Badwater (13 page)

“Fuck you, Ross.”

“You watch it, QuickDraw. Watch it.”

eighteen

I
t was already evening when I parked in the pullout near the river. The sun had just disappeared behind the snowcapped summits of the Absaroka Mountains, and the shadows of the pines were fading into the growing gloom.

There was only one other car on the side of the highway, a VW Jetta that was nearly as beat-up and rust-spotted as my Pig. No one was in it, but I could see only an expensive-looking mountain bike wedged tight in the backseat. The engine was cold when I put my hand on the paint-flaked hood. I decided the car had probably broken down. The driver must have hitched into town instead of pedaling.

It seemed safe to let Mungo out to play. She shivered with pleasure as she leapt out of the truck. It had been a long, truck-bound day for her.

I hopped over the guardrail as Mungo slunk under it, then we walked a short distance through the trees on the well-littered trail. It ended on top of the giant boulder above the river. It looked a lot different in the dusk than it had in the frenzied daylight, when I’d helped wrestle the stretcher up from the beach. Then there’d been shouting gawkers, hustling paramedics, frantic police officers, raving young cousins, and one dead child. Now it was eerily quiet except for the distant thunder of the rapids upstream. All the adrenaline-induced brilliance of sound, color, and energy was gone.

But the memories of it all lingered in my mind like vengeful phantoms. The river had not released its grip on me. I could still feel its power. I could still hear it roaring in my ears. I could still see the blurry white shape spread over the darker, jumbled coffins. I could still feel the inexorable pull toward it.

My lungs tightened and, even though I was standing immobile, I found myself taking fast, shallow breaths.

Things were even eerier once I climbed up onto the flat top of the rock where the battle had taken place. Here, piled high on a flat space just shy of the edge, were stuffed animals, bouquets of flowers, and dozens of hand-drawn cards. The mound of tribute lay in a half circle around a crucifix someone had pounded into a crack in the rock’s surface.

“Check it out,” I murmured to Mungo.

I’d never seen this kind of spontaneous gesture. I had to fight to push away the thought that again twisted my gut—if I’d only gotten there sooner, if only I’d been brave enough to complete that first dive . . .

I realized I’d better get busy before it got too dark to see.

Unlikely as it was, what I’d come to find was the stick Cody had used to swat Jonah. Since the younger Mann brothers denied there being a stick, or even any rock-throwing, I figured that showing the stick to Luke might encourage him to cut Jonah—and Mattie—a break. It would help prove that there really was a struggle and that Cody and the Mann boys had instigated it. On a more practicable level, it would also prove that the best witnesses for the prosecution—the boys—had lied. Maybe it would be enough to get Luke to swallow his pride and political stratagems and just get rid of this whole thing. But the stick, I knew, had in all likelihood gone off the edge with the boy. There remained a chance, however slight, that it could have washed up on the beach below. I looked around on top of the boulder and all I could find were small twigs, rocks, and pine needles.

A crunching sound like a footstep made me jump. It came from over the edge that led down to the beach, where I was just about to go. Nothing followed it—just silence. I played the sound over in my head, wondering what it could have been. Some animal walking on the river stones was my best guess. A bear? A moose? Something attempting to be furtive, knowing Mungo and I were up here poking around. I looked at Mungo and saw her standing where the boys’ bikes had been on that afternoon three days before. Her head was raised, her nostrils quivering.

I took three quick steps to the edge and looked down. Then I jumped again.

What was down there on the beach was scarier than any ghost, or even a grizzly. It was the lawyer, Brandy Walsh. Her hands were on her hips and she seemed to be glowering up at me.

“Hello,” I called.

She didn’t answer.

“It’s Ant,” I added in case she couldn’t make me out in the twilight. “Antonio Burns. We, uh, met yesterday morning.”

She looked very different than she had in the county attorney’s conference room, but no less intense. She appeared to be wearing cycling clothes—tight black shorts and some lighter-colored sleeveless top. She must have gone for a ride before coming here. Something small, like a camera, hung around her neck. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and there was a pair of sporty sunglasses pushed up in her hair. If it hadn’t been for the familiar disapproval radiating in my direction, I might not have recognized her.

“Hi,” she finally said, her voice flat.

