Point of Law (16 page)

 

JUSTICE TRAVELS WITH A LEADEN HEEL, BUT STRIKES WITH AN IRON HAND.

—JEREMIAH S. BLACK,
FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, 1876

TWENTY-ONE

T
HE TRUCK IS
humming with speed, shaking a little as the recently replaced engine pushes the rusting frame faster than it wants to go. But my foot remains heavy on the accelerator. Outside, the nighttime desert seems devoid of obstacles and the road is ruler-straight, encouraging even greater velocity. One of the few benefits of my job is that an “accidental” flash of my badge when removing my driver’s license makes me immune from speeding tickets in most states. I make a mental note to recall that fact the next time Dad and I argue about the job—that is, if I ever speak to him again.

The bright stars illuminate a strange desert landscape all around us. Odd towers of sandstone are occasionally silhouetted in the sky. The earth is bright red in the glow of the headlights on the sides of the road. If it weren’t for the shrubs and chaparral, it would appear to be an almost Martian landscape. I’ve heard of some legendary climbs in the area—the Moonlight Buttress, Shiprock, Castleton Tower, the Totem Pole, and Spider Rock—but have never been on them, having always preferred a more alpine environment.

Kim’s been silent beside me for over an hour now, ever since surprising me with the selection of a Nirvana CD from the kit on the floorboard. Behind us Oso is grumpy, displeased by his backseat position. He’s unhappier still that I refuse to roll down the window so he can hang his head out into the night. At ninety-five miles per hour, a moth or a bee could take an eye out. Every few minutes he smacks the window with a heavy paw to register his complaint, then scrapes his claws down the glass and over the plastic armrest.

“Tell me about Sunny. How well do you know her?” I ask.

We’ve been driving without speaking and my mind has been wandering. I’ve realized that it must mean something, Kim knowing the address of Sunny’s parents. Despite the more than a decade-and-a-half difference in their ages, they’d seemed close when I first met them in the meadow. But the other times I saw them together Sunny seemed closer to Cal, who was clearly Kim’s rival for the leadership of the Wild Fire Tribe.

“She was my friend.”

Kim’s not looking at me, instead staring out the passenger window at the dark desert beyond. I wait for her to say more and she complies.

“Like me, she volunteered at a battered women’s clinic in town. She looks up to me, I guess. She thinks I’ve got it all together.” She says this last part with a disbelieving shake of her head.

“How about Cal? Was he a friend, too?”

“No, not really. Just Sunny. She met Cal through me, though, when I got her involved in all this.”

Kim finally turns to look at me. There is guilt in her voice.

“Cal’s been a part of the Wild Fire Tribe from the start, ever since the development was proposed and I started organizing. He is—was—kind of a weird kid, like he was wrapped too tight. He helped me recruit a lot of other students in the Tribe. He and I got along okay. I liked him—but he always wanted to make a more direct, more antagonistic challenge to the developers. He never had a lot of patience for the legal process. And once he found that Indian cave he was always talking about, well, he just got weirder. Wrapped tighter, you know. I think he was conflicted between wanting to have it all for himself and wanting to preserve it and the valley, too. Anyway, once those two hooked up, Sunny and I stopped hanging around together. At least, we weren’t friends like we’d been before.”

“Did you disapprove of Sunny going out with him?”

“Something like that.”

Kim looks away again and I think I catch a flicker of irritation in the way she moves her head.

It’s obvious she doesn’t want to talk about it. Unsure if it’s because of my too-personal questions or something else, I turn up the volume on the CD player. In a minute I turn it back down to ask, “What can you tell me about David Fast and his sidekick, Alf Burgermeister?”

Kim sighs. Apparently this, too, is a topic she doesn’t want to discuss. But she answers my question.

“David Fast’s family has been in Tomichi for more than a hundred years. He’s thirty-five years old, born and bred locally, attended my alma mater, the University of Utah, on a football scholarship, although he certainly could have afforded to go to school anywhere. The family had a lot of money back then.” She turns to me. “Like I told you before, he’s an arrogant prick who has led a charmed life. So far.”

There’s a tight strain of anger in her voice. I wonder if it’s due to her personal dislike for the man or a general dislike for anyone who’s led a charmed life. For a moment I wonder if my own life appears charmed to her. It shouldn’t, not after she’s met my brother and seen what happened to him.

