The Wolf Path

by Judith Van GIeson

  I flipped through the file and found the transcript of the bank robbery trial. Some statement was being made then, but these days, when people have gone back to robbing banks out of greed, it’s hard to remember what. There probably was some interesting reading in there among the boilerplate, but I didn’t have time to look. I turned to the back of the transcript, found that four of the defendants (there were a total of five) had been convicted. Juan, who drove the getaway car, got seven years, just like he’d said. The fifth—Betty Jo Burnett—went free. She was only nineteen at the time and the only female.

  I hadn’t come here in the middle of the night to find that Jayne hadn’t been convicted. There had to be more to it than that. I started looking through the pretrial motions, letters and memos and I found what I had been looking for. One of the tellers at the bank had been shot and killed by an AK-47 during the robbery. An eyewitness—another teller—claimed Betty Jo had fired the shot and identified her in a lineup. Other witnesses had conflicting stories and there wasn’t any physical evidence. The bullet was traced to one of the AK-47s, but that gun couldn’t be traced to Betty Jo Burnett and there were no fingerprints on it or on any of the guns. The robbers were careful—up to a point—but they screwed up their getaway and got caught. The government was making preparations to try Jayne for murder, basing their case on circumstantial evidence and their star witness, but then that witness recanted his story. Said that he wasn’t sure who fired the gun after all, said he wasn’t even sure Betty Jo had been there. It blew the government’s case, so they went with the conviction they thought they could get—bank robbery. They didn’t do so well with Betty Jo. Every prosecutor knows it’s hard to convict a good-looking defendant, even harder to convict a young one and, back then anyway, harder still to convict a female. Betty Jo at nineteen was a lot dewier than Jayne at forty-something and she was acquitted. The government never stopped believing Betty Jo had fired the AK-47, but were unable to get enough evidence to take it to trial.

  Juan got seven years. He was lucky the robbery took place in the ’60s. A few years later the government changed the law, possibly because of people like Juan. Nowadays everyone who participates in a bank robbery that results in murder gets charged with the murder. Whether the defendant drives the getaway car or pulls the trigger makes no difference in the eyes of the law.

  The feds kept both Juan and Jayne under surveillance for years, to the point of following Juan’s wolf program around the country, which proved that he hadn’t been so paranoid after all. The government had a lot of other radical troublemakers to worry about and eventually they forgot about Juan and Jayne and stashed the file away somewhere until she asked for it. The file indicated it had been released in early ’87. Why did she ask for it then? I wondered. To find out if she was still under surveillance?

  “Find what you’re looking for?” A wall switch flicked and the bare bulb overhead filled the living room with stark white inquisition light. The shadows shriveled and ran under the sofa, the moonlight went out the window, the pink velvet drapes came into sharp focus, shifting nervously in place. I remembered the tape recorder I had in my pocket and punched the record button before I turned around and faced Jayne. I was glad I’d hit the button first because one look at her and her hard-nosed Magnum was enough to make me forget everything but the essentials like was the blood still running through my veins?

  “It looks like you killed a man,” I said.

  “Yeah?” She was wearing a low-cut, slinky pink nightgown. The overhead light revealed her muscular arms, her unripe mango breasts, her flat bare feet planted firmly on the ballroom floor, her tousled blond hair, her dark roots, the lines beside her mouth that were hard and determined. “Who?” she asked.

  “The bank teller,” I said, “for one.”

  She shrugged. The pink nightgown clung to her breasts, shimmied around her ankles. “I was never tried for that crime.”

  “The witness recanted his testimony. What did you do? Pay him off?”

  She smiled. “In a way.”

  “You know whether you killed him; you’re the one who’s had to live with it for over twenty years.”

  She seemed to be at ease here in her living room even with the harsh spotlight on and the flattering pink lamps off. She was in her nightgown, I was in my jeans, two women together late at night, sharing their slumber party secrets. If only the gun had been a water pistol instead of a Magnum, I might have felt at ease, too. Feeling comfortable got her talking anyway.

