Left Hanging (21 page)

“Would it get him over the top rail?” I asked.

“It could take some doing,” Mike acknowledged. “The height of the beam would make a difference. And the strength of the person pulling.”

I brought a chair over, stood on it and looked at the top of the door. Faint marks ran perpendicular to the door’s face. A deeper groove cut into the edges at an angle from when Mike let the rope take his full weight.

“Grooves. Similar to what Lloyd described to you, Mike.” I removed a chip of paint loosened by the experiment and shook my head. “The sacrifices I make.”

“All in the interests of justice,” Mike said.

“And at the expense of my security deposit.”

“Good lord, you paid a security deposit on this place?”

My cell and the landline rang almost simultaneously. I answered when I saw it was Audrey from KWMT. By habit I checked my watch—four twenty-seven. Before I finished hello, she shouted, “He’s short! Thurston. He’s short. He says a minute, and Warren can fill in on the weather. But I’ve looked at it twice, and it’s five fifteen short.
Five-frigging-fifteen
! Maybe more. And he won’t do—”

As the wail continued in my ear, I covered the phone’s mouthpiece and said, “Problem at the station. Paycik and I have to go right now.”

“—anything about it. And there’s nothing from yesterday I can grab because—”

“Hole,” I said to Mike’s questioning look. “Five fifteen.”

“Holy shit!” He rustled through notes on the coffee table for his keys.

“—it was all him, and this is all him, and he won’t approve using anything from the feed, and oh, my God, we’re going to have six minutes of dead air, even if Warren gives the weather from around the entire fucking globe!”

“Audrey, calm down. And you can stop calling my other number now.”

“Oh. