Author’s Note

Stonehenge on the Columbia River

A full-size replica of Stonehenge is located on an isolated bluff adjacent to the Columbia River in southeastern Washington State. It is not, strictly speaking, a model of the famous Wiltshire ruin in England, but an accepted stylization of the Neolithic henge before the ravages of time and man caused its partial destruction.

Nevertheless, the monument’s dimensions are accurate and the towering megaliths that encompass the altar stone—the linteled sarsen circle and massive horseshoe of trilithons—are faithfully proportional.

The description of its lonely setting in chapter four is also true to life. It is accessible to the public at all times and entirely unilluminated at night except by stars and the periodic wash of moonlight.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

May 31, 1994

How much worse could it get?

The chain of cause and effect started well before the outlaw bikers found the body. Virtue had run its course and would have to be clawed back. But not yet.

For I knew what was about to happen.

It was time.

The only streetlight in town dangled from a cable over the intersection of Clark and Kitchener, flashing red to the cardinal points. As I crossed the street to Hooker’s Stop N Go, two Jeep Cherokees, the sheriff’s radio cars, sped out of the courthouse complex, emergency lights ablaze.

“They found a body at Stonehenge!” Hooker shouted at me as soon as I walked in. As usual, he’d seen me coming. By the time I got through the door, my latte was ready, my coffee card already punched and refiled.

Short bursts of cryptic radio traffic squawked from the police scanner mounted above the espresso machine. Two of Hooker’s regulars nursed their plain coffees at the stand-up counter next to the window, keeping their ears tuned to the scanner and their eyes on the cop car action at the courthouse. As soon as I walked in, their ball caps swung around and took aim at Hooker and me.

I tossed my wallet on the counter. Hooker came over and set the latte down but deliberately kept it out of my reach. He did that every goddamned morning. He set the coffee next to the cash register and would only shove it through the narrow alley between it and the open boxes of candy, cookies, and jerky when he was satisfied with our conversation.

Elmer Hooker was shorter than me but a hundred pounds heavier. His face glistened with tiny droplets of moisture as though misted with an atomizer. A self-confessed recovering alcoholic with several prior lives, he was deeply tolerant of defective moral equipment in others. This made him immensely popular in the community and probably helped to keep his snack shop in the black.

He was also very serious about his gossip—which he called intelligence. I suspected the fancy, west-of-the-mountains espresso machine brought in more than dollars: it increased his morning customers and the opportunity to broker information. In my own case he usually wanted scuttlebutt about the law and justice floor of the courthouse, for which he would trade city hall, where his wife worked, and where he knew I still had interests. Hovering protectively, Hooker started to disgorge what he’d heard on the scanner.

“Shit’s hittin’ the fan at Stonehenge!” he exclaimed. “They’re going nuts down there, calling cops in from all over the place. The bikers say they found a body last night—”

“Hook, wait,” I interrupted, raising a hand in appeal. My headache had returned, and I didn’t want a stream-of-consciousness version of what he thought had happened at Stonehenge.

“This just come across?” I lifted my chin toward the scanner, letting him see my weariness. Maybe he would let me drain him of his facts methodically.

He nodded. “About fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”

“What kind of body?”

“A dead one. No other details yet. No sex, no age, no nothin’.”

“Who found the body, exactly?”

“They found it, the bikers. They sent one of their own to the cops in the motor home to report it—this morning, just a while ago.”

“Today’s Tuesday,” I said, stating the obvious. “The bikers have been there since Friday noon.”

“No other details,” he repeated impatiently. “But I can tell that the deputies are excited like they get when there’s foul play. Sheriff’s on his way down. State patrol should be there any minute.”

The scanner released a short burst of incomprehensible static, then fell silent.

“Who’s down there now?” I asked.

“Until a few minutes ago, just the two surveillance guys—Z-seven and a reserve. It sounds like Staters are almost there and deputies are arriving. Everyone’s been called.”

I nodded my head, picturing it.

It was Biker Weekend.

The Memorial Day Stonehenge Run was a “mandatory” for many of the outlaw motorcycle clubs in the Pacific Northwest. The only valid excuse for nonattendance was hospitalization or incarceration. Most years upward of a hundred and fifty people turned out over the long holiday, including the full members and prospects of the various clubs and chapters and the riffraff they called hang-arounds. Usually only the host club, the Portland Infidels, stayed until Tuesday morning.

“How many are still there?” I asked Hooker.

“There’s dozens. There’s still U-Hauls and vans, too.”

Every year the sheriff posted a surveillance team on the bluff above the monument. They used an old motor home seized in a drug bust as temporary headquarters. In shifts, the officers openly watched the party, twenty-four hours a day, until the last chopper roared away. Their job was soft law enforcement presence—no intervention, no pressure—but to get as much photography as possible during daylight. If anything happened—meaning if shots were fired—they were to call for backup before they went in.

The scanner activated: “Z-seven to Samhill!”

The city dispatcher responded in an unhurried voice: “Samhill.”

