Lizardskin (35 page)

Vanessa Ballard held the upper end of the table, her snake-skin briefcase open beside her, her Pearlcorder and a little seed mike propped up on the briefcase.

Eustace Meagher sat at the opposite end of the table, a chart-board propped up on an easel behind him with a detailed map of the Ballantine side road and the relevant sections of Arrow Creek marked off in green ink. Meagher’s garrison belt and service piece hung on the back of his chair, and he had his
clip-tie off and the first two buttons of his tan patrol shirt open. A pile of computer fanfold paper lay at his elbow.

On Meagher’s right, Finch Hyam slouched in a wrinkled beige sports jacket and dark brown trousers, his lanky frame limp and his lean face shiny with sweat.

“Howdy” Rowdy Klein, Hyam’s partner in the Criminal Investigation Bureau, sat beside him, head down, lips set, writing something on a yellow legal pad, working hard to convey the impression of a man with heavy burdens that he would neither shirk nor share. Sweat stained his armpits and the hollows of his dark blue suit.

In the long wood-paneled hallway outside the boardroom, a large group of men and women sat or stood in various combinations, according to their moods and friendships.

Beneath the portrait of the dead cattle-king sat Dell Greer and Moses Harper, stiff and starched in blue County uniforms, their Stetsons on their knees, hands on the Stetsons. They looked like nervous bookends. They were here to tell their stories and, they sincerely hoped, offer support for Meagher’s contention that he had no choice but to shoot the Indian male who had confronted them in the hills above the creek. And they hoped—even
more
sincerely—that there wasn’t some kind of unexpected career-terminating bear-trap hidden inside Vanessa Ballard’s briefcase.

Next to them, sitting up straight and looking around the hall with unconcealed fascination, his large black-booted feet barely reaching the hardwood floor, was Trooper Benitez—now blooded and proven—tightly wrapped in a torso bandage under his pressed tan uniform, bruised about the face and freshly scrubbed, his shiny black hair combed straight back from his blunt Indio features.

Standing next to Trooper Benitez, slouching bonelessly against the wall, Myron Sugar ran through the Friday-night action again and again, trying to see the traps and snares and get it all straight in his mind.

Sugar liked to stick to his desk, and he’d gone along with Meagher that night with his heart in his throat. Maybe it was punishment for ignoring the sabbath. Maybe if he’d been a
better Jew, he wouldn’t have been working that night at all and someone else would have had to go and get involved in an Indian war.

Rita Sonnette and Ron Thornton and a couple of other cops were slouching around fanning themselves with their hats and grousing about the time this was taking.

In a far corner of the hall Marla LeMay sat in a railchair, staring straight ahead, her hands in her lap. She was wearing her waitress uniform. Rita Sonnette had picked her up at Bell’s Oasis, where she had been acting as the boss for Joe Bell until his wounds healed enough for him to come back to the station.

Next to her, but not with her, Danny Burt sat in a hardback chair, reading an old
Sports Illustrated
. He wore his usual morgue wagon uniform—a black suit, single breasted, over a pale gray shirt and a thin black tie. Black brogues carefully tied, and a gold ring on the third finger of his left hand.

Danny Burt was a large man with a hard little potbelly and thick hands covered with fine blond hair. His head was shiny with sweat in the stuffy room, and thinning blond hairs stuck to his scalp. His face was pale and blunt, and his eyes, which at first meeting might have been mistaken for friendly and warm, were actually cool and remote-looking, gray-blue and flecked with green, like mountain onyx. At his wrist a gold Rolex caught the light from the lamp next to him, illuminating his hard face and the roughness of his unshaven cheeks.

The wedding ring was less than it seemed; Burt said he wore it to keep the women in line. He wasn’t married, although he maintained that he had been once, back in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His wrists were exposed as he held the magazine. Fresh bruises showed on them, red marks and raw skin where the ropes had held him. There was a purple bruise above his left eye, and a butterfly stitch held a section of his eyebrow together.

Normally he liked to mix it up with the cops, and he was always a welcome addition to any barside chat. Today he kept to himself and answered Ron Thornton’s conversational leads with noncommittal grunts.

