Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

  “What if it isn’t?” I hadn’t said that to anyone outside my brain trust.

  “It is, even if it isn’t,” she insisted. “If he hadn’t done what he did, Juarez would be alive, and we’d all be better off for it.”

  Her rationale was twisted, selfish, destructive. “Maybe you weren’t dealing drugs directly, but you helped enable Juarez’s people to. You’re not clean, Mrs. Bearpaw—you’re filthy. I know the way your people have to live is shit, it’s unconscionable—but that can’t justify doing business with drug dealers. And it didn’t solve your problem, did it? You and your son are going to jail, and your tribe will never get that property now.”

  Her hollowness was too twisted for me to handle. I had to get out of here.

  “I’m going to get who killed Juarez, you and I both know that—but it’s far better for the world that he’s dead.”

  She clung to her attitude like a barnacle. “Not for me.”

  Tom Miller was waiting for me in my office, slumped in a chair. He was ashen.

  “You’ve arrested my deputy.”

  “And his mother.”

  His look was pure distress. “You know about us? Louisa?”

  I nodded. “Your son told me.”

  “Aw, Jesus.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. They both think you’re the greatest guy in the world.”

  “No, I’m not.” He shook his head from side to side. “I betrayed my wife, and had a child out of wedlock.”

  “If those are the worst sins you’ve ever committed, you still have a fighting chance of getting into heaven.”

  “I’m not religious that way.”

  “One less problem to worry about.”

  “I lied about my investments, too.” This had been quite a morning for confessions. “I didn’t make that money playing stocks. I wouldn’t have the guts to do that, or the foresight. That money was from my wife’s life insurance policy. From an old policy I bought back when I was with the Bureau. It had nothing to do with being smart.” He gave me a sideways, embarrassed look. “I wanted to look like a big shot. Like I was modern. Not a relic, which is what I’ve become.”

  He was so down in the dumps it was terrible. I couldn’t even fake trying to make him feel better—I had to fill him in on my conversations with Louisa and Wayne. It got worse and worse. He kept shaking his head.

  “For the record”—I had to do this officially—“it wasn’t you, was it? You had nothing to do with it?”

  “No, it wasn’t me.”

  “For a long time, I thought it was.”

  “I know.”

  “You never said anything to me.”

  “What was I going to say, ‘I’m innocent of a crime I haven’t been charged with’? You’re a smart man, Luke. I knew that sooner or later you’d figure it out.”

  “It took me a long time.”

  He grimaced. “Me, too.”

  “When did you?”

  He was sheepish. “Only now. Hearing about Louisa and Wayne.”

  I threw him some rope. “Wayne says he didn’t do it. That he freed Juarez from the trailer, but didn’t pull the trigger out there.”

  Miller leaned over, burying his head in his hands. “I hope that’s true.” His shoulders were shaking from his crying, this rock of a man. “This is a nightmare. How in the world did this ever happen?”

  “It’s a long story, Tom. You know more of it than I do, I’m sure.”

  He nodded.

  “What about Juarez laundering money through the tribe? Did you know about that?”

  He shook his head. “No. Louisa kept it from me to protect me, I’m sure. She said it was money out-of-state tribes were donating to them, to get a piece of the Prop 5 action when it happened. I bought it.”

  He paused. “I didn’t want to look under the rock,” he berated himself. “Man, did she play me for a fool. An old fool’s the worst fool, isn’t he? You’re not supposed to be blinded by love when you get to be as old as me.”

  “I think you were right the first time,” I consoled him. “She was protecting you.”

  He kept shaking his head. I could see that my attempt at solace was small comfort.

  Nora was my final call before I went to the judge. I caught her at home; she was on her way out the door for the courtroom, to hear the final arguments. She agreed to wait for me. She was curious, of course, about why I wanted to see her. I told her there had been a big break in the case, involving Jerome. That excited her—she was eager to know what it was, right then. I told her I’d be there in a short while, that it would be better to hear it-all in person.

