Fool Me Twice

CHAPTER 26

I didn’t go to Barbados, Aruba, or Curacao. Instead, I said good-bye to Patterson, slogged through the snow, and got my rental car from the garage at the foot of Galena Street. There were no beaches or bikinied lasses along the way. There were boots and gloves, scarves pulled tight against the cold. Before coming here, the last time I saw a ski mask, it was being introduced into evidence against my client who wore it when pointing an Uzi at a convenience store clerk in Hialeah.

My car yawked and hawked and sputtered like an old codger clearing his throat. I nearly flooded the carburetor but finally got it to turn over and cough itself to life. I pulled onto Main Street and turned left, for no good reason, it could just as well have been right. Clouds hung low, shrouding the town in a gray mist, obscuring the surrounding mountains. There was no wind, and the snow fell straight and hard, as if dumped from a celestial truck. I used to ski on days like this, the visibility so poor you had to guess where the next mogul would pop up. But then, I windsurf in thunderstorms, too.

I drove slowly, politely yielding the right of way a couple of times. Traffic was heavy, the Volvos and Jeeps, Range Rovers and Land Cruisers heading home, ski racks laden with equipment. Hey, fun seekers, I envy you, muscles stretched and lungs expanded. Load up with complex carbs tonight, stretch out with someone you love-or at least like-in a hot tub, and be back at it in the fresh powder tomorrow. Me, I think I’ll just visit the courthouse and let them call me a rapist and murderer all day.

I drove aimlessly and found myself heading east out of town. I turned left and started up a gentle rise on the lower slopes of what was probably Smuggler Mountain. I was lost, but what did it matter? I had nowhere to go and lots of time to get there. Suddenly, from behind, a black Dodge Turbo Ram pickup with dual rear wheels pulled out and passed me, its oversize tires chomping through the fresh snow. Through its steamy rear window, I caught sight of a long spill of dark hair. I squinted at the personalized Colorado plate as the truck sped on. “Aurum.” I didn’t have to call Doc Riggs for the translation. I remembered it from high school chemistry, right along with dropping a dissected frog down Joan Wooldridge’s blouse.

Aurum is gold.

She was driving Cimarron’s truck. Hers now, I supposed. I gave the rental some gas and followed the taillights up the hill. She turned right, and so did I. She turned left, and I followed. Hey, this was fun. We went about a mile, made a couple more turns, and she slowed. I hung back, watching, waiting.

I tuned the radio to an oldies station and heard the Beatles longing for yesterday. Me, too. I listened to my wipers clackety-clacking and had a conversation with myself.

Just what the hell was I doing?

Following Jo Jo Baroso.

Why?

Because, like Everest, she’s there.

What does that mean?

It means I don’t know why. Maybe I want her to testify tomorrow that I’m still stalking her, turn up the heat some more. Maybe I’ll run her car into a ditch, grab her and make her eat a handful of snow. Or maybe I just want to know why she’s driving up Smuggler Mountain in the middle of a blizzard. Maybe I figure there’s an answer out here, because there sure as hell isn’t one anywhere else.

Through the gray haze and falling snow, I didn’t see the fork in the road. She turned left smartly. I hit the brakes and tried to follow but spun out. I whipped the wheel back, let up on the brakes, then kissed them gently. The car straightened and came to a stop. I had missed the turn. I started up again, threw it into reverse, tires spinning, got back to the fork, and took the turn ever so slowly. The taillights were gone. Half a mile up the road was another fork. I took the low road and never saw the pickup again.

I kept going because I had nothing better to do. I listened to the Rolling Stones complain about getting no satisfaction. I took another turn onto what seemed to be a gravel road, though under a cover of snow, you couldn’t tell. Then I figured out it wasn’t a road at all, but a private drive. I hit the brakes and slid to a stop in front of a black, wrought-iron fence. A cemetery. How appropriate.

I got out of the car, tromped through the snow, opened a gate and walked in. The headstones were topped with snow and weathered from the years, but the vertical ones could be read. Many dated from the mining days. Beneath a marble figure of a child asleep on a pedestal, the inscription: “Mabel Garnett Asbell, December 12, 1888, one year and four days.”

I thought about the winter of 1888 and the girl’s parents, burying their child, and it made me think of Kip and suddenly I was filled with sorrow. If I was sent away, what would become of him? What a strange thought. A year ago, I didn’t know of his existence. Now, my first thought about my future, or lack of it, was of him. So that’s what love is all about.

Other questions plagued me. How long will Granny be around? Who will take care of her?