Ron assumed he didn’t like official business, even less since
it was Danny Burt’s carelessness that had gotten the wagon hijacked in the first place and Peter Hinsdale killed.

Standing alone at the farthest reach of the hallway, leaning against a wooden railing that overlooked the lower rotunda and the front doors of the courthouse, a short fox-faced man in a dark brown suit and heavy brown shoes stood watching the other witnesses. Frank Duffy, special agent in charge, of the FBI’s Montana liaison office in Helena.

Crimes involving possible interstate flight or federal installations were part of the FBI’s jurisdiction. But even if they weren’t part of this one, the arrival of SPEAR and the ACLU on the scene would have brought them into it. SPEAR was on a list of subversive organizations with possible terrorist connections. Had been ever since 1973, when Russell Means took over at Wounded Knee.

Duffy’s brown hair was thinning into a blade shape, exposing a high sunburned forehead. His ears were huge and projected straight out from the side of his skull. He had a sharp nose and a narrow jawline. His skin seemed stretched over his skull, and Duffy projected a general air of guile and suspicion.

Beau McAllister, in a sense the star of the evening—the way an aristocrat is the star of the activities around a guillotine—was back in Lizardskin, packing a bag and talking to Tom Blasingame about his cats.

A large white wall clock at the end of the hall ticked loudly in the hush and murmur, tinny and relentless.

Vanessa Ballard poured herself some water from a silver pitcher. She drank it all and set it down, and something about the motion stopped the small talk between Finch Hyam and Rowdy Klein. Meagher waited with an expectant look on his face, his eyebrows cocked. He knew Vanessa was still angry about the scene in Doc Darryl’s office. Beau had gone over the top and down the far side on that one. Meagher hoped his career could survive it. Yet Meagher felt that Beau had been set up to do that, aimed and fired like a 105. Why would the old man want his son worked over like that? It was ugly.

On the other hand, the kid needed a beating, and if he was
going to get one, why not let Beau have the pleasure? The kid had caused him enough grief over the last couple of years.

Vanessa Ballard looked up from her notes.

“Fine, gentlemen. If we’re all ready, we’ll proceed.”

She turned on her Pearlcorder, read the time and date, and started to name the officers present.

Rowdy Klein was looking increasingly worried. When she got to the end of her list, he leaned forward and raised his hand, waving it to get her attention.

“What is it, Sergeant Klein?”

“Ahh—ma’am, shouldn’t we wait for Staff Sergeant McAllister?”

“He’ll be along,” said Meagher. “Relax, Rowdy. You’ll get your chance at him.”

Ballard looked at Klein over the tops of her glasses. “That okay with you, Sergeant?”

Klein flushed red and wiped his face with a large gingham handkerchief. He folded it and stuffed it into his breast pocket.

“No, ma’am. I mean, this’ll be … if you think it’s okay?”

“I do.”

Klein had a mean streak in him, especially where Beau was involved. The ugly scene between them in the aftermath of the shooting at Bell’s Oasis was just one of a long string of confrontations. Meagher figured that Klein was jealous of Beau’s reputation. Or maybe Klein was just an asshole. If Klein had been directly under Meagher’s command, he would have been looking at the world from behind the grill in evidence storage over in Bozeman. But he wasn’t. The Criminal Investigation Bureau was a separate department of the state’s Department of Justice, created to spread the scarce resources of the detective operation around the state. They had their HQ in Helena, where they played Hide the Bunny with the FBI and generally involved themselves in what the department liked to call Serious Crimes. Meagher was only nominally Klein’s superior.

Ballard was up to speed now. She ran through the reported events of last Friday, including the shooting at Bell’s Oasis, running down the events in simple, clear terms, providing the context for the shooting board and, not incidentally, also setting
up her sightlines in the event that criminal charges might arise from the evidence to be presented today.

Meagher sighed and forced himself to focus.

Rita Sonnette came in, told her part in a slightly shaky voice. It was her first shooting board, and like all rookies, it worried her. But there was iron in her. Meagher thought she was shaping up nicely. She’d be a good trooper.

Ron Thornton came next, and everything he said about the Bell shooting corresponded neatly with Beau’s report and with Rita Sonnette’s.

Very
neatly. Even some identical turns of phrase.