  I picked up Kate Blanchard en route. I wanted a witness with me, preferably a woman, when I broke the news. I was clear with Miller about not tipping Nora in advance—this was my show. He was fine with that.

  Kate arched an eyebrow as she got into the car and saw me. “What cat dragged you in?”

  “One with sharp teeth.”

  She was beside herself with glee as I recited the predawn events. “Goddamn Sam!” She pounded the dashboard, she was so jazzed. “This is major high drama. I mean, it’s insane!”

  “You’re a big reason for all this. You’re a dogged detective, lady.”

  “Thank you, kind sir. As long as I’m not a dog.”

  In another life, she’d be a hell of a fine old lady. I already have one of those; besides, we’re great friends, also something to be prized.

  Nora was surprised that Kate was with me—maybe disappointed is a better word. She was wearing a clingy dress that showed her figure to good advantage—this was going to be her day in court as well as mine—the culmination of her efforts to find justice.

  We sat in her living room, Kate and me on one couch, Nora across the coffee table from us, perched on the edge of the cushion. She was having coffee; Kate and I had declined. This wasn’t a time to have anything fragile or liquid in my hands.

  “What’s up?” Nora asked, looking from me to Kate and back. “What’s new with Jerome we don’t already know?” She glanced at her watch. “You start closing arguments in less than an hour.” She took a sip of coffee. She was drinking from a china cup, a good one.

  “You might want to put your coffee down,” I cautioned her.

  “What?” She was antsy, wanting to know. She put the cup down on the table.

  I leaned toward her. “We arrested Wayne Bearpaw this morning.”

  That froze her. “Wayne Bearpaw? Deputy Bearpaw? For what?”

  “Perjury. Resisting arrest.” I paused. “Accessory to murder.”

  She rocked in place. “Jesus.” Another look at Kate, back to me. “Wayne was in cahoots with Jerome? How in…what in the world is that all about? How did he and Jerome hook up?”

  “I don’t know exactly, yet,” I said. “It’s complicated. One piece of it is, Bearpaw’s mother’s been laundering money for Juarez. Ever since he built the compound. Before, even.”

  “That’s incredible. Louisa Bearpaw? You know that for a fact?”

  “She’s confessed to it.”

  “Oh my God!” Her hands fluttered above her waist. She pushed them down into her lap, one on top of the other. “Louisa’s one of my closest friends.” A look of consternation crossed her face. “This isn’t going to screw up the trial, is it?”

  I gave an anything-goes shrug. “It’s all up in the air now.”

  That was the last thing she wanted to hear. “That’s great!” she spat. “That’s fucking wonderful! All this time, and money, and energy. Does Judge McBee know?” she asked, her mind spinning.

  I shook my head. “I told him I needed to push my closing back an hour, but I didn’t tell him why. I wanted to tell you first.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” She jumped up. “Bill Fishell. He has to be told. I’ll call him.” She ran toward the phone in the kitchen.

  “He already knows.”

  She stopped cold, turned back to me. “He does?”

  I nodded. “I called h
im last night.”

  She came back, sat down slowly. “What did he have to say?”

  “He was as surprised and shocked as I was.” I leaned toward her. “You can talk to him directly, yourself. He’s here in town, in my office.”

  She frowned. “Bill Fishell is here in Blue River? When did he get here?”

  “Five this morning. He was with me when we arrested the Bearpaws.”

  I could see her mind going a mile a minute. “Does Tom Miller know about this?”

  “He knows.”

  She was thinking on the run. “He must be in shock, he’s so close to them.”

  “He’s taking it hard,” I told her, greatly understanding Miller’s grief. “But he understands. And yes, it was a terrible blow to him.”

  She looked at me, her body rocking. Slowly she said, “Then you know about—”

  I cut her off. “Thanks for clueing me in.” I was being deliberately curt with her.

  “How was I to know that would matter?” she bristled. “And what are you so mad about?”

  “Everything matters, Nora,” I said darkly. “I’ve found that out, the hard way. Everything.”

