The Edge of Justice (16 page)

I am embarrassed that I have dressed only in a T-shirt and jeans. And the T-shirt is not even a new one—it's a little ragged around the neck and reads “Exum Mountaineering” on one side of the chest and again in big letters on the back. I know I must look unprofessional. Then I see her glance at where the short sleeves of the shirt are stretched tight over my arms. I feel better about it, but in a way even more foolish. Vain. Like a meathead jock, and it is easy to see that's not her type. I briefly wonder how a simple glance and smile from her can make me feel so self-conscious. It seems like a very long time since I cared.

It is the hissings and murmurings that make me look away from her smile. I notice for the first time that there are other people in the room. And quite a lot of people for such a small courtroom. They are all looking at me and whispering to one another. The impression isn't welcoming. Many of the younger ones, in their late teens or early twenties, wear their dark shirts buttoned to the neck over white T-shirts. Some wear baseball caps backward and others wear tight-fitting ski hats stretched low on their foreheads, almost covering their eyes. Those ski hats are referred to by cops as “condoms for dickheads.” They are an essential part of a gangbanger's wardrobe. All the spectators, with the exception of Rebecca, are Hispanic or mixed. They are undoubtedly the family and gang relations of the Torres boy who tried to brain me with the pipe.

There is no judge on the bench and no clerks or deputies in the room. The prisoner hasn't yet been brought in from the holding cell after his mental health evaluation at the state hospital in Evanston. I think about leaving and am sure it would be the wise option, but then I sit on the pew in back of Rebecca's instead. Twenty or thirty pairs of eyes remain on me, and colorful expressions are muttered in Spanish, like
puta
and
maricon.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her.

“I'm sick and tired of doing ‘local color' and interviewing people about what they think of the Lee case. So I thought I'd just hang around the courthouse and hope for some excitement.” She smiles again at me, then says, “And I've been thinking about how to do an article about you and your hearing on Thursday. I'm just not sure of my angle. It could be on gangs in Wyoming . . . or maybe civil rights enforcement in Wyoming. What do you think?”

I am disconcerted by her smile. Just last night, when I got her phone message, she seemed impossibly distant. Instead of answering her question, I wonder about what she thinks of me. Then out of the corner of my eye I see a girl, shirt buttoned to the collar and wearing the de rigueur cap pulled low, stand up and walk toward me. Several of the youths around her snicker in anticipation. I turn to watch her approach, my face neutral.

She walks right up to me and hesitates. Then she spits in my face. I see it coming but can't move in time to stop it. Rebecca gasps in front of me. I slowly rise to my feet and wipe the spittle from my cheek. The girl raises her hand to slap me. I catch her wrist in midair. Gently, still holding her wrist, I turn her around and push her hand up behind her back in a come-along. I nudge her to the aisle and toward the doors that lead into the hallway.

The spectators in the courtroom jump to their feet. The hissing and expletives begin again after a moment's silence, louder now. They are loudest of all from the girl I hold. Just as we reach the swinging doors, the girl's free hand shoots back and grasps at my crotch. I catch this wrist too and pin both her hands behind her as I push her through the doors chest-first. Her friends follow and spill into the hallway behind us. I push her cautiously and quickly, feeling as if I'm walking on some narrow ledge.

The door ahead of us in the hallway reads “Sheriff's Office—Holding Cells. Authorized Personnel Only.” The girl sees where we are headed and begins to swing her body back and forth as she curses. She kicks at my legs.

The twin doors to the Sheriff's Office are single sheets of bulletproof glass divided in the center. Through the glass I see two uniformed officers studying a newspaper on the counter, their backs to the door, unaware of the tension in the hallway. I urge the door with my foot but it barely moves. It's locked. There is a button on the wall on the opposite side of the door that operates the electronic lock. The crowd is encircling me from behind. Their curses are coming faster and louder.

I kick the glass door with the toe of my sandal. It makes the glass slam against the electronic lock but it doesn't move more than a fraction of an inch. Inside, the two uniformed deputies whip their heads around. Bender and Knight. Shit. They stare at the girl's face that's pressed against the glass and my face behind her as I mouth the words “Open it.”

Bender's eyes move from mine to the crowd gathering behind me. I turn myself and look at the wall of young gang members and older family members that's forming in the hallway. Then I look again through the glass and watch as Knight moves toward the door, his hand on his baton. Bender says something sharp to the rookie and Knight freezes. His eyes stay on mine until he turns away from me, away from the button and the door. Then Bender also turns and they both lean on the counter to study the paper just like before.

After a few seconds, Bender shoots me a look over his shoulder, grins, and then goes back to the paper, shaking his head.

