The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  The ninth message is from the Attorney General for the state of Wyoming, and he identifies himself as such, despite my knowing full well who he is and immediately recognizing his voice. With a terse tone he orders me to contact Captain Tobias of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation without delay. “Your brother,” he says dryly, “apparently has decided to parole himself a little early.”

  And the next one is from the subject of all the fuss, the same reckless man who was thrilled after a seven-hundred-pound wild grizzly sniffed his hair. “Che, what's up? I called your work—they told me where to find you.” He laughs. “Guess what? I'm on the loose. I blew the joint. Where do you think I'm at? Well, I'm not going to tell—I know you'd snitch me out. You're too straight for your own good, bro. But I bet you can guess where I'm heading. See you at Christmas! It's time to feed the Rat.” He hoots. “Tell the boys from Colorado I'll be seeing them around. And keep your meat off the deck!” The message ends and I press 9 to save the message. Go, 'Berto, go, I think. A smile creeps across my swollen face.

  The final message is another from Kristi. She asks, in a whispered voice, what's going on. “People are saying that you're about to be suspended, that you might've helped your brother escape, and that they're thinking again about filing murder charges. I'm worried about you, buddy. Oh yeah, that nice kid from the civil division, your attorney, keeps calling, sounding real upset. He wants to talk to you before the hearing today.”

  I hang up the phone and walk to the sink, the goose bumps my brother's voice had raised still on me. Bending over the counter, I put my head under the faucet and suck at the cold Wyoming water there. I let it run over my face and cool my burned lip and nostrils. The taste of gasoline is still in my throat.

  Back at the phone I try to call Lynn but no one answers. I let it ring and ring. Then there's a sharp knock on the door. If it were McGee or Rebecca, they would just come in.

  I hang up the phone. “One minute,” I call out as I drop the towel from around my waist and step into underwear and a pair of suit pants. As I'm pulling on a starched white shirt the knocking begins again, louder. It doesn't stop. I can feel the pressure of my blood rising, heating up my face with annoyance.

  I walk over and kick the closed door hard with my bare forefoot. “I said one minute!” After that I stay still, not bothering to button the shirt. I will the anger to drain away.

  “This is Captain Tobias of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Open this door!” a voice from beyond it orders.

  I slowly exhale, then twist the handle and pull open the door. A short, middle-aged man with fierce eyes stands before me with one hand under his polyester suit jacket on the butt of his gun. The man's gray hair is buzzed short above his ears. It's a little longer on top and stands stiff like a brush. White walls, I remember it's called from my years as a military brat. He glares briefly at me, and then looks past me into the room. I don't move from where I'm holding the door open, partially blocking the little man's view.

  “I'm Burns. I understand you want to talk to me.”

  “Agent Burns, I've been trying to reach you for two days. I'd like to hear an explanation.”

  I feel my pulse once again picking up its pace, the temperature of my blood rising. “I've been busy,” I say rudely. “I'm investigating multiple murders.”

  “I'm afraid that's not good enough. Are you going to make me go over your head again?” he threatens. “Would you like me to call your Attorney General to find out why you've been ignoring my messages and now are evading my questions regarding your brother's escape?”

  I've had enough. “Go ahead, Captain. I've had a rotten week and I really don't give a shit. It's been nice talking to you.”

  I begin to close the door in his face. With a quick motion Tobias presses one foot against the door and starts to push his way into the room with his free left hand.

  The anger that's been simmering in my chest suddenly knocks the lid off the pot. In a grab equally quick, I snatch the wrist of the captain's gun hand where it's reaching across his chest to the shoulder holster and pull it out. It comes out without the gun. Using the captain's momentum as he tries to push forward through the door, I step out of the way, pull on the wrist with both hands, and neatly flip the captain over my hip. The small man's upper back thumps down hard on the unpadded carpet. Air escapes his lungs in a rush. Bending to him, I whip the gun out of its holster just as Tobias makes a long moan, trying to force air back into his chest. A moose call, I remember my brother calling it.

  I feel a refreshing release.

  With a malicious grin, I place the pistol high up on a shelf in the open closet where it will be out of the small man's reach. Then I sit on the bed, over Tobias, as the man rolls up into a kneeling position, then rests his forehead on the carpet. Slowly the air is coming back to him.

  “You're under . . . arrest,” he pants. “I'll . . . have . . . your badge. . . . I'll . . . have your ass!”

  “I'm not even going to ask how you're going to arrest me, Captain, seeing as how you're laying on my floor without a gun. Because a more important question is what are you going to arrest me for?”

  “Assault on a peace . . . officer.”

  I laugh. “You must not have seen that sign as you were driving into town. About thirty miles back it says, ‘Welcome to Wyoming.' You've got no jurisdiction here, asshole. You aren't a peace officer here and you can't arrest anyone.”

  When he looks up, his face is red. The look he gives me is meant to penetrate like a bullet, but I have taken far tougher blows lately.

  “All right, Captain. You said you had questions. Go ahead and ask them.”

  After a long, embarrassed minute he gets up off the floor and sits in a chair. I can see he's struggling to keep himself under control.

  “Where were you Tuesday night?”

  “I was camping, in the Big Horn Mountains.” I don't immediately explain further.

  He smiles meanly, the hope that I'm un-alibied gleaming in his eyes. I let it build for a second, then dash his hopes. “You can call the Sheriff's Office there in Johnson County and verify that. Ask for Sergeant Sorrel. I found a body in the mountains and phoned it in. If you check around, you'll learn that I also had lunch at the Moonbeam Café and bought a bunch of stuff at a climbing shop.”

  My seesawing emotions waver again. I'm beginning to feel sorry for the captain. He has made countless phone calls in pursuit of me and driven all the way up from Colorado. Now he's been embarrassed and told his efforts were in vain. I, the missing brother, had probably been his only lead. In my weakened, exhausted state I momentarily feel bad for him. “Look, Captain, I did get a voice mail from Roberto. You tell me the details of his escape and I'll play it for you.”

  Wisely, Tobias doesn't tell me I have a duty to play the message for him. In clipped speech he explains that my brother somehow scaled a sheer, thirty-foot brick wall, then climbed a ten-foot fence topped with rolls of razor wire. They found chalk marks on a corner where the brick walls met, then tracked him through rolling hills of chaparral and cottonwoods to a highway. That was as far as they got.

  I suspect Roberto had one of his many girlfriends pick him up, and say as much to Tobias. I also say that I don't believe they will catch him. As uncontrollable and impulsive as Roberto is, he's also very, very smart. And more than willing to take great risks. What I don't tell the captain is that my brother has property and a sizable trust in our ancestral home in Argentina. We each inherited one from our maternal grandfather, who was a cattle baron there, in a country from which Americans will not be extradited. By now Roberto is probably on a plane, never to return.

  I pick up the phone and dial the numbers to retrieve my brother's message. Tobias listens intently, taking notes on a small leather-bound pad. He writes down the numbers on the outside of my phone as well, so he can subpoena the phone company for a tape of the message.

  Then he asks suspiciously, “What does that mean, feed the Rat?”

  �
��It means a sort of fix for adrenaline junkies like my brother. And about Christmas, I can't even guess. I haven't seen him over the holidays in nine or ten years.” But I suspect Roberto had meant that he'll see me in Argentina, as I plan to see my parents there. He might have learned that in one of my mother's unanswered letters. “I don't think you'll be seeing Roberto again, Captain.”

  I reach up onto the high closet shelf and get Tobias's gun for him so he won't be further humiliated by having to ask or use a chair. Before I hand it over, I eject the clip and pop the round out of the chamber. I give those back to him separately, in another hand.

  Before he leaves for his return trip to Colorado, the captain wants to talk to Ross, just as I do—I want to know the result of his meeting with Karge. So I call McGee's room and find that he's back from the meeting. I lead Tobias there, past the pool that's once again filled with splashing and tanning reporters. They're back from the murder scene in Buford, believing it's just another bizarre Wyoming tragedy, not connected with the sensational Lee case.

