The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Lemme check with my boss before I make any promises, but yeah, that sounds good.”

  I also check my messages at the office up in Cody. There are only two. One is from McGee, who sounds typically surly, demanding to know why the hell have I taken Rebecca with me into the mountains. Not very subtly, he suggests that it's for some immoral purpose. He also reports that he is going back to Cheyenne for the night—his wife, “the old battle-ax,” is ill. The second message is from a Captain Tobias of Colorado's Bureau of Investigation. I know from past multistate, joint-jurisdictional cases that CBI is Colorado's version of Wyoming's DCI. It is their statewide law enforcement agency. The captain sounds irate and says it's urgent that he speak with me. He doesn't say about what. It could be any number of cases, but something pokes at my mind in a warning. I think of Roberto.

  It is eleven at night when I drive slowly through Laramie's dark streets back to our hotel. Rebecca has not spoken the entire ride, perhaps sensing my need for silence. Although somewhere around Wheatland she tilted back in the Land Cruiser's passenger seat, I don't think she has slept at all. I know from experience that the exertion, exhaustion, and dehydration can elevate your heart rate and blood pressure, making sleep desperately needed but impossible.

  The sky in Laramie is clear and cold. Thousands of bright stars illuminate the night even though there is no moon. I am so tired that I fail to notice the patrol car sitting with its lights out at the far end of the lot, protected from the starlight by the shadows of a large elm.

  I pull into a vacant spot near the building and turn off the engine. Rebecca doesn't move, but I can see that her eyes are open. Unable to risk the emotional burden of any conversation, I quickly walk around the car and open the door for her. When she gets out she steps right into my arms. Her tears begin anew.

  “I'm so sorry, Anton. Sorry about Oso. Sorry about everything.”

  I stroke her dirty hair the way I had stroked Oso's pelt. There is nothing for me to say. I hold her tightly in the dark lot until my emotional dam threatens to crumble. Then I gently push her toward her room on the opposite end of the building from mine.

  “Get some sleep, Rebecca. Drink some water and go to bed.”

  She looks back at me. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  “No. But thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  I watch her limp past the security lights and into the dimly lit hallway. More than anything, I wanted to tell her yes. But I'm feeling too weak, too brittle, and too cold. To have said yes would be to use her as a crutch. And I have a lot to do before the hearing in Cheyenne just fifteen hours away.

  After she is gone I open the truck's back gate and drag out my pack. When I turn around, swinging the pack onto an aching shoulder, a beam of light from a powerful torch hits my face like a punch.

  I squint and raise a hand to ward off the light, at the same time letting the pack drop off my shoulder and onto the pavement. I step back and quickly to the side, away from the tall figure holding the light. The police car I hadn't seen before now skids toward me from its hiding place with its roof-mounted gumballs ignited, the sirens off.

  “Good-looking piece of ass,” a voice says.

  My sight is still devastated from the sudden light, but I recognize the voice. Bender. His comment about Rebecca prods me to the core.

  “What do you want, Leroy?”

  “For starters, you little half-spic, put your hands in the air. Unless you want to give me an excuse to cap your ass right here.”

  My vision is clearing despite the light that is still in my eyes. Bender's other hand holds his gun. It's pointed at my chest. I do as he says, seeing another deputy get out of the car with his hand on his holster. Deputy David Knight's young face looks scared in the revolving red and blue colors.

  Bender shouts at Knight, “Cut the lights!”

  Knight reaches in and flicks the switch. Bender keeps his torch on me.

  He says, “Where's your piece?”

  I can smell whiskey and tobacco on his breath. “In evidence. Remember, you booked it in after you let that gangbanger brain me with it.” Sometime on the ride back to Laramie I had tucked Cecelia's .32 under the car seat.

  “Right. Whoowee, now that was fun. Too bad it was unloaded. You've got to be a serious pussy to—”

  I cut him off. “Leroy, do you have any idea what I'm going to do to you for this? For drawing on me in the middle of the night? Now get that fucking light out of my face before I go blind.”

  He laughs. I lower my arms and take a step toward him, ready to knock the flashlight away.

