Badwater

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Dad!” Zach yelled.

  He crunched over the gravel toward us, then got out with the rifle in his hands.

  “That’s a wolf!” one of the muscle-bound pricks yelled. “Shoot it, Dad!”

  “Load up!” I told Mungo, spinning her and shoving her toward the open window of the truck.

  Mr. Mann was pointing the rifle but didn’t pull the trigger. His sons and I were in the line of fire. Once Mungo was in the truck, he lowered the gun. But he still held it two-handed across his body, ready to bring it up again and fire.

  “What are you doing on my land? And what are you doing here with a wolf? I don’t recall giving you permission to come out here.”

  “He threatened to kill us, Dad. Just like he did Randy and Trey!”

  “Mr. Mann, I need to talk to your sons. All of them. About the lawyer that’s missing. I think they might know something about it.”

  The father looked at his sons in such a way that I knew he probably had few illusions about their character.

  “Do you know anything about it?” he demanded.

  “No!”

  He turned back to me, and I could also see in an instant that although he might be willing to believe anything about his oldest boys, he wasn’t going to let someone like me push them around without some damn good evidence.

  I said quietly, “Mr. Mann, I think they’re the ones who’ve been threatening Jonah Strasburg’s lawyers. Harassing them. I think they may have had something to do with that lawyer’s disappearance.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then it’s time for you to go.”

  The brothers laughed. I considered arguing, but read the look on the father’s face. I also saw the way his hands were white around the rifle. I creaked open the Pig’s door and climbed in.

  “Bye-bye. Adiós, amigo,” the brothers taunted.

  “You’re on notice, Agent,” their father said. “Don’t come back on my property without permission or a warrant. You do, and I’ll be within my rights to put a bullet in you.”

  I backed over the rocks edging the driveway and turned around in front of the house. The Pig had a huge turning radius, and I had to circumnavigate the entire drive. At the far edge, I saw two four-wheelers through the trees. I almost hit the brakes. But then I drove on and the brothers waved mockingly and Mr. Mann held on to his rifle.

  thirty-six

  While I was running around threatening citizens, Brandy was wondering for the thousandth time what was supposed to happen to her.

  Then she heard footsteps outside.

  The spark of hope was hard to smother. She wouldn’t let herself cry out, though. If it was Bogey or whoever had helped him bring her here, she didn’t want them to think she was begging. She would never give the bastards that kind of satisfaction. So she determined to wait and listen—she wouldn’t try a muffled yell for help unless the footsteps stopped coming toward her and started moving away.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  The steps came right up to the door frame. The sun was still on the lake, the light reflecting into the cabin, and she’d been staring out so hard that at first she couldn’t make out the figure that blocked the light. But she could smell him.

  Then slowly Bogey’s features became visible. He stared back at her with an expression of surprise.

  “Brandy? Oh my God. Brandy! What are you doing up here?” He rushed inside, still talking. “My God! Are you all right? I can’t believe I found you!”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and briefly hugged her, drawing taut the duct tape behind her back. Then he stopped and stared at her face. She knew he was reading the accusation in her eyes. The hatred. She felt it so strongly she wouldn’t have been surprised if he burst into flames.

  Slowly, his aristocratic face lost the surprised, concerned expression. It creased up into a slight smile.

  “Oh well,” he said. “You can’t blame me for trying, can you?”

  He dropped his pack on the debris-covered floor. He opened it and took out a supermarket-wrapped sandwich and a bottle of water. Taking out a pair of pliers, he crouched beside her and clipped the gag.

  Suddenly Brandy couldn’t get enough air. She gulped and gulped at it. God, it felt so good to have that thing off. For an odd moment she felt grateful to him. Then she caught herself and hated him all the more.

  She desperately wanted to rub her mouth, to knead its torn corners, but Bogey didn’t make a move toward the tape that bound her wrists.

  “First we need to have a little talk,” he said.

  “You sick bastard!” she shouted at him, only it came out slurred. The gag had been in so long it had molded the shape of her mouth. “You goddamn—”

  “Shh. Shh. Be quiet and listen to me, Brandy. You need to understand something. This is all an accident. A mistake that’s snowballed far beyond anyone’s intentions. The boys only intended to spook you last night. To keep up the pressure of threats and harassment. I had no idea they would burn your car.”

  “You’re a goddamn liar,” Brandy shouted at him.

  “Shhh. Just listen to me now. According to what they told me, you showed up later than they expected. For all they knew, you were camping somewhere in the woods. That’s apparently why they burned the car. Just to do something. Then you showed up, and they tried to chase you off. Just to scare you, nothing more. But you fell off the bike and hit your head. They didn’t know what to do—they were frightened. So they brought you up to this old cabin they knew about from hunting trips and tied you up. At some point late last night they realized things had gone too far and decided to call me, to see if I could help them. And you. Do you understand? I’m going to get you out of here, but we’ve got to help them in return. Keep them out of trouble. I promised them that if they told me where you were, I’d make sure they didn’t get in trouble.”

