Point of Law (8 page)

Without her clothes, she staggered from the room and down a staircase. The party was still in full swing. Another girl took pity on her. She helped collect Kim’s clothes and drove her home. Kim ran from the car, sobbing with rage, shame, and fear. She ran right into her apartment to vomit into the sink. As she lurched and heaved over the porcelain, she didn’t notice the upturned knife in the drying rack.

Tears are rolling out of her remaining eye but her voice has no quaver in it. Despite her svelte and graceful exterior, there’s a hardness to this woman. A tough, sturdy strength. There’s a weakness to it, though. Deep underneath I get a sense of brittleness. As if it wouldn’t take much of a fall for her to break. After holding herself together for twelve years, it seems that this thing with the valley might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

“Jesus, Kim. I’m sorry,” I say uselessly.

In my head I’m taking the bloody knife back to that fraternity house. I’m carving up four young men. If I’d known her then, and if I were just a little more like Roberto, I would have taken more from them than just an eye.

I can’t help but ask, “Did they get arrested?”

I’m praying that they did. Then at least she would be given some sense of closure. Some kind of justice. My face is aimed at the water between us but my vision is lifted up, trying to gauge the psychological damage. My hands are clenched under the water so tight that my fingertips might puncture my palms.

“No. The police said they couldn’t prove that it happened, much less that it wasn’t consensual. It was their word against mine. The school didn’t even suspend them because
my date
had rich parents who gave the school a ton of money.”

“Fuck,” I say out loud. “That makes me feel really good about our justice system. What a fucking joke.”

She shrugs, now looking far calmer than I feel. “They’re always improving the laws, trying to make it work better. Like protecting witnesses and with rape shield laws and all that. After finishing law school, I worked to get what happened to me included in the elements of sexual assault. It’s still not perfect, but our laws are getting closer to being an instrument of justice.”

She can’t really believe that. In my three years as a cop I’ve come to realize that criminal law is simply a weak attempt to disguise a world of anarchy, chaos, and unfairness. A world where the rich and the strong prosper and the weak suffer. It’s a pretense, the idea that the laws are based on it being better to let ten guilty men go free than convict a single innocent man. Innocent men are still convicted, and the guilty, even when they are convicted, rarely pay what they should. And the so-called “search for the truth” of the trial process is totally ridiculous. Evidence is often inadmissible because it’s “too prejudicial.” The defendant has the right to remain silent or lie even when he knows the truth. The right to plead not guilty even when he
is
guilty, then to beg for forgiveness prior to sentencing. The right to challenge evidence even if it’s both reliable and probative. And he has the right to counsel, who will counsel him not to confess, not to answer questions, who will blame the victims, and will do everything in his or her power to get the client off.

I close my eyes and slouch lower in the water. I make an effort to unclench my fists but it doesn’t work.

“Glad you asked?”

She’s smiling again, a sort of sad half-smile. She splashes water onto her face to wash away the tears.

“I’m sorry, Kim. Again.”

“Hey, I don’t want to be depressing. I shouldn’t have even told you. It’s just that you pretty much saved me in the meadow there, and I feel like I owe you for that. Believe me, it’s not something I talk about much. So tell me, what do you do when you’re not being a famous climber?” She’s trying hard to lighten the mood.

“I’m a cop. A special agent for the Attorney General’s Office in Wyoming. I mostly take down meth labs.”

“Really?” She cocks her head. “What you were saying just a minute ago, about the law being a joke . . . Well, it doesn’t sound like something a police officer would say.”

“It’s exactly what most cops I know would say. It’s just a game.”

“What about the scar on your face? Did that happen climbing or policing?”

I feel foolish, after having heard what happened to her. Earlier I’d played with the thought of how our disfigurements might bring us together. “Climbing,” I say. “Just climbing.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. It was a good trip despite getting smacked in the face by a falling rock. I couldn’t wait to do it again.”

