Badwater Read online

  The computers in the county attorney’s office were all out of date. The software was ancient, the text on the screen a sickly green, and the modem connection to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center still a screeching dial-up. It was as if I’d been transported back to another era—ages ago, at least eight years, when I’d been a brand-new agent with a master’s degree, chock-full of enthusiasm and respect for the system of justice, learning about the real world from Luke Endow.

  After the two large margaritas, my technological disdain seemed kind of funny. I slept in the dirt but could complain about old computers.

  It was nice, at least, to have the office to myself. To not have to listen to Luke’s tough-prosecutor talk, or endure the stares of his staff, who looked at me like I was an animal that had escaped from the zoo. At nine o’clock on a Saturday night, the office was totally silent but for the hum of old machinery.

  Mungo sniffed around on the well-worn carpet. She’d already given me a thorough sniffing when I’d climbed in the Pig. The wolf-dog poked her head between the front seats and nosed my face, not licking, but picking up where Jo had kissed me before I could leave the booth. Then she caught the scent of Jo’s perfume or hand lotion on my pants, and gave me a very dirty look.

  “Don’t even think of ratting me out,” I told her.

  Not that Rebecca would really care.

  I typed Jonah’s full name and birth date into the box on the screen. He had been cited for jaywalking in 2003, just as he’d told me. And for having an open container of alcohol in a prohibited place in 2002. The computer noted that he’d been fined for both crimes, in addition to a surcharge for FTAing—failing to appear—at one initial hearing date.

  Yeah, Jonah was a hardened criminal, all right. Luke was going to be disappointed.

  Next I typed Mattie Freda’s name and birth date. Here I got a solid hit. She’d been arrested three times, all for misdemeanor trespass. But no convictions were listed, so the cases must have been dismissed. Trespass means different things in different states—it could be anything from burglary to shoplifting. But in her case, I suspected it was protesting. She looked like and acted like an activist for something.

  I printed it out, because if Luke could trick her into denying ever having been arrested, he could use it to undermine all of her testimony, which was likely to be favorable to Jonah. It’s the kind of nasty thing both sides do in a trial.

  I checked Pete the Guide, too, not for impeachment material—his testimony was likely to be unbiased—but for any surprises in his background. He’d gotten a DUI in California and that was all. I printed it out, too. We’d need to share this stuff with the defense, anyway.

  And that was all the witnesses, except for the two underage Mann brothers, who wouldn’t have NCIC records. I checked them out by going into the file room, switching on the light, and scanning the juvie files.

  As I expected, there was a wide shelf half full of Mann files. But all of the files were at least a couple of years old and dealt with Ned and Zach Mann, rather than the younger bros. Wondering if the twins had always been the scumbags they appeared to be now, I pulled out two identical-size stacks of folders and took them to a table.

  Theft at age twelve, CDs from Kmart, charges dismissed in return for “parental correction.” Theft again at age fourteen, this time a bottle of Jack from a local liquor store, resulting in a deferred prosecution requiring six months good behavior. Assault at fifteen, beating up a kid five years younger who’d picked on their brother Randy, reduced to harassment and eight hours of community service. Also theft at age fifteen, stealing a kid’s skateboard, case dismissed, no reason given.

  Age sixteen got even more interesting. Assaulting another kid—their own age this time—who they claimed made fun of them. Theft of more liquor. Cruelty to animals in dropping another classmate’s cat out of the backseat window of a moving car. Sexual assault for getting another classmate so drunk she passed out and then taking advantage of her. The only thing they’d actually been “adjudicated” for was the theft. Either Luke’s predecessor had been pretty lax, or the brothers had learned how to work the system.

  Age seventeen had only one charge, arson, for starting a fire in the Shoshone National Forest. This had resulted in another adjudication, their third. Three adjudications and you’re out—they were sent to a kids’ boot camp in Utah for six months, which was presumably the reason why they stayed out of trouble for the rest of the year.

