, that there was probable cause to believe a crime had been committed and that he had committed it. I’m a cop. I don’t charge people with crimes. That’s a lawyer’s job.”

  “And you want me to believe you don’t advise and influence Luke Endow? I know about you two. I know he used to be your partner.”

  “I don’t advise or influence him about anything.”

  She peered at me over Mungo’s head, her eyes not losing any of their hostility.

  “That’s a little hard to believe, Agent Burns. He saved your life once, and you captured the man who shot him. I know about that, too.”

  “We were partners. That’s what you do. But I don’t think we ever really liked each other. And he certainly doesn’t like me right now. I think he’s hated my guts ever since I spoke up for Jonah at the bail hearing. Maybe even before then.”

  He’d probably been jealous for years of my unearned reputation—“QuickDraw,” and all that. That was just the sort of thing he would have loved to be called. And that’s exactly the kind of cop he’d been.

  “Listen. If it were up to me, Jonah would get a deferred judgment to reckless endangerment with time served and five hundred hours of community service, or something like that.”

  I hoped that sank in. That she could hear my sincerity. I gave it a minute.

  Then I continued, “But you know what? You wouldn’t take it. Not even a deferred. You and Bogey are so determined to get yourselves on TV, to go on all those bullshit shows that love to expose supposed government corruption, that you’d insist on a trial no matter what. Bogey is a has-been desperate to get back on top. And you’re just as desperate to make a name for yourself. You guys have goaded Luke at every turn to keep him from offering a reasonable plea, and now you’re inflaming things as much as you can to keep the media interested. I don’t know how you justify it to yourself, but there’s no way in hell you’re acting in the best interest of your client.”

  We rode in silence. The radio was off and the only sound was the big tires vibrating on the pavement. Mungo was straining forward between us, peering out the windshield, trying to guess where we were headed.

  “Where are you going? Turn around.”

  Without really meaning to, I had gotten on the highway and was driving us out of town. I wanted to say: Not until you admit it, but didn’t want to be later accused of kidnapping a defense lawyer. I slowed and obediently turned around.

  We rolled along for a few more minutes. She was looking out her window, her shoulder pushed against it, as far away from Mungo and me as she could get.

  I wondered if she was considering what I’d said, or whether she was really frightened of me. Maybe the threats the defense lawyers had been getting were for real and she thought I was the one who’d crapped on her professor’s car and made those phone calls. I almost hoped she did.

  “You lawyers always talk about the trial process,” I said. “About the search for the truth. About just making sure your client’s side of the story is heard. It’s all bullshit, you know. It’s only about winning. All those motions you filed, all that stuff you said about me in there, you know it’s all bullshit.”

  Now her head turned and she looked at me.

  “You should quit while you’re ahead, Burns. What I implied about what happened in Cheyenne may or may not be true, but I’m beginning to uncover some interesting things about a botched federal raid in a town called Potash and a little trip you took to Mexico last summer that make those allegations seem pretty minor.”

  I tried to hold her gaze. To stare her down with a contemptuous look of my own. But I was driving, damn it, and I had to make sure we didn’t go off a cliff into the river. I turned back to the road. It wasn’t fair. In that gesture I think I made a fatal admission.

  “Not that I entirely blame you, after what they did to your brother.”

  I wanted to grind my teeth. She knew about my brother, too.

  We reentered town, passing a gas station, liquor store, and grocery. Her motel was coming up.

  “What are you doing this afternoon?” I asked in the calmest voice I could muster.

  “I don’t know. Pack. Go for a ride. Bogey’s doing interviews all afternoon, but I wasn’t asked to sit in. Why?”

  “Come climbing with me. You said—that night when I took your sticks—that you’d done some. Let’s figure out a way to make this thing right. We know our bosses aren’t going to get it done.”

  twenty-six

  She was quiet for a long time. I assumed she was refusing to even acknowledge such an outrageous request. For her, a lawyer on the opposite side, to do something alone and in a remote location with a man she’d just accused of being a multiple murderer, not to mention his flesh-eating dog, would be insane.

  But then she surprised the hell out of me by murmuring “All right.”

  I suppose she thought she might be able to get something out of me to help her case, and for that she was willing to take some risks.

  I was instructed to pull to the back of her motel. She disappeared around the side of the building and returned five minutes later without her chocolate-brown suit. Instead she wore wraparound sunglasses, baggy khaki shorts, and one of her sleeveless riding jerseys. She had pulled her blond hair back into a ponytail.

  “Did you leave a message for Bogey?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I assumed she was lying.

  We picked up sandwiches at a drive-through, earning me three more punches on a new card. At least I would get something out of this. Mungo and I were familiar there, and the girl at the window gave Mungo a slice of salami, nervously feeding it to her with her fingers after asking me if it was all right. I thought I heard Brandy snort when I replied that Mungo was harmless.

