by Mike Lawson
A gunshot sounded. It was like a cannon going off in the enclosed space.
Bunt’s men—the two still standing, one of them with blood pouring from his nose—spun around to see Jim Turner standing there, holding a pistol still aimed at the ceiling.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Turner said.
“He started it,” the one with the broken nose said, pointing at DeMarco who was struggling to get to his feet.
Turner looked down at the man DeMarco had knocked unconscious. “Is Roy okay?”
The young cowboy with the rodeo belt buckle knelt down next to his fallen buddy, slapped him lightly on the cheek a couple of times, and the man came to. “How you doin’, Roy?”
“I’m all right,” Roy said. “Lucky fuckin’ punch.”
DeMarco smiled, his teeth smeared red with blood.
Turner walked over to DeMarco and said, “You’re coming with me. I’m placing you under arrest for trespassing and breaking and entering.”
DeMarco was treated like your average hardcore criminal, processed into the Rock Springs detention center, photographed and fingerprinted. His wallet, watch, spare change, and cell phone were placed into an envelope and he was required to remove his belt and his shoelaces, apparently to prevent him from hanging himself. He was then tossed into a holding cell. His cellmates were two men who appeared to have been in a fight, who reeked of booze and stale vomit and had passed out on the floor.
An hour later he was escorted to a room where he met his lawyer, Dora Little Bear, an intense, dark-haired young lady who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. DeMarco’s head hurt, his ribs were sore, he was having a little trouble breathing, and his mouth was swollen. Nonetheless, he felt pretty good, figuring he gave as good as he got. Knocking out ol’ Roy with a single punch made all his aches and pains seem worthwhile.
Little Bear pointed at DeMarco’s face and asked: “Did the cops do that to you?”
“No,” DeMarco said. “Three of Hiram Bunt’s men did.”
“Huh,” the lawyer said. “I would have liked it better if the law had roughed you up making a misdemeanor arrest.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but Turner never touched me,” DeMarco said. “In fact, he may have kept Bunt’s guys from kicking me to death.”
“Let’s talk about how we’re going to handle the arraignment,” Little Bear said. “According to what your previous lawyer told me, you broke into a man’s house and—”
DeMarco said, “I didn’t break in. I walked in through an unlocked back door.” After telling that small lie, DeMarco proceeded to tell her the truth about everything else he did: searching Sonny’s house, firing two of Sonny’s guns into a rain barrel, then taking the slugs to the FBI to determine if the weapons had been used in the murders of Shannon and the BLM agent. DeMarco concluded with: “Thanks to me, Sonny Bunt is now in jail for the murder of Jeff Hunter.”
“Well, you got a lucky break,” Little Bear said. “The judge you’ll appear before hates Hiram Bunt. Not because of the standoff, but because of some property dispute where Bunt apparently screwed him. I’d suggest you plead guilty to trespassing. I’ll argue that you trespassed in the interest of seeing justice done and because of what you did, a man almost certainly guilty of murder is now behind bars. I think the judge will let you off with probation, or maybe a fine, but he won’t do much more than that. I hope.”
“You hope?”
As the town of Rock Springs didn’t hold court at night, DeMarco couldn’t be arraigned and, therefore, couldn’t bail himself out of jail. So—and over his lawyer’s objections—he spent the night in the holding cell at the detention center, sitting on the floor, his back against a wall, trying and mostly failing to sleep. The two men who’d been passed out in the cell when he’d arrived eventually regained consciousness. It turned out they were brothers who got drunk, then got into a donnybrook in a local bar when the older brother discovered that the younger one was sleeping with his woman, a gal named Trixie. Based on what DeMarco overheard, the brothers concluded—once they were sober—that Trixie wasn’t exactly a prize worth fighting over and certainly wasn’t worth what they were going to have to pay the bar owner for the furnishings they’d destroyed during their altercation.
In the morning, DeMarco was taken before a judge named Amos Morris, an amiable, roly-poly, red-cheeked man with wispy white hair. The first thing he said when he saw DeMarco was: “Who beat you up?” Morris just sounded curious and not particularly concerned about DeMarco’s condition.
Before DeMarco could speak, Little Bear said, “Three of Hiram Bunt’s men who decided to take the law into their own hands.”
“But the cops didn’t hit you,” the judge said.
DeMarco shook his head and was about to say that Turner had probably saved him from a much more severe beating, but again his lawyer spoke first. She said, “No, the police didn’t injure my client. On the other hand, the deputy involved also didn’t arrest Mr. Bunt’s employees for assault. It appears as if the law in Sweetwater County is willing to turn a blind eye to anything that Hiram Bunt does and the sheriff’s office is more concerned about a minor case of trespassing than my client being brutally attacked.”
The prosecutor, a guy wearing a string tie with an agate clasp, objected. He said, “What the deputy did or did not do with regard to Mr. Bunt’s men isn’t relevant to the matter at hand, which is your client breaking into a man’s house. And that’s not minor at all.”