  She was defensive and unapologetic simultaneously.

  “Like what, Luke? I’m not sorry I didn’t tell you about Miller and the Bearpaws. No one knows about that, it’s a well-kept secret. Anyway, that has nothing to do with Juarez’s murder. I can’t be expected to tell you the history of everything that’s happened in Muir County over the last thirty years, can I?”

  “Anything that touches on this, even remotely, you should have.”

  “Well, like what? Besides that.”

  I sat up straight. “Things about you.”

  She gave me a funny look. “What things?”

  Her eyes darted to Kate for a second, as if seeking some kind of woman-to-woman bonding coalition against me. Kate returned her look with a noncommittal stare.

  “What things?” Nora asked me again.

  “There are an awful lot of coincidences here, Nora. They’re piling up.”

  I pulled a few sheets of paper out of my back pocket on which I’d scribbled some notes the night before.

  “This connection with Juarez’s contractor. It still bothers me.”

  “Oh, come on, Luke,” she said, clearly exasperated. “We’ve already gone over this. I’m sorry I don’t have twenty-twenty hindsight, okay? How was I supposed to know? I wouldn’t have used Dean if I’d known. But how could I have? Juarez was never there.”

  “Remind me again—how did you get on the property? Juarez’s man Portillo said it was heavily guarded, from day one.”

  She shrugged—too nonchalantly, I thought. “Not when I was there. That must have been later, after they finished it.” She took a sip of coffee.

  “So you met the architect before it was finished.”

  “Yes. You know that.”

  My eyes flicked over at Kate for an instant. “That’s funny.”

  “What is?” Nora asked crossly.

  “The first time you ever showed me the place, the day after I came up here, you said you had never been there until after the killings. But you’d been there plenty of times before, hadn’t you?”

  “No. I mean…yes, of course I was up there before. I told you that. I never said I hadn’t been there before Juarez was killed.”

  “I must be mistaken,” I said, staring at her coolly. “You sure you didn’t say that?”

  “I’m positive, Luke,” she said firmly. “I had been there before it was finished. What I said, I’m sure, was that I hadn’t been there since it was built. Before Juarez’s group moved in.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Obviously, I misheard you.”

  “Obviously,” she said tartly.

  I looked at my notes again. “And paying for the house, all in cash. Why didn’t you take out a mortgage?”

  “Has anything I’ve ever said registered with you? I told you, my parents gave me the money in a lump sum. I could have gotten a home loan, I suppose, but this way I don’t have the debt.” She was becoming increasingly agitated with my questions. “It’s my money, what concern is it of yours?”

  I felt Kate tensing, next to me. “We couldn’t find any documentation of your parents giving you any money, Nora. Not in that amount.”

  She put her cup down hard, rattling the saucer. “You’ve been investigating me?”

  “I’ve been investigating everyone. Including you.”

  She stood. “I find that offensive, Luke. I find that ugly.”

  “Where did the money come from, Nora?” I wasn’t going to stop.

  “My parents, like I said. You want me to get a letter from them to give the principal?” She was livid—a vein was popping involuntarily in her neck. “I don’t want to have any more of this conversation,” she said abruptly. “I want you to leave. Both of you. Now.” She pointed to the door.

  I waggled my head back and forth slowly. “That’s a bad idea. It could give me a worse impression that I already have. I don’t feel good, okay? I was up all night, watching my case go up in flames. So sit down and answer my questions.”

  She hesitated, considering possible courses of action. Then she came around the couch and sat back down, perched on the edge.

  She tried a new tack. “You’re tired,” she said calmly. “I understand. You’ve had a monkey wrench thrown into the works. Go ahead. Ask me whatever you want to ask me. I have nothing to hide from you.” She paused. “From anyone.” She smiled at me, almost lasciviously. “Do you?”

  “No,” I answered, feeling the churn in my gut, “but we’re not here for me.”

  “You mean I have to show you mine, but you don’t have to show me yours.”

