Trial by Ice and Fire (11 page)

THIRTEEN

S
HE WAKES ME
with her bad breath and rough tongue. Sleepy eyed, I get up and open the front door to let the wolf out. I don't notice the white scrap of paper that's been slipped halfway under the welcome mat.

Cali comes down from the loft once I have coffee brewing and a bowl full of Cheerios on the table in front of me. She has pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. The trailing ends nearly cause her to once again fall down the steep stairs. I get a shy, uncertain smile from amid the wild blonde curls and below puffy eyes before she disappears into the bathroom.

“How are you feeling?” I ask when she comes out.

“Fine,” she answers shortly. She doesn't look at me or speak as she eats her own bowl of cereal. We both stare at yesterday's newspaper spread out on the table.

A little later I shower, shave, and get dressed. When I come out of the gear room/closet Cali is back in last night's dress with the bandanna now holding back her short mane of hair.

“What are your plans for the day?” I ask. “Jim's going to be staying with you.”

Cali is crouched by Mungo's prostrate form, stroking her fur while the wolf's legs jerk and tremble and her lips pull up.

“Good,” she says quietly and with a short nod. “It's Sunday, but I need to spend the day at the office. I've got that trial tomorrow I want to prepare for.”

Mungo leaps to her feet when I pick up my keys and then stares at me with pathetic hopefulness on her long, hatchet-shaped face. It reminds me of the way I feel on the phone with Rebecca. Pathetic. I decide to let her spend the day with me. “Okay” is all I have to say and she races happily out the front door and stands alertly by the truck.

“What's that?”

Cali's pointing at a scrap of paper on the porch. I crouch to pick it up, and my heart rate picks up, too. It's a small piece torn from the corner of a topographical map. On the back, in pencil, is written:
You rat me out to the cops, bro? This road was like a pigpen at feeding time last night
. Below that is a signature that's indecipherable. Farther down is:
P.S. Who's the girl? She's got the look, you know? And definitely NOT too drunk!

Cali is reading over my shoulder. “What is this? Who's this from?” Her voice sounds a little breathless. A little high.

I fold the note in half and stick it in my jeans pocket. When I look at her, her expression shows alarm and concern.

“A friend of mine. Someone who's been watching the place, I guess.”

For the first time this morning she's giving me a direct look. “Oh God, when I saw it there, I thought it might be a letter from the guy who's after me. That maybe he followed us out here last night. But it's your brother, isn't it? He calls you
bro.
”

I don't answer right away. I unlock the truck so that Mungo can leap inside as I think about what I should say. Cali's a prosecutor, a sworn peace officer as well. With a phone call she could have Wokowski and the SWAT team out here combing the hills, and me arrested as an accessory. But it would be foolish for me to try a lie.

“Look, my brother showed up yesterday. Unexpectedly. He's working a deal with the Feds, and he's supposed to turn himself in later this week. I'm pretty sure he's going to do it. I don't want to screw things up for him. I don't really have any right to ask this, but—”

She smiles, breathing better now, and puts her hands on her hips. Then she cocks her head to one side, saying as she looks back up at me, “Okay. Don't worry, I won't say anything. I never saw the note. Besides, he's not wanted in Wyoming for anything, right?”

“Right. Well, not on a Wyoming-based warrant, anyway.”

“Okay, so you owe me now. That means you can't mess with my head, Anton.”

Suddenly the taste of tequila and toothpaste is back in my mouth. The kiss. Now that was stupid.

“Cali—”

She brings up her hand and touches my lips with her fingertips to shut me up.

“Don't say anything. I don't want to talk about it right now. I know you're dealing with something with that girl who called last night, and I shouldn't have gotten in your bed. Just don't mess with me, okay? That's all I want to say.”

Her fingers are still on my lips so I just nod. They're cool in the morning air, the kind of cool that's not really cold but still makes you want to warm them. We stand this way, looking at each other, for several seconds. Then she takes her hand away.

“Now tell me, what does he mean about cops being around here last night?”

“I don't know, but I'm going to find out.”

I walk around to the side of the house. The hillside is thick with aspens and green spruce but that doesn't stop me from squinting into the morning light and looking for a bit of cloth or skin that might betray my brother's presence. Even a bright glint of his mad eyes. But I see nothing but a pair of squirrels cavorting high in some branches.

There are still faint numbers scratched into the dirt beneath the bathroom window. Surprisingly, the sequence is only ten numbers long. An Idaho area code, not an Argentinean one. He must have gotten a new phone when he arrived. I copy it down onto the piece of paper before scuffing it out with the heel of my shoe. I'll try to call him later, when I'm alone.

