Trial by Ice and Fire

by Clinton McKinzie

  “I know. I know what I've got.”

  She looks up at me for a long time, and then once again toward the table. She smiles sadly. “No, Anton. I really don't think you do.”

  “I thought you'd wrapped that up,” McGee says when I return to the table. His mouth is frowning hard beneath his beard but his eyes seem lit up with evil amusement.

  “So did I. There was a loose end.”

  Shrugging it off, I try to conclude the previous examination by saying, “Mr. Hersh—David—you should let me take you climbing sometime. We could do it near your house in Boulder. Top-rope a low crag, which is incredibly safe. You might like it.”

  “No, Antonio. I don't think so. I have a daughter to think about. You—”

  Rebecca interrupts, standing up and pushing back her chair. “Dad, Ross, do you mind if Anton and I take a walk?”

  When I get up to follow her toward the door I have the feeling that someone else is watching us. I glance over my shoulder before going out into the night, expecting to see that Cali has stayed to see the rest of the show. But it's not Cali's eyes that I feel on me. Sitting at a corner table is a large party. And one of them is staring at me blatantly with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. It's the action-movie hero, Danny Gorgon. It's hard to see from this distance but I think he winks at me.

  Outside it's cool, although not nearly as cool as it should be at this time of year. At this altitude and latitude there should still be night frosts. My hands are shoved deep in my pockets as if it were much colder. A muscular wind rustles through the grass alongside the resort's paths and makes the waxy new leaves on the aspen trees rattle together. There is a small pond with a wooden plank walkway around it. The water in it is being whipped up by the gusts, forming tiny whitecaps. We head in the other direction, side by side, on a trail that leads to the top of the butte.

  She walks with her head down. I look for her hand but, like me, she's tucked them both away in the pockets of her leather jacket. I'm starting to feel angry. At myself, more than anything, for acting like a scared, love-struck kid. Like a fool. Overhead the stars are very bright. We walk among some noisy aspens with bone-white trunks.

  Below us is the entire Teton Valley, Jackson Hole. The town is literally at our feet. It's all lit up by streetlights, headlights, and neon signs, and a hazy glow rises above the whole place and forms a sort of bubble over the south end of the valley. We stop at the very edge of the steep, dry slope that leads down a thousand feet into the light.

  “That's where my cabin is.” I point across the valley. A few pinpricks of light are nestled in Cache Creek Canyon. “It's a little valley between the ski area and the Elk Refuge.”

  “It looks pretty remote.”

  “It's only about ten minutes from downtown. See the three farthest lights? I think mine is the one up on the left.”

  “You left a light on for Mungo? Are you taking good care of our baby?”

  She must notice my hesitation in answering, because she turns to look up at me. I know I've been neglecting the wolf. I should have brought her, but I didn't want to take the time to drive by the cabin and pick her up. I had another motive for leaving her behind, too, one that I mention now.

  “She misses you. Why don't we go see her?” I ask. “I can drive you there right now and back again in the morning. Your dad can keep your car.”

  “No, Anton. I'm going to stay here with him tonight.” She says it firmly, so I don't try to argue.

  My brother says the only way to face fear is to jump right into it. To crash through it as if it were one of those Japanese paper walls.

  “'Becca. What's going on?”

  She turns to me, her hands still deep in her jacket's side pockets. The wind blows the loose tendrils of hair across her face. I ache with the need to hold her.

  “What are you doing, Anton? Up here, I mean. In Wyoming. Six months ago you told me you were going to quit.”

  “It's my job.”

  “It's not a job,” she says. “It's a vendetta.”

  I look away from her and back out into the darkness above the haze of artificial light.

  Following the arrest of the state's governor-elect, and the four deaths he had indirectly caused by covering up a crime and trying to save his own skin, I'd had enough. I was done with law enforcement. All that remained was to figure out what to do from there. Rebecca had talked about law school, to which I'd said No way—I've had enough of lawyers and the law. I had thought about maybe going back to guiding. But I had to stay on for the would-be governor's trial, and as the trial progressed I had realized the inevitable result. That the governor wasn't going to prison where he belonged. That my reputation would suffer in a much greater way. And I just couldn't quit like that. I couldn't let the governor and the defense attorneys and the office win. I couldn't go out like a chump.

