The Edge of Justice (7 page)

The cheap carpet on the interview room floor is stained with vomit and urine. I stare at it and realize the healing I've felt since my return to Laramie the day before is totally gone.

“You want off this investigation? If you can't hack it here . . . let me know now. I'll get you back up north. You'll only have to come back . . . for the hearing next week.” McGee's voice is uncommonly soft.

I shake my head angrily and feel tiny pieces of glass fall on the bare skin of my arms. “Fuck that, Ross. I'll finish this.” I'm glaring at him and I realize he wanted to make me mad. So I smile and say, “Everyone tells me this Danning thing is supposed to be routine anyway.”

McGee gives me a nod with a rare and crooked grin, displaying two decades of military dentistry.

SEVEN

A
T THREE O
'
CLOCK
we drive out to the county coroner's office in the basement of Ivinson Memorial Hospital. The coroner himself, Dr. Jim Gustavson, meets us in the narrow lobby. Apparently the job in a small town like Laramie doesn't require a receptionist. Nor does it require a full-time coroner—on the way over, McGee told me that Gustavson works part-time as a mortician. He is a small, bald man with the sort of pasty complexion you would expect from someone whose professional life is spent among the dead. The white hospital smock he wears is stained with dried blood and other unidentifiable bits of gore. There is a nauseating chemical smell about him. He introduces himself to me without offering a hand and hellos McGee in a casual way. They've apparently met before. It sounds to me as if they are professional acquaintances rather than friends.

“Come on around, gentlemen. I'm finishing up a little project in back.”

I follow them past the unmanned counter and through a pair of metal doors into a room with a single stainless-steel table. The air in it is cold. It stinks of death. Cluttered shelves line the walls above long counters except for one side, where the entire wall is taken up by large, square doors, each about the size of a coffin. It looks like some sort of enormous filing cabinet. McGee had warned me that the coroner would want to talk in the cutting room. “The prick likes to keep you off-balance . . . when you question his incompetence. . . . A typical friggin' ghoul's ploy.”

A twisted corpse lies naked on the table. I look away from it quickly, but McGee limps right up and examines it with a critical eye.

“Car accident?” he asks, puffing hard from the short walk.

“Right. The boy was sixteen. He lost control of his car out on 287—driving far too fast, of course. He was sideways across the highway when the eighteen-wheeler caught him. See the bumper imprints where it came through the top of the door and crushed his chest? You can read the license-plate number there. His parents will never have to ask if anyone got the number of the truck that hit him.” The coroner chuckles as he makes the feeble joke. Neither McGee nor I join in.

I spot a counter along the wall that doesn't look as if it has any body parts or blood spatters on it and place my briefcase there. Opening it, I take out the file on Kate Danning and spread it on the counter. I don't want to be in the same room with the corpse any longer than I have to, so I interrupt McGee and the coroner as they study the body.

“Dr. Gustavson, I'm hoping you can answer a couple of questions about Kate Danning's autopsy. You did the cut on her Monday, right?”

“Oh yes, just three days ago. She was a pretty girl, at least before she landed on those rocks. I actually know her parents.”

“As Sheriff Willis probably told you, I'm looking into it as a routine inquiry. There's a potential conflict of interest because the County Attorney's son is the primary witness. Do you know him?”

Gustavson chuckles. “Who, the County Attorney? I see him almost every day.”

I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. I can already tell this guy's going to jerk me around. “The kid, Dr. Gustavson.”

“Sure, I've met the boy several times over the years. Nice young man. I saw him just the other day at the funeral. He looked devastated.”

That doesn't quite match with how I'd seen him at the bar. I remember him ignoring my wave when Lynn pointed him out. He was with the other climbers at the table, laughing and spraying beer from his mouth, just one day after his girlfriend's funeral.

“I just wanted to ask you about the injury to the back of her skull. Do you know what caused it?”

The coroner looks at me as if I'm dim-witted, and then looks at McGee and smiles. “She fell off a cliff, Agent Burns.”

I'm not in the mood to put up with any shit, but I try to ignore his tone. “The reports and pictures I saw indicate that she landed on her face. What I'd like to know is how did she crack the back of her skull?”

“Let me see my report.” The coroner takes the pages from my slim file. I grimace inwardly. He hadn't washed his hands after touching the corpse during his discussion with McGee. I stand at his side and point out the mention of the injury to the rear of her head. The doctor grunts, then shakes the autopsy photographs out of the envelope. In them the thin girl is naked on the same steel table, posed in sad postures for the camera. Sure enough, one of the photos shows the vivid yellow bruise and jagged tear of parted skin at the back of Kate Danning's freshly shaved scalp. I also point out to him the picture of her at the base of the cliff and the small bit of matted hair visible on the back of her head.

