Badwater (28 page)

forty-five

W
ith typical arrogance, Bogey arrived at the river at 4:30
A
.
M
., a half hour late. No matter what he’d said on the phone, how he’d pretended to be delighted that she was “back,” I guess he had to demonstrate to Brandy that, even now, he wouldn’t be pushed around. And that was okay with me. I was fine with everything just as long as he showed up at the river.

I’d placed her out on the rock, near the pile of mildewing stuffed animals, the survivors that hadn’t been blown into the river along with the flowers by the violent storm two days earlier.

Her back was to the single small tree that grew from the crack in the rock. From her position, she could see the headlights that swept through the trees by the highway as Bogey pulled into the turnout. She informed me of this in a whisper. I was hidden in a bush just twenty feet away. Although the moon had disappeared, I could see her face clearly in the starlight. She didn’t look scared, but I was.

The river gurgled ominously behind and below her. I could almost feel it sucking me in.

I watched silently as she felt through her two shirts and hit the
RECORD
button on the microcassette. A little earlier, she’d wondered why I was having her do this. She said it couldn’t possibly work. Bogey had been aware she might have been trying to record him on the phone and had avoided saying anything incriminating. Why was I so sure he’d fall apart at the sight of her and start babbling?

“Like I told you before,” I’d said. “I’ve been building cases for eight years now. Before all that QuickDraw stuff started, I was the best investigator in the state.”

I said it without modesty, simply stating a fact. It was true. But I could read her mind:
Yeah,
she’d wanted to say,
but the last three years you haven’t done anything but fuck up, right? After what I heard about Mexico, I think an argument could be made that your judgment might be a little suspect.

She did what I asked, though. I think she trusted me. And she sure as hell owed me.

An engine died, a car door snicked shut, and footsteps could be heard coming down the trail, led by a bobbing flashlight. Ostrich-skin cowboy boots crunched on leaves and gravel.

I saw her take a deep breath then stand up.

“Hello?” a voice behind the flashlight called.

“Right here, dickhead.”

Language, language,
I wanted to chide her. Until tonight I’d never heard her use an obscenity. I was feeling almost giddy with relief about Roberto and tremendous excitement about what was happening right here. Finally, I believed, I could get Jonah Strasburg’s case off my back. Justice, or at least the closest thing to it, would be done.

He came closer, warily, turning and shining the light around him, saying, “Brandy? Are you okay? How did you get here?”

“Never mind how I got here. All you need to know is that I got out of that cabin you left me in. Tied up and freezing to death.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brandy.” He played the light over her, slowly, down from her face to her feet. “Where did you get those clothes?”

“Shut the fuck up, Bogey. You’re going to listen to me now. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to publicly apologize for demonizing this town and insulting its county attorney. Then you’re going to go to Luke Endow and beg him for the very best deal he can offer Jonah. If it’s fair, commensurate with what we know of the facts, then you’ll convince Jonah to take it. If it’s not, you recuse yourself from the case and have me assigned. Solo.”

“I can’t do that,” Bogey said. “You’ve never tried a case, Brandy. It would be depriving our client of the best defense available, something I recall you believing is an intrinsic right. He’s entitled to a no-holds-barred defense, something only I can offer him.”

“If you don’t do as I say, I’ll expose you.”

Bogey turned all the way around again. He shined the light at the bush I was hiding behind, but then it moved on, probing others.

“Who brought you here? I’m guessing it was Burns, and that he’s your co-conspirator in whatever stunt the two of you are trying to pull. Where is he? Why don’t you ask him to come out?”

He was getting closer to admitting something. That was one reason for this whole setup, but only a minor one. I wanted to backdoor Bogey into talking about what he’d done to Brandy by getting him to agree to follow her instructions about the case. His agreement would imply that he was guilty—why else would he follow her orders? I hadn’t been able to tell her this. If we’d planned this too hard, she might have come off fake.

“There’s no one here but us,” she lied, and we both knew that
he
knew she was probably lying. “Are you going to agree to my conditions, Bogey? Or am I going to have to take you down?”

“Come on out, Agent Burns,” he called. “Come out, come out.”

Brandy now said exactly what I had coached her to. “He’s not here. He saw you at the cabin, though. And he saw you dragging that carcass inside. Now, do you agree to my terms, asshole?”