  I passed the sandwiches through onto Brandy’s lap.

  “Three sandwiches,” she commented with what seemed a mocking tone. “Getting dragged over the coals in court must have given you an appetite.”

  “The meatball’s for Mungo,” I explained, trying not to sound annoyed.

  She had pushed up between the seats again and was now drooling onto Brandy’s shorts. Good dog.

  “You mean it doesn’t just eat human flesh?”

  I leaned forward to stare over at her. She was smiling. I had to smile back.

  “It’s a she. And thanks for not ratting us out at Vedauwoo. I guess she just thought someone dropped a tasty snack.”

  Now she did laugh. “That was about the grossest thing I’d ever seen. My date tossed his cookies. And he didn’t ever ask me to go riding with him again.”

  Her date. For some reason I cared about that bit of information. Luke had all along assumed she was sleeping with Bogey—made a lot of obscene and illustrative comments about it, actually—but maybe she wasn’t after all. Attractive as she was, I reminded myself, she was still a defense lawyer.

  I fed Mungo hunks torn from the meatball sandwich as we drove out o
f town. We had just passed the turnout by the river, where this had all begun, when Brandy abruptly asked, “So what are we going to talk about this afternoon?”

  “How to finally get Jonah out of the mess he’s in. How to get our bosses to stop playing games and acting like such frigging lawyers.”

  I could sense her starting to bristle. But all she said was “And how are we going to do that?”

  “By telling the truth, for a start.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “Everything. But for the moment, you’ve got to swear to me that everything we say stays between us until we figure out a way to make this work. Okay?”

  “Sure. So tell me the truth,” she said, sounding skeptical.

  Keeping my eyes on the road, I said, “For one thing, the kid—Cody Wallis—was high on meth. So were the Mann brothers, probably.”

  I could feel her staring at me. I knew the ramifications for her would be huge. It would make the victim seem not like just an innocent child. It would give rise to a whole new defense. Self-defense was the simplest explanation for what Jonah had done on the edge of the boulder, but Bogey had so far refused to press it either in court or to the media. It wasn’t as glamorous as going after a murderous cop and a vindictive, campaigning prosecutor. Self-defense wouldn’t make the news the way police persecution did.

  “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “It’s part of the autopsy report. Luke is holding back on discovering it to you. At least for a while. He’s hoping you won’t notice until he can force you, on the eve of trial, into a hard-nosed plea. But we both know Bogey won’t accept one. No way. His primary concern is grandstanding, getting his name back in the papers and on TV. He wants a trial no matter what. Right?”

  I looked past Mungo and met her eyes through the sunglasses. Just before I had to turn back to watch the road, I saw her give a small nod. Relief flooded through me. I was taking a huge gamble by telling her. If it got back to Luke, I’d certainly be fired. And maybe worse. But I could now see that the look she’d given me as I’d walked out of Bogey’s office the day before was genuine. She hated what he was doing. I was relieved because I thought I was safe. I knew she could figure out a way to demand the autopsy report without raising suspicion. It would even make her look good to her boss because demanding it was something he’d obviously overlooked.

  “What about the Mann brothers?” she asked after a little while.

  “Which ones?”

  “Those young boys. Will they confess to getting high with Cody? Have they already confessed to you?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen them since my initial interview with them, way back in June. When they denied throwing rocks. Have you talked to them?”

  “No. I tried. Bogey even sent me out to their ranch—he tried to make me dress kind of sexy for it, actually. He thought it would make them more cooperative. It didn’t matter, though. They wouldn’t talk to me. Their parents wouldn’t let them. But he managed to talk to them himself a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know how he did it.”

  I, too, wondered how he’d pulled that off. Ed Mann and his wife certainly wouldn’t willingly cooperate with the lawyer of the man who killed their nephew. I guiltily remembered suggesting just that to them, when I’d been out there. But they probably wouldn’t be too happy about cooperating with the prosecution, either, now that I’d arrested their older twin sons just the day before. Maybe that was why Luke had gotten their bail reduced.

  “Have you met the older brothers?” I asked Brandy.

  “No. I just heard there were some. Twins, right?”

  “Yeah. Ned and Zach. They’re trouble. Chances are, they’re the ones who’ve been hassling you. Making those threats and all that.”

  “We, uh, thought it might be you,” she said carefully.

  “Why . . . never mind. It wasn’t me. But this morning, when you had me up on the stand, I would have liked to have ordered Mungo up onto the hood of your car.”

  I heard her laugh as she pictured it. I laughed, too. Then she said, by way of apology I guess, “That was business.”

  “It was just the lawyer in you, huh?” I was beginning to see that there was more to her than just being a zealous attorney. She had a sense of humor.

