The Edge of Justice (23 page)

“Already did, son. They said they don't do dogs.”

“Then tell them it's a fucking wolf,” McGee suggests. I recall his fondness for dogs and am thankful for that as well as his rough resourcefulness.

I continue to brace the door while the sheriff takes out a cell phone and a leather address book. Moving back down the hall, he dials a number and speaks for a few minutes over the noise. “She's coming,” he finally says from the living room, stabbing a button to end the call.

I call for the nearly catatonic deputy to bring me one of the upright chairs from the table. The deputy awakens from his trance and lifts a chair, carefully staying as far away from the girl's body as he can. I brace the chair against the rear door's knob as added security. We all return to the living room where McGee and McKittrick crouch by the body, studying it. Soft pink cord binds her hands and ankles. They are the same unusual type and color of cord I'd been given by Cecelia up in Buffalo. I immediately recognize the knots that have been used to cinch and lock the line tight around her hands, ankles, and throat. Prusik knots, a climber's knot for ascending a rope.

I point them out to McGee and he says, “Same kind as was used on Lee.”

“It's the same kind of cord Heller's been buying up in Buffalo,” I tell him.

“You know her, Agent?” McKittrick asks, indicating the body before us.

“Yes, Sheriff, I do. She was a witness in an ongoing murder investigation. Two murders, actually, now three. Let's go outside until the lab guys get here,” I say, my investigative instincts for preserving the evidence taking control. “Who touched what?”

“Nothing,” both McGee and McKittrick respond.

“What about you?” I ask the deputy, observing his pale face, bulging eyes, and lips that are bloodless.

“Just the chair,” he whispers.

Before I lead them through the front door, the sheriff pauses at a window, looking out into the yard. The sun has finally risen high enough to have its rays curve over the surface of eastern Wyoming and brush away the stars. Through the window's glass I see its light reaching the Snowy Range to the west, turning its glacial couloirs golden and its quartz and granite purple. I wish I were there, brewing tea on some snow-covered ledge.

The sheriff is looking down at the ground outside, shaking his head and grumbling to himself. I follow his gaze and see the deputy who was assigned the task of rounding up the dogs outside. He's holding a rope with a wide slipknot on one end, chasing the German shepherd out of sight around a corner. A moment later he runs back into view, the dog chasing him. I could laugh if I didn't feel so sick. For a moment I forget what I'm doing and rest my forehead against the trailer's cool aluminum wall.

Outside we stand on the porch for a few minutes while we wait for wildlife control and the DCI crime scene techs to show up. We watch the deputy, joined now by his colleague, pursuing and being pursued by the dogs. The dogs have turned it into a game. McGee sits on the steps and lights a cigar while the sheriff and I walk a circle around the trailer and shed, ignoring the play taking place around us. We can't find any broken windows or torn screens. I'm not surprised. I already know she was friends with her killers; she probably invited them in.

We spend a few minutes studying the dirt driveway. The ground is hard and rocky. We can't see any discernible tire marks.

I turn when I hear the sound of an engine coming down into the depression. It's a lime green pickup with the insignia of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department painted on its side. It pulls to a stop behind the other cars and a small woman gets out, pointedly ignoring us. From the back of the pickup she withdraws a long, flimsy pole with a wire noose on one end. The pole is as thin as a fly-fishing rod. We can still hear and feel the trailer shuddering as the Great Dane throws himself at the door. Beside me, the sheriff chuckles.

“That little lady don't know what she's in for.” He leaves my side and walks over to her while I join McGee on the steps.

We watch Sheriff McKittrick argue with the woman for a few minutes. He's telling her that the stick won't work, she has to tranquilize the damn wolf. And she says that she knows there isn't any damn wolf, and that the stick will work fine for a dog. Finally, after the sheriff has her observe the trailer rocking on its foundations from the force of the big dog's attacks on the door, she appears to give in and puts away the stick-and-noose. From behind the seat in the cab of the pickup she takes out a rifle bag and a smaller nylon case. She spreads them both on the hood of the truck and I hear her say as she unzips them, “I don't know what dose to use. Just how big is he?”

“Like an elk,” McKittrick responds.

“Half an elk,” McGee calls to them.

