The Burning Man (3 page)

"Sit down, Peter," Richard said, indicating a highbacked leather chair. Peter sat.

"I never imagined that it would come to this."

Peter wanted to protest, to defend himself, but there was a lump in his throat the size of an apple and he could only look down at the polished desktop.

"You wanted to be lead counsel in a big case. That's why you did this, isn't it?"

Peter nodded.

"I know how much you resented me for denying you your chance." Peter looked up, surprised. He had no idea he was.so transparent. "But I could not permit it."

Richard sighed. He looked defeated.

"I've tried to fool myself about you, Peter, but what you've done has forced me to face the truth. You are a highly intelligent young man. I have your scores on IQ tests to prove it. But you have never lived up to your potential. You didn't apply yourself in high school, so I had to use my pull to get you into a good university, where you partied for four years, achieving grades that were s o low that I had to call in every chip I could find to get you into law school. Then I did the same thing to get you a job with this firm, hoping against hope that you would finally change into a responsible adult.

"In part, I blame myself for your failures. I know I wasn't around as much as I should have been when you were growing up, because I was working so damned hard to build this firm. And when I was around, I tried to make up for my absences by spoiling you rotten. With the wisdom of hindsight, I see now that you would have been better off getting through life without so much of my help. Maybe, if you had been forced to deal with failure, you would have developed the toughness moral fiber..

Richard's voice trailed off. He closed his eyes and rubbed the lids. When he opened them he looked sad and resigned.

"Well, it doesn't matter now. Regardless of who's to blame, you are who you are and that is why I could not let you try Elliot. I know you possess the intelligence to be a good lawyer, but you are lazy and self-centered.

You have always taken the easy way out. You have never given one hundred percent of yourself to anything.

For you, trying Elliot was an opportunity to show off your trial skills and gain advancement in the firm, but this case was Mrs. Elliot's life. Your arrogance and your thoughtlessness have deprived that poor woman of the money she needs for medical care and her children. You have destroyed her future and her children's future and, the saddest thing for me, as your father, is that I don't believe you care."

"Dad, I Peter started, but Richard shook his head.

"There is nothing left to say, Peter. Mrs. Elliot will sue this firm for malpractice and I will have to tell her lawyers that you disobeyed my direct order to ask for a mistrial, that you misled judge Pruitt so you could have your day in the sun and that your conduct was a blatant example of malpractice. Naturally, under the circumstances, you can no longer remain here. As a favor to me, the firm will give you the option of resigning. That, however, is the last favor you will ever get from me."

Richard leaned forward. He rested his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands.

"It pains me to say this, but I must be blunt with you, for your own good. This may be your last chance to be saved. I've thought about what I am going to say long and hard and I hope and pray that I'm doing the right thing. First, I've changed my will to disinherit you. Second, I will never give you another penny. You have not earned the way you live. From now on, you must live according to what you earn."

The words hit Peter like a hammer and he could only stare, open mouthed. His father was turning his back on him, his law firm was taking away his job.

Not one more penny, Richard had said. How would he meet his payments on the Porsche and the condo? How would he pay his debts? And the will. Disinherited, Richard had said.

"Dad," Peter managed, "I know I was wrong. I'm sorry. I ... It's just -."

Richard shook his head. "Save your breath, Peter. I love you, but I can't stand the sight of you anymore.

You have no idea how hard it is for me to admit to myself that my only child is a failure. I had such high hopes for you. But you let everyone down. Me, the firm, Mrs. Elliot."

"You can't do this. You can't cut me out of your life."

"No, I can't. I'm going to give you one, last chance to make something of yourself."

Peter collapsed with relief, feeling like a hiker lost for days in the forest, near death and bereft of hope, who suddenly hears the voice of his rescuer.

"Anything, Dad. I know I was wrong. I'll do what you want."

"You're not going to like what I'm about to propose, but I see it as the only way out for you. If you can prove to me that you are a responsible adult, I will reconsider my decision to disinherit you. To that end, I've spoken to an old friend, Amos Geary. Amos and I go way back.