“What am I supposed to do? I’ve got leakage out the bottom here. Am I supposed to hold them? I’ve got lights on but they’re not stopping. They’re waving at me! They won’t stop!”

Z-seven was a young deputy, if I recalled, barely out of his teens. He sounded nervous, near panic, his boyish voice on the edge of a whine. The dispatcher acknowledged the deputy’s call sign but made no other response.

“Goddamn hippies kilt one a’ their own again, that’s all,” drawled one of the men at the window. His ball cap displayed the words RED NECK. I’d represented him a few years back and knew him for a smart-ass and a jerk. He had kneed his wife in the head during a domestic, breaking her nose, but she’d refused to testify against him. The jury had been sent home.

“Where’s the sheriff?” I asked Hooker.

“On his way down. He’s called for help from Klickitat County, and he’s called in that death doctor from The Dalles.”

“I’m worried about Z-seven,” I said. “He’s new, right? About twenty-two years old? Looks like an Explorer Scout on a field trip?” I could imagine what he was going through. The bikers are riding past his position with impunity, waving middle fingers at him. He’s scared, confused, and alone. And he has no fucking idea how bad these guys really are.

Hooker, who had every call sign memorized—city, county, state patrol, Fish and Wildlife, even the Yakama Nation’s patrol officers—knew the deputy’s vitals by heart.

“He’s twenty-five. Has a wife who’s expecting. Religious fellow. Gets the special, no matter what it is.”

“He needs to let them leak,” I said.

“I know,” Hooker said gravely. He ran a dishrag through the flabby creases in his neck. “I wish Tom would get there.” He was very loyal to Thomas Anders, the Cayuse County sheriff, who bought a double mocha every afternoon and, like me, laid on a few news items for the privilege.

Tom has to be assuming the worst, I thought. He’s got a couple dozen hungover one-percenters who want to straddle their 74s and roll down I-84 to Portland now that the party’s over. He’s got a body, a possible crime scene to process, witnesses scattering, and a bad case of déjà vu.

The scanner activated and, as if I’d called him up just by thinking about him, Tom’s voice came out of the speaker.

“Z-one–Samhill, what’s the medical examiner’s ETA?”

“Listen!” shouted Hooker.

“Estimated arrival ten minutes.”

There was silence as the sheriff cogitated.

“Crime lab?”

Dispatch answered: “Twelve hundred hours is about as good as they can do. They’re en route from Olympia.”

“Okay. I’m coming off the hill now.” There was a brief pause and his mike remained on. His breath exploded into the mouthpiece, which sounded to me like his characteristic smoker’s blow.

“Okay, everybody, listen up. ID these guys if you can, but only if you can do it without any hassles until we get some help and we know what we’ve got. Z-seven, you let them go if they won’t stop.”

“Ten-four,” said the dispatcher.

“What’s Klickitat County tell you?” Tom asked without preamble, suddenly back on the radio. The sheriff was a little short on radio etiquette.

“They’re sending five deputies. Their own sheriff’s coming too.”

“Tell him to get a move on. Looks like the state patrol is already here. What about Fish and Wildlife? Gilliam County? Sherman County? We’re gonna need some containment here.”

“Z-one,” Dispatch said, “calls are out. Gilliam’s sending three radio cars.”

“And call the prosecutor while you’re at it. We’ll need a coroner.”

There was another pause, yet his mike remained open as though further orders were imminent. The sound of a lighter igniting—it was unmistakable—was followed by an equally clear visual image of the sheriff sucking an inch of Camel Light into his lungs.

“And I want everybody off the radio. Mobile phones only,” he said finally, the smoke thickening his voice.

“Ten-four. Z-one, oh-eight forty.”

“Damn,” said Hooker, “he’s cutting us off.”

“He knows the bikers are monitoring the scanner from their war wagon,” I told him.

“We got a murder!” declared Red Neck’s buddy in a large, enthusiastic voice.

“That ain’t the word that came to my mind,” said Red Neck, eyeing me, proud of himself. “I was thinkin’ the word fratricide would be about right. Just like in ’87. Weren’t you involved in that case, Hartman?”

I ignored him.

Seven years ago, at the first Stonehenge Run, Memorial Day, 1987, a member of the Portland-based Infidels Motorcycle Club had died with an ice pick in his throat, his trousers around his knees, his tattooed club patch skinned from his chest and draped neatly over his genitals. After a gutsy investigation, newly elected sheriff Thomas Anders delivered the case file to the prosecuting attorney for charging, alleging that the president of the Infidels, one John “The Baptist” Mathieu, had ordered the execution. And very likely, given biker politics, he had personally carried out the sentence.

The allegations never crystallized into a formal charge because I persuaded the prosecuting attorney—also newly elected—of the simple truth: none of the eyewitnesses would ever show up for trial. Even if they were brought in with arrest warrants as material witnesses, their stories would utterly change.

