The Edge of Justice (3 page)

The Klansman wails as the K9 officer drags the dog away. Laughter erupts from the deputies as they whoop and cheer the dog.

“Jesus Christ,” Jones says, disgusted. “Someone call an ambulance.”

The old man lies on the ground, crying and cursing, as two officers quickly pat him down and take a long folding knife from his pocket. Looking to Jones for approval, they don't bother to handcuff him. Their sergeant nods back at them. The old man is obviously drunk and fairly harmless, and it appears that in addition to having been bitten on the butt he's broken his arm as well. He holds it cradled against his chest. An ambulance rolls up within minutes and carts him off.

While Jones is orchestrating the old man's transport, another deputy approaches me. “What are you doing here, QuickDraw?” he asks without smiling.

“Hey, Bender. I can't say. You know, state business. But it's good to see you,” I lie, looking up straight into Leroy Bender's wide moon-face. He's almost as tall as Jones, and nearly as heavy, but his bulk comes from fat rather than muscle. The uniform he wears is sloppy, one shirttail partially untucked and a white T-shirt showing between the straining buttons across his belly. He wears a cowboy's mustache like an upside-down horseshoe. It looks both absurd and menacing at the same time on his broad face. I know him as a suspect from an excessive force investigation two years ago, the last time I was in Laramie. The charges I filed against him were dismissed, I was told, for political reasons. I later learned that his uncle is the Albany County sheriff.

Now the deputy stands too close to me but I don't step back. He's rocking on his boot heels, his gloved hands on his waist with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. The tight black leather gloves he wears are the universal sign of cops with too much testosterone; their sole purpose is to prevent splitting a knuckle on someone's head.

“Fuck you, Burns. That your rustbucket over there? If you know what's good for you, you'll get in it and out of my town.”

I don't reply. I just keep my eyes on him.

“What went down in Cheyenne don't make you a hero. It just makes you a lucky piece of shit. QuickDraw my ass.”

“You got lucky too, Leroy. You never got convicted.”

The cop moves even closer. “Funny, I didn't feel so lucky with you pushin' those charges, and with that reprimand you had put in my file.” He spits out a brown foam of tobacco waste and I feel its gentle tug at my pant leg.

I look away for a moment, down at my shoes, trying to will away the anger that's rising in me. But the hot pressure is too great. Just as I'm telling myself to do nothing, I shoot out one arm and plant my palm hard in Bender's solar plexus. “Stay away from me,” I say as my hand presses into his soft flesh. He staggers back, more surprised than off-balance, and one boot heel catches on the grass. His gun belt clatters as he goes down. The deputies and other spectators around us freeze, watching.

Then Jones comes between us like a brick wall. “Cut it out,” he says.

Bender's face is red and flared in the streetlights when he rolls to his feet. To Jones he says, “You got no rank on me, Jeff. Back off!”

“No, Leroy, but I got size.”

It's a long moment before he turns and walks away. With a final hard look he says to me, “I take back what I said before—I hope you have a nice long visit in Laramie, you little fuck. I'll be seeing you. You can bet on that.”

“Quite a town you live in,” I say to Jones when he's gone.

Jones is frowning. “What the fuck you doing, Anton? You know better than to tangle with that peckerhead.”

“I've got nothing to lose.” It's true. My name and my reputation, once highly regarded in the state's small law enforcement community, have been sullied by the suspicions the Cheyenne shooting raised. For a while now I've sensed that my career as a cop is coming to an end.

“What about your badge? Shit, what about your life?” Jones finally smiles. “You sure made a lot of friends the last time you came to this part of the state. Most of the good cops think you've freaked out, they say you've become some kind of Dirty Harry rogue, while the bad cops love you. Excepting that scumbag Bender, of course.” Then he laughs, adding, “And the sheriff.”

I think for a minute. What have I done to offend the sheriff? Then I groan. “I'd forgotten about the sheriff.”