“I say ‘so far’ because the ranching and timber industries have taken a lot of hits lately. And Fast has been spending what his parents left him on shiny trucks and a new house. He had to mortgage everything in order to buy the White River land, which he planned to use all along for blackmailing the Forest Service into the exchange for Wild Fire Valley. And he had to borrow more from people in town. I guess about half the important businesspeople in Tomichi are investors. And more than half of the city council. If the exchange doesn’t go through, he’ll lose
everything
. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

Kim’s emphasis on him losing everything is strong. I glance at her and see she’s looking out the windshield. There’s a faint smile on her mouth as she contemplates the thought.

“What about Burgermeister?”

“He’s the guy they call Rent-a-Riot. Alf Burgermeister considers himself a consultant, but really he’s just hired muscle for antienvironmental groups all over the country. To find clients he holds clinics on how to harass the environmentalists into leaving your projects alone. He’s quite effective—you heard the stories the other night. The Feds think he was the one who planted a pipe bomb in the car of an Earth Firster a few years back. But they can’t prove it. Anyway, Fast brought him in when we began to protest the development at the public hearings held by the Forest Service.”

I remember the jailhouse Aryan tattoos I’d seen on his arms. I’m willing to bet he has a prison record for something serious. I’m also willing to bet his interests aren’t limited to just antagonizing environmentalists.

“And Sheriff Munik? What do you know about him?”

Kim shrugs. “He’s a friend of Fast’s family. A distant cousin, too, or something like that. People say he’s clean, but you never know. When all the harassment started a few months ago, when Burgermeister came to town, I had a lot of talks with the sheriff. He said he talked to Fast and told him to cut it out. He probably did, too, because the harassment slowed a little for a while. Of course then it got worse as Fast got more desperate. Sheriff Munik wasn’t exactly proactive in finding out who was doing it—he certainly never made any arrests. When I asked him to come keep an eye on things during the rally the other day, he refused. I have the feeling that in a pinch, though, he’d probably do the right thing. Reluctantly.”

Her assessment is pretty much the same as mine. I don’t bother asking her opinion of Deputy B. J. Timms—I know my brother correctly pegged him as an asshole at first sight.

“Let me ask
you
something,” Kim says. “Tell me about Leonard, your father. What happened to him? How come he isn’t here with us?”

“Do you mean trying to find Sunny or supporting the Tribe against Fast?” I reply, trying to be a little evasive.

“Both.”

It’s my turn to sigh at an unpleasant subject. “He won’t openly support the Tribe because he can’t. He’s an officer in the Air Force, and to get involved in a political action, particularly an environmental action, would just cause trouble with his superiors.” Even though it sounds like I’m understanding, I’m not. The people I admire most are those willing to throw away everything for a righteous cause. And my father, with his history in the valley, certainly should have a cause in saving the valley. I don’t mention what he’d told me that first day in the meadow, after Kim had tried to recruit him with me—that he believes it’s hopeless and therefore not worth fighting for.

“As for why he’s not with us now—well, he had a major falling-out with my brother a few years ago. It had to do with some trouble Roberto got in and the effect it had on Dad’s career.” My voice sounds bitter even though I try to speak evenly. “He got a call from his work this morning, right after Roberto was arrested. And he flew back to Washington. I guess he decided his career was more important.”

I glance over at Kim to see if she’s noticed the anger in my voice. She’s looking back at me.

“I’m sorry,” she says simply.

She looks like she’s on the verge of asking more, so I say quickly, “We should be in Page at about seven in the morning. I’d like to get a room and take a shower.”

“Let’s see Sunny’s parents first, and hope she’s there.”

“How about you go see them while I clean up?” My eyes are bleary from staring at the dotted white lines on the road and half-blind from the occasional stab of oncoming headlights. I rub the nearly two weeks’ worth of growth on my face and stroke the long scar on my cheek. “I don’t think I’m exactly presentable. And I don’t think I’ll be too sensible.”

After a moment Kim reaches over and touches my arm. Her irritation is gone—her voice is now just tired and sad. “Please come,” she says. “You can take a quick shower before we go.”

I feel that same electric tingle running through my skin.

“Are you sure? You’d be better off on your own. Sunny doesn’t even really know me.”

“I’ll need you there” is all she’ll say.

