Trial by Ice and Fire

by Clinton McKinzie

  “He's a patrol supervisor—it's his job to patrol,” she says but now her voice is a little less adamant and her face a little less certain.

  “Just a half hour ago he tried to go into the courthouse to see her. When I wouldn't let him in, things were very close to getting out of hand.”

  “At least that doesn't surprise me. He wouldn't like you telling him what to do, keeping him out of a building within his area of supervision—”

  “In his off-duty hours?”

  “But that doesn't add up to a lot of evidence, Agent Burns.”

  She's right, of course. There's no real evidence. This is why I've come to see her in the first place.

  But before I can start asking my questions, she leans back again in her chair and continues in a less-defensive tone, “He and I talked about you some when you were in the news. He felt that you should have been prosecuted after you shot those drug dealers who raped that little girl, that there might have been something to the ambush theory.”

  Now I sit forward on the edge of my chair and put my hands on my knees, squeezing them. The heat I'd felt coming into my face earlier cranks up by several degrees. It takes effort to keep my voice low and reasonable, even amused.

  “He said as much when I addressed the SWAT team yesterday. As I told you before, it's bullshit. The only ambush was them waiting for me. But we're getting off the subject, Sheriff. I've heard Wokowski's being investigated for using excessive force himself.”

  “That's true,” she acknowledges. “I'm investigating him. And except for this one isolated incident, Charles's record has been exemplary.”

  Even though I like this sheriff—I can't help believing that she does her best to be fair as well as loyal to the officers she commands—I like her even better when she's the one being defensive instead of me. “He slammed a handcuffed suspect—an elderly man—on the hood of a patrol car and punched him in the stomach. It's on video, isn't it?”

  “There are some extenuating circumstances with that.”

  “What are they?” I expect that she's waiting to see how things will shake out at Cali's trial tomorrow. If the jury regards Wokowski's transgression as no big deal, and if the local press ignores the videotape the defense attorney is bound to show if Cali doesn't show it first, then she'll probably want to handle it very quietly so as not to make any unnecessary waves and possibly ruin her sergeant's career.

  “The man Charles allegedly roughed up, Dale Watson, has been arrested for drunk driving on six prior occasions. On only one of those occasions was he convicted. Two years ago he ran over a little boy on a bicycle and fled the scene. That boy was—is—paralyzed. A quadriplegic, Agent, who will never walk or move his arms or legs again. When Watson was finally arrested for that incident, we could no longer prove the intoxication element necessary to make the crime a felony. So all he could be charged with was Leaving the Scene of an Accident. A misdemeanor punishable by only up to a year in the county jail. Charles's family is friendly with the boy's family. I'm told that ever since the accident, Charles has visited the boy at least once a week and reads to him. Takes him to ball games, too. So you see, he was understandably upset when he found the same man who crippled the boy driving drunk once again.”

  I don't want it to, but the level of my dislike for Wokowski drops a few notches. Would I have done the same thing? I might have done a lot worse.

  “What about stun guns? Does your department use them?”

  “Only in the jail. And only in the event of trouble. We have five of them. They're kept with the SWAT team's arsenal and have to be signed out.”

  “Wokowski heads the SWAT team, doesn't he?”

  She doesn't answer.

  “Let's take a look at the arsenal.”

  Still without speaking, she lifts a ring of keys from a drawer. I follow her out into the hallway and then past several more offices—one empty but with Wokowski's name on a placard on the desk—to a locked metal door. As she turns the key in the lock I feel excitement welling in me.

  The arsenal is nothing more than a large closet. Stuffed full of gear, it resembles a neater, much smaller version of the guest bedroom in my cabin. Only much of this gear is lethal. Flash-bang grenades, bullet-proof vests, shotguns, battering rams, automatic weapons. On one shelf are the stun guns resting in their green-lit chargers. There are five chargers and five stun guns. I try not to show the disappointment I feel, but the sheriff doesn't attempt to conceal her smile of relief. Still I make a show of checking the brands and voltages, which only increases my disappointment. These are a different model, and only 500,000 volts, where the one dropped outside Cali's window was 625,000.

