Ground Money (14 page)

M
OLLY
W
HITE
H
ORSE
—or, as someone had named her, Molly Pitcher—sat with her lawyer at the oak table in front of the spectators’ benches. Across the aisle at the second table sat Deputy District Attorney Kolagny rustling through his sheaf of papers. It was a preliminary hearing, so the jury box was empty except for a guard and three men in the dark jumpsuits of the Detention Center. They were waiting for their arraignments to come up, and their faces held the blankness of inmates paraded before the public. Kolagny, with his usual arrogance, had ordered Wager to be present at the hearing as his advisory witness or else. Wager came, less because he was ordered than because Kolagny always needed any help he could get. He sat on one of the blond wooden benches and tried to stifle the yawns that kept surfacing through the drowsy heat of the courtroom. Outside the wide-open windows, the rush and clatter of traffic below increased the stuffy feeling, and Wager found himself wishing he could have bottled the icy wind of Leadville and brought it down with him.

“All rise!”

A brisk swirl of black robes, and the judge entered through the door leading to his chambers. He sat, and the bailiff began the hear-ye’s and then called Molly White Horse. Her public defender, a short and pockmarked man with a full mustache, answered, “The accused is here, your honor,” and patted the small, rounded shoulder under the dark dress with its splashes of scarlet flowers. His name was Parry, and there were always jokes made about him parrying the prosecutor’s thrusts. But even if the jokes weren’t very good, Wager thought the man was; and Kolagny would have to outdo himself just to stay even.

“Would counsel approach the bench, please. Mr. Kolagny … Kolagny—aren’t you a counsel?”

“Yessir, your honor, coming.”

Wager heard only a buzz of muted voices from the three men peering at each other across the barrier of the judge’s bench, but he had a good idea what was being said: the judge asking if there were any grounds for settling this quickly, and of course the defense counsel would say no. No one whose client was up for murder ever gave an inch. Wager guessed Kolagny didn’t give anything, either, because the judge nodded curtly and adjusted his glasses and the two lawyers strode back to their tables.

Kolagny argued that the evidence was strong enough for second-degree murder and asked that the charge be upheld. In the middle of the presentation, Wager felt a hand pat him on the shoulder and looked back to see Fred Baird, the lab technician, settle down on the empty bench behind him.

“You here for Molly’s case?” Fred’s sour breath cut through the heavily perfumed odor of his chewing gum.

Wager nodded.

“You think there’s enough for second-degree?” he whispered.

“Hell, no. She didn’t know she was killing him—there’s no way Kolagny can show that Molly knew she was killing him.”

Baird nodded once; the fluorescent lights in the high ceiling glinted off the streaks of scalp that shone through his thinning hair. Wager had not noticed before how fast Baird was losing his sandy hair, or how tired and gray the man looked, either, as if his vitality were being drained off somewhere to let his flesh slowly collapse.

Then Baird shifted on the bench and the shadows disappeared, taking with them the haggard look and the little tinge of mortality that Wager had felt: Baird’s and his own. “Did you tell him that?”

“Once. He didn’t want to hear it,” said Wager.

“Yeah. I thought manslaughter would be the max. Well, what the hell, I didn’t have much to do today. Not much more than three months’ work, anyway.”

“Jesus, the state is really after this vicious criminal!” Gargan slid along the shiny wood toward Wager. “Bringing out all the big guns—I’m surprised you’re not asking for the death penalty.”

“She’s not my candidate for that,” said Baird.

“Hello, Gargan,” said Wager. “Goodbye, Gargan.”

“It’s a democracy, Wager. I know it tears you up to hear that. And if you really want to get pissed, think about the First Amendment.”

Wager sighed. Kolagny in front of him, Gargan beside him, and over his shoulder the fragrance of Baird’s breath.

The lab technician was called to testify to the cause of death. At the trial, the medical examiner would be the one to detail the technical facts, but at a preliminary it was cheaper and quicker to use the police technician’s statement rather than pay for a doctor’s time. Baird half shrugged as he came back to his seat. Kolagny reminded the court that self-induced intoxication was not a defense to this charge and returned to his desk. The defense counsel took his turn and asked that the judge rule the death accidental and that any and all charges be dropped entirely on the grounds that Molly White Horse had neither the intention to kill nor the knowledge that she was doing it—not because of self-induced intoxication but because she did not know the beer was entering the deceased’s lungs. It was self-evident, Parry said, that this uneducated woman who lacked medical knowledge had no idea of the extent of the victim’s wounds and therefore was not acting with intent, with criminal negligence, nor recklessly.