  “I was just a kid and under Juan’s influence,” Jayne said. “I didn’t mean to kill anybody. The teller reached for a weapon and my gun went off. I was trying to protect us; it was an instinctive reaction. It could have happened to anybody.”

  Anybody who happened to be robbing a bank and holding an AK-47 in their hand.

  “It’s kind of like having an abortion,” she said, “in the old days when abortion was despicable, illegal and terrifying too. When it’s over you can hate yourself forever or you can say you did what you had to do and get on with your life. I was pretty young when I found out what I was capable of.”

  “How did you feel the second time?” Assuming, of course, that Bob Bartel was the second time.

  “Believe it or not, that was an accident, too. Bad karma, I guess.” She shrugged again.

  When someone keeps getting caught committing illegal acts with a gun in her hand it seems kind of a stretch to blame it on karma. On one level criminals want to get caught, and one way they get caught is they talk about their crimes. Like everybody else, they want recognition for their work. Their problem is they don’t have anybody to talk to but each other and they know better than to trust each other. The ones that get off have it worse; they don’t even have each other. Jayne was only human; she needed to talk.

  “Tell me about it,” I said like a sympathetic public defender or an expensive shrink. The tape was turning in my pocket, I hoped, recording her every word. Anna would love to transcribe this.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Jayne said. “Norm had to go into Soledad and I was alone in the barn with the pups. I heard someone coming and I knew it wasn’t Norm. He wasn’t due back yet and I would have heard his truck anyway. It was someone who’d come on foot, a thief, an investigator, Buddy Ohles? I didn’t know, but I knew it was someone who had no business being there. Those are very valuable wolves. There was a hunting rifle in the barn; I picked it up. Bartel pushed the door open, looked all around at the wolves. He was holding his radio receiver, his earphones and his antenna. He must have followed Nepenthe’s signal over the mountain. Loki, the mother wolf, was startled and she started fear woofing. I was in the shadows and he hadn’t seen me yet. He put down the radio gear, pulled the gun off his back. I’m a mother to those pups, too. I panicked and I fired.”

  It was a good story, but it wouldn’t fly in court. “Bartel never carried a gun,” I said.

  “It was a dart rifle, but I didn’t know that when I fired. He was standing with the light behind him and it blinded me. I told Norm it was stupid to use a radio collar, that someone could track the signal, but no one was doing any studies in the Soledads and he thought the chances of anybody tracking it were infinitesimal—that’s his word, infinitesimal.”

  “Nepenthe was the wolf in the pen by herself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why had he collared her?” I asked, even though I thought I already knew.

  “To monitor her from the house without being seen himself. He was looking for signs of any unusual excitement or activity.”

  “Like her reaction to a wild lobo coming over the mountain?”

  “That’s it,” Jayne said, surprised. I guess I was smarter than she’d thought. Smart enough to realize that what Norm Alexander was attempting to do down here in the sole of America was lure an illegal alien, a lonely lobo, over the border to increase the heterozygosity of his breeding population.

  “He’d installed physiological sensors so he could monitor her he
artbeat,” Jayne said. “He knew every timed she peed. If Norm could have gotten inside of Nepenthe he would have done that too. You might say he was obsessed with wolves.”

  “What brought you two together?” I asked.

  “I met Norm years ago at a wolf seminar in California and we’d kept in touch. He’d lost his job, my husband took off and I got nothing but a ranch that I couldn’t sell.”

  “And a hot Frida Kahlo that you couldn’t sell either?”

  “That, too. I know more about breeding wolves in captivity than Norm does. I was the one who raised and mated Siri’s ancestors.”

  “So you and Norm stole the lobos from the zoo?”

  She nodded. “Both of us needed to find some way to make a living. Wolves are what we know.”

  Wolves and stealing. “I suppose they’re worth a lot to the right person.”

