Trial by Ice and Fire

by Clinton McKinzie

  McGee shrugs his shoulders. He has no neck, so the pads of his suit bulge up to his ears.

  “Everybody, probably. . . . The town police who showed up and investigated . . . her boss, the County Attorney. . . . Everyone knew the locals would be taken off it . . . because of the vic's status.”

  “There won't be any doubt as to who's been assigned when they see Jim and me escorting her around.”

  “If it is him, it might draw him out.” McGee grins at me with his large, crooked teeth. “Might focus his attention on you instead.”

  I have the feeling it's already focused in my direction.

  “This is your priority for now, lad,” McGee continues. “Forget about clan labs and drugs until we get this asshole rounded up.”

  “I'm watching her tonight—going with her to a party her mother's throwing. I'll find out more about Wokowski then. I'll ask about other boyfriends, too, or weird guys she might know. She mentioned that Bill Laughlin's going to be at this party, too, and I'll see if he remembers anything else about the guy he saw at the window. Tomorrow we should go through all the cases she's prosecuted and make sure there are no other possibles there.” I say this last part reluctantly, wanting the sergeant known as Wook to be my man. But long ago McGee had taught me about following evidence rather than picking a perp and trying to build a case to fit him. “Hopefully Jim will find that Wokowski made a recent stun-gun purchase. Or maybe the Sheriff's Office issues them to SWAT team members.”

  McGee lights a cigar while I roll down a window. The cigar is one of those cheap ones with a plastic nipple that tastes like honey. Its stench and the hot air that wafts in the open window make me feel light-headed. The morning climb and the surge of anger I'd felt at the meeting have left me exhausted.

  He chuckles to himself. “So you're watching her tonight, eh, QuickDraw? . . . Tell me . . . she look anything like her mama-san?”

  “I'm meeting her mom tonight, so I'll let you know.”

  His satyr's grin grows broader. His eyes are unpleasantly bright with mischief.

  “Should I call my goddaughter . . . let her know you may be out late this evening . . . with a movie star's daughter? . . . I'd come along to chaperone if I weren't having dinner with the County Attorney.”

  I've had a lot of bad luck in the last two years, but sometimes I think the very worst of it is that McGee served in the Army with Rebecca's father. He is her godfather, God help me. And he'd even been inadvertently responsible for us first meeting. At the time he'd said, “You don't have a Popsicle's chance in hell, QuickDraw.” Until recently I thought I'd proved him wrong. But then maybe I've been reaching too high. Hubris.

  “What does the young lady think about you coming back to work? . . . She glad to be rid of you?”

  “Ask her.”

  “Don't worry, I'll do that. . . . I'll let her know she's a hell of a lot better off . . . without you mooning around. . . . With any luck she'll meet a real man.”

  Then his face grows serious. His eyes are even brighter but they lose their mischievous gleam. “Now I've got to ask you something, Burns . . . and I don't want you getting all pissy and silent on me, okay?”

  I nod, wondering what he's up to and half expecting a joke. But he looks like he did two years ago when he took a statement from me about what had happened that night in Cheyenne. It's a lie-detector look, and for no particular reason I can think of, right now I feel a drop of sweat roll down one side of my ribs.

  “Where's your brother?”

  I look out the window and let out a breath. An obscenity, too. “Why do you want to know? He's not wanted in this state.”

  “He's wanted in every state. You know that. . . . It's a nationwide warrant. . . . The Feds have been calling. . . . They thought they had a deal with him and then he goes and disappears. . . . They want to know what's going on . . . and they want to interrogate you, see if you know anything about it . . . but I held 'em off. For now.”

  Still looking out the window, watching a man and a woman walking by holding hands, I say, “Tell them I don't know where he is. As far as I know he's still going to turn himself over in Salt Lake next week. He's probably in the mountains somewhere, getting in some last climbs. My parents said he took off almost two weeks ago without a word.”

  FIVE

  WHAT DOES ONE WEAR to a movie star's party?