Bogey stopped calling and studied her again.

“Brandy, what you ask isn’t in our client’s best interest.”

“Kidnapping and trying to kill me wasn’t in
my
best interest, you scumbag. You agree to my conditions or I’ll tell the police, the press, the university—everyone—about what you’ve done. Either beg Endow for a deal and apologize publicly, or else you’re going to be exposed.”

“Oh, are those all of your conditions?” he asked sarcastically. “Just end my career?”

She gave an evil laugh.

“Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me, shithead. That’s another one. You surrender your license to practice law as soon as Jonah pleads to a reduced charge. God knows you were worthless at it anyway—you always had to cheat, didn’t you?”

He shined the light in her eyes, moving closer. I knew what he was doing. He was blinding her.

“You bitch,” he hissed.

She’d finally gotten to him. Just as I knew she would.

“Get away from me,” she started to say. But only got as far as “Get—” before his hands were on her shoulders. The afterglow of the flashlight would still be in her eyes, looking like a red sun. He started to swing her around. She tried to resist, but she didn’t know where the edge was anymore. She didn’t know which way to fight—she might fall right off it. The way Cody Wallis probably had.

I stood up and starting walking. I should have shouted something, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. The words “stop” or “freeze” just wouldn’t come out. As I took those few quiet steps, I felt eight years of law-enforcement training and rigid self-constraint fall off me. Even though I suspected it was coming, Bogey’s sudden violence—and his obvious intent—turned something in me loose. I let go of all the controls, allowing myself just a few seconds of living in my brother’s world.

Brandy did her best to force him—and herself—down onto the stone, where he would have a harder time pushing and swinging her. But he was too strong. He was holding her up now, dragging her.

Brandy screamed. She flailed at him with her arms and feet, and even tried to bite the arms holding her. But the stone kept sliding beneath her shoes.

That was when I hit him. I hit him in the small of the back, giving it all the strength I’d amassed from a summer of clinging to Moriah, from a summer of frustration, guilt, disappointment, and overwhelming disillusionment. I put it all into that single kidney shot; it was a blow of pure, undiluted rage.

Bogey went rigid, rising up on his toes. He made a sound like a low groan but couldn’t shout or scream as the air whooshed out of his lungs.

Brandy threw herself flat on the ground as Bogey’s hands released her. She spread her arms and legs over the rock to hold herself still. Bogey was toppling forward, over her. With agonizing slowness, he lifted a leg to catch himself. But the leg just wouldn’t seem to work right. I suspect his kidney had exploded, releasing toxins throughout his body and permanently jumbling all his nerves. The foot snagged on Brandy’s body, the pointy toe of the cowboy boot catching in the baggy aloha shirt.

He went down like a tall tree. But he didn’t strike the ground with a thump. Instead he kept on falling. He just disappeared into the blackness. A second later there was a splash. And after that, nothing.

Her eyes beginning to clear, Brandy crawled frantically away from the edge. I could see that she was unsure what had happened, who was in the water. I got myself back under control, forcing myself into the role of Antonio Burns, the good cop, again. But I wasn’t sure which face was the mask anymore.

“Anton?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I was trying to get him to let go of you. He fell off the cliff.”

The flashlight was lying on the rock a few feet away. She pointed at it.

“Quick! Get the light! Shine it down there!” she said.

“Okay,” I told her.

I took a step and bent down, reaching for the flashlight. But I somehow managed to clumsily kick it with my toe just before my hand could grab it. The flashlight rattled over the edge and plopped into the blackness below.

“Oops,” I said.

“My God! We’ve got to do something. He’s going to get sucked into the sink!”

I made my voice very gentle and almost apologetic.

“Sorry, but there’s no way I’m going in there again. Not now. Not ever. I’m afraid he’s fucked.”

I moved closer to her and pulled her to her feet. I held on, worried she might try to dive to Bogey’s rescue. But she wouldn’t let me embrace her. When I tried, she pushed me away. I felt off-balance, though, and kept holding on. I needed her support.

She began to realize that I wasn’t going to help Bogey. There wasn’t any help I could offer, anyway. It was too late. We both listened intently for another minute and heard nothing but the swirl and suck of the river below.

“Oh my God,” she said. “He’s gone.”

Then, after a long, long silence: “We’d better call the police.”