A statue of a lamb guarded the grave of another child. “Our darling Mallory.” A white marble headstone, July 28, 1898, for “Little Dale, ten months and fifteen days.” Nearby, the headless statue of a woman in the Greek style stood guard over a grave surrounded by a rusty iron fence. The woman wore a flowing gown, and her right hand held a garland of granite flowers.

I stood there, bareheaded in the falling snow, overcome with a sadness such as I’ve never known. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I turned and started to run, slipping in the snow and falling, legs splayed. I got to my feet and hurried to the car in a crablike crouch, a foolish figure of a man frozen to the core, not with cold, but with fear.

The Jack Daniel’s warmed me, comforted me. The bottle sat between my legs under the steering wheel, and I’d already put a good dent in it. From the liquor store, I headed west out of town for the same reason I earlier had headed east: none.

When I got to the turnoff to Red Butte, I swung right, fishtailing in the snow. I missed the road to Woody Creek, did a U-turn, barely avoiding a ditch concealed by snowdrifts, and slowly began climbing the hill past fenced fields covered with virgin snow. I knew the way, though I had been here only once before.

The front gate was chained and padlocked, and the county sheriff had posted a no trespassing sign. Not enough to stop a man overcome with lust and greed, a man with a thirst for violence, or whatever McBain would say in closing argument.

I was wearing my trial suit and a wool overcoat and felt out of place in the broad expanse of the frozen ranch. I climbed over the gate, my wing tips crunching into the snow of the driveway. I sunk to my knees with each step. It was a laborious walk, and I began sweating. Cold on the outside, steaming inside. Halfway up the road, I turned back to look at my tracks. I thought of an animal, chased across the fields by hunters.

The house was quiet and dark, no cars outside. Wherever Josefina was staying, it wasn’t here. That was smart. She might have figured I’d come looking for her.

But that wasn’t why I had come to the Red Canyon Ranch.

I hadn’t known it while driving here, but I knew it now. I came because it was time to act more like a lawyer and less like a client. As a lawyer, I always visited the site, whether it was an auto accident or a murder scene. Sure, I used investigators, and in discovery, I’d get the state’s evidence. But there is no substitute for being there, even if you’ve been there before. After I hired H. T. Patterson, we came here under the watchful eyes of a police escort. I had walked him through it, but now, cold and alone, I would do it again. Instead of a briefcase, I carried a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

The barn door was unlocked. I flipped on the lights. The horses were still in their stalls, oats freshly poured. Muddy footprints led to the feed bags and back to the stalls. A neighboring rancher must have been helping out. I said hello to the horses, and one of them said something back, his breath visible in the cold.

I retraced my steps of that night. The night in question, as lawyers like to say.

Up the ladder to the loft. I remembered Jo Jo flicking on a lantern, the shadows creeping up the wall. What had she said?

Oh, Jake, you shouldn’t have come. How true. What else? Think now. How did she look? Remember that face. She had seemed surprised Kip was with me. And upset about it.

The boy shouldn’t be here.

Why not?

Because she didn’t want him, or anyone else to witness what would happen. Right, but how did she know what would happen? What was her plan? That I kill Cimarron? That he kill me? And why?

Motive, motive, motive.

I walked the circumference of the loft, making a trail in the straw. Snowflakes drifted through the wall where the plank had been removed. I looked around, but I didn’t know for what. I saw the railing, or what was left of it, where I had broken through before landing in a stall.

I went down to the first floor, but this time took the slow route of the ladder. Accurately re-creating the scene has its limits. I opened the Appaloosa’s stall, walked inside, and my shoes squished in a steaming pile of what had been oats only a day before. The horse seemed to smile at me.

I left the stall, straw sticking to my shoes. For a while, I fiddled around, tinkering with this and that, touching the rough wood planks, trying to divine some message that had to be there. I went into the corn crib, still overflowing with ears that had tumbled down the silo. I stepped out of the crib and wandered in a circle, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. I kicked at bales of hay and feed bags.

What was missing? A saddle with an embedded nail, a plank from the wall with Cimarron’s hair embedded in it. The bridle and bit I had used to get Cimarron off me. The nail gun. Now all tagged and marked as state’s exhibits.

I took a hit of the bourbon to fend off the chill and kept looking. There were no surprises. No revelations. No clues, at least none I could see. Just the crisp air and sweet smells of horse feed mixed with the musky tang of manure. Just a nondescript barn where a man had died a gruesome death.

I pulled two blankets from a railing and put them around my shoulders. I sat down in the straw and made myself comfortable. I sneezed, maybe from the dust, or maybe from the cold. For medicinal purposes, I guzzled some more bourbon, liquid aurum to warm the throat. I leaned back and tried to concentrate on words like “evidence” and “proof’ and “reasonable doubt,” but my mind was a battery running out of juice. I couldn’t concentrate and after a while, I didn’t even try. I listened to the snorts of the horses and the shuffling of their hooves. Outside, an owl hooted. I hummed a song to myself and dug deeper into the straw, a babe in the manger, finally closing my eyes and burying myself under the warm velvet blanket of sleep.

