“I checked up on you, you know,” the sheriff begins. “You’ve got quite a reputation up in Wyoming. Not a very good one, I’m afraid. Three years as a special agent and already you’ve been suspended twice.”
I’m tempted to explain that the first time it had been the normal suspension-with-pay following any officer-involved shooting. And the second time I’d hit a cop who had it coming. But I say nothing. It would only come out defensive and self-serving.
“For a drug agent you sure seem to cause a lot of ruckus. Always thought you guys were supposed to stay behind the scenes.”
Again I don’t comment.
“Your brother has even more of a reputation. Or should I say record?”
I stay quiet. Deputy B. J. Timms laughs in the seat behind me. It comes out high-pitched and mean.
Munik turns to frown at him, then says, “Tell me about tonight.”
I tell him everything again while the deputy scratches his pen against paper. I tell him about thinking I’d heard a woman’s scream, then Oso’s barking, and Kim asking me to go with her to check on her friends. As best I can, I describe Sunny’s car as it came bouncing down the trail and add that Kim can describe it a lot better, that she might even know the license number.
The sheriff listens without asking any questions. I take this as a compliment on my professional description of the events leading up to the discovery of Cal’s body, until he asks, “And where was your brother, the felon, during all this?”
“My brother had nothing to do with this, Sheriff. He was asleep next to me when I heard the scream.”
“You sure about that, son?” In the glow of the green dashboard lights, I can see he’s smiling slightly. It’s a sad, compassionate smile, offering me another shot at telling the truth.
A warm heat floods through me. I’m tired and hungry and I don’t need this shit. “Listen, Sheriff, and listen carefully.
He was right next to me.
” I turn to the scribbling deputy behind me. “Did you get that down?” Timms glares back at me.
“Never left, huh?” the sheriff asks.
I think about Roberto’s disappearance down the canyon earlier in the night and debate whether to tell the sheriff about that. It can’t hurt, as it was far earlier and Dad and I had heard him howling in the canyon, not in the broader valley. Anyway, I bet that his next move is to talk to my father alone, who will probably tell him that. Besides, the truth will set you free. Right?
“My brother hiked down the canyon to be alone for a while just after dinner. He was back well before I heard the scream.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure. I told you—my brother has nothing to do with this. You should be looking at David Fast and his hired gun. A guy named Burgermeister.”
The sheriff turns and looks at the deputy in the backseat. Then he looks back at me. “Here’s a thought for you, Special Agent. Your brother might have been next to you when you heard that scream, but that doesn’t prove he wasn’t down here earlier. Maybe the girl came up later, found her guy’s body, and started screaming then.”
I stare at him, openmouthed. I want to explain that Roberto would never hurt someone who’d done nothing to offend him, but know it will sound stupid since the sheriff’s already commented on my brother’s long record.
Instead all I say is “Bullshit.”
He sighs. “Stay here a minute, Agent.” The sheriff then does what I predicted. He gets out and walks up to talk to my father, who’s still sitting in the front of my truck. In the headlights of the police SUV, I see my father’s face turn hard and cold with anger.
I pull at the door handle and start to get out.
“He tol’ you to stay put,” Deputy B. J. Timms says from the backseat. They are the first words I’ve heard him utter. Like his laugh, his voice is oddly high-pitched. It’s no wonder he seldom speaks.
“Fuck off, Blow Job.”
As soon as I step out, the deputy’s getting out, too. He’s shouting at the sheriff, “Hey, Sheriff, the guy won’t stay. Want me to cuff him?”
Munik turns and watches me stomp up to him and my father.
“Burns,” he says wearily, “you can either do as I tell you and stay put or I’m going to cuff you for obstruction. And, Colonel, I’m afraid the same goes for you.”