  McGee has left the door unlatched. I push it wide and allow Tobias to enter ahead of me. Like a soldier, Tobias marches directly to where McGee slumps at the hotel's small desk. He's wearing a clear plastic oxygen mask, which he pulls off irritably with quaking hands. I should have knocked. There's an audible hiss from the steel bottle turned on high.

  “Mr. McGee, my name is Captain John Tobias of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. I want to file a complaint against Agent Burns. He assaulted me in his room just minutes ago. I ask that you relieve him of his duties immediately, pending an investigation and the filing of charges.”

  McGee's thick and grizzled eyebrows pinch together in either puzzlement or pain. He tries to turn on the hard seat to directly face the straight-backed captain but doesn't have the strength. “A big fucking pleasure . . . to meet you as well, Mr. Tobias. . . . What's this about, Anton?” A wet cough rumbles from his chest.

  I step toward him in concern, then stop, remembering the indignant look he gave me on the courthouse stairs when I tried to take his arm. I shrug and say, “He pushed his way into my room uninvited. I took away his gun before he shot himself or me—”

  The captain interrupts. “I really can't imagine why you'd allow a man such as this to be working as a law enforcement officer. He has a murderer for a brother, now an escaped convict no less, and may be one himself, as well as a history of excessive-force complaints and improper shootings. I've read up on him, you see.”

  Still coughing, McGee chokes out, “The complaints . . . were unsubstantiated . . . and the only thing improper . . . about the shootings . . . was the type . . . of ammunition used. . . . You must also have seen . . . that Agent Burns . . . is considered one of the finest . . . peace officers . . . in the state.”

  From where I stand, slightly behind Tobias, I roll my eyes at McGee. He's laying it on thick.

  Tobias is red in the face again. Nothing is going as he planned. “Well, now he's a suspect in the escape of his brother.”

  McGee looks at the captain hard, then focuses on the obvious bulge near the captain's breast. “And you . . . Mr. Tobias, are a suspect . . . in the carrying of a concealed weapon. . . . Surely you realize your carry permit . . . is no good outside of Colorado?”

  Good one, I think. I hadn't thought of that.

  “I—” Tobias begins to sputter.

  “Now you listen to me . . . you arrogant little prick,” McGee says, dropping any pretense of civility. His voice is like a wounded lion's roar. “You don't come to me . . . and accuse one of my troops . . . of something like that . . . without some damn good evidence. . . . Now get the fuck out of my state.”

  Without a word the captain spins around and starts toward the door. He hits me with his shoulder as he passes. In the doorway he pauses and turns back to us. “Your Attorney General will be hearing from me. The governor too. And if either one of you ever sets foot in Colorado—” I shove the door shut in his face before he can finish.

  “You seem to have a talent . . . for making friends, lad.”

  “People keep telling me that. Why don't I believe them?”

  His coughing becomes uncontrollable again. “Ross, I'm going to call an ambulance. You need to be in the hospital.”

  McGee shakes his head angrily and ignores my suggestion. His hands are shaking so badly he has trouble reattaching the oxygen mask. I'm unsure what to do. I'm frightened for him—I honestly believe McGee's at Death's door. I know I should call an ambulance whether he likes it or not. But then this little giant of a man, who survived Korea and thirty or more years as an honest and respected prosecutor, deserves to call his own shots. I'm not going to take that away from him. If he wants to battle on his own I will let him. Do not go gentle . . . Dylan Thomas's poem comes unbidden into my mind.

  After a few minutes he pulls the mask back down. “That's not a man to piss off lightly. . . . He's the third-in-command of . . . Colorado's state investigative agency. . . . I don't think . . . we'll be getting much cooperation . . . from them for a while.”

  “What happened with Karge?” I ask.

  “He won't continue the sentencing. . . . He says I can't prove . . . he doesn't have the right killers. . . . He says the cord's . . . a bunch of bullshit. . . . He says he's got the Knapps' . . . fingerprints at the scene . . . and their confession to Sheriff Willis. . . . And he says he's got a conviction. . . . Then he threw me out of his office.”

