Trial by Ice and Fire

by Clinton McKinzie

  “Any idea of his size or shape?”

  He shakes his head. “He was just a shadow. But he was no climber—could see that,” he adds with a smile. “That fellow was having a hard time with the window. Now excuse me, I think I'd better be getting home. I'm tired and I'm afraid I've worn out my welcome in these parts.”

  Cali starts to protest but he holds up his hand. Instead of speaking she cuts a glare to where her mother is standing close to two men and smiling coquettishly as she sips from her glass, then Cali stands on tiptoe in her cowboy boots and kisses Bill Laughlin on the corner of his lips. I like watching her do it—I like watching the way the old man's eyes seem to light up and get even wetter.

  When he's gone Cali says to me, “We need to go.” Her face is suddenly tight and there is a teaspoon-sized bulge of clenched muscle by each jaw.

  “What's the matter?”

  “Mom wants you—us—out of here, too. Danny and his pals are looking to make some more trouble.”

  I know she added the “us” part to soften the blow of my being ejected from the party. Voluntarily or not, I'm happy to leave.

  At the bar I see Danny Gorgon and his friends looking our way. It pains me not to gaze back, but then I could be stuck standing here for minutes in a childish stare fight. Instead I do something equally juvenile—I touch my forehead with the heel of my hand and give him a smiling wince—ouch!—to remind him of the way I'd bounced his head off the wall a half hour earlier. He doesn't smile back.

  I remember a lesson my father taught my brother and me. When you hurt a man, hurt him bad. You don't want him waking up in the morning thinking maybe next time he can take you. Thinking about revenge. You want him waking up scared, not mad. From the look in Danny Gorgon's eyes I suspect I've violated Dad's rule.

  It's full night when we get outside. The air is chillier now and Cali stays close by my side as we walk the two blocks back to the truck. I hear boot heels thunking on the plank sidewalk behind us. When I turn around there are three silhouettes about a half block away.

  “How long are they going to be in town?” I ask, staring at the dark shapes.

  “Two weeks. Ugh. They're doing readings for my mom's next movie. Development, it's called. Danny is going to play her love interest. He must be more than twenty years younger than her. By the way, that was really gross, what he said before you handcuffed him. So, even though Mom doesn't agree, I want to say thanks. But she's right, too, you know. You should just ignore them. They're bored and looking for some excitement. And guys like Danny, they don't have any limits.”

  NINE

  I DON'T WANT TO GO HOME YET. God, after all that, I really need a drink.”

  We are back in the Iron Pig, pulling away from the curb. I spin the wheel hard to U-turn on the narrow street and feel the oversized tires rub against the fenders. The headlights play over the sidewalk we'd come down but the three shadows are gone.

  “I saw you put down a few already. Martinis, it looked like. That's not enough?”

  She laughs. “Not nearly. I'm just getting started. It's Saturday night, Anton.”

  We drive to a small bar she suggests. I'm not particularly surprised by her choice—it's a bar where I've heard the local cops hang out—but I am surprised by the reception she receives. When we walk into a murky, smoke-filled room that's lit only by neon beer signs and a few very dim overheads behind the bar, the welcome is in the form of averted eyes and a few sullen stares.

  Cali appears oblivious to the hostility. Smiling and waving to people who don't smile or wave back, she leads me through a moderate crowd to a high-backed booth against one wall. As we slide in I recognize one of the men standing near our table from the afternoon's meeting. He ignores me as well as Cali despite having seen us. I check for Sergeant Wokowski's broad pit bull's face and am relieved to not see him. After the exchange of barbs at the SWAT team briefing and the roughhousing at the party, I've already had two confrontations too many today. The jukebox starts playing a Lenny Kravitz song—“American Woman”—so loud that everyone in the bar has to shout. A waitress appears and before I can stop her, Cali orders us each a shot of tequila and a beer.

  “I'm sort of on duty,” I tell her. “Those drinks are all yours.”

  “Please don't be a wimp, Anton. I need a drink and I need someone to drink it with.”

