Last Lie (35 page)

"No." My discomfort and my defensiveness were joining forces. The sum of the parts was beginning to feel a lot like anger. I reminded myself that Sam was my friend. "What are you getting at? I don't like the implication of your question."

Sam ignored my protest. He asked, "There aren't any pending public statements from fancy attorneys I should be waiting for with bated breath?"

I'm thick sometimes. I had thought Sam and I were getting together as friends to attend a wake-slash-demolition. Part of the completing of the circle. A friendly effort to track down the always elusive, rare species that is closure.

Sam apparently had other ideas about how we were spending our time that morning. His plan felt more like interrogation.

Six months or so before, when Carmen was still pregnant, Sam had gone to a wedding in Florida and come back from the long weekend a different man. I couldn't put my finger on how, but my friend had changed.

This felt like part of that. Whatever that was.

"Really?" I said. "Cordillera? That's what you think this morning is all about? Not you and me? You're wondering if this whole mess has become another Cordillera? A Mr. Kobe Bryant, act two? And Lauren and I have starring roles?"

Sam turned his head toward me and smiled that smile of his I really didn't like. "Don't lose sight of what really happened up there in Eagle County. At the end, it wasn't about Mr. Bryant. Or his alleged victim. At the end, it was about attorneys who arranged a version of justice that they considered better than the version of justice the system--the cops, the prosecutors, the judges, the juries--might come up with."

"That's a powerful indictment, Sam."

"It is what it is. Other people, wiser people than me, were the ones who said it first. I'm just being agreeable, since--as we both know--that's my nature."

Ha.
"But this, Sam? You think this"--I swept my arm at the mess being cleaned up--"is the same thing?"

"This here? This is nothing but rubble being cleared and carried away to the dump." He smiled at himself, pleased that I'd given him the chance to deploy that metaphor. Then he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

"What do we got? We got famous folk. Not as famous as Kobe, but there's at least one real-life true national celebrity around. Yes? Allegations of sexual assault. Check. We got a vic suddenly refusing to testify. Right? And potential felonies evaporating before our eyes.
Poof.
No doubt about that happening. Then, there's the aroma of big dollars." Sam sniffed the air. "And, of course, we have superstar members of the illustrious Colorado Bar. Proverbial lawyer wizards. Two or three of those at least.

"Add it all up and you gotta admit, Alan, minus a few hundred TV cameras, all the ingredients are right here and right now. For a replay, I mean. So to speak."

"I'm offended, I think. Are you really accusing Lauren of paying off Mattin Snow in order to avoid a felony charge?"

Sam tried to pretend he was trying to look innocent. He didn't pull it off. Not even close. He said, "It was his house. He could have decided not to press charges against her, or against you. But I'm not accusing your wife. Or you, for that matter," he said. He turned his big head my way, offering me yet another creepy smile.

"Me? You think I'm paying that asshole money to go away?"

"You know, you say that with such precious indignation, it's as though you believe it has never happened before. And you say it as though you wouldn't do it now, today, if you thought it was the only way to keep you or your wife out of prison."

A short round Hispanic man and a reed-thin Hmong woman were just completing tying down the blackened carcass of the SUV on the flatbed. They were throwing a tarp over it, cinching everything down.

I wasn't about to admit it to Sam, but if things had come down the way Sam was implying they had come down--and Lauren and I were facing the ominous portent of incarceration--I would indeed have run to my nearest lawyer wizard and asked him or her to imagine me some justice that offered a different outcome.

I offered my friend a crumb. I said, "Point. I admit that. If I had to do it to save my family, I might. Okay, I would. So I'll spare you my indignation. But I will say it's not happening this time. Not with us. Not at all."

"Good," Sam said. "Glad to hear it."

"I'd feel better if I thought you believed me, Sam."

"Not my problem. What might make you feel better, I mean."

"I thought you were my friend."

"Don't act all injured on me. You and I have too much of the same dirt underneath our fingernails."

"What is it, then?"

"You may be surprised to learn this about me, my
friend,
but I don't always agree with what my bosses and the DA's office decide to do about charging people I think have committed serious crimes. I do my part. My job. I do the investigations. Sometimes I arrest the suspects. After that? The way it works, it's out of my hands."

I played along. "Really? You, a malcontent?"

"Yup, go figure. They decide to let some people walk even though I think I have all the evidence required to send them away. But even when I think they're wrong, I let it go. I believe my bosses and the DA are the ones who should be making those decisions. Why? Because that's our system.