  SEVENTEEN

  I LEAVE THE Sheriff's Office intending to hit the pawn shops then drive out to the ranchette where Armalli grew up and, according to the files I'd borrowed, still resides as a squatter. I'd looked up the address on a county map at the Sheriff's Office and seen that I was correct in supposing what I had when I first saw the address—the place is disturbingly close to the remote east end of Alana Reese's far-larger property. This Myron Armalli—horse burner, schizophrenic, and convicted stalker—is looking better and better all the time.

  My cell phone starts chiming before I even crank the Pig's engine. The digital screen shows a 213 area code. Los Angeles? It puzzles me for a moment until I hear the voice on the other end.

  “Burns? It's Angela Hernandez. We met last night, after you put on that wonderful performance at the party.”

  There's the sound of throbbing music in the background, as if she's really in Los Angeles, in a nightclub perhaps, at two on a Sunday afternoon. Her voice sounds less formal than it had at the party. Almost playful.

  “Have you caught your stalker yet?” she asks.

  “No, but I have some leads. And some questions for someone with experience in this kind of stuff and a psych degree. Can we get together anytime earlier than tomorrow morning?”

  “Actually, Burns, that's why I'm calling. I may not be able to make it tomorrow—I have to take a little hike for Alana. Could we do it this afternoon? I'm in town right now with Alana. I might be able to shake free in a few minutes when she heads back to the ranch with her driver. Maybe we can get a beer or something?”

  “Where are you now?”

  Angela names a clothing store that she describes as being about two blocks away, just off the square. The background noise doesn't sound like any store I'm familiar with but I get out of the car and start walking down the planks in that direction.

  The store isn't hard to find. From more than a block away I observe a pack of men and women standing in front of two big plate-glass windows facing the street. Bright, artsy graffiti is painted on the brick above and between the windows. The spectators are lined three-deep against the glass, staring in. All of them appear to be tourists, and a couple of them are aiming handheld video cameras inside. Some others snap away with conventional cameras. I excuse myself as I shoulder through the crowd and try the door. It's locked.

  “They're not letting anyone in,” a fat, balding man in a golf shirt says to me. He winks and rubs his sweaty palms together. “But boy oh boy, I wish they would.”

  A woman next to him, probably his wife, backhands his arm and laughs loudly.

  Through the glass I see Angela Hernandez glaring at the sightseers outside. She is wearing tight jeans over her sturdy legs, a white T-shirt, and, despite the heat, a hip-length leather jacket to hide her old-fashioned shoulder harness. She appears to be taking this Hollywood/FBI thing to heart. Her arms are folded across her chest. Behind her Alana Reese parades around the racks of snowboard-and-skateboard-chic merchandise.

  It's immediately obvious why the tourists are gaping. The movie star has shed her clothes—right down to her black bra and underwear—as she tries on a close-fitting orange shirt and a pair of very baggy parachute pants. A salesgirl trails behind her, picking up the items Alana discards on the floor. Cali's mother has to be aware of the slavering crowd out
side but she never looks our way.

  Although she must be in her early fifties, she really does remain worthy of the attention. From a physical standpoint, anyway—morally I'm not too fond of her right now. Her skin glows with a pale coppery color, and, despite the lithe muscles moving beneath it, it looks as soft and smooth as butter. Each move she makes is languidly graceful. But to me it all seems a little too practiced, a little overdone. I remember what Cali had said about her mother only feeling alive when she is the center of attention.

  I knock on the glass door. Angela looks my way with an annoyed frown. She recognizes me, shakes her thick hair, and then walks over to turn the lock. As I slip through the door, one of the men says to me, “You lucky bastard!” I'm not so sure. White hip-hop music is banging over the store's speakers. The singer is probably one of those middle-class white kids striving to sound dangerous and persecuted.