  We entered the Shoshone National Forest and bounced along increasingly rugged logging roads. Branches scraped at the sides of the Pig, and we splashed through two shallow creeks before entering the canyon. I paused for a minute to let her see the beauty of the place. From the river in the center, it rose in forested slopes of aspens and pines to the rock walls, which led hundreds of feet higher to a blue Wyoming sky. Twelve-thousand-foot peaks capped with snow were not far off.

  “Wow,” she said. “You live here?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I put the truck back in gear and headed up the rocky double-track that led to my camp beneath Moriah. Enjoying showing her this place, I’d forgotten about Roberto’s van still being up there. When she asked whose it was, I said a friend of mine who’d gone into the wilderness for a couple of weeks. It was close to the truth. She didn’t mention the handicapped plates or the bumper sticker. I wondered how much she knew about my brother and whether she’d put it together.

  Getting out of the truck, she examined my little blue tent, the ring of blackened rocks, and then pointed up at a green bag hanging from between two trees.

  “What’s that up there?”

  “Dinner. And breakfast. Hopefully the bears around here aren’t tall enough to reach it.”

  She looked around, slightly alarmed. “Bears? What kind of bears?”

  “This canyon is the gateway to the Absaroka range,” I told her. “Welcome to grizzly country.”

  “Have you seen any around here?”

  “Just some tracks. Bears don’t like the way Mungo smells.”

  “Why not?”

  I decided there wasn’t too much risk in admitting it. “She’s half wolf. Bears don’t like wolves.”

  Brandy stared down at Mungo. She was lying upside-down in the dirt, scratching her back by bicycling her long legs. She couldn’t have looked less wolfish.

  “Surely she’s too small to fight one. What will you do if a bear comes into your camp? Shoot it?”

  “My gun’s a .40-caliber handgun. It wouldn’t stop a grizzly. It would just make it mad.”

  “Well, what about pepper spray? Do you have any of that?”

  She reached in the pocket of her shorts and came out with the little black cylinder, the same one she’d used to threaten Mungo and me that night on the river. It wasn’t much bigger than a cigarette lighter.

  I repeated an old joke. “If a bear charges, you should use that to spray yourself in the face. You don’t want to see what the bear’s going to do to you.”

  But she seemed truly agitated by the threat of predatory bears. This surfer girl, I guess, hadn’t had much experience around them. I tried to explain that bears eat mostly roots, bugs, and berries, and they’d be a lot more scared of her than she would be of them. She didn’t look convinced, though.

  “There’s not many left around here,” I added, “and they aren’t usually dangerous unless you run into a mother with cubs. Or try to feed one a peanut-butter sandwich, like the tourists do in Yellowstone. Grizzlies have killed about ten people in the last decade. Deer have killed more than a thousand, coming through windshields. It’s a one-in-a-million chance.”

  “I bet the odds are a lot shorter when you’re out here every day. A friend of mine was bitten by a shark.”

  “Is that why you stopped surfing?”

  Her look was very direct. “You’ve been checking up on me, too, huh? I guess it’s only fair. As you know, I’ve certainly been checking up on you. No, I quit because I wasn’t that good.”

  “That’s not what I read.”

  “I was good, but only as an amateur. I couldn’t compete with the pros. In surfing, there’s a huge difference between a good amateur and a tru
e professional. Isn’t it the same with climbing?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I never competed.”

  “But you were mentioned once or twice in the climbing magazines. I checked on Lexis and read about some expeditions you went on in Alaska and Patagonia. Your brother was mentioned all the time. Before his accident.”

  “I just climb for fun. My brother, he’s another story.” I tried to make it pretty clear I didn’t want to talk about him, even though I was curious about what she knew. I didn’t want to think about him right then. “You might want to turn around, because I’m going to take off this suit.”

  I was still wearing my courtroom suit. Once her back was turned, I stripped out of it, hung it up in the back of the Pig, and pulled on a pair of cut-off shorts and a ragged T-shirt.

  “What are we going to climb?” she asked when I was done changing and busy stuffing a pack with gear.

  “See that cliff above us?”

  She pointed up at Moriah. “That thing that looks like a hat brim on top?”

  “No, not that. Down the canyon a little ways. Where it’s not too steep.”

  “Oh. I see. That looks more reasonable.”

  “That ‘hat brim’ is my secret project. I might show it to you later. But like everything we talk about today, it’s confidential, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I led her a quarter mile along the base of the cliff to where it was only a hundred or so feet high. Here I dumped a packful of rope and gear on the broken rocks that littered the ground. I handed her a pair of shoes.

  “These ought to fit.”

  “You have woman’s-size shoes?” she asked.

  “They’re mine. For climbing hard stuff. The smaller the better.”

  She looked at my sandaled feet and seemed to be comparing the length of them to the length of the shoes. “That must hurt.”