The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  I've long since sweated through my fleece. I'm jogging along the trail now, the hip belt of my pack blistering my sides through the damp pile. Lactic acid burns ferociously in my legs. My throat is hot and dry from an hour of panting. Just when I feel the rigid grip of exhaustion seizing my muscles, I let the stifled anger leach back through me like the gentle turn of a pressure valve.

  The trail rises onto a wide field of broken rocks. Over the howl of the wind, I can hear the soft gurgling of water running over them. I splash through the tiny streams of icy water and remember this place from the ranger's map. I look for and spot the small, deserted rescue cabin that crouches under a boulder-strewn slope.

  I lose the trail amid the shallow water, but know it lies somewhere above the cabin. Scrambling up the slope, I pull myself over the walls of irregular truck-size blocks until I reach another plateau. Here, in a wide depression, the moonlight streaks crazy yellow shapes over the surface of a glacial lake. Small waves sweep up and over the ice that rims the water's edge. I find the trail again and follow it at a run around the lake. The vast black shape looms up above me, leaning over, ready to crash down on the lake and everything around it.

  The foot of the dark wall is shod in white. The hard glacial snow runs hundreds of feet down from the Diamond's lower reaches. I pause again to study it, my hands on my knees, my breath coming in harsh gasps, my head arched all the way back. The glacier resembles a white hand pushing against the base of the wall. There are two ways to reach Broadway Ledge a third of the way up the face, where the King of Swords begins. One way I can see to my left; a low-angled couloir called Lamb's Slide rising diagonally left, up, and slightly away from the face. If the snowfield is a right hand, then the couloir looks like the outstretched thumb. A slow, safe, circuitous route. The other, more difficult but more direct, route is the North Chimney. Far steeper, its narrow line of snow leads up directly above me, like an extended middle finger, until it disappears in darkness a few hundred feet up the wall.

  Speed is my priority, I decide. If it were safety, I wouldn't be here in the first place. I dump my pack in the scree at the edge of the snowfield, tug on my harness, and snap the crampons onto my boots. I tie one end of the skinny, eight-millimeter rope to the harness and drape the rest in coils over my head and one shoulder. Over the other shoulder, I lift a small rack of cams and wired chocks. I jam the second ax through a harness loop and with the other I prod the firm snow. Like a magician's trick, my now unweighted pack is stolen by the wind and vanishes into the night.

  At first the glacier isn't steep enough to force me onto my crampon's front points. I'm able to place my feet flat on the snow, sideways, so that all the lower points in the crampons are engaged. This is painful on my bent ankles, which are flexed to the side 30 degrees or more to keep me upright, but it saves my tired calves from the exertion of front pointing. I traverse in this awkward manner, known as the French Technique, for twenty steps up and to the right, turn, then twenty up and in the other direction. I grip my long ice tool in my uphill hand and firmly plant the spike in the snow with each step.

  Within twenty minutes I reach the top of the glacier and the beginning of what had looked like an extended middle finger from the glacier below. Up close, it looks to me more like a narrow white tongue lolling out of some dark recess. The North Chimney. The tongue is much steeper than the slope below. I move up it without hesitation, front-pointing now. I pull my second tool from my harness as I climb and use the two in tandem, my gloved palms wrapped around their steel heads. After every two steps, I pull the axes out of the snow one at a time and replant them into the snow ahead, shoving them in the way one would plunge a dagger into another man's belly.

  Close to the top of the tongue, I pause to look up at a starless expanse of darkness. The sky has turned to black stone. Despite the fear that expands within me, I feel a familiar thrill.

  The hard snow drools out of the chimney's three-sided space. The opening is as broad as an elevator shaft, but its concave walls close in tighter farther back. The rear of the chimney is just two and a half feet wide. The temperature drops at least twenty degrees in the dark, high chamber. The wind rumbles down the shaft like a train. Without having touched the stone walls yet, I can feel their chill through my gloves. I feel it on my skin, in my muscles, down to my tired bones. The cold seems to grip at my chest, choking me.