Obviously, Ron and Rita had taken the time to work out their stories, which was fine with Meagher as long as Vanessa didn’t object. As Ron talked, his young face bright with radiant sincerity and earnest professionalism, Ballard kept her head down and made notes, looking up now and then to stare at Ron over her reading glasses.

When Ron was finished, Ballard sent Meagher a loaded glance and called for the next witness.

They came in no particular order. Vanessa Ballard liked to run it that way. It helped to keep the witnesses off-balance and interfered with their tendency to try to corroborate one another. It hadn’t seemed to work with Thornton and Sonnette.

Marla LeMay told her story, unimpressed and cynical, neither a support for Bell nor an accuser. She told it straight and seemed not to give a damn what they thought of it. Meagher was attracted to that quality in people. The world was too stuffed with people, especially civilians, who wanted to impress you with how much they knew.

Joe Bell would have been called in next, but since he was suing the county, he would have needed legal representation, and that was a delicate area right now.

“Why?” asked Finch Hyam, intrigued, his antennae up.

“Let’s just say the situation is fluid, Detective Hyam. We can proceed without Bell’s information right now. We have plenty of witnesses.”

Hyam let it pass, but his eyes were bright with interest, and
he looked over at Meagher, raising an eyebrow. Meagher frowned at him and shook his head once.

Ballard called Finch next.

It was clear from Finch’s tone and the way he stared solidly ahead as he answered Ballard’s questions that he had no doubts about the rightness of Beau’s actions, that he thought Joe Bell was a danger to himself and others, and that anybody who pulled a gun around a Montana Highway Patrol trooper had better expect to get himself shot. That included any demented Indian fanatics suicidal enough to lock horns with a cop. He finished and nodded to Rowdy Klein.

Rowdy Klein tied himself in knots trying to make his case that Beau McAllister had mishandled his part of the incident at Bell’s Oasis, but he didn’t have much in the way of evidence, unless sheer bad will was evidence.

Meagher interrupted him, his voice hard and clipped. “As McAllister’s CO I want to get in the record that there had been an exchange of fire before the sergeant arrived on the scene, but we do not seem to have established who
initiated
the exchange. So it seems to me that he can’t be accused of interfering with a citizen’s right to self-defense and defense of property
until
it’s been clearly shown that Bell was actually defending himself. All I hear so far is proof that some kind of hostilities were being engaged in, and that McAllister’s arrival helped to prevent further exchange of fire. If Sergeant Klein wants to bring formal charges against my sergeant, he’s got the legal right to do so, but I’m not gonna sit here and listen to him talk about something that took place while he was off somewhere practicing his quick-draw. Due respect, ma’am.”

“Hell, Lieutenant,” said Klein, “how can you say there was no robbery attempt? What
else
did it look like?”

“That’s enough,” said Ballard. “Thank you, Sergeant Klein.”

The next witness was Dell Greer, followed by Moses Harper.

They both described the events leading up to the Arrow Creek confrontation as simply as they could, referring to their notes and reciting the details in a lockjaw singsong cops use
when talking to DA’s. The details corroborated other testimony, and they were both excused with thanks.

Out in the hall, they picked up their hats, waved to the rest of the witnesses, and split for the parking lot at a slow run. From there they went straight to the Muzzleloader and ordered a Coors and a Corona, which they downed in two takes.

Danny Burt was next.

Burt came into the room surrounded by dead air. He smiled briefly at Meagher and the two CIB men. They had all gotten swilled together more times than they could count, at Twilly’s or Fogarty’s New York Bar. But today was formal, and Burt seemed to know that one of the results of this hearing might be a contributory negligence charge against him. The first thing he said made his position clear.

“I just want to make a statement, ma’am?”

“Certainly, Mr. Burt.”

“I give—I retained a lawyer this morning, and he’s saying that if this meeting gets into anything about the hijacking and that, then I’m gonna clam up. Okay?”

Ballard looked at him for a moment, her face blank.

“To whom did you give the retainer?”

“Spellman Sterling.”

Everyone around the table tried not to react to that information. Ballard’s eyes were bright and amused. “Are we to assume by this that you intend not to answer questions in this matter?”