"And sometimes it turns out--believe it or not--that I don't like how trials get conducted, what prosecutors do and don't do to bring justice to bear in criminal court. I let that go, too. Because I do believe that judges and juries and prosecutors are the ones who should be doing the people's bidding. So I keep my mouth shut. Again, I do that because that's our system.

"I live with it all. The good, the bad. Plenty of the ugly. Sometimes I'm happier than other times. But that's our system, and I go along."

I could've reminded Sam about one prominent exception to his going-along meme, but I wasn't feeling suicidal enough to bring up the solo trip he'd made late one night a year-plus back to a rented cottage on a ranch near Frederick, Colorado.

Sam hadn't forgotten Frederick. He'd never forget Frederick. He was counting on the fact that I wasn't courageous enough to use it in our argument. Sam was right.

He timed a long draw of his beer to coincide with a determined dig into the garage rubble by the front loader.

I was waiting. I could tell he wasn't done.

"The way it works? If the public doesn't like how cops like me are protecting them, their community, then they're free to go to the polls and vote out the mayor. They vote in a new mayor, who comes in and cleans house. He--or she--appoints a new police chief. The new chief fires cops, picks new division chiefs, changes priorities in the department. Hopefully, it all works out better for the public.

"If the public doesn't like how a DA is prosecuting criminals, then they're free to go to the polls and vote out the DA. They elect a new one who will do it all differently. Hopefully, once there's a new DA, it all works out better for the public.

"And if the public doesn't like how a judge is handling criminal trials, the public can vote not to retain that judge. Doesn't happen often, but the public has that choice. If they vote not to retain, they'll end up with a new judge who will handle defendants and trials differently. Once again, maybe better. Hopefully better for the public."

I watched one of the chimneys topple over after a nudge from the bucket on the excavator. It was incredibly anticlimactic. The excavator immediately reached down and grabbed on to the carcass of the old harvest-gold washing machine from the basement. Lifting it out of the junk made a lot of noise.

Sam asked if he was boring me. "Not at all," I said. "Please continue."

"But when criminal justice is outsourced--I like to think of it as hijacked--and left to the lawyers, to the private lawyers and only to the private lawyers, who exactly is it who ends up accountable to the public? Anybody at all?"

I couldn't tell if I had any lines in Sam's play right then. I decided silence was my safest option.

I'd guessed right. Sam went on. "What if the secret deals the lawyer wizards make don't work in the public interest? What then? For example"--Sam held up one finger--"because of the secret arrangements all the lawyer wizards made in Cordillera, we--the public--will never know if Mr. Kobe Bryant actually raped that woman in that hotel. Right? She said he did. He said he didn't. Maybe he did. And maybe he didn't. If he didn't, I suppose I can live with the outcome of all the fancy lawyering and secret deal-making and private justice just fine. But what if he did? What if he raped her?

"See, what I'm saying is that justice isn't only what happened between Mr. Bryant and that woman. Justice is a bigger thing. The public has a dog in that fight. An important dog."

He stared at me. I felt he was daring me to say something stupid. I didn't move a muscle.

"At the beginning? You were worried about your kids and your wife. Their safety if it turned out there was a rapist next door. Recall that? That's the public interest I'm talking about.

"Well, if Mr. Bryant did what the original indictment said he did, that would mean there is a rapist walking free, right? Today. And how shitty is that for the public? And if Mr. Bryant isn't a rapist, some other guy in some other situation who is a rapist has already gone free, or will eventually go free because of some other secret arrangements between some other lawyer wizards. Want to know how I know that?"

"Sure."

"Law of averages," Sam said. "You tell me, what is the public supposed to do when the law of averages catches up with all the secret arrangements between lawyer wizards that leaves men accused of rape walking the streets, free to pick out new victims?"

I considered responding. Then I reconsidered.

Sam went on. "I'm just asking. What is the public supposed to do when one of these private lawyer secret deals about testimony leaves a wife beater free to marry again, to get down on one knee and pick out a new victim and put a ring on her finger a few days or weeks before he reaches out and . . . breaks that finger? Hell, law of averages says it's already happened.

"I mean, what is the public's recourse when one of these secret deals about testimony leaves a
murderer
free to go on with his life, free to select a new victim?" Sam hesitated, then added, "Well?"

"Rhetorical question?" I asked. "Or has that happened, too?"

"Law of averages. If it hasn't happened, it will happen. Hardly rhetorical," Sam said.

"Okay."

Sam finished his beer. He long-tossed the bottle into a pile of rubble about to be scooped up by the front loader.