  “I don't know, Rebecca. I can't quit now. I've got to finish.”

  “Finish what?”

  I can't tell her that it's the game I need to finish. To see who wins. And that it's my ego calling the shots. And curiosity about who I am; the wonder of the fact that I hadn't put a bullet through young Myron Armalli even though I'd wanted to, the fact that I hadn't made love to Cali two nights ago even though I needed to. But thoughts aren't as bad as deeds, are they? In any case, I don't have the vocabulary to express such things. I'm not comfortable enough with these thoughts to even try.

  “This case,” I say lamely. “My reputation.”

  “Even if it means finishing us?”

  My temperature rises a couple of degrees. What is this? Blackmail? I almost died today and here she is, dumping on me.

  I make an effort to keep my voice flat but emotion manages to creep into it. “What do we have? We had something spectacular early on. But lately, this last month, I don't know. You've been treating me like shit. What's going on, Rebecca? Is there someone else or what? What do you want?”

  It's her turn to look away out into the darkness.

  “I want you—us—to have a normal life.” She speaks very slowly, as if choosing her words carefully. “I want safety. Security. No guns. No crusades. No hanging off cliffs for a thrill. I do not want someone who's addicted to living life on the very edge. I want a man I know will come home to his family every night.”

  And that's not me. Not me. Not me. The words echo in my head.

  “Is there someone else?” I imagine that there has to be. Someone who has the vocabulary to discuss with her the issues of life and living. Someone with an interest other than climbing mountains and putting dope dealers in jail. Someone who doesn't desire anything so much as to be by her side. Always. I want that, too, but I need the mountains. Like a true addict, I can't imagine a life without them would be worth living.

  “In a way, I guess you could say there is.”

  It doesn't register right away. Despite my suspicions, what I'd believed was paranoia, I can't believe it's true. Not Rebecca. I stare at her. She's still looking out over the valley, her hands out of her pockets now and clasped with intertwined fingers across her stomach.

  “I'm pregnant, Anton.”

  She turns to me as she says it. Her eyes are black and indecipherable in the darkness, each one confined between two tiny slivers of shiny white.

  At first I feel absolutely nothing. Through six months of nearly daily lovemaking, I'd been so centered on myself and the governor-elect's trial that I'd somehow never got around to considering the possibility. And she'd never raised the subject, even when we'd talked dreamily in the early days about the possibilities of a life together. I'm as hollow as a gourd, and there's nothing in me but the dull moan of emptiness like when you put your ear to a hollow thing. What's happening? My first impulse is to grab hold of her. To kiss her face and neck and slide to my knees and press my face to her stomach. But the stiffness of her posture—she's almost leaning back, away from me—and her black eyes stop me cold.

  “It's going to be all right,” I tell her. “Better t
han all right.” I try to work some surprised joy into my voice but it's so clearly out of place with her mood that it sounds like a lie. Worse than a lie. God, why don't I have the words to express . . .

  “I wish you weren't the father,” she whispers.

  And that breaks something in me.

  I turn away from the lights and head back toward where the Pig is parked outside the restaurant. I keep walking even when I hear her call my name. The word floats in the wind behind my back, hovering, then is cut off as if it has fallen and shattered on the ground.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE LOG CABIN IS ON FIRE when I walk in fifteen minutes later. In a resort town like Jackson, during the tourist season, it's always Friday night. Music that is nothing more than a throbbing pulse almost batters me back out the door. Beneath the beat is a layer of shrieking chatter and drunken laughter. Bodies bump against me when I duck down my head and push into the noise. My eyes are assaulted by the multicolored strobes. The air inside is very hot and it reeks of cheap liquor, smoke, and sweat. I feel fuzzy, like I'm already drunk.