Mungo hangs her head out the truck's window when we turn onto the pavement at Cache Creek Road. As we pick up speed her ears and lips flap in the wind, her tongue lolling far out of her mouth. We haven't driven more than a half-mile when I see a County Sheriff's black-and-white Chevy Tahoe coming toward us from the other direction. Like the time I'd once seen a killer whale cruising the Inland Passage during a kayaking trip, I feel a sense of menace pushing ahead of the actual object.

“Uh-oh,” Cali says. “That's Wook's car. He supervises the midnight-to-ten shift, so he must be about to get off.”

The windows of the police vehicle are darkly tinted, but the shape of Wokowski's square head and protruding jaw muscles are discernible through the glass as we pass. For a fraction of a second he and I stare at each other from just a few feet away as our trucks intersect. Even through the obscuring tint I think I can sense animosity radiating toward me. Maybe even something stronger than that. A moment later in my rearview mirror I see his taillights flash on then off before he vanishes around a corner.

Cali turns around in her seat to look out the rear window. She doesn't say anything.

“You still think he's not the guy?”

She shakes her head, still twisted back in her seat and looking out the window. “I don't know anymore. It's spooky, though, him coming out here. Are you going to talk to him?”

“Soon. When I have some evidence linking him to the letters or the break-in. Right now all I've got is that he's your ex and that he's following you around.”

Cali puts her hand on my shoulder as she settles back into her seat. “Remember what I said before, Anton. You'll want to have some backup around when you talk to him.”

I drive on, slowly now, but the big truck with the gumball lights on top doesn't reappear in the rearview mirror.

FOURTEEN

E
VEN THOUGH IT
'
S
S
UNDAY MORNING
, Lydia Grayson, the manager of the County Attorney's Office, consents to meet McGee and me in front of the courthouse. She is a stern little woman who greets us with a small nod and a disapproving gaze. Around her neck is a heavy wooden cross on a chain. We have probably interrupted her weekly worship and she doesn't look too happy about it.

I'm taken aback when my boss mentions to her that he had known her late husband, a state Fish and Wildlife officer, who was, in McGee's words, a “feisty son of a bitch.” I wince, unable to imagine this woman not being horribly offended at having her dead spouse described in such terms.

But McGee somehow gets away with such things. The hard, wrinkled face softens a little as she says, “Let me assure you, Mr. McGee, that he often described you in similar terms.”

My boss gives her his depraved grin. “You're just being kind, Mrs. Grayson.”

She promptly replies, “No, but I'm sure he was.”

McGee's bark of laughter turns into a rough, hacking cough that causes him to double over on his walker.

I look back at the street behind us while McGee recovers and Mrs. Grayson unlocks the glass doors. Above us, to the west, the massive wall of West Gros Ventre Butte looms over the town like a cresting tsunami. The steep hillside is thick with dry, brown grass. It wouldn't take much to ignite it—just a careless smoker tossing a butt or a kid with a bottle rocket.

From across the street Jim gives me an earnest wave.
I'm awake. See?
He has parked his rental car so that he can watch the entire front of the glass-and-sandstone building. I'd told him again to keep an eye out for the big cop with the big jaw and to call me on my cell phone if he so much as drives by and gives the courthouse a long look. And, of course, to make sure he comes nowhere near Cali Morrow.

Parked in front of Jim is Cali's black Volkswagen Jetta. She is already somewhere inside, preparing for her trial tomorrow. I figure that the courthouse is a good, safe place for her to be. Until I can nail down enough probable cause for a warrant with Charles Wokowski's name on it anyway. The only place safer would be somewhere far out of town—a subject I need to raise with her.

After leaving her in Jim's care at her house on Colter Street, I'd driven back out to the cabin to see if either my suspect or my brother was lurking around. No one had been there. I'd called the number Roberto had scratched in the dirt but there'd been no answer. No greeting either. Just the sound of a beep, after which I'd left a terse message—“Call me”—and my own cell-phone number. Then I'd met with McGee and told him almost everything about last night.

Mrs. Grayson, now happily trading barbs with my boss, leads us to a room stuffed with files on floor-to-ceiling shelves. I set my father's cast-off briefcase on the room's only table and take out a legal pad. McGee rolls up on his walker, huffing over it, while Mrs. Grayson begins pulling manila folders from the shelves. When she's done she places a six-inch-high stack of these on the table in front of me.

“These, Mr. Burns, are all the criminal cases our Miss Morrow has prosecuted since starting work with us. I assume you aren't interested in traffic violations. Now, would you gentlemen like coffee? Milk or sugar?”

When she leaves us alone and closes the door behind her, I say, “I don't know how you do it, Ross.”