  I lift the coil of rope off my shoulder and drop it on a small depression I stamp out at the very top of the snow tongue. Gently passing it through my gloves, I uncoil it and feel for any knots that could catch on the chimney's many cracks and edges. I let my leashed tools dangle free from my wrists as I press myself into the shaft and begin stemming upward, the line trailing out beneath me from where one end is tied to my harness.

  It takes a half hour of hard climbing, the sort that would be easy without the cold and darkness, before I reach the Broadway Ledge. Up the entire North Chimney route the rope hung loosely from my harness. I never felt unsteady enough to need to slow my progress by placing protection in the rock or ice and tying in. But standing on the narrow ledge, when the wind staggers me slightly, I'm glad I brought the rope. I look up at the dank wall that leans over me and know I will need it.

  The ledge slopes disturbingly down toward the edge. But as I move north, the bench broadens until it is almost ten feet wide. Rock debris litters its surface. At one point I have to move gingerly around the base of a massive buttress that projects from the wall. In the recess on the pillar's far side, I remember from the ranger's map, begins the route known as the King of Swords. If Lynn and Billy are somewhere on it, I hope they are riding out the storm on some higher ledge. I hope that at least Lynn is still alive.

  I find a wide, vertical crack in a corner of the recess that must be the route's start. I'm tempted to turn on my headlamp to inspect the fissure for chalk marks, any sign of recent passage, but am afraid the light could be seen from above. Hesitating, I pull off my gloves and stare upward, trying to recall a Catholic prayer my mother taught my brother and me. Something about being weak, cold, and scared, asking the Lord to give me strength and courage as I strap on my sword and shield to go into battle. But my mind can't find it, or God isn't with me on this wall.

  Instead other images rise within me: Billy Heller raging at me on his porch; Oso's snarling and shattered muzzle as his blood drains out on the snow; Sierra Calloway's bound corpse and the faint burn marks on her back from the broken lamp; and Ross McGee collapsing on the marble floor as the Assistant AG asks for my badge. I open the pressure valve all the way, letting the fury out in an enormous torrent. Then I put my hands in the crack and start climbing.

  An hour later there is no way to tell how much higher the wall reaches above my position clinging flat against it. The blackness beneath me is also impossible to measure. I'm almost overcome by doubts—maybe Heller has already thrown Lynn off, then finished the route or rapped off. Maybe the Jeep at the trailhead and the note in the climber's log were just decoys, and they are really somewhere else, on another route.

  At a small stance I set two mechanical cams in a crack and wearily tie the rope to them. For the sixth time I rappel the skinny 50-meter line, picking out the pieces of protection I left when I climbed up the rock, remove the anchor I built at the lowest point, then knot slings into ascension knots and jug back up the rope while swinging free in the wind. In this cumbersome way, having to climb each pitch twice, I have progressed six rope lengths above Broadway Ledge.

  Back at the stance where I tied the highest anchor, I feel for the crack to reach higher but can't find it. My frozen hands slide across the dark, vertical surface and find nothing but small edges. Then I remember the topo map in the ranger's cabin. I must be at the pitch below Table Ledge, not too far from the summit. The drawing showed the crack I've followed for over six hundred feet ending and the hundred feet above devoid of all but the smallest holds.

  I slot another cam into the very top of the crack and secure it to t
he other pieces of protection that provide my anchor. I know this is just a pretense of greater security—there's unlikely to be much in the way of further placements until Table Ledge, which I guess is a hundred feet higher. The act of strengthening the anchor is futile. I know my single skinny rope won't hold much of a fall if I come off.

  After what feels like eighty feet of crimping and edging on tiny holds, I find a small, horizontal crack into which I can fit a small cam. I punch it in frantically, finally achieving some protection when I snap the rope through its carabiner. I risk hanging off the single piece to rest for a minute, spinning on the rope and seeing a pink glow on the horizon at my back. The first blush of dawn. The Knapps' sentencing will be starting just hours from now in Laramie, a hundred miles to the north. The thought of it gets me started again.

  After only a few moves beyond the cam I pause again, listening.

