The Edge of Justice

by Clinton McKinzie

  I collapse on the carpet, roll onto my back, and groan. As the adrenaline subsides, the pain returns. Still laughing, she kneels beside me. For a moment I think she's going to give me CPR. Her hair sweeps across my bare chest and neck as she lowers her lips to mine. A kind of CPR, anyway. The Breath of Life.

  Within minutes, with barely another word, she's naked in my arms and tangled in the sheets, her white skin like silk, her lips locked cool and smooth against my mouth. I gasp in delight rather than pain when her thin weight presses against my hips and her arms encircle my back. While the moment lasts, the bruises, sprains, and twinges are all magically healed.

  The phone rings. Even though the hotel's voice-mail system keeps cutting it off, a few seconds later it starts again. Finally I scoop it up off the nightstand and answer with a breathless grunt of “Burns.”

  “Caught you with your knickers down, eh?”

  “Ross! How are you feeling?”

  “Better, lad. They might let me out . . . of this hellhole tomorrow. I just had a visit from the AG . . . things are wild at the office . . . the Torres suit has settled . . . the murder investigation's been dropped. . . . You're reinstated, God help us all.”

  “That's great! Whatever you did, thank you.”

  “It's not my work, it's the frigging media . . . they're all over the place trying to figure out . . . just how deep the shit's piled. . . . The office is going to be kissing your ass for a long time . . . hoping like hell you won't point your finger at them. . . . Now where's my girl Rebecca? . . . Is that young vixen with you?”

  “Yeah, but she's indisposed at the moment.” With her palm Rebecca smacks me gently on the back. I gasp as the bruises there flare for a few seconds. Rebecca murmurs an apology.

  “Ah well . . . to the victor . . . go the spoils,” he says, chuckling. “And good job, lad. . . . Sorry I let you down.”

  I hang up the phone. Rebecca and I slowly begin to finish what we started.

  A little later she's still pressed against me but her breath is finally slowing. There's a sensation as if love is blowing gently on my skin. Feeling like Oso, a wounded and abused animal suddenly in the presence of kindness and affection, I magnify it and reflect it back a hundred times. I lie with my head deep in the pillow, letting her warmth envelop me and carry me on. Like this I drift away.

  Two days later I'm allowed by the office's attorneys and the federal authorities to return to my former office-of-exile in Cody. Rather than suspended, I'm now merely “on leave.” It's standard procedure after any duty-related shooting.

  “Consider it a paid vacation,” the Assistant Attorney General told me with an oily smile, the same sort of grin I had seen on his face when McGee collapsed. “Take as long as you like.”

  “I will,” I told him, stepping close. “And by the way, go fuck yourself.”

  His smile never faltered. The office is now willing to do anything to keep me happy, to keep me from talking about their complicity in the attempts to silence me prior to the sentencing. Apparently my suspension was never official. An administrative mistake, one of the junior attorneys there told me. It happens sometimes. The office is anxious to get me out of town and away from the swarming reporters.

  Rebecca has been as busy as me. Her articles have been picked up by papers across the country. She told me she's received job offers from New York, Chicago, and Washington. Already there's talk about the possibility of a journalistic award. Pulitzer, she mouthed to me one evening with her face just inches above mine, not speaking the word for fear of jinxing herself. I see her only late at night, when she slips through my room's door without knocking.

  I will be seeing a lot more of her, though. She's going to take a vacation too, once the developments on what is known as the Laramie Scandal have died down and she's milked it for all she can. In anticipation, I liberated a small portion of my grandfather's trust from a bank in Argentina and bought two first-class tickets to South America.

  We're going to Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia. There I plan to introduce her to mountains of ice and granite that dwarf even Cloud Peak, which had impressed her so much. Maybe I'll be able to interest her in putting on a rope. Like any true addict, I would like nothing better than to hook another on the adrenaline surge that comes from having a thousand feet of empty space beneath your heels.

