Point of Law (14 page)

“The blood was on his hands because he’d been rock climbing yesterday. Frequently, I’m told, climbing results in scratches on the hands. He—”

The judge bangs the gavel. “Thank you, Mr. Allison. Bond is set at five hundred thousand dollars. Cash only. I’m setting a preliminary hearing in ninety days. My clerk will give you the exact date later today.” She turns to the deputies guarding the prisoners. “You may take them away.”

Allison stands gaping like a hooked fish as he turns his legal pad in his hands. Not only is the judge ignoring his arguments, she’s not even deigning to hear them.

I expect an explosion from Roberto but he just shrugs in front of me. I’m relieved until he stands up. He’s worked his pants down until the orange suit is most of the way down his butt. And he’s not wearing anything underneath. Up on the bench, the judge is rising out of her big chair and pulling her reading glasses from her face, readying to disappear through the hidden door that leads to her chambers. She half turns when she hears the laughter that’s rolling out of the gallery.

In the jury box now, Roberto is bent over, as if picking up something from the floor. His bare ass is pointed at the judge.

EIGHTEEN

“H
EY!
Y
OU CAN
’
T
go in there!”

I don’t even flinch at the desk officer’s shout as I stride through the Sheriff’s Department lobby, through the low swinging doors that lead behind the counter, and into the interior hallway beyond. Small offices line the walls on each side of me. The walls are covered with stapled sheaves of papers, wanted posters, and assorted flyers. Just seconds before, the desk officer had looked me over and told me the sheriff was too busy to see me.

“Hey!” the desk officer shouts again, her voice fading behind me.

From the cluttered offices I pass, men and women with startled expressions rise up behind their desks. The fact that many of them hold sandwiches in their hands reminds me that it’s lunchtime and that my own stomach is rumbling. More people are beginning to call out in alarm. I’m thankful that among them I don’t see pint-sized deputy B. J. Timms with his gloves, boots, and wraparound sunglasses. He’d probably shoot me on sight.

“Hey!”

“Stop!”

One young officer has seen too many cop movies. He shouts, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

I ignore them all. I’m heading for the office at the end of the hall. It’s the only office directly facing the length of the hallway, and it’s located at what I guess is a corner of the building. Before making this intrusive dash I’d tightly tucked my shirt into my jeans so that no one would think I was carrying a weapon.

A hand grips my arm from behind just as my intuition proves correct regarding the location of the sheriff’s personal office. Aroused by the shouts, Sheriff Munik’s lanky frame fills the doorway at the end of the hall. It’s the first time I’ve seen him without his white Stetson, and I notice that his head is totally bald but for where the long tufts of gray hair stick out from the sides of his head. He’ll have to get a toupee if he wants to play Wyatt Earp indoors. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled above the elbows to reveal long, knotty forearms.

“I need five minutes, Sheriff,” I say as I try to jerk free from the hand on my arm. “Just five minutes, and I’ll start with an apology.”

I keep my eyes on his as more hands grab at me, attempting to pull me back. I try to twist free while being careful not to appear so aggressive that someone will decide to brain me with a nightstick or fill my face with pepper spray.

“Down on the ground!” someone’s yelling from behind me. It’s probably the young cop who has seen too many movies.

The sheriff just stares back at me with his cold gray eyes. They’re the same color and hardness as the pearl buttons on his shirt. The only move he makes is to raise one hand to his chin, where he rubs the stubble of another sleepless night between his thumb and forefinger.

The mass of the deputies, the office staff, and whoever else is joining in the dog-pile on my back is beginning to drag me down. My legs can’t support all the grappling weight. My knees bang onto the thin carpet, and then I catch myself with my palms. I’m embarrassed to realize that I’m now on my knees, like a beggar, and may soon be prostrate. When I barged through the lobby I’d hoped my entrance would be a little more dignified than this. I keep my head arched up so as not to lose the sheriff’s gaze and so that I can implore him with my eyes.

The voices behind and on top of me are a single, shouting clamor. I can barely hear what Munik says when I finally see his lips move.

“Let him up.”

The dog-pile either doesn’t hear or pays no attention. They keep piling on, collapsing me under their weight. I shout to the ears closest to my mouth, “He said to let me up. Now get off!” but to no avail. Their weight and someone’s fist hammering at my locked elbows spills me face-first onto the carpet.

“That’s enough,” the sheriff says, louder this time. “Let him go.”