  Not far above, over the bay of the wind that roars in my ears, I hear the soft flapping of nylon. There's a voice somewhere too, a man's monotone, and then a chuckle and a slap. Reaching up, I grip a solid edge. I pull myself up on it with both my torn, frozen hands and discover Table Ledge just as the sun's first curving rays paint the wall from black to a dark gray.

  The ledge is a small, cavelike platform that extends back into the face only five feet or so. The length is no more than fifteen feet from where I cling at the left-most end. To the right of me a tiny blue bivouac tent snaps in the wind, nestled back against the rock. From it comes the man's low voice.

  Hesitating before crawling up, I look into the grayness beneath me and try to remember where I placed my last piece of protection—that insignificant little cam. Twenty feet below? There's no way to tell. I note with a mixture of relief and wariness the safety cord that the tent's occupants have stretched low across the back of the ledge.

  I slide up and stand on the first real horizontal surface I have felt in what seems like forever. As I do, the gear and axes that hang from me jingle against the rock. The voice I heard from the tent is suddenly silent. Hurrying now, I take a long piece of webbing that's attached to my harness and clip it to the safety line. When the carabiner snaps shut, the tent's door rips open with a zipper's shriek.

  “Heller! Billy Heller!” I call over the howl of a sudden gust that staggers me on the ledge.

  A ponytailed head shoves through the opening in the faint predawn light. The face splits into a grin as easily as the tent's fly had parted. He looks absolutely satanic.

  “My, my. I wasn't expecting company,” he shouts to me. There's laughter in his voice. “You gonna serve a warrant on me, Agent Burns? Here?”

  “I just want Lynn.”

  “The little bitch who ran off and banged you, then came crawling back to me? Sure, hang on a sec.” He says it casually, as if I'd knocked on his screen door and Lynn was watching TV somewhere inside.

  Heller's face disappears for a moment. Then it returns and he parts the opening with his massive shoulders and crawls halfway out of the tent. With a meaty fist he pulls a handful of blonde hair after him, onto the small space between us. It's Lynn. She's only wearing polypropylene underwear, the bottoms pushed down around her knees. There's a harness still around her waist with the leg loops undone but I can't see any rope or cord attached to it. Her eyes are swollen almost shut by deep bruises, her mouth is open, and her head is lolling on the cold stone.

  “Anton?” I think I hear her say. But the wind's too loud and her voice barely a whisper. I can't be sure if she spoke at all.

  “This little darling was just fixing to see if she could fly. You might give it a try yourself, Agent,” Heller shouts, the laughter still in his voice. He's squatting next to her now by the tent's entrance. In the early-morning light I can see that he's wearing a harness too. A long, loose length of cord snakes to the safety line.

  I take a step toward them but stop when he nudges Lynn so that she's almost at the edge.

  “Don't do it, Billy! Even if she's not around to testify, there's more than enough evidence to nail you for the murders of Kimberly, Kate, Chris, and Sierra. You don't need to hurt her.”

  “Kate? I think you got that one wrong, cowboy. I didn't kill Kate. Sure, I did the others, Kim, Chris, and Sierra. But not Kate, not that tasty little piece of ass. Tell him, sweetheart.”

  I see Lynn's head nod. Her mouth moves and she says one word, “Karge.”

  “I already know about that. But you and Brad are accessories, at the least. I've already got Brad in a cell in Laramie County. It's over, Billy. Let her go.”

  “So you've got me, Agent? What are you going to do, handcuff me? And I don't see any gun.” He smiles. “That's right, I hear you don't carry one. A climbing cop without a gun.” He shakes his head, his voice full of mirth. “It doesn't look like you thought this one through, Agent. Now this is really getting fun. More fun than banging young broads, then whacking them. You ought to try it, Agent. Combine it with climbing and you've got one powerful fucking brew.”

  “It's over,” I say again. “Let her clip to me; I'll take her out of here. Do that, I can promise you life, not a ride on a gurney. Okay? Life—I swear.” I usually know just the right thing to say, the right thing to do, but I'm unsure how to play this. My exhaustion and his obvious confidence combine to have me rattled. All I know for sure is that I have to get Lynn away from the edge.