  “A lot. People love wolves and the lobos are one of the rarest mammals in existence. We have customers from all over the world. We breed them every year, and we’re making the lobos better than ever. If people ever get smart enough to let the lobos come back to the wild and if a site can be found, our wolves will be the strongest. Private enterprise, you could say. You know the government’s going to fuck it up.”

  I couldn’t argue with her about that. “I’m curious as to why you held the meeting here.”

  “That damn meeting. It was the start of all our problems. If those fucking kids hadn’t set Siri free, if Juan hadn’t gotten into your tequila…”

  If she hadn’t stolen an endangered species, bred and sold them, I thought. But having a Magnum staring at you helps you keep your thoughts to yourself. It was my wits and a tape recorder against her superior physical conditioning and a gun. At the moment the gun was ahead.

  “Juan insisted,” Jayne shrugged. “You know how he can be. He chips away at you until he gets what he wants. No one’s going to let the lobo come back to White Sands, anyway. It’s just an FWS charade to shut up the environmentalists. I thought the meeting would be a lot of hot air and Juan would have been suspicious if I refused to do it. Anything else you want to know?”

  “If you shot Bartel before he saw you, how did you know where his truck was?”

  “Where else could it have been? There are only three ways onto Norm’s property. He hadn’t driven through the gate so he either came over the peaks from the Phillipses’ or from Roaring Falls Ranch, and he wouldn’t have gone on my land without asking me first.”

  “Bob Bartel was a gentleman.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him. I told you that. He should have warned me he was coming. You don’t go around surprising people in Soledad County.”

  I replayed the action. “Norm hiked over the mountain and got the truck. He probably wouldn’t have had any trouble pushing the gearshift into place even with his bad hand. You came home, gave Juan the Xanax, went out and helped Alexander dispose of the body, set the clock to one when you got back, woke Juan up for an alibi and made love. The Xanax had probably worn off somewhat by then.”

  “Somewhat. I was pretty wound up and I needed the release. Juan isn’t what he used to be when he was Billie, but I was excited enough for us both that night.” Her finger was getting itchy on the Magnum’s trigger. “You know I’m not going to jail for this. I know what it’s like to kill and I know I can live with it. I know enough about jail to know I could never live with that: no outdoors, no animals, no exercise, no men, no freedom. No way.”

  “It’s not going to be so easy to get away with it this time,” I said.

  “Why not?” she shrugged. “You broke into my house. I thought you were a burglar. That’s reason enough in Soledad County.”

  “What about Charlie Clark? He was at Norm’s. He saw the wolves. You fired at him, too.”

  “Norm and the wolves are well out of Soledad County by now. And no one can prove it was me that fired. Besides, like Charlie said, he’s a radical environmentalist, he could be taken out at any time,” she smiled. “Well, I’ve said all I have to say. I think this little conversation is about to end.” It had been a deathbed confession, only she had confessed and I was on death’s bed.

  “Do I get a last wish?” I asked.

  “Why not?”

  Now that the talking was over, I didn’t have the unnatural calm I usually have when I find myself staring down trouble. A life wish was circulating through my arteries, through my veins. She’d already proven that at any distance she was a lousy shot, but with the Magnum only ten feet away, hitting me would be the equivalent of taking out a house. “I want to hear the wolf howling at Roaring Falls Ranch before I die,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I want to hear the wolf howling at Roaring Falls Ranch before I die.” I said it again louder.

  The wolf at the window responded with a long, deep howl that made me feel my spinal column was full of Jell-O and startled Jayne so much her silicone shook.

  “What the…?” She turned toward the window, forgetting for an instant that she was holding a weapon in her hand. The pink velvet drapes parted. A two-legged wolf in long scraggly fur and a pointy-eared mask stepped out. Muddy running shoes showed beneath the fur. It whipped off its wolf skin and, with all the gusto it could muster, threw it over Jayne. The gun went off, but its aim was deflected and the bullet sailed into the wall, missing Frida Kahlo, whose karma wasn’t so great either, by an inch. Charlie Clark leapt on Jayne, pinned her down with the wolf skin and kneed her wrist until the gun fell out on the bare floor.