  Using my right elbow as a wedge, I shoulder my way in what I think is the direction of the bar. Once I find it and manage to work through what must be the local rugby team—beefy men in striped shirts stained with dirt and blood—it takes almost five minutes to catch the attention of a bartender.

  He shouts something at me. A question.

  “What kind of tequila do you have?” I shout back.

  He shouts again. I still can't hear him.

  “Chinaco?” I yell at him. “Herradura?”

  He raises his eyebrows and shouts back again.

  “Tequila!” I try.

  He nods. He begins to turn away but I lean over the bar and grab the back of his T-shirt. It stretches as if he doesn't feel the tug until I think it might rip. Then he spins back angrily, shouting again, and tries to knock my hand away. This time I can hear him. “What the fuck?” The rugby players on either side of me press in a little closer. A couple of them are standing up for the bartender, saying, “Let go of him, dude.”

  With my free hand I hold up two fingers. The bartender looks at my face for a second, giving me a hard look. But then he turns away quickly to pour the shots. I doubt he recognized me, but I'm feeling every inch the man who he might have seen if he did. An elbow from the left bumps my ribs and I meet the bumper's eyes for a minute—a meaty, florid face that mouths “Sorry” before it, too, turns away.

  My two shots appear pathetically small when they are placed before me. Not nearly enough, even though they are filled to the rim and the sticky liquid has slopped down the sides. I throw both shots down, one after the other—a double-tap to the gut—and feel the heat blossom. My stomach tries to object violently but I hold down the mescal with a bite from a lime wedge the bartender lays down just in time.

  “Eight dollars,” he mouths. Other people are screaming at him but he stays with me, looking solicitous now through my watery eyes.

  Pulling out my wallet, I yell at him, “Two more!” I open it without caring if anyone sees the badge and put a twenty on the bar.

  My shoulder is gripped from behind. I pivot around, expecting the rugby player's florid face again. Instead a small dark face thrusts itself right at me. Special Agent Angela Hernandez. Her brown cheeks have been drunk pink. She's once again in her Hollywood attire, a T-shirt with a black lace bra visible beneath it and tight jeans below. No gun in evidence tonight.

  “What are you doing here?” she shouts from an inch away, blowing more flammable fumes into my nose and mouth. “And just my luck—all alone!”

  “Who are you here with?”

  She jerks her head down along the bar. I lean over it to see, wondering if Alana Reese would be foolish enough to enter a crush like this and allow her pet federal agent to get drunk. But it's not Alana who meets my eye from down the packed bar. Again, it's Danny Gorgon and some others from Alana's entourage. They must have left the Granary right when Rebecca and I began our walk.

  He's staring back at me, not smiling anymore, from between a bracket of admiring young women.

  “Where's Alana?”

  “At home. It's my night off.” She says some more but I can't hear her until I lean my ear against her mouth. “I said, until midnight, anyway. That's when I turn into a pumpkin.”

  I put my mouth to her thick hair, trying to find her ear. “I thought he was her lover. He's your date now?”

  She laughs and turns my chin with her fingers so she can talk into my ear. “No. He's looking for some new chippy to take hiking to this hot spring he knows about. It's his big come-on. After that, it's a big letdown. Believe me. I've seen it—Alana sent me up to spy on him this morning. Guy's got a tiny dick and he doesn't know what to do with it.” Her fingers stay on my chin even when I turn my head back to look at her. She's grinning. Then she turns my face away again and her lips touch my ear. “I'm glad to see you. You can't leave me with these people.”

  “He's still mad at me?”

  “Now he wants to—again, I'm quoting here—gouge out your eyes and skull-fuck you. Only he knows who you are now, so he's too chickenshit to come at you directly. That means you'd better watch your back. Or maybe I'll watch it for you!”

  Angela yells something over the bar, apparently having caught the bartender's eye far more quickly than I had. He puts two more shots of tequila on the bar.

  “You find your stalker?” she shouts at me as she puts money on the bar.

  “Hooked and booked.”