  I'm stunned. I thought that game was up. Now Karge is playing chicken with us. “He's going to go ahead with the sentencing, even after learning we have exculpatory evidence, that we're going to get a warrant for his son?”

  “It's his career, his future. . . . Our Nathan Karge . . . is an ambitious man. . . . The way he sees it . . . our jury said those boys . . . did it beyond a reasonable doubt . . . and the press believes it too. . . . I think he's gambling right now . . . betting he can get the AG to shut us up. . . .”

  “Well, we can't wait around to find out,” I say. “I'm going to get a warrant. Today. As soon as I get back from court. I'll do everything I can to get Heller and Brad picked up tonight. Once they're in custody, the game will be over for Mr. Karge.”

  “And I'll be in court . . . in the morning . . . no matter what the office does. . . . Tell the judge everything. . . . She knows me, an old friend . . . trusts me. . . . She'll continue it . . . or declare a mistrial.” He is again racked with a cough so fierce he nearly slides out of the chair.

  There's a soft knock at the door, too soft for Tobias to be returning, and I open it. Rebecca stands outside, dressed in an expensive-looking cream-colored silk suit. She's looking down the corridor as if a stranger there had said something dirty. It turns out to be true—she'd passed Tobias, who was muttering profanities.

  When she sees me she says, “There you are. I called your room like you asked but just got the answering service. Then I checked and you weren't there. I was worried . . .” Then she sees McGee at the small littered desk beyond me and rushes toward him.

  “Oh, Ross,” she says, kneeling by his chair. “You look horrible. Anton, we need to call an ambulance.”

  “I tried—he won't let me.”

  McGee is trying to pull the mask down again, his gray skin turning red from a new fit of coughing. “No . . . don't . . . fucking . . . call! I'm . . . going . . . to your . . . hearing.”

  Rebecca looks at me, torn by the same indecision I feel.

  “He's the boss,” I tell her sadly.

  “Then I'm coming too,” she says. “I was going to anyway.”

  I pull the Land Cruiser as close as I can get it to McGee's room. After I load his oxygen and medical kit into the truck, he allows Rebecca and me to help him into the backseat. She sits there with him as we drive, Oso's hair quickly pasting itself to her light-colored clothes, and barely appears to listen to me as I fill her in on what McGee told me about his meeting with Karge. She's staring at him with soft eyes, and I feel my heart expa
nd in my chest once again while my throat constricts.

  TWENTY-SIX

  MORRIS CASH FILED the suit on behalf of the three families just days after the shooting. Because it involves an alleged civil rights violation, the federal courts have jurisdiction. The plaintiffs claim that I killed the three young Hispanic men in cold blood. The original pleading, and the many amended pleadings that followed, boldly state that I lied when I said the gang members pulled their guns on me first, that I planted the weapons on their bodies after I shot them in cold blood. How else could I have come out of that ranch house alive?

  The federal courthouse in Cheyenne is full of security. Obviously someone informed the federal marshals about the trouble with Sureno 13 earlier in the week at the Albany County courthouse. The local press has gotten the word too, and they're out in force. Although the case pales in comparison to the sensational Lee trial, its validity has been hotly debated in Wyoming since the shooting, and Monday's assault on me in Laramie's courthouse has increased the interest. A few national reporters have even shown up, eager for entertainment as they await the Lee sentencing.

  One of the reporters there is Don Bradshaw, the Cheyenne Observer columnist who coined my nickname, QuickDraw. In his article he meant it sarcastically, as if it were impossible for me to have walked away alive from three armed gangbangers who intended to kill me. He ridiculed the notion that I could have fired five shots, taking the lives of three men, before they were able to put even a single bullet in me. Apparently he didn't believe in quick reflexes, a lifelong education in shooting from a father who commanded a Special Forces team, and a hell of a lot of luck.

  QuickDraw, he had mocked. According to him I was a liar as well as a killer, and the people who believed me were fools who had seen too many Rambo movies. His columns railed at Wyoming law enforcement in general and me in particular, embarrassing state officers from the governor and Attorney General on down to the deputy sheriffs patrolling the streets. I had gotten away with murder and the state had allowed it by not prosecuting me.