  “Don't move! Up against the car,” he shouts, the laughter abruptly cut off the second I moved. When I hesitate he drops the flashlight on the pavement and braces his gun hand with his free one. In the light from the stars and the hotel's low-watt security bulbs, I can see his finger on the trigger. “Move a muscle, QuickDraw, I'm gonna blow you away. Now turn around!”

  Again I do as he says, almost choking with the fury that's flooding my head, and raise my hands once again above my shoulders. He shoves me toward the patrol car, where Knight stands as if frozen, not saying a word. Bender shoves me again with a hand on the back of my neck, propelling me roughly onto the car's hood. When my palms hit the warm metal his left hand is still on my neck. In his right he holds the barrel of his pistol pressed into the muscle on one side of my spine.

  I allow myself to bounce off the hood. He is not expecting it when I come off and back, spinning. I knock his gun hand wide and see Bender's eyes go even wider with surprise. I drive my right fist straight into his face while his pistol arm is still outstretched. He starts to go down and I leap after him, ready to wrestle the gun away.

  “Freeze! Freeze, Burns!” another voice is shouting.

  Someone kicks me in the ribs, sending me off Bender and sprawling across the gravel. In my anger I had forgotten about Deputy Knight. He goes on screaming and repeating himself, his small automatic pointed at my head.

  “Stay down! Stay the fuck down.”

  I watch, one cheek pressed against the ground, as Bender gets to his feet. He rubs his cheek thoughtfully. Then he takes two quick steps toward me and drives his boot between my ribs and my hip. A white light explodes in my head, a thousand times brighter than the beam of his torch. The kicks keep coming, but the white light is a little dimmer with each blow.

  From a great distance I hear Knight's voice, pitched high with fright. “Stop it, Sarge! You'll kill him.”

  “Don't you tell me what to do, Dave,” Bender snaps, breathing hard. But the force that propels his boots seems to diminish.

  When he is finished kicking me, they work together to handcuff my hands behind my back. Even if I wanted to, I'm unable to help. Kneeling on the gravel with their hands lifting at my shoulders, I can't even raise my head. I try to retch but nothing comes up.

  They haul me to the patrol car and toss me in the back like a duffel bag. At first the sandpaper texture of the rough, plastic bench seat feels cool on my face. It quickly becomes wet and sticky. I open an eye and see in the light of the car's dome that my own blood is staining it.

  When Bender and Knight slam shut the doors it sounds like a faraway echo. The engine starts and my head bounces on the plastic as we pull onto the street. Bender's voice comes from the same great distance.

  He speaks to Knight. “Anyone taught you to make popcorn, boy?”

  I don't hear Knight reply but I know what is coming. “Popcorn” is what makes a tough kernel of a suspect into a soft, fluffy, and edible meal for a cowboy cop.

  “Got your seat belt on?”

  Bender hits the brakes and I crash into the clear partition. Then he accelerates, throwing me back onto the bench seat. I can hear him laughing. He hits the brakes again. This goes on and on—the screech of the brakes, the smack of my body against the partition, the laughter, and the ricochet back onto the plastic seat. At some point I let myself enter a dream. In it
I'm on an icy summit, the sun and the wind on my face, my ice tools hanging limply at my sides. I'm smiling, knowing that my big dog is waiting faithfully for me far below.

  I come to my senses when they pull me out of the car and drag me by the arms into the Sheriff's Office through the underground garage. My knees and boots scuff along on the floor. Unlike the time I woke up in the hospital, now I'm fully alert. The rage cuts through all the mist.

  They drop me on the floor in an interview room. It is like tens of others I have been in around the state, observing someone else handcuffed and scared. It is not much bigger than a closet and is furnished with a table, a couple of plastic chairs, an intercom box mounted on the wall, and a one-way mirror. The intercom and mirror would lead into a smaller room where a video camera or recording equipment is usually set up. There is an odor of fear and desperation in the room. So many times I have sat, protected and superior with my badge clipped to my shirt pocket, across the table or behind the mirror, watching a suspect sweat. Now I know a little of what they felt.