Jones chuckles again. “I haven't. That was the funniest thing I ever saw. Anyway, I was hoping to catch up to you, Anton. Seeing you today, I figured you must be the supersecret agent on that Danning girl. I just love the way the state takes these things off our hands whenever there's a hint of a conflict.”

“I don't really know anything about it yet. The office just told me to come down and see Ross McGee about it. I tried to talk to him at the courthouse, but he didn't have the time. I'm seeing him later tonight. Anything I should know?”

Jones looks at me for a fraction of a second too long before speaking. “Nope, I don't know anything about it either. It's the sheriff's deal. You ought to go on down and see him. I know he's working late tonight. Shit, we're all working late tonight. But go see him and get it over with.” He flashes teeth that are brilliant against his dark skin and the night. “Y'all can talk about old times. And give me a call tomorrow. Let me know how it goes. We'll get a few beers while you're here, long as I'm not seen with you.”

I take Grand Avenue to Third Street and then go south past the interstate to the Holiday Inn. Another
NO VACANCY
sign flashes brightly there just as one had from every motel I passed. Yesterday a secretary at DCI's main office in Cheyenne described the trouble she went through to get a room. Every hotel or motel had been booked for months, she said, for the Lee trial. The only way she finally reserved a space was by threatening to have the Department of Health pay a lengthy and determined visit. A reporter from a distant, small newspaper was apparently booted out and rendered homeless so I could have a place to sleep.

Despite the secretary's threat, the motel is actually Laramie's finest. It consists of a single sprawling brick building, two stories high, with a long wing of rooms that faces a grass courtyard and a partially covered swimming pool. There's a coffee shop and a bar just off the lobby, as well as a gift shop and some convention halls. The motel is at the very southern edge of town, where the land turns from tree-lined neighborhoods into scattered ranches and rolling plains.

After changing into a soft flannel shirt, jeans, and Tevas at the motel and feeding Oso, I leave him there and drive to the sheriff's office. The three-story building is next to the sandstone courthouse and houses the jail, the twenty-man Laramie Police Department, and the fire department in addition to being the headquarters of the Albany County Sheriff's Department. Inside the lobby I show my badge to the Explorer Scout who's manning the front desk and explain that I want to find the sheriff. The Scout takes my name and gives me an astonished look, probably having read my name in the papers or having heard some of the talk after the Cheyenne shooting. Then he makes a quick call and gives me directions before buzzing me through.

I vaguely remember the way down the maze of hallways to the sheriff's office although I've only been here once before. It was in more carefree days, two years ago, when one of the less notorious cases I investigated involved two deputies, Bender and another named Arnold, for the use of excessive force. The two officers had beaten a drunk Mexican farmhand outside a south-of-town bar, in front of a crowd of spectators. DCI, which is mandated by the state to investigate all allegations of official misconduct by city, county, or state officers, sent me to conduct the inquiry and to make a recommendation to the Attorney General's Office about the potential filing of charges against the officers.

I came to this very office to interview the sheriff. I was a little puzzled at just how helpful he acted in providing witness statements. Generally, the locals resent an outside agency poking around. But the sheriff gave me an animated demonstration of what the witnesses had said happened. First he braced his big belly and arms against his own desk, showing how the farmworker didn't cooperate in putting his hands on the hood of a car for a pat-down. Then he got on his hands and knees in front of me, facing me, to illustrate how the worker refused to lie flat when the two officers tried to take him down.

And it was at that moment that I made the mistake that earned me what is probably the sheriff's devoted animosity. I was standing in the doorway to his office with my hands on my hips, the sheriff on all fours before me, when I heard footsteps coming down the hallway. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Jefferson Jones, my roommate from the police academy four years before. How strange the situation must have looked to Jones: me blocking the doorway with my back and the sheriff barely visible beyond, on hands and knees. So I did it. I winked at Jones and with one hand made a short zipping motion in front of my pants.