Things are moving too fast for me. There have been times, in fistfights, on climbs, and in my one gunfight, when the world seems to fade into slow motion and I feel that I’m the only one moving at regular speed. In the gunfight I had thought I could almost see the bullets coming. That I had time to get out of the way. But that isn’t happening now. I can’t even get a mental grasp on what the sheriff’s saying to his deputies, punctuating his words with short, brusque hand motions. And it’s probably for the best that I don’t notice the weight of the pistol in my jacket pocket.
A couple of deputies get into the sheriff’s SUV and pull it forward. They slow when they approach my truck and turn out their lights. Deputy Timms is ordered out by the sheriff before he climbs in. Timms argues to come along, surely remembering how Roberto had insulted him the day before, but the sheriff gives another indication of competence by refusing to take him. “Cool down,” he says. Then the SUV rumbles up toward the meadow, as they go to interrogate my brother about a crime he hasn’t committed.
Timms and the other remaining deputy watch us from positions behind my truck and closer to the meadow. Both of them have their thumbs hooked on their gun belts. The pint-sized cop smiles at me, daring me to disobey the sheriff’s orders, and I have to restrain myself from saying or doing something. I won’t be able to do anyone any good if I get arrested for interfering.
“What’s Roberto going to do when those fools wake him up?” Dad asks me, getting out of my Land Cruiser and looking up the valley. The white shape of the sheriff’s blacked-out SUV creeps around a bend, disappearing toward the meadow.
“I don’t know.”
FIFTEEN
A
ROUND US THE
night is close to fading. Birds start to wake and call to one another in the predawn darkness. The crickets have finally abandoned their nightly rhythm. My truck creaks every now and then when Oso shifts his weight to lean out a new window. Muted rock music plays from the cab of the ambulance where the two paramedics wait to “bag and tag.” To keep from worrying about my brother and how he’ll react when he’s awakened by a gang of country cops, I think about Cal. How the caver in his mud-stained clothes had been so amped with life on the two occasions I’d met him. How he’d acted with foolish courage when he’d leapt on the back of one of Kim’s assailants during the fight in the meadow. And how now he’s just a piece of evidence for the coroner and his staff to cut up and try to decipher. Like a puzzle.
The two deputies talk in low voices, sometimes laughing as they keep an eye on us. I’m inclined to glare at Deputy Timms but know it won’t do any good. I’m desperate to do something, anything, but I’m utterly powerless here. It’s a constricting feeling akin to claustrophobia. Like I’m being squeezed into a very small place. With clenched hands I stand beside my father in the road. We’re both silent and unmoving, both listening intently to the end of the night. We hear no shouts, no sounds of violence, and, thankfully, no gunshots coming from the direction of the meadow. But I remember that the meadow is far enough away that I’d barely heard the scream.
“I think we’re going to have to change our strategy,” Dad says to me.
I cock my head at him, not knowing what he’s talking about.
“Talking’s not doing any good. It might dry him out, to spend a few days locked up. Until they find out who really killed that boy.”
“Jesus, Dad,” I snap.
The thought of Roberto back in a cell makes me feel a cold chill. And it adds weight to the claustrophobic feeling that’s pressing down on me. From what little I’d heard about the federal time he did, it almost killed him. His sentence was extended twice because of fights he’d gotten into there. He almost never talked about it but I know it took a permanent toll on his psyche. It had upped the ante on his excesses—the soloing had begun in earnest when he was released. The one time I’d visited him at the medium-security facility outside Denver, he’d been like a caged mountain lion. Pacing, snapping at the bars, slowly burning himself up with his own energy.
In a calmer voice I add, “I think he needs to make his own decisions, not have them forced on him.”
My father grunts and turns away again to look up the valley. Over it the stars are fading as the sky turns from black to a pinkish gray.
It’s perhaps twenty minutes before a pair of headlights starts heading back down the valley toward us from the meadow. And it’s maybe five minutes after that before we can hear off-road tires crunching on the rocky road. Every few seconds the SUV’s engine noise is punctuated by a heavy thump. As they drive slowly past us and into the light made by the ambulance’s high beams, I realize the cause of the periodic thump. Roberto is sprawled in what amounts to a cage at the very rear of the big SUV. His hands are pinned behind his back and his shackled bare feet are slamming into the reinforced glass of the rear window.