Anxious to show his sophistication in such matters and after thinking it over a few days for show, the prosecutor dropped the case without filing charges.

I banked the five grand cash retainer and moved on to other things. The Baptist’s old lady sewed another patch onto his colors and he battened down his presidency.

• • •

The scanner had fallen silent after the sheriff’s admonition. As though seeing me for the first time, Hooker stared at my face with unrestrained sympathy. His eyes lingered on the freshly stitched cut high on my cheekbone.

“Rough night, Jed?” he asked kindly, casting a discreet glance at his two coffee drinkers.

“Rough weekend,” I growled. I saw no reason to put a gloss on it. “Now how about that latte?”

Reluctantly he scooted it my way and then started to ring it up. Instead of digging for money I showed him my driver’s license.

“Congratulations,” he said, studying it. “What’s that? Forty-six? You ain’t old. I owe you a punch.”

I buried the billfold in a hip pocket, picked up the coffee, and turned to go.

“You ain’t that old, Jed,” he repeated, like it was an antidote for my hangover. “You going to the meeting tonight?”

“No,” I said. The evening’s city council meeting on the landfill annexation seemed weeks away. I couldn’t imagine mustering the energy to stay in town that long.

“It’s our last chance to stop ’em!”

“You go,” I muttered. “You stop ’em.” I headed out.

“Je’diah?” He pronounced it with three syllables, checking me at the door. He couldn’t let loose.

I looked back.

“You got any intelligence on this thing down there?” he asked plaintively. Both regulars pointed their hats my direction.

Over the years in the course of defense work—or even earlier, as a prosecutor—I’d occasionally played hide-the-ball with Hooker because of ethical requirements or some other duty. As a result, he always suspected that I knew more than I let on. This was no slander on my character—as far as he was concerned, it was legitimate for me to appear ignorant when in fact I was informed. It was therefore rare when he asked me to give up more than I offered, but this was big news, and it frustrated him that the scanner was mute. Elmer Hooker wanted a scoop, plain and simple. He wanted to be able to discuss the Stonehenge event with his customers all day long like an insider. He squinted at me now, this egoless man, and waited.

I paused and weighed my options.

“The bikers didn’t do it,” I said finally.

“No?” His expression was hopeful but suspect, afraid I would take it away as easily as it had been given.

“Shiiit!” barked Red Neck. His friend bared teeth in support.

To no one in particular I repeated, “No.”

Pushing against the bar that protected the glass door, I turned again and looked back at Elmer Hooker. An open-mouthed, uninhibited smile took years off his face. This was real intelligence, complex yet subtle and enigmatic. For a moment he looked like the ten-year-old fat boy he must have once been, standing in a candy store with a buck in his fist, before wives and children, periods of addiction, courses of treatment, and seasons of incarceration.

• • •

I walked kitty-corner across Clark Street and into the Lewis and Clark Square, two acres of lawn and widely spaced oak trees interspersed with monuments dedicated to the two explorers, Sacajawea, and the local indigenous tribes.

County and city employees occupied the metal picnic tables scattered among the trees, savoring the minutes before their nine-to-five workday began. I nodded a greeting at the Road Department team and steered around the front office of city hall. They collectively looked up and fell silent as I passed. Finding a table equidistant from the various clusters of people, I slumped down and leaned against its rolled metal edge.

“Do you have something on the nine o’clock calendar?”

“Nicki,” I sighed.

Nickla Abel, the only female lawyer in Cayuse County, looked down at me, her crafty, mischievous eyes rummaging for a place to settle.

“Do you?” she persisted.

“Yeah, I do.” I stood, towering over her. Private snippets of dialogue became distinguishable as the public employees picked up and migrated.

“Well then, let’s get going, big guy,” she said cheerfully. “We’ve only got about five minutes before God buzzes.”

“You go ahead,” I said. I let my eyes slide around the park.

Nicki Abel’s most remarkable feature burst from her scalp with the texture of steel wool, a natural red, permanently unkempt and hopelessly unmanageable. It made her look smart but pesky, like an eccentric genius.

“Are you attending the criminal calendar because you need a client?” The question was shrewd but not without empathy. If it was true, she knew what it cost me. “Are you bottom fishing?”

“I’ll see you in there,” I said.

She shrugged and strode away.

I picked up the latte and hazarded a sip. It was still too hot to drink outright, so I sucked air with the liquid to cool it down. The strong coffee flavor hit the back of my throat agreeably, like a pop of whiskey on a cold morning. Around me, mothers with children settled at the picnic tables abandoned by the civil servants. The children’s happy chatter and the mothers’ musical responses sounded unaccountably strange, like foreign speech.

So the body’s been found, I thought. The police have been called, the public’s been informed, and we now inhabit a world in which the march of events is wildly out of our control.

In no real rush, I moved in the wake of Nicki’s swaying skirts and lingering perfume, ten feet back, as we threaded through the trees toward the courthouse.

Now it begins.

Things got a lot worse.

Continue the journey. Order your copy of Monument to Justice.