“I'm so goddamn irresistible . . . it gives me goose bumps sometimes,” he growls as he collapses into a chair on the far side of the table. “Now tell me why we're here on a sacred Sunday morning. . . . I should be drinking whiskey in a grogshop somewhere . . . not violating the Sabbath with a degenerate such as yourself.”

I examine the stack of slender folders. “It's probably a waste of time, but I want to see if anybody Cali's prosecuted could have fixated on her.”

“Why's it a waste of time? I thought finding the guy was your job.”

“Because I'm pretty sure Wokowski's the guy. He was cruising by my place this morning when I left to take Cali home.”

McGee's grizzled eyebrows leap up high on his forehead. “Oh ho!” he barks. “So the lass spent the night with you!”

I'm not sure if McGee is shocked or amused. With him it's hard to tell. Despite all his swaggering lechery, I've never known him to follow through on it. I suspect he'd been entirely faithful to his wife of forty years before she'd died the previous winter.

“I slept on the couch,” I add too quickly. I'm glad Cali's somewhere out of sight and hearing in the building, where McGee's bright eyes and hairy ears will be unable to pick up any vibe or tension flowing between us. I don't want him thinking I'm screwing around on his beloved goddaughter.

“Sure you did . . . and I'm the Queen of Siam.”

The sarcasm is a good sign. If he didn't believe me it wouldn't be there.

“Like I said, I'm pretty sure Wook's the guy. But I want to check out other possibilities, too, so that a defense lawyer can't say we didn't look at all the angles and pop us in front of the jury with an alternative suspect.” It's a common defense strategy. All they need is the tiniest bit of doubt to get a jury to kick their client loose, and an alternative suspect, no matter how unlikely, can often do the trick. Juries, at a defense attorney's prompting, too often mistake beyond a reasonable doubt for beyond a shadow of a doubt.

McGee grunts and nods his approval, still showing me a lot of teeth. In other circumstances I would take it as high praise. “Besides, until I can talk to the local pawn and gun shops, I won't know if he's bought a stun gun in town lately. And the stores don't open until noon.”

McGee now lowers his eyebrows to give me a suspicious look. “I thought Guinness was going to do that.”

I look down at the files. “I'm going to do it while he watches her.” McGee is regarding me closely now but he doesn't comment on why I, the agent in charge of the investigation, would pick up on the boring scut work.

The stack in front of me is arranged in chronological order with the oldest cases on top. On the cover of each is colored tape spelling out the name of the defendant. Below that are the charges alleged and their statutory codes. On the backs of the files are handwritten notes regarding the disposition of each case.

Flipping through them, I see that most of the cases are simple drunk-driving charges. A couple of bar fights, a few charges of Narcotics Possession, three cases of Misdemeanor Domestic Violence, and one case alleging five counts of “Abuse of a Corpse,” a crime I've never heard of, to add some spice. There have not yet been any serious felonies in the young prosecutor's caseload. I read Cali's handwritten notes on the backs of the folders and see that most of the defendants chose to accept a plea to a lesser charge rather than face the uncertainties of a trial. In one year as an assistant county attorney she'd only gone to trial four times.

The suspect in the Abuse of a Corpse case seems to have the most potential for a wacko stalker, so I read that file first. A booking photo clipped to the inside cover shows a young man with messy brown hair almost as long as my brother's. Other than that he is very normal-looking for someone charged with such a ghoulish-sounding crime.

The defendant, a twenty-one-year-old seasonal ski patrolman named Myron Armalli, had worked summers as a driver for the local coroner's office. One of his duties was to transport corpses from accident scenes to the morgue, and then from there to local mortuaries. His address was a number on the highway running over the mountains between Jackson Hole and Lander. Next to it is a handwritten comment about the property, “Condemned.”

According to the file, someone had sent an anonymous note to the Sheriff's Office, advising them to check out Armalli's website, where he sold a personalized line of greeting cards. It turned out that the cards were grotesque photographs—like of naked corpses seated before birthday cakes. Apparently Armalli had been hijacking the bodies and taking them home, where he posed them for pictures and did God knows what else. It was never discovered for sure if he was abusing them sexually because the County Attorney's Office was unwilling to disinter the dead victims. But the photographs were enough. Cali had taken the case to trial three months ago—just about the time when the letters began coming, I realize—after a final plea bargain was refused.

McGee pulls the state's copies of the evidence from the folder—five sample greeting cards—and studies them carefully.

“The AG's birthday is next week. . . . You think he'd like one of these?”

“Only if it were a picture of you, Ross. Or me.”

McGee chuckles, the scowl momentarily fading, and slips a card into his coat pocket. I do nothing but shake my head at him. My boss's boss is in for a surprise.