The lawyers blabbed back and forth a bit, Little Bear explaining how DeMarco’s initiative—initiative sounding a lot better than breaking and entering—resulted in the arrest of a man who had almost certainly killed a BLM agent. The prosecutor argued that no matter DeMarco’s intentions or motives, it was unlawful for him to enter a home and do illegitimate ballistic tests on a man’s weapons. When the lawyers finished, the judge asked DeMarco if he had anything to say. DeMarco said he was willing to plead guilty to the crime of trespassing, that being the only crime he’d committed. The judge mulled this over for about five seconds, shrugged, and said, “The court fines you one hundred dollars.”
The prosecutor shrieked, “That’s not right, your honor! This man should be sentenced to at least thirty days in the county lockup.”
The judge responded with: “Get real, Bernie.” The judge did, however, tell DeMarco that he’d better not break into anyone else’s home while he was in Wyoming or the next time he would spend some time in jail.
DeMarco wrote a check to pay his fine then asked Little Bear if he could buy her breakfast as a way to partially repay her. She said she didn’t have the time, that she had to meet with a client, a kid who’d almost killed an old lady when he broke into her house to steal to support his opioid addiction. She told DeMarco she’d send him her bill—and if he got into any more trouble while he was in Wyoming, to give her a call. The last thing she said to him was: “I’m really sad about what happened to Shannon Doyle. I never met her but I loved her book. I hope you find the person who killed her, but try not to break the law again.”
After Little Bear left, DeMarco realized he didn’t have a way to get back to Waverly as Jim Turner had driven him to Rock Springs. It took him an hour to find a taxi driver who was willing to make the forty-minute drive for a hundred dollars. Considering the fine, his lawyer’s fee, and the taxi ride, breaking into Sonny Bunt’s house had cost him about five hundred bucks.
It was worth it.
26
McCord had told DeMarco that now that she had solid evidence that Sonny had killed Jeff Hunter, she could get warrants to break Sonny’s alibi and prove that he had not been in Cheyenne the day Hunter was shot. Then she thought: to hell with breaking Sonny’s alibi. She was going to break the man who’d given him the alibi.
The man who’d said that Sonny had been with him at the gun show in Cheyenne the day of Hunter’s
murder was a short, bantamweight drunk who’d gone to high school with Sonny and had spent time on the rodeo circuit in his twenties. His name was William Warren, but as he was about five foot four with his boots on, his cowboy sobriquet was naturally Shorty. McCord had heard that the only reason Hiram Bunt tolerated an alcoholic working for him was because Shorty was an exceptional horse trainer. That and the fact that he was a good friend of Sonny’s.
Shorty lived in a manufactured home in Waverly. The place hadn’t seen a coat of paint in twenty years and the weed-filled front yard contained the carcasses of three Ford pickup trucks that had been cannibalized for parts but, for whatever reason, hadn’t been hauled off to a wrecking yard. There was also a fourth Ford pickup with rusty fenders and a cracked windshield that appeared to be functional if not completely legal.
McCord had left Casper at three-thirty a.m. so she could arrive in Waverly at six. One problem with being an FBI agent in a state the size of Wyoming was you often had to drive for hours to do your job. The reason she’d risen so early was that she was hoping to catch Shorty before he left for work. She didn’t want to have to go out to Bunt’s ranch to pick him up as that was likely to result in another confrontation with Hiram, one which might end up with her shooting him.
She looked around before getting out of her car to see if Shorty had a pit bull roaming his yard. She’d rather shoot Hiram than a dog. She rapped hard on Shorty’s door and a moment later he appeared, wearing a once-white T-shirt, stained with what looked like tomato sauce, and blue boxer shorts. His hair was sticking up, he hadn’t shaved in days, and his eyes looked as if he’d spent the night drinking until he’d passed out.
He said, “What do you want?”
He recognized McCord from the time she’d questioned him after Sonny claimed Shorty was his alibi.
“I want to talk to you again about Sonny being with you in Cheyenne the day Jeff Hunter was killed.”
He said, “I don’t have anything more to say to you. And I’m not going to talk to you without my lawyer present.”
McCord was five inches taller than Shorty and probably outweighed him by forty pounds. She shoved by him and walked into the house. She said, “Go put on some pants, you little shit. And you’re going to talk to me or I’ll arrest you and drag your ass to Casper and talk to you there. Which means you’ll have to pay your lawyer, assuming you even have one, for the time it takes him to drive to my office.”
While she was waiting for Shorty to get dressed, she looked around his hovel. It was just what she’d expected from the exterior: a pigsty. Clothes strewn about, unwashed dishes in the sink, fast food cartons and pizza boxes and beer cans on the floor and almost every other flat surface.
A moment later Shorty came back to the living room, now wearing jeans, but still barefoot. She pointed to a recliner aimed at the television and said, “Sit down.” She walked over to a leather chair with a split in the upholstery and swept a jean jacket and a couple of soiled work shirts onto the floor and took a seat.
“So what do you want?” Shorty said.
“As I’m sure you must have heard by now, I’ve arrested Sonny Bunt because I can prove his rifle was used to kill Jeff Hunter. Well, Shorty, I’m going to give you one chance, and one chance only, to tell me the truth. And if you don’t, you’re going to jail.”