  “If your pen pal makes a move tonight, I don't want to be stumbling around and trying to find my gun.” I'm also afraid that, as tired as I am, any more alcohol will increase the likelihood of further stupidity on my part. If I were really smart, I would call Jim right now, tell him to take over, and go home. But I still haven't talked to her about Wokowski. And I'm curious about the way she'd held my hand in hers earlier.

  The waitress, who is tan and strong and either a climber or a kayaker judging by the size of her forearms and the rippling muscles in her shoulders, returns with the four glasses—two big and two small—on a platter. She puts one mismatched set in front of each of us. I push my pair across the table, then hesitate and end up pulling back the beer. Looking at me, Cali lifts a shot of tequila and tosses it down. No lime, no salt. The agaves twist her face until she composes it again with a long pull on her beer.

  “I can't believe the old dragon kicked us out,” she says, breathing hard from the shot and the fire that must be spreading through her belly.

  “She didn't want you to leave. Just me. And I probably deserved it.”

  “She knew you were with me, and I'm her damn daughter! She totally snubbed Uncle Bill, too, and she has to know how sick he is.”

  “I noticed that he didn't look too good. And I saw how much you like him.”

  Cali toys with the second shot, tilting it back and forth so that the gold liquid threatens to spill from first one side and then the other.

  “He's been like a father to me. He was my dad's best friend, you know. Uncle Bill was with him when he died in a forest fire. They were both smoke jumpers. My dad did it so he could ski all winter without having to work. Bill did it so he could climb.”

  I'm reminded again of my old life, living out of the back of my truck and thinking of nothing but mountains. Right now I'm missing it more and more despite the longing for a home I'd felt before calling Rebecca.

  “What's wrong with him? He was shaking like he had MS or Parkinson's.”

  “An aneurysm, in his brain. It bled once already, then stopped on its own. An MRI showed that it's inoperable. It's in a place where it would be too dangerous to cut. And they say it's going to bleed again. Probably soon.”

  “Are they treating it?”

  “He's taking some pills that are supposed to help, but the doctors say another bleed is inevitable. He doesn't have long to live.”

  I'm sorry to hear it. I'd enjoyed getting to meet the legendary hardman. And I see clearly by the expression on her face just how much Cali adores him. But I'm glad that he still seemed strong and proud. He'd flirted with death for years—it wouldn't be hard to fall into its dark embrace.

  “What did he mean when he said he'd worn out his welcome at the party?”

  Cali sets down the shot glass and sips from her beer instead. “He probably meant Mom was ignoring him again. See, I'm pretty sure he's in love with her, and always has been. Ever since I can remember he's always done anything she's asked him to, from looking out for me in the summertime to taking care of her house and horses. But she's never liked having him around when she's in town. She acts like he's some pain in the butt that she only puts up with for my sake. I had to beg her to invite him tonight—and I think from the way she was avoiding him, he figured it out.”

  “That sounds pretty sad.” I have an ever-greater feeling of sympathy for the hardman. I wonder if I'm going to spend the next forty years pining after Rebecca. Could he be a future reflection of me?

  “Life's a bitch,” Cali says. “And sometimes so is my mom.”

  “Why doesn't she like him?”

  Cali shrugs. “Maybe she blames
him in some way for what happened to my dad—for being with him when he died and then surviving. It's probably that he brings back bad memories for her. And Mom doesn't like anyone who makes her feel down.”

  “It can't be easy, having a mother as famous as that.”

  Now Cali picks up the shot again, salutes me with it, and pours half of it down her throat. After she washes away the taste with more beer she says, “You don't know the half of it, Anton. Most people think I'm so lucky—money, fame, and all that for the asking. But I didn't ask for any of it. And I sure as hell didn't earn any of it. It was just an accident of birth. Mom, on the other hand, has worked all her life for it. It's all that's important to her. It's like when she's not in the spotlight, being beautiful and sexy and glamorous, then she doesn't exist at all. And I don't exist for her either.”