“You hear that, Wager? You people shouldn’t have brought that poor woman to trial.”

That wasn’t what he was thinking. As sometimes happened in the heat and the drone of voices, Wager’s tired mind had a tendency to drift to those areas of thought that usually stayed at the edge of sleep. Right now, he was comparing court procedure and rodeo, the way they both tried to place rules and assessments on the chaotic flow of violent behavior. Here, the rules of evidence and procedure were played out in front of a judge who would declare either Kolagny or Parry the winner; in the rodeo arena, the judges applied rules to the fight between rider and animal and then said who won the most points. In both shows the animal was an excuse for the performance as well as a participant, be it horse or cow or Molly sitting there with her hair twisted up into some kind of braid that looked far younger than the curve of her slumped back and the narrow slope of her shoulders.

When Parry finished, the judge called a recess. “Time for his midmorning piss,” muttered Baird. “I’ll see you later, Gabe. Maybe I still got some time to get something done today.”

Kolagny turned and beckoned Wager to his table. “We’re going to get a trial out of this. You going to be ready to go?”

Wager looked at the man. He had been testifying in court before Kolagny had even sweated his application to law school. “I’ll be ready.”

“She saw the knife in that other guy’s—Robert Smith’s—hands, right?”

“That’s what she said.”

Kolagny was convincing himself more than Wager; but like a lot of lawyers the man needed an audience for his thoughts, and Wager guessed that was the real reason he had to give up his morning’s sleep. “The most you’re going to get out of this is criminally negligent homicide.”

“Who the hell asked you, Wager? Who in the hell’s got the law degree around here? You just get the facts; I’ll handle the cases—that OK with you?”

“I’m your advisory witness, Kolagny. That’s my advice.”

“You keep your fucking advice until I ask for it, you hear?”

“You need more than my advice anyway.”

The bailiff signaled the end of recess, and the judge, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, reentered as everyone stood and then sat back with the shuffle and rustle of papers.

“Well.” The judge hunched forward and looked at Molly. “A man’s been killed. That’s a highly serious action, and the charges are serious too. The defendant is apparently the cause of that death. Do you understand that, Miss White Horse?”

The back of the head nodded.

“That being the case, I feel there has to be a careful and considered weighing of the state’s evidence. A man’s death is not something to be shrugged off lightly. Therefore, I am ruling sufficient cause for a trial.” He beckoned to his aide, who bent over and murmured. “Trial is set for … September fourteenth. I remind the defendant that she is still under bond to appear in court.” The gavel dropped, followed by a general scuffling of feet and shifting of positions as Kolagny and Parry gathered their papers and left the desks, and the next lawyers came forward for their cases. Wager glanced at his watch: 10:30, and Sam Walking Tall’s ghost had just been told that he had more respect from the state when he was dead than when he was alive. Wager yawned more widely. With luck, he could be in bed by noon and get his other four hours’ sleep before his next tour.

His apartment did not have air conditioning, and the morning’s heat lingered in the rooms as he opened the sliding glass door to his balcony and cranked out the bedroom window to trap any stray breeze. Ten stories below, Downing Street was quiet after the noon rush of office workers speeding toward various restaurants, and Wager could even hear the pad-pad-pad of a jogger cross the shimmering pavement at the intersection and head back under the canopy of leaves. The quiet stillness meant no breeze, and Wager, still sweating from a workout on his rowing machine, dragged the cold bottle of Killian’s across his forehead. The exercise stretched and loosened those muscles that had tightened while he sat in court and especially as he listened to Kolagny. The beer was supposed to do the same thing for his mind so he could get the rest of his sleep. But it didn’t seem to be working.

He thumbed through his green notebook for the telephone number and poked the little tune that rang the Chaffee County’s Sheriff’s Office. It took a minute or so for Detective Allen to be called to the telephone.