“Going to jail for what? I didn’t commit any crime.”
“Yeah, you did. You lied to me. You lied when you said Sonny was with you at the gun show in Cheyenne the day Hunter was killed.”
“I didn’t—”
“By now I’d think that every person in America, even a dumb ass like you, must know that lying to the FBI is a crime.”
Shorty started to say something but she held up a hand, silencing him. “Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that lying isn’t that big a deal and the most you’ll get is a fine or a few days in the county lockup. But you see, Shorty, lying is just going to be the first charge on your indictment. Do you know what the second one is going to be?”
“What indictment?”
“The second charge is going to be accessory to murder. You’ll be charged as an accessory because you lied to help Sonny get away with killing a federal agent. So now you’re not looking at a few days in jail and picking up trash on the highway. Now you’re looking at years. Maybe you’ll end up in a cell next to your buddy Sonny.”
Shorty said, “I’m telling you that Sonny—”
“I suggest you stop before you tell me another lie. Because I know what else you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I can’t prove that Sonny wasn’t with you in Cheyenne that day. Well, cowboy, let me explain something to you. Now that I have evidence tying Sonny to a murder, namely that his rifle was used to kill a man, I’m getting warrants to look at his cell phone and credit card records. All it will take is a phone call Sonny made or him paying for something with a credit card to prove he’s wasn’t in Cheyenne.”
Shorty just sat there, looking trapped.
McCord remembered this one time when she was a kid. A mouse had gotten into the house and she’d cornered it, intending to smash it with a broom, and the mouse had looked just the way Shorty did: its little black eyes darting everywhere, looking for a way out of that corner. The mouse got away that day because it had been too quick for her—but Shorty wasn’t as quick as the mouse. Or as smart.
She said, “So, let’s start over. Let’s pretend this is the first time I’m talking to you, now that you know what’ll happen if you lie to me again. Was Sonny Bunt really with you in Cheyenne the day Jeff Hunter was killed?”
Shorty’s Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times as if he was trying to swallow a baseball. “No,” he said.
Maybe he was as smart as the mouse.
“So why did you tell me he was?”
“Because he asked me to. He said you goddamn feds were out to get him because of his old man. He told me he didn’t kill Hunter but he couldn’t say where he really was that day. He said he was really with his girlfriend, you know that Mexican chick, Angela, who tends bar at the Grill. He didn’t want to use her for an alibi because then his wife would find out that he was fucking around on her.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yeah. Sonny can be kind of an asshole, but I didn’t think he would have shot that man in the back.”
McCord’s parting words to Shorty were: “You skip town before you can be formally deposed, I’ll track you down like a gut-shot deer leaving a trail of blood.”
McCord thought that sounded pretty good—like something an old-time Wyoming lawman would say—although she’d never shot an animal in her life, much less tracked a wounded one.
McCord decided to stop at the café in Waverly for breakfast before driving back to Casper.
A stout woman with short white hair came over and took her order. McCord had read enough of Shannon’s journal to know that the woman was Harriet and that Shannon had been close to her. Which made her wonder what that slick bastard, DeMarco, had learned from her. DeMarco was a piece of work.
“What’ll you have?” Harriet asked.
McCord really wanted a stack of pancakes slathered with butter and maple syrup but restrained herself. She said, “Black coffee, bacon, and a couple of eggs over easy. No hash browns or toast.” She was proud of her self-control but knew that long before noon her stomach would be rumbling.
She sipped her coffee as she waited for her breakfast to arrive, feeling good about the way things had gone with Shorty. She had no doubt now that she’d stripped Sonny of his alibi that he’d go to jail for life for first-degree murder. She also wouldn’t be totally surprised if he eventually pleaded guilty to avoid a death sentence. Wyoming still had the death sentence on the books, and although no one had been executed since 1992, the state might make an exception for Sonny. But there was still the issue of whether or not he’d kil
led Shannon Doyle, as DeMarco thought. When she got back to Casper, she’d swing by the detention center and ask Sonny if he had an alibi for the night Doyle was killed.
Then she thought, as long as she was down in this part of the state already, she might as well go talk to Sonny’s wife. She knew Elaine Bunt was a high school teacher in Rock Springs and therefore only forty minutes away. She figured that since Shannon Doyle had been shot sometime around midnight, that if Sonny was innocent he should have been lying in bed next to his wife the night Doyle was killed. And if he had been, his wife should be able to corroborate this.
There was the problem that Doyle’s murder was under the jurisdiction of the Sweetwater County Sheriff and not the FBI, but she decided that she didn’t care. Screw everybody’s rice bowls.
McCord showed her ID to the principal of the high school and asked him to bring Elaine Bunt to her. When the principal asked if Elaine had done something wrong, she said, “Not a thing. I just need to ask her a question related to an ongoing investigation.”
A few minutes later, the principal returned to his office with a worried looking Elaine Bunt following him. Elaine was a thin blonde woman with bitten-to-the-quick fingernails. She seemed so mousy and timid that McCord wondered how she was able to control classrooms filled with unruly teenagers.