Kim smiles fully for the first time since we’ve gotten in the spring. “You’re honest,” she says, “too honest and intelligent to be so dumb.” Then, after a minute, “I can’t imagine why you guys do it. Risk your lives on the cliff for nothing. How is it worth it? Don’t you get scared up there?”

I want to explain it to her but don’t know how without sounding even dumber. I want to tell her about the joy that comes with the terror, and how it bursts into flame when the fear is conquered. The bigger the fear, the bigger the rush. The best rushes come more than a thousand feet off the deck, when you’ve got a hundred-and-fifty-foot rope-length of shitty gear connecting you to your partner and it feels as if Death is climbing just beneath you, grasping at your ankles. When your heart is pounding out a heavy-metal rhythm at a hundred and eighty beats a minute and your muscles are racked with lactic acid. When the easiest thing in the world would be to just let go. But you don’t. You fight.

I don’t say any of this, though. I’m realizing that I know nothing about fear compared to her. Nothing about the consequences I take such delight in cheating.

Instead I just say, “You ought to try it sometime, Kim.”

She laughs this time. “No thanks. Not until hell freezes over.”

Neither of us realizes that Satan is pulling on a pair of his warmest socks.

NINE

T
ONIGHT
I
DON
’
T
go back over to join the activists’ bonfire—playing the peacemaker between Dad and Roberto has to take priority. They’d apparently argued while climbing down in the canyon this afternoon. When they returned, my father’s face was tight with a frown. Even Roberto’s ever-present smile looked forced beneath his crystal blue eyes. But I couldn’t seem to focus on our family’s problems. Instead I watched the dark shapes of the activists moving before the flames from across the meadow, trying to spot Kim. While my brother and father talk loudly over the hiss of my stove with false amiability about past climbs, visions of Kim’s tan skin, slim hips, and small breasts beneath the yellow fabric float through my mind. Foolishly, I know, I’ve convinced myself that I’m the one who can ease her pain.

“Remember that trip to Notchtop Spire?” Dad asks. “When you and Antonio dropped the rope?”

Roberto groans and laughs. We’d been very young at the time, just boys, thrilled to be allowed to climb with Dad up a moderately serious alpine route. We climbed all day with my father leading then belaying Roberto and me, who were tied ten feet apart at the end of the rope. He led us up to broad ledges before the real business began just below the spire’s peak. Halfway up, a steady drizzle engulfed us. It took hours to reach the summit because Dad had to haul us most of the way. Finally, on the summit’s tiny perch, he set up a rappel off the back side while Roberto and I readied the rope. A sudden bolt of lightning frightened us—we somehow managed to drop the rope too close to the edge. It slithered down the steep incline like an angry snake until it snagged on a flake of rock fifty feet below. Dad didn’t berate us, but his eyes gave us a beating. He had to risk his life soloing down to the rope on the slick granite. We’d been scared shitless, thinking he was so disgusted he would leave without us. Or die. But he came back, the errant rope coiled neatly over his shoulder.

“How’s the parole going?” Dad asks out of nowhere. His voice is as nonchalant as if he were asking Roberto how his motorcycle is running.

Roberto stares at him for a while before answering. There’s no smile at all on his face now. “Fine.”

“They still having you do UAs?” Dad means urine analysis to detect the presence of drugs in my brother’s blood.

“Yep.” The single word comes out hard.

“Are they coming back clean?”

“Yep,” he answers after another pause, harder still.

How is that?
I wonder and I know my father does too. But I’m desperately trying to think of a way to change the subject.

Then Roberto answers for us, smiling suddenly. “You know, I guess I don’t hydrate enough or something. Sometimes I’ve got to bring my own piss in a bag. Or someone else’s.” He doesn’t have to tell us this; he doesn’t have to be honest about it. But I guess he wants to rub it in to see what Dad will do.