  The weight of Cecelia's pistol is heavy in my jacket pocket. I want to slip it out, point it between his eyes, blast him away into the dawn. But I can't. With one hand he could push her off in half a second. Despite my ridiculous nickname, there's no way I can draw that fast.

  “I'll tell you about life, Agent. This is life! And it's getting better and better,” he says, his voice fast and excited like a preacher's. “When I first did that bitch Kim, she was about to go to the cops and tell them about my selling a little meth. I just meant to kill her, make it look like those stupid Knapps did it by throwing some piece of her meat in their truck and writing some shit on the wall. But when I had her all tied up, I just couldn't resist giving her one last fuck for old times' sake. God, that felt good!” He stares right through my eyes and licks his lips. “Tightening that cord around the bitch's neck as I gave her one last hurrah. I couldn't wait to do it again.”

  I find myself almost mesmerized by his words. It's the passion in his voice that's so enthralling, despite the ugliness of his words and deeds. For the first time I can see why the young climbers worship him. He's sick, I think, like a rabid dog, but I feel no pity. The wind reels up to deliver another blow and I sway on the ledge.

  “Kate was my second taste. She was about to go to the cops too. Brad, that dumb kid, even helped me out with that one, after I told him how good it'd been with Kim. Then his father showed up, right in the fucking middle of things. Came out of nowhere, yelling like a maniac and coming at me.” He rumbles with laughter, one hand sliding over Lynn's unmoving buttock and tucking between her legs. “I couldn't believe it when he missed me with Brad's bottle of bourbon and nailed the bitch. You should've heard her scream as she went over the edge!”

  My mouth's too dry to spit, so I just say, “Shut the fuck up and let her come over, Heller. You aren't going to convert me.” But he's not listening.

  “Man, I'm telling you, it's just like climbing. Once you get that first little taste, that first fucking thrill, there's no going back. It's the Rat, man. Killing, God, that's milk and honey! Don't talk to me about life until you've tasted it.” His face is lit up by one of the widest grins I've ever seen. And the most perverse. His eyes are shining as if he's in the midst of some religious ecstasy. At one point he starts to raise his hands to more forcefully show his emotion, but he's too cunning to move them far from Lynn's still form.

  “Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, sweet Sierra. My third slice of pie. After I heard she talked to you, I took my time with her, man, and I almost got it just right. Then when I got worried about young Chris spilling the beans, he was next in line. Man, the look he g
ave me when I cut the rope! I was God to him. He's there looking up at me, coming up the pitch while I'm belaying, totally psyched to be out with me. It was like God playing a little joke.”

  He pauses for a minute and goes back to stroking Lynn's bare legs. The wind roars again across us but he doesn't appear to notice. He's too caught up in reliving his triumphs. I'm standing just seven or eight feet away, my hands loose at my sides, ready to go for the pistol if he so much as turns his head.

  “You were next. I was watching you through binoculars that morning in the Horns, watching you solo up toward Chris. Brad and I were heading down the valley to have some fun with that piece of ass you'd brought along when your dog came at us. Man, what a brute! At first we thought he was a bear. I popped him one in the face, damn near tore his nose off, but he didn't stop till I blew a .45 caliber hole right in his fucking heart. I shit you not, I didn't think that dog was ever going down! If it hadn't been for that storm, I'd of nailed you then.”

  The heat rises so fast within me that it feels like my hair might catch fire. The frozen numbness in my ragged hands melts away with a single surge of blood. So strong is the urge to reach for the pistol that I feel my hands tremble. The moment I get a sure, safe shot, I'm going to kill this man. I'm going to unload all six rounds into his head and paint the rock red.

  “What you did to my van wasn't funny, though.” His heavy brow drops down over his eyes as he frowns. We share a moment of hate that's like a bolt of lightning between us. Then he brightens with another smile. His voice is so soft the wind almost carries it away when he says, “But you've given me so many more reasons to kill you, Agent Burns.”