“It looks to me like she struck it on the way down. There's your explanation, Agent. She bounced on the cliff.” He's smiling again.

In my already fragile emotional state, the pictures have affected me strongly; I want to wipe the smile off his face with my knuckles.

I show him the eight-by-ten of the sheer cliff, vertical to overhanging, as well as the picture of it I'd found in the Vedauwoo guidebook. Trying to control the aggressiveness I'm feeling but not doing a very good job, I say, “Show me what she bounced off of, Doctor.”

The coroner remains adamant. “Well, young man, that's the only way she could have gotten that. Maybe you should go up there and jump off yourself—see what pops you in the head.”

“How about we go up there together and I throw you off?”

His spine jerks straight and he glares at me. I glare back. I expect a rebuke from McGee, but it doesn't come. He's shuffling through the autopsy photos. I'd offered to show them to him before, in the hotel, but he'd declined.

“Gustavson,” he suddenly barks, “what the hell's that?” He holds up a shot of the crushed face and chest. With a thick finger he draws a line across the girl's throat. There is an angry red mark there. The coroner takes the photo from him and looks at it closely.

“Oh yes, I remember that. She was wearing a necklace of some sort. A piece of colored string, if I remember correctly. I couldn't untie it and had to cut it off. It must have caught on something, probably when she hit the back of her head.”

“You keep the goddamn necklace?”

“No, I put it in the incinerator. It was inexpensive and not very glamorous, for a girl with such wealthy parents.”

I glance at McGee and see that he looks as worked up as I feel. His labored breaths are increasing rather than diminishing. His fierce blue eyes blaze above his beard. Heat and blood are brightening his face. “You did the cut on Lee, right? She was strangled. . . . With a narrow pink cord . . . I've seen the fucking pictures. . . . And she was using meth. Just like Danning . . . or at least had been. . . . Are you catching my drift, Gustavson?” He says the doctor's name as if it's an insult.

Gustavson turns away. “Coincidence.” He slides all the photos back into the envelope and tosses it rudely on top of my other papers on the counter.

“Christ!” McGee continues. “Did you check for binding marks on Danning?” He steps closer to the coroner. I can see the doctor wince at the smell of McGee's cigar-flavored breath.

“No, Mr. McGee. There was no need—that girl fell off a cliff, damn it.”

McGee moves even closer and Gustavson steps back, looking cornered. “Landed facedown? And got a fractured skull in back? . . . Never looked into a strangle mark . . . on her neck? Christ, you better not . . . have fucked this one up too.”

“I hope you at least did a rape kit,” I say.

“I was told it wasn't necessary.”

“Who the fuck told you that!” McGee swings his cane in a low, agitated arc. With a sharp crack it strikes the steel table upon which lies the boy's body. I half expect the corpse to jump off the table and run. There's something particularly profane about our anger in a room where the crumpled and naked body lies partially cut open.

The coroner is now glaring back at McGee, red-faced. “The sheriff did! And he was passing the message on from Karge!” We both stare at him, stunned. “So if you want to shout at someone, go shout at them. Listen, I did what I'm supposed to do. I cut them up and tell you how they died. And she fell off a cliff, so don't go making this kind of stuff up! I've suffered enough with this Lee trial!”

McGee speaks slowly. “If you're looking for sympathy, look it up in the dictionary. . . . It's between shit and syphilis.”

Gustavson regains some of his composure. “Please leave. I've got to finish this one.” He motions at the boy's corpse. “And you're chasing your tail if you think anything except that the girl fell off a cliff.”

I gather the papers and photos back into my briefcase. On our way out the door, McGee turns and again growls at the coroner. “Where is she? Buried or cremated?”

“Buried Tuesday,” Gustavson says, as he stands unmoving over the boy's twisted corpse. Then he adds, uselessly, “Closed casket, of course.”

Outside in the heat and the wind I walk slowly with McGee to his office-assigned Ford sedan that we're driving. The vinyl seats are hot and the car reeks of his cigars. McGee had earlier declined to drag his bulk high up into the Land Cruiser and have the beast drool down his neck. So I'd left Oso at the hotel with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door to save an unwary maid from a surprise.

“What's this about the Lee?”

“Possible clusterfuck. . . . She was strangled by a thin cord too. . . . But all the way.”