  Brandy watched him for a moment. Then she spoke slowly and carefully, enunciating every word.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Bogey. As soon as I get back to town, I’m going to call the police. Then the university. Then the state bar. And then all of your favorite reporters, and let them know exactly what kind of man you are.”

  Bogey shook her shoulders.

  “You need to listen to me, Brandy. You do that, and Jonah Strasburg will go to prison for the rest of his life. It won’t just ruin my defense strategy, it will turn it into a bomb against us. Everything I’ve done has been for Jonah. I told you at the very start—this is war. You say anything, you do anything, to keep the state from convicting your client. You want to be a defense lawyer? Then you’ve got to be a warrior. You’ve got to understand why I did this, and play your part. When we get back into town, you tell the authorities that you were kidnapped by a bunch of locals. That you didn’t see who they were, but they told you this was in retaliation for what happened to Cody. I found you only after getting an anonymous tip. You’ll be famous. And Jonah will be saved.”

  Brandy stared at him in disbelief.

  “You’re really sick,” she said. “No, you’re not just sick, you’re fucking insane.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear you say that,” he replied.

  He looked very sad all of a sudden, like he was disappointed in her. He’d better be sad, she thought. He’s about to lose his job, his license, his reputation, and his freedom.

  Shaking his head, Bogey reached behind her and grabbed the tightly wound strips of tape that held her wrists. He tugged on them, hard.

  “Ow!” Brandy yelped. Her wrists were bloody and bruised.

  Bogey tugged again.

  “Take it off!” she ordered him.

  “Just checking that they’re secure.”

  He backed away, brushing then plucking at the creases of his pressed jeans. He bent to pack up the food and water he hadn’t given her. Suddenly he lunged toward her again, ripping an arm’s length of duct tape from a roll. Her scream of outrage was cut off as he wrapped the
tape crookedly around her head.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Brandy. You disappoint me. Maybe you just need some quiet time to reconsider.”

  He started to walk out the door, then turned back.

  “Think about this: If I let you go, no one will believe you. They’ll think that you were just part of the hoax. Or that the whole thing was your idea, and I refused to go along. Yes, that’s what I’ll say. I refused to participate, and now you’re angry and trying to blame it all on me. They might suspect me of being involved, but there’s no evidence other than your word. But for you, you’re finished. You’ll be disgraced. You’ll never practice law again.”

  thirty-seven

  I drove back through Badwater looking for McGee’s car. I knew it was a state vehicle, a shiny black four-door Buick, usually filled with fast-food litter and the stench of cigarettes. I had ridden in it many times in better days. I’d laughed a lot in it, too.

  I found it outside Cesar’s. I parked next to it in the lot and went inside. McGee wasn’t at the bar, which hadn’t yet filled with the after-work crowd. Instead he was exactly where he’d been the last time—in a booth in the empty restaurant portion. Despite the bad food and surly service, he evidently liked this place. Something about the black walls and the blood red upholstery must have appealed to him.

  Spread across the table was a copy of Luke’s files on the Strasburg case. McGee was studying the pages in the light of the table’s red-globed candle. I had a partial view of an autopsy shot. I averted my eyes. I had always hated seeing that stuff.

  “Speak of the devil,” McGee said by way of greeting.

  “You’re talking to yourself now? Don’t tell me you’re getting senile already.”

  I slid into the booth without being asked. McGee began closing up the files. I saw that there was also a fat folder labeled “Antonio Burns.” My personnel file. When he had them all in a disorderly stack, with the personnel file buried beneath those about the Jonah Strasburg case, he leaned back and sipped his signature drink of rum and Diet Pepsi.

  “What are you doing with all that stuff? Are you baby-sitting Luke, too?” I didn’t mention having noticed my file.

  “I’m consulting with him.”

  “He really agreed to that? To taking advice from the guy who fired him as a cop eight years ago?”

  “I had to exert some influence. He’s going to at least hear me out if he wants the endorsement of the AG come election time.”

  I felt suddenly sad. McGee was hawking the AG’s endorsement? Since when had he become a politico? Through the years of our friendship, he’d always railed against politics as the greatest threat to the impartial rule of law, which had seemed to be his religion. Over the last year, as our relationship fell apart, I’d noticed more and more times when he’d had to compromise for what I supposed he saw as the greater good. It sounded like now he’d crossed the line, just as I seemed to be heading in the other direction. It made me sad, but it also made me want to hurt him.

  “Oh. That’s just great. So the two of you are going to work together now to sacrifice this kid.”

  McGee bristled. “That’s not how I’m looking at it. I’m going to talk to Luke about a reasonable plea offer.”

  I snorted.

  “What? Plead to the top count, and you’ll promise to stand silent at sentencing?”

  It was a joke, an ugly one. Murder had only one sentence when the death penalty wasn’t invoked—life in prison.

  “I thought a deal was what you wanted. Isn’t that why you’ve been running off at the mouth to the defense? Or is it just because you wanted to shag the co-counsel?”

  I ignored that. “What is it? The deal? Another media ploy to make you guys look generous? You know Bogey won’t take anything. All he cares about is the attention. Fuck it. I don’t care about the case anymore, Ross. I just don’t want the girl to get hurt. I don’t give a shit about anyone—or anything—else in this state.”

  I felt too much emotion raising my voice. I never did that. I slouched lower in my seat.

  McGee scoffed. “She’s in no danger. It’s a publicity stunt.”

  I shook my head and said, “No, it’s not. I know her.”

  “Carnally, I assume?”

  He didn’t mention his goddaughter’s name, but it was implicit in the way his eyes blazed as he spit the question. As if I could still somehow wrong Rebecca a year after she had ended our romantic relationship.

  “Yeah. That’s right. Brandy Walsh might have screwed me and then stabbed me in the back for her client’s sake, but she wouldn’t pull something like this.”

  “Oh, no. She’d just whore herself out to the lead investigator for information. But she’s a moral person. She certainly wouldn’t dirty her hands.”

  I didn’t reply. I knew I couldn’t win. After all these years, McGee should trust me. Trust my instincts, at least. But those days were long gone.

  The chubby waitress walked by without looking our way. When she passed again, still pointedly without looking, McGee raised his glass and rattled his ice cubes but to no avail.

  After a few minutes of silence, he asked, “Have you been keeping out of this? Leaving it to the professionals?”

  I sat up a little straighter. The insult stung—the fact that I wasn’t really a cop anymore.

  “Not really.”

  McGee’s scowl intensified.

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing illegal. Well, nothing too illegal, anyway. Just sort of out there on the line without quite crossing it. Arguably, as you lawyers say.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Do you really want to know?” I asked. “You might have to fire me before this case goes to trial. It will screw things up for you and Luke. Screw up the election.”

  “Don’t fuck around with me, QuickDraw.”

  “Well, I used Mungo to intimidate some citizens. It kind of went along with my threatening to arrest or maybe shoot them if they didn’t answer my questions.”

  Instead of exploding, McGee just glared harder. He had a major-league stink eye, even in a dark restaurant. But I sustained it and gave right back my best brown-eyed version.

  “I thought we had an understanding, QuickDraw,” he growled. “Your probation’s been revoked.”

  “Yeah, I’m not a cop anymore. Just a private citizen. An unindicted felon, isn’t that pretty much what you called me? If you want to believe bad things about me, the least I can do after all these years of friendship is prove to you that you’re not entirely senile yet.”

  McGee’s face was turning a darker color of crimson than the red-globed candle could account for. I decided, Why the hell not? I was as disappointed and as angry as he was. My onetime best friend and mentor was spurning me; why not give it right back? I laid all my cards on the table.

  “You might find it interesting that I plan on stepping all the way over the line tonight. I’ve never done it before, at least not on this side of the border. But it might be the only way to find her. See, I know the Mann twins had something to do with Brandy’s disappearance. They know where she is. They all but admitted it—they were in the forest last night. Before I could finish my questions, though, their father drove up and booted me off their land. Pointed a gun at Mungo, too. So I need to talk to them again, and this time I’m not going to be so nice.”

  “How are you going to do that?” he demanded. “You said you already threatened to shoot them.”

  “That’s something that, I swear, Ross, you really don’t want to know.”

  Roberto called again. Things were still peaceful in the jail, but something was definitely up. Tom, the prick with the crew cut, was on duty tonight. He was the one who’d been so upset when I Tased Smit, and the one who’d only pretended to lock Jonah’s cell the other night. Roberto thought he and the deputy working with him—a young male I didn’t know—were disturbingly sociable with Smit and his little crowd of Anglo inmates. And disturbi
ngly hostile to Jonah.

  Not only that, but the Anglo inmates had been giving Jonah a particularly hard time throughout the day. Smit had taken his food while the guards chuckled and pretended not to see. Someone had tripped him when he was trying to get back to his cell. There’d been talk all day that tonight was the night he was finally going to get it.

  “Okay. Just try to stay out of it,” I told him. “Fake another seizure if you can. I’m not sure what else you can do. See what happens and I’ll try to make sure that the perps are prosecuted.”

  It was a hollow promise, given my current status. But I didn’t know what else I could do. The county attorney didn’t give a damn if his prized defendant was attacked in the jail—he’d made that very clear. Jonah’s own lawyer would love it if he was seriously assaulted. It would make his client a martyr, and make things even more of a circus. The sheriff had hated me from the night I’d Tased Smit. In fact, he might be listening to a complaint right now from one of his leading citizens, the head of the County Cattlemen’s Association, about how I had trespassed on his land—accompanied by a banned predator—and threatened his eldest sons.

  Roberto, though, had never been particularly good at following orders.

  thirty-eight

  I sat in my truck with Mungo restlessly prowling the backseat for nearly an hour. I’d pulled down a side street where I could see Cesar’s parking lot, but where it was unlikely I could be seen. We listened to the Clash on the CD player. “I Fought the Law” was playing when the Mann twins pulled into the lot in their raised crew-cab truck with the naked-woman decals on the rear mud flaps, and I wondered what kind of omen the song suggested. The brothers drove to the far dark corner of the lot and got out. Despite their injuries, they were laughing as they walked toward the bar. They didn’t notice my truck.