The girl stops trying to pull her wrists from my grasp. She stops too with her Spanish obscenities. In realization and delight she calls to the crowd gathered behind us, “They're not helping him! They're not helping him!”

I feel as if I'm in a dream where everything is going wrong, where everyone is not what they seem, and where everybody is against me. The bangers close in until I can feel the vibrations of their angry curses on my back. I beat the glass door with the forefoot of my sandal, rocking it in its steel frame. The glass rebounds back and forth in its limited range of motion. Small chips of plaster snow down from the ceiling. A spray of profanities and spittle from the crowd in the hall raises the hair on the back of my exposed neck. I begin to shout, “Open it! Goddamn it, open it!” The deputies inside don't turn. Then I feel the first blow to my skull.

It rocks my head sideways and I taste iron as I bite my tongue. But I keep my hands locked on the girl's wrists. She is shrieking now, incomprehensible words, almost keening in exultation. I pull her back from the glass a few inches. I raise my whole leg, folding it, knee high against my chest and to the side of the girl. I slam my heel against the glass. It crashes again against the lock but doesn't yield. More plaster, bigger pieces, come off the ceiling. I feel a hand grasping at the small of my back and the cold touch of my own pistol as it slides out from its hidden holster. A second blow blasts at my skull. Then a third.

The last thing I hear as my knees give way and I collapse to the ground is what sounds like the voice of Rebecca Hersh, panicked and screaming, “Help him!”

EIGHTEEN

I
FEEL AS IF
I am rising up out of a dark pit. It's like when I wormed my way into the mouth of that chimney from the cave below, where Jones had grumbled and watched. In the distance I think I hear Oso barking rhythmically, the way he does when he trees a squirrel. I stem with my knees and elbows braced against the cold stone, its irregularities cutting into my back and ribs, and pull myself higher and higher toward the sunlit chamber above as my senses begin to return. And then, before I even open my eyes, I know where I am. Oso's barks turn into the amplified beats of my pulse. I can smell the antiseptic odor in the air. I can feel the touch of thin, worn cotton on my skin. Then the hurting starts and it feels as if the chimney is full of sharp-edged granite, cutting my flesh.

The sound of a turning page comes through the mist of pain that is on the verge of dropping me back into the dark chimney. I wait a little while before attempting to open my eyes. When I finally do, the fluorescent light stabs into my brain, causing me to quickly close them. A few minutes later I try again and it's not quite as bad. I move my head when I hear another turning page, and see Rebecca Hersh in a chair in the corner.

She comes slowly into focus. A ray of light from the window cuts across the room and illuminates her pale skin. Her eyes are puffy and red and there is a slight blue bruise on her forehead where her thick hair is swept back. She looks up and sees me staring.

“Anton . . .” is all she says at first. She comes up out of her chair, letting the magazine slide to the linoleum floor, and kneels beside the bed. Both of her hands reach up under the sheet and I feel their warmth on one of my own. After studying my face for a few moments, she says, “How do you feel?”

“Probably about how I look,” I manage. My lips and face feel swollen. I am tempted to tease her, to ask her why reporters always pose that question when they talk to accident victims, bereaved widows, and newly orphaned children, because the answer is so obvious. Bad. Very bad. But I don't ask. The effort of getting the words together would be too great.

Instead I try to recall how I got into this hospital bed and how my body became so battered. A vague recollection of a shouting, kicking mass of angry people is as far as I can get. I remember though what she had said to me in the courtroom—that she was looking for some excitement—and almost smile. “What happened?”

An angry look replaces the concern in her eyes. “Those bastards,” she says. “Those cops. They saw what was happening and didn't do anything. When they did, they sauntered out of that office. They sauntered! They only came when I started screaming!”

I want to know the details but there is a wind roaring at me, its noise surrounding me. My vision begins to blur at the edges. I taste salt in my mouth and want to spit but can't. The roaring and blurring swirls around me like a tornado, sucking me back into the chimney. Rebecca lifts her head and I try to focus on the shining reflection of myself in her eyes.

I see her lips open. “I called Ross McGee in Cheyenne. He's coming. He's on his way.”

What's he doing back in Cheyenne? I wonder as I let the wind take me and drag me back down into that black chimney. I'm falling. I don't bother to claw at the rock with my fingers and toes; the wind is too powerful and I don't have the strength to fight it.

Waking up the second time is easier. If it weren't for the throbbing in my skull and the aching along my back and legs, it would be like coming out of a deep sleep. When I open my eyes I again feel the deep stab of the fluorescent bulbs into my brain. Like before, I wince and squeeze them shut. There is a different noise than the beeps this time. It sounds like the whir of an electric motor.

“Sorry 'bout that,” an unfamiliar voice says.

