The Edge of Justice (22 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

H
ER TRAILER
'
S UP
past Buford, in Laramie County. . . . The sheriff up there's asked us to assist . . . our crime scene techs are coming too . . . they'll be there in ninety minutes,” McGee tells me as we get into his state-issued sedan. I know that Laramie County often works with DCI, especially since our office is based in Cheyenne, Laramie County's biggest town.

The car's interior is permanently stained with the odor of McGee's foul cigars. The smell penetrates even my swollen nose as I ease myself down into the passenger seat. When he's done wrestling his bulk behind the steering wheel, the amused look is gone from his face. We discuss what little he knows about Sierra Calloway's murder. He doesn't ask me for an explanation about the angry girl running down the hall and I don't offer one.

Stars still hang low over Happy Jack Mountains near Vedauwoo as McGee drives me east on Grand Avenue out of town. The early-morning wind has swept the dark sky clean. A beautiful dawn is inevitable, but the circumstances will not allow me to contemplate it. I don't even turn my head to look at Vedauwoo as we drive past. My eyes are nearly swollen shut from the bruises and exhaustion. My ribs ache a little each time I inhale. A knifelike pain cuts across my stomach every few minutes, caused either by hunger or damage from the kicks I received. And I'm on my way to see the corpse of a girl who was probably killed for just talking with me.

It takes us thirty minutes to cross the county line due to McGee's cautious driving. Just before we reach the line, McGee points at a boarded-up saloon off to the side of the highway.

“I had a case from there once. . . . It used to be a strip joint . . . nearly twenty years back. . . . The place did a little prostitution on the side. . . . One morning a bunch of sheriff's deputies brought in five strippers for arraignment. . . . One of them was famous in those days . . . called herself ‘Chris Colt and Her Twin .44s'. . . . The deputies had run an unapproved undercover sting . . . they said they had evidence of illegal touching for pay going on. . . . Turned out the evidence was a bunch of Polaroids taken by the bar's own photographer . . . each showing a grinning deputy holding the Twin .44s. . . . Apparently the boys were angry . . . they didn't get more than just a feel . . . so they arrested all the girls.” McGee chuckles dryly and shakes his head. “I threw the charges out.”

I ask out of habit, “Is there a point to that story, Boss?”

“Of course, lad. . . . One of the moronic young deputies . . . was named Daniel Willis. . . . He's moved up in the world since then . . . but he's still a vindictive piece of shit. . . . I wonder if I still have that photo of him somewhere.”

In the remaining moonlight that hangs over the prairie, I can see that Buford is not really a town at all, just a dark gas station with an attached diner, a few collapsing barns, and a couple of trailers. We turn onto a dirt road that parallels the highway.

A few miles past the insignificant town, a Laramie County Sheriff's Office SUV is parked with its lights off before another, smaller, unmarked dirt road. In the faint light, we can see that the road stretches south across the rolling plain toward the towering ice and granite of Rocky Mountain National Park and the 14,000-foot massif of Longs Peak. McGee pulls in behind the car and turns his lights off and on again. In their illumination the figure in the driver's seat makes a follow-me gesture and starts his car. We trail it down the unmarked road through the dust it kicks up. Our two-car caravan rocks up over a small rise, then drops into a broad depression that's a mile or more in circumference.

There's a long, battered trailer there among low shrublike trees. A partially collapsed shed hunkers behind it and there's a dog run to the side. Two more SUVs bearing the emblem of the Laramie County Sheriff's Office are waiting with their lights turned on, pointing at the trailer. The barking of dogs penetrates the otherwise quiet night.

McGee pulls up alongside one and puts his car in park. I roll down my window and let McGee speak across me to the elderly man behind the wheel.

“Morning, McKittrick. . . . I won't say it's a good one. . . . This is Special Agent Burns. He's DCI.”

The sheriff nods at me, taking a minute to examine a little skeptically my two-day growth of beard and tired, beaten face. He doesn't say it, but I can read what he's thinking—
Heard about you.

When the sheriff does speak, it's past me to McGee. “Howdy, Ross. Good to see you, and thanks for coming out. We've been waiting on you. Be careful now, there's some dogs about. I think they're behind the trailer right now.”