I don’t know if it was the morning sun or the cold that woke me. The sun slanted through the open slat in the wall and struck me squarely in the eyes. Dust motes floated in the light, and the cold bit through me to the bone. I tried to stand, but every joint was locked into place. I felt like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. It took several moments to work out the knots and kinks in my back. I felt an urgent need to pee and a secondary need to brush my teeth. A cup of coffee and a Danish wouldn’t have hurt anything, either.

I needed to get back to my apartment, shower and change for court. I started walking out when something caught my eye. The shaft of sunlight crossed the barn floor and ended barely two feet from where I had slept. There, in a depression I had made in the straw, the sunlight caught the reflection of a wedge of glass that twinkled back at me. I followed the sunlight four paces, bent down and dug into the straw. Up came Kip’s video camera, lens pointed to the sun.

It was clear and cold, the sky a bottomless blue. Light snow was falling, puffy, dry flakes unlike what I was used to in the five winters I spent as a student-athlete in the hills of central Pennsylvania. Yeah, that’s right. It took five years, but I got my degree. I remember those ice storms, including one during a game against Notre Dame. The referee fell on his ass flipping the coin, and the rest of us could barely break a huddle without skating like Dorothy Hamill on LSD. My fingers were numb by the end of the first quarter, but I refused to wear gloves or a second pair of socks. Let the sissy wide receivers keep their pinkies toasty. I played with short sleeves and a cutoff jersey that stopped right above my navel. After missing a tackle on the opening kickoff, I slid halfway across the field on my belly and ice water sloshed down my jock. I can’t remember if we won or lost, but I seem to recall spending Sunday through Thursday in the infirmary with the flu.

That was then. This is now.

Here the snow was dry and powdery, just like the travel posters show, and the roads were already clear, snow piled high alongside. I wasn’t as polite driving back into town as I had been getting out. I honked at tortoiselike tourists. I skidded around one corner and ignored every posted speed limit I could find.

Back in town, I stood ten minutes in the doorway waiting for the camera store to open. The female clerk gave me a curious look. Maybe it was the wildness in my eyes, maybe the smell of straw and manure. After a moment, she found the battery I needed and an earphone, took my cash, and watched me leave, the bell attached to the front door tinkling merrily.

When I had picked up the camera in the barn, I muttered a private prayer to whatever God protects the semi-honest man who doesn’t strangle kittens or litter in public parks. The prayer was answered when I found the on button engaged. The battery, of course, would be dead. It was. So far, so good.

A silent thank-you.

Through the Plexiglas cover, I saw the tape was three-quarters unwound. A couple of hours had been recorded before the battery gave out. With any luck, it would all be there.

Not the video, of course, once Kip left the loft. The camera had been buried in the straw. But the sound. The audio would be there. What had Kip told me? This baby can pick up a rat farting at fifty yards.

I was back in the car, parked at the curb, engine running, heater on, my heart thumping as the tape rewound. It was one of those Super-8 formats you don’t need a separate VCR to show on your TV. I rewound to the beginning of the tape, fighting the urge to see the middle first. I attached the earphone jack to the camera and watched through the viewfinder as I hit the play button.

The first shot was a speck against the sky. The lens zoomed. A bird. The frame jumped around as Kip tried to steady the camera. “Lord of flight,” Kip said into the microphone. “A golden eagle. Last of a breed. Mighty predator.” Kip went on for a while, sounding like a pint-size Marlin Perkins. The bird disappeared into some spruce trees and Kip said, “Shit, where’d he go?”

Next, a shot of the kids from the neighboring cabin at the Lazy Q. Then, a dog urinating against a tree. Then, there it was: a darkened room, growing lighter as the lens opened wider. The nine-volt lantern cast half of Jo Jo’s face in a white, bleaching light, the other half in darkness, but I saw her, huddled under a blanket.

“ No, Jake, please. I’m so ashamed. The boy shouldn’t be here.”

The camera jiggled and seemed to adjust itself to the light. “Uncle Jake, please, you’re cutting off the angle. I want to zoom from medium close up to extreme close up.”

He did, and Jo Jo’s face filled the screen, tear-streaked cheeks and puffy eyes. But close up, the eyes revealed something else altogether. That blazing intelligence, that quick mind, that total control.

Her forehead was wrinkled in thought. She wasn’t in shock. She wasn’t in fear. Her brain was in overdrive. Why didn’t I see it at the time?

