The Edge of Justice (13 page)

FIFTEEN

A
T A LITTLE
past noon on Sunday, Oso and I are back in Wyoming. We speed into the capital city of Cheyenne, which is really just a dusty little cow town squatting on the plains. I park in the nearly empty lot outside the office building that houses the AG's Office and DCI's headquarters. As I open the back door for Oso, we both watch a tumbleweed race erratically through the lot and across one of the town's busiest streets. There is no traffic to slow the weed on its frenzied errand.

The beast's gaze follows it, but he doesn't give chase. I'm not sure if it's another sign of his advancing age or if he's just trying to be well behaved, thinking that if he's good I won't leave him behind on my next climb. “A few years ago you wouldn't have let that 'weed get away,” I chastise him. “I guess you used it all up on that soccer ball the other day.”

I unlock a side door to the building with an electronic card, and Oso comes in behind me. At a bank of elevators, Oso eyes an open door suspiciously before I can coax him in. When the elevator starts with a jerk, he spreads his legs wide and lowers himself a few inches. We ride down into the basement that houses DCI's laboratories. Again I use the card to let us into the Forensics Department, which is where all physical and trace evidence is analyzed.

Behind the receptionist's station in the windowless office, Dave Ruddick, the chief forensic technician of DCI, leans back in a chair smoking a cigarette and reading a
People
magazine. His excessively long legs are propped on the desk in front of him. I have never seen him sit without his legs propped up on something—they take up a good portion of his six feet and seven inches and will scarcely fit under a desk. Looking up at me, he grins with teeth that are equally overlarge and casually tosses the magazine on the desk. He starts to drawl out, “Howdy,” but it turns into a yelp of fright when he sees Oso. It comes out something like, “Howdiiii!” He leaps to his feet. “Jesus, I've heard about that monster!”

“Thanks for working the weekend, Dave.”

“No problem,” he says, watching Oso in the same cautious way the dog had looked at the elevator, holding out a trembling hand to be sniffed. “Gets me away from the wife and the kids, you know. Is that thing safe?”

“Oh yeah. He's a cupcake.”

Oso, still on his best behavior, licks Dave's hand.

“So how's that case going in Laramie? We heard you had a run-in with some of the younger Surenos.”

“Yeah, those guys don't like me much. As for the Danning investigation, it was supposed to be easy, just make sure the locals weren't covering up anything, with the County Attorney's kid being there when the Danning girl fell and all. But it's looking more and more like they're hiding something. In the words of the immortal Ross McGee, it's a clusterfuck.”

Dave laughs. “The bosses are real happy to have that old degenerate out of town for a while. For two weeks now they haven't had to worry about the secretaries filing a class-action sexual harassment suit.” McGee's grotesque but harmless flirting is a source of intense concern for the AG and his immediate staff. At one point they even hired a feminist to give us, and more pointedly Ross McGee, a mandatory lecture on the subject of appropriate office behavior. He'd limped in a half hour late smelling of tobacco and whiskey, patted the speaker on the rear with his hoary hand, and said something like, “Sorry, darling . . . I got caught up in a
Penthouse
while sitting on the crapper.” Dave and I and all McGee's other disciples live in fear that they will one day use it as an excuse to fire him. But so far they haven't had the balls.

Dave waves me back toward his office and says, “It's an interesting bottle you brought me. So who's covering up what in Danning?”

I follow him down the hall and into the wide laboratory that is his office. The room is large and cluttered with metal tables, scales, refrigerators, gyroscopes, and an assortment of stranger scientific instruments. His desk is at the front of the room, facing it, like a teacher's. Taped to the wall behind it and the filing cabinets that surround it are finger paintings that Dave's children have made. I pause and admire them as I explain about the suspect injury to the back of Kate Danning's skull, the positive drug tests, the unexplained abrasion to her neck, the shoddy initial investigation, and Karge's request to the coroner that no rape kit be performed. I don't mention the similarities to the murder of Kimberly Lee.

“What did you find?” I ask, pointing at the whiskey bottle that sits on the desk, enclosed in clear plastic. The bottle itself is covered with grayish dust. Next to it rests a Magic Eight Ball, which is the source of great amusement for all the staff. When I was working cases out of this building we would regularly consult it.

