The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Hey, bro. What's up?” he says, grinning into the telephone receiver, his eyes exuding some weird demonic energy.

  “'Berto. You doing okay?”

  “Gettin' by.”

  There's a long pause as we simply look at one another. His smile turns surprisingly gentle.

  “How come you called?” I ask. “It got me worried about you.” He's never called before. He's never written. He's never wanted me or anyone else in the family to see him like this.

  And I can understand that. Seeing my brother this way is the last thing I want to do. It's hard to imagine him confined. Even as a child Roberto was always like a cougar, utterly wild and uncontrollable. The rest of the family was a little scared of him and a little awed—he seemed to have too much energy for this world. Yet here he is, kept in a cage, snapping at the bars. I can see in his hard blue eyes that the past two years since he began serving his sentence have certainly not tamed him. His eyes look frenzied and maniacal. In a way, I'm glad to see a spark still in him. Only it doesn't look like just a spark. It looks like an inferno.

  “Che, I've been thinking a lot 'bout you. I got you in my mind, you know?” He taps his index finger between his eyes. “I could feel it when you were on the rock, when you were shooting those fuckers I read about, when you were mopin' after. Now you're back in the saddle, right?”

  “Yeah, 'Berto, I am.” I try to laugh. “Don't get too weird on me, okay?”

  For the first time since sitting down behind the glass, my brother closes his eyes and stops the family's signature staring. “Tell me what you've been climbing, Ant.”

  I describe in detail the few big climbs I did in the Tetons and the Winds that summer before the shooting in Cheyenne. There was a brief trip to the pink granite of the Bugaboos when I used up some vacation days. I don't explain my year-and-a-half absence from the stone. My brother keeps his eyes shut as I talk, interrupting only to ask for more detail. Then I tell him I've been at Vedauwoo the last week and he smiles, remembering the cracks our father had first taught us on.

  “Veed-a-voo,” he almost hums without opening his eyes. “That's a magic word. That's the first place I'm heading to when I get out of here.”

  When I've finally caught him up on the intimacies of the climbs, Roberto opens those mad eyes and says, “Now tell me what you've been fucking.”

  “Not much,” I lie, “but I've got prospects. How about you?”

  He laughs so hard he pounds the phone on the counter in front of him. A guard steps up behind him but Roberto waves him off. “Real comedian, che. Very fucking funny. But I've been getting in shape for both.” I can see it's true. His jaw is swollen with muscle, as is his throat. Under the V-neck of his blue jailhouse shirt, I can see a deep line that intersects his pectoral muscles. Each of his forearms is as thick as the striking end of a baseball bat. I've never seen him stronger or crazier.

  “Starting your training a little early, aren't you? You got a few years left before you want to peak.”

  “It won't be that long, bro. I guarantee it. And I've already peaked.”

  I don't like the way he says that. I don't like the sudden heat I feel radiating through the phone in my hand. I speak carefully, slowly. “'Berto, do your time and come out clean. Don't screw it up.”

  He waves my concerns away and I try to let it go. “That's all there is for me to do here. Train. Pull-ups and shit all day long. I've got some maps in my cell that Mom sent me. Topos of the Cerro Torre, Punta Herro, Cerro Standhardt and Torre Egger, all that stuff near the ranch. Some photos too. I think there's some new routes to be done, bro, and I think some old ones can go free.”

  “The Rat's getting hungry,” I say without thinking, repeating the expression Lynn had reminded me of.

  He knows exactly what I mean. “Fucking starving, bro. Fucking e-mac-i-at-ed.”

  “Mom's writing you?”

  “Uh-huh. Can you believe she's encouraging me to do more climbing when I get out? She used to freak when Dad took us, then when we got older and started going on our own. Guess she's decided it's better than other rushes.” He winks. “Speaking of rushes, how you liking carrying that gun and shield these days? Still hookin' and bookin'? Shot any more of those nasty drug dealers lately?”