  I drive back up over the plains, where the chaparral is still dusted with the storm's debris, to my rented cabin and my office in Cody. There's an enormous hole in my heart because no beast is grinning and drooling out the backseat window. I picture him at Vedauwoo, that afternoon ten days ago when I first arrived, hunched beneath a cliff and gazing up at me. His gold eyes glisten with devotion. As my tires hum across the asphalt that cuts through the prairie like an open vein, I finally cry for him.

  I'm going twenty or thirty miles an hour faster than the bullet-holed, near-invisible sign states is allowable as I enter Cody's city limits. I blow right through the speed trap, one that anyone who has been through Cody before knows is always manned. It's the town's way of generating revenue from midwestern tourists in their motor homes. Racing past the screen of pines concealing the ever present patrol car, I turn my head and observe the deputy there relieving himself on one tire. My speed visibly startles him. Then he recognizes my truck in time to release himself and pantomime the gunslinger's move of drawing a pistol from each hip. QuickDraw. Despite having lived in Cody for eighteen months, I hadn't realized before that people here might like me. My depression made me entirely too self-absorbed.

  I drive down the main street, past the ramshackle buildings, looking at the ranchers in their cowboy hats and pointed boots intermingling with the hippies and climbers wearing shorts and Tevas. Everyone nods politely to one another as they pass on the street. This is a nice town, I think, a lot like Laramie. A good place. At the top of a small hill, I park outside the small post office to retrieve my mail.

  The florid matron behind the counter smiles when I walk in. “Been reading about you,” she says with a wink. “Good stuff, these days. What're you going to do for an encore, Agent?”

  “I think I'm done fighting crime. I'm going back to fighting gravity,” I tell her.

  My words surprise me. Up until this very second I hadn't thought much about the future. Just the trip south with Rebecca, and then the inevitable weeks of testimony that will be required to convict both the Karges and Sheriff Willis. But I'm done with law enforcement, I realize. I'm done playing the Game. The decision feels invigorating, as if I kicked over the table, declared the other players cheats, and walked away with all the cash.

  I unlock my box and take out the tight sheaf of mail stuffed into the small metal compartment. I sit in my truck and let the wind gently rock it as I sort through the junk. A bent postcard slips out from the pages of a climbing catalog that I'd tossed on the passenger seat to be thrown away.

  The picture on the wrinkled front is of Los Angeles International Airport. It's a photograph of a plane roaring off the runway and into a sunset swirling with color. Flipping the card over, I see there's no text other than my name and address spelled in block letters. There is simply a drawing. It's well done, as if the artist had spent a lot of time practicing and dreaming. What else is there to do in prison? The picture is of a sleek and well-muscled rat. The creature is fitting sharp teeth around a hunk of what appears to be Swiss cheese in the shape of a jagged peak. Smiling, I tuck the card back into the catalog and toss it in the first trash can I drive by. But the wind tugs the card free before the catalog drops. I watch the wind suck it straight up into the sky, then send it soaring over the stores and pine trees toward the mountains.

  Maybe I will take Rebecca by the ranch for Christmas. To see my parents and whoever else is there.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CLINTON McKINZIE is the acclaimed author of THE EDGE OF JUSTICE. His second book, POINT OF LAW, is forthcoming from Dell. He was raised in Santa Monica and now lives in Colorado with his wife, son
, and dog. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as a peace officer and deputy district attorney in Denver. His passion is climbing alpine walls. Visit his website at www.clintonmckinzie.com.

  Also by Clinton McKinzie

  POINT OF LAW

  Coming soon

  in hardcover

  from Delacorte Press

  TRIAL BY ICE AND FIRE

  High Praise for

  THE EDGE OF JUSTICE

  “Action-packed . . . McKinzie has made an admirable beginning to what is likely to prove to be a long and distinguished career as an author.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Clinton McKinzie gets so much right in this novel that you have to keep reminding yourself that this is his first book. . . . He knows how to tell a story that won't let go.”

  —Stephen White, New York Times

  bestselling author of WARNING SIGNS

  “An exciting, clever, and whip-smart action thriller—Clinton McKinzie is a talent to watch.”