I decipher some of what Cali has written on the file's backside. It reads:
D takes stand despite atty's reluctance. D argues frame, claims personal vendetta by P. Claims 1st
Am. rights. Jury out less than five minutes. Guilty
x
5. Sentenced to two years probation with a mental-health eval and treatment. Add'l condition: No use of Internet.

D
is shorthand for
defendant
and
P
is for the state, or the
prosecutor
. I wonder if Armalli's belief of a “personal vendetta by P” refers to Cali or to the County Attorney's Office as a whole. This is exactly what I was hoping I wouldn't find—an alternative suspect to keep me from focusing all the way on Wokowski. Just the kind of guy who would write filthy letters, too.

Inside the folder is a pretrial competency evaluation that had been stipulated to by both parties and ordered by the judge. It is a five-page single-spaced document written by a local psychiatrist after several interviews with Myron Armalli. It finds him competent to stand trial—he can understand what is taking place around him and is capable of assisting in his own defense—yet the shrink also felt compelled to add that Mr. Armalli exhibits all the signs and symptoms of someone suffering from schizophrenia. He cites but doesn't describe episodes of bizarre behavior, irrational statements, the admitted hearing of voices, inappropriate laughter, “unusual” sensitivity to stimuli, and staring without blinking as evidence of the disease.

I also learn from this report that schizophrenia most often develops in young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, and that it's a common disease, affecting one in a hundred youths. The sickness generally doesn't involve violent behavior but it's hinted that Armalli might be an exception, as phrases like
antisocial behavior
and
potentially violent psychosis
pepper the report. The doctor recommends various antipsychotic medications, including Thorazine and Haldol. With counseling and these drugs, the shrink believes, there is a good chance Armalli will be able to function positively in society.

With some alarm I also realize that Armalli's address, at the time of the trial and marked “Condemned,” is not far from Alana Reese's ranch in Jackson Hole.

“We've got a monkey in the works,” McGee says after reading the file.

“This guy looks pretty good,” I admit, feeling the weight of disappointment settle on my shoulders. “I'll talk to Cali about him, see if he seemed to be fixated on her during his trial.”

I look at the photo again. He looks perfectly normal except for the messy long hair, but even that is the fashion on young men in Jackson. His face is plain and ordinary, maybe a little anemic. His eyes look right at the camera and there is the barest hint of a smile on his thin lips.

All the other cases are more or less innocuous, standard fare for a small-town prosecutor. The three domestic-violence cases are of the usual drunken spouse-beating variety. The DUIs are ordinary, too, as are the bar fights and the drug arrests. There are no more indications on the file notes of anyone else taking a dislike to or a particular interest in the young woman who had prosecuted them. At least there are no more monkeys.

“What's the plan now, QuickDraw?”

“Wokowski's still the focus. We check out his internal file with the sheriff, find out if the SWAT team members have access to stun guns and whether or not one might be missing, and get customers' names from the stores around here that might sell them. But we'll still have to check this wacko out.”

I get up and study the jackets on the walls, trying to figure out how they've been filed. With relief I discover it's alphabetically. I'm able to search for other cases in which Armalli had been a defendant in the past without calling Mrs. Grayson back into the room and risking Cali wandering in to see what's going on. I don't want to talk to her in front of McGee.

There are no more jackets with Armalli typed on them. Apparently the corpse-abuse had been his one and only adult offense in Teton County. But I realize I'll need to run his name on NCIC, the FBI's database, and make sure there aren't other offenses in other jurisdictions. Then some shelves off by themselves catch my eye—the manila file jackets stored there are all marked in pink. They're the juvenile files, which technically should be sealed after the subject's eighteenth birthday, and only opened with a court order.

Checking to see that the door's still shut, I scan the files for Armalli's name. Three are together on the highest shelf and are bound together with a rubber band. I pull them down.

“I'm not seeing this,” McGee says. He's a stickler when it comes to the law and following it to the letter. I'm a little surprised when he doesn't indignantly order me to put them back.

One of the cases is for cruelty to animals. Apparently Armalli had been charged with setting a horse on fire when he was fifteen years old. He was given a deferred judgment—meaning eventual dismissal—provided he seek and receive psychological counseling and pay restitution to the damaged horse's owner. The statutory violation on the cover of the second jacket is for the crime of harassment, and this time he had been adjudicated a delinquent. A quick read of the statement of probable cause tells me that seventeen-year-old Myron had groped and fondled a high-school classmate during gym class. His sentence was a term of probation and more counseling. The third folder makes me groan out load. On the cover it says, “Wy. Statute 16-2-506—STALKING.”