  So I tell him that I'm thinking of quitting, about next week's hearing, and what I'm doing down in Laramie. He frowns when I mention Billy Heller's name and turns serious.

  “I know that old freak,” he says. “Stay away from him, little bro. He's even crazier than me.”

  “That's hard to believe.”

  He laughs. “You still got that dog? He doin' okay?”

  Oso was far younger the last few times I saw my brother, when Roberto was living and using in the mountains of southern Colorado. The visits were infrequent because I couldn't stand seeing Roberto on the edge of combustion. My brother and I were opposites then, I believed, with me a rookie cop with a master's degree and him cooking off his brain cells as fast as he could. But there was an immediate bond between the beast and him. I think Oso recognized Roberto as a kindred wild spirit, a canine soul before the days of domestication. The two of them would wrestle like wolf cubs for hours on the carpet while growling ferociously and gently gnawing at each other's throat.

  I tell him Oso is all right, just old, and repeat the story about the soccer ball, which has Roberto hooting.

  Even as he laughs, I feel overwhelmingly sad about so many things. About my faithful dog who won't be at my side much longer. About my brother burning himself up in jail. About two other brothers who may unjustly get a fatal ride on a hospital gurney. About an unsolved climber's murder in Vedauwoo. About the lives I took in Cheyenne. About the upcoming hearing that may result in my being criminally charged and publicly humiliated. And about the end of the career I once thought was my calling. I feel as if I'm trying to ascend a thin, worn rope with an impossible weight strapped to my back. I'm ready to leave—I desperately want to get back on the rock, where the only thing I have to worry about is falling.

  “So how come you called for me to come down here?” I finally ask him.

  “I wanted you to see this, see me here. And I want you to know you'll never see me in a fucking hole like this again.”

  “What do you mean? I'll come down and see you here any time you want.”

  “You'll never see me here again, Ant,” he repeats, smiling and looking right through me. “But don't worry, I'll still be looking after you.” Then he slowly hangs up the phone. I see his lips purse in what must be a whistle to the guard. I bang my own phone against the glass but he doesn't turn around.

  From Canon City I drive north back toward Wyoming. I nearly swoon with the need to feel an enormous void beneath my heels. The short climbs I've done in the past few days have set the hook firmly back in my mouth. And the visit to my brother has only jerked it deeper. Just past Denver I suddenly cut across three lanes of traffic and leave the interstate highway, going through Boulder on the way to Estes and Rocky Mountain National Park. As I drop into the valley there, I feel the old thrill that the sight of the craggy peaks always gives me. The glaciers high above Estes sparkle violet in the sunset, and above the snow and ice the granite of the peaks are a deep purple.

  I drop off Oso under the porch light at the small house of a graduate school roommate. And I politely refuse my friend's offer to climb with me while his wife entertains Oso. I want to climb alone, solo. I drive a little farther through the night toward the Glacier Gorge trailhead and try to forget about the incriminating look the dog gave me as I pulled away.

  At the parking lot I fill two water bottles that still hold the sickly odor of tequila. I feed into my pack a rope, a jacket, a small rack of gear, two ice tools, and my crampons. All I take in the way of food is a couple of PowerBars.

  Near midnight I'm breathing lightly, wet with sweat, when I come up out of the trees and low mountains and reach the dark wall that is the base of McHenrys Peak. My crampons scrape and squeak up a lon
g pitch of easy rock before I gain a couloir of ice that has hardened to glass under the months of summer sun. It shatters into broken circles the size of dinner plates with each swing of my ax, but I'm immune to the peril. My mind is heavy with my brother's last words. I wonder if he's feeling me in his mind right now, feeling the vast black space beneath my boots.

  On the summit I sit under the stars and let the cold wind dry my clothes. When I begin shivering in earnest I put on my down jacket and pull my pack up over my legs. Through the chattering of my teeth the concerns that clog my head mutely rattle out of me until my mind begins to clear. I lie that way until the dawn lifts away the darkness, and I resolve to do nothing about what my brother said. Telling the prison officials would do nothing but get him hurt or make him angrier. It's his life. The Rat is buckled in the driver's seat and will take Roberto wherever he wants with the accelerator jammed to the floor.

