C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

Then the judge raised the seat with one hand, using the other to tuck the blankets around Angelina. As Coates reached for the seat with a leer on his face, the judge seemed to shove it at him, one hand on the handle and the other in the blankets. Suddenly, the back of the seat blew open and there was a sharp pop and the snow from a thousand pine boughs across the face of the mountain dropped to the earth in a smoky white cascade.

Coates fell back, his arms outstretched.

Ripping out his earpiece, Torkleson screamed into his handheld, “Who the fuck did that?”

“Not me,” Morales shouted. “It wasn’t one of us, I don’t think.”

Cody and I flew through the brush we’d been hiding behind toward the trailer. A pine branch slapped me in the face and took my hat, and we were scrambling down the hillside in the deep snow. I could see two officers emerging from the trees on the right side of the trailer, hollering to Garrett and the judge to freeze.

Running, falling, a mouthful of snow and pine needles, back on my feet, Cody in front of me with his gun drawn.

Shouting from everywhere.

We ran around from the back of the trailer to where the judge and Garrett stood. The cops from both sides of the canyon were out of the trees now; so were Sanders and Morales, with their hunting rifles. The H3 and the father and son were surrounded.

Judge Moreland saw cops on both sides of him and raised the car seat in front of him so if anyone took a shot at him it would need to pass through it to hit him. His expression wasn’t scared, or angry, but calculating.

“Thank God you got here, Officers,” the judge said in the tone he used from the bench. “My son and I have a permit and we were up here trying to find a good Christmas tree, but we got lost. I realized we’d stumbled on Aubrey Coates…” And then he noticed Cody and me and he lost his train of thought and his ridiculous words tailed off.

I drew the.45, cocked it, and said, “Hand over that car seat and the gun in it or I’ll kill you a thousand times.”

I could see in his face that he was considering keeping it, using the seat as a shield.

“Drop the seat and the gun and hand over the negatives, Judge,” Cody said, his weapon down along his thigh. “We’ve got Wyatt Henkel singing like a bird, and we’ve got the exchange on tape. You’re fucked, so cooperate or die.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” the judge said, glaring at Cody and me with the righ teousness of a true liar, “my son and I were going to cut down a Christmas tree…”

Cody laughed at him. “You don’t understand, Judge. The camera’s off. What happens now is your word against eight officers of the law and the father of the child you took.”

That’s when Coates moaned and thrashed in the snow.

“Son of a bitch,” Cody said, wheeling. “I thought he was dead.” And he raised the Glock and fired four times point-blank into Coates, who went still. That froze everyone. Cody dug into his parka and pulled out a nondescript revolver and flipped it at the body.

“This is why I always carry a throw-down,” he said to Moreland.

The judge looked to Torkleson, who huffed and puffed his way from around the back of the trailer. “Aren’t you going to arrest him? Didn’t you all just see what he did?”

No one said a word. The judge lowered the smoking car seat into the snow. The blankets fell away to reveal a lifesize baby doll. The large-caliber revolver lay across the doll’s thighs.

Cody squared off, facing the judge. “Who’s next? You,” he said, then nodding toward Garrett, “or the fruit of your loins?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Garrett bolt for his father’s gun. Before any of the cops could tackle him, I raised the.45 and shot him. I tried for his chest, but I hit him in the stomach, and he doubled over and sat back in the snow, holding his belly.

“Freeze,” I said.

“You’re supposed to do that the other way around,” Cody said.

“I’m not a cop.”

Garrett burned two holes in me with hate-filled eyes. “Aw, you don’t really want her,” he said. “She comes from me and him, don’t forget. She’s missing the same part I am. You’ll see.”

I shot him in the head, and he flopped back, his blood steaming and stinking and staining the snow. In my mind I severed the connection between Garrett Moreland and Angelina. Forever.

Torkleson stepped between the judge and me, and said, “That’ll be enough, gentlemen.” He gently took the gun out of my hand and slipped it into his jacket pocket. From the other pocket he drew a nickel-plated semiauto and tossed it at Garrett’s body. To the judge, Torkleson said, “Too bad. He had such promise. He could have been a great gangster.”

To his men and Deputies Sanders and Morales, he said, “We all saw the same thing, right, Officers? Both Coates and the boy here pulled weapons and were killed. And we’ll all testify to that, my brothers?”

One by one everyone agreed. Morales wept with joy and dropped to his knees. Sanders stepped over and put a gloved hand on his partner’s shoulder.

“But that’s not true,” Moreland cried. “I killed a known pedophile in self-defense! You all saw that, right?”

“Ha,” Cody said, picking up the revolver from the car seat and sticking it into his belt. “I was wondering where my lost piece was. Now I’ve found it.”

I WAS CONVICTED OF AGGRAVATED Assault with a Deadly Weapon for shooting Wyatt Henkel and was sentenced to one to three years in the Colorado State Penitentiary in, of all places, Canon City. The original charge had been for a class two felony, which could have been eight to twenty-four years, but the DA was sympathetic and knocked it down to a class five. The judge, also sympathetic, had no problem with that. When he sentenced me I said, “Thank you, Your Honor,” but not because of the reduction. I said thank you because I deserved to go to prison, and I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself for the things I’d done unless I did. I was also thankful that the worst of my actions were never discovered by the DA.

The judge said he’d write a letter to the parole board urging early release, but he said I should be prepared to serve a year. How does one prepare for that?

SO NOW I WEAR an orange jumpsuit and laceless boat shoes and every article of clothing I have is stenciled with CDOC- COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

The food is tolerable, but the scenery outside-when I can see it-is pretty nice. My Rocky Mountains are still there, although they’re the southern Colorado version, and they aren’t snowcapped. But they’re with me, always, to the west, framing my days and nights and stretching all the way to Montana.

I’m in the general population. The guards protect me because they, like the judge and DA, are sympathetic. I’ve never asked them for favors, but they give them. I have my own cell with a bed, a washstand and a toilet, books, and this laptop computer. There are books in the library and decent medical care. I’m pleasant but not friendly with all the rest of the population. The only time I see the truly dangerous inmates is across the room at mealtimes.

YES, I’VE SEEN JOHN Moreland. Five times, to be exact. He saw me too, even though he pretended he didn’t. Moreland wears a white jumpsuit, meaning he’s on death row. All of us avoid the guys in white, and the corrections officers segregate them from us.

The judge was convicted in the trial some of you followed on truTV and the cable channels. Despite his investment in house hold names like Bertram Ludik as his defense attorneys and his earnest testimony-where he claimed both Aubrey Coates and his son Garrett were murdered in cold blood during a botched raid on the pedophile’s residence that he mistakenly blundered into while looking for a perfect Christmas tree-the jury convicted him for murder in the first degree for killing Dorrie. Those four photos I first saw in my living room are among the most recognized images in America among those who follow murder trials, I’ve read. They were even printed in People magazine. Despite the photos and Henkel’s testimony, John Moreland has never admitted to either the murder of his parents or of his wife. He claims he was railroaded by rogue cops. He also insists it was he who shot Aubrey Coates, not the police.