As if on cue, all the operators of all the heavy equipment killed their engines. It was break time.

Sam said, "If you're waiting for my point, and I know you are, it's this: as far as I know, there is no polling place the public can walk into to vote out the lawyer wizards. Is there? Am I missing something?"

Again, he wanted an answer. I shook my head at the "missing something" part.

"The way it is now? The way it looks like it will be going forward? If some accused criminal type can afford the fees, these lawyer wizards are absolutely free to go out and do it all again. What they did with Mr. Bryant--go into some pretty, private conference room where the public isn't invited and barter this in exchange for that. From where I sit it seems like what always ends up getting bartered is something that closely resembles testimony for something that looks a lot like money. But that's a guess. I've never actually been invited into any of those meetings.

"I guarantee you, though, that one of these lawyer wizards will end up, or has ended up, making a secret deal that leaves a rapist, or a wife beater, or a murderer, beyond the grasp of the real criminal justice system. And you know what? There isn't a damn thing the public can do about it."

Sam was making a big point. But in the moment, the finger he was figuratively pointing felt personal and accusatory.

"You think," I said, "that there was some fancy lawyering like that going on here? With us?"

"I'm afraid I do, Alan," he said. "This one didn't end quite right. I don't have a good taste in my mouth."

"It's not the beer?"

I was aiming for a laugh. I got a chuckle. "It's not the beer."

"I suggest you wait, Sam, for this one to resolve completely. A week. A month. See what shakes out. See if justice--the public kind, the justice that leaves a good taste in your mouth--finds its way back into the equation."

I hoped my words turned out to be true. I didn't want the last lie in this tragic story to be mine.

Sam sat back, extended his legs. Crossed one ankle over the other. He said, "You know something, don't you?"

He said it as though he had trouble believing I knew something.

I said, "All I know is that there are still people out there determined to do the right thing."

He stood up, towering over me. He said, "Huh, you fucking know something."

49

S
am was right about some of the rumors he'd heard.

He let me know that the civil suit that had been quietly filed by the widow against the family of Emerson Abbott did settle, not only quickly but also confidentially. The rape victim immediately decided to move from Colorado. Sam told me he thought she was "gone before the check cleared." I suspected that Hella knew where she had gone.

I didn't know, nor did I care. I hoped she found a good therapist, and something resembling closure, wherever she landed.

I was wrong in regard to the time frame I had suggested to Sam about the meandering ways of justice. But not by too much.

Mattin Snow's arrest didn't come until two days before Christmas.

He was charged with two rapes. One victim was a thirty-seven-year-old real estate agent, a local, whom he and Mimi had met on a ski trip in Telluride the previous March. The rape had occurred in the couple's rented condo in the hours after the woman had been invited over for a nightcap.

The second victim was the twenty-two-year-old daughter of a Dominican woman who cleaned Mimi and Mattin's Boulder house, the one they'd lived in before moving to Spanish Hills. The woman's daughter had been filling in during the previous year's holiday season while her mother was recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer.

Both women recalled the circumstances of the assaults, which were almost identical. Neither recalled the rapes.

According to the charges, both rapes reportedly involved powerful hypnotics like Rohypnol, and each featured Mattin Snow's perverse dominance fantasies. The rapes also involved Mimi Snow. She, Lauren told me the night before the story broke to massive media fanfare, would be the primary witness for the prosecution.

Mimi's deal with the prosecutors? She had earned herself a reasonable chance of not dying in a Colorado prison. And an outside possibility that she might get to attend her not-yet-conceived grandchild's college graduation.

Lauren thought Mimi had also bought herself some peace of mind.

Casey Sparrow had Mattin Snow out on bond in time for midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

Sam's justice--the kind the public cared about--if it were to occur at all, would have a righteous adversary.

Casey Sparrow was most definitely a lawyer wizard.

ON JANUARY THIRD, our neighbor down the lane, Ralph, somehow managed to get the post of a for-sale sign to pierce through the crust of frozen earth on the land across the lane from our house.

That was the same morning the vet gave Emily the all-clear for full activity.

She immediately resumed making nightly rounds of her parish, with gusto.

That night, I allowed Fiji to run free with her big friend, at least on the open ground where I could see her clearly.

During Emily's convalescence, the little Havanese seemed to have totally forgotten about prairie dogs. She put all her energy into shadowing Emily and emulating the Bouv's good traits, which was most of them.

Fiji was trying to earn her deputy's badge.