Jones's short burst of laughter before he brought himself under control betrayed me. It caused the sheriff to look up from his demonstration and catch the gist of my unspoken but obscene joke. The sheriff threw me out of his building and filed a complaint with the Attorney General's Office.

At this time of night there is no one at the secretary's station outside the sheriff's office. I go right to the familiar open door and knock on the frame. Inside I can see Sheriff Willis not behind his desk, but slouching in a corner easy chair watching the news on a small TV propped on a bookshelf.

“Special Agent Antonio Burns, right?” he asks, taking a stubby cigar out of his mouth. I appreciate the sheriff's greeting, acting as if he barely remembers me. That makes things easier for both of us.

Without rising he gestures with the cigar toward another chair. The office walls are crowded with community service plaques and photos showing the sheriff with his arm around various local and state politicians. Cardboard boxes are scattered across the floor, some spilling their contents. With a glance I see they are pamphlets advertising Nathan Karge for governor. I remember hearing somewhere that the sheriff is Karge's campaign manager, and that he's expected to follow Karge to the capital after the election.

As I sit, I'm struck again by the wonder of how this fat, balding redneck can remain an elected official for so many years in a town like Laramie. The town today has as many Internet commuters and yuppies as it has ranchers. Probably more. In addition, it has a large and visible population of hippies. People in other parts of the state think of the town as Wyoming's version of Berkeley. Sheriff Daniel Willis is a throwback to a time when Laramie was a hard and dusty cow town, full of saloons and whorehouses, and where the western railway abruptly terminated not far from the peaks of the Snowy Range. He always seemed to me like the epitome of heavy-handed cowboy justice. Maybe a sheriff like him keeps Laramie's new citizens feeling as if they're in the midst of some rustic charm.

“I hear you're the one that's gonna look into that young gal's fall,” he drawls. “Make sure it was an accident and that we're not covering nothing up. Should be pretty easy, I expect. Routine.”

“I don't know anything about it yet, Sheriff. I haven't even seen the witness statements or the coroner's report.”

“Coroner already made the determination, son. Accident. See what I mean about easy?” He's selling something and appears anxious that I buy.

I shrug. “I heard her boyfriend, one of the witnesses, is your County Attorney's son?”

“Yep. Brad Karge. I've known that boy all his life. His daddy too, who's going to be your next governor—you might want to keep that in mind. The boy's a pistol. Been in a little trouble, but nothing serious. He just messes around with those rock climbers and gets high a little. Still growing up.” The sheriff pauses and studies me. “I heard somewheres you used to be a climber.”

“I still am.” I say it with unexpected pride, still feeling the euphoria of the afternoon's rededication to my passion.

Willis shakes his head, squinting through his pig eyes. “Sounds like a foolish hobby to me, son. Good way to get yourself killed. Anyhow, I'd appreciate it if you'd sign off on that girl's death right quick and move on. As you saw today, this town's got more important things going on. Put this accident to bed.”

With a grunt the sheriff pulls himself out of his chair and picks up a thick manila file from his desk. “What little we've got is in there. Like I said, should be a piece of cake.” With a quick toss that I barely catch as it hits my lap, he gives the file over to me and wishes me a good night.

THREE

T
HE RESTAURANT IS
crowded and dark when I walk in a little after eight o'clock. Its air is perfumed with the fecund odor of portobello mushrooms steaming on a grill. I stand in the entrance with all the other locals and out-of-towners who are waiting for tables while my eyes adjust to the candlelit gloom. The reporters and tourists are easy to spot. They wear expensive new hiking boots and shiny Gore-Tex jackets, as if they expect to go backpacking after dinner. The angry looks on their faces lead me to suspect the locals are being seated first.