We played football together at Oregon State and we were once partners. He has a practice in Whitaker, a small town of about thirteen thousand in eastern Oregon, and the contract to provide indigent defense for Whitaker County and several other small counties around there. His associate just quit. He's willing to give you the job. It pays seventeen thousand to start."

Peter could not believe his ears. He'd been to Whitaker to take depositions, two years ago. There were four streets in Whitaker. When the wind blew, you couldn't see the buildings for the dust. If it wasn't for the college, which was packed with Future Farmers of America, there wouldn't be any life at all.

"I won't do it," he said, shaking his head from side to side.

"Then, we have nothing more to say to each other."

Peter stood up. He'd had enough.

"That's where you're wrong." Peter's voice shook and tears welled up in his eyes. "You may have nothing to say to me, but I have plenty to say to you. You can be self-centered. You are the most arrogant son of a bitch I've ever met. You call yourself a father. You were never a father to me.

Mom raised me. You put in appearances and made rules. And it sure is no surprise to me that you think I'm a failure. You let me know how little you thought of me every chance you had when I was growing up. My grades were never good enough. I never put out enough at sports. Well, I'll tell you this, no one could live up to your standards. All-American, high school valedictorian, first in your law school class.

How was I supposed to compete with a ghost? But I tried and you never gave me credit for trying.

And now, when I was ready to show you what I could do in court, you stepped on me, every chance you could.

You're afraid to admit how good a lawyer I am. Well, I'll show you. I'll get a job with another firm. I'll make partner and Hale, Greaves; can kiss my ass."

Richard listened to Peter's tirade calmly. When Peter was through, Richard asked, "What firm will give you a job after the stunt you pulled? They all know what you did. You're the talk of the Portland legal community. How are you going to get a job once your potential employer talks to us? I will tell you flat out that no one here will give you a recommendation."

Peter's bravado disappeared. He knew that what his father said was true.

"You may not believe me," Richard said, "but I do love you. You have no idea how it hurts me to cast you out. But I have to do it for your sake. Go to Whitaker.

There won't be any temptations for you there. Learn to stand on your own two feet and live within your means.

Learn how to be a good lawyer. Learn to be a man."

Chapter TWO.

The sun was a blistering disk that mercilessly baked the brown dirt covering the vast expanse of wasteland east of Whitaker. There were no clouds to compete with it in the pale blue and unforgiving sky. The young Oregon state trooper was grateful for his Stetson and fervently wished for a breeze that would cool him down and create a cloud of swirling dust thick enough to obscure the thing that lay among the sagebrush halfway down the gully. When Dr. Guisti's vehicle appeared, shimmering in the heat like a toy trapped in a bubble of molten glass, the trooper was intentionally standing with his back to the thing. One long look before radioing for assistance had been enough.

The trooper knew it was disrespectful to think of the young woman as a thing, but she no longer resembled any woman he had ever known. The creatures of the desert had feasted on her flesh, the elements had had their way with her, and something else had been at her.

Some person whom the trooper also had trouble thinking of in human terms.

A group of students from a geology class at Whitaker State College on a field trip with their professor had found the body. They huddled together while members of the Major Crime Team took their statements. The young trooper noticed that they too averted their eyes from the gully, even though there was no way they could see the body from where they were standing.

The City of Whitaker had a sixteen-person police force. The county sheriff's office was even smaller, with one under-sheriff and five deputies. On those rare occasions when a major crime occurred, it was investigated by a Major Crime Team, which consisted of a detective from the small Oregon State Police office headquartered in Whitaker, the Whitaker County sheriff, or his designee, a member of the Whitaker Police Department and police from neighboring Blaine and Cayuse counties.

Since the body was found outside the city limits of Whitaker, and because the Oregon State Police had taken the initial call, the team had designated Detective Jason Dagget of the Oregon State Police as the officer in charge.

