Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

TWENTY-THREE

AND IT WAS OVER.

Even now the events of that morning are wispy and sharply painful and disconnected in my mind. I remember everything, but I have trouble putting the events in order. Even now, as I recall them, my heart palpitates and my breathing gets shallow and irregular and I find myself reaching out to steady myself.

It was early in the morning when the doorbell rang, I remember that clearly. The sun hadn’t yet percolated through the clouds and, with an inch or two of fresh snow on the ground, it seemed ice blue outside. I remember my eyes shooting open and being instantly awake and thinking: It’s them.

A BLAST OF WINTER as I opened the front door to find Sanders, Morales, the sheriff with his big gut and gunfighter’s mustache, plus a female deputy I hadn’t seen before. All of them crowded on my front porch wearing identical sheriff’s department dark coats, condensation like smoke from their mouths haloing around their heads as they stood there like a small black army from hell. They stamped snow from their boots as they came into the living room.

Outside, parked in my driveway with the motor running, were Judge Moreland and Garrett. Waiting.

Behind me, Melissa came down the stairs holding Angelina. When she saw the cops she said, “Oh my God.”

The female deputy was introducing herself, talking in I’m sure what she thought as competent and soothing tones. I didn’t hear a word she said.

I can’t recall if I lost it as she held out her arms for our daughter or when the sheriff said the Morelands “just want the child. They aren’t interested in the boxes.”

Something white-hot exploded behind my eyes and I was on them-punching, kicking, gouging, trying to get through them to the door so I could get outside and pull Moreland and Garrett from their car into the snow and kill them with my bare hands. Sanders went down with a surprised look on his face, and his fall took down the sheriff. The female deputy shouted while she unclipped her pepper spray and threatened me with it. Either Sanders or the sheriff clipped me hard in the jaw with a frozen fist and my teeth snapped together and my head snapped back and for a second I was staring at the ceiling. Then my arms were pinned to my sides and my feet left the ground as Morales picked me up in a bear hug and slammed me face-first into the couch. I saw spangles and little else for a moment. There was a knee in my spine and my arms were wrenched back. I heard the zip sound of flexcuffs being pulled tight around my wrists.

Through a fog, Melissa said, “I just can’t hand her over to you. I can’t perform that act.”

The female deputy said, “That’s all right, I understand. Just put her in that swing, and I’ll take her out. You don’t have to hand her to me that way.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Please, ma’am. We don’t want to have to restrain you to take the child. Think of the girl, think of the girl in your arms. We don’t want to risk hurting anyone.”

Melissa did it.

I heard an animal roar that turned out to be me.

Deputies cried, looked away.

The female deputy wrapped Angelina in blankets she’d brought along and backed toward the door, flanked by Morales and Sanders.

Directly in front of me, inches away, was the hem of the sheriff’s coat as he directed them. I could feel the cold emanating from it.

Angelina realized that she was being taken away and she screamed and her chubby hands shot out from beneath the blanket toward Melissa. The deputy quickly covered them back up.

Melissa shrieked and dropped to her knees.

The front door closed as the female deputy went outside with Angelina.

The sheriff said to Sanders, “Call the EMTs.”

To me, “Can I trust you to help your wife if I cut you loose?”

“Yes,” I said.

Melissa climbed back to her feet with the help of Morales, who was openly blubbering.

The sheriff watched the exchange outside through the front window, then said with grim finality, “It’s done.”

My cuffs were released, and I rolled off the couch to the floor, scrambling to all fours. Melissa was clutching herself, her eyes wild, her face bone white. I rushed to her.

She collapsed in my arms, but I held her body tight against mine so she wouldn’t slide to the floor. I duckwalked with her that way to the couch.

They say that when a person dies, the body suddenly becomes lighter as the soul leaves, that it’s been measured. Melissa didn’t die, but I remember thinking that her soul had left her because she felt featherlight in my arms.

As I picked up her legs and put them on the couch, I heard the tires of Moreland’s car crunch snow as it backed up and left.