According to the garrulous clerk at the hotel's desk, The First Story restaurant is something the town is proud of. A former university professor bought the old building, which stands in the center of town. Like most of the other buildings in downtown Laramie, it had once been a brothel. The upstairs was divided into twenty or so small “cribs” where the working girls had plied their trade. The professor tore them out and installed a highbrow bookstore called The Second Story. She converted the lower level into this, The First Story, and hired a chef from one of San Francisco's finest restaurants to run it for her. Judging from the odor and the atmosphere alone, the place seems to be as much a part of the new Laramie as Sheriff Willis is a part of the old.

After a few minutes of peering into the darkness, I spot Ross McGee crouching like a troll over a small table in the far corner. There's a bottle of wine and a full glass before him. He has a hand clenched around each. Above the white beard his cheeks are flushed and his eyes shiny, indicating that maybe this is not his first bottle.

I pull out the other chair. “Sorry I'm late, Ross.”

“Goddamn, you are sorry, lad,” he growls.

“It's good to see you too. How's the old battle-ax?” I use one of McGee's own terms of endearment for his fragile and surprisingly beautiful wife.

“She's deliriously happy,” he says, then pauses in his peculiar manner, sucking air into his emphysemic and overworked lungs, “. . . to see me out of town.” His home is in Cheyenne, not far from the main office of DCI and the Attorney General.

Even though he has an exterior more prickly than a porcupine's, I like McGee as much as I like anyone. He takes shit from no one and routinely sends agents off on politically sensitive investigations with his mantra of “Do the right thing; don't fuck around.” And when his agents get in trouble with the office for doing exactly that, McGee backs them up with the ferocity of an old hump-backed grizzly protecting her cubs. As a result he is feared, despised, and avoided by the state administration, from the Attorney General himself on down. My lower-level colleagues and I dread the inevitable day McGee will keel over from a heart attack.

He has an unexpected softer side too. He dotes on his wife's two miniature poodles with an obvious adoration that is completely out of character. When I once told him a story of my father's about a poodle, meant to be morbidly funny, McGee had been outraged.

In the early seventies, my father had been climbing near where two Frenchmen were putting up a new route on the great overhanging wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. The route had been a nightmare—they'd run out of food and water on the fifth day and had done without for the remaining three. Near the edge of the broad summit, where an easy trail reaches from El Capitan's gentle backside, the Frenchmen were congratulated by climbers, hikers, and tourists, all wanting to know what eight days of hanging by threads without a horizontal surface had been like. An elderly couple approached with a tiny toy poodle that wouldn't stop snapping at the Frenchmen's ankles. The couple indignantly refused to leash the pint-sized dog, insinuating that its aggressiveness must have something to do with the unwashed smell emanating from the climbers' bodies. To everyone's horror, one of the Frenchmen shrugged and nonchalantly punted the tiny dog over the edge.

When I told McGee that story, I expected to receive a rough chuckle. But instead tears came into his eyes. He reviled the French with language so hateful and vile that I noticed the office secretaries fleeing the room.

“Why are you late?” he demands.

“I stopped by to see the sheriff and get the file on the Danning girl. The sheriff and I had some patching up to do.” I explain the mistake I'd made a year ago and McGee's satyr face is split by a smile. That's the sort of prank he enjoys.

“Good lad. I'd forgotten about that.”

Then McGee's eyes brighten further as he focuses on someone behind my back. Turning my head, I see the reporter whose profile had so enticed me in the courtroom.

“Ross McGee,” she says fondly.

“Aah, the lovely Miss Hersh.” McGee gives her his most lecherous look, nearly smacking his lips.

She looks as if she's dressed for dining in Paris, New York, or Rome instead of Wyoming. She wears a long black dress that stretches across her thin hips, and a tight leather jacket. Clinging high up on her exposed neck is a string of pearls. She has mahogany eyes and her dark hair hangs limply almost to the tips of her breasts. The skin of her face and throat is a porcelain white, far different than the high-altitude tans of the girls I normally find myself attracted to. It's not easy to keep from staring.

“How are you, you old goat?”

“Fine, my dear. If I were two years younger . . . I'd be goring you tonight.”