“The Knapp brothers were in custody when Kate Danning died, right?” I say, thinking out loud. “It happened in the middle of their trial. Another young, dead girl involved in the local drug scene, possibly strangled, at least partly. So I guess we have a problem with the good doctor's coincidence theory.”

“Coincidence doesn't get a trial, lad. . . . I presume it guilty until proven innocent.”

“What are you thinking, then? Someone else did Kimberly Lee? Not the brothers? I thought that case was about as solid as they get.”

McGee jams a fresh cigar in his mouth and paws at the car's cigarette lighter. He doesn't answer me but curses some more around the fat roll of dried leaves.

“What about the rape kit on Lee? I don't remember hearing about that. What did it show?”

McGee tears the cigar out of his mouth, his eyes as bright as its hot cherry. “That's what the little shit was talking about. . . . That's why the defense raked him over the fucking coals. . . . He didn't bother to do one on Lee . . . since everyone knew who killed her. The incompetent prick!”

I'm amazed. On the same day he was burned for not doing a rape kit in the Lee trial, he doesn't bother to do one on Kate Danning. You would think he'd learn from his mistakes. And why would Karge not want one done? Even if his son's semen or pubic hair were found on her, why would it matter, as everyone knew he was her boyfriend? It's too late now—Kate Danning's body is in the earth and even if we dig her up, she'll have been washed by the mortician, probably Gustavson himself, before the funeral.

Then McGee's cell phone rings. He wrestles it out of his suit pants pocket and stabs the button. “McGee.”

Without a word he presses the button again. He stares straight through the windshield, straight into the hot sun, as he growls, “Goddamn. Verdict's in.”

EIGHT

I
'
M SITTING UP
front next to McGee when the reporters once again burst into the courtroom. Twenty minutes earlier the deputies and security guards outside the building took note of the badges we displayed and let us through the agitated crowd that was massed by the courthouse's entrance like runners at a starting line. Behind us now, they nudge one another and argue for more room on the hard pews.

I feel uncomfortable with the media staring at the back of my head. Once or twice I think I hear my name among the whisperings, followed by the sardonic nickname “QuickDraw.” Then I feel even more uncomfortable when the Lee family is led in to take their seats directly behind us. An apology is on my lips, for exactly what I don't know, but I don't turn around. The five of them sit silently except for the occasional sniffle that I assume is the result of Mrs. Lee's ever present and well-deserved tears.

On the ride over and then in the courtroom, when it was still empty and quiet, McGee had growled out the forensic details of the Lee case.

Kimberly Lee was beaten and raped before she was strangled by a nylon-sheathed cord three millimeters in diameter. Cord of the same color and diameter also had been used to bind her hands behind her back. The strangulation had been carried out by the use of some sort of slipknot rather than simply having been held in two hands like a garrote. When she was found the pink cord flecked with purple was still biting into her flaccid skin. There were several different abrasions on her neck caused by the cord, indicating she'd struggled bravely before the lack of blood flow to her brain and the resulting lack of oxygen caused her to lose consciousness forever.

The bright, thin cord was unusual. It was dissimilar to the cords sold in both the town's mountaineering stores as well as in all of Laramie's hardware stores. One of the few high points in the defendants' case was that no more of it was found among the brothers' belongings. The prosecution was unable to explain where the Knapps had purchased it.

A second point for the defense was the fact that no rape kit was ever performed on the victim's body. The good Dr. Gustavson's autopsy was cursory at best, unlike the exacting procedures the state's examiners would have used.

Generally, the state's superior resources are taken advantage of by local law enforcement in all serious or complex cases. But DCI was not invited to participate in the Lee investigation. With the believed killers so quickly and easily apprehended, both Nathan Karge and Sheriff Willis, his campaign manager, apparently felt the state's assistance was not needed. Or, more likely, they wanted to do this case on their own and not have to share any credit. They wanted to show Wyoming and the nation that they were diligent and effective; that in the wake of Matthew Shepard's murder the town and its elected officials were perfectly capable of handling this all by themselves. In the midst of the campaign, Karge and Willis needed to be the heroes. They jealously guarded the limelight.

I remember a part of the closing arguments I saw the day before. The defense argued to the jury that a reasonable doubt exists for two reasons. First, because no rape kit was performed, there was no DNA evidence tying the Knapps to the scene—only the single fingerprint on the broken crank pipe, which could have gotten there a number of ways. Second, the prosecution had been unable to associate the cord to the defendants. These two facts, their lawyers said, raised a reasonable doubt as to whether the Knapps really raped and murdered Kimberly Lee. It was a rush to judgment based on shoddy evidence and political ambitions.