A few moments later an EMT van, lights flashing, swung up into the driveway. The EMTs had no doubt been on call just down the street in case they’d be needed. Suddenly, there were more dark-clothed people in our house. They helped Melissa up the stairs into bed. I stood on the landing shell-shocked, my eyes burning. My jaw hurt.

There was a heated discussion as Morales and Sanders told the sheriff they refused to arrest me for assault, and if he insisted on it, he could do it himself, and they’d walk off the job. I heard him say, “Jesus, okay, okay. You guys are too damned close to this situation, that’s for sure.” While he talked, he sucked on a bloody front tooth that had been dislodged during the scuffle.

Sanders said, “You bet your ass we are.”

I went upstairs.

Melissa was sedated. Her eyelids fluttered and her grip on my hand relaxed to nothing and her hand dropped away. I looked up at the EMTs and insisted I didn’t need anything, didn’t want anything.

When I went back downstairs, the sheriff had left. Morales and Sanders stood there with their heads down, staring at their boots.

Sanders said, “I hate my job.”

Morales said to me, “Can we leave you? You won’t do anything, will you? You won’t hurt yourself or anyone else, will you?”

I shook my head no. Which meant yes.

And it was over.

THAT EVENING, as the sun set and suspended snow and ice crystals lit up with the cold fire of it and the temperature dropped to minus ten, I checked on Melissa in our dark bedroom. Still sleeping. The EMTs said she would likely be out all night. Nevertheless, I left her a note on the night table in a scrawl I didn’t recognize. I wrote:

I’M GOING TO GO GET ANGELINA.

IF I DON’T COME BACK I WANT YOU TO

KNOW I LOVE YOU WITH ALL OF MY

HEART.

LOVE, JACK

I slipped the Colt.45 into the front right pocket of my parka. It was heavy. To balance out the load, I emptied the box of cartridges in the left.

THE COLD SLAPPED ME right in the face. When I breathed in, I could feel ice crystals form in my nose. The snow squeaked beneath my boots. That sound made me grit my teeth, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

I’d forgotten gloves, and the metal of the door handle of my Jeep stung my fingers.

“Where do you think you’re going, Jack?”

I froze. Cody.

I turned stiffly. He was walking across my lawn. His car was parked in front of the house, and I hadn’t even noticed it.

“I’m going to kill Judge Moreland.”

“So it’s over? They took her?”

“Where were you? I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

“I broke my stupid phone on a guy’s head.”

“I need to go.”

“He probably does need killing,” Cody said. “But not now. Not by you.”

“Stay out of my way, Cody.”

He reached out and grabbed my coat sleeve. I wanted nothing to do with him, had no desire to hear his words. He wasn’t there when we needed him, and I had to do this myself.

Cody said, “What I’m saying is that you don’t need to go over there right now. You won’t get close anyway-the sheriff’s got cars in front of Moreland’s house just in case you thought of trying something like this. All this will do is land you in jail.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should,” said Cody. “Because I’ve fucking cracked this thing. We’re going to be able to get that son of a bitch Moreland and get your daughter back.”

I blinked.

“That’s right,” he said.

“How?”

“I’ve got somebody with me you’ll want to meet.”

I looked at Cody’s car again. There was no one in it. But I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. The car was trembling a bit, rocking slightly side to side.

“He’s in the trunk,” Cody said. “Let’s go get him and have a little talk inside.”

TWENTY-FOUR

INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO MR. MCGUANE,” Cody said to the disheveled little man he shoved roughly through my front door.

He mumbled something in a tight-lipped way that sounded like “My-wott.”

“Where’s Melissa?” Cody asked me.

I chinned upstairs. “Sedated.”

Cody shook his head. “Bastards. Is she okay?”

“How could she be?”

“Bastards.”

“They came this morning. The sheriff and three deputies. The judge and Garrett stayed out in their car and didn’t even come in.”

My-wott stood there, watching us go back and forth as if he were observing a tennis match. By his blank expression I could tell he had no idea what we were talking about.

