The Edge of Justice (15 page)

For some reason I am not all that surprised to find out Karge had once been a climber himself and a good one. I had noticed the muscles of his forearms and the scars on his hands. Apparently he pioneered some early routes in Vedauwoo and at Devil's Tower. There is an impressive list of first ascents he made. The article talks about that and then how he went off to law school, purposely ending his climbing career. The subtext of the article is snidely clear. Traitor. Nathan Karge gave up climbing to become an attorney and a square. It also mentions that his teenage son is showing signs of picking up the torch and carrying on the climbing tradition.

Reading it twice, I begin to understand what some of the tension is between father and son, other than the son's rebellious use of drugs and extremely casual sex. Nathan Karge gave up climbing to become a provider and a better role model for Brad. He gave up passion for money and security. But if my mother's theory is true and such things are genetic, the son inherited
la llamada del salvaje,
the Rat, or whatever else it is called. And his son turned to the warped and messianic Billy Heller as a father figure he better identified with, one who represented everything Nathan Karge gave up.

I read the article a final time, not knowing what to make of the fact that the County Attorney himself used to be a climber. I wonder if there's a Rat still rattling around in his rib cage.

SEVENTEEN

A
FTER MY DAILY
training I sit on the hotel bed, freshly dressed, holding a toothbrush in my hand. I am staring at the television as a Monday morning national news show gives an update on the long-awaited sentencing of the Lee defendants. Video clips from last week are played of the chanting throngs outside the courthouse. The anchor's voice sounds excited, as if tickled by blood lust, when he says that prosecutor Nathan Karge will seek the death penalty during the sentencing arguments to the jury on Friday.

A knock on the door causes Oso to jerk up his head, preparing to give his usual bellow. I hold up a hand with my palm out to silence the beast and then go to the door in my bare feet.

Through the peephole I see a cleaning cart and a brown-haired girl wearing a loose gray work blouse and a pair of baggy shorts so large they resemble a khaki skirt. She matches the description the hotel manager gave me. I open the door and tell her to come on in and not to mind the dog—he's harmless and we'll be leaving soon.

The maid approaches Oso with an unusual lack of caution. She pats his thick head as he sniffs at her hand.

“Hey there. Aren't you a big fella.”

I sit on the unmade bed and begin pulling on my sandals, keeping my eyes on the TV. The maid giggles as Oso slowly rolls over on his side and offers his belly to scratch. I see it out of the corner of my vision and snort to myself.

“Some tough dog he is,” I say, “letting someone he just met have their way with him.”

“Dogs dig me. I've got seven myself.”

“Seven dogs? That sounds like a busy house.”

“It's a friggin' nightmare,” she says, laughing. “What's worse is when I get them all in the car with me. They tear around like cats, chasing each another. Doing crazy stuff like humping in the backseat and hanging out the windows. It's so bad that I hate to drive with them anymore. But I'm a sucker for dogs. Every time I find a homeless one I take it in. Plus the animal shelter knows what a sucker I am—sometimes when they can't find a home for a nice one they use me as a sort of foster home till some other sucker comes along. But by that time I've fallen in love and won't give 'em up. Seven dogs. God, if my landlord knew, I'd be out on my ass.”

She squats with ease as she rubs Oso's tummy. The girl's appearance is something like a cross between a ballerina and a junkie. Her bare shoulders and arms are thin and limber like the branches on a young tree. The khaki shorts balloon out over her equally thin legs. Slightly swollen and lined not by age but by hard use, her face looks as if it belongs on a heavier body. When she puts her head down, close to the dog's, her hair parts across the back of her neck. A tattoo of a grinning skull with a halo of roses is revealed there.

“I like the tattoo,” I tell her.

She looks up at me, her green eyes sparkling mischievously. “Oh yeah? That one's old, couple of years.” She stops scratching and stands up, much to Oso's disappointment. “I got a new one just a few weeks ago. Check it out.” She hoists one leg of the baggy shorts high on her hip and turns to the side, displaying her entire bony thigh.

The tattoo starts just below the bottom line of her white underwear where its thin band comes around her side. The top of the tattoo is an outstretched hand reaching upward, toward the strap of white cotton. The hand rises from the depiction of a long female climber's body, the lower foot of which is nearly down to her knee.

“Wow,” I remark. “That's one of the biggest tattoos I've ever seen. At least on a girl. You a rock climber?”

“Sometimes, when I get around to it.” She drops the leg of her shorts and squats again to Oso. “You look like you climb.” She nods her head toward my backpack in the corner. It has a rope lashed to its top.

“Like you, I guess. When I get around to it.”