She laughs, and I like the confident sound. I think she can't be more than twenty-six or twenty-seven, nearly forty years his junior. Then McGee asks, “What brings you to this inhospitable state?”

“The newspaper sent me up to cover the trial, of course. Would you let me pick your brain with some legal questions?”

“You can pick me wherever you like. . . . But first tell me how is your father . . . that ugly son of a bitch?”

She laughs again. “That's exactly how he refers to you—‘that ugly son of a bitch.' At least when he's feeling generous. He told me to be sure and see you while I'm here.”

McGee then speaks to me. “Don't get any ideas, lad. . . . This is Rebecca Hersh of the
Denver Post
. . . . She's the daughter of an old enemy of mine . . . a limp-wristed professorial type. . . . And this young ruffian is Special Agent Antonio Burns. . . . You may have heard of him.”

I rise to shake her hand, more than a little dazzled by her looks, as she assesses me in return. Her look is quizzical. “Aren't you the one who was in the news last year? That gang shooting?”

I feel the blood coming into my face and try not to wince. “I'm afraid so.”

McGee is not the least bit sympathetic to my discomfort. He chuckles and coughs, saying, “They call him QuickDraw nowadays. . . . Will you eat with us?”

“I'm sorry, I can't. There are some others waiting for me. But I'd love to interview you sometime, Agent Burns.”

“I'll think about it,” I say. My face is hot.

She takes a card from her purse and puts it on the table in front of me. Then without pause she turns again to McGee.

“Let me ask you quickly, Ross, what did you think of the closing today?”

“In general . . . it was well done, lass.”

“I saw you talking with the prosecutor. What was your role there?”

“Just to make sure the prosecution doesn't step in any shit . . . that'll make our shoes stink in the AG's Office . . . when the case comes up on appeal.”

“Were any issues created?”

“Of course, my dear. . . . There's always issues. . . . And when there aren't . . . the Public Pretenders will make them up.” He pauses to drag several ragged breaths into his lungs. “Nathan probably stepped in it a few times . . . in an appealable sense. But from what I saw . . . none are likely to stink enough . . . to get the case thrown out.”

“When did he go too far?”

McGee counts off on his thick fingers. “When he talked about the community's right for justice and protection . . . when he called this the most horrible of all crimes . . . when he called the defendants cold-blooded animals . . . All of those are technically improper. . . . There's some case law that says . . . the prosecutor can't inflame the passions of the jurors . . . or call the defendants names.”

“But the defense lawyers called all the witnesses and police liars, and said that Karge was conducting a witch-hunt for political gain.”

McGee explains, “The prosecution does it, it's potentially reversible error. . . . The defense does it, it doesn't fucking matter. . . . You can't appeal an acquittal, lass. Only a conviction. . . . Those are the rules of the game.”

“I can't imagine the jury doing anything but finding them guilty of first-degree murder and imposing the death penalty. Can you comment at all, officially or not?”

“Unofficially and off the record . . . you never know what a jury will do . . . You understand, we're talking about your average . . . to below-average citizen-idiots here. . . . These are the same morons . . . who think reintroducing wolves is a federal plot to steal their land . . . and that Waco was an execution. . . . And any time you try to get twelve people . . . to agree on anything, you're asking for trouble. . . . All too often they'll focus on something . . . that's totally irrelevant. . . . But the town's just as hot . . . to put the Knapps in the fryer as Karge is. . . . People've been saying his predecessor was soft on Shepard's killers . . . letting the punks get away with their lives.” McGee then starts into one of his stories, of which there seem to be thousands, while I signal the waitress for a drink stronger than wine. This one is about a domestic violence case he prosecuted where the victim was well known in the community and not very popular. The jury felt she got exactly what she had coming—a broken jaw courtesy of her drunken husband. They acquitted him. It was later revealed that one of the jurors had smuggled a bottle of whiskey into the deliberations. Instead of deliberating, the jury sat around drinking and talking about what they would have done to the bitch.

I've never seen my boss speak this much.

