“How did the rest of your day go?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“Pretty well, I think,” he said, but the tone was ambivalent, and he still looked exhausted instead of fired up. “Tony’s going to stick around to give a statement, Alice is downright enthusiastic about testifying. She seems to think she owes you a favor. But you know what? I keep running into that same problem.”
“What problem? I don’t see a problem. Eyewitnesses, that’s what you need, that’s what you have. Isn’t it?” I had the feeling he was about to tangle me up in some legal loophole.
“Why were we all there in the first place?” he said.
I wasn’t sure I could explain it anymore. It seemed so long ago. “We were going to remove Alice’s curse. Tony said he had a ritual.”
“Magic. Witchcraft,” he said curtly. “So how do you convince the legal system that this is real? That when Tony and Alice talk about casting their spells, they’re serious, and it’s real. That they’re not crackpots. I’m afraid Espinoza’s going to use that angle to discredit their testimony. He’ll say, of course a couple of people who are out in the woods at dusk lighting candles and burning incense are going to think up some story about how this woman really turned into a wolf. Of course they’ll say that even shot through the chest and dying she was a threat because she was a skinwalker. He’ll say they’re as deluded as Miriam was and therefore their testimony is suspect.”
He was twisting the words, manipulating the story. Just like a lawyer. Just like Espinoza. Ben was thinking of all the angles, but none of them seemed to work in our favor.
“So you can’t use their testimony.”
“Oh, I’m going to use it and hope for the best. Maybe I’m wrong and Espinoza won’t shoot them down.”
This was looking grimmer and grimmer. Grasping at straws. “What about Marks? He had it in for me in the first place—that’s why we were at the cabin when Miriam attacked. Can’t you use that to discredit him as a witness?”
“If you want to sue Alice and Sheriff Marks for harassment, I’m all for it. I think you have a good case against them. You don’t even have to bring up magic to prove that leaving dead dogs in someone’s yard is harassment. But it’s a different case. I’ll certainly bring it up, but the judge might decide that a suit against Marks doesn’t have any bearing in the case of Miriam Wilson’s death.”
The pizza had gotten cold and I’d lost my appetite. Ben wasn’t eating either.
“The whole thing seems rigged,” I said. “It’s not fair.”
“Welcome to the Am
erican justice system.” He raised his bottle of beer, as if in a toast.
“Cynic.” I pouted.
“Lawyer,” he countered, grinning.
“Ben. Drink your beer.”
I went to see Sheriff Marks the next morning. I told Ben I was taking a walk to the grocery store for donuts.
Carefully, I approached the front desk at the sheriff’s department like it was a bomb. I asked the woman working there, a nonuniformed civilian, “Hi, is Sheriff Marks in? Could I speak to him?”
“Yes, I think he is. Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I said, wincing. I fully expected Marks to refuse to see me. But I had to try.
The receptionist frowned sadly, and I tried not to be mad at her. She was just doing her job. “Then I’m afraid he probably won’t be available, he’s very busy—”
“It’s all right, Kelly.” Marks stood in the hallway to the side, just within view. His expression was guarded, pointedly bland, like he’d expected me to be here all along and didn’t mind. He knew his place in the world and I couldn’t shake it. “I’ll talk to her. Send her back.”
He turned and went down the hall, presumably to his office.
“Go on back,” Kelly the receptionist said. I did.
Marks disappeared through a doorway halfway down the hall, and I followed him into a perfectly average, perfectly normal cluttered office: a desk with a computer sat against the wall. There was an in-box overflowing with papers and files, bookshelves, also overflowing, certificates and plaques on the wall, along with a huge map labeled Huerfano County. Colored pins marked various spots; a red pin was stuck about where I guessed my cabin was.
Marks sat at the desk and gestured me toward a couple of straight-backed plastic chairs by the opposite wall.
“Thanks” I said, sitting. “I didn’t think you’d even talk to me.”
He gave an amiable shrug, donning the persona of a friendly small-town cop. “I figure the least I can do is hear you out.”