“What are you doing here?”

She hesitated a moment before answering. When she did, her voice was more strident. I realized I’d probably really freaked her out by showing up here just as it was getting dark.
Good,
I thought.

“Looking for the branch my client was struck with. It wasn’t listed as evidence on the initial report your pal Luke gave us.”

“That’s why I’m here, too. Did you find it?”

The ponytail swung a little as she shook her head.

“No. Not yet.”

I squatted, turned, then carefully scrambled down twenty feet to the beach. When I faced her, she still had her hands on her hips, but she’d moved back a few feet. I examined the beach with its smooth, round stones.

There were pieces of wood scattered everywhere. Most of the ones I could see were too short or too thick to match the descriptions I’d gotten from Jonah, Mattie, and Pete the Guide. Or they appeared to be bleached, like they’d been in the water, not up on the cliff. But it was hard to tell, it was getting so dark. Then I noticed a small pile of long sticks behind Brandy Walsh. She was standing directly in front of it. I realized she was trying to shield it from my view.

I pointed at her ankles.

“Any likely suspects in that pile?”

“I won’t know until I show them to my client.”

The way she said it, it was clear she didn’t intend to give them up.

I smiled and said lightly, “I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to take them. They’re potential evidence. They’ve got to be bagged and tagged. I promise to make sure you have access to them, though.”

The ponytail swung again. “No. I found them. I’m going to take them.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Walsh. I can’t let you do that. Finder’s keepers doesn’t apply at a crime scene.”

Now she took her hands off her hips and folded her arms across her chest. She had a small black tube in her right hand. Pepper spray, I suspected, and almost laughed.

Was this twenty-something surfer-turned-lawyer really about to gas me? She was good-looking all right, but about as mean as a junkyard dog. I waited for her to make her move, and readied myself. If her arms unfolded, I decided I was going to run. There was no way I was going to fight her. Being a sneaky lawyer, she’d probably claim I’d accosted her. Tried to rape her or something. No, she could have the damn sticks.

“Look, I’m just doing my job,” I said.

I also felt bad for her. She’d probably been out here all afternoon, gathering her little pile of wood, and thinking about her client in jail and how badly he’d been treated, thinking about all the bad things she’d probably heard about me, and then here I was, in the dark, scaring her to death, and threatening to take her sticks.

“I’m supposed to collect all the evidence and witness statements and hand them over. It’s up to you lawyers what happens from there,” I tried again.

“Is that right? Just doing your job? Is that why you handcuffed Jonah and put him in jail? Is that why you allowed him to be brutally assaulted in there?”

“Listen, I’m the one who—”

She wasn’t listening. Her pretty face, with its high cheekbones and oval shape, wore a very unpleasant expression. She was half smiling and half scowling, every feature loaded with scorn.

“Is that why you and Luke Endow stood around smirking after having him locked up on a no-bond hold?”

“I wasn’t—”

“Is that why you’re charging him with murder instead of something even remotely related to what actually occurred? Why you’re refusing to negotiate a plea appropriate—”

I held up a hand with the palm to her face.

“Whoa. It was you and your boss who didn’t want to negotiate yesterday. If Luke is being intractable, it’s just because you guys came into town yesterday and busted his balls, and because he’s getting a lot of heat from the community. All he’s probably trying to do is leverage you guys into a reasonable deal at a more reasonable time. But then you and your professor spit in his face. I know you’re pretty new to this, but there’s a way these things generally work.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Oh? And that makes it right?”

Before I could think of a way to explain the system that wouldn’t make it sound too corrupt or me too self-serving, she continued, “While you’re trying to answer that one, why don’t you tell me why they call you QuickDraw?”

It was said with such sweet venom that if she’d been a man, I would have knocked out her teeth. This was one vicious lawyer.

I took a deep breath. Then another.

Very quietly I said, “Don’t call me that.” Then, after another moment: “Look, I know you don’t like me. You’ve probably heard some ugly rumors about me.” Why did I care? I’d always needed to be liked—it was what had driven me to be so effective undercover, but I’d learned to live without it since Cheyenne and Baja. Now this nasty little lawyer was making me need it more urgently than ever. “But those are just rumors. Unsubstantiated accusations. But they don’t matter here. I’m just trying to do my job as best as I can. This whole thing sucks, as far as I’m concerned, but I’m doing what I can to see that Jonah’s treated fairly.”