  She tells me a story about when she'd been competing for a spot on the national ski team. Her mom was supposed to fly in for the competition but her private jet was delayed by a storm. When Alana found out via the telephone that her daughter hadn't won, had in fact come in near last, she'd turned her plane south and gone to the Bahamas instead of attending the dinner and award ceremony with her daughter.

  Cali continues smiling faintly as she talks but it's just the alcohol lifting the corners of her lips. There is nothing happy about the way her eyes are growing watery. Bloodshot, too. Then she laughs self-consciously.

  “Sorry, Anton. This isn't like me, getting trashed like this. Talking like this. I want to know something about you. Where did you grow up and all that?”

  Lately I haven't enjoyed talking about my family, but it would be cruel to put her off after the way she's been opening up.

  “My dad was in the Air Force, commanding a unit that performs rescues all over the world,” I tell her. “He met my mom when he was training a similar unit in Argentina. After that, my brother and I grew up on military bases from Okinawa to Alaska to Saudi Arabia. It was a weird way to grow up, a shitty way, actually, but not nearly as weird as yours.”

  She hesitates while asking, “Is, uh, the stuff I've heard about your brother true?”

  I sip at my beer. This is exactly the reason I don't like to talk about my family. Suddenly Roberto's standing in front of me again, his ever-present smile fading when I refuse to climb one last time with him. When I more or less told him to get out of my life.

  “The general facts probably are,” I admit. “He's a junkie and a felon. And he's killed two men that I know of. But he's not evil or vicious. Or some cold-blooded murderer. He's a good man who can't follow rules. He does what he feels is right without considering the aftereffects. My mom says he's destraillado. It means unrestrained. Unleashed. He has no sense of consequences. I became a cop because I thought it was the drugs that did it to him. But I'm starting to think I was wrong. It's just the way he is.”

  “Where is he now? I read about how he escaped from Canon City in Colorado last fall.”

  “I saw him last Christmas,” I say carefully. “He was at my grandfather's estancia—ranch. In Argentina.”

  She looks surprised that I would tell her this. “How come he's not being extradited?”

  “My mother's father was a bigwig in the government before he died a couple of years ago. In the bad old days, the Dirty War. My mom's family still has a lot of friends in high places. So Roberto's safe down there. Or as safe as he'll let himself be.” I think of Rebecca and my Christmas visit and the solos Roberto has been doing. “He's supposed to come back to the U.S. I've heard he's worked something out with the U.S. Attorney's Office, exchanging information for the dismissal of the escape charge.”

  “Why would he come back?”

  It's something I've been wondering about, too. “I don't know. I guess maybe because he can't. So of course he wants to. And maybe he's trying to atone for some of his past sins. It's hard to say with him.”

  The two beer mugs on the table are empty. So are the shots in front of Cali. The sight of all the dry glasses reminds me that I'm talking too much. Thinking too much. Cali catches the waitress as she passes and asks her to bring us two more beers.

  More people come into the bar. They're mostly men, the blue-collar types you would expect in a bar like this. Boots and belt buckles. Cowboy hats—real ones, sweat-stained and creased. There are a few big women with big hair. A popular fashion in the state is for women of a certain economic background to iron their bangs straight up, often six inches or more. I marvel at the heights.

  Someone turns up the jukebox and the bartender dims the lights even more. I notice that the cops and their friends at the bar are still pretending to ignore us.

  Needing to change the subject, I lean closer across the table and ask, “What's with the cops in this place? Why aren't they over here saying hi?”

  She looks over her shoulder at the bar and smiles crookedly. “'Cause I dumped their superstar. And because I got him in some hot water.”

  “Tell me about it.” It's time to stop screwing around and get to work.

  The waitress sets two full mugs on the table and leaves them with the other empty glasses. Cali waits for her to walk out of earshot before she speaks.

  “When I started going out with Wook, it was cool. I had fun with these guys. We'd mess around with each other at the courthouse and all that. I even jumped with them a couple of times.”

  “Jumped?”

  “You know, skydiving. Wook learned it as a smoke jumper, and despite his bum knee, he keeps on doing it.”

  Maybe the fact that Wokowski was a smoke jumper, just like her father and Bill Laughlin, her adopted uncle, explains some of her attraction to him.

