Dream of the Wolf

by Bradley McKenzie

  “I think Avina Zadeh is overwhelmed. Her trauma is authentic. She has a low stress threshold. She has the symptoms of shock. I’m not ready to offer her a deal.”

  “But that’s how we do this. One rolls over on the other. We have the best-case scenario, the Brown girl rolling over on the blonde. The blonde’s a killer, through and through.”

  “Avina Zadeh trusts me. I can’t threaten that trust. I need her to truly open up to me. I think she knows more about what happened than she is saying and I don’t want to jeopardize the trust we’ve built with threats. And those two women are tighter than you think.”

  “You want to become Avina’s friend?”

  “I need to build a real relationship with her so she can trust me and come clean to me about what happened that night.”

  “The more I watch your interviews of Helen Hearne, the more convinced I am that she killed both women. It explains murder with lack of violence. It explains the lack of semen. We need probable cause to get the brown girl’s Land Rover in as evidence for processing, to cast her tire tread and search for Lara’s hair. We can even photo the spotlights for an ID with the witness. What do you think of all this?”

  “I have more people of interest to clear. I ask that you be patient, sir. I need a few days.”

  “Days? You don’t have a few fucking days, sister. Did you see the camera vans at town square? That’s national cable news, in Jackson. The media will go bananas for these rich bitches. The attitude, the style, the west coast bullshit values, these are dream girls. We give them rope and they hang themselves. The public will do all the work for us with these two. They’ll fucking feast on these girls and so will a jury.”

  She pulled the gearshift down into reverse to back out.

  “You don’t have two days with me lady. You don’t have twenty-four hours. You don’t have one fucking day. You roll the Arab girl over on Helen and you do it tonight.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. She didn’t know why, his presence standing over her, in her face, her lack of sleep, his bloodlust, she could not explain it, but tears rolled from her eyes. Hot wet tears poured down her face, as though she were crying, in front of Leeman, of all people. She felt betrayed by her body.

  She wiped her face with her hands and he took a step back in shock.

  He paused and thought a moment. “You’re a young woman, and you really are a hard worker. But you haven’t put a lot of people away like I have. Did they tell you how many motherfuckers I put away back east? I’ll tell you a quick story, there was a bigtime black gangster up in Cleveland, and he was King of the gang-bangers in a town as black as coal. I put so many of his outfit away they were scared to shoot each other. King Banger put a bounty on my head worth a quarter million dollars, for literally, my decapitation. This, in a town, mind you, where niggers die for the drawer of a cash register, never mind a cool 250. Well, King Banger died in prison and I have a ranch house in Jackson Hole. That’s how that one ended; it was easier for his gunmen to roll on him that to try for my head. That’s how I pressure someone into a deal. You know, I am not much older than Hargrove. But I’ve buried some motherfuckers. You’ll get used to all this. You really are a very young woman for this business.”

  She felt a wellspring of dread rolling through herself. She cleared her eyes with her cotton shirtsleeves.

  He said, “You have feelings, emotions, and all that. It’s natural for women to have many different emotions; you naturally have much deeper access to intuitive perception. I’m the type of guy that is not at all bothered by that, it’s perfectly natural. Women have a gift. You’re as good as any police I’ve seen, at your age, anyway.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “And I can see that you don’t like these girls for this, that’s obvious to me, and it’s not easy for you to pressure someone you feel is a victim. You don’t feel that the girls killed Catherine and Lara. Do I have it right? I’m sensitive to that. But you and I disagree, so you have to prove me wrong, you see.”

  He was being as gentle as he could be. He reached in and touched her hand lightly, in a caring way, she held herself from recoiling. “I quite like you Brouwer,” he said, “you’re as foxy as hell. You can bring me who you think did this. I’m giving you a window of opportunity to exonerate the girls. Do you have someone else you can bring me?”

  “I would like a bit more time with the women, a bit more time on some other leads, sir.”

  “Okay cool. You do your thing and bring me your suspect, but you’d better move your little ass to do it, because this can’t take days. I can put this blonde bitch from Seattle in front of any twelve locals and they will fry her ass. I’ll sleep as soundly as my fucking basset hound.”

  He banged his hand on her roof, indicating she could go, and she did.

  “Bring me someone,” he called after her.

  Duchess draped her jaw over Brouwer’s shoulder as she touched her fingers to her soft nose. Mosquitoes fled as she ran her hand along the mare’s smooth hide.

  He watched her. On the other side of her cabin, she was stroking her horses’ neck. If she turned, it meant moving smoothly behind her cabin, then down into the cottonwood stand by the stream that edged her property, and quietly through the trees.

  Breeze brushed the moon of clouds, the yard light lit the corral and barn, and she stood with her horse in the shadow of her home, beautiful woman, with her dutiful horse. Sweat from the hike through trees into the sage lands dried in the night’s coolness. The warbling call of a fox drifted out over the cottonwoods at the creek and she turned, quickening the beating heart. Pulling her shoulder down in a turn to listen for the fox again, showed there was nothing on her hip, she was unarmed, and the breathing calmed. Bright, tiny, and clean, the stars were precise in the night. She faced to her side with her horses head over her back, as though being comforted by the beast.