  “I'm a little disappointed, QuickDraw,” Bender says when I try to stagger to my feet despite having my hands cuffed behind my back. “You were supposed to be a tough guy. A cocky little son of a bitch. Now it just looks like you've been rode hard and put up wet.” He pushes me back down onto the dirty carpet and sweeps my legs out of the way of the door.

  “Let's go get the sheriff, Dave,” he says to Knight as the door shuts and locks.

  Left alone, I turn onto my back, then roll to my feet. The dizziness and pain come on so strong I almost go down again. With one foot I tug a chair out from under the table and barely make it into it. I want to put my head on the table's flat surface but I guess I'm being watched from beyond the mirror. So I sit up straight and stare into the glass.

  The metallic sound of voices comes over the intercom after the sound of a door closing. The small-town idiots have left it on two-way transmit. Despite the pain, I almost grin when I realize that.

  “Mean-looking fucker, ain't he?” It's Willis's voice.

  “He's a pussy,” Bender says.

  Willis laughs. “You saying before or after you hooked him? Looks like he gave you a nice shiner.”

  There's silence for a moment.

  “Look at him, glarin' at that mirror, like he can see us. Maybe he thinks he's still pretty,” Bender says.

  “Nathan won't be happy if he files a brutality complaint.”

  “Don't worry, Uncle Dan. It would be his word 'gainst Knight's and mine. Knight's a stand-up guy. And no one would believe a word that little spic has to say, 'specially as he's under investigation for aiding his brother's escape. Anyway, he ain't the type to do that. He likes to keep things personal. It'll be between him and me.”

  So Roberto has gone and done it. I should be worried, but I am strangely relieved to hear my brother has done what he threatened to do. His soul had been burning itself up while caged in that prison. He's better off with a short, wild run than a long death. And I don't believe he will let himself be caught. Not this time.

  “The fucker's still staring at us. I'm gonna wipe that smirk off his face.”

  “Easy, boy. I want to talk to him first. Did he say anything 'bout his brother?”

  “No, sir. I didn't say anything myself. I thought you'd want to bring that up.”

  “Good boy. Do the paperwork—charge him with obstruction and resisting. Assault on an officer too. That ought to get him held till Friday, even without those Colorado guys we got coming up. Nathan says it don't matter what we do with him after the sentencing. He'll be good as elected by then.”

  “What about his boss, that old guy with the beard?”

  “Nathan says he'll take care of him.”

  The door opens and Sheriff Willis follows Bender into the room. A silver rodeo belt buckle holds up his big belly. Instead of riding upright, facing out, the buckle reflects down to the snakeskin boots on his feet.

  “I'm a little surprised to see you back in town, Agent.”

  “I'm a little surprised you haven't had a heart attack yet, Sheriff,” I tell him, looking at his belly.

  The sheriff sighs. “It sounds like you want to do this the hard way, boy.”

  “Sheriff, I don't think there's much that's hard about you.”

  The sheriff allows a chuckle, then slaps me across the mouth. My senses are too dulled from pain and exhaustion to see it coming. I gather my feet under me and start to stand, but Bender puts his hands on my shoulders and slams me back down in the chair. Again I can taste fresh blood in my mouth.

  “You're already being charged with resisting and assault. You want to add to it? You're in a heap of trouble, boy. There's talk you may have helped your brother get out of Colorado last night.”

  I say, “Then you should call up to Johnson County, Sheriff. They'll tell you I was back there finding a body last night.” I don't want to mention either Rebecca's or Cecelia's name to these two rednecks. “A boy named Chris Braddock, who the County Attorney's son dropped off a cliff just like he did Kate Danning.”

  The sheriff grunts. “I've been wanting to talk to you about that, find out exactly what kind of shit you're trying to pull with this Danning thing.”

  I spit a mouthful of blood on the carpet near his fancy boots and he dances back.

  “I've been wanting to talk to you too, Sheriff. I want to know what you're going to say when it comes out that you told the coroner not to run a rape kit on her. I want to know what you're going to say when it comes out that you and Nathan Karge are protecting his son for her murder. I want to know what you're going to say when it comes out that nobody from your office investigated the similarities to the Lee killing. I want to know what you're going to do when I stick obstruction and assault charges up your fat ass. And I want to know how you're stupid enough to leave the intercom on.”