  After putting the files away, I plugged the twins’ names into NCIC on the computer. Nothing but some pending possession charges for a small amount of marijuana in another Wyoming county. They’d apparently been good in the three years since their eighteenth birthdays. But I knew that wasn’t true—I strongly suspected them of using both steroids and meth. They just hadn’t gotten caught. Or maybe their family had some pull with the sheriff and the county attorney. Small towns often dispensed their own informal justice, based on a combination of local values and politics.

  Mungo rested her head on my sullied knee. I scratched her ears while I considered whether I needed to check up on anyone else. Finally I entered William J. Bogey into the box. Luke might appreciate a little opposition research. There were a dozen William Bogeys, but none that seemed to have the right dates or locations. Too bad. Some dirt on him would have made Luke very, very happy.

  I tried Googling Bogey and had more success. A huge amount of it, actually—thousands of hits. Some apparently were legal filings, others opinion pieces he had penned, some announced his appearance as a pundit on CNN or MSNBC, and a huge amount were articles either about him or mentioning his name. I looked at a few that appeared to feature him prominently. They had headlines like “Attorney Bogey Alleges Planted Evidence,” or “Bogey Accuses Police of ‘Gross’ Misconduct,” and “Bogey: Prosecutor Lied.” Reading the articles, I found that a lot of people felt he’d gone over the top when he’d served as lead defense counsel for a professional athlete accused of rape. He didn’t just tear into prosecutors, cops, and hostile witnesses, but he went after the victim, too—a sixteen-year-old girl with a history of mental illness—and absolutely tore her to shreds. The girl had actually killed herself after the fifth day of cross-examination.

  The articles, as well as the announcements of his TV appearances, were all at least a few years old. Maybe he was hoping this small case in Colter County would bring him back into the limelight. The thought made me groan out loud. I hoped like hell Luke would settle this thing fast.

  Next I put Brandy Walsh into NCIC and got a hit—a string of busts for prostitution and possession of crack cocaine going back ten years. AKAs of “Brandywine” and “Big-Butted Brandy” and “Brandy Blow.” This was great stuff. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any way it could be the same young woman. The FBI’s description had her as four feet ten inches tall and 240 pounds.

  Damn. But I printed out a copy just for fun and put it with the stuff I was going to leave for Luke. He’d get a laugh out of it. He might even include it in the discovery.

  Googling Brandy Walsh, I got another surprise. A relevant one this time. If it was the same person—and one close-up picture made it appear so—then she’d recently been a semiprofessional surfer. There were lists of contest results in Hawaii and California from 1995 to 2001. A brief biography said that she’d grown up in Kona and was attending college, as of 2000, in Santa Barbara, where she was studying history and criminal justice.

  If it was the same Ms. Walsh, then, I wondered, what had brought her to law school in Wyoming? And how had she gotten hooked up with a onetime celebrity lawyer like Bogey, working on a criminal case?

  I printed out the bio and picture and left them for Luke, too, along with the other stuff. My notes on the Mann twins I kept to myself. They weren’t a part of the investigation, but those two losers worried me. I couldn’t decide if they were truly dangerous or just fuckups.

  seventeen

  Nearly a hundred pickups and SUVs crowded the st
reets around a small church in the center of town. The majority were oversize four-door ranch vehicles, like Dodge Rams with three-foot-high chrome grilles and Ford Excursions and Chevy Surburbans that stretched to almost twenty feet in length. These monsters made my Pig look dainty. In Wyoming it’s fashionable to own the newest, biggest, most powerful thing on the road. Particularly, for some reason, among the struggling farmers and ranchers—the same people who complain the most bitterly about rising gas prices, even in a state that has no fuel tax.

  The locals gathered in clumps on the church lawn, talking in low, sometimes angry voices, shaking hands and hugging. The ceremony wasn’t scheduled to start for another ten minutes and already there was an impressive turnout. I’d learned from Luke that both the Wallis and the Mann families had been in Colter County for generations. The Wallises were, in fact, sort of the county’s First Family. Cody’s grandfather had even served as county commissioner for nearly thirty years. Then his father had become one of the region’s wealthiest homegrown businessmen through the leasing of heavy farm machinery. The Manns, on the other hand, had begun just as prosperously but hadn’t done so well in the last couple of generations, as evidenced by what I’d learned of Mr. Mann’s long-ago scrapes with the law as well as his oldest sons’ lengthy juvenile records. Surly Ed Mann had been better lately—he was currently the president of the County Cattlemen’s Association.