  She had been in her house watching TV, mesmerized by her own image, as he had been when he first saw her on the news. Below her, his chest against her cabin, while only feet away, she stood at her sink. Backing away slowly to be still in her yard, with her so close in her cabin and its ocher logs. Through the sagebrush, around the light of her barn, remaining in the dark, he slid under the wood pole fence into her horse pen, and then, standing silently in her barn, he watched her. A large dark horse pawed, clanking its steel shoe on the stable door while a second horse wandered out front. He went through the barn door and suddenly she was there, perfect, at her kitchen window. She was a perfect image framed in the window by the light of her cabin, a forest queen.

  Along the further side of her cabin, looking for entry points other than the glass front door, he needed to have her, to hold her high, to raise her beautiful body to the sky paradise beyond the stars. He avoided her motion light; the smaller horse had triggered it. Then she came out of her cabin to be alone with him in the night. While she stood with her hand on her horse, whispering to the docile animal, he moved silently behind her cabin. He had circled her in this way and viewed her for some time. Her beauty and isolation, and her strength, was deserving of a queen, the thing you desire so powerfully you must defile, and destroy, to make it yours, to raze it to your animal level. Then she was in her cabin.

  Her left her property by walking slowly back into the woods from where he came. The breeze was cooling among the cottonwoods by the creek, into a trailhead on the mountainside. Hiking all night away from her, through the forest, the brightest star in the sky became the sun.

  22.

  She needed more time to bring Leeman something, to slow him down, but he wouldn’t give her time. Falling back on how she learned to police, from her days at Highway Patrol, she cruised, looking for any off road truck with roof lighting.

  She pulled over a man with his family. Hauling a fifth wheel camper, his truck had roof rack lighting. A small child crying in a safety seat, the wife breast-fed an infant while she questioned the man from South Dakota. It was a waste of time.

 
She drove up as Sheriff Hargrove returned to the county offices. He pulled his truck up to hers and they faced one another through open driver’s windows.

  “You need to bring Leeman something. He’s been calling you he says. That isn’t good.”

  “I can’t talk to Leeman, I’m on patrol. What the hell is with that guy? He’s bat-shit.”

  “I don’t know but you’re a bur under his saddle. He thinks you’re playing him. He wants you to bring Helen Hearne in for more questioning.”

  “Is he joking? Lawyers flew out here to take her back west; I watched it myself. They escorted her as if she’s the empress of Japan. We don’t bring Helen Hearne anywhere. That horse left the barn.”

  “Avina then, get her to turn on Helen. Just try her once more so Leeman gets his way and calms down.”

  “I’m building trust with Avina Zadeh. That takes time and threatening her will undo that. I’m working leads and patrolling. What is Leeman’s problem?”

  “He’s worried you’ve been working behind his back, building a case with the state’s attorney general, stealing this from him.”

  “Jesus, he’s something else, which one of us is emotional. He’s the one overpowered by feelings and emotions.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. You two need to back off and let me do my job.”

  “Your job is to get the Zadeh girl to talk. You need to focus on her Lane.”

  “I think she knows something too, but I need to shake out details to bring to her, to make her think. I need to bring new information to her, to change the course of these discussions, it’s going nowhere with her. She’s in a daze.”

  “The girl lives in a daze. Her life is a daze. New information won’t change that. Are you building a state’s case on the Jackals? Leeman has me worried too.”

  “Jesus, you two are made for one another. I’m following leads. Why do I get the feeling you’re undermining me?”

  “What does that mean, that we’re ‘undermining you’?”

  She ran her hands above her ears to straighten her hair behind her head.

  “I feel like you and Leeman are working me out of this. It’s a terrible feeling. You’re undermining me, excluding me, and holding me to a different standard. I can’t do what he wants in the amount of time he’s given me, he’s setting me up to fail.”

  The sheriff looked forward through his windshield, shook his head, and faced her again.

  “I have no idea what Leeman is up to,” he said. “He doesn’t tell me shit. And don’t lump me in with that little prick, as I’m the one keeping him off you. What’s with all this double standard talk? It’s very unlike you.”

  “I have a terrible feeling now. Leeman is putting pressure on me, setting unreal expectations so that he can argue me off this case.”

  “Jesus, Lane, you sound like one of these millennial girls. They think it’s unfair the world can inconvenience them. All that is happening is that we disagree with you about these murders. On a homicide case, detectives disagree. It happens. But you need to watch out. You may be right about Leeman. I don’t know what he is up to, but you should have debriefed him, not kept him in the dark about the Jackals. You have him seriously hot again. He is pacing around stewing about you. I’m worried I can’t hold him back any longer.”

  Sheriff Hargrove drove away, and his dust clouded her open window.

  She sat for a moment, unsure of what to do. She decided to patrol. Driving would clear her mind.

  23.

  She cut through slower moving traffic along the 191, four lanes curving amongst foothills holding back the towering mountains. Her smartphone vibrated along the top of a Tupperware container of oatmeal and blueberries with yogurt, a reminder she had forgotten to eat. She pulled into a motel parking lot and answered.