“QuickDraw, you waking up? You coming back to us, Anton?” It is Jones's bass. “Hey, did he just open his eyes?”

The unfamiliar voice says, “I dunno. I thought so, just when the flash went off.”

I speak through swollen, dry lips. “Jefferson Jones, what the hell are you doing to me?”

Jones laughs in relief. “You are back! And ornery as ever too! Welcome back to the light, my friend.”

The light isn't welcoming. I squint around the room from where I lie in the hospital bed. Jones's immense bulk hovers over me as he squeezes my arm. Another man stands beside him wearing a wrinkled shirt and jacket with a bolo tie and holding a camera. The man's face is as disheveled as his suit. Hair sprouts randomly across it in a pathetic attempt at a goatee. He looks ridiculously small and skinny next to Jones.

“This is Kevin, our crime scene tech. We were trying to get some beauty shots for your obituary, but seeing as how you're still alive, maybe we'll use 'em as evidence to nail those kids who did this to you.”

Beaten up by a bunch of kids. And in the courthouse too. I'm embarrassed.

I nod at the man who looks eager to take more pictures. Then I spot a cup of water along with a pitcher next to the bed and reach for it. My ribs ache when I stretch out an arm but not enough to indicate a fracture. After I take a couple of gulps, draining the cup, I ask, “What's the damage?”

“Concussion, bruises, et cetera. Nothing broke. Wouldn't be that big a deal if you weren't such a little guy.” Everyone is small compared to Jones.

“Tell me what happened. Last thing I remember I was trying to take in a girl at the courthouse—she spit in my face—as a mob formed and your pals—”

“Whoa there, easy fella,” Jones says. He turns to Kevin and asks him to wait outside for a few minutes. After Kevin leaves the room, he tells me, “That guy's in tight with those rednecks. Sheriff's wife's nephew, and probably somehow related to Bender too. Incestuous bunch of crackers. Wants to be a cop, but he's too scrawny to make it through the academy. Anyway, Bender and Knight apparently broke up some mob that was beating your ass in the court hallway. The way they tell it, three or four of those Sureno 13 punks were kicking and knuckling you, with others cheering them on. But then there's that girl reporter, a nice-looking thing by the way, who keeps telling me the two police officers wouldn't let you into the holding cells, that they just laughed as the bangers took it to you. Oh yeah, one of those kids got your gun and brained you with it. Which brings me to another bit of strangeness. It was a good thing there were no bullets, but why the fuck you carrying your piece unloaded? The state don't supply you agents with lead or something?”

“Forget that,” I tell him. The gun hadn't been loaded in eighteen months. Not since Cheyenne. “I remember seeing those two clowns laughing as I went down. I'm going to burn them for that.”

“Easy, cowboy. I get first shot at them. Officially. Your cute little reporter friend already's talking 'bout filing a complaint with the office. Maybe the state'll send another one of you agents down to investigate that! Anyway, Bender and Knight are saying they heard a commotion, saw you go down, then saved your ass. Bender is boasting that it's the second time in a week. And he says the reporter's full of shit.”

“Where is she? She was in the hallway when I was jumped. Then I thought I saw her here earlier with a bruised face.”

“She's around, but I kicked her out when we came in to take the pictures. Caught an elbow during the ruckus is all. She's acting like she's your personal watchdog now. Says she knows you through Ross McGee. She your girlfriend or something?”

“I wish. Speaking of watchdogs, where's Oso?”

Jones laughs. “We've been trying to take your Land Cruiser to the impound lot for safekeeping. Got the keys out of your pocket. But that damned monster wouldn't let anyone near it, even when we tried to give him a Big Mac through the window. Finally that reporter girl gave it a try, and damn if he didn't let her in. I thought she was dead meat when she opened that door. I thought there'd be blood on the roof for sure. But she just started it right up and followed a marked car to the lot, even let the dog out for a piss. He wouldn't leave the truck though, hopped right back in, so we locked him in there with the cheeseburger.”

“What about the Surenos who pounded on me?”

“Those boys and girls are filling all our cells, partying and laughing about giving it to you. If the public defender doesn't get some of them bonded out soon, they'll take over the place. Bender and Knight, with the help of some of those security guys, arrested the whole lot of them.”

Jones calls Kevin the photographer back in to finish taking pictures. After a few of my face, they have me roll onto my front to get photographs of the bruising to my back and legs. Jones jerks loose the tie on the back of the hospital smock and whistles through his teeth when he sees the exposed skin that's turning black and blue. “You look like a piñata after the party's over,” he comments. “Cute ass, though.”

“Fuck you, Jones.”

