The Edge of Justice (28 page)

TWENTY-NINE

R
ATTLING ALONG THE
back roads of Vedauwoo, I have never felt so tired and alone. I have only missed one full night of sleep, but the tension, exertion, and bruises make it feel like a week.

Around the turns my headlights sweep across the white trunks of nearly leafless aspens and random granite boulders. They all remind me of headstones, and the place looks like a cemetery. I feel as if I'm just another spirit in the night moving through it, lonely and unable to communicate with mortals but desperately needing to.

After leaving Heller's house I again called the hospital from my cell phone. The duty nurse told me there had been no change in McGee's condition. I decided to not have her wake up Rebecca, who according to the nurse was sleeping on a waiting room couch. Then I drove to the address Kristi had given me for Lynn White. The decrepit cottage was dark and still. Her pickup truck was gone.

I drove around Laramie for half an hour, checking the bars and coffee shops, remembering the furious look on Lynn's face when she saw Rebecca in the hotel room's bed. She would be going back to Heller, I knew. Sierra Calloway had told me she was Billy's frolicsome Titania who used other men as pawns in some private game they played. From the look Lynn gave me, I can bet she isn't used to having her pawns defect to take another queen into their beds. So she would go back to her king—a dangerous emperor who is in the process of eliminating his entire court.

It was at ten o'clock when I decided to look for her at Vedauwoo. I remembered thinking on the day I had climbed with her that the place seemed like her backyard, like her spiritual home. She is the Fairy Queen who rules the stone and trees there. Although I haven't admitted it to myself before, it is obvious she knows more than she has said about what happened to Kate Danning up there. Maybe about Kimberly Lee too. If I can find her, tell her what has happened to Sierra Calloway and Chris Braddock, convince her that she and Cindy Topper are surely next, maybe I can get her to open up. Besides, I have nothing else to do.

Because of my suspension I don't have the authority to make arrests or write affidavits for others to make the arrests. I can't even get a warrant to enter Heller's house, because I found the cords there illegally. I would be charged with breaking and entering, and worse, the evidence that he was a killer would never see the light of a courtroom. It would be suppressed due to the illegal search.

If I can find Lynn, I think maybe she can tell Sheriff McKittrick in Laramie County about the night Kate Danning died. And there is every chance she knows something about Kimberly Lee's murder. As Heller's sometime girlfriend, maybe she has seen the cords in the basement and around the mannequin's head. Maybe she has even been a participant in whatever games were played there. Her testimony, if I can bring her before the court, along with the evidence I have gathered so far, might be enough to convince the judge to delay the sentencing.

Only one thing is certain: if I don't find some way of halting the Knapps' sentencing in the morning, there's a fair chance they will die for a crime they didn't commit.

I hit the brakes and skid in the dirt. Throwing my truck into reverse, I spin the tires backward, cranking the wheel, letting the headlights cut across a section of the forest. There, alone in a small hollow of trees and rocks, is Lynn's beat-up truck. I bounce over the rough trail behind it and park.

The hood is cool when I put my hand on its flaking paint, as is the rusty exhaust pipe. When I look through the windows of the cab all I see in the moonlight are littered papers and coffee cups. So I stand in the night listening to the wind in the trees and the clicks of my own engine cooling, trying to figure out where I am and where she could be.

The hollow seems vaguely familiar—there is the white trunk of a fallen aspen lying on the ground near my truck. I remember sitting on that trunk, studying the guidebook while Jones talked sarcastically about starving in the wilderness. This is where we turned around after I got us lost just a week ago.

I start moving along a trail. My courtroom shoes skitter on small stones and sharp branches tug at my suit. The trail crosses a dirt road, near where I parked that day with Jones, and begins winding its way toward the base of the formation where Kate Danning died. Several times I stop to listen but hear only the increasing wind. Finally, I hop awkwardly up the last few boulders to the rocks beneath the wall, where Danning's blood soaked the ground.

There is no way I'm going to climb the cliff in my battered condition without at least my climbing slippers and preferably a rope. Some internal warning keeps me from calling out—it is a feeling so strong that I can't imagine breaking the night with a shout. So I start circling the tower, remembering the narrow ledges and granite slabs I saw before that looked as if they led up the back side.