I had managed to regain my equilibrium. I let her go.

“I am the police.”

“Come on, Anton. Who do we notify? There’re procedures and laws about this kind of thing, aren’t there?”

I shook my head.

“No. Not for him. He was a lawless man. He didn’t believe in it, only in manipulating it. The law doesn’t really apply to him.”

I moved to hold her again, but she pushed me away a second time.

forty-six

L
uke didn’t hold his press conference in any of the scenic or symbolic places that had been so carefully chosen by the opposition. Not the courthouse steps, not the parking lot in front of the jail, not even in his own office. Instead he did it in the concrete hallway behind the courtroom, with just a handful of reporters in attendance. They were the same ones who’d been Bogey’s tools over the course of the summer, stubbornly refusing to believe that they’d been conned by the lawyer.

They were about to be rewarded for their obstinacy.

Luke spoke without any lawyerly flourishes; his manner only showed tired surrender.

“Brandy Walsh has been found. She is dehydrated and exhausted but otherwise unharmed. It appears that her two-day disappearance was the result of a publicity stunt by William J. Bogey, her supervising attorney. We don’t believe Ms. Walsh is in any way culpable. However, a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Mr. Bogey. The charges include kidnapping, false imprisonment, and false reporting. We hope to have him in custody soon. Ms. Walsh is declining to speak with the media at this point.”

Usually there would have been an outpouring of questions at this point, but instead there was only a stunned silence.

Luke cleared his throat.

“Additionally, Jonah Strasburg has been offered a plea agreement that I expect him to accept. Ms. Walsh will continue to represent him. After a lengthy investigation that has continued even while the trial has been pending, I’ve determined that the murder charge that was initially filed against him is unwarranted. Because of outrageous and insulting statements by the defense recently, I would love nothing better than to take this case to trial. Believe me. However, I wasn’t elected to this job to conduct vendettas, or to go for the maximum penalty in every case. I was elected to do justice. Even when it means reevaluating my case after filing initial charges. And that’s what I’m going to do. Jonah Strasburg did an irresponsible, thoughtless thing. It caused the death of a young boy. He needs to be punished for it, but a life in prison for him is not just. If the people of this community don’t like my decision, they can vote me out of office next month. I’ll sleep well at night either way, knowing I represented the people of this county and the laws of this state to the best of my ability.”

The reporters just stared. And I tried not to laugh.

“I won’t be taking any questions, so don’t bother asking.”

Ten eyes swung toward me.

“He won’t, either,” Luke said, suddenly sounding angry rather than defeated.

He turned his back on all of us without another word. He walked up the stairs and I headed down. I wondered if that symbolized anything.

Jonah was still being held in the jail, but he wore his own clothes instead of an orange jumpsuit. The sleeveless black T-shirt seemed to fit him a little better now. Maybe he’d put on a few pounds thanks to all the fast food we feed Wyoming inmates in county custody. The tattoos and the tough look fit him a little better, too. When he saw me standing in the hall, he got up off a cot and walked over. He was smiling a little shyly.

“You getting out today?” I asked him through the bars.

“Yeah. So they say, anyway. The county attorney says he won’t object to a personal recognizance bond until I plead and get sentenced.”

“Are you okay with it?”

He shrugged. “I did what I did.”

“I want to thank you. For what happened in here last night. I don’t know if you heard, but the guy they were beating and going to sodomize was my brother.”

Jonah laughed. “Yeah, man. I know. I know. I knew from the moment he was brought in. All summer long my lawyers had been telling me about what a bad guy you were, and how you even had this brother who was some kind of psychotic killer who’d lost the use of his legs. They said they were trying to draw some connection between what had happened to him and some drug lord who disappeared last year. So when this guy comes in, all buffed out and kind of crazy-looking like you, a guy who can’t use his legs too well, I made a guess. I had nothing else to do but sit around and think about things. Only I didn’t know if you’d put him in here to kill me or to save me. When he had that seizure right as Smit was starting to pound on me the other night, I knew it was to protect me. So I felt kind of obligated to protect him.”

“Thanks. You did a good thing. Thank you.”

I shook his hand through the bars and turned to walk away.

Jonah stopped me, saying, “Hey, Burns. You did what you had to do. I don’t blame you for arresting me. You’re a cop, man.”

I gave him a wave and kept walking.