  “You little shit.” She struggled against the skin. I picked the gun up. It felt warm and sweaty in my palm. It was tempting to turn around and aim it at Jayne, but I didn’t. I put the Magnum on the credenza and took my weapon, a lawyer’s weapon, out of my pocket.

  Charlie straddled Jayne on the floor, high on the excitement of a well-planned and -executed action. “Did you get it?” he yelled.

  “Let’s see.” I rewound, played back the last few minutes. The voices were a little scratchy, but the tape was understandable.

  “So I could be taken out at any time, huh?” Charlie said, giving Jayne’s arm a twist.

  “You know, you’re a real bitch,” Jayne snapped at me.

  Juan had been woken up by the noise and he staggered groggily to the door. He was wearing a pair of blue boxer shorts and his chest was covered all over with soft, fuzzy gray hair. He scratched his belly. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “Jayne killed Bob Bartel and tried to kill Charlie and me. I’ve got it all on tape,” I said.

  “Jeez, Jaynie, Ohweiler was trying to blame Bartel on me.”

  “He wouldn’t have been able to; I gave you an alibi,” Jayne replied.

  Actually she’d given herself an alibi, but I’d let the two of them work that one out.

  “Why did you do it?” Juan asked. “He just put Siri in the zoo. I would have gotten him back.”

  Jayne seemed to be all talked out so I answered for her. “She killed him because he caught her and Norm Alexander breeding lobos across the mountain.” I’d been wondering if Juan knew anything about it. Probably not, I decided from his sleepy, puzzled look.

  “What’s wrong with that?” he asked.

  “Lobos are an endangered species, Juan. They stole pups from the zoo and started breeding and selling them. It’s illegal.”

  “So? They probably did a better job of it than the government.” I wasn’t going to argue that point with him. Juan got down on the floor and tried to hug Jayne, but Charlie and the wolf skin were in the way. “Let her go,” Juan said. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  Charlie looked at me for approval. “It’s okay,” I said. I had the Magnum and could shoot at the fleeing legs if I had to.

  Jayne sat up straight-backed and dry-eyed and shook the wolf skin off. Juan gave her a hug, but, stiff as she was, it had to feel like hugging cement. I got on the phone, dialed 911 and asked for Sheriff Ohweiler. The dispatcher was reluctant to get him up, but I insisted. />
  “Oh, Jaynie,” Juan said, “it’s all my fault. You were just a kid and I got you into trouble.” There were tears in his eyes.

  Trouble was Juan’s middle name. Jayne didn’t deny it. She sat stiffly on the floor like her back was in a brace, but she let him hold her.

  20

  SHERIFF OHWEILER AND his deputy came over and arrested Jayne, who got dressed, made up and combed her hair before they took her off to jail. No doubt she was already calculating how she’d get off and who would defend her. The kind of help she needed would take more than a lawyer could give, more than a fenced Frida Kahlo.

  “By the way,” I said to Ohweiler. “You ought to check out the painting; I think she stole that, too.”

  Ohweiler looked at Frida. Frida looked back. “That?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Jayne was wishing she’d shot me hours ago. Ohweiler took the Magnum and the tape with him. Later that morning the state police caught Norm Alexander on I-10 heading into Arizona with a truck full of lobos. They could be tested genetically to see whether any breeding with wild lobos had taken place and no doubt they would be. Charlie Clark went home to sleep, Juan Sololobo went into the kitchen.

  I was too wired for sleep or food, so I walked into the desert, sat down on a rock and waited for the sun to come up, which it did eventually, spotlighting the backs of the Soledads and outlining the jagged shapes of the peaks. In the west I could see a far sierra. As the sun moved up, the morning glow climbed down the sierra and crossed the plains of Soledad step by sangria-colored step. Maybe Bob Bartel’s spirit was out there somewhere, drifting easier now that Jayne had been caught. Maybe not. The sun climbed higher, the glow faded, the sierra turned to rock and the plains to dust. I went inside and called the Kid.