  Before I can say hello and see her reaction, Alana dances off toward the back of the store with the clerk in tow. I turn around to greet Angela and instead my eyes are drawn past her to all the hungry, leering faces pressed against the glass. I can fully understand Cali's aversion to this sort of life. But at least for once it's not me who is the subject of all the attention.

  “Quite a show,” I shout to the FBI agent as she relocks the door.

  She shakes her head again, glowers over her shoulder at the window, then checks to see that her ward is out of earshot. “How the hell am I supposed to protect her? She might as well put up a sign: ‘Stalkers Apply Here.' ”

  “Last night she told me that it came with the territory, or something like that.”

  Turning away from the window, Angela switches off the glower and smiles at me for the first time. “Like living in any territory, you must want to be there.” She blows a small pink bubble then sucks it back in with a small pop. “So how come you haven't caught your stalker yet, QuickDraw? You aren't going to screw up your perfect record on this one, are you? I know all about you now—I know about the gangbangers and then the thing with the governor.”

  I study her grin for signs of sarcasm but see none. All the same, I can't quite keep contained the sudden flare of my blood. “Right, Angela. I lost my professional reputation and nearly my liberty because of the former, and the latter, the governor-elect, he only got probation—no jail—for helping get a couple of kids snuffed and knowingly almost giving two yokels the needle for something they didn't do. Does that sound like a perfect record?”

  Her smile fades. “Are you serious? Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything.”

  “And don't call me ‘QuickDraw,' either, okay? The guy who made it up didn't mean it in a nice way, as I'm sure you read.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. But you can't take that stuff seriously, Burns. If everything the media wrote was true, I'd be an anal-retentive man in a navy suit, with sunglasses and an earphone, cross-dressing in secret. That's about how they portray the Bureau. Anyway, reading about you was, uh, pretty colorful. I might be able to use some of it. For my screenplay, you know?”

  The bile that had been bubbling up my throat sinks back down to my stomach. “Oh God, please don't,” I say, smiling a little myself now. “Just let me ask you some stuff about this guy and get out of here.”

  Angela scrunches up her face and points at the speakers mounted in the corners of the shop. “I can't think over this crap.”

  Alana Reese steps out from behind a rack of clothes. A short, tight shirt that is a wild pink covers only her arms, shoulders, and breasts. Other than that, all she is wearing is the black underwear. The matching bra has disappeared—it's quite obviously not under the pink shirt. The young salesgirl trails at her heels with a mound of clothes hugged to her chest.

  “Angela, dear, could you take some of these from the poor girl?” Alana purrs over the music. “I'm afraid she's running out of arms. Oh, Mr. Burns—Special Agent Burns, that's what they call you people, isn't it? It's nice to see you again. But don't you think you ought to be looking after my daughter right now?”

  Her tone is saccharine-sweet, but the intent of her words is emphasized by a spot of color on each high-boned cheek and the razor-sharp gleam in her green eyes.

  “Nice to see you, too. Another state agent is with Cali right now.”

  “Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that!”

  “It's really heartening to know you're so concerned,” I tell her.

  Her mouth twitches up in a smile that's not a smile as she pivots away from me and toward a rack of tie-dyes. Angela, a clandestine look on her face, reluctantly takes an armful of clothes from the salesgirl and dumps them on the counter.

  Alana pulls a multicolored Lycra shirt off a rack, studies it for a minute, then hands it to Angela. “You would look wonderful in this, dear. You should try it on.”

  “Thanks,” Angela tells the movie star. “I will. A little later. Do you mind if we turn down the music? I'm trying to talk to Burns here about the guy that's bothering your daughter.”

  Alana appears not to hear her. Bobbing and snapping her fingers, gyrating a little with her perfect rear end twitching to the music, she disappears once again into the racks. The salesgirl dumps her remaining armful on the counter and turns down the music a couple of clicks. The volume now is less painful, but the music still hurts. Then she vanishes after the actress.

  “She's quite concerned about Cali, you know,” Angela says with a straight face.

  “Yeah, she looks it.”