She drops her hand from my forearm and plumps a jacket against the window as a pillow for her head. In minutes she’s asleep. With the music low, I try to think about anything but Cal’s battered body and my brother burning himself up alone in a cell. Surprisingly, it’s not impossible. My thoughts keep focusing on the woman at my side.

The sun’s been up for an hour already when the narrow two-lane highway releases us onto the turnoff for Page. A high-pitched whine has been coming from the tires for so long that the deeper hum of a slower speed sounds strange. The truck’s reduced momentum makes Oso stand up in the rear seat and shake out his coat in the small space. The rattle of his collar in turn wakes Kim. At some point during the night, when the truck wound down into some canyons whose gentle turns had made it difficult for her to keep her head upright against the passenger window, Kim had put the jacket in my lap and then laid her head on it.

“Do you mind?” she’d mumbled.

I was surprised and pleased by the intimacy. “Not at all.” That action alone had removed any risk of me falling asleep behind the wheel.

“We’re here,” I tell her when she sits up and rubs her single eye with a knuckle. “I’ll find a motel so we can get cleaned up.”

Using the rearview mirror, Kim combs her short black hair in place over her bad eye with her fingers, while I assess the handful of motels that are scattered down the main street. One is a Best Western with a sign that reads, “Pets Welcome,” so I choose it. Out of concern that Oso may not be the kind of pet they have in mind, I park the truck just out of sight of the office’s window. “Be right back,” I tell Kim and the beast.

Inside the office an elderly woman with bluish hair and too-tan skin looks me over. I smile as disarmingly as I can and tell her by way of explanation as I touch my face, “Car accident.”

“Ouch. It must have been a bad one,” she says kindly.

“It was. Do you have a room for two people and a dog? Nonsmoking?” Coming in the door, I’d considered asking for two rooms but determined double beds would suffice. With my lap still warm from Kim’s head, I’m a little hopeful that one of the beds will go unused.

“What kind of dog, sir?”

“Oh, he’s sort of a Lab mix,” I lie. There’s nothing even vaguely Labrador-like about Oso.

She tells me the only pet room available has a single king-sized bed. I take it reluctantly, wishing I’d brought Kim with me into the office so she wouldn’t think I’d planned it this way. The matronly woman explains the rates and that I have to pay for two nights as check-in isn’t until three in the afternoon. Even though we might not be here even one night, I’m too tired and too uncomfortable about the single bed to argue.

The room is in the back of the building, overlooking a swimming pool. Despite the early hour the pool is already swarming with kids and watchful mothers. Their husbands and fathers are probably out powerboating or fishing on the lake. When I lead Oso to the room’s door on the short leash, the children are suddenly silent, awed. One young mother even stands and steps in front of her child as if to protect him from the sight of such an intimidating beast. My battered appearance probably doesn’t help, nor does Kim’s eye patch. I try my disarming smile again and say to her, “He’s harmless, really,” before hurrying Oso into the room. It didn’t look like she’d believed me.

The room is large, spacious, and clean. As promised, there is an enormous bed as well as a long couch beneath the window. I toss a duffel bag onto the bed. Oso immediately shambles into the bathroom to drink from the toilet, but I call him back. Kim drops her small backpack on the bed beside the duffel. She gives my dusty bag a curious glance.

Looking up, she sees me watching her in the bathroom mirror as I fill Oso’s bowl with water. She gives me an awkward smile. “In your dreams, kid,” she says, and then picks back up her pack and tosses it on the couch. “You’re paying, so I’ll take the couch.”

I laugh. “Hey, I’m a gentleman. I always defer to my elders. I’ll take the couch tonight, if we’re still here.”

Her smile fades, replaced by a look of concern. “Do you think we’re going to find her here?”

“I don’t know. You know her a lot better than me. I’m just wondering if Fast and Burgermeister are here, looking for her, too. If they are, then it should confirm that they killed Cal.”

“What will we do if we see him? I’d like to let Oso tear his lungs out.” The fierceness in Kim, what I’d seen that first time I’d met her in the meadow, makes a brief appearance. And I’m glad to see it. Her spirit is getting stronger. Just twenty-four hours earlier she’d appeared on the edge of a total breakdown. As much as I’d been touched by her grief, shock, and sorrow, I feel more comfortable with her when she’s acting tough. It makes me feel less guilty for wanting to kiss her every time I look at her damaged face. I wonder if I’ll ever get her mind on other things so that I have the chance. I wonder if she’ll kiss back.