“S'right.” He is watching his father again. And I see that Karge is staring back at his son.
“Where were each of you when she fell?”
“In the cave. We had a fire going, I had a bottle. Billy and Chris had some beer. Billy doesn't touch the hard stuff, so Chris won't either.”
“What was Kate doing?”
“She was outside the cave, on the ledge. Dancing or something.”
“Did you have any music?”
“No, she was dancing to the tunes in her head, I guess.”
“How did she fall?”
“Don't know. None of us saw it. We just looked over and she was gone. When we couldn't find her, we rapped down the ropes. There she was, at the bottom. We went into town and I called the cops. That's it.”
I look at McGee before asking the next questions. McGee has been sitting on the bed, leaning with bearded chin on his cane in his usual gargoyle pose with his eyes closed. Now I see a flicker of blue beneath his shaggy white eyebrows when he opens them to determine the reason for my pause. Then he gives me an almost imperceptible nod.
“Why'd you hit her with the bottle, Brad?”
“I never hit—”
Karge surges forward from the bar, toward me. “That's it! He said he didn't hit her with the bottle. That's it! He doesn't have to answer those sorts of questions anymore! Let's go, Brad.”
I don't move and ignore Karge's interruption. “Your fingerprints are on the bottle, Brad. That bottle has her blood and hair on it. Why did you hit her?”
Karge is shouting, now at McGee, as he tugs on his son's arm and pulls him up out of his chair, “This is entrapment, McGee! No one ever said anything about any prints! This is a witch-hunt!”
McGee speaks for the first time since I started asking questions. “Let him answer the question, Nathan. This is a homicide investigation.”
But Karge has the hotel door open and is trying to drag his son out through it. Brad jerks his arm from his father's grasp, turns to me and gives one final smirk, then walks out the door. Nathan is yelling, “This is not a homicide! It was an accident! What this is is politics, a political persecution, and I'll have you both out on the street! Go to hell, McGee!”
I can't help myself. I say, “You're a long ways from the governor's office right now, Mr. Karge,” as the County Attorney storms down the hallway.
“What now?” I ask McGee as I snap off the tape recorder. “I didn't even get to ask him about the ligature marks and the connections to Kimberly Lee. I was looking forward to springing that.”
I expect McGee to be wound up, but he just looks wearier and more haggard than ever. Even though he has barely moved in the last ninety minutes, he is almost gasping without the oxygen bottle. “I can either try to speak . . . with Nathan again in . . . the hope of getting some cooperation”—he sees me shaking my head at him—“or we can go the other route . . . play hardball, get warrants.”
I nod. “We need to do something soon, Ross. That sentencing is just days away now. And I don't think I have enough to pull off an arrest warrant yet. All I've got is a dead girl who the coroner says fell, a bottle and some prints, but there's no DNA match yet with the blood and hair to Kate Danning. And I need some sort of a motive to explain to a judge, to tie it all together.”
McGee doesn't want to or can't talk much anymore. “Keep digging,” he tells me. “Fast. Quietly.”
Back in my own room I make notes on the laptop about the interview with Brad Karge and a list of the things I need to do while awaiting the DNA results on the bottle's blood and hair. The first order of business is to talk to Chris Braddock and Sierra Calloway. And at some point I need to confront Billy Heller and see what he has to say. I will take Jones or another cop with me as additional muscle for that. Finding Chris is the most important. Unlike Sierra, he was still up at Vedauwoo when Kate Danning fell. Hopefully he won't be quite as hostile as Heller.
In the stack of printouts Kristi gave me I find his number and address. I think about driving over there but decide to call first. The phone is answered on the eighth ring by an adult voice that could be his father's. He's not there, the man tells me. As far as he knows, Chris is out, maybe at his friend Billy's. I am not ready to go out there yet, not until I learn more and have some backup with me. I leave my name and my office's phone number with the man.