On the other side the formation begins with a steep slab, about fifty feet high, which looks as though it rises up to a series of parallel ledges high on the formation. In the moon's light the ledges appear to be separated by only short walls ten feet high or so that are broken with cracks and shadows. The slab will be the tricky part. It is shaped like a great rising wave, scooped out in the middle. The initial twenty feet are low-angled before the slab steadily steepens to near vertical.

I try to smear my dress shoes on the granite, but the smooth leather soles just slide off its hard surface. Pulling them off along with my socks, I lay them at the slab's base where I hope I can find them again in the dark if I don't find an easier way down. If Lynn is up there in the cave she will surely have a rope, and we can rappel off the other side. Just climbing up this untested slab will be hard enough in the dark.

Before starting up, I kick my feet in the dust to dry the sweat. My bare soles stick well enough to the stone until it begins to steepen. Then I'm forced to feel for small edges with my fingers and toes. I'm so exhausted that I climb without thinking and without fear, totally absorbed by the search for holds and the tearing pain I feel in my ribs when I'm forced to suspend much weight from my hands.

Abruptly it all changes. I'm nearly to the top of the slab, fifty feet off a forest floor that is strewn with sharp-edged boulders, when my feet slip out from under me. My right forefoot had been smeared on an edge no larger than a quarter and my left foot reaching for a small toehold when it happened. All my weight suddenly came onto the fingertips of both my hands where they are crimping small quartz crystals protruding from the granite. I almost yelp from the sharp pain that feels as if it is separating my ribs. I make the mistake of looking down to frantically try and spot the footholds again.

The dark ground seems to swell at me and for a moment I'm sure I'm falling. But then the agony in my fingers' tendons alerts me that I'm not—yet. With my bare feet I pedal at the rock while fear soaks my suit with sweat. Somehow I find marginal toeholds and am able to relieve some of the pain in my fingers and ribs. A small rain of pebbles rattles past as I startle a bird or a mouse somewhere above.

I finally pull over the top of the slab, gasping for air and shaking with fright. Several minutes go by before I come to the realization that someone is standing on the ledge with me.

Brad Karge is grinning at me from where he stands in the moon-shadow of an overhang just fifteen feet away. “Never seen a dude climb in a monkey suit before,” he says quietly. His blond dreadlocks look like light-colored snakes in the night, and they are writhing in the wind. There is something squat and heavy in his hand, pointed at me.

It takes me a minute to find my voice. “That the gun you used to kill my dog, Brad?” I manage after I calm myself.

He laughs, his voice pitched high with the fever of methamphetamine. “Oh yeah, man. We blasted that sucker when we were looking for you up in the Horns. It was Billy pulling the trigger, though.”

A gust of wind rises up behind him and blows the links of his hair straight out from his head. I feel it sweep through me too, fanning the carefully tended anger within me.

“Where's Billy now, Brad?”

“Gone climbing. He's taking Lynn on her last climb, he says. Dude's psychic or something—he said you'd be coming up here tonight, just like she would. So this is your last climb too. Hope it was fun, dude.”

Heller has left him here to kill me, knowing I would come up to look for Lynn. The man does seem psychic, or at least perceptive and very smart. But there is a madness in his actions. He has nothing to gain anymore by killing me. The Sheriff's Office in Johnson County will still seek him for Chris Braddock's murder on the east face of Cloud Peak. Sheriff McKittrick will still hunt him for Sierra Calloway's murder even if the state office tries to let it go. I can sense that he has recognized me as the enemy from the start, just as I have recognized him. Even that first night at the bar there was a competitiveness between us, a need to dominate and destroy. I have always suspected Brad is just another of his disposable pawns, but a valuable one because of his paternity. And I think it is cowardice that made him leave Brad here to ambush me. I can't help but take some satisfaction in believing Heller's afraid to do it himself. The worst part, though, the part that makes me want to scream, is that he is going to succeed—Cecelia's .32 revolver is still under the seat in the truck and Brad is out of reach, fifteen feet away on the narrow ledge.

“Where did he take her?” I ask. “In whose car? Yours?”

