The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  “You'd better.” He looks like he's feeling dubious about this whole project.

  I start to lead up the face. The only features on the first twenty feet are small, lateral edges. I pull myself upward on pockets in the rock so small I'm lucky to get much more than a fingertip in. Jones can handle it, I hope, but I prefer a solid crack any day. Then I reach a fist-size fissure that continues straight up and feel relief as I shove my hands in, curling my fingers tight, and feeling the bite of the rock against the outside of my palm and the soft meat of the back of my hand between the thumb and first finger. My relief intensifies as I hang off one fist and bury a mechanical cam deep in the crack, then clip the rope to it.

  “Hey, QuickDraw, I forgot to ask. How we getting down?” Jones yells when I'm near the top.

  I'm too out of breath to attempt an explanation of rappelling. So I just shout, “We fly!”

  “Yeah, just like that girl,” I hear him mutter.

  I pull myself over the top onto a broad ledge. At the back of the ledge, where the pillar once again soars upward, there's a small, dark hole. In the reflected sunlight reaching into it I can see the uneven floor and distant darkness of a cave beyond the hole. On the ledge is a pair of ordinary bolts with steel hangers near the edge of the cliff. With green spray paint someone has sloppily printed “No Trespassing” on the rock just below the hangers. Climbers are becoming as territorial as surfers and gangbangers. I clip a carabiner to one of the hangers, then freeze. The click of metal on metal didn't sound right. There's something about the way the metals touched that has the hair on my arms standing up.

  I leave the carabiner dangling on the hanger and move on up and over the bolts onto the ledge. Standing up, I notice a second pair of bolted hangers concealed in a crevice off to one side. I ignore these too and instead begin building my own anchor. I place three pieces of gear in a crack and tie them together with a thin cord, making a solid, backed-up central placement. I clip myself to it with enough slack so that I can lean out over the cliff and help Jones with the climb.

  Then I go back to the suspect bolts on the ledge's edge. I take a sling of webbing from over my shoulder and slip a loop through the carabiner I had placed on the hanger. I tug hard. The hanger comes free from the rock, popping me hard in the forehead. With a low curse I look at the rock from which the hanger came free—there's no bolt. The hanger swings free at the end of the sling. On it there's some sort of residue that looks and smells like Krazy Glue. I curse again, amazed. It takes me a couple of minutes to realize the horror of what someone has done here.

  After warily double-checking my self-built anchor, I yell, “Off belay!” I lean out over the edge and watch as Jones jerks the rope out of the ATC. I pull up the slack. Locking the rope through my own belay device, I shout, “On belay!” as I promised him I would and tug the rope twice, causing it to snap at Jones's harness. Jones studies the face above him for a long time, shaking his head and presumably swearing.

  He moves slowly once he starts up the cliff. He is sweating and gasping for air just ten feet off the deck, hauling himself skyward with his massive arms alone, gripping the edges with all his formidable strength. Oso sits up and watches curiously. “Put some weight on your legs. You aren't a cripple,” I yell down, trying to be helpful.

  “Fuck you!” is the reply.

  “It'll be easier—I swear.”

  “Bite me!”

  “Okay, so I take it you don't want any advice?”

  “Shut up and keep that rope tight!”

  I make a whistling sound. “Poor sportsmanship. Penalty: ten feet of slack.” I loosen the rope to tease him, then pull it tight again.

  He looks up, truly terrified now. “Don't do that!”

  Thirty feet off the ground, Jones comes to the first piece of gear: a cam with the rope running through it. As Jones starts to climb above it, I tell him to pull the cam's trigger and take it out. Jones complies without comment, apparently breathing too hard for further profanity. From above I watch his calves beginning to tremble with the onset of the dreaded sewing-machine leg. When Jones raises his head for the next hold there's white all the way around his eyeballs.

  I pull the rope as tight as I can and tell Jones to let go of the rock and lean back, to just sit in the harness and rest. “You won't fall, I swear. I've got you tight.” Jones grudgingly and desperately does as I recommend, but instead of resting his arms he grips the rope as if he's going to strangle it. I hold my tongue and don't offer any further advice, but cannot refrain from pulling the camera out of my pack with my free hand and snapping a quick picture of Jones grimly hang-dogging. Fortunately, Jones doesn't notice.

