Raptor

by Judith Van GIeson

  “It’s not very hard. You just throw something into the engine. Usually I cover the jet engines, but I took Attorney Stillman for a flight this afternoon and I planned to cover them after I finished tonight. A large rock would destroy an engine, so would just about anything else. You could empty your suitcase, that would do it: running shoes, jeans, a down vest, even a fur coat would destroy an engine.”

  “If it was a fur coat, it wasn’t Katharine.”

  “Katharine? Do you know her?”

  “Yes. She’s March Augusta’s girlfriend.”

  The prince, widening his hands like he was stretching out a note on an accordion, reinflated the ever-present ball. “Indeed. Her lover kills Sandy Pedersen, then she tries to kill me. Can someone please tell me why?”

  “Well, first of all, as I already told you, March didn’t kill Sandy Pedersen. Secondly, I don’t know that she did try to kill you. If she did sabotage the Sparhawk maybe she just wanted to prevent you from leaving and make a statement in the process.” Which raised the question of how she knew he was leaving.

  The prince brushed some imaginary lint from the arm of the jacket, which looked like an old flight jacket but was made of butter-soft leather, much finer quality than any bombardier ever wore. It probably came from some boutique in London, one of those elegant stores where black-veiled Saudi women spent millions of dollars on clothes and jewels to be seen by nobody but other members of the harem. “Why should she care whether I left or did not?” the prince asked.

  “She didn’t want you to take the gyrfalcon.”

  “The gyrfalcon. What concern is that of hers?”

  “She cares about birds, as do a lot of people.” It was a possibility that the prince had somehow fulfilled his dream and gotten ahold of the gyr, but if she had been in that plane the only flying she was doing now was as a wisp of smoke. “You didn’t have the bird in the plane, did you?” I asked him.

  The prince stopped picking at the lint. “I’m afraid not,” he said and changed the subject. “What is wrong with women in your country anyway? They have everything they want, but it hasn’t made them happy. Why are they so angry? Women in Saudi Arabia don’t act like that.”

  “How would anybody know? They are invisible in their black veils.”

  “That is not true. They have power in the home. They can scream and yell just as well as an American woman, but they don’t.”

  Katharine was screaming and yelling pretty well as the guards dragged her out of the airport. “Bastards,” she screamed. “Bastards, bastards, bastards. You’re letting the poachers, the real killers, go free while March is stuck in jail.” All eyes were on her, but her face, deranged with anger, was not a pleasant sight.

  16

  I’D BEEN IN Montana long enough now to know what there was to get angry about: predators who were free to kill, predators who weren’t; poachers who illegally took raptors from the wild for money, poachers who did it for the federal government; people who were imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit, people who committed crimes and went free. There was everything in Montana to get angry about and nothing. The everything is easy, the nothing is hard, unless you’re a Buddha. Anger can be useful when it is under control; it can also be a mad monkey that climbs into the mind and throws sense out. Some societies (Latin and Arab for starters) reward angry behavior. If a crime is committed in the heat of passion, the criminal may go free, particularly if the person who commits the crime is a man, and the person who supposedly provokes it is a woman. Even in the U.S.A. we make a distinction between crime that is premeditated and crime that is impassioned, but I’ve never been able to figure out why a crime that requires thought and planning is more reprehensible than one that is impulsive. A person who acts without thinking is far less predictable and far more dangerous to the ordinary uninvolved citizen than one who is motivated, plans ahead and knows who they’re after.

  As I drove through Fire Pond I was struck once again by its placid facade. It was hard to imagine a crime taking place here, planned or otherwise. What could go wrong in a town where the mountains were far enough away to impress you with their beauty without oppressing you with their shadow, a town with perfectly straight streets numbered and lettered in sequence, with no traffic problems even at nine o’clock in the morning, a town where cars stopped to let a pedestrian go by? It was another deep-blue-sky, crystalline-air day, a day of brilliant sunshine and clearly defined shadows. I was on my way to the massive stone building that now housed a gentle man, a black marketeer and an angry woman.

  March and Katharine were under the same roof again. How long that would last could well depend on Wayne Betts. The prince’s plane had been parked at a municipal airport and had not been on federal land so the supposed sabotage wouldn’t actually be under Betts’s jurisdiction. It wasn’t a federal crime, but if Betts could establish that it was related to the federal crime (the killing of a government operative on federal land) he might be able to involve himself in Katharine’s bail hearing, which would probably take place this afternoon.

  I had a client once in Albuquerque whose bookkeeper robbed him blind and spent the money on drugs and sugar. The money she took came from his employees’ withholding. Instead of paying the IRS she paid herself, and the penalties the IRS imposed when they caught up to him forced my client into bankruptcy. He got wise to her when she left the office one day to try to recover a repossessed car and he opened the mail to find a dunning letter from the IRS. We had her arrested on a Friday morning; she was out on Friday afternoon. “We don’t like to keep women in jail over the weekend,” the judge told me. “Then we have to feed ’em.” Betts was probably liberated enough to have no compunction about keeping a woman in jail and feeding her for two days or twenty years if he thought she’d interfered with his sting operation.

  The way to be a good lawyer, they say, is to see things through your opponent’s eyes. How would Betts’s swimming-pool blues see Katharine’s unstrung behavior at the airport? I wondered. Would it indicate to him that she had also been involved in Pedersen’s murder? She hated poachers, she had wolf-wipers in her shed, she was capable of violent acts.

  I’d made an appointment to talk to Betts later. My concern at the moment was March, who sat across from me in the visiting room of the Fire Pond jail. He didn’t look good; his hair seemed limp and drab, as if his curls had lost their spirit in captivity. His eyes were dull and he was badly in need of a change of clothes. Was he depressed for Katharine because the wild bird was now imprisoned between these stone walls or could it be because Katharine was no longer on the outside fighting his battles for him? March was the still center around which we had revolved. While he had been locked up passively in here, I’d been chasing a murderer for him, as the Kid put it. But still it was a job, I was gaining some experience and getting paid for it. What about Katharine? Was she acting out some submerged, possibly violent impulse for March? I didn’t believe he was capable of killing Pedersen or of asking Katharine to do it, but maybe she’d been angry enough that she wanted to. She was openly angry, he wasn’t, maybe that was enough. Maybe it was Katharine’s violence that made it possible for him to remain so calm. Was she the falcon in this situation and he the falconer? Or, like in many relationships that had gone on for a while, had the roles blurred? Although the burden of proof wasn’t on me, I was ready to believe Katharine had sabotaged the prince’s plane. The more interesting question was what else she had done.

  “What kind of a day is it?” March asked me wistfully.

  “It’s beautiful, crisp and clear and the sky goes on forever.”

  “It won’t be long before we have the first snow. I’d love to be out there making tracks in it,” he sighed.

  “I know.”

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said and for a moment the amber light came on and warmed his eyes. Even with his jailhouse pallor, he was a great-looking guy, and gentle, too, but gentleness could turn to Jell-O in here.

  “I’m sorry I w
asn’t able to get back sooner. It’s been quite a week; a murder, a car wreck, now this.”

  “What happened with Brannen? You never did tell me.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything, but it wasn’t long after I left his place that I was run off the road.”

  “I can’t believe Jimmy would do something like that.”

  Hard for March to believe that anybody he knew was capable of doing anything he didn’t like. “Maybe he didn’t, maybe he called someone else who did. Have you seen Katharine yet?” I asked.

  “Only briefly.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “Not too well,” he said. “She hates it here.”

  “Does she have a lawyer?”

  “Yes, someone who has represented her before.”

  “What happened?”

  “She found out the prince was planning on leaving on Saturday…”

  “How did she find that out?” It was the question I’d been afraid I’d have to ask.

  He picked at the tear in his jeans, which had widened at least an inch since I saw him last. A sliver of white leg peeked through. “I told her.”