  FIFTEEN

  AT A LITTLE past noon on Sunday, Oso and I are back in Wyoming. We speed into the capital city of Cheyenne, which is really just a dusty little cow town squatting on the plains. I park in the nearly empty lot outside the office building that houses the AG's Office and DCI's headquarters. As I open the back door for Oso, we both watch a tumbleweed race erratically through the lot and across one of the town's busiest streets. There is no traffic to slow the weed on its frenzied errand.

  The beast's gaze follows it, but he doesn't give chase. I'm not sure if it's another sign of his advancing age or if he's just trying to be well behaved, thinking that if he's good I won't leave him behind on my next climb. “A few years ago you wouldn't have let that 'weed get away,” I chastise him. “I guess you used it all up on that soccer ball the other day.”

  I unlock a side door to the building with an electronic card, and Oso comes in behind me. At a bank of elevators, Oso eyes an open door suspiciously before I can coax him in. When the elevator starts with a jerk, he spreads his legs wide and lowers himself a few inches. We ride down into the basement that houses DCI's laboratories. Again I use the card to let us into the Forensics Department, which is where all physical and trace evidence is analyzed.

  Behind the receptionist's station in the windowless office, Dave Ruddick, the chief forensic technician of DCI, leans back in a chair smoking a cigarette and reading a People magazine. His excessively long legs are propped on the desk in front of him. I have never seen him sit without his legs propped up on something—they take up a good portion of his six feet and seven inches and will scarcely fit under a desk. Looking up at me, he grins with teeth that are equally overlarge and casually tosses the magazine on the desk. He starts to drawl out, “Howdy,” but it turns into a yelp of fright when he sees Oso. It comes out something like, “Howdiiii!” He leaps to his feet. “Jesus, I've heard about that monster!”

  “Thanks for working the weekend, Dave.”

  “No problem,” he says, watching Oso in the same cautious way the dog had looked at the elevator, holding out a trembling hand to be sniffed. “Gets me away from the wife and the kids, you know. Is that thing safe?”

  “Oh yeah. He's a cupcake.”

  Oso, still on his best behavior, licks Dave's hand.

  “So how's that case going in Laramie? We heard you had a run-in with some of the younger Surenos.”

  “Yeah, those guys don't like me much. As for the Danning investigation, it was supposed to be easy, just make sure the locals weren't covering up anything, with the County Attorney's kid being there when the Danning girl fell and all. But it's looking more and more like they're hiding something. In the words of the immortal Ross McGee, it's a clusterfuck.”

  Dave laughs. “The bosses are real happy to have that old degenerate out of town for a while. For two weeks now they haven't had to worry about the secretaries filing a class-action sexual harassment suit.” McGee's grotesque but harmless flirting is a source of intense concern for the AG and his immediate staff. At one point they even hired a feminist to give us, and more pointedly Ross McGee, a mandatory lecture on the subject of appropriate office behavior. He'd limped in a half hour late smelling of tobacco and whiskey, patted the speaker on the rear with his hoary hand, and said something like, “Sorry, darling . . . I got caught up in a Penthouse while sitting on the crapper.” Dave and I and all McGee's other disciples live in fear that they will one day use it as an excuse to fire him. But so far they haven't had the balls.

  Dave waves me back toward his office and says, “It's an interesting bottle you brought me. So who's covering up what in Danning?”

  I follow him down the hall and into the wide laboratory that is his office. The room is large and cluttered with metal tables, scales, refrigerators, gyroscopes, and an assortment of stranger scientific instruments. His desk is at the front of the room, facing it, like a teacher's. Taped to the wall behind it and the filing cabinets that surround it are finger paintings that Dave's children have made. I pause and admire them as I explain about the suspect injury to the back of Kate Danning's skull, the positive drug tests, the unexplained abrasion to her neck, the shoddy initial investigation, and Karge's request to the coroner that no rape kit be performed. I don't mention the similarities to the murder of Kimberly Lee.