  Finally, he's up. He rolls over onto the wide ledge and appears to hug the horizontal rock with great passion as he blows and sucks the high, clean air. When he looks up at me he is grinning.

  “You are one crazy motherfucker!” he says, laughing. “But I think I could get into this climbing shit!”

  I explain what I'm doing as I tie Jones in to the anchor on a long line just in case he stumbles. Jones is still smiling and gazing out over the aspens and pines and onto the plain below and beyond.

  I show Jones the hanger that had been glued to the rock and explain how I'd jerked it right off.

  “Why would someone put that there?”

  “I guess someone didn't want anyone else coming up here. Anyone who clipped those hangers and trusted them as an anchor would be dead.”

  Before going into the cave, I study the natural platform. It is roughly ten feet by ten feet and sticks out from the cave entrance like an unrailed balcony. The edge at the end of the balcony is smooth. There is nothing for Kate Danning to have hit her head on, and there is nothing that could have caught at her necklace and caused the abrasion in the photos. Above the platform and the cave entrance the pillar reaches another fifty feet higher. Telling Jones to wait here, I untie myself from the rope and gingerly follow a narrow, broken ledge that leads around to the other side of the pillar. On that side is an even bigger ledge, populated by several stubby pine trees growing directly out of the rock. Branches are broken off—probably used as firewood for parties in the cave. Boulders and more ledges lead in what appears to be an easy scramble up to the summit.

  I ease back around on the narrow ledge to where Jones waits on the balcony, still staring happily out over Vedauwoo. He blanches as much as a dark black man can when he notices that I'm unroped. “Hope you know what you're doing, bro.”

  I fish a headlamp out of the second pack and put it on. “Let's check this cave out.”

  From the police reports and photographs there is no indication that anyone ever bothered to climb the pillar from which she fell to see where the climbers' party took place. But then if the investigating cops had not been so lazy, there would almost certainly have been a dead cop when he hung from the bolts. For a moment I'm almost sad that Sergeant Bender isn't a climber.

  I pause for a long time at the cave's entrance, carefully studying the interior. What I see in the glow of my headlamp is that the cave appears to consist of a single large and irregular room. Empty beer cans and broken glass clutter the floor. There are some ratty old sleeping bags piled by the back wall. The floor is a mess of burnt-out roaches and cigarette butts. The ceiling is only three feet high near the rear, but slopes nearly ten feet high just inside the entrance. I brace myself on one arm and twist all the way around to look up at the ceiling. I spot a narrow chimney that rises straight up toward the pillar's summit until it disappears in darkness. Then I duck inside the cave, followed by Jones. We both move around in it, looking without touching at empty cans cut in half for inhaling drugs, cigarette butts, and other debris. Reluctantly, I tug on some surgical gloves and unroll the dirty sleeping bags. I find nothing inside but used condoms. I make a face and roll them up again.

  “Well, I don't see any signed confession written in blood,” Jones says.

  I keep prowling around for a few more minutes, but soon I'm reaching the
same conclusion. This is going to be a short investigation, I think; all that is left to do is interview the partyers. Maybe the head injury and ligature mark were simply random, unexplainable injuries after all.

  Jones, still tethered to the safety line, goes back out into the sunlight and I start to follow him. But on a whim I stop and look again at the ceiling.

  The narrow chimney is really a long, smoke-darkened hole, maybe three feet by eighteen inches. Just wide enough for a body to fit through. With my headlamp's help I discover small foot- and handholds, then begin to pull myself up into the narrow recess. Jones sticks his head back in to watch as my head, shoulders, then torso are swallowed by the rock.

  In up to my butt, I can't find any more holds. I worm higher by bracing my shoes against the cool wall behind me and my knees against the front, creating a wedge. I do the same with my hands and elbows and work myself higher. Ten feet in to the mouth of rock it begins to widen. Turning my head, in the headlamp's glow, I can see another chamber opening up.