  The sheriff looks at the box on the wall, then behind me at Bender. His face blanches for a moment and the smile he gives Bender is not nice. He shakes his head, saying, “Leroy, sometimes you're dumber than pig shit.”

  “Somebody else must have left it on, Uncle Dan.”

  The sheriff shakes his head again, then brings his attention back down to me. “You're not gettin' it, are you, boy?”

  Bender grabs both my wrists from behind and torques them high up behind my back. I'm jerked to my feet. Before I can bring my boot down hard on his instep, the sheriff steps forward and grabs me between the legs.

  Whatever strength is left in me is gone in a second. Nausea floods my body and I feel the bile rise out of my stomach and into my throat. I want to vomit—to spew it all over the front of the sheriff's checked shirt and pearl buttons, but it won't come. My stomach is empty. I kick at the sheriff but my boot strikes his shin no harder than a kiss. Sounding as if it is coming from a long ways away, a groan escapes my lips.

  The sheriff is talking. “Now you think anyone would believe you, boy? I don't think no one in this state would believe you if you said the wind might blow. You are what the lawyers call incredible, and I don't mean that in a good way. So you can forget about any charges 'gainst anyone but yourself. And you can forget anything you might have heard. So far we got you as a suspect in your spic brother's escape out of Colorado and for assault and resisting. You want to resist some more, boy?”

  He grips me tighter and I think I might pass out.

  “Now 'bout that Danning girl. I believe it's time for you to stop screwing around with that. Hell, you sign off on that little accident and I may even see my way fit to drop these charges against you. Course, I'm gonna have to hold you for a few days as a favor to our friends down south in Colorado. Those boys are lookin' forward to talking with you. So you behave, I might let you go, let's see . . .” He speaks over my head to Bender. “What time's that sentencing on Friday?”

  “Nine o'clock, Uncle Dan.”

  “Then you behave and I might let you go on Friday night. Just think, son, you behave and you'll get to spen
d the weekend with that little reporter girl.” He chuckles and squeezes me again. “But after this you might not be much good to her at playing hide the salami, if you know what I mean. My nephew here may have to show her a good time before then if you mess with us.”

  Then the door opens so fast it might have been kicked. My ears ring from the crash. Jones's massive form fills the doorway. He comes into the room without speaking a word. He is dressed in cotton pajama pants, ridiculously patterned with pictures of Mickey Mouse, and a tank top that reveals the enormous mounds of muscle. There are still the lines of a pillow on his face.

  “What the hell,” the sheriff says, releasing me and turning to him, “this ain't your shift, Sergeant. Now you get your black ass out—” Jones pushes him aside in what for him is a gentle nudge. The sheriff staggers against the metal table.

  Jones reaches one arm past my head and puts his hand across what I guess is Bender's throat. Grasping at Jones's wrists, Bender releases my handcuffs from where he'd been torquing them up high on my back. The sheriff is yelling at Jones now, but things are moving too quickly for me to understand.

  The fury I had been stifling pops out of its hole like a jack-in-the-box. I twist in the small space between Bender and Jones, bent on attacking Bender with my teeth or my feet, and see that Jones has not grabbed his throat but his face. The parts of Bender's face that I can see between Jones's fingers are contorted under the pressure of those powerful digits.

  With his free hand Jones takes one of my handcuffed arms and pushes me toward the door, but not before I bring my knee up hard between Bender's legs. Propelled across the room by another gentle push from Jones, I spin and drive my elbow hard into the sheriff's gut as I pass. I spill down onto the floor as the sheriff doubles over. I kick at his knee but miss. Then Jones drags me out of the room.

  In the hallway he releases me for a second and leans back into the interview room. I hear him say, “Sheriff, you even think about retaliating or filing anything on me, I'll take you down. I got enough on you and your boys to bring in a federal corruption probe. Oh, by the way—I quit. Consider this my two weeks' notice.”