The defense also tried to explain the Knapps' peculiar way of answering the door as a drunken mistake, the result of several years of “unfortunate” encounters with the local police.

Karge responded in his rebuttal that no case was perfect, there are always unanswered questions, and there are always a few things that can't be explained, but that this sort of speculation did not amount to a reasonable doubt. He pointed out the weighty evidence that proved the Knapps' guilt: that Kimberly Lee was planning on telling the police where she used to get her drugs; one of the Knapps' fingerprints on the crank pipe near the victim's body; the hacked-off piece of Kimberly Lee's breast along with the work glove found in the bed of their pickup; the way the Knapps answered the deputies' knock on their trailer with a shotgun blast as if they expected the police; the racist propaganda found inside; and, most damning of all, the slurred statement one of the Knapps made to Sheriff Willis—“Bitch had it coming.”

Now I find myself staring at the two defendants as the deputies lead them shuffling into the courtroom. The Knapps walk cautiously, limping a little from the leg braces hidden by their public-defender standard-issue cheap polyester suits. I'm thinking about another dead girl with abrasions on her neck and the casually discarded “necklace,” wondering if this entire circus could be a mistake.

The bailiff slams down the gavel and shouts, “All rise!” Everyone in the courtroom leaps to their feet on the old wooden floor but the defendants and their parents. The mother and father sit grim-faced and angry behind their sons, sure like everyone else that their children are about to be found guilty. I take the opportunity to look around for Rebecca Hersh, and spot her thick dark hair and alabaster skin near the rear of the chamber. I wonder what she would write if she knew about the things McGee and I learned in the coroner's cutting room.

When the judge comes in, she gives the family and the public defender's staff who sit among them a brief glare before she tells the courtroom to be seated.

“Mr. Karge, Mr. Crane, Mr. Schneider,” she says to each of the attorneys, “I'm told we have a verdict. Are you prepared to receive it?”

Each answers with a solemn nod. Most of the room gets to their feet a second time as the jury is led into the box. The men and women look uncomfortable, knowing that every eye in the room is searching their faces for some clue. They keep their eyes in neutral places—the floor, the flags, the judge. Once the jury is seated the gallery is told to take their seats again. It's almost like a game of Simon Says.

“Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” the judge asks them. The foreman stands with a dip of his head and holds out a piece of paper to the bailiff, who carries it to the judge. She glances at it without expression and sends it back to the foreman.

Never before having observed a capital trial, I watch impressed by the speed of such a consequential proceeding. As soon as the slip of paper is back to the jury, the judge asks the defendants to rise and the foreman to read the verdict. The defendants' attorneys and family members now stand with them. I've never heard anything so quiet as that room, packed with one hundred and fifty people. It's more hushed than a moment of silence at a funeral.

The foreman reads the first charge, Wyoming Statute 6–2–101, Murder in the First Degree, in an almost serene voice. It sounds suspiciously to me like the soft hiss of a fuse being lit. The room holds its collective breath as the foreman pauses and looks directly and bravely at the defendants. His voice is gentle as he pronounces a single word: “Guilty.” But that one word causes the courtroom to explode.

Before the spectators even have a chance to exhale, one of the brothers shouts, “Bullshit!” He flips the table in front of him into the well of the court. There's an audible pop as the restraining devices concealed beneath his pant legs snap open. He balances awkwardly as he begins to rave. The two deputies, seated in folding chairs behind the defense table, spring toward him. The other brother sweeps his own table clear of his attorney's books, legal pads, and laptop computers.

He too is screaming at the jurors, males and females alike, “You bitches! You fucking bitches!”

The two deputies struggle with the brother who's flipped the table, while the other is held by his own attorneys. Everyone in the room is on their feet and the chamber roars with noise. I'm among them, considering a leap over the short wall that divides the pews from the court's well.

Before I can, a door near the jury's box bangs open. Jones strides out followed by another two deputies. The heat goes out of the brothers' curses at the sight of the enormous man moving coolly toward them. Coming at them is something they hold in utter contempt—a black man—with the courtroom lights reflecting off his shaved skull like a halo. Even worse, it's a black man wearing the uniform of authority with a badge on his chest and a gun at his hip. Their shouts turn to mutters as Jones efficiently handcuffs the one held by his attorneys while four deputies take care of the other. Jerking slightly against their captors, as if a brief trickle of potassium chloride is already entering their veins, both brothers are led out of the courtroom.

At a nod from the judge, Jones walks to the rear of the chamber and positions himself against the main doors. He folds his arms across his wide chest. The message on his face is clear: No one is getting out until the judge dismisses them.

I look around the room and watch as the reporters assess their chances of getting past Jones, then resort to scribbling and talking among themselves. The defendants' mother is openly sobbing while her husband sits red-faced in what is either shame or fury. Behind me, the Lees are not exulting in the one verdict they've heard. They sit stone-faced. No public condemnation or punishment of the animals who killed their daughter will bring her back. The defense attorneys and their staff right the overturned table and recover their scattered belongings.

The judge beats the bench with her gavel to silence the room. “Mr. Foreman,” she says, “you may continue reading the verdict.”

“Objection!” the lead attorney yelps from where he's crouched, picking up his computer. “Your honor, I move for a mistrial!”

“On what grounds, Mr. Smith?”

“This jury has clearly been prejudiced by what they've just seen.”

Karge speaks up. “It doesn't matter, they've already reached verdicts.”

“But—”

“No more argument, please, Mr. Smith. Motion for a mistrial denied. You'll have an opportunity to poll the jury after the verdicts are read. Continue, Mr. Foreman.”

The defense attorney interrupts again. “Objection as to the absence of my clients from the courtroom.”

“They've made themselves quite unavailable. You may inform them of the jury's verdicts once this proceeding is finished. Now be quiet and save your objections,” the judge snaps at him.

The foreman maintains his composure except for a small quaver in his voice as he reads each count and the jury's finding of guilty. By the end of his reading, the entire courtroom is again buzzing with murmurs. The reporters are visibly anxious to get to their phones and cameras, but the judge keeps them in their seats with a harsh glare. “Frigging ants in their pants,” McGee stage-whispers to me.

After the judge allows the defense to despondently poll each of the jurors as to whether the verdict to each charge was their individual verdict and the unanimous verdict of the jury, she tells the attorneys they can take up posttrial motions the next morning. She sets a sentencing date in eight days—next Friday at nine o'clock.

Karge objects to that. “Your honor, the State is prepared to proceed with sentencing immediately.”

“I'm sure you are, Mr. Karge,” the judge snaps at him now. “But I'm going to give the jurors a few days off. Surely you don't want the jury to vote on whether to impose the death penalty with
this
scene fresh in their minds.”

Karge wants exactly that. He waits a moment before sitting again, as if he's considering whether he should argue the point further, until the judge's glare burns his legs out from under him. He does a strange thing when he sits—quickly turning in his seat, he gives McGee and me the briefest of glances before turning back to the papers on his table.

I wait for the reporters and spectators to flee from the room before I follow. Moments earlier McGee trailed Karge out through a side door after the County Attorney gravely shook the hand of Mr. Lee and received a low bow from both him and the victim's mother. In the hallway I spot Jones standing by a window, watching the exodus of spectators and the agitated crowd on the grass outside. While disparate portions of the crowd chant different slogans, either in victory or in anguish, or for even some stranger passion, the television commentators talk excitedly at their cameras.

The big man gives me a familiar roll of his eyes when he notices me coming toward him. “Never seen anything like this, QuickDraw. Hope never to again, but I know next week could be worse. The sentencing, you know. At least I finally get a day off tomorrow.”

“Your guys did a good job getting ahold of them.”

“Next week those boys are sure as shit going to be wearing shock belts. One false move and zap!” He pushes an imaginary button with his finger. “We once put it on a young deputy and shocked him. Guy peed his pants.”

Feeling talkative from the day's events, I recall one of McGee's many stories and tell it to Jones. During a robbery trial McGee prosecuted, the defendant hadn't liked the way the case was going. So he grabbed the bag of the state's evidence and took off running out of the courtroom. The jury convicted him anyway, in absentia, and without a good deal of the evidence. When he was finally caught weeks later and brought in for sentencing, the pissed-off judge gave him the max—twelve years. McGee said the guy appealed, arguing that he was convicted without sufficient evidence, and the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, setting him free pending a new trial. Of course the stolen evidence was never recovered. And in the second trial he was acquitted.

Jones says with a laugh, “Justice, huh?” Then he in turn tells me his own story about a courtroom uproar. It was a rape trial he saw Nathan Karge prosecute. During his closing argument, Karge was interrupted by the sound of small shrieks and running feet. He'd been graphically describing to the jury how the perp forced his penis between the victim's lips and shoved it again and again in her mouth, bruising the back of her throat. A troop of Girl Scouts had just wandered in to see justice at work, and their den mothers were chasing them back out the courtroom's door.