“ Jake, no! Haven’t you done enough to me already?” She buried her head in her hands.

I didn’t say, “What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t say, “What the hell are you talking about?” I didn’t say anything. But then, I thought she was talking about old times, or that she was confused. Hell, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I sure didn’t think she had it all figured out, that the prosecutor lady knew the tape might just pop up as evidence and it might be nice to show the All-Pro pervert had a kid videotaping his evil deeds.

“ Okay,” I said on the tape. “Kip. Cut! I’ve got enough.”

Was it my imagination, or was there an unnecessary harshness to my voice. The screen faded to black.

Oh, Jo Jo, you are one bright, evil-hearted woman.

The screen flashed on again. Too dark to make out anything. Then, the lantern came on, and Kip’s voice: “That’s better. Natural light just wasn’t doing it.”

I shooed him out again, and the screen went dark. But I knew there would be more.

The camera would be off now. No telling how long.

The screen lightened, then twirled upside down. A rustling sound through the earphone. An oomph that might have come from Kip. “Put me dow-nk.”

The camera must have been dropped or thrown, Kip’s thumb plopping the record button. The auto focus was trying to sharpen the picture, but all I could see were fuzzy, thickened pieces of straw, now covering the lenses. The camera had fallen.

Show time. Again, I said a prayer.

Another muffled oomph, fading away. Kip was being carried up the ladder, a hand over his mouth.

The voices were indistinct from the loft. But the footsteps pounding the boards were picked up clearly. Heavy feet. Soft words, “Quiet down, boy.”

Then, my voice calling out to Kip, when I thought he was playing games again. “Kip! You’re starting to bug me. I’ve got some business to finish with the lady.”

Was that me? It sounded not like the fellow I know so well, but the goat-man I’d heard described all week in court. Another moment passed, then the unmistakable voice of Kit Carson Cimarron, “Fool me twice, and you’re dead.”

The audio was clear. Better than I could have hoped. I kept listening.

“ Simmy, he forced me.”

Damn. Even her lies are consistent.

“ He hit me, just like he used to do. He tore off my clothes and just forced me.”

Then Cimarron’s voice, calm and dispassionate. “You knew what he was like. You told me yourself.”

I heard myself shout, “This is crazy!”

But who would believe me? Don’t all criminals deny their crimes?

Cimarron’s voice grew louder. “First you steal from me. Then you trespass on my land, and now you violate my woman.”

Why don’t I just hand the tape to McBain? He can play it for his closing argument. What else does he need?

When Cimarron started flinging me into the walls, the audio captured every thud.

“ No, Simmy! You’ll kill him! Don’t!”

She seemed to mean it. But then, if H. T. Patterson was right, she wanted me to kill him.

A cr-ack, the rail splitting, and the noise of the horse snorting and stomping its feet as I landed on its back and slid into its stall.

“ C’mon out, lawyer. I’m not through with you.”

No, he wasn’t. I listened to the rest, so familiar and yet so unreal. There was Kip crying out he was Spartacus, Cimarron taking away the pitchfork, Kip dashing out of the barn. There was the first shot from the nail gun, then Cimarron telling Jo Jo to reload a clip for him. The muffled whomp of another shot and then another. The noise from the corncrib, the sounds of two big men crashing into each other and whatever else got in the way. More whomps of steel into wood, and finally, after a pause, the last shot straight into the meat of a man’s brain.

I hit the stop, then rewound to the beginning and played it again. Something was bothering me, but what? I listened more carefully when I knew it was near the end, but still, it seemed out of sync. The timing of the last shot was off. I needed to count the seconds.

Again, I rewound the tape and listened. This time I closed my eyes and saw the scene. I was on my back, my hand curling around the nail gun and lifting it toward his chest. I remembered his hand grabbing it and my pulling the trigger, hoping for the blast and hearing nothing but a…

Click.

Then the sound of my own head being snapped against the floor by Cimarron’s fist.

A thud like a baseball smacking into the catcher’s mitt.

Followed quickly by a grunt.

I couldn’t place the sounds. I would have been already close to unconsciousness. Seconds passed. What was happening?

Whomp.

Silence.

I stopped the tape, rewound just a bit, and played the last few moments yet again.

I counted, a-thousand-one, a-thousand-two, a-thousand-three. From the time I was hit, three seconds, then the thud and grunt. Seven more seconds until the final whomp.

Ten seconds from the time I was hit! I couldn’t have fired it. At the time, I was drifting toward dreamland, having been battered into a fair-to-middling concussion.

I tried to figure it out.

Ten seconds.

What happened when I was sailing somewhere between pain and coma?

I was still thinking about it as the tape ran on. This time, I didn’t stop it.

Then I heard the voice. And I knew.