Dave sits behind his desk and once again props up his feet. “A lot of smudges and partials, a couple of complete prints, and that the tip of the neck, where the threads are, was wiped with a cotton cloth of some sort. Probably a T-shirt.”

“I didn't wipe it. I picked it up with rubber gloves.”

“I figured you knew what you were doing. Anyway, some of the prints came back as unknowns. Two I got matched up with one of the names you gave me. Bradley Karge, the County Attorney's son. We got his prints off the fed's computer from when he was arrested in New Mexico or someplace.”

I sink into a chair and Oso drops at my feet. “Wow. That's what Ross and I were afraid of.”

“You know, if the media gets ahold of this . . .”

I don't let him finish. “I know, I know. The sentencing's going to be in less than a week. This Friday. Right when the county's attention is focused on Nathan Karge. If it comes out that his son could be a killer himself, Karge is as good as gone. There's no way he'll make governor. Not if he raised a murderer, or even a suspected murderer.”

Dave looks uncomfortably stern. “From what I've seen of the man on TV, that'll be a shame. That man should be governor. Or senator. Or even president. He's the kind of guy that makes Wyoming look good. I hope you know what you're doing, going after his boy and all. Especially right now.”

I scratch Oso's ears. “They gave me the investigation and I'm investigating it. Let the chips fall where they may.”

Dave shakes his head. “Sometimes that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. There's such a thing as discretion.”

I stop scratching Oso. “That's interesting, Dave. So you're saying maybe I should let the next governor's son slide on a potential homicide, but when I righteously shoot three dealers and rapists who were drawing on me, it's okay for the office to discipline me, exile me across the state, make me out as some kind of dangerous rogue, then assign some rookie to defend me, when you and everyone else here knows it's just politics.”

Dave holds up his hands. “Hey, hey. I'm not saying that at all. And you did get screwed. That was bullshit, no one's denying it. Forget I said anything. This place is getting to me. . . .” He passes me a sheet of paper with fingerprints in squares on it. “Look, there's the partials from the bottles on the left. On the right are Bradley Karge's prints from when he was booked on that drug charge in New Mexico.”

I examine it. And I decide to cut Dave some slack, both because of what he's just said about me getting screwed and the fact that he was willing to come in on the weekend and look at the bottle. Besides, I like him and he's very good at his job. And one can't help but be influenced by the political intrigue that sweeps through this office like the Chinook.

“I can never read these things. But you say they match?”

“They match.”

I check to make sure that Dave's name and signature are on the paper, making him an official witness now.

“What about the other prints? The unknowns?”

“Nothing came up on the crime computer. I can't match them to anybody. They're not Brad Karge's, and they're not Heller's or any of the other names you gave me.”

I'm disappointed to hear that. I would like nothing better than to arrest them both. Heller's behavior at the bar and at his house has earned my sincere antipathy. As has his reputation as an abuser and corrupter of young girls. It would be a community service to break up his little cult. For a moment I feel uncomfortable about my night with Lynn, a prominent member of that very group. I should have had better judgment, more self-control.

“What about the blood and hair? And what about saliva from where someone would have drunk out of it?”

“All in the works, pard. Those things will take some time to check out the DNA. I need the sample from the dead girl, if you think it's her stuff. I already put in a request with the Albany County Coroner. At least the blood type matches the girl's, for a start. You might want to have McGee lean some of his weight on the coroner, get him to rush me the sample. From my phone conversation with him I got the feeling he might drag his feet a little.”

It will be a pleasure to pay another visit to Dr. Gustavson with Ross. And it's time to bring in Bradley Karge for some official questioning. There is not yet quite enough evidence to charge him with Kate Danning's murder, but it is getting very close. Before I borrow a phone and call McGee at the hotel in Laramie, I take the Magic Eight Ball off Dave's desk and give it a shake. “All signs point to yes,” it reads.