  It opens into a wide room even bigger than the one below. A broad Carolina hammock is strung between two chocks sunk in cracks on opposite walls. A shotgun is propped in a recessed corner near an old Coleman lantern. A half-empty case of Yukon Jack lies on the ground. And there are tins of food, a stove, pots, and two twenty-gallon bags of water. There's a fire pit too, near the vertical entry hole that continues on up but grows too small for me to climb higher. Something shiny flashes in the reflected light of my headlamp near the floor of the chamber. Into a small recess someone has shoved an empty bottle of whiskey. I withdraw it using one of the surgical gloves I'm still wearing.

  The bottle's bottom corner is crusted with blood and there are several strands of blonde hair stuck to it. Why would someone hide and keep an incriminating piece of evidence like that? I wonder. It doesn't make any sense, unless there's more than one killer and one is trying to keep something over the other. I bag the bottle using the evidence envelopes in the pack, and then photograph the chamber.

  Back down in the cave, I show Jones the bottle through the clear plastic bag and point out the bits of dried blood and hair on its base. “Holy shit,” he says. “Holy fucking shit.”

  “You never know,” I speculate. “Maybe that's from some long-ago fight. Maybe this bottle's been up there for years.”

  Jones looks at me with a cool, level, sergeantlike gaze. He is back to being a cop and the day is no longer a lark. “And I'm the tooth fairy. That's no coincidence, Anton.” For once he doesn't bother with the nickname. “Looks like you've got a murder investigation, bro. Now how the hell do we get down?”

  TWELVE

  MCGEE IS WAITING for me on the courthouse steps. He's perched like a gargoyle, one that's wearing a sloppy business suit, on a short wall adjacent to the steps with cigar smoke curling from his beard. The steps and the courthouse lawn are relatively quiet. On the street a lone media van from a TV station in Cheyenne, hopeful for some new development, rests out of the sun in the shade of a cottonwood's turning leaves. I park in front of the van. Flashing McGee a thumbs-up, I crack the windows and then lock Oso inside.

  “It was a productive morning,” I say as I approach him.

  “Wish I could say the same. Damned constipation is killing me.”

  I ignore that. “I was up at Vedauwoo this morning,” I tell him, explaining the cave and finding the incriminating bottle that could have caused the injury to the back of Kate Danning's head. “It doesn't look like the bottle was wiped—there's still some blood and hair on it. If it matches the girl's, we've got a murder for sure. And hopefully the killer's prints.”

  McGee grunts and says nothing at first, just sucks on his cigar. After a moment he spins his cane's gold head with a thick, gnarled hand while holding the length of mahogany wood in his other. The eagle's head comes off in his hand. I smile when I see the cork stopper that is hidden beneath it. McGee lifts the top of the dissected cane to his lips and tilts it back, then wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. He holds the cane out to me but I gesture no thanks.

  “Know what this fucking means?” he says after a second pull at the flask, the whiskey making him sputter and cough.

  “It means we're looking at the County Attorney's son as a killer.”

  He nods. “Not just that. The drugs and the ligature abrasions . . . all the similarities to the Lee girl. Climbers with raps for dealing meth . . . they could be the scumbags Lee was going to turn in. Not the Knapp brothers . . . Motive and some evidence. Might mean nothing, but we have to look and give it over to the defense . . . it's exculpatory fucking evidence,” he says, coughing again and spraying saliva. “Evidence the Knapps have a right to.”

  I don't want to do that. I don't want to give up anything to anyone until I know all the facts. “Why now, when we don't know if it's exculpatory or not? We can pass it on later if it's germane. They've already been convicted. The jury said they're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Why tell them anything before we know for sure?”

  “The conviction hasn't yet entered. Not on the record. Not until the sentencing. . . . We're still bound by the rules of discovery. We have to turn over to them . . . any evidence, no matter how unlikely . . . or risk taking it up the ass on appeal . . . when it's my goddamned case, not Karge's.” He moves a hand over his scarred scalp and growls, “Christ, what a bloody mess. At some point I'll have to talk to Nathan. . . . See how he wants to handle it. If the media were to get wind of this . . .”