  She was coming on to me. Not for the reasons she had before, but to embarrass me in front of Kate.

  I forced a smile. “I don’t have anything to show you.”

  She looked at Kate again. This time, she winked. “Oh, I’ll bet you do.”

  Kate glanced at me, like asking, What’s this?

  I wasn’t going to get caught up in Nora’s emotional machinations. I threw her a curve. “Let’s talk about Dennis’s suicide.”

  My tactic worked—she turned pale. “Dennis’s suicide? What does that have to do with anything? My God, Luke, isn’t that low? At a time like this?”

  I took the autopsy report out of my pocket. “You found him.”

  “Yes,” she said between clenched teeth, staring at the document in my hand.

  “He shot himself with a gun. In the temple. A nine-millimeter Sig Sauer.” I looked up from the page. “Your gun.”

  “I know all that!” she cried. “You don’t have to remind me. I’ve been living with it for five years.” She turned to Kate. “Please make him stop.”

  Kate shook her head.

  I carefully laid the autopsy report on the coffee table. “You never told me you had a gun, Nora. Why didn’t you tell me you had a gun? Why didn’t you tell me your husband killed himself with your gun?”

  Her nails were digging into the palms of her hands. “What in the world does that have to do with any of this case?” She snatched up the report, crumpled it in her hand. “Yes, I have a gun. All D.A.’s in this county have guns, they’re given to you when you take the job, whether you want one or not. This is the old West up here, Luke. Everybody has a gun.”

  She threw the paper across the room at me. “I didn’t want the fucking thing. I hate guns, they scare the shit out of me. They kill people.” She started crying, her face in her hands, loud, racking sobs. “Like Dennis,” she cried from behind her hands. “It was in a drawer, I’d forgotten I even had it.”

  She sobbed harder.

  Kate put a hand on my arm. “Should we stop for a while?” she whispered, concerned.

  I was fresh out of pity. “Get her a glass of water.”

  Kate went into the kitchen and came back with a half-full glass. She pressed it into Nora’s hands. Kate looked over at me—she w
as feeling sorry for Nora.

  I wasn’t. “Come on, Nora. Pull it together.”

  Her crying turned to sniffles. She took a swallow, handed the glass back to Kate. Kate put it on the coffee table and sat next to me again.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this, Luke.” Nora’s eyes were red-rimmed.

  “You brought me up here to do a job. This is part of it.”

  Her sigh came from way deep down. “Okay. Go ahead. I’ll be all right.” She reached for the water.

  I went to my notes again. “Where were you the night of the raid?”

  She looked at me incredulously; then she broke out laughing. “Now you’re really reaching.”

  I sat there staring at her.

  One of her legs was crossed over the other. Her foot jiggled up and down involuntarily. “I was home, of course. In my bed, asleep. It happened at four in the morning, for God’s sakes.”

  “You didn’t know it was going down? Tom Miller didn’t call and tell you?”

  The expression on her face told me I’d caught her in a lie.

  She backtracked hastily. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Yes, he called me.”

  “When?”

  “Around twelve or one. Somewhere in there. Of course he called me.”

  “What did you do?”

  She snorted a laugh. “Cussed. That bastard Jerome had cut us out until the last minute. But what could you expect?”

  I was a metronome. “Then what?”

  “Nothing.” Her foot had taken on a life of its own, twitching up and down. “There was nothing I could do. I hoped it would go all right. What else could I do?”

  I rubbed my fingers on my forehead. “What does ‘go all right’ mean?”

  “You know. That the raid would be successful.”

  “That they’d catch these guys, the dealers,” I paused. “Including Juarez.”

  “Of course including Juarez,” she answered. “He was the reason for it.”

  “Okay. So then what?”

  “I went…” She hesitated. “I didn’t go back to sleep. I stayed up.”

  “You were up all night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Here.”

  “Yes. I sat by the phone. With a glass of Jack Daniel’s close at hand, I might add. It was a very tense time, as you can imagine.”