The woman snorts, disbelieving, and pops a cylinder of amber liquid into the chamber of the rifle.

The sheriff leads her onto the porch, where she gasps at the smell that even McGee's rancid cigar is unable to disguise. McKittrick explains to her what's inside before he opens the door. The wildlife officer turns a little white, but nods gamely when he tells her exactly what she should not look at. “We're just going to march straight down the hall, plug the dog, then leave. All right, honey?”

She nods again.

“Keep your eyes on me,” I add.

The sheriff opens the door and steps inside quickly, in an attempt to shield the woman's eyes from the corpse. I back in after him, keeping my eyes on hers. “Follow me.” She does as she was told and we quickly move down the hallway where the mutant Great Dane resumes its bellowing and attacks on the door.

I again brace my foot against the thin door and move the chair out of the way. The wildlife officer raises the rifle as I crack open the door. “Jesus,” she says when the huge, snarling snout pushes through. She pushes the barrel of the gun through the crack above the dog's head and aims it down. With one eye shut and her tongue slightly protruding from between her teeth, she pulls the trigger.

From the gun comes a sharp hiss of escaping air. The dart imbeds itself just to one side of the brute's skinny spine. The dog lets out a high-pitched yelp that is surprisingly out of character for such a large canine. Then without any further warning it collapses onto one side.

The sheriff looks into the room past us. “Ma'am, I think you killed him,” he deadpans. “Must not have been even half an elk. Maybe just an antelope.” But then the Great Dane lets out a long groan. We can see its ribs rise and fall in slow motion. I'm glad for that—there's been more than enough death.

The sheriff and I escort the woman out of the trailer, again guarding her eyes. She walks straight to her truck and zips up her rifle. Without a word to anyone she climbs in the cab and slowly drives up and out of the depression. The sheriff and I work together to drag the Dane out by its front legs and carry it gently down the stairs below the porch. We leave it in the dog run with five out of the six dogs the deputies have caught so far.

McGee has abandoned his perch on the steps for the quieter and relatively less stinking sanctuary of the state's sedan. With the car's door open, McGee is sitting on the driver's seat with his feet in the dirt and his hands resting on the head of his cane. I walk over and stretch out on the car's dusty hood in the morning light. The sun, its rays now high enough to touch the earth directly, starts baking through my jacket. The warmth seeps through my clothes down to my battered skin, muscles, and bones.

“You meet her?” I finally ask.

“No, I was never . . . in the room when she came by.”

“Heller and Brad killed her, Ross. Probably on Monday night, late or early in the morning. As they were leaving town with Chris, to kill him too. Somehow they found out she talked to me, or they thought she might have. She's the one who told me Chris wasn't so bad, that he was the one I should talk to. The weak link.”

“Who knew that she talked to you?”

I try to think, but my brain is sluggish. “I told you in the hospital, right? And Rebecca. Who'd you talk to about it?”

“Karge's pal, the AG,” he says. “No one else.”

“Then he might have passed the word along to Karge.”

“Much as I hate that self-righteous prig . . . the AG wouldn't have done it . . . if he knew this would be the result. . . . And Karge sure as hell wouldn't . . . resort to murder. . . . He may be a typical politician . . . an ambitious cover-your-ass kind of guy . . . but he's not a frigging killer.”

“Maybe not. But I think he's protecting his kid and Heller, trying to play Heller like a puppet. Doing it to save the Knapp trial, the election, and his son. He's assisting in this mess by passing along information that's getting everyone killed. Heller's nobody's puppet.”

“More like a pet tiger on a leash . . . dragging Karge through all sorts of shit,” McGee rasps. “Who's left?”

I think about it for a minute. “That girl you saw this morning in the hall, Lynn White. She was Heller's girlfriend at some point. But she told me she left early that night, before Kate went off the cliff. Damn.”

I have to find her, but I doubt now that she wants to be found by me, or will even be willing to listen. Not after this morning. I use my cell phone to call the climbing shop where she works in Laramie. The girl who answers tells me Lynn hasn't come in today and won't tell me where she is, even when I tell her it's an emergency. Finally I just leave an urgent message for her to call me along with my cell phone number. I leave a similar message on the anonymous recording that picks up when I call the number that I have for Lynn's house.