“Don’t move,” she hissed.

Her arms uncrossed from where she’d been holding them over her chest. Startled by the force of her whispered voice, I didn’t. Even when the little black tube of tear gas was extended in my direction.
Here it comes,
I thought. But then I could see that her face was tilted up, that she was looking somewhere over my head.

“There’s something up there,” she said quietly.

Slowly, I turned around and looked up the steep rock wall that led to the top of the boulder. For a moment I couldn’t see anything. Then I made out a long snout and two glinting eyes protruding over the edge above us.

I laughed.

“That’s my mutt. Mungo, get your ass down here.”

She lunged over the edge and came sliding down the slope, landing in a long-legged tangle. As she regained her footing at my side, I noticed Brandy backing away.

“She’s harmless,” I said.

But Brandy kept walking backward on the stones, holding her little canister pointed at both of us. It was hard to believe this mean, tough lawyer could be so afraid of an animal like Mungo.

“Really,” I insisted. “She’s friendly. Smile, Mungo.”

Mungo dutifully raised her upper lip, exposing long, white teeth. Brandy Walsh’s extended arm shook then tightened, and I closed my eyes and winced. I belatedly realized that someone scared of a dog might not see Mungo’s sheepish grin as being disarming. But the blast of pepper spray didn’t come.

Instead Brandy circled to the side, then launched up a section of the rock wall that was far steeper than the easy section right behind me.

“Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were scared of dogs.”

“Now you do, jerk.”

Moving fast, she grabbed good edges with her hands and smeared toeholds with her feet. She kept her butt far out from the rock—a counterintuitive move climbers use for maximum traction. But it made her camera swing and bang against the stone.

“You’re a climber?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

At the top, she hesitated. She’d abandoned her pile of sticks. I’d won. I rubbed Mungo’s head appreciatively.

“Why do you care?” she demanded. Then: “Some of my friends climb at Vedauwoo. I’ve watched them a few times.”

Vedauwoo.
The word was magic to me. Vedauwoo was my spiritual home. When my father was based nearby at Warren Air Force Base, the whole family had spent many good days there. Before Dad had been forced to resign because of his son’s conduct and retire to Mom’s family ranch in Argentina. Before all the bad things started happening to Roberto and, later, me.

“That’s a really nice place,” I said almost reverently. “Good rock. Fat cracks.”

Maybe something about my tone, or her position of relative safety high above us, caused her voice to soften just a little.

“Do you still climb?” she asked me.

The question meant that she knew I used to. It also meant she knew more about me than just the lies and innuendo she’d probably read about that long-ago fiasco in Cheyenne. I’d never been anywhere near as famous a climber as my brother, but some of the stuff I’d done did occasionally make it into the climbing mags. At least she couldn’t know about Baja—the only thing I had to be really ashamed of. No one had ever publicly connected me to that.

“Pretty much every day. There’s a lot of good rock around here. You ought to come out with me. We could talk about Jonah’s case. See if we can work out a way to keep Luke and your professor from butting heads to Jonah’s detriment.”

She remained still and silent, a silhouette before the first faint stars. And I wondered why the hell I’d gone and said that. Maybe it was because I knew that she was, or had been, an athlete, too. Or maybe it was because I wanted to prove myself to her, prove that the rumors weren’t true. Or maybe, more pathetically, it was because she was just so damn good-looking and I kind of liked being treated like shit.

When she answered, it was in the flat, disdainful voice she’d been using before.

“Thanks, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

Then she disappeared. After a minute the Jetta’s misfiring engine snarled to life and reverberated down the highway.

Roberto called just as I was plopping two fillets of fresh-caught trout into a pan of butter and garlic. I hesitated, staring at the phone’s backlit screen, wondering if I had the courage to answer. My instinct was not to, to just let it chime shrilly until the message system picked up and the flashing light kicked off, then to take the pan off the flames and fire up a bowl instead. I looked up at the sky and saw Orion burning brightly. It was a constellation I’d always associated with my brother. The great, impulsive hunter, drunk and wounded and blind, staggering about in the sky.