  Angela allows another smile. “Actually, she really is. This is what she does when she's upset—makes a spectacle and buys things. Alana doesn't talk a lot about anything except herself, but when she does, she talks about her daughter. Last night she was up half the night, drinking Stoli, and asking me again and again if she should call in the FBI to take care of Cali. I told her no, that you could handle it.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I don't think she likes me very much. The Teton County Sheriff had a talk with me earlier.”

  “Oh shit. She did it, didn't she? Called ‘her dearest friend' the sheriff? I told her not to do that. Sorry, Burns. Everyone else kind of enjoyed seeing Danny made to look like an ass. Just not her. She's sleeping with him, you know. And he's sleeping with absolutely everyone. And I think she's beginning to realize it and it's making her insecure—that's why I've got to take a hike tomorrow, to follow Danny. She suspects he's been taking local girls up to this hot spring near her property.” She laughs. “No, you're not too popular with that crowd, Burns. Danny Gorgon wants to, as he says in his movie-macho talk, rip off your head and shit down your neck.”

  I shake my head. “Don't you mind following her around and carrying her clothes? Dealing with these people?”

  “No, not really. I want into the business, so I'll pay my dues. When I started at the Bureau I dreamed of being a profiler, but ever since they made that movie, it's like the most competitive posting there is.”

  “The Silence of the Lambs, right?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Saw it when I was fifteen and right then I decided to get a master's in psych and a federal badge.”

  “My brother felt the same way about Top Gun,” I say without thinking. But then he found other ways of getting high, ways where he wouldn't have to answer to anyone or follow orders.

  At the mention of my brother, Angela's smile grows wider, almost predatory. “I was hoping your brother would come up. Roberto Burns came close to making the Bureau's Top Ten for a while last year. But the Argentineans wouldn't extradite him—your family's got some kind of pull down there, apparently. I was in L.A., you know, when he caught that flight to Buenos Aires. We missed him by this much.” She holds up a thumb and finger that are a half-inch apart. “Saw his picture in the file, too. If he ever gets clean and does his time, he could be a movie star himself. Maybe there's a place for him in my screenplay, too.”

  “I'll pass that along the next time I hear from him. In fact, he might be meeting some of your colleagues soon.”
>
  “Really? He's gonna do a deal? From what I read in his file, he's got the contacts to make it happen if he's willing to switch teams.”

  “That's what I hear,” I say, shrugging and wanting to change the subject. “Can I get you to pretend you're Jodie Foster in that movie for a minute and help me do some profiling?” Striving to talk quietly over the still-too-loud music, I give her a strictly factual summary of the letters, the attempted break-in, and last night's attack at the bar. “Tell me what you know about the guys who do this kind of stuff.”

  She wrinkles her nose with an expression of disgust. “Okay, Burns, there are generally two types of serious stalkers. There are the Spurned Suitors, the guys who've been rejected. Those losers either want to reestablish the relationship or get revenge for having been dumped. They can be dangerous and often lethal. Then, especially with celebrities, there are the Predators and the Insane—subsets of the same general category but alike. Sometimes they can be pretty dangerous, too. Because of the letters, it sounds possible that whoever's doing this is at least mentally ill, if not schizophrenic.”

  “As Alana may have told you, Cali was dating a sergeant in the Sheriff's Office until about a month ago, when she dumped him.” I tell her about how he'd driven by my place all night and then about our brief confrontation outside the courthouse.

  Angela rubs her chin with her knuckles and considers. “Jealousy, following, lurking, all that fits a Spurned Suitor type. But it doesn't match up with the rambling letters.”

  “Maybe they were a ploy. You know, scare her so she'll feel like she needs him. Needs his protection.”

  I'm pleased when Angela purses her lips and nods thoughtfully. “If he were pretty smart and cunning, yeah, that's possible. If he's the guy, you'd better be watching your back. He could just as easily focus on you when you're getting in his face and she's spending nights in your house.”

  “For her protection,” I point out, feeling the need to.

  Angela smiles. “Sure.”