  Luke had also helpfully explained why the Mann twins didn’t have anything recent on them. Under his predecessor’s reign in the county attorney’s office, and under his own now, as well, it was deemed impolitic to harass the Mann family when it came to minor charges. Especially in the coming electoral season. Luke assured me, though, that if the twins ever did anything serious, he would clean house. I hoped so. Particularly if the “something serious” was done to me.

  I moved quickly across the lawn, averting my eyes from anyone who seemed to be looking my way.

  At the top of the church steps I observed Luke chatting up a white-robed minister. From the way the county attorney was talking—his usual shit-eating smirk veiled by an expression of somber wisdom—it was clear to me that he was busy politicking. I managed to weave around behind him without being seen. The minister, though, caught me when I glanced in his direction. He gave me a gentle smile and a saintly nod that conveyed a blessing. I almost laughed. He obviously didn’t know who I was or anything about me. I scurried on into the church and found an empty pew three rows from the back.

  Then I almost missed the bench when I turned to sit.

  In the row behind me, tucked between two pairs of oblivious senior citizens, was Mattie Freda.

  She was dressed all in black, which as far as I could tell was the only color she ever wore. Her lacy blouse covered her pale arms and vivid tattoos. For the occasion she’d even removed some of her facial jewelry and gone easy on the spiky hair gel. She actually looked exotic and quite pretty. But what the hell was she doing here? I’d warned her to stay away.

  I fought the impulse to say something—to even acknowledge her with a greeting or a rebuke. It would inevitably lead to her moving to sit beside the only familiar face in the church. Then, sooner or later, someone would figure out who she was, the whispering would begin, more heads would turn, and my career would be over. It would look like I was escorting the supposed killer’s girlfriend to the victim’s funeral.

  I stood up and started to move away, but I was pinned in on both sides by the arrival of families with squalling toddlers. I decided that it would create even more of a commotion to attempt an escape—better to sit tight and pretend ignorance.

  After a few minutes in which Mattie did not attempt to speak with me, I began to relax and look around. My attention was immediately drawn to the varnished coffin behind the altar. Built of some heavy, dark wood, it was surrounded by candles and flowers. I tried not to think about the small boy inside, or how he’d looked when I’d dragged him onto the beach, or how his breath had tasted like the river. I tried not to think of Roberto, too—how it was a miracle he hadn’t been placed in a coffin like this one, and how it might have been a blessing if he had been.

  The church filled as the crowd outside was ushered in. Among them were many teens and preteens—schoolmates, probably, of Cody’s and the younger Manns’. Most of the kids hadn’t bothered to dress any differently than they would have for school. The boys wore baggy pants and T-shirts, with puka-shell necklaces around their throats; the girls were showing too much cleavage and abdomen. They all acted as if they were in school, too: whispering and signaling and giggling. I supposed they’d seen too much fake death on TV and in video games for this sedate ceremony to have any effect.

  The parents, for the most part, didn’t bother trying to correct their children’s behavior. They seemed to have given up.

  I had to wonder if I had been like this twenty years ago. I probably looked just as stupid with the Mohawk I’d sported for a while in the early teen years, but I would never have dreamed of acting like this at a funeral. It wasn’t just fear of my parents’ reproach; it came from some innate sense of respect and empathy. Even Roberto, the convicted killer, wouldn’t behave this way.

  Maybe we were just cooler.