  In an exhausted daze I stare around the cabin's downstairs bedroom. Until I have time to get settled, I'm using it as a closet. My two court suits hang from a clothesline on one wall next to Gore-Tex bibs, rain shells, fleece underclothes, and an assortment of ice axes. Skis are propped nearby, with plastic boots, rock shoes, crampons, sleeping bags, and ropes spilling across the pine floor. The room's log walls are covered with nails supporting more climbing gear.

  Mungo, my wolf-dog, stands beside me and also stares at the mess. Even though she always holds her head low in a submissive shrug, she is tall enough that her snout is high against my thigh. With one hand I absentmindedly knuckle her bony skull. She seems to wince at my touch and slinks a few feet away. It makes me sigh.

  “You don't have to be afraid of me,” I tell her. “You know I won't hurt you.”

  Rebecca had thought this pathetic creature with gray fur hanging over a gaunt frame like oversized clothes could replace Oso, the loyal beast I'd lost last fall. The dog who'd once hamstrung a fleeing suspect, who'd frightened and awed the drug dealers and cops I worked with, before being shot by a man who was coming to kill me.

  Mungo is no replacement, though. Not even close. She's such a wimp that she'll wet the floor if I speak much louder than a whisper or utter the word “No.” So when she gnaws the oak table's stout legs or the leather arm of the couch, I'm forced to discourage her by softly saying things like “Um, you know, Mungo, maybe that's not such a good idea. You might get a splinter or something.”

  Now the wolf watches me with averted eyes, her black lips pulled up slightly to expose her long canines. Nervousness makes her look a little devious. Rebecca calls it her “sly smile.”

  I take a suit off the clothesline, hesitate, and then hang it back up. Cali said it's to be a Western-themed party. I have no idea what Hollywood people wear to such things, but I expect it will be something that no Wyoming native would be caught dead in. I smile as I picture blow-dried actors, producers, agents, and flunkies awkwardly dressed in expensive cowboy boots, ten-gallon hats, and leather chaps. Feeling sanctimonious, I put on my usual khaki painter's jeans, worn-out running shoes, and a loose brown corduroy shirt that I leave untucked to hide the .40 H&K I'll clip to the side of my pants before I leave. In case the party turns out to be more formal than I anticipate, I also pick up a ridiculous cashmere coat—an expensive gift from Rebecca, an attempt to dress me up a little—to throw in the car.

  The main room of the funky old A-frame is furnished with a heavy leather-and-wood couch and matching chair. A solid oak table supports last night's pizza box and two empty bottles of Snake River Pale Ale. I clean up and then go about preparing dinner. Mungo becomes a little less cringing when I offer her the crusts of the two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches that make up the meal. She snatches them from my fingers with a delicate nip then stands back, her long tongue snaking in and out as she attempts to clear the sticky stuff from the roof of her mouth.

  I should be accustomed to this kind of food, to this kind of home, and to this kind of living. Except for the times when my mother, Roberto, and I lived on Grandfather's ranch—when Dad was on leave or off on assignment somewhere too dangerous for dependents—and my few happy months in Rebecca's apartment, this is the only kind of home I've ever known. Rented walls, appliances, and a roof. Pizza, oatmeal, granola, rice, beans, and peanut-butter sandwiches. I feel more comfortable in a tent in the wilderness, dozing on the ground beneath alpine walls, than I've ever felt in town. The realization isn't a particularly happy one. Maybe we are too different. But I'm getting too old for living like a college student or a climbing bum. And it
's getting lonely.

  This place is somewhere in between real grown-up life and my old life. It's a solid structure at least, with semimodern appliances, but it sits well out of town on a wooded hillside above Cache Creek. Guiltily, I recall how claustrophobic I'd felt at times in Rebecca's downtown Denver loft. It disturbed me to hear all the street noise rising up. The voices, breaking bottles on weekend nights, and sirens.

  Mungo watches me get ready to leave from her cut-down sleeping bag in the corner of the cabin's main room. Although her tongue is still snaking in and out, her yellow eyes are narrow with reproof. She can't believe I'm leaving her again after being gone half the night and most of the day.

  “I'm sorry, Mungo. It's my job. You'll have to amuse yourself. Do something useful while I'm gone. Guard the cabin, okay?” I try to give her a rawhide chew stick but she turns her head away from it.