“Sit,” Cody said to My-wott, indicating the couch. The little man shuffled over to it stiff-legged and sat down. I could see now why he couldn’t talk and could barely move: He was freezing. His skin was sallow. His teeth were chattering so hard it sounded like popcorn popping. My-wott was thin, stooped, mousy. I guessed his build at five-four, 130. He had badly cut brown hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, no chin but a prominent Adam’s apple, and his face was a moonscape of old acne scars. He had furtive, darting eyes and a manner to him that was weak and annoying. I felt sorry for him but wanted to hit him at the same time. He wore a red-checked plaid shirt, baggy jeans, and Crocs shoes. His arms shot out when he sat down, and I noted a massive gold Rolex on his wrist that just didn’t go with the rest of him. It looked like it weighed two pounds.

My-wott had a nasty-looking bruise right in the middle of a small bald spot on the back of his head. Cody saw me looking at it, and said, “That’s how I broke my damn phone.”

Cody dragged two chairs from the kitchen and placed them in front of him. He spun his around and straddled it, placing his arms on the top of the backrest. His eyes were gleaming, and his mouth was set in a sarcastic snarl. “I said, introduce yourself to Mr. McGuane.” To me: “Jack, have a seat.”

The little man looked down at his Crocs. His legs shook violently.

“Speak the fuck up,” Cody said, and slapped him sharply on his face. I glared at Cody, who ignored me.

“Wyatt,” the man said.

“Wyatt what?” Cody barked.

“Wyatt Henkel.”

“And where are you from, Wyatt Henkel?”

“You mean now, or where I was born?”

Cody slapped him again.

“Jesus, Cody,” I said.

Cody looked at me. “When you hear what he’s going to say, you’re going to want to do more than slap him.”

“Still,” I said.

“I was born in Greeley, Colorado,” Henkel said, forcing the words out through his chattering teeth. “I live now in Las Cruces, New Mexico.”

“Good,” Cody said. “Now tell Mr. McGuane why you’re here. Why your telephone number was on Brian Eastman’s call log from his cell phone.”

Henkel looked away from Cody and stared at our gas fireplace, which I’d turned off a few minutes before as I left the house.

“I’m freezing to death,” Henkel said, turning to me. “I’ve been in that trunk for eight hours.”

“Seven hours, tops,” Cody said. “Quit whining.”

I got up and walked over to the fireplace to turn it on.

Cody said, “No-keep it off.”

“Look at him,” I said.

“Fuck him,” Cody said. “We’ll turn on the fireplace once he starts talking.” To Henkel, Cody said, “Fuck you. Got that?”

Henkel avoided meeting his eyes.

To me, Cody said, “I noticed some weight in your coat pockets. Are you carrying?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get that gun out of your pocket. This is your grandpa’s Colt.45 Peacemaker, right?”

I drew it out. It was heavy and cold, and it looked like a blunt instrument in my hand.

Cody said, “Cock it and put the muzzle against Wyatt Henkel’s forehead. If he tells a lie, I’ll ask you to pull the trigger. Don’t worry about his brains splashing all over the wall because I don’t think he has any. And don’t worry about the body afterward, either. I’ll just take it up to where I buried Uncle Jeter. It’s a perfect place nobody will ever look. Maybe the coyotes will dig up their bones in 2025, but by then who gives a shit?”

Cody defused my look of horror with a barely perceptible wink that Henkel couldn’t see because his head was still down. Okay, I nodded. Now I get it.

Henkel’s head came up slowly. He was terrified.

I cocked the hammer and the cylinder rotated and I put the muzzle above his eyebrow.

Cody shifted in his chair and pulled his departmental.40 Glock semiauto. He held it loosely in his hand. “In case he misses,” Cody said to Henkel.

“Let’s start again,” Cody said to Henkel. “State your occupation.”

Henkel’s voice was high and reedy. “I’m a janitor at Las Cruces High School.”

“A janitor, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, I like that. Call me ‘sir.’ And call Mr. McGuane here ‘sir’ as well. Now tell me how long you’ve had your job.”

“Seven years.”

“What is your salary?”

“I make $26,000. It’s considered part-time.”

“Interesting,” Cody said. “You pull down 26K, but you live on five acres and you have two new vehicles. Is that correct?”

Henkel tried to swallow, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Yes,” he said.

“And you have that big piece of gold on your wrist. Is it a fake? One of those Taiwanese knockoffs?”