“What are you doing in Laramie? Climbing at the 'Voo?”

“A little. I'm here for the trial, like everyone else.”

“Oh yeah?” She asks, “You one of those ‘investigative reporters'?”

“Something like that.”

The maid stands up. “I should get to cleaning. Got to get through a full hotel again today.” She nudges Oso's belly with a tennis shoe worn sockless. “You need anything besides the cleaning? Anything special?” She stands before me and puts her hands on her cocked hips where a braided belt holds the oversize shorts low on her waist.

I look at her for a few seconds. “I think I know what you mean,” I tell her.

“You do, huh?” she asks, and giggles in a way that sounds both silly and contrived. “'Cause even a good-looking guy like you sometimes needs something special.”

“How much does something special cost?”

“Depends what you want.”

I reach into the back pocket of my pants and bring out my wallet. She laughs again expectantly, anticipating cash, but her laugh is abruptly cut off when I flip open the wallet and she catches sight of my badge.

“Oh shit. I didn't mean anything, I was just fooling around.”

Her voice isn't girlish anymore. It sounds low and scared.

“Actually, there is something special I need. But not that.”

“What?”

“You know a lot of the climbers around here?”

Her face is confused, her jaw slack and her eyes wide. She is sullen when she answers. “Yeah, I know some.”

“Do you know Billy Heller, Brad Karge, Chris Braddock—those guys?”

“I've seen them around is all.”

I put away my wallet and give her a long look.

“I've been looking for you, Sierra. You've been busted before, right? In Boulder?”

She nods.

“You're on probation?”

She nods again, then clenches her fists at her sides and looks as though she might cry. I finish putting on my sandals.

“Look, I'm not out to bust you,” I finally say, and then make a threat. “I don't want to take you away from your dogs. Just be straight with me and answer some questions, then that's it. Okay?”

She unballs her hands and tears begin to roll down her cheeks as my words sink in. “Oh God. Whatever you want.” I motion her to the chair at the small table where she sits down primly and wipes her cheeks.

“Do you hang out with them?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Not as much as I used to, but yeah. I know them.”

“Do they sell drugs to you?”

“No, I don't . . .” But then she catches my look and stops.

“What's the name of your PO?” I ask. “Or should I call the courthouse in Boulder and have them look it up?”

“Okay, yeah, they sell me stuff sometimes. They sell it to all their friends. Pot and crank, nothing heavy.” She keeps her eyes on the floor. Oso rolls back onto his chest and looks at her almost sadly.

“Crank's pretty heavy,” I tell her. “What sort of quantities do they sell?”

“Just little bits, just to friends. Climbers. That's all I've seen. But I hear they make the stuff. The crank, I mean. Those three, they always have a lot of it. I hear they sell bigger stuff, to real dealers in Cheyenne and Casper.”

“They sell to the Sureno 13?”

She nods. “I think so. I've seen them with some of those guys.”

Suddenly I'm back at that night eighteen months ago, my informant's terrified voice telling me I'd been burned, then driving out to the old ranch house on the cold, dark plain. I wonder again how I was burned—who had told the Surenos that I was an undercover police officer.

“Tell me about them. What do you know about Heller and Brad?”

She wipes at her cheeks again, takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Heller's an asshole. He's a fucking lunatic. And Brad's just like him, but, like, his sidekick. They do everything together. They make me do stuff before they'll give over. You know, like tie me up and take pictures. They hit too. That kind of shit. They do it to a lot of girls around here. Like a couple of fucking rapists, those two.” Her voice is getting harder, changing from scared to angry. She looks up at me. “You know Brad's dad is the County Attorney?”

I nod.

“See, nobody messes with them. And people look up to Billy like he's a fucking god or something. Everybody worships him.”

“So they're not scared of getting busted?”

“Not much. Or at least they didn't used to be. But the two of them are getting worse. Last time I saw Billy, at Kate's funeral, he was walking around saying nobody can touch him, that he owns the cops and the prosecutors.”

“Do you know what he meant by that?”

“Naw. Probably just that he's got something heavy on Brad, something he can take to his daddy. Maybe about that night that Kate fell. But he always had that anyway. They're real assholes, those two. But Chris isn't that bad a guy. He's just a kid. He just hangs around with them. We used to call him Mini Me 'cause for a while he had a ponytail and dyed it black to look like Billy.”

“How about Kate Danning? How well did you know her?”

“Not real well. She was Brad's special piece of ass, but I think Billy was nailing her too. He's like that. Like he wants to own every young thing in town. And the younger the better. He needs to know he's the boss.”

“How about Cindy and Lynn?”

“Cindy's like me, only she's got folks who give her money, so she don't got to do the things I do. Lynn is Billy's special piece. He's like the King of the Fairies in that play I read in school,
Midsummer Night's Dream.
He's that guy Oberon, and she's the queen, Titania. They both screw with each other by fucking other people. Those two deserve each other.”

I listen to this without expression. I am thinking back to my night with Lynn, trying to fit the information with what I'd seen, heard, and felt. At first it doesn't wear quite right, but then in a way it does.

“So what happened up there last week, when Kate fell?”

“I dunno. I left before that happened, with Cindy. There was some bad vibes up there that night. See, Lynn was pissed 'cause Billy and Brad were getting Kate wasted. I think they were going to screw around with her, you know, the way they've done with me. It was a bad scene, so Cindy and I rapped off and split after just an hour or so.”

“Did Billy or Brad have a reason to mess with Kate? Were they mad at her?”

“I heard she was getting some pressure from her parents—they'd had an intervention or something—trying to get her into Narcotics Anonymous.”

I make a mental note to try to get ahold of a counselor at NA. A vague recollection of the closing arguments in Kimberly Lee's trial comes to me—it was her NA counselor, also her boyfriend, who found her. He had been worried about her because she was thinking of talking to the police about where she'd gotten her drugs.

“Okay, Sierra, thanks for talking to me. I may want to talk to you again.”

“That's it? You're letting me go?”

“I told you I'd be straight with you, so yeah, that's it.”

She starts to cry again and I pass her the box of Kleenex from the bedside table. Sierra blows her nose loudly and stands up. She straightens her blouse.

“If they find out I told you that stuff they'll come after me.”

“Then let's both of us forget we talked, okay? And my room's clean enough; just leave me some fresh towels. Get some new friends and a new job, Sierra. You won't even outlive your dogs if you keep this up.”

I pick up the phone and dial the number to McGee's room. I let the phone ring until the hotel's answering service comes on before hanging up. Then I try the climbing shop where Lynn works, and a recorded message tells me the store doesn't open until ten. Again there is no answer at the phone number I have for Chris Braddock.

Finally I reach a real human being when I call Kristi at DCI.

“Did you get the message I left you?”

“The one where you proposed?” she asks. “Wait a minute, I guess that was a dream, buddy. Yeah, I got your message. And I found the stuff you needed.”

“You're fantastic, Kristi. Maybe I should propose.”

“Not if you're going to keep asking me to get young ladies' addresses and phone numbers. Anyway, here it is.”

After I copied the information down, Kristi says, “You know, buddy, if you're thinking about trying to get a date, I'd skip it. This Lynn White is a messed-up chick.”

“What do you mean?”

“I ran a check on her—just two years ago she's listed as a reporting party and victim of a sexual assault. From what I can tell, she went to the hospital in Laramie and reported that a guy raped her. William Heller, Jr., who's one of those guys on the printouts I gave you a few weeks ago. Anyway, she made a complaint, then withdrew it just hours later. So this Heller was never picked up or charged. Sounds like damaged goods, buddy. You'd be better off with me.”

Not knowing what else to do and needing to kill some time, I snap the short leash to Oso's collar, tell him to heel, and we walk out past the maid's cart and the lonely swimming pool to the truck.

Right at nine o'clock I walk into the courthouse and badge my way past the security guards at the metal detector. The whole place, open for business, seems eerily normal after last week's circus. There are no reporters and no protesters. Instead there are just regular people going about their business. Lawyers, defendants, clerks, and local citizens getting their driver's licenses and plates.

I speak to one of the security guards, asking where juvenile court is being held. The guard gives me directions to a courtroom on the floor above. I want to see Dominic Torres's little brother get arraigned, see if the shrinks have found him fit to be formally charged. A part of me is furious at all the Surenos and the families that are suing me, and another part of me feels sorry for this boy who is so full of drugs and rage. And I am thinking that if he is deemed fit, when he's assigned a lawyer, I'll talk to the lawyer about getting the charges dropped if the kid's willing to talk about Heller's connection with the Surenos.

Up the wide stairs and into another hall, near Nathan Karge's office and the sheriff's holding cells for prisoners who must appear in court, I find the courtroom the guard had described. I push through the two sets of double doors that lead into it. The doors are padded along the edges and make a sharp
shhh
as they swing closed behind me. The first thing I see inside the chamber is the back of Rebecca Hersh's head. Those long, tangled auburn curls are hard to miss. Her face appears over one shoulder at the sound of the doors whisking shut. She smiles at me.