I twist my head to look up at him from between the legs of a pair of uniform pants. The corners of his mouth are raised in a faint smile.

Once the swarm above me has disentangled themselves, I get to my feet and try to stand up straight. My bruised ribs ache from where someone has been kneeling on them.

“You’ve got five minutes,” Munik tells me, the smile having disappeared. Then he adds, as if I didn’t already know, “I’ve got a murder case to build.” He waves me into his office. At the entry I pause to hold the doorknob. The sheriff, now seated behind his desk, nods his permission for me to shut the door in the faces of my new friends in the hallway. I give them a flat look and resist the urge to mouth
Fuck you very much
before the latch clicks shut.

“Sit down,” he orders, pointing at a leather visitor’s chair.

His office is about what you would expect of a small-town sheriff. There is a scarred wooden desk that’s fairly clean of papers and other debris (a testament to a low crime rate), a glass-walled gun case full of rifles and shotguns, a coatrack from which a sweat-stained bulletproof vest hangs on a hook next to his white Stetson and tan sport coat, and the two battered leather chairs facing the desk. On the two walls without windows are a couple of dead animal heads. Trophies, like the framed photographs beneath them that show the sheriff with his arm around people I assume are important. There are also two large windows behind the desk. One looks out onto the courthouse lawn and the other looks east. In the distance I can see the pyramid-shaped summit of Wild Fire Peak. Grateful that he hadn’t ordered me to be thrown out into the street, or worse, thrown in jail with my brother, I sink into one of the leather chairs.

Munik is looking at me with what seems to be a forced frown. I suspect that he’s still working to suppress the grin I’d glimpsed on his face just a minute earlier. I recall all his “Special Agent” cracks from earlier in the morning and assume that he had enjoyed watching me be taken to the carpet out in the hallway. I’ve felt a mild animosity between us from the very first day we met, up in the meadow just following the burning of the lodge.

From what I can tell, Sheriff Munik seems like a fairly competent, rigid, by-the-book–type elected official. A plodder. And probably a decent man, but not too bright. In contrast, I tend to project a rebellious, smart-ass attitude. It’s reinforced by the Roberto-like things I can’t help but do, such as forcing my way into the office of the man who had just arrested my brother. This attitude of mine works well when I’m undercover, dealing with drug dealers and other scumbags, but often serves me badly in the eyes of my superiors at the Wyoming AG’s office and with the county law enforcement officers I often work with. What Sheriff Munik and I have is a conflict of personalities. Usually I take a little pleasure in tweaking men and women like him, but right now I can’t afford that kind of fun.

“Let’s hear that apology,” the sheriff says.

I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. This is hard because of my bruised ribs. The words are even harder.

“I’m sorry I got in your face this morning.” As much as it pains me, I also admit, “If I were in your shoes at the time, I would have probably done the same thing. You’ve got a body that’s been beaten to death up in the mountains and you’ve got a, as you said earlier, a ‘violent felon’ up there too that no one can account for, at least for part of the night. And then, when you go to talk to him, you find him with bloody hands and an attitude.”

Across the desk from me, Munik isn’t gloating or even nodding as I say this, but his eyes lose some of their cold flintiness.

“But, Sheriff, with all due respect, that doesn’t mean you’ve got the right man. When you get the blood results back you’re going to see that the blood is all Roberto’s. And while you’re building a case against my brother, trying to think up some reason you can sell to a jury about why he might have killed that boy, the real killer just has more time to cover his tracks.”

“I don’t need a motive, son. Last time I looked, ‘motive’ wasn’t one of the elements of murder.”

“That’s true, but you need one if the DA’s going to get a jury to convict. And he won’t have one. Because not only is there no reason Roberto would have done this, there’s the simple truth that he didn’t do it. Have you talked to the girl yet? Sunny?”

His eyes take on a new alertness when I mention her name. Attempting to conceal it, he turns his wooden chair to one side with a loud creak of unoiled metal-on-metal and glances out the window toward Wild Fire Peak. I wait for him to say something.

But when he speaks it’s not about Sunny.

“I know about you, son,” the sheriff tells me, still looking out the window. “I made another call up to Wyoming this morning and heard you’ve been suspended for assaulting an officer. Before that, it was for shooting some guy in the ass. You and your family seem to have a thing about guns and fighting with cops.”