  “You're the lawyer.” I think about what he means. Just based on the nature of the crime, the case is already a media circus. If it comes out that the prosecutor's own son is a potential alternative suspect the defense could have used as a tool to pry some doubt into the juror's minds, the case will explode in Karge's face. As will his political ambitions.

  “So while he's preparing for the biggest sentencing of his life,” I conjecture out loud, “one that the papers say will make him the next governor, and maybe even take him higher after that, we're going to tell him we're investigating his son for a murder and maybe screw his conviction?”

  “Just so.”

  “What will the judge do?” I ask.

  “She could throw out the verdicts. Reopen the defense's case. Or she could declare a mistrial. . . . Karge would have to start all over. Either way, his political stock . . . won't be worth a sack of shit.”

  That's really not so bad, I think. I've always hated the way politics and justice are married. The two have no business together. I know that firsthand, after the incident in Cheyenne.

  “What if we do nothing, or the judge does nothing?”

  “Then those two shitheads, the Knapps . . . they're going to die on a gurney. No one's going to turn this thing over on appeal. . . . Certainly not the governor, who'll be Karge by then . . . not the state Supreme Court. It'd make them look like pussies . . . after all the Shepard stink.

  “So keep it quiet for now. Run the prints on that bottle, pronto. . . . Tell the lazy pricks in the lab it's priority. That's from me. . . . And get the DNA checked too. But that'll take a few weeks. . . . If the prints come back as young Bradley's, then I'll go have a talk with Nathan . . . see how he wants it handled. You'll need a day or two to run the prints. . . . You just keep doing what you're doing. Find out if Kate Danning was killed. Find out if there's any other links to Lee. . . . And for God's sake do it quietly. We've got less than a week before the sentencing to make the call.”

  Using the address I had found for Cindy Topper in the Laramie phone book, I drive to a small apartment building just a few blocks from the University of Wyoming campus. The building is neatly maintained with five apartments facing the street on the lower level and five apartments above. Cindy Topper's is on the upper level.

  Knowing the crowd she hangs out with, when the door opens I'm expecting to see tie-dyed curtains and scattered drug paraphernalia. But when Cindy answers the door at three o'clock in the afternoon, behind her is a clean, plant-filled room heavy wi
th the odor of burning incense rather than marijuana. Green leaves and flowers rise off of every surface. The plants' earthy odor combines with the sweet incense and gives the air a tropical flavor and humidity.

  I introduce myself and she giggles when she sees my badge. There's no time anymore for me to screw around, playing undercover. “Oh my God, you're the one Lynn told me about. You don't look like a cop,” she tells me. Then, “Holy shit, does Lynn know you're a cop?”

  “I don't know—we haven't talked about our jobs. Look, can I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure, I'm just starting to get ready for class but it's not till four o'clock. A climbing cop!” The idea seems to really amuse her.

  She waves me in and curls up on the couch while I sit in an easy chair opposite her. After she tucks her long hair behind her ears, I ask what she's studying. Massage therapy, she replies. There are not many men in the world who would object to having her hands on their skin. She is a very pretty girl and, even though it's late in the afternoon, she wears only a short white silk robe as far as I can tell. As we talk she pushes the robe down between her legs and brings her bare feet up so that her thighs are curled against her chest. Each of her toenails is painted different colors like a bright arrangement of flowers.

  To keep from staring at her bare legs, I look around the room. Tarot cards are spread on the low coffee table between us near what looks like a crystal ball. Aside from the plants, there are framed Rousseau and Gauguin prints on the walls. These too have a tropical feel. A small poster on one wall, strikingly out of place, is of Billy Heller powering an overhanging lateral crack on red sandstone. Fluorescent slings of webbing hang from his bulging shoulders. The poster is encased in a large wooden frame that has been hand-painted. The bright frame and its prominence in the room suggest almost an altar to me. In one corner of the room is a backpack with a pair of climbing slippers and a chalk bag clipped to it.