“It’s real,” he said.

“And that Escalade you drive-was it stolen?”

“No, sir.”

“You live well for a part-time janitor, don’t you, Wyatt?”

“Not as well as some, but I do all right.” His voice had gained some confidence. He was warming up both literally and figuratively. Which angered Cody.

“Shoot him,” he said.

I pushed the gun harder into Henkel’s brow.

“No!” he cried, his eyes round.

“Then answer me straight,” Cody said. Cody even scared me.

“Okay,” said Henkel.

“You weren’t always a janitor, were you?”

“No.”

“What other jobs have you held?”

“A lot of ’em. I’m not very smart, I guess.” Although Cody was asking the questions, Henkel was answering them to me. Probably because despite my gun, Cody scared him more. “I do my best, but people just don’t like me. No one’s ever really liked me.”

Said Cody, “I can see why. Again, what jobs have you had in your life?”

Henkel’s eyes rolled up as if trying to remember. “Retail, mostly. Wal-Mart, Target, Pier One. I moved around a lot between New Mexico and Colorado.”

“You didn’t mention that one-hour photo place you used to work at,” Cody said. “You know, that one in Canon City, Colorado.”

“Oh, that one,” Henkel said, his face getting even whiter. Cody’d struck a nerve.

“Tell Mr. McGuane when you worked there.”

He thought for a second. “It was 2001.”

“Before everybody went digital,” Cody said. “Back at the end of the film-and-print days.”

“Yes. I don’t think that shop is even there anymore.”

“Royal Gorge is outside of Canon City, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s quite a spectacular place, isn’t it?” Cody asked. “Lots of tourists go there to see it and walk across the footbridge and look down at the Arkansas River. There’s even a state park there, right?”

I tried not to look at Cody to ask him where the hell this was going.

Henkel paused, then said, “Yes.”

“In 2001, the caretaker of the state park brought in some film to have developed at your shop. Do you remember that?”

Henkel tried to swallow again but couldn’t.

“Could I have a glass of water?” he asked me.

“You can have a bullet in your head,” Cody said. “Again, do you remember when the caretaker of the state park brought some film in to you?”

“Yes.”

“He brought in lots of film to be developed, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to look at the prints that you develop, are you? And the way the equipment worked, there was no reason even to see them. The processor was automatic, right? The only time you even touched the prints was when you put them in the envelope for the customer, right?”

“That was the policy.”

“But in this case you looked, didn’t you, Wyatt?”

His voice was a croak. “I looked.” As he said it his eyes darted to Cody and back to me.

“What was on the prints, Wyatt?”

“Nature stuff, mostly. But there were a lot of pictures of children with their families. The families were camping or hiking.”

“Were photos of children pretty much all the customer took?”

“Yes.”

Cody shot me a look. I still didn’t know what the point was.

“And why did you run a second set of prints to keep for yourself?”

Henkel briefly closed his eyes.

“Wyatt?”

“There were four pictures I wanted to keep,” he said.

Cody leaned back and reached into his coat with his free hand and brought out a manila envelope. “Are these the four photos you kept, Wyatt?”

“You know they are.”

Cody handed the envelope to me.

Cody said, “Who has the originals and the negatives?”

“The customer.”

Cody smiled sarcastically. “And who is the customer, Wyatt?”

“Aubrey Coates. He was the park caretaker at the time.”

I felt an electric bolt shoot through my chest, and I almost pulled the trigger accidentally. Suddenly, it was as if all around me, for three weeks, there were dozens of sheets of clear plastic, each with a brush of color and several errant squiggles. Individually, none of the sheets made sense. But when they were placed one upon the other, a whole image emerged. It was as if everything we had learned and done over the last three weeks made horrifying sense.

I lowered the pistol and opened the envelope, knowing what I would find.

Brian was right. There were photos.

The first was of a young family of three hiking along a narrow trail. There was a rock wall behind them so it was obviously in a canyon-Royal Gorge Canyon. The photo was grainy, and there was a pine twig in the bottom corner of it, indicating to me that the shot was taken at a great distance, and the photographer was hiding in a stand of trees. The woman-plain, heavy, obviously pregnant-was in the lead. A boy of twelve or thirteen was last. It took me a moment to recognize him as a young Garrett. The man in the middle was John Moreland.