  She puts one of the tiny glasses in my hand. “Then we've got something to celebrate!”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE ODOR OF CHEAP TEQUILA goes deeper than just a stench in my nostrils or a reek in my mouth. It goes all the way to the marrow of my bones. To each tiny brain cell that lies in the bottom of my skull like so many dead, stinking fish. It's so bad it makes Mungo's breath smell like rose petals as she stands panting over me in the sun-heated loft.

  I lift my hand to pat her head and the skin of my arm peels from my side with a tacky sensation. Dried sweat. I vaguely remember running all the way back to the cabin instead of driving. The reason Wokowski kneed the old man in the groin must have made an impression on me. At least I'd done one thing right last night, other than arresting Armalli. But I'd done a whole lot wrong, too. I refuse to allow myself any further contemplation.

  Mungo, her head held low, shifts from paw to paw in discomfort as I thrash my way out of the bed. The sheet has been twisted into a fat, damp rope and has wound its way around my body. I keep my eyes scrunched into slits to defend against the onslaught of light pouring in through the overhead windows. The wolf follows me with scratching claws and lurching steps as I nearly fall down the steep stairs leading to the main room.

  Feeling ten feet tall and as thin and fragile as a piece of paper, I sway into the bathroom. I kneel before the toilet and taste thick, salty bile. With my elbows propped on the toilet seat, I drool into the bowl but nothing else will come up. I don't think I've eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. I'm getting too old for this, I tell myself to keep from thinking more deprecating thoughts, but the truth is, I'd never been young enough for this.

  The man is there behind the mirror. He's waving at me, trying to get my attention. I can't see him—I keep my eyes averted—but I can sense his smirk, his bloodred lips lifted to show his long, sharp canines. The dead black eyes are bright and laughing.

  “Fuck you,” I tell him, washing my mouth and spitting water. Still not looking at the reflection. “Really. Fuck you.”

  Through the open bathroom door Mungo anxiously watches me talking to the sink. Her ears are pricked all the way forward. “Sorry, girl. I'm okay,” I tell her, lying. “I'm not going crazy.”

  I pad barefoot across the main room, clicking my parched tongue at her to follow along, and jerk open the front door so she can go out. Mungo takes two quick steps onto the porch then freezes. Her tail snaps up between her hind legs as she smiles h
er anxious grin.

  A man is sitting on the porch steps.

  He turns his freckled cannonball of a head to look up at us. This simple motion is no easy feat for him because he has no neck. McGee looks like some wise, sad troll straight out of a Tolkien book. Smoke curls up from the bent cigar that droops dangerously close to his beard. His normally bright eyes are yellow, cloudy, and shot with red. Mine probably look the same. Maybe worse.

  “We fucked up, QuickDraw,” he tells me. His voice, always harsh, is even harsher. “We really screwed the fucking pooch this time.”

  Mungo slinks around him, staying as far away as possible, then bounds away into the pines to relieve herself.

  I know I fucked up. God, I feel it all the way down to the depths of my soul. But how does he know about it already? I don't really hear the odd use of the word we—I assume he includes himself for ever having trusted me with his friend's daughter.

  “You talked to Rebecca,” I croak.

  He glares up at me, as if he can't believe I have the balls to speak her name. A blossom of shame erupts in my chest and I'm sure it's as visible as a scarlet letter spreading over my skin. An S for stupid. Spineless. Substandard.

  “Rebecca?” he barks. “Just to ask if she knew where the fuck you went last night. . . . She didn't, by the way. . . . I'm talking about Cali Morrow! . . . She's down at the hospital, getting glass shards picked out of her face.”

  I stumble out on the porch's warped boards, not even realizing I'm still naked. My legs are weak. I drop down next to him on the steps. “Cali? What happened?”

  “Like I said, we fucked up.” He shakes his massive head. “Goddamn, Burns, we fucked up. . . . Someone broke into her place last night. . . . Pushed his way right through the door. . . . He came after her—”

  “Where's Armalli?”

  The answer is the worst thing imaginable. “In the jail. Where the hell do you think?”

  I put my elbows on my knees and my hands over my face.