As Kevin is finishing up with the pictures, the door bangs open and McGee shuffles in. He is out of breath as usual. His face is set in stone and his blue eyes blaze. But he looks better than he had the day before, as if anger has burned up some of the sickness. “Goddamn it, Anton . . . can't you keep out of trouble?” he bellows. “You look like a bull's been tap dancing on your hide.” Then he whacks Jones's ankle with his cane and huffs, “And you, what kind of town do you have here . . . letting those kids take advantage of one of my limp-wristed agents?”

Rebecca eases into the room behind McGee without making a sound. I quickly roll back over and pull the sheets up to my chest as she looks at me and smiles. McGee continues to rave. There is a swollen purple bruise on her forehead and her cheeks are red and flushed. Seeing her earlier hadn't been a dream. In my head I can hear her shouting for help when everyone else had turned their backs. I give her a small nod, smiling back, unable to communicate the gratitude I feel toward her with words, but hoping my eyes pass along the message.

After McGee finishes deriding the Sheriff's Office, his own agents' ineffectiveness in a fight, the citizens of southeast Wyoming, and the human population in general, Jones excuses himself from the room and takes Kevin with him. McGee and Rebecca pull both of the room's two chairs close to the bed, where McGee hesitates before lowering his bulk. Instead of sitting, McGee examines a sore spot on my cheek that has swollen up under my eye. “Looks like Nikes,” he remarks. “We'll hold all their shoes as evidence . . . just to screw with 'em. Reminds me of a case a few years back. Four bangers opened a can of whoop-ass . . . on one of their friends. Someone nearly finished him off . . . with a kick to the head. . . . We couldn't figure out who did the coup de grace . . . until we matched up the tread patterns on their boots . . . to the marks on the vic's face. It turned out they beat him . . . because he'd played a little prank on one of the others . . . who'd passed out drunk the night before. You see, the vic had smeared the banger's privates . . . with peanut butter, then called for his dog . . . to clean it up while he took pictures.”

“Thanks for the story, Ross. Is there a point?”

“Nay, lad, just an observation. So tell me what happened to you. The sheriff told me . . . his men's version, and sweet Rebecca Hersh . . . told me another. Give me the gospel according to QuickDraw Burns.”

I repeat what I can remember. McGee sits through my short narrative twisting his cane in his hands and remaining largely silent, only occasionally asking a question for clarification. He says nothing when I finish, but the blue eyes are brighter than ever. Rebecca adds how the morning had ended—with police officers and security guards dragging the gang members away as they kicked at the head and back of my prostrate form. One of them even unzipped his pants to urinate on my face, but Rebecca's shouts left him unable to make the necessary water. “That's where I got this,” she says, pointing to her forehead. “When the police came in after all hell broke loose, the one who wouldn't let you in the door hit me with his elbow. I think he did it on purpose.”

Bender, I think. After a pause I say to McGee, “I want them burned.”

“Sure, lad. But what would we charge them with? And how would we prove it? It looks like they did . . . save your hide from worse.”

“Fuck,” I say.

After a few minutes of glowering at the wall and barely tolerating the pounding ache in my head and the cutting sensation that I feel across my ribs with each breath, I put that question to rest for a while.

“What were you doing in Cheyenne this morning?” I ask.

“The AG wanted to see me . . . wants you to back off this Danning thing . . . Karge has been making complaints . . . making threats. I told him to go fuck himself.” I wouldn't have been surprised if McGee did so in exactly those words. No wonder he wasn't popular with the administration.

“Do you want to hear the latest on Danning?” I pointedly look from McGee, to whom the question is addressed, to Rebecca, wondering if he will ask her to leave the room.

McGee looks at her too. “Let's have it. And I want her to hear it too. She's earned the right . . . after trying to save your sorry butt. In addition, we may need some help . . . from the media on this. Otherwise everyone's urge . . . will be to bury it. But I want it understood, lass . . . that all this is off the record . . . you cannot write one word about it . . . without my permission. Do I have your word?”

She gives it, prudently not mentioning that I have told her some of it already, and McGee quickly fills her in on our concern that Kate Danning did not fall off the cliff. He summarizes the evidence for her like the veteran prosecutor he was before his diminishing health and increasing vulgarity made him no longer fit for addressing juries: the unexplained bruise to the rear of her head, the ligature mark on her neck, the bottle with what was probably her blood and hair on it, Brad Karge's fingerprints, the unproductive interview, and the admission that both Brad and Billy had sex with her that night.

I add what I learned from the hotel maid, Sierra Calloway, that morning. I don't mention my evening with Lynn. I can't bring myself to admit what I did while I was drunk, both because of Rebecca's presence in the room and the ridicule McGee would rightly subject me to for having slept with a potential witness.