“This is Detective Wager up in Denver. Did the Sanchez boys get down there to claim their father’s body?”

“Yes, they did, Detective Wager.”

“Did they say anything about a funeral? Where and when?”

“I didn’t think to ask them. Here’s the local mortuary number if you want it—maybe they know about it.” He read it to Wager. “Say, I found out why the hospital didn’t notify you about Sanchez’s death—I guess you stepped in shit over there with the hospital administrator, or something. Anyway, the nurse was going to call you and he told her not to, at least that’s what she says. What the hell happened?”

Wager told him a little of it.

“All right. I guess she didn’t have much choice if he told her not to. He’s a foreigner, you know; kind of an asshole sometimes.”

Wager knew. “Did you find out anything more about Tom’s death?”

“Not much more than we already have. His sons weren’t much help—they hadn’t seen him in years, they said.”

“Did you get in touch with his employer?”

A note of caution came into his voice. Wager’s question was moving beyond professional courtesy into jurisdiction.

“Why?”

“For some lead as to what he was doing up that way without his truck.”

“He didn’t know, Detective Wager. Like I told you, we don’t know much more than we did. But I am working on the case.”

“Can you give me his employer’s name?”

“What for?”

“In case Sanchez has some pay coming. His sons might want to know about it. Did you tell them who he worked for?”

“Well, no. I didn’t think of that—I figured they’d know. Tell you the truth, though, they weren’t too interested in him.”

“I’ll pass it on to them.”

“All right.” He spelled the name and address. It was in Sterling, Colorado, in the northeast corner of the state and about 125 miles from Denver. Wager thanked him and after hanging up the telephone drew little doodles around the name and address. This wasn’t his case, and he had plenty of Denver’s to worry about. It sure as hell wasn’t his jurisdiction, either. But his personal time was his own, and Tom had been a friend.

He left in midmorning of the next day, aiming the Trans-Am up the long, straight lanes of I-76 as it sliced through the rolling, yellow prairie. On the western horizon, the ragged blue shadows of mountains gradually dropped below the sun-baked earth to leave an unbroken circle of sky and treeless land whose early green was felt more than seen beneath last year’s winter-killed grass. It reminded Wager of being at sea, except that the oil-streaked concrete lanes split the yellow-and-blue world into hemispheres where, occasionally, a distant farm with its glimmering buildings and huddled cluster of tiny trees swung past the car. Despite the official fifty-five-mile limit, what traffic there was cruised at seventy, and Wager—finding pleasure in the feel of motion—settled the car into the flow of semi-trucks and salesmen and the occasional tourist who preferred this route to the more scenic swing through the Black Hills.

Sterling was a farm and ranch community as well as county seat, and had a scattering of light industry and the various services that went with it. The ones located near the interchange where he turned off were the restaurants and gas stations that highway travelers wanted; farther in, he passed farm-equipment lots and grain elevators, shopping centers and meat-processing plants, before finding the major cross-town street he looked for. State Highway 14 led out again, west; and beyond a row of towering cottonwoods lining an irrigation ditch, he found County Road W, a straight line of gravel that led from one horizon to the next. Turning, he slowed at the occasional mailbox to read the names. Finally, on one of the mailboxes planted in a dirt-filled milk can that could be lifted on top of the winter snows, he saw the name D. W. Barstow, and a lettered board below it, Shorty Barstow Rodeo Company. He turned and clattered across a rusted cattle guard, balancing the Trans-Am on the dirt road’s center ridge to keep its underside clear of the occasional rock.

The ranch road led up a shallow bowl of prairie that cupped Wager between the dry earth and the heat-paled blue of empty sky. It wasn’t hard to imagine the sudden appearance, on one of the surrounding ridges, of a line of Pawnee horsemen, silent, ominous, as they studied the wide valley below. And Wager felt the tug of wonder that must have led the first Europeans across these grassy seas of rolling earth. The next ridge was right there: gentle and inviting in its incline, mysterious in what it masked from view. Even if you knew that when you got to the top you would see only another broad, treeless valley, you still wanted to go. Because beyond that shallow next trough, only a mile or two, would be another gentle ridge just as inviting, and who knew what might lie beyond that?