  “Then one night about a month ago, I was out to dinner with Wook and a couple of his buddies. We'd just come from a motions hearing on a DUI case where the defendant had also supposedly resisted arrest, but the case was pretty strong and no big deal. At dinner somebody made a joke about how the old man had already paid for his crime, and we should mail him a copy of the videotape after the trial to remind him. I didn't know about any tape—there wasn't one in any of the discovery I'd handed over to the defendant's attorney.

  “So I started looking into it, and the next day found it accidentally mislabeled in the evidence locker. It turned out that one of the patrol cars had a dashboard-mounted camera running. It showed Wook slamming the guy on the hood, then punching him in the stomach. Like he'd lost it or something. I guess the guy was too drunk or too embarrassed to tell his lawyer about how he got beat up. Maybe he thought no one would believe him. Or maybe they were just waiting to spring it on us at trial. You know, like a discovery violation. Anyway, that day I turned over the tape to the defense attorney, Suzy Casey. She was as pissed about it as I was. She wants Wook charged for assault and misconduct and everything else. It's being investigated internally right now by the Sheriff's Office—I don't know why they didn't bring you guys in on it. Probably they don't want to make too much of a stink. I wanted to dump the DUI, but because the old man has a prior for Careless Driving Causing Injury, my boss is making me go ahead with it. The trial starts Monday. Boy, is that going to be fun.” She shakes her head and looks over her shoulder again at the bar. “Ever since then, I've been persona non grata around here. Those guys have even been resisting my subpoenas, failing to appear for hearings, and stuff like that.”

  “I want to hear more about Wokowski.”

  Cali drinks some more of her fresh beer. I don't touch mine.

  “Wook's smart and handsome. And until that thing with the tape I thought he was the most honest man I've ever met. I've known him my whole life, practically. I spent the summers here, living on Mom's ranch with her caretaker or at Uncle Bill's. Wook grew up here, too. When we were old enough, we both volunteered on Forest Service fire crews. We both became Hot Shots—those are the ground guys that get 'coptered in—at about the same time, then when I went to college he went on to become a smoke jumper until he blew out his knee on a jump in Oregon. He became a cop aft
er that. Anyway, he was always really nice to me when we were on the crew together, but I pretty much ignored him. When I started working for the office we became pals. He came on real strong, and, after a while, I kind of liked that. He'd known me all my life so he wasn't nervous or weird around me. And I didn't get the impression he was trying to make himself into a celebrity or anything. So we dated pretty seriously for a couple of months.”

  “When did it end?”

  “When that thing happened with the videotape. He was upset, said he wanted to explain, but I told him that he was a big fake. That he could go to hell.”

  I take my first sip of the new beer. “I met him this afternoon,” I tell her. “While you were napping, I briefed the SWAT team about identifying clan labs. He seemed like a really nice guy. I liked him a lot.”

  She cocks her head quizzically for a moment then sees I'm only joking. “He's a jerk. To do that to an old man.”

  I nod in agreement. But from the look on her face I'm not sure she's entirely over the big, rugged-looking cop.

  “Is he a climber? Bill said the guy he'd seen trying to get in your window didn't look like much of a climber.”

  “No,” she answers, with a slight wrinkling of her nose. “His thing is hunting. He shoots elk and deer then eats them. If you ask him why, he gives you this spiritual back-to-nature speech that he has down pat.”

  In Wyoming almost everybody hunts. All the men, at least. Most do it badly, for the simple thrill of killing. But some, unfortunately only a few, do it well and cleanly and without much emotion. Which kind of hunter is Wokowski, and does it matter? I wonder what Angela Hernandez with her master's in psychology would think about a stalking suspect who hunts. Someone who is capable of killing an animal bigger than a man. Then butchering it. I make a mental note to ask her about it when I meet her on Monday.

  Cali is looking down at her beer. In a quiet voice, like she's making a confession, she adds, “I don't think he broke the window, Anton. Or wrote the letters. Until the other night, I thought they were just someone's sick joke. I wish my boss hadn't mentioned his name.”