But the issue arouses my professional curiosity. I know that parolees are watched by their parole officer as they pee in the cup just so that they can’t bring it in a bag. “Doesn’t your PO watch?” I ask.

“Sure, she likes to watch. There and at her apartment sometimes later.”

Without a word Dad pushes himself to his feet and stomps away into the dark.

It’s still hours before dawn when I’m awakened by the sound of distant voices. I sit up in my sleeping bag and hear nylon rustling nearby as my brother and father do the same. Tiny sparks jump from where the fabric scrunches in the dry alpine air.

“What the fuck?” Roberto is saying.

The voices come from across the meadow at the activists’ camp. There’s what sounds like a small cheer from a group of the environmentalists. I slide out of my bag and see the shapes of people gathered in the darkness. A million stars illuminate the meadow in the moon’s monthly absence. Feeling the chill air, I shiver and turn around three hundred and sixty degrees. Up high on the mountain, where the workers had been hammering and sawing two days before, flames are leaping like they’re dancing above some enormous campfire.
The lodge,
I realize.

I tell Roberto and Dad there’d been some threats at the meeting the night before about burning down the structure Fast was building. Some hotheads—I don’t say any names—didn’t want to go along with Kim’s legal strategy.

“Goddamn fanatics. Lunatics,” my father says sadly.

“Way to go!” Roberto responds, shouting toward the activists’ camp. He raises a clenched fist to the stars in a power salute.

I pull on a pair of jeans and the fleece jacket that I’d been using as a pillow. “I’ll see if I can figure out what’s up,” I tell them.

“Stay here, Ant. It’s not your fight. You’re already too involved. You don’t want any of this mess sticking to you.”

I go anyway.

The activists’ camp is obviously divided. I’d noticed that at the campfire meeting two nights ago. In the dim glow of the distant flames up on the mountain, I first recognize some of the young men and women from Cal’s crowd. As a whole they seem younger and appear to have more metal studs in their ears, noses, and eyebrows than Kim’s older and more conservative supporters. The silver piercings spark with orange in the reflected light. They’re talking excitedly to one another, occasionally slapping hands.

The others, Kim’s followers, are solemn and quiet. They remain in the trees at the meadow’s edge. I see several of them shake their heads in the direction of the burning lodge.

I find Kim sitting alone in the dark on the trunk of a felled tree. She’s watching the blaze, too, with her head lowered and her sleep-tangled hair covering the eye patch and most of her face.

“Hey.”

She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look my way. Uninvited, I sit down next to her.

“Where’s Cal?” I ask.

She shrugs. We sit in silence for a little while, listening to the chatter of Cal’s friends. In the breeze coming off the mountain, I can smell burning wood and insulation. It’s a chemical scent. I sniff the breeze for gasoline or some other accelerant, but we’re too far away to pick up any indicators of arson.

“Asshole,” she finally says. “He has no idea how this will look to the Forest Service. And in court. If there was ever any chance of convincing them to deny the swap, it’s gone now.”

There’s something in her voice, though, beneath her words, that makes me look at her carefully. It’s what I think might be a note of vindictive pleasure. Maybe even triumph.

TEN

F
AR DOWN THE
valley, where the Forest Service road winds up toward the meadow from the highway, there are flashing red and white lights but no sirens. Ten minutes later a fire engine noses into the meadow over the ruts in the rough road. The heavy machine moves barely faster than a crawl. Close behind it are two SUVs bearing the emblems of a sheriff’s department. I’m not surprised to see them, as often state and county peace officers have jurisdiction in national forests by agreement with the federal government, which doesn’t have the manpower to investigate all the crimes that occur on the millions of acres of federal land. Although I barely have a glimpse of them before they turn onto the newly cut access road that twists its way up Wild Fire Mountain to where the lodge is still burning, I’m able to follow their flashing lights all the way.

By the time the emergency vehicles reach the lodge, the flames are already starting to die down on their own accord. There probably isn’t a lot for the fire truck to do but start an arson investigation. The remains of the building glow orange and red like molten lava in the predawn sky.