  I avoid looking in the mirror when I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had a bad experience with it my first night in this place that I still haven't recovered from. I woke up in the early-morning hours when, fuzzy from tequila drunk alone, I stumbled down the steep steps from the loft and cracked my shin on the toilet bowl. I turned on the light and was unpleasantly surprised by what I saw. It seemed that when I turned my head the reflected image moved a fraction of an inch too slow. And there was something in the image's coffee-dark eyes I didn't like. A sort of smirk fighting to emerge. It reminded me of when, as a child, I'd made a practice of avoiding mirrors. I was afraid I might see a doppelganger staring back at me—with my features but wild-eyed and bloody-fanged. Reaching out to pull me in.

  I know that it's stupid now that I'm a grown man, but I check my reflection in the window instead of the mirror to be sure I've washed away all the toothpaste.

  And all the breath leaves my lungs in a rush.

  What I see there is far worse than anything I'd ever imagined in the mirror. I leap backward and fall, rolling through the bathroom's open door. My butt smacks the pine floor an instant before my elbows and then the back of my head. The fingers of my right hand automatically claw at the side of my pants—where my gun would be if it weren't on the oak table. My eyes remained fixed on the window but in the periphery of my vision I see Mungo springing out of her bed and scurrying away from me. Her claws scratch at the floor as if she were trying to burrow into it.

  The window is empty now, revealing only aspens and spruce. But a moment before, a dark face had been pressed against the glass. The lips were sealed on the pane, the cheeks puffed up like a blowfish's, exposing white molars and a red tongue. The eyes were squinted almost shut.

  I roll to my feet and lunge to the table for my gun. But as I wrap my palm around the beveled grip, I realize I know that face. Not the contorted features, exactly, but I know those eyes. Even narrowed to mere slits they're unmistakable. They'd been a pale glacier blue with almost no pupils evident in the irises. I'd seen those eyes ten thousand times.

  “'Berto! You maniac!” I yell at the window, striding back into the bathroom with the gun tight in my hand.

  The face is gone. But there are still lip prints and a circle of vaporizing breath on the glass. When I look out I see him on the carpet of pine needles with his hands on his knees as he laughs. His tangled black hair covers his face. I can hear him through the thin pane. He's saying, “Should've seen your eyes, che! Thought they were gonna pop out of your head!”

  I call for Mungo to come. She obeys reluctantly. With her ears forward and her chin almost scraping the ground, she follows me out the back door and around to the stand of trees on one side of the cabin. Scenting then spotting my brother, she begins to growl uncertainly—something for which I'm proud of her.

  “Good girl,” I tell her. “Now sic him.”

  She continues staring at Roberto and steps behind me. She watches him from around my hip.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I yell at my brother. “The Feds are looking for you. My boss asked me if I knew where you were just an hour ago.”

  Roberto finally stands up straight to grin at me. His face is a lot like mine, but it shows more of Mom's Indio ancestry in its high cheekbones and broad nose. His eyes are all Dad's, though. They are extremely disconcerting when they peer at you from amid the dark skin and black hair. So much so that he usually wears sunglasses to hide them. Otherwise the madness is too obvious. Prison muscles are still evident beneath his faded black T-shirt. The thin fabric is stretched taut over his chest, shoulders, and arms but is loose around the waist. His forearms look as big and as hard as fenceposts. Dirty jeans and motorcycle boots hide the leaner, long-distance muscles of his legs.

  “Sorry, Ant. But I had to make sure you were alone, you know. I came to get you to go climbing with me. One last time. I've got a week before I got to turn myself in. Time enough to do the Teton Traverse. Not just the south summits, but starting all the way up at Moran.”

  Mungo surprises me by inching forward around my side. She's no longer growling. Roberto holds out his heavily calloused hand to her. She sniffs it, and, to my amazement, lets him caress her cheek with his fingertips. She lifts her lips an inch and gives my brother her snaggle-toothed grin while her tail comes out from between her legs and starts to swing. It's like she recognizes him as a fellow wild thing.

  “Look at that,” Roberto says, chuckling, before I can respond to his absurd invitation. “A dog that smiles.” Then looking back at me, “You with me, bro?”

  “Jesus, 'Berto. I can't. No friggin' way. I'm on a case and besides, you're still a wanted man until you turn yourself in. If you get caught here I'll be an accessory. And the Feds will burn their deal with you. We'll both go to jail.”

  Roberto escaped from a Colorado prison six months ago while I was in the midst of the investigation involving the state's governor-elect. He'd been serving an eight-year sentence there for manslaughter—for killing a man who crudely groped Roberto's girlfriend in a Durango bar. Beating him, then stabbing him with a broken beer mug. According to the many witnesses, he was laughing as he did it.

  My brother did the first two years of his sentence the hard way. Very hard. I'd always thought he had too much energy to be confined by the earth and now he was shoved down into a little cell. When I visited him I could see he was on the verge of being burned up by his own volatile energy. It was either get out or die—I knew it even then. A week after the one and only visit he'd permitted me, he scaled a sheer thirty-foot wall at night, climbed some fences wrapped in razor wire, and took off. Within another week he was back in Argentina, where our maternal grandfather's old friends from the Dirty War could protect him from extradition.

  What I'd learned of the deal had come through my parents, who had learned it from the Buenos Aires lawyers they paid to negotiate on Roberto's behalf. The U.S. Attorneys were offering a reduced sentence in a federal rehabilitation facility and dropping the Colorado escape charges if Roberto would cooperate with them. They wanted him to work as an informant against one of his old buddies from his muling days across the Mexican border. The target, Jesus Hidalgo, had recently carved up a DEA agent in Tijuana and the Feds were desperate to bag him. Desperate enough to cut a deal with my brother. I don't know why Roberto would even consider cooperating—he's always been intensely loyal to his drug-dealing friends—but now's not the time to ask.

  “I don't trust those fuckers anyway,” he's saying. “What I'm going to do, see, is have a friend fly in to the rendezvous at Salt Lake on my passport. You know Miguel? At the ranch? Dude who looks a lot like me? Anyway, I'll be skulking around somewhere to check out what kind of reception he gets. Check out the vibe, you know. Then I'll either walk up and introduce myself or walk away.”

  Mungo is groaning and twisting up her head as he rubs her rear end.

  “So I've got one week,” he continues, giving me the full effect of his blue-eyed gaze, “to feed the Rat with my little bro. We need to do this, che. It's been too long. And it could be a lot longer before I get the chance a
gain.”

  I can feel my face growing hot. The way he's endangering my job and my freedom makes me angry. The guilt trip he's putting on me makes me even angrier.

  I struggle to keep my voice even. “'Berto, I'm a cop! I should arrest you right now and call the FBI.”

  He chuckles at that but there's something I've never before heard in his voice when he speaks again. He's staring right into my head.

  “C'mon, bro. Pretty please.”

  I take then let out a long breath. Then another. “I can't. I'm sorry, 'Berto, but I can't. I can't have anything to do with you until you do the deal. You need to get the hell away from me. From here.”

  He finally looks away from me and down at Mungo. But before his eyes leave mine I can see a wounded look in them. They're tight and hard, the pupils contracted as if in a defensive posture.

  “All right, che. It's cool. You change your mind, you can call.” He stoops and brushes away some pine needles then writes a number in the dirt with the tip of his finger.

  “I can't even call you, 'Berto. I'm going to have to pretend this was just a bad dream.”

  “Whatever, Ant. Call, you change your mind.” Still without looking at me he walks up the hill into the forest.

  Back in the living room I pick up my keys, put them down, and rub my face with my hands. Mungo settles back onto her sleeping pad and watches me as I pace. Her look seems to say I can't believe that you'd do that to him. Your only brother.

  I pick up the phone and punch the buttons.

  Rebecca's answering machine comes on and I listen to the outgoing message that no longer includes my name. It's Saturday, but next I call her desk at the newspaper anyway. She answers on the first ring.

  “The Post. Rebecca Hersh.”

  “It's me.”

  There's a pause at the other end of the line. My heart sinks from what had been a desperate, hopeful height at the sound of her voice. Like hitting the bottom of a big roller-coaster drop. It's amazing the way such a short moment of silence can do that.