The second photo was slightly blurred, but it was obvious that Moreland was tugging on his wife’s arm, and she was reaching out wildly to steady herself. Garrett stood in sharp focus, looking on with what looked like intense interest.

In the third photo, Dorrie Pence Moreland, the ultradevout Catholic homely homebody who was a drag on her husband’s social and political climb and who was bringing another child into the world to compete with her monomaniacal and psychopathic firstborn son, could be seen cartwheeling through the sky, her long black hair flying behind her like flames.

In the fourth, Garrett prepared to deliver the coup de grâce with the large rock he held over his head to the broken body of his mother while his father looked on approvingly.

I went through the photos a second time, then a third.

“My God,” I said. “So Coates owns the judge.”

“That would be correct,” Cody said.

“Which is why he was bulletproof.”

“Bingo.”

“So he’s been blackmailing him all these years?”

Cody nodded his head and raised his Glock, pointing it at Wyatt Henkel’s head. “Sort of. Tell him, Wyatt.”

If possible, Henkel suddenly looked even smaller and more pathetic.

“It was me who blackmailed the judge,” Henkel said. “I told him I had the pictures. I put them on a copy machine and sent a copy to him to prove it. So for years he’s been paying up.”

Cody said, “Hence the vehicles, the large spread, the Rolex. But you lied to the judge, didn’t you, Wyatt? You told him you had the negatives.”

Henkel nodded.

Cody said, “So when Brian Eastman started putting word out among all of his acquaintances that he was searching the country for someone who had some kind of photos on Judge Moreland, you contacted the judge again, right?”

“Yes.”

“To tell him the price would be going up or you’d sell the photos to Brian, right?”

“Right.”

Strangely, Henkel was warming to the revelations. It was obvious he was proud of himself. I really did want to shoot him, but not before I’d heard everything.

Cody said to me, “I’m speculating now, but it’s speculation based on Henkel’s role in this. When I was investigating Coates, I always wondered why Coates quit working at state parks five years ago and switched exclusively to campgrounds on federal land. It was just one of those little things that stuck out and didn’t make sense to me. Now it makes sense. Coates’s job switch corresponds with when Moreland was named to the federal bench. Henkel here had the photos and wanted money from the judge-and got it. Coates didn’t want money-he needed security. Coates knew someday he’d get caught so he contacted Moreland and told him about his hole card. He wanted to make sure he was tried in a federal courtroom because he knew who the judge would be. Another thing: There are nine district court judges. Coates must have somehow made it known to Moreland that someday he might show up in his courtroom and that he’d need a favor. So how did Moreland make sure he’d be the presiding judge if this unknown blackmailer got hauled before him? He worked the system from the inside, and made sure he’d be the judge for serious crimes committed on federal land. Moreland wanted to be in control of the situation for his own sake in case the second blackmailer ever needed that favor. That’s why Coates was bulletproof.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said. Then: “Hold it. Why would Coates risk taking his film to Henkel? Wouldn’t Coates be worried that Henkel or somebody would see the shots of the murder?”

“I can answer that,” Henkel said. “I don’t think at the time he realized what he had. Those photos are blown up, that’s why they’re so grainy. In the originals, the people look like ants against that wall. I think he may have gotten a shot of her falling, but I don’t think he knew that the judge pushed her. I don’t think he knew what he had until he got home and looked closely at the prints.”

“And he never came after you?” I asked, skeptical.

He smiled for the first time. Rotten yellow stubs for teeth. “I was long gone if he ever did. I took those blowups and kept them with me when I moved from place to place, job to job. I think he tried to find me a couple of times. Once a man showed up at my store in Salida asking about me. I heard it from the other room and walked out the side door and never looked back. Another time I came home after work in Durango and saw some kids who looked like Mexican gangsters parked in front of my apartment building. I just drove right by and all the way to New Mexico.”

Cody nodded, as if another piece of the puzzle had just fit into place. “So when you left the message about Brian Eastman, did the judge call you back?”