  And that was the answer I’d been afraid of. “You told her? March, I asked you not to talk about what I told you with anyone and that included Katharine, especially Katharine.”

  “We live together … when we’re not in jail together.” He smiled slightly. “It’s hard not to tell her what’s going on in my life.”

  “You’re not going to have much of a life if you don’t cooperate with me.” My voice was rising, but I couldn’t help it. He’d given Katharine the opportunity to screw up my case.

  March picked at his jeans some more. Another week in here and the hole would be big enough for his knee to fit through. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so important.”

  “Of course it’s important. I don’t know whether Katharine sabotaged the prince’s plane or not. I’m going to see Betts later and it would be better if I didn’t know. However, he is likely to think that a woman violent enough to try to ground the prince is capable of killing or aiding in the killing of Pedersen. There’s no point in my helping him to reach that conclusion. If he can find a connection between the two crimes, he’ll keep you both in jail.”

  “He can’t keep Katharine here. Being imprisoned would kill her.”

  “If he can’t, there is a good chance the state can. She should have thought it through before she lost control and acted so irrationally.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  Fair? What did that have to do with it? I was right.

  “Katharine’s been through some hard times,” he said.

  “You know someone who hasn’t?”

  “It’s been worse for her than most. Her parents split up when she was only a kid. The father took off and her mother had a succession of boyfriends. One of them molested Katharine and locked her in a shed when she threatened to tell her mother. The shed was cold and dark; it was a terrifying experience. Because of that Katharine has a horror of being locked up. She can’t stand to see any living creature imprisoned. It has freaked her out even to visit me here. It’s going to be hell for her in jail.”

  A bad childhood experience—that might explain it, it might not. You could say she was traumatized by her childhood. You could also say she came into this life with a difficult karma to work out, a residue of bad deeds from past lives which was attracting violence to her in this one. It depends which side of the sixties you’re on. Whatever the cause of it, there is a certain amount of repetition in life. A person who has been a victim of violence in childhood is all too likely to experience the same later on. Only sometimes the roles change, the victim becomes the aggressor when the violence is repeated. Abused children can become abusive adults. If Katharine was violent and out of control enough to have thrown something into the prince’s jet engine, the next question would have to be, Had she been violent enough to have set the trap for Pedersen? Had March been accurate about the number of wolf-wipers in their shed? If so, had she gotten another one from Jimmy Brannen?

  Next question, Had she run me off the road because she feared Jimmy Brannen had blabbed or maybe just because she wanted to? A lot of people were willing to peer over the abyss now and then; Katharine jumped right in. Maybe she had an elastic rope that she counted on to bring her back. If so, the person who held the other end of it sat across from me. If anyone knew what Katharine was capable of it was March so I asked.

  “March, I don’t like to do this, but there’s a question I have to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did Katharine set the trap for Pedersen?”

  He hesitated and then he said “No,” very softly. His amber eyes, however, had a blank and puzzled expression.

  “She’s an unguided missile. Who really knows what she would do?” I was thinking out loud, which is a mistake when someone else is listening.

  “You never get angry?” asked March.

  “I don’t let it get out of control.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.” He was, in fact, getting a little edgy himself.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The acrimony in this conversation was escalating quickly.

  “Your drinking, for example. Do you have that under control?” He was making a good case for the notion that depression is anger repressed. His hair curled right up as his own temper began to show.

  “Drinking? What are you talking about? Have you ever seen me drinking?” This “drinking” business was getting overworked. I had a tequila now and then. So what?

  “Actually, the only place I ever see you is right here. It was just something Joan mentioned once. She worried that you were drinking too much.” He smiled ruefully, de-escalating already, indicating he either had a whole lot of control or only a little bit of anger.

  “Joan? What did she know about my drinking?” It pissed me off. Here I was trekking all over Montana finishing up her business, working for him, and they accused me of drinking.