McGee has scheduled an appointment for us to meet with Nathan Karge this afternoon. A roving security guard at the courthouse, a big, sunburnt man with a mullet haircut, unlocks the door after McGee knocks on the glass with the gold head of his cane. The rent-a-cop recognizes McGee and is fawningly polite to him, probably realizing that a bad word from head of the state's law enforcement division could keep him from ever getting a job on any police force in Wyoming. I smile, smirk really, watching the guard say “Good afternoon, sir,” and “How are you?” in his redneck drawl. There are few things more awkward than a cracker kissing ass. McGee merely grunts at him, and the guard in turn pretends I am invisible when I try to show him my badge. I wonder if he is a relative of Bender and Willis—he has the same big, sloppy, corn-fed build.

McGee looks worse than I have ever seen him. His skin is almost gray above his long white beard. His breaths are rapid and shallow, as if it is costing him an enormous effort to keep his lungs inflated. McGee sounds like Oso after a long run on a hot summer day, but with the addition of a new wheeze that makes me think my boss's throat is constricting. Leaning heavily on his cane as we climb the stairs, he shoots me a truly malevolent look when I move to take his free arm. I jerk away from him, a little stung by his glare. And saddened by his condition.

At the top of the stairs we finally come to the County Attorney's Office. I shake the double glass doors but find that they are locked. McGee again raps on the glass with the head of his cane. After a wait of a few minutes that is silent except for my boss's ragged respiration, it is Nathan Karge himself who appears on the other side.

He doesn't smile at the sight of the two of us outside his office's door. He looks tired but fierce. His tie is loose at the neck and his shirtsleeves are rolled above the elbow. Out of habit I notice his hands. He has surprisingly muscular forearms for a lawyer and there is a scribbling of tiny white scars across the backs of his hands. It causes me to examine the prosecutor more closely, wondering if he'd ever been a climber. On each side of his long, sharp-edged nose are faint black crescents beneath his eyes that indicate too many sleepless nights. He gazes at us through the glass as if evaluating whether to invite us in or not and rubs a hand across his jaw. I can almost hear the sandpaper rasp of his two-day-old beard.

“Still trying to ruin my life, eh, Ross?” he asks bitterly, finally unlocking the door. As he speaks the words he looks embarrassed that they have come from his own lips. “Sorry, I've been working late. Or early, I guess. I don't know anymore. Come on in.”

We follow him through the office lobby to a warren of hallways and smaller rooms. Karge's own office is all the way in back, in one corner of the courthouse. It is as austere as the man himself except for the stacks of notebooks and folders on his desk. There's an American flag and a Wyoming flag, and not much else but a picture of a young Bradley Karge with his mother, who I was told died of breast cancer a decade earlier. The windows face the south and west. I look out past his desk and can see the icy twelve-thousand-foot summits of Medicine Bow Peak and Old Main just forty miles distant. The sun is just starting its arcing descent toward them.

McGee collapses in a chair. Karge doesn't ask him if he's all right. He doesn't offer him a drink. I don't say anything either, but that is only because I know better. I resent that Karge acts unaware of McGee's condition, though, and find myself beginning to dislike the man.

McGee says, “Nathan . . . this is Agent Burns . . . with DCI. . . . He's the one . . . been looking into Kate Danning.”

Automatically, I start to step forward to shake the County Attorney's hand, but stop and return to my position by the door when the man merely nods at me.

“Your reputation precedes you, Agent.”

I can't tell what he means by that, so I say nothing. From the look he gives me I have a feeling that Karge is not one of those people in law enforcement that thinks I have done the state a favor by shooting three bangers. Besides, it wouldn't be good politics for a man with national ambitions to become friendly with someone who was involved in the disputed deaths of three minority citizens.

“Well, Nathan . . . our lad here . . . he has some problems . . . with the coroner's findings.”

Karge leans back in the chair behind his desk and raises one hand to the edge of his nose, which he pinches with his thumb and forefingers as he shuts his eyes. From my experience in reading body language it is apparent he's trying to have patience with an unimportant and disagreeable topic. When he opens them he says to us both, “I heard that you talked to Dr. Gustavson. He said you made a reference to the Kimberly Lee case. I want you to know that I don't appreciate you looking into a case that doesn't involve you or your office, except possibly Mr. McGee as a legal advisor.”