Next I try calling the climbing shop, which is the only number I have for Lynn. The phone rings and rings until I realize it is already Sunday evening, that the shop is closed. In a way I am relieved—I'm not looking forward to talking with her after that drunken night. But I need to talk to her soon. I need to know if she was lying about having left early.
I decide to concentrate on finding Sierra Calloway. Again using the phone book, I begin to call all the hotels and motels in Laramie, identifying myself and asking if she's an employee there. I don't have much luck until my last call, when the only number I need is a “0.” The operator at the Holiday Inn transfers me to the on-duty manager, who checks the books and tells me that Sierra Calloway has worked there for the past few weeks, but that all the maids have long since gone home for the day. He doesn't have a phone number for her and doesn't think she has a phone, but he describes her for me. I tell him not to bother leaving her a message—I'll find her in the morning.
When I put down the phone I notice for the first time that the message light is blinking. Following the hotel's instructions, I retrieve the message. It's Lynn. Her voice is soft and slurred; she sounds stoned. She asks where I've been, how come I haven't been by the shop to see her. She hangs up after telling me to call her soon but I guess is too high to remember I don't have her number or address. It is not in the phone book—I will have to ask Kristi to call the phone company or the department of motor vehicles in order to get it.
Frustrated, I check the voice-mail system at my office up in Cody. Clayton Wells, my lawyer, has called again telling me we should talk settlement before Thursday's hearing. Rebecca too has called. She is all business and addresses me as Agent Burns, not Anton. She says she has some follow-up questions she would like to discuss. The fact that she called my office in Cody instead of reaching me at the hotel makes me think perhaps she is not interested in seeing me face-to-face again. Because of that, the drunken episode with Lynn, and the fact that I have really learned little else but that the fingerprints on the bottle were Brad's, I'm reluctant to return her call.
At a loss, I scratch Oso's head while I pick up the old issue of Rock and Ice that Lynn left in my room. Feeling somewhat vain but needing a confidence boost, I reread the article about the climb my friends and I did in Alaska and study the pictures.
Flipping through the magazine, one photo obviously from an even older era catches my eye. It is of a climber ascending a crack while wearing dated clothes—a rugby shirt and painter's pants. The lean body and face are familiar, but younger. The short article that accompanies the photo is titled “Where Are They Now?” And it's about Nathan Karge.
For some reason I am not all that surprised to find out Karge had once been a climber himself and a good one. I had noticed the muscles of his forearms and the scars on his hands. Apparently he pioneered some early routes in Vedauwoo and at Devil's Tower. There is an impressive list of first ascents he made. The article talks about that and then how he went off to law school, purposely ending his climbing career. The subtext of the article is snidely clear. Traitor. Nathan Karge gave up climbing to become an attorney and a square. It also mentions that his teenage son is showing signs of picking up the torch and carrying on the climbing tradition.
Reading it twice, I begin to understand what some of the tension is between father and son, other than the son's rebellious use of drugs and extremely casual sex. Nathan Karge gave up climbing to become a provider and a better role model for Brad. He gave up passion for money and security. But if my mother's theory is true and such things are genetic, the son inherited la llamada del salvaje, the Rat, or whatever else it is
called. And his son turned to the warped and messianic Billy Heller as a father figure he better identified with, one who represented everything Nathan Karge gave up.
I read the article a final time, not knowing what to make of the fact that the County Attorney himself used to be a climber. I wonder if there's a Rat still rattling around in his rib cage.
SEVENTEEN
AFTER MY DAILY training I sit on the hotel bed, freshly dressed, holding a toothbrush in my hand. I am staring at the television as a Monday morning national news show gives an update on the long-awaited sentencing of the Lee defendants. Video clips from last week are played of the chanting throngs outside the courthouse. The anchor's voice sounds excited, as if tickled by blood lust, when he says that prosecutor Nathan Karge will seek the death penalty during the sentencing arguments to the jury on Friday.
A knock on the door causes Oso to jerk up his head, preparing to give his usual bellow. I hold up a hand with my palm out to silence the beast and then go to the door in my bare feet.