  Jennifer Hackett had a nice voice on, a pleasant voice. “Lane, there has been a change of plans.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Well, before you react, I want to say that I’ve really gone to bat for you as best I can. I mean, personally, as your friend, we graduated from Bozeman together, and we started out together. I’ve worked my magic, and there’s a huge upside for you. In the end this is going to be so much better for you,” Jennifer said.

  She could feel the lining of her stomach wall. “What is going to be better for me Jennifer?”

  “You are being reassigned.”

  Traffic hummed past her, recreation vehicles and motor homes, heading north to Yellowstone Park.

  “Lane?”

  “What do you mean I’m being reassigned?” She put a hand to her abdomen.

  “It hurts me to tell you this, but I wanted to be the one to do it, to help you understand. We are closing the Jackson Field Office. You will need to step down from the Kinderdine and Mazer murder investigation and await orders for the closing of the command.”

  Her stomach throbbed with emptiness, and she tasted its acid. “Why are you doing this?”

  “So you can come to work with me in Cheyenne. You’ll be in a much more important role, directing state police resources, with better pay. We’re promoting you to a special liaison role. You no longer have to put up with good old boys down there. You can be here, in the capital, with me. That backward county can go to hell. You’ll have a great time down here, and you’ll be safe.”

  Jennifer thought the upside was being like Jennifer. Brouwer did not want Jennifer’s life and never had. Jennifer believed that others wanted what she wanted and she was wrong.

  “They can’t close the Jackson office. We have two murder investigations under way. It makes no sense. How in hell could you close it now? Never mind, I know why.”

  “Lane, I don’t want you to be angry.”

  “I’m not angry. I’m a homicide detective investigating multiple murders. This is how we sound. You sound like the state of Wyoming isn’t interested in getting justice for these women.”

  “We are, but it’s complicated.”

  “You’re making it complicated because y’ all made it political.”

  “Attorney Leeman formally requested that we withdraw from the case and the Governor has agreed.”

  “In exchange for what?” There was a moment of quiet on the other end. Brouwer went on, “Jennifer, what kind of guy do you really, truly think Attorney Leeman is?”

  Hackett said, “The kind of guy that if he can’t fuck you in bed, he tries to in life.”

  “Exactly. Well, guess what he’s doing to us both right now?”

  “Lane, I don’t have to tell you this. I’m only helping you because we are such close friends, because we were friends in college, but yeah, we are closing the Jackson office so that Leeman’s people won’t run a candidate against our guy up there. We have lost a lot of momentum politically in the valley, and the Governor can’t afford to lose anymore. He doesn’t want an enemy in Leeman. We have to let the county get their way on this, and live to fight another day. We’ll restore the office once we win the election next fall.”

  “We weren’t friends in college.”

  “What do you mean? Of course we were friends in college.”

  “You were a bitch in college. I hated you.”

  “Brouwer, you did not just say that.”

  “Jennifer, listen to yourself. You’re stopping the investigation into the murders of two women, just to protect some nutless politician. Who are you?”

  “I’m doing my job and I’m looking after you. I’m looking after my friend. You’re in too much danger up there in your cabin alone, out on patrol alone. You’re all over TV. The attorney general feels we have left you exposed, that without support from the county you may be in grave danger, and I agree. It’s too much for one female agent. I said that a year ago. The Jackson office had to fall. You are too hard-headed to see that I’m looking out for you here. You wouldn’t be happy until you got yourself killed.”

  Jennifer Hackett’s voice came from deep inside her. She truly believed this.


  “Don’t spin this around to be about my safety.” Brouwer said. “If the attorney general thought this field work was so dangerous he would have assigned me highway patrolmen. Your gutless governor is making deals to drop a homicide case because he’s too afraid to face his enemies in an election and let the people decide. Do politics at the ballot box, not in a murder case. You think you’re winning some political deal on this? Gimme a break. You’re leaving justice for those girls in the hands of county show ponies. Leeman wants to make a big spectacle out of this for the media, and he’ll have a mob burning Helen at the stake. But that won’t help Catherine and Lara.”

  “Lane, don’t accuse me of not wanting to solve these crimes. Confronting violence against women is why I became a prosecutor, and why I joined the attorney general’s office. I’m on your side.”

  “Your plan to protect women is to stop investigating the deaths of two of them?”

  “Lane, with all due respect, and I know you’re hurt by this, and I know it was always your dream to be up in Jackson Hole, but the county has been able to make the case that you aren’t helping the investigation, and that you’re taking it off the rails.”

  “Excuse me?” Motorcycles rattled past on the interstate. She rolled up her window. “How am I doing that exactly Jennifer? This should be interesting.”

  “You went after Nathan Petrie with a vengeance but coddled those little rich bitches like they’re royalty. Leeman and Hargrove liked those girls for this from the start and you ignored them.”

  “I didn’t ignore them, I ignored their theory because its bullshit.”

  “You sent the phone chip, the Kinderdine home security footage and both women’s remains to us down here. We support you in doing that but Jesus girl, you made the good old boys out there hot under the collar. You threaten Attorney Leeman in a way only you can.”

  “Everyone is so afraid of Attorney Leeman. What am I missing?”