  —Robert K. Tanenbaum, New York Times

  bestselling author of ABSOLUTE RAGE

  “McKinzie has talent: a sense of character and dialogue, the imagination to construct a unique and complex plot.”

  —Booklist

  “McKinzie brings the bizarre and exciting world of climbing addicts to life with such skill and passion that there can be little doubt he is a novelist with a bright future.”

  —Kyle Mills, New York Times

  bestselling author of SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

  “A tough, taut thriller with fascinating insight into the world of extreme rock climbing. . . . McKinzie hammers his action and suspense home like a bolt into a rock face.”

  —Perri O'Shaughnessy, New York Times

  bestselling author of UNFIT TO PRACTICE

  “A heart-pounding thriller. McKinzie creates a taut read filled with psychopathic killers, monstrous cliffs, and hairpin twists that will leave you gasping for more.”

  —Lisa Gardner, New York Times

  bestselling author of THE SURVIVORS CLUB

  “McKinzie packs his first novel with a wealth of rock-climbing detail while winningly depicting the clash between the new-century West's yeoman and yuppies.”

  —Daily News (New York)

  “A superb thriller . . . Antonio Burns is a unique and likable detective who creates adventure and suspense at every turn and crevice in the rock all the way to an exciting mountaintop climax.”

  —Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

  “A stunning debut by a gifted writer. This book combines two of the most exciting things on earth—rock climbing and courtrooms—to produce a spellbinding thriller. Clinton McKinzie knows how to grab your attention and hold it to the very last page—and beyond.”

  —William Bernhardt, author of CRIMINAL INTENT

  “An altogether smashing debut by an author who will clearly be with us for years to come. McKinzie's fast-paced tale of murder and political intrigue set against the backdrop of Wyoming rock-climbing wilderness will leave readers breathless. . . . Don't miss it.”

  —Les Standiford, author of BONE KEY

  “McKinzie knows his wild Wyoming, and also how to keep things moving briskly. . . . A nail-biting climax on a mountain in a storm.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Don't miss the new Antonio Burns novel,

  POINT OF LAW,

  the exciting prequel to

  THE EDGE

  OF JUSTICE.

  On sale May 2003 from Dell.

  “Watch me. Keep it tight.”

  My father's calm voice belies his precarious position. He clings to the vertical granite forty feet above where I sway in my harness, another one hundred and fifty feet above the canyon floor. Although my vision is slightly blurred by the waves of early-morning heat the sun is generating off the cliff's face, I can see where his right hand grips a tiny edge barely thicker than a pencil. His left hand sorts through the rack of protective gear slung around one burly shoulder. The toes of the old man's climbing slippers are splayed on nubbins of quartz that look as if they could pop off the sandstone wall at any moment. But there's no quiver in his muscles, no panic in his voice. I glance at that last piece of protection my father had clipped to the rope twenty feet beneath him and feel a familiar admiration swelling in my chest.

  “You say you want slack?” I shout up, pretending to have misunderstood. My hands shuffle over the belay device—a slotted piece of cold-forged steel appropriately called an Air Traffic Controller—and take in the few inches of loose rope between us.

  My father drops down a hard look before he returns to the task of finding a cam to fit in the narrow crack above his head. From the look I guess he isn't in a humorous mood. My mother had warned me about this: in recent months his tolerance for frivolity has suffered a dramatic decline. Resolving to remain silent and simply focus on my job, I study the forty feet of vertical space between us.

  The rock is a combination of sandstone, gneiss, and pinkish pegmatite. Its texture is sometimes smooth and sometimes coarse under my fingertips. The entire five-hundred-foot canyon wall overhangs slightly from where it's been carved out of ancient bedrock by thousands of years of rushing water and tumbling boulders. The distance between my father and me appears almost featureless but for where a single recess mars the wall—a short and flaring horizontal fissure, the only opportunity for him to have placed some gear to protect against a fall. Above his head begins the comfort of the deep vertical crack into which he's working the spring-loaded camming device.