The truck stops beyond us, close to the patrol car and the waiting ambulance. Sheriff Munik steps out. He slaps the hood twice after closing the door behind him. Then the truck pulls away and heads down-valley, creeping past the other vehicles. The Wyatt Earp look-alike gives us a brief look and hesitates before walking toward us. His coat looks rumpled. One sleeve is half torn off. When he gets closer I notice a trickle of blood running from one of his ears.
“I apologize for having tried to be helpful earlier,” I tell the sheriff as I advance to meet him. “I mistook you for a competent peace officer.”
“Now, son—” Munik says.
“You’ve arrested an innocent man while Fast or Burgermeister or whoever really killed Cal is covering their tracks. This is bullshit.” I’m up in his face but the sheriff doesn’t move away. The brim of his big Stetson almost hangs over my forehead. The two deputies who’d been assigned to watch us quickly flank their boss, waiting for a signal to drag me down. B. J. Timms slides his nightstick from his gun belt with the low hiss of wood on leather. I have enough sense to keep my hands at my sides and swing only from the mouth.
“Simmer down,” the sheriff says.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Sheriff? You don’t have probable cause to arrest him. You don’t have shit. My brother is going to sue the hell out of your county, and if he’s lucky, even you personally.” Law enforcement officers are generally immune from lawsuits unless it can be shown that they were acting in bad faith, but right now I’m angry enough to believe we can prove it.
“Step back, son.” The sheriff says it quietly but his tone is hard. He’s not going to take much more. And that’s fine with me—I want something to happen. But I need him or his sidekick to be the one to start it.
I begin to say more but my father takes my arms with an iron grip and pulls me back. From behind us I can hear Oso growling from inside my truck.
“Antonio, shut up,” Dad says.
Then to the sheriff: “My son is right. You’ve arrested the wrong man. Roberto was asleep beside us when we heard the scream.”
Munik rubs his chin with the back of a hand. “Well, sir, you may or may not be right about that. The scream might have come when that girl they saw flying down the road found her friend beat to death. Or you might be wrong about the timing. I’m not going to call you a liar, but contrary to what your other hothead son is saying, we’ve got more than enough PC.” He means probable cause to make an arrest.
“One, your boy Roberto just fought with me and another officer when we tried to ask some questions. As the
special agent
here can probably tell you, that in itself can be evidence of guilt. Two, he’s got a history as long as my arm for assaults and vandalism. Three, he’s got dried blood on his hands, and I’m betting it’s that boy’s blood.” He gestures up the hill to where Cal’s body is decomposing. “And four, both you and the special agent here admit he took off for a few hours sometime earlier in the evening. That adds up to a hell of a lot of evidence, General, and it doesn’t look good.”
“Colonel,” my father corrects, but the sheriff knows that.
“The blood’s from climbing,” I snap. “His hands got torn up climbing yesterday afternoon. Look at my hands, look at my father’s.”
“Son, you trying to get yourself arrested, too?”
A phone chirps twice. The sound it makes is unnatural in this place with the primitive emotions in the air. The sheriff, my father, and I all slap our pockets with the annoying habit of a cellular culture. For a moment I think it’s Roberto, somehow calling me, but then I remember that my phone is locked in the glove box of my truck and that Roberto is halfway to Tomichi already, trussed like a turkey in the back of the sheriff’s SUV.
It turns out to be my father’s satellite phone. He lets go of my arms and walks a little ways up the road.
“Look, Sheriff, this is bullshit,” I say, trying hard now to keep both the anger and the pleading out of my voice. “Test the blood. Find the girl. You’re going to be apologizing when all this is sorted out.”
Munik shakes his head almost sadly. He turns and walks down toward the patrol car and ambulance.