About a half hour after the emergency vehicles passed through the meadow, when the sun’s first rays are curving around the mountains and into the valley, there’s the roar of another engine coming up the road. I recognize Fast’s gleaming black Suburban as it tears into the meadow with the horn blaring angrily. He keeps the sound up nearly all the way to the burnt-out lodge to ensure that the activists—his enemies—are aware of his displeasure.

It’s full dawn by the time the emergency vehicles come back down the mountain. The fire truck disappears down toward the highway after bumping past us. The two police SUVs return behind it and they park not far from the activists’ camp. It’s light enough now that I can read the emblem on the trucks’ doors. It’s the emblem of the Tomichi County Sheriff’s Department.

Having worked all over the state of Wyoming, I’ve gotten to know many types of rural county sheriffs. There are the Good Old Boys, the friendly slobs who are elected to office by nature of their good humor and their families’ long-standing presence in the community. There are the Transplants, former senior officers in big cities who bring their knowledge and efficiency to pastoral states in order to escape bureaucracy and overwhelming amounts of senseless urban crime. There are the Flunkies, who are elected by the town’s prominent families or businessmen in order to serve their self-interests. There are the Bad Boys, who seek the job as a power trip and love the authority it gives them to bully the county’s weaker citizens. And then there are the Reachers, ambitious men who take the job and strive to be perfect at it in order to use it as a trampoline to higher office. All these characteristics are usually present to some degree, but usually one trait is most prominent.

The sheriff of this Colorado town is something new: a Caricature. If Hollywood were to come looking for someone new to play Wyatt Earp, then Sheriff Munik is already dressed for the role and working hard to be in character.

He is a tall, wiry man roughly my father’s age. Tufts of salt-and-pepper hair curl from beneath his white Stetson. A wide and drooping cowboy’s mustache makes his long face seem even longer. His eyes are steel gray and set close together, like a gunfighter’s. Typical of a county sheriff, he doesn’t wear a uniform—just boots, jeans, pearl-button shirt, and a blazer with leather hunting patches. But his job is obvious because of where his coat is hitched up over the revolver that’s strapped to his hip. I almost smile when I see that the gun is an enormous old Colt .45. It completes the cowboy image.

Despite his corny appearance, my next impression is that he appears competent. When David Fast tears back into the meadow and springs from his truck—red-faced, cursing, and looking seriously pissed off—the sheriff strides over to him and pushes the developer back toward the open driver’s door. I hear the sheriff say, “Davy, for your own damned good, sit down and stay put. I don’t want you interfering while I talk to these folk.”

It’s interesting that Burgermeister remains in the passenger seat. He too looks pissed, and the expression on his face is far more dangerous than Fast’s, but he apparently wants nothing to do with the sheriff. I remember noting his jailhouse tattoos and bet he has a record. He’s going to let his employer and partner handle this side of things.

Fast argues briefly but I can’t hear what he’s saying other than the occasional four-letter word. Finally, though, he pulls himself back behind the steering wheel and he slams the Suburban’s door.

For a moment Burgermeister’s eyes meet mine through the windshield. He glares at me. Used to receiving such treatment from the suspects I’ve arrested, I’m nevertheless surprised by the lethal potency of his gaze. It even makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Alf Burgermeister has a world-class stink eye. But I don’t look away. The bruises I’d received at the hands and boots of him and his men seem to radiate heat beneath my skin. Just to be rude, I slowly smile and tap my raised knee to remind him of how I’d brought it up between his legs.

No one’s kicking the Hacky Sack in the meadow as the sheriff and a deputy, a very short and chunky guy with the swagger of a teenager who has become a cop just to take revenge on the big people, start interviewing the environmentalists. The sheriff does the talking. He’s not accusing anyone, but his tone makes it clear the activists are all likely suspects. I stand with the group around him trying to eavesdrop and at the same time trying to avoid being questioned. My father and brother are wiser and stay at our camp at the far end of the meadow.