The man called McKittrick has a large head and a leathery face. Despite being parked, his weathered hands grip the wheel at the ten-and-two positions. From what I can see of him above the car's frame, he wears a sport coat with Western-cut shoulders and lapels over a wool work shirt. His face is clean-shaven except for a long mustache. On his head he wears a smallish cowboy hat.

“What have you found?” I ask him, taking a legal pad and pen from my briefcase.

“Girl lives there.” He nods at the trailer. “She's the deceased. Works in town. Laramie. A friend of hers came out to check on her a few hours ago and found her. We haven't been in there yet. After we got the call, 'bout an hour ago, one of my deputies and I just peeked inside with a torch. She's clearly dead, bent over a chair or something. Then those dogs came around. We've been sitting on our asses in the cars ever since, waiting for y'all.” Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “There's a dog inside too. You'll hear him in a minute.”

As if on cue, there's a bellow that eclipses the other barking. It's followed by a crash from inside the trailer. The flimsy home shakes visibly on its foundations.

“Must be a big sucker,” the sheriff comments. “We think he's locked in a back room somewheres. The body's in the front, just beyond the door.”

“Who found her?” I ask.

“Pretty girl, name of Cindy Topper. Out of Laramie, she says. She called it in from a cell phone 'bout two
A
.
M
. Said she came out here 'cause of some call she'd gotten herself—wouldn't say from who—but it scared her so she thought she'd just come on out and spend the night with her friend.”

“Where's Topper now?” McGee asks. We are both thinking the same thing: she's undoubtedly next on Heller and Brad's hit list. Probably Lynn is high up on that list too. They are wiping out the whole Heller cult as if it were Jonestown.

“One of my boys picked her up. She's at the station right now, waiting to see if we've got any more questions.”

“Hang on to her, Sheriff,” I say. “I'm afraid I know who did this and I think she may be next.”

McGee and I get out of the car. It's a small relief to feel the wind and smell the sagebrush after a half hour in McGee's rank sedan. The sheriff speaks a few words on his radio, then gets out in unison with two younger officers from the other two cars. They exchange nods with us in the blaze of the headlights. I hear some ragged barks and the sound of scampering paws and snapping twigs coming through the dry brush toward us.

A big German shepherd mix emerges from the night in a slow lope, coming at McGee and me where we stand in front of his sedan. The shepherd is tentatively followed by three smaller dogs, far less of a threat. The deputies have their guns out of their holsters but I yell at them not to shoot as the shepherd slows and comes at me, growling and baring his teeth. With a black coat and another one hundred pounds on his skinny frame he would look a bit like Oso.

I take a quick step toward him, waving the legal pad. “No,” I tell him. “Cut it out! Bad dog.” At first the dog just snarls louder, then finally lowers his volume as I continue to yell. The others keep up their yapping behind him. “Sit! Sit!” Grudgingly, the big dog half-lowers himself onto his hindquarters. “Sit!” I yell again and he finally lowers his butt into the dirt. “Good dog. Now stay.” I walk past him, turning to keep my eyes locked on the dog's, and walk up three rickety wooden steps to the door of the trailer. The trailer shakes again as the dog inside bellows and hurls its weight against what I assume must be an interior door. McGee follows me up onto the porch, then the sheriff and one of the deputies. The other deputy stands behind us, covering our rear from the advancing dogs.

“Round up those mutts,” the sheriff tells the surprised and alarmed deputy. “Start with the big 'un.” The deputy looks like he wants to appeal that order but then turns away unhappily, already expecting to get bit.

“Whew. I hate that smell. . . . Seems like I've lived with it ever since Korea,” McGee says to no one.

Even standing outside the door I can smell the sweet-sick scent of rotting meat. Adding to its offense is the sound of buzzing flies. My stomach turns, but it doesn't concern me—there's nothing in it to come up. Anger and loss and hunger and exhaustion have left me punch-drunk and cold as stone.

I take the flashlight from the deputy and examine the slightly open door. It's made of the same rusty aluminum as the trailer's body. A cheap brass lock is the only built-in security I can see. Someone has mounted the hinged steel of a padlock brace on the door to better secure the trailer from the outside. The padlock itself hangs open from the mounting on the side of the trailer.