With my boss's nod of permission, I also call the duty officer at DCI. I request a BOLO on Heller and Brad Karge and describe Heller's van. The Be On the Lookout report will hopefully get them picked up for questioning. It's all I can do until I get a warrant written and signed.

A large black van comes bouncing down into the depression, going too fast for the poor condition of the unpaved road. The driver propels it like it's a vehicle owned by someone else. Which it is, even though its panels display no advertising. It skids to a halt behind the four cars gathered outside Sierra Calloway's trailer. Its approach sets the captured dogs to their manic barking again. By this time the young deputy sheriff, with the help of his colleague, has herded the last of them into the long dog run. Miraculously, neither of the deputies appears to have been bitten.

Dave Ruddick climbs out of the state vehicle followed by two of his assistants. With only a nod to McGee and me, the three slide open the van's side and slip orange jumpsuits over their clothing. I come out of my exhausted stupor slowly. I hesitate a long time, then slap my palms against the hood of McGee's car, letting the sting penetrate the fatigue, and roll up and off it in a single swift motion. Still thinking about how much I don't want to do this, don't want to go back inside that trailer, I walk over and select a pair of coveralls and gloves for myself.

The air inside becomes stifling as the sun rises in the sky, seeming to seek a better angle at which to increase the pressure of its heat on the tin-roofed trailer on the plain. The heat weakens us and makes the orange suits claustrophobic. I can manage the smell only with a liberal application of gasoline that scorches the skin of my upper lip and sears from my nostrils to the back of my throat. But there's no respite from the sound of a thousand flies buzzing, and there's no way to shield our eyes from the tasks we are required to perform before the body can be removed.

I come to a point when I've witnessed all I will need to in order to testify and I can't take another minute inside. I stagger out of the trailer, and although my sense of smell has long since been burned away, I know that my clothes must reek of sweat and death. Just the thought of it chokes me as does the sight of Sierra Calloway's body. I jerk the suit off and toss it in the dirt. I start walking through the chaparral with no purpose in mind other than to suck in the high plains air and let the rising wind cleanse my lungs. McGee watches me stalk away but doesn't yell after me.

A little later I hear Rebecca's voice calling my name. I look around me and find myself walking more or less parallel to the unpaved road, up and out of the depression in which the trailer sits. Squinting through the sunlight, I can see ten or more cars being held back at the rim by a Laramie deputy. The cars look cheap and American; I realize they are the rental cars of a town full of bored reporters.

She's walking through the dirt and brush toward me. Despite her clean shirt and blue jeans, she looks tired, as if she hasn't slept at all. But she's still impossibly beautiful. I hold up one hand as she approaches, and she stops ten or more feet from me.

“Stay back. I'm kind of a mess.” I don't want her coming closer to the stench of my clothes and body. It's a smell that seems to penetrate all the way to my bones.

“Anton . . .” she says again, hesitating. “Are you all right?”

“That girl at the hotel,” I say, “I dated her once. Not anymore, though. I want you to know that.”

“I don't care, Anton,” she says, her expression unreadable behind the sunglasses. I don't know if she means for me or about the fact that I had seen another girl. “Did they kill Sierra Calloway?”

“Yeah. They did, cords and all. For talking to me. That's what got her killed. Look, I'll call you later.”

I turn and walk through the brush back into the depression on the plain.

When I return to the vicinity of the trailer, Dave Ruddick is heading toward me, smoking a cigarette. He still wears his orange crime scene suit but he has pulled the gloves off his hands. Sweat runs out of his hair and down his face.

“About finished?” I ask.

“Yep. The boys are bagging her right now.”

“You got a TOD for me?”

Ruddick nods. “Looks like she was cooled sometime on Monday night. The parasites in her mouth, vagina, and anus—”

“That's all right,” I tell him, “I don't want to hear about that.” The outside air has purified me to a fragile degree and I want to remember Sierra as she appeared when boldly propositioning me in my hotel room, not as the befouled corpse in a black bag that the other techs are dragging down the steps of the porch and across the dirt to the van. I want to walk over and order them to carry her gently but I don't. They deal with corpses all too often, and the only way they can cope is to treat their wards like pieces of meat. I remind myself that the body is nothing but a discarded husk.