Through the peephole I see a cleaning cart and a brown-haired girl wearing a loose gray work blouse and a pair of baggy shorts so large they resemble a khaki skirt. She matches the description the hotel manager gave me. I open the door and tell her to come on in and not to mind the dog—he's harmless and we'll be leaving soon.
The maid approaches Oso with an unusual lack of caution. She pats his thick head as he sniffs at her hand.
“Hey there. Aren't you a big fella.”
I sit on the unmade bed and begin pulling on my sandals, keeping my eyes on the TV. The maid giggles as Oso slowly rolls over on his side and offers his belly to scratch. I see it out of the corner of my vision and snort to myself.
“Some tough dog he is,” I say, “letting someone he just met have their way with him.”
“Dogs dig me. I've got seven myself.”
“Seven dogs? That sounds like a busy house.”
“It's a friggin' nightmare,” she says, laughing. “What's worse is when I get them all in the car with me. They tear around like cats, chasing each another. Doing crazy stuff like humping in the backseat and hanging out the windows. It's so bad that I hate to drive with them anymore. But I'm a sucker for dogs. Every time I find a homeless one I take it in. Plus the animal shelter knows what a sucker I am—sometimes when they can't find a home for a nice one they use me as a sort of foster home till some other sucker comes along. But by that time I've fallen in love and won't give 'em up. Seven dogs. God, if my landlord knew, I'd be out on my ass.”
She squats with ease as she rubs Oso's tummy. The girl's appearance is something like a cross between a ballerina and a junkie. Her bare shoulders and arms are thin and limber like the branches on a young tree. The khaki shorts balloon out over her equally thin legs. Slightly swollen and lined not by age but by hard use, her face looks as if it belongs on a heavier body. When she puts her head down, close to the dog's, her hair parts across the back of her neck. A tattoo of a grinning skull with a halo of roses is revealed there.
“I like the tattoo,” I tell her.
She looks up at me, her green eyes sparkling mischievously. “Oh yeah? That one's old, couple of years.” She stops scratching and stands up, much to Oso's disappointment. “I got a new one just a few weeks ago. Check it out.” She hoists one leg of the baggy shorts high on her hip and turns to the side, displaying her entire bony thigh.
The tattoo starts just below the bottom line of her white underwear where its thin band comes around her side. The top of the tattoo is an outstretched hand reaching upward, toward the strap of white cotton. The hand rises from the depiction of a long female climber's body, the lower foot of which is nearly down to her knee.
“Wow,” I remark. “That's one of the biggest tattoos I've ever seen. At least on a girl. You a rock climber?”
“Sometimes, when I get around to it.” She drops the leg of her shorts and squats again to Oso. “You look like you climb.” She nods her head toward my backpack in the corner. It has a rope lashed to its top.
“Like you, I guess. When I get around to it.”
“What are you doing in Laramie? Climbing at the 'Voo?”
“A little. I'm here for the trial, like everyone else.”
“Oh yeah?” She asks, “You one of those ‘investigative reporters'?”
“Something like that.”
The maid stands up. “I should get to cleaning. Got to get through a full hotel again today.” She nudges Oso's belly with a tennis shoe worn sockless. “You need anything besides the cleaning? Anything special?” She stands before me and puts her hands on her cocked hips where a braided belt holds the oversize shorts low on her waist.
I look at her for a few seconds. “I think I know what you mean,” I tell her.
“You do, huh?” she asks, and giggles in a way that sounds both silly and contrived. “'Cause even a good-looking guy like you sometimes needs something special.”
“How much does something special cost?”
“Depends what you want.”
I reach into the back pocket of my pants and bring out my wallet. She laughs again expectantly, anticipating cash, but her laugh is abruptly cut off when I flip open the wallet and she catches sight of my badge.
“Oh shit. I didn't mean anything, I was just fooling around.”
Her voice isn't girlish anymore. It sounds low and scared.
“Actually, there is something special I need. But not that.”
“What?”