The sheriff wipes his mustache with a rag and passes it to me. I sniff it and feel its scorch all the way to the back of my throat—gasoline to deaden our sense of smell. I wipe my own lips and nostrils and pass it on to McGee, my skin burning. With the toe of one hiking boot I ease the door open wider and probe the darkness with the flashlight as another bellow and crash shakes the trailer.

“Lord, that makes my hair stand on end,” McKittrick says.

The beam of light is immediately drawn to the body that lies a few feet beyond the door. It's clearly a woman's, a girl's really, that's bent over a chair and facing away from the door. The pale, thin buttocks have been carefully posed to be the first thing anyone entering the trailer will see. A cloud of flies hangs in the darkness above the body. The strong beam of light shows carnivorous fire ants busily gorging themselves on the cold flesh. I hear the men behind me gasp and curse. I focus on the dead girl's thigh, and even from this angle I can see the long, familiar tattoo of a climber reaching nearly from knee to hip.

“It's Sierra. The hotel maid,” I say out loud, without thinking. At the sound of my voice, or the dead girl's name, the trailer rocks again with another roar and crash from the rear of the trailer. The floor vibrates beneath my feet. I move the beam of light on, sweeping it steadily around the room.

Other than the body, the small room is orderly but for a single broken lamp. It lies on the floor not far from the corpse. The glass from the broken bulb is strewn on the tabletop. Its cord snakes across the floor to a socket in the wall. I suspect the naked wires that protrude from where the bulb had once been were used to get answers. Or to punish. A closer examination of the corpse will probably reveal tiny burn marks in painful places.

The windows are hung with tie-dyed sheets used as drapes. Other psychedelic art is tacked to the imitation-wood walls. One spells out the name of a band, “Phish,” in bright, waving letters. Another features dancing bears and is a tribute to the Grateful Dead. As the light wavers on it, Sheriff McKittrick says from behind me, “I'd be gratefully dead too, someone done that to me.” There are several other posters displaying climbers clinging tenaciously on wildly exposed rock. Cheap, mismatched glasses and dishes stand in formation on a shelf above the small sink and two-burner propane stove. Along the floor against one wall is a long line of various sized dog bowls.

With the sleeve of my coat pulled over my hand, I sweep my forearm against the inside wall, feeling for a light switch. Something catches the material at the right level and I flip it up. The room flickers into light, but loses none of its horror. If anything, the horror is intensified. Evil is one thing when cloaked in the dark, but it takes on an even more terrifying aspect in the light, when it becomes all too real.

I step cautiously around to the side of the body and wish I hadn't come. I could have told McGee I was just too tired. Or I could have left in my Land Cruiser after the first run-in with Dominic Torres's little brother and driven back up to Cody with Oso drooling out the windows. If I'd done that, two people and my dog would probably still be alive. Their relatively innocent lives were being exchanged for the more sullied lives of the Knapps. And unless something was done soon to halt the sentencing, the Knapps too would be sacrificed. And maybe others.

My knees feel weak as I stare at the long tattoo on Sierra Calloway's thigh. The hot taste of bile is in my mouth and I finally look away as I try to swallow it down. I swallow again and again, listening to the other men's obscenities and the howls and crashes from the rear of the trailer. I make myself step closer to the body and see the laughing skull on her neck, half hidden by lank blonde hair.

I ease down the narrow hallway to a bedroom door made of cheap wood that is splintering from the dog's repeated attacks. I brace my foot and hip against it, feeling the weight of the big dog on the other side. “Easy,” I say through the door. But that only causes the dog to renew its baying and go at the door with greater force. I turn and see McGee and the sheriff behind me. The other deputy is still in the living room, transfixed by the corpse.

“Good thing he didn't get out. We wouldn't have a body left,” McKittrick says.

I don't answer and don't bother to cover my hand when I turn the knob, my leg still bracing the door. I let it open toward me a few inches. A snarling muzzle protrudes, level with my stomach. The dog is gigantic—taller than even Oso, but much thinner. Some sort of mutated Great Dane. I push the door shut and reengage the latch.

“I guess we'll have to shoot the bastard,” the sheriff advises a little sadly.

I shake my head. “Call the Game and Fish. Get them out here to tranquilize it.”