While the sheriff gathers people’s names and addresses, the small deputy writes them down with great difficulty. The pen looks ridiculously large in his stubby fingers. Making it even harder on himself, he wears fingerless leather gloves—also a trait I’m familiar with from my experiences with small-town law enforcement. The gloves are the insignia of the head-busters—cops who like to hit, who do it often enough that they need to wear the gloves to keep from splitting a knuckle on a suspect’s head. Like the sheriff, it’s an image thing, I guess. But it’s hard to imagine this little guy doing much damage.

The sheriff asks if anyone left the campsites that evening. No one admits that they had, and no one mentions Cal’s name. But I can see from the uneasy looks on some of the older activists’ faces that they’re likely to have a personal chat with Sheriff Munik the next time they go into town. Probably that very afternoon. At that point Cal will certainly be fingered as the perpetrator of the arson.

At one point, when the sheriff and his deputy are close to me, the horn blasts again from Fast’s truck. Through the windshield I can see Burgermeister still glaring at me and Fast motioning to the sheriff. Munik shakes his head in irritation and again stalks over to the gleaming Suburban. Fast leans out the open window, pointing at me, and then jabs his index finger toward my father and brother across the meadow.

“What’s your name, son?” the sheriff asks me when he returns.

I tell him my name and his deputy takes down my current address in Lander. Answering his questions, I explain that I’m in the valley to climb, and that I hadn’t been with the activists the night before.

“What happened to your face?”

“It’s a long story, Sheriff. I broke my cheekbone climbing a few years ago, then I got in a little scuffle yesterday and it split open again.”

“Tell me about the scuffle.”

I explain what had happened after the demonstration in the meadow.

“You looking to press charges?”

I shake my head. “Not unless they are,” I say, indicating where Fast and Burgermeister still glare from behind the windshield. “From my point of view, it isn’t something anyone’s likely to get convicted of.”

“How’d you know what a fellow can get convicted of?”

“I’m a special agent with the AG’s Office in Wyoming, sort of like your CBI guys here in Colorado.”

Munik looks at me with fresh interest in his metallic eyes. “You’re a cop?” His deputy pauses as he strains to finish a note on the pad and tilts his head up at me without smiling. I can sense a critical assessment from behind his sunglasses. Some cops are like that; they don’t like an outsider stepping onto their turf.

“Technically, yeah. Mostly I deal with drug stuff.”

The sheriff gestures with his hands at a scruffy young gathering of the activists, and says, “Too bad you’re out of your jurisdiction, Agent. Bet you’d have your hands full with this crowd. Are those two, over there, with you?” He points at where Dad and Roberto are finishing their breakfast.

“My brother and father. As I’m sure Mr. Fast just told you, they were involved in that scuffle yesterday, too. Like me, they don’t want to press charges.”

Munik clears his throat. “Right now the three of you ought to be more worried about charges being filed against
you
.” The pint-sized deputy beside him smirks at me from behind his wraparound shades.

The sheriff wants to talk to my family. As we walk over to them, my brother puts on his own mirrored sunglasses. With a frown, I remember having seen him wander into the forest a little earlier while I was hanging out in the activists’ camp. He probably took a post-breakfast walk in order to give himself a start-me-up injection.

“You look familiar,” the sheriff says to my brother after I’ve introduced them. “You been in any trouble in my county?”

Roberto smiles. “No, Wyatt, at least none you know about.” My brother has obviously picked up on the same carefully cultivated resemblance. By the angry squint Munik gives him in return, I can tell he doesn’t take it as a compliment. At least not coming from my brother’s mocking mouth.

Roberto looks the short deputy over, taking in first his face, his fingerless gloves, his boots, and then his name tag. The aluminum tag on his breast reads “B. J. Timms.” My brother is good at reading the vibe coming from people, and he clearly doesn’t like the one he’s getting from Deputy Timms.