“You know a lot of the climbers around here?”
Her face is confused, her jaw slack and her eyes wide. She is sullen when she answers. “Yeah, I know some.”
“Do you know Billy Heller, Brad Karge, Chris Braddock—those guys?”
“I've seen them around is all.”
I put away my wallet and give her a long look.
“I've been looking for you, Sierra. You've been busted before, right? In Boulder?”
She nods.
“You're on probation?”
She nods again, then clenches her fists at her sides and looks as though she might cry. I finish putting on my sandals.
“Look, I'm not out to bust you,” I finally say, and then make a threat. “I don't want to take you away from your dogs. Just be straight with me and answer some questions, then that's it. Okay?”
She unballs her hands and tears begin to roll down her cheeks as my words sink in. “Oh God. Whatever you want.” I motion her to the chair at the small table where she sits down primly and wipes her cheeks.
“Do you hang out with them?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Not as much as I used to, but yeah. I know them.”
“Do they sell drugs to you?”
“No, I don't . . .” But then she catches my look and stops.
“What's the name of your PO?” I ask. “Or should I call the courthouse in Boulder and have them look it up?”
“Okay, yeah, they sell me stuff sometimes. They sell it to all their friends. Pot and crank, nothing heavy.” She keeps her eyes on the floor. Oso rolls back onto his chest and looks at her almost sadly.
“Crank's pretty heavy,” I tell her. “What sort of quantities do they sell?”
“Just little bits, just to friends. Climbers. That's all I've seen. But I hear they make the stuff. The crank, I mean. Those three, they always have a lot of it. I hear they sell bigger stuff, to real dealers in Cheyenne and Casper.”
“They sell to the Sureno 13?”
She nods. “I think so. I've seen them with some of those guys.”
Suddenly I'm back at that night eighteen months ago, my informant's terrified voice telling me I'd been burned, then driving out to the old ranch house on the cold, dark plain. I wonder again how I was burned—who had told the Surenos that I was an undercover police officer.
“Tell me about them. What do you know about Heller and Brad?”
She wipes at her cheeks again, takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Heller's an asshole. He's a
fucking lunatic. And Brad's just like him, but, like, his sidekick. They do everything together. They make me do stuff before they'll give over. You know, like tie me up and take pictures. They hit too. That kind of shit. They do it to a lot of girls around here. Like a couple of fucking rapists, those two.” Her voice is getting harder, changing from scared to angry. She looks up at me. “You know Brad's dad is the County Attorney?”
I nod.
“See, nobody messes with them. And people look up to Billy like he's a fucking god or something. Everybody worships him.”
“So they're not scared of getting busted?”
“Not much. Or at least they didn't used to be. But the two of them are getting worse. Last time I saw Billy, at Kate's funeral, he was walking around saying nobody can touch him, that he owns the cops and the prosecutors.”
“Do you know what he meant by that?”
“Naw. Probably just that he's got something heavy on Brad, something he can take to his daddy. Maybe about that night that Kate fell. But he always had that anyway. They're real assholes, those two. But Chris isn't that bad a guy. He's just a kid. He just hangs around with them. We used to call him Mini Me 'cause for a while he had a ponytail and dyed it black to look like Billy.”
“How about Kate Danning? How well did you know her?”
“Not real well. She was Brad's special piece of ass, but I think Billy was nailing her too. He's like that. Like he wants to own every young thing in town. And the younger the better. He needs to know he's the boss.”
“How about Cindy and Lynn?”
“Cindy's like me, only she's got folks who give her money, so she don't got to do the things I do. Lynn is Billy's special piece. He's like the King of the Fairies in that play I read in school, Midsummer Night's Dream. He's that guy Oberon, and she's the queen, Titania. They both screw with each other by fucking other people. Those two deserve each other.”
I listen to this without expression. I am thinking back to my night with Lynn, trying to fit the information with what I'd seen, heard, and felt. At first it doesn't wear quite right, but then in a way it does.
The Edge of Justice Page 17