I close my eyes and will my voice to remain steady. “I’m suspended right now for hitting a cop who was torturing a dog. My dog. Before that, two years ago, I was suspended with pay, pending a standard officer-involved-shooting investigation,” I say, and then add with a sigh, “and that guy was a dealer who shot at me first, Sheriff.” God only knows what he’s heard from my office. There are some people in the senior administration there who would love to make trouble for me.

“Heard you were a smart-ass about it, too. Kind of like you’ve been with me.” He turns back to me with the faint smile back on his mouth.

“Sheriff, I don’t know what you heard, but that shooting was ruled justifiable. And this thing I’m suspended for now will never be charged. If you don’t believe me, call my immediate boss at the AG’s Office. His name is Ross McGee.”

“That’s who I talked to.”

I exhale in relief. While Ross might have taken a great deal of delight in retelling the stories of my suspensions to this Colorado sheriff, I’m sure in the end he would put a positive spin on it.

“He says you’re a good cop,” Munik grudgingly admits. “That’s why I’m talking to you right now. As a professional courtesy and that’s it.”

His admission gives me my chance. “Then let me help you, Sheriff. I’ll be honest with you about my brother, and I’ll tell you some more reasons why you should be looking at David Fast and his enforcer, a guy named Alf Burgermeister. Sunny must have told you my brother had nothing to do with it.”

The sheriff leans back, causing the chair’s metal springs to screech again in protest. He puts his leathery hands behind his head. “First of all, son, I don’t need you helping me with anything, especially when it’s your brother I’m investigating. And second, you’d better be awfully careful about accusing a man like David Fast in this town. Third, no one’s talked to the girl yet because we can’t find her. What I want to know is where she’s at.”

He says it like I should know. I lean forward, keeping the distance between us even and wanting him to know I’m sincere. “Sheriff, I have no idea where she is. But if you haven’t talked to her, then the first thing I’m going to do is find her.”

He assesses me for a few moments, then apparently decides to give me a little information. “After we got her name and address from your friend Ms. Walsh, we checked her apartment. Someone had kicked her door in.”

Shit.
“Was the place trashed?” I want to know if there’d been a struggle or if the place had been ransacked during a search.

“Yep. Someone was looking for something. And we got this”—he holds up a rough tracing of a shoe print—“from her door. Just for fun, Agent Burns, let’s see the soles of your feet.”

Shaking my head in disbelief that he would suspect me of trying to intimidate a witness or worse, I grip the arms of the chair and lift both my feet toward him. The sheriff leans forward again to study the soles. After a moment he lifts his eyes back to mine. His look is so intense, so hard, that I pull one foot over my knee and twist it up so that I can see for myself. The sandal’s sole is worn almost smooth—it’s nothing like the pattern on the paper he’d shown me.

“Got you,” he says, giving me his first real smile.

I’m not amused. “Have you checked where Fast was last night, and early this morning?”

Munik rests his elbows on the desk and gives me another one of his long looks, this one for real, while the smile fades. “Son, you don’t seem to understand the way this town works. You just can’t go around accusing a man like David Fast of things you’ve got no evidence he actually did. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Dave runs this town, but he sure comes close. If you were to look at public records about campaign contributions, you’d see that he’s the number one benefactor for everything from the school board to the mayor. In fact, you’d see that he was also numero uno when it came to ponying up for my last campaign. The DA’s, too.”

Money and politics and justice. The three should never mix but they always do.

The look of distaste I give him causes him to raise his hands in defense. His drawl becomes crisp. “He doesn’t own me—if that’s what you’re thinking, then you can get the hell out of my office right this minute. But I ain’t gonna go accusing him without having me some hard evidence first. I know he made a deal with the devil when he brought in that guy Burgermeister—he’s a hard-time con with a NCIC sheet even longer than your brother’s. I knew that would cause some trouble. But right now all I got is a bunch of stuff all pointing at your brother.”

I slump down in the chair, trying to digest what he’s telling me. I really don’t give a shit if Fast is the town’s most prominent citizen—all I care about is getting my brother out of jail. But it would be awfully nice if I could implicate Fast in Cal’s death. I’d liked Cal, appreciated that he’d talked me up to Kim as a once-famous climber, and know that if it can be shown that Fast had something to do with Cal’s murder it would certainly queer the development of Wild Fire Valley. And that would earn me some bonus points with Kim.

I tell the sheriff about the argument I’d seen Fast and Burgermeister have with Cal before the brawl two days ago in the meadow. With a silent apology to Cal’s ghost, I even go so far as to tell the sheriff that Cal had boasted that he was going to burn down the lodge Fast was building on the peak.