  “I’m sorry, Neil. Don’t be angry.” The deer-in-the-woods look had come back into his eyes. I was the attorney, he was the incarcerated client. We had the same goal—getting him out of here. There was a lot at stake and someone had to back off, which was something he did better than I. I’ll admit it. It came with the territory. I don’t know of anyone who ever paid an attorney to back off.

  “Angry?” I asked. “Who’s angry?” I looked at the large clock on the wall that ticked off the prisoner’s precious visiting hours. “I should get going. I have to see Betts.” Actually it wasn’t time to see Betts—that appointment wasn’t until this afternoon—but it was time to get out of here. When you get right down to it, I’m not crazy about being in jail either.

  “What are you going to talk to him about?”

  “Just some information about his sting operation I’d like to check out.”

  “Let me know what he says.” He didn’t push it, which was just as well; I didn’t want Katharine attacking any more suspects if she got out on bail.

  “Of course.”

  “Neil.” He looked down at his jeans. “I really appreciate all that you’re doing for me. I want you to know that.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re not angry?”

  “Didn’t I say I wasn’t?”

  “See you soon?”

  “You got it.”

  I left him staring morosely down the long hallway that led to his cell.

  On my way back to the Aspen Inn I made a stop at a nearby mall because I was out of Marlboros. Back in the Pontiac I lit my cigarette and began negotiating my way out of the parking lot. The exit onto B Street was blocked by a Chevy Blazer trying to make a left turn. The driver was a woman with neat blond hair. The Blazer had New Mexico plates, which made her a neighbor I guess. It also had one of those bumper stickers you see in New Mexico that ask, “Are you prepared to meet your maker?” She thoughtfully chewed a piece of gum while she pondered her move and ponder
ed it some more, afraid to take the plunge. There was some traffic on B Street, but not that much, and the blond just sat there chewing her gum, blocking my exit and letting opportunities go by. I sidled up on her right and tried to squeeze through, but it couldn’t be done without scraping the lone strip of chrome off my no-frills rental car. I tapped my horn politely after she let one more opportunity pass, but there was no reaction. Granted a left-hand turn is tougher than a right, but if she was afraid to cross one lane and turn into another, she could have just turned right and gone around the block like a thinking person. Being trapped behind a gum-chewing Baptist in an oversized 4 × 4 was getting on my nerves. Maybe she was preparing to meet her maker in the parking lot, because she sure wasn’t making any effort to get out of there. She had to be from the southern part of the state to be that slow. I checked the fine print over the zia sign on the red and yellow license plate. Ruidoso, the noisy city. If she came from northern New Mexico, she’d have learned not to hesitate in traffic and to stay alert in parking lots. I beeped again louder. She turned and smiled as if to say, “What can I do? It’s in God’s hands.”

  “Move it, bitch,” I said.

  17

  WHEN I GOT back to the Aspen Inn, the movable letters had been removed from the sign, indicating, I supposed, that the Rebekahs and Odd Fellows had gone back to their nests. As I eased my way between the yellow lines in the parking lot, a pickup truck pulled in next to me, a beat-up brown model with rust spots on the side and a lot of nicks and dings in the fenders. The blue letters on the license plate said TALL; Leo Wolfe stretched his legs slowly, stepped out and ambled over.

  “Your truck looks like it’s seen some hard driving,” I said. If he wasn’t stupid enough to show up at the Aspen Inn in a truck in which he’d tried to run me off the road, he might be arrogant enough.

  “It gets a workout,” he replied. “If you’ve got a minute, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  The desk clerk flagged me down as we entered the lobby to give me a message from Marie, Tom Mitchell’s secretary, saying she’d like to talk to me today. Leo took off his cowboy hat when we entered the coffee shop, and, since there was no peg to hang it on, he carried it to the booth. He sucked in his gut, squeezed himself behind the table and lay the cowboy hat on the seat next to him. Once we had ordered our caffeine (coffee for him, tea for me), he shook his mane and congratulated himself.