I'm crunching the ice from my drink by the time he's finished the story, unsure and uncaring of the point McGee is trying to make. But Rebecca Hersh has more courtesy. She is still standing by the table, looking attentive.

After a few other questions, she asks, “Nathan Karge looked tired to me. Everyone's talking about that too. Is it just the trial or has he been much affected by the death of that girl his son was dating?”

“I don't know . . . Nathan is a very private man when it comes to family. . . . He doesn't talk about his boy with me. . . . But it sure as hell was poor timing . . . having to deal with shit like that . . . in the middle of the trial of his career. . . . During a capital case like this . . . you don't want anything else on your mind. . . . Especially not with the fucking election coming up.”

“Well, I've got to go find my friends. Can I call you tomorrow for some legal background?”

“Always, lass. I'm at the Holiday Inn.”

“Great, I'm there too.” Rebecca then gives me a slightly embarrassed look. “It was nice meeting you, Agent Burns. Will you think about doing an interview?”

As she leaves I can't help but turn in my seat and watch her walk away. When I face McGee again he fixes me with his bright blue eyes. “She's way out of your league, youth.”

“Fuck you, Boss,” I answer but feel it's probably true.

Back at the Holiday Inn, I'm both elevated from the climb—my hands still tingle with the feel of the warm rock—and embarrassed at how I handled my introduction to the reporter. The file I took from the sheriff sits unopened on the bed. I'm off duty and intend to stay that way until the morning. Oso's old bones are tired from the afternoon at Vedauwoo. Gorged with Purina, he snores contentedly, sprawled across the room's second double bed.

I find myself driving back through the breezy night again toward downtown Laramie, not knowing at first what I'm hoping to find. But images of Rebecca Hersh and the girl who gave my dog the wreath of daisies play inside my mind. I park and begin to walk.

I come across a place called the Fireside Bar. A neon sign flashes, “Dancin' and Drinkin'.” Underneath, on the white wall in black marker, someone has added, “And Dyin'.” I observe the souped-up pickups outside and see through the window throngs of young white men in tightly curled baseball caps. This was the bar from which Matthew Shepard had been lured by two yokels from the same nomadic trailer-park culture as the Knapp brothers. They'd cajoled the small college student outside, driven him onto the plains outside of town, tied him to a buck fence, and beat him to death with the butt of a pistol. They told the police they did it because he flirted with one of them and for the couple of dollars and credit cards he had in his wallet. The Fireside Bar had been a poor choice for the boy. And his murder brought Laramie the continuing fame the town never wanted and didn't deserve. I walk on.

Two blocks farther I come to the Altitude Brewery. It's a new place, large and open inside. The floor and fixtures are all bright pine. The customers are dressed in a mix of alpaca wool sweaters, fleece jackets, and tie-dyed T-shirts worn under open hemp shirts. Unlike the other places I passed, the banging rhythm vibrating out the door from this bar is secondary to the sound of voices. While that attracts me, what really draws me in is that through the front window I think I see the flower girl.

I walk in and sit on a varnished stump at the bar. The bartender, sporting a lip ring, a couple of nose rings, and viciously spiked hair, pours me an Easy Street Wheat from the tap. When he says, “You're welcome,” I see that his tongue is also pierced with a silver stud. I stare toward the big-screen TV behind the bar, but I'm really watching the mirror below it—reflected there I see the girl sitting at a booth with three men, one ponytailed and older than the other two, and several more young men gathered around, gripping mugs of beer.

When she stands and walks toward the bathroom my eyes follow her. She's wearing threadbare jeans and a purple loose-weave vest. Her bare arms are tan and slender. There are thin cords of muscle running from her shoulders to her wrists. Her dirty blonde hair is mostly tucked behind her ears except for the few loose tendrils that sweep around her face. The young men around the table all steal glances after her as she bounces away. The only exception is the big, ponytailed one she'd been closest to. He looks at the others in challenge and annoyance.