“Yeah, they took my ride. But where? I dunno, dude. Somewhere insane I bet. Her last climb'll be really something, not a shitty little slab like yours. Billy has a sense of style when it comes to that,” he says admiringly.

“This is yours, too, Brad,” I tell him as I get to my feet so I can at least die fighting. “There's enough evidence now to nail you for three murders: Kate Danning, Sierra Calloway, and Chris Braddock. My office knows about all of it. Tomorrow morning they're going to stop the Knapps' sentencing too and arrest your dad for obstruction of justice, malicious prosecution, and anything else they can think of. And they're going to take you down for Kimberly Lee. Make that four murders, Brad. You're the one who's going to be strapped to the gurney. You and your hero Billy.”

“That's bullshit, man. You can't prove anything, and you can't fuck with my dad. He's the next governor—your boss!” He laughs.

I shake my head sadly at him, my eyes fixed on his, ignoring the gun in his hand but trying to think of a way to get it from him. I talk as if I'm the one holding the gun, not the one having it pointed at me. “You're wrong. Karge is history as of tomorrow,” I lie. “And I've got the rope you used to cut down Chris. We know about the cords you and Heller bought in Buffalo. We know about the cords in Heller's basement. The same cords that were used on them all: Kimberly, Kate, and Sierra—”

He is starting to jitter a little in the shadows when he interrupts, “No, man, no. I didn't do any of that. Heller did them by himself, I just waited outside.”

“Your prints on the bottle, Brad. Along with Kate's blood. You hit her on the back of the head with it.”

“You got that wrong, Agent. My
dad
smacked her with it. That's right, the future governor of Wyoming. He came up here that night wanting to talk with me about some shit he learned during the trial of those Knapp brothers. When he was looking at the Knapps' past convictions, he figured out the pipe'd come from the evidence locker. That the sheriffs planted that piece of shit to make their case a little better, and probably made up the confession too. Dad was starting to think maybe I'd had a part in it. So he came up where you just did and snuck up on us. Saw Billy and me with Kate. And Lynn, your little friend, fucked-up and screaming at Billy like a banshee. Man, she didn't like it one bit! But good old solid, straight-arrow Pop is the one who really freaked out, started spitting and swinging at us as we were workin' on her. Kate jumped up to get out of the way when he grabbed my bottle to hit Billy—he missed, smacked her on the head, and knocked her off the fucking cliff!”

So Lynn was there. She lied to me. I can understand why, although I can't understand why she'd go back to Heller. But all the rest of it makes sense. I remember Dave Ruddick telling me about Nathan's fingerprints on the bottle, and then I think of Sierra Calloway's comment that Billy had been talking at Kate's funeral about how he owned the cops and the County Attorney. That he was untouchable. It all fits. Billy is the one who carefully stuck the bottle in the recess in the hidden cave. His own Get Out of Jail Free card.

“Even if you didn't directly participate in the killings, it doesn't matter. All we have to do is prove that you knew about them and assisted before, after, or during. Then you're toast. And killing me's just going to up the dosage, Brad. Killing a cop is an automatic ride. You put the gun down and cooperate with me in stopping Heller, I'll do all I can to keep you off the gurney, see that you live.”

He hesitates and the gun slowly lowers until it's pointing at my legs. But then he raises it again with a smile, aiming at my head. I've overplayed my hand.

“Fuck it, dude,” he says. “I'm not ratting Billy out. I'll take my chances on the lope if it comes to that. Better to die than fade away.”

I close my eyes for a minute and think of all the things left undone. Saving Lynn, stopping Heller, seeing Karge's downfall, avenging Oso, making love to Rebecca . . . the list is endless. I feel another gust of cool wind on my face and wait for the bullet to split my flesh and tumble me off the rock. Bending my knees, I ready myself to launch at him and with any luck take him over the edge with me.

Rather than a gunshot, a voice from behind and above Brad breaks the silence. A dark silhouette is poised on a ledge over our heads. “You pull that trigger, you're going to die a real slow death, kid.” The shadow turns and hangs one-handed from the rock, pushing off the short, overhanging wall with the other, then drops as softly as a spider on an invisible silken thread onto the tiny, flat space behind Brad. I recognize the voice and feel a thrill come over me. My brother.