“No. It was the judge’s son, Garrett. He’s the boy in the pictures-the one with the rock.”

“Right. And what did Garrett say?”

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” Henkel asked us.

Cody screwed up his face. “I’m at ninety percent yes. But there’s ten percent to play with, Wyatt. You need to convince me you’re worth that ten percent by telling me the truth.”

I could see Henkel thinking, running through the arguments. Finally, he said, “Garrett said they’d pay more but only if I called Eastman and told him I had the photos. I talked to him, and he agreed to meet me here in Denver. Garrett gave me the directions to give to Eastman, but he told me not to go. I guess Garrett met him instead.”

I shot him.

The explosion was deafening. I don’t know how Melissa slept through it, but she did. And Henkel was writhing on my couch, clutching his shoulder where the bullet hit, smearing bright red blood all over the fabric.

Cody wrenched the.45 out of my hand before I could cock it and finish Henkel off.

“For Christ’s sake, Jack!” Cody yelled. “We’re not done with him yet!”

“I am,” I said, but what I’d just done shocked me.

Henkel grunted and moaned.

Cody grabbed him by the hair and sat him back up.

“Talk fast,” Cody said, “and maybe you’ll get to live.”

“It hurts,” Henkel said through bared teeth.

“It’s gonna hurt a lot more!”

“I’m going to bleed to death.”

“Maybe.”

Cody leaned over him, his face inches away.

“As far as you knew, Coates never contacted the judge again until recently, correct?”

“As far as I know,” Henkel said.

Cody looked to me, nodding. “When Coates found out I was closing in on him, he must have contacted the judge and reminded him what he had all these years. Imagine Moreland’s surprise when he found out that one of the two people who knew about Dorrie’s murder was the very pedophile we were closing in on. Moreland had the search and arrest warrants on his desk, of course, so he tipped Coates we were coming. That’s how Coates knew to destroy everything ahead of time. And he made sure Coates walked.”

A million thoughts were going through my mind. I tried to put them into some kind of order.

“But Cody,” I said, “Coates walked because of what you did.”

I instantly regretted saying it, and Cody’s eyes flashed with pure rage.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But…”

Cody said, “Up until to night there has always been one thing about that trial I couldn’t figure out, and that was how Ludik knew everything there was to know about my movements after we arrested Coates. I mean, Ludik’s smart, but he’s not that smart. Somebody tipped him, and I think it was Moreland. He didn’t do it with a phone call or anything that obvious, I’m sure. He probably told some court gossip something like, ‘I just hope this is a solid case because there seem to be some real chain-of-evidence problems with it’- something like that. He probably heard about me through the DA or some blabbermouth cop. So Moreland put it out there so Ludik would hear it thirdhand and investigate. I’m not saying I didn’t fuck up, Jack-I did. But Moreland set the whole clusterfuck in motion-from tipping Coates to the search warrant to suggesting to the defense they take a second look at the chain-of-evidence list.”

It made sense.

Cody turned from me and shoved his Glock into Henkel’s nose. His voice was flat. “When I came to your house in New Mexico, you were packing up your car. Where were you planning to go?”

Henkel said, “We were going to do the exchange.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There was going to be an exchange. A big meeting, where everybody got what they wanted.”

Cody slapped him again, and Henkel winced. The cushions were getting dark with lost blood. I could smell it, and it was sharp and metallic and it made me want to gag.

Henkel was fading. His eyelids were starting to drop.

“WHAT EXCHANGE?” Cody screamed.

“The judge was going to get all the photos and the negatives from Coates and me once and for all,” Henkel said. “I was going to get my big payoff from the judge. We were going to meet at Coates’s place up in the mountains tomorrow morning.”

Cody said, “What was Coates going to get?”

Henkel coughed and nearly passed out. He said, “What he said he always wanted-his own little girl.”

And at that moment I realized who had sent the photo of Angelina to his associate Malcolm Harris in London- Aubrey Coates. I recalled Moreland taking that photo the morning they came to visit when he went upstairs with Melissa. It was the reason he was so insistent that he see her, and the reason he asked Melissa to turn her over for a better look.