  According to my father's tattered guidebook that describes the route, called “Big Balls and a Puckered Ass” (the route's name could just as easily describe my father), and which credits him with the route's first ascent, this second pitch is the toughest of the four rope-lengths up the cliff. I had led the easier first one hundred and fifty feet or so and had expected that this crux pitch would be mine as well. Dad hasn't been cimbing much lately and the years have to be taking their toll. But the old man insisted on keeping the crux for himself, taking what is known as the “sharp end” of the rope from me rather than being safely belayed from above, where a fall could be measured in inches rather than feet or broken limbs.

  Dad has something to prove today, I realize. It is the last time he'll be able to climb here at the scene of his glory days thirty years ago. And this is the hardest single pitch of the numerous routes he'd pioneered on the isolated canyon's walls, when climbs of this level were only rarely attempted and the land around the canyon and the entire Wild Fire Valley region was believed to be forever in the public trust. It must pain him to know that in just weeks this land—his land—will become private property and climbing will be forbidden.

  The narrow gorge is sacred to me, too, because of a sort of mythology I'd invented about the place when I was a child. Although my brother and I had never been to the canyon, we grew up listening to stories told by our parents' friends about Dad's long-ago exploits here. For me in my childhood this was Mount Olympus, where the gods frolicked in ancient times.

  For a moment I try to image my father in the old days, before my birth and before the war that turned him into a career soldier. I can see him laughing and joking with equally loose-jointed and tight-muscled young partners, clad in felt-soled boots while trusting their lives to primitive gear, made delirious by the heights and the virgin risks they faced. At night they camped around bonfires up in the broader valley where the canyon walls begin their deep cut through the red and gold sandstone. There they drank cheap wine from jugs and relived each day's thrills in a sort of Olympian bacchanal. They would wake in the morning, groggy and heavy-headed in the damp meadow grass, but ready to lay it all on the line once again. If the stories were true, Dad must have been a far more effusive man back then. The tales his friends told my brother and me made him sound wild-ass crazy and larger than life, not at all like the somber, cautious man above me now.

  Refocusing on the present and the expanse of steep rock bet
ween us, I can see that there's good reason for caution. If he slips, he'll be looking at more than a forty-foot fall before the rope locked in my belay device can catch him. And that's only if the one lousy piece of protection he'd placed twenty feet beneath his heels doesn't fail him. If it blows, then the rope will catch on the anchor I hang from. An eighty-foot fall for Dad. A serious whipper for any man; one that few could walk away from unscathed. I take a quick look at the boulder-strewn ground well over a hundred feet below me and reassure myself that at least he won't deck out. As long as the rope and my anchor hold, he might shatter his bones on the cliff face but he won't hit the ground. Then I look at the three pieces of gear that compose the anchor in front of me, suspending me from the wall, and wish I'd done a better job of positioning them.

  My father gingerly slots the mechanical cam in the crack over his head. A good fit. He finally calls for slack in that same terse, unconcerned voice. I give him a few feet so that he can clip the rope to the cam's nylon runner. My lungs release an unconsciously retained breath as the carabiner's gate snaps shut.

  “Want to rest?” I yell up, unable to restrain myself.

  He doesn't even bother to give me a look this time. My question had been meant as another joke, but as far as I can tell he never even smiles. Either he climbs or he falls—Dad never hangs on a rope. But he does spit out a brown glob of tobacco juice that I watch float down toward me then past, barely missing my arm. After a few seconds I hear its soft smack on the boulders below. Above me he resumes his deliberate crawl into the sky.

  I start to shift in my harness, trying to ease where the nylon straps are cutting into my crotch. But after a quick glance at the sketchy anchor, I resolve to stop squirming and simply endure it. If the anchor fails, I will plummet, pulling Dad off with me. It isn't the danger that concerns me, as in all likelihood the cam he's just placed will hold us both on our separate ends of the rope, but the shame that will result. Above me my father continues upward with apparent ease although I know his forearms and calves must be burning, his shoulders pumped with lactic acid. Christ. Closing in on sixty and the old man's still an animal.