  “What did you find?” I ask, pointing at the whiskey bottle that sits on the desk, enclosed in clear plastic. The bottle itself is covered with grayish dust. Next to it rests a Magic Eight Ball, which is the source of great amusement for all the staff. When I was working cases out of this building we would regularly consult it.

  Dave sits behind his desk and once again props up his feet. “A lot of smudges and partials, a couple of complete prints, and that the tip of the neck, where the threads are, was wiped with a cotton cloth of some sort. Probably a T-shirt.”

  “I didn't wipe it. I picked it up with rubber gloves.”

  “I figured you knew what you were doing. Anyway, some of the prints came back as unknowns. Two I got matched up with one of the names you gave me. Bradley Karge, the County Attorney's son. We got his prints off the fed's computer from when he was arrested in New Mexico or someplace.”

  I sink into a chair and Oso drops at my feet. “Wow. That's what Ross and I were afraid of.”

  “You know, if the media gets ahold of this . . .”

  I don't let him finish. “I know, I know. The sentencing's going to be in less than a week. This Friday. Right when the county's attention is focused on Nathan Karge. If it comes out that his son could be a killer himself, Karge is as good as gone. There's no way he'll make governor. Not if he raised a murderer, or even a suspected murderer.”

  Dave looks uncomfortably stern. “From what I've seen of the man on TV, that'll be a shame. That man should be governor. Or senator. Or even president. He's the kind of guy that makes Wyoming look good. I hope you know what you're doing, going after his boy and all. Especially right now.”

  I scratch Oso's ears. “They gave me the investigation and I'm investigating it. Let the chips fall where they may.”

  Dave shakes his head. “Sometimes that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. There's such a thing as discretion.”

  I stop scratching Oso. “That's interesting, Dave. So you're saying maybe I should let the next governor's son slide on a potential homicide, but when I righteously shoot three dealers and rapists who were drawing on me, it's okay for the office to discipline me, exile me across the state, make me out as some kind of dangerous rogue, then assign some rookie to defend me, when you and everyone else here knows it's just politics.”

  Dave holds up his hands. “Hey, hey. I'm not saying that at all. And you did get screwed. That was bullshit, no one's denying it. Forget I said anything. This place is getting to me. . . .” He passes me a sheet of paper with fingerprints in squares on it. “Look, there's the partials from the bottles on the left. On the right are Bradley Karge's prints from when he was booked on that drug charge in New Mexico.”

  I examine it. And I decide to cut Dave some slack, both because of what he's just sa
id about me getting screwed and the fact that he was willing to come in on the weekend and look at the bottle. Besides, I like him and he's very good at his job. And one can't help but be influenced by the political intrigue that sweeps through this office like the Chinook.

  “I can never read these things. But you say they match?”

  “They match.”

  I check to make sure that Dave's name and signature are on the paper, making him an official witness now.

  “What about the other prints? The unknowns?”

  “Nothing came up on the crime computer. I can't match them to anybody. They're not Brad Karge's, and they're not Heller's or any of the other names you gave me.”

  I'm disappointed to hear that. I would like nothing better than to arrest them both. Heller's behavior at the bar and at his house has earned my sincere antipathy. As has his reputation as an abuser and corrupter of young girls. It would be a community service to break up his little cult. For a moment I feel uncomfortable about my night with Lynn, a prominent member of that very group. I should have had better judgment, more self-control.

  “What about the blood and hair? And what about saliva from where someone would have drunk out of it?”

  “All in the works, pard. Those things will take some time to check out the DNA. I need the sample from the dead girl, if you think it's her stuff. I already put in a request with the Albany County Coroner. At least the blood type matches the girl's, for a start. You might want to have McGee lean some of his weight on the coroner, get him to rush me the sample. From my phone conversation with him I got the feeling he might drag his feet a little.”