  The only time I could remember us ever being so blatantly disrespectful was the time we’d ditched school, “borrowed” a military Jeep, and gone cruising the streets of Manila in a rainstorm. We searched out the biggest puddles we could find and plowed into them, sometimes sending up fifteen-foot walls of water. Turning a corner, we’d seen a puddle as big and deep as a lake up ahead, filling the street with brown water from curb to curb. I was driving, and I floored it—somehow oblivious to the crowd of shopkeepers, chickens, pigs, and customers all huddled under awnings on both sides of the road. I’ll never forget the shame I felt just as I noticed them—and saw their faces—before the twin waves of water leapt up and obscured my view.

  “I know you told me not to come,” a voice whispered in my ear, “but I had to. Jonah asked me to be here for him.”

  I didn’t respond or turn around. I sat stonily facing forward, remembering that old shame, and feeling a little new shame, too.

  The Mann family walked down the center aisle, Ed Mann looking mean and tough, his wife stern and grim. The younger brothers, at least, were dressed more appropriately in collared shirts and long pants. But they didn’t look happy about it, and kept their scrubbed and angry faces pointed toward the ground. The older twins both wore ill-fitting suits and sunglasses. They looked even less happy—it was probably galling not to be able to show off their muscles. They stared all around in challenge, just as they had at the bar. I focused on the back of the head in front of me until they’d sat down.

  Next came Luke with a large woman gripping his arm. His wife, I guessed. He’d gotten married while in law school, but no one I knew from his old life at DCI had been invited. They appeared to be leading Mr. and Mrs. Wallis to their seats in the first row. Apparently Cody had no siblings, or none that could make the service, because no one else accompanied them. The father, big and wide as he was, took each step as if his leg bones were made out of glass. Tears rolled down the mother’s face as she stared at the coffin and staggered. Their obvious grief made my heart feel like a cold stone.

  Everyone finally grew quiet.

  The minister appeared at the altar and asked us to bow our heads. We prayed, then sang hymns, then half-listened to a sermon—something about it being a part of God’s plan when life is brutally cut short. I wasn’t buying it, and wasn’t really paying attention. Then he said something that surprised me, and evidently many others in the congregation.

  “I ask that you not only pray for Cody, but also for the soul of the man who took Cody from us.”

  This brought angry grumbles from the front half of the church. I saw Luke’s head turn nearly 180 degrees in both directions, his political radar fully extended.

  The minister continued on this unpopular theme, preaching about Jesus a
nd love and forgiveness. The congregation was clearly in the mood for something a little more Old Testament.

  The grumbling intensified. One person turned to look at me. Not me, I realized after an uncomfortable moment, but through me, to where Mattie Freda sat just behind me. Other faces began to turn, too, as a message was whispered from ear to ear throughout the front of the church. I resisted the urge to turn myself and see how Mattie was holding up. The eyes were withering. The heat of the gazes passing by me made me want to squirm in my seat.

  Unaware of how his message of love and absolution was being twisted into two hundred laser beams of hate, the minister rambled on. I heard Mattie rustle in her seat behind me. Then I heard the quick taps of shoes fleeing down the aisle. I caught the additional sound of a single muffled sob.

  I’d warned her not to come. But I still felt like shit. Like a coward.

  And yet I couldn’t despise the people whose stares had just ejected her from the church, either. They were mourning, they were angry, they couldn’t yet accept that the kid’s death had just been a mindless accident. Nothing alleviates grief like causing it.

  I know. That kind of grief had taken me to Mexico one year ago. And the best part of me, the good cop, had stayed there.

  With the exception of the Mann twins, these locals were probably good people. They were just irrational with sorrow. And too stubborn to ever admit that irrationality. In desperate times, they clung to desperate ideas. Like the fantasy that their ranches and farms are the backbone of the American economy. Or that environmentalists will stop at nothing until they’ve eradicated mankind altogether. Or that wolves—or even half wolves like Mungo—want to carry off their children.

  When it was finally over, after we’d followed a hearse to the graveyard and the boy named Cody Wallis had been lowered into a hole in the ground, the kids bolted first. Then the elderly wandered away. In a few minutes the cemetery had been stripped of anyone not between twenty and seventy. The grown-ups who remained gathered in small groups on the grass. The largest of these groups was centered around Luke.