“B. J.,” my brother says, “what does that stand for? Blow job? You probably don’t even need to kneel.”

From behind the police officers, I shake my head frantically at Roberto, willing him to shut up. The officers stare at him in disbelief. Before the words take effect, my father interrupts, “You’ll have to excuse my son, Sheriff. Deputy. He has a problem with his manners when speaking to authority.”

The sheriff doesn’t take his eyes off his own reflection in Roberto’s glasses. “Nothing a trip to the woodshed wouldn’t fix, I’ll bet.”

I’m thankful that Roberto doesn’t say anything further, though he does once again give the sheriff his sardonic grin. The sheriff lets it go by just shaking his head. Deputy B. J. Timms, on the other hand, appears to be in apoplectic shock. He’s frozen in his boots and his face is turning a screaming red.

“Both my sons were here with me all night. I can vouch for them,” Dad says.

The sheriff allows himself a chuckle. “But who can vouch for you? Your sons? That isn’t exactly a sterling alibi, Mr. Burns.” Again, Munik’s tone isn’t accusatory. It sounds to me like he’s simply trying to convey the fact that at this point no one’s above suspicion for having lit the fire.

But my father’s face grows hard anyway. I don’t imagine he’s ever had his integrity called into question before.

“Sheriff, I’m a colonel in the United States Air Force. I can assure you that I’m not interested in any petty vandalism.”

The Wyatt Earp look-alike doesn’t respond except to grunt noncommittally. His eyes pick over my ancient Land Cruiser, the alert and menacing beast tied to the bumper, our unrolled sleeping bags, and Roberto’s huge bike. I’m thankful that unlike many off-road trucks, mine doesn’t have extra fuel containers mounted on the back. But despite the brawl with Fast and his men in the meadow, I don’t really believe we can be suspects. After all, we’d pretty much won the fight. We have no need to seek revenge against the developer.

“Hell of a dog,” he comments, “if that’s what it is.”

“I took possession of him after a raid on a meth lab,” I tell him, feeling the need to reestablish that I’m a cop, too. “He was rumored to have eaten a missing informant.”

That makes the sheriff chuckle again. “Looks like he could do it, all right.”

Munik has to ask Deputy Timms twice to write down my father’s and brother’s addresses. The first time the deputy didn’t respond to his command. His gleaming black boots were still rooted to the earth as he glared furiously up at my brother. He finally takes down their information like he had the others, but his tiny hands now have a noticeable quiver. As usual, Roberto hasn’t made any friends.

The sheriff tells us, “Don’t go anywhere for the next couple of days. I’ll probably be wanting to talk with you gentlemen again.”

“We plan on being here for two more days at most,” Dad says. He wants to make it clear to the sheriff that he’s not taking orders from anyone. Munik responds by giving my father a long gunfighter look and spitting some tobacco sideways onto the grass. Two bull elk, I think. Shit, three, with Roberto. And then me and the pint-sized deputy. It wouldn’t take a whole lot to start another brawl right here. My brother had come close to doing that already.

Without another word Sheriff Munik walks back over to Fast’s Suburban, followed by his sidekick. Even from this distance I can see the sheriff and the developer arguing hotly. Obviously Munik is unwilling to do what Fast wants. Fast probably wants us arrested. He finally slams his truck into gear and roars out of the meadow, tearing two long strips of grass and alpine flowers from the ground. I take the ferocity of his exit as a warning, or maybe a threat. It seems to say, “I’ll be back.”

Then the brake lights flash as Cal steps out of the trees just where the road begins its descent down the valley to the highway. Cal stares without expression at Fast’s truck, but there’s something arrogant, something victorious in the young man’s posture. When he walks across the road, and when the sheriff’s view of him is blocked by Fast’s tinted windows, Cal takes a lighter from his pocket, grins, and lights the flame.