Dagget had summoned a forensic team from the Oregon State Crime Lab to the scene and they were working the area around the body. Then he called Dr. Harold Guisti, a tall, anorexic man with a florid complexion who had practiced family medicine in Whitaker for thirty years and contracted with the state medical examiner to perform autopsies in Whitaker, Blaine and Cayuse counties. The doctor's battered Range Rover bounced to a stop in front of Detective Dagget. The detective went around to the driver's door.

Dr. Guisti stepped out. A sudden wind blew dust in the doctor's eyes and spread his thinning gray hair across his partially exposed scalp.

"Where's she at?" Guisti asked, as soon as the wind died down.

"In the gully. We think she was killed somewhere else and dumped down there. We haven't found much blood. She's also naked, but there are no clothes."

Guisti grunted, then stepped over the lip of the gully, cautiously edging sideways down the wall far enough away from the body so that anything he dislodged in his descent would not foul the crime scene.

"How was she killed?" he asked Dagget, who was following behind.

"She was butchered, Harold. Plain and simple." PART of Guisti had been hoping that the woman had been shot or poisoned, because there had been another body discovered in an outcropping of rock two months ago, naked and butchered. Guisti believed the weapon used was a hatchet of some kind. He was hoping he would not come to the same conclusion when he examined this young female, because he did not want to think about what that would mean for the people of Whitaker, Cayuse and Blaine.

A FINGER EXERCISE FOR HELL!

Chapter THREE.

Surrounding the City of Whitaker was farmland made 'green by irrigation systems that tapped into the Camas River, but beyond the farms, hot, dusty winds blew tumbleweeds across vast flatlands that were broken only occasionally by high, brown hills. As Peter drove through the desert, he felt his spirit burning up and crumbling slowly to gray ash and he entered the City of Whitaker as empty as the and land that encircled it.

Peter spent his first night in Whitaker at the Riverview Motel, which was clean, quiet and actually had a view of the Camas River. After breakfast, Peter walked from the motel to the offices of Amos Geary. He was exhausted from tossing and turning all night in strange surroundings as his emotions shifted from boiling rage at the injustices that life had heaped upon him to feelings of fear and utter despair as he struggled with the very real possibility that he might have lost forever the love of his father.

The walk from the motel took Peter through Wishing Well Park, which ran the length of the town between High Street and the Camas River. There was a wistful beauty in the slow-moving Camas, but Peter found the town as dry and uninteresting as the wastelands that surrounded it. The biggest bookstore was the Christian Bookshop; you could easily find a store that fixed saddles but none that made carlattes and the town's only movie theater featured wholesome family entertainment. Peter thought of Whitaker as a finger exercise for l the architect who designed hell.

City center started at High and First where the courthouse stood. Peter turned up First Street to Main. Running parallel to Main Street was Broad Street. Elm, the street farthest from the river, started commercial, then curved through a pleasant, tree-shaded, residential section of town until it arrived at the campus of Whitaker State College. On the other side of the college was the hospital.

As Peter walked, he saw battered Ford pickups in the parking spaces and noticed more cowboy hats than he had seen all of last year in Portland. When he reached Main and Fourth, he checked the slip of paper with Geary's address. On both sides of Main were old, two and three-story brick buildings.

Peter saw Dot's coffee shop, B.J."s beauty salon and an orange-and-black Rexhall sign, but no law office. Then, he glanced up a story and saw AMOS J. GEARY, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW painted in flaking gold letters on a second-floor window. Peter backtracked and found a narrow doorway between the beauty salon and the coffee shop. The door opened directly into a cramped stairwell. Dingy, green linoleum was secured to the stairs by dented brass runners. It creaked underfoot as Peter climbed to the second floor.

The hall at the top of the stairs was dark and musty.

Geary's name and profession were painted in black on a door to the left of the stairwell. The door stuck and Peter had to push hard to get it open. A middle-aged woman with grey hair was sitting behind a desk working at a word processor, the only item in the reception area that did not look as if it had been purchased in a seca ndhand store.