Deputy Timms snorts at me. “I’ve got a prediction of my own.” He closes his eyes for a second and holds a finger pointed to his temple as if he’s receiving a vision. “I see your brother apologizing to a jury, begging them not to give him a ride on Old Sparky. And I see you up there pleading with him.”
Without thinking, I step forward again, but he anticipates my move. He has his nightstick held parallel to the ground, an end in each hand. With the rounded edge he shoves me hard in the stomach.
“Try it,” the deputy murmurs up at me, correctly reading the look in my eyes.
I swallow my anger. Turning my back, I spit on the road to rid my mouth of the bile that has crawled up my throat.
It will only make things worse.
“Thought so,” I hear Timms say. “He’s a pussy.” His partner laughs.
“And I guess you only like dicks, Blow Job,” I tell him.
From where he’s taking an evidence kit out of the trunk of the patrol car, the sheriff shouts at us, “Now you and the general clear on out of here, unless you want to get yourselves arrested for obstruction. Go on back up to your camp—this road’s closed for the next hour or two. I don’t want anyone but my men fooling around with the crime scene.”
“You hear that?” the pint-sized deputy says from behind me. Then he imitates his boss by saying, “We’ll let you know if we need any help,
Special Agent
Burns.”
When my father walks back, pushing his phone back into a pocket, his face is as expressionless as ever. But I notice an even greater rigidity in his steps and in the way he drives the heels of his hiking boots into the ground. I’d been too angry and worried about my brother to care much who was calling him. Now, I realize, it must be something important if someone’s willing to interrupt what’s left of Dad’s vacation with a five-thirty
A
.
M
. phone call.
“We’ve been ordered back to the meadow,” I say.
My father doesn’t reply as we get in my truck with Oso. I maneuver the truck back and forth on the narrow Forest Service road, trying to turn around. The whole time, Deputy Timms stands close, his burnished wood weapon still in his hand. It takes four or five shifts between first gear and reverse while spinning the steering wheel before I get the truck pointed back up-valley. I pop the clutch and press the gas pedal a little too hard, sending a small spray of dirt onto the deputy’s boots and uniform trousers. In the rearview mirror, I see him giving me the finger.
Up ahead the sun is finally rising over Wild Fire Peak, putting an end to this nightmarish night. But the day is not looking like it’s going to be any better.
“You look like you got some more bad news,” I say.
He looks straight ahead and grunts once in acknowledgment. How much worse could it be than having your drug-addict son arrested for a crime he didn’t commit?
“Was it Mom?”
Dad exhales loudly in what could be a sigh. There’s a long pause before he answers. “No, Antonio, it wasn’t your mother. It was work—they’re calling me back. There’s a situation in Bosnia. It hasn’t been released on the news yet, but a helicopter crashed behind Serbian lines with four Americans aboard. They want me at my desk today, and maybe on my way to the Balkans tonight.”
The truck bounces over a series of ruts, filling the interior with the sounds of metallic rattling. In the backseat Oso sneezes in the dust that’s coming in the open windows. I realize I’m gripping the wheel with unnecessary tightness. I look over at my father’s rigid face.
“Did you tell them you’ve got a situation right here?”
He pauses again before answering. “No, son, I didn’t. Your brother’s safe enough for a few days. Safer, anyway, than on the loose.” And we both know it won’t do any good to tell his superiors about this new family problem; it would only result in another black mark in his official file.
But even understanding that, a new anger warms my blood.
Roberto needs you here. I need you here. Whatever happened to all those years of preaching that family comes before all else? That we Burnses need to stick together, support one another through hard times?
It is a concept he’d drilled into us as children, the same as he’d drilled us to always double-check our knots. In these last few years we’ve all been forgetting to do what’s necessary to keep each other alive. And there’s no time we’ve needed one another like right now.
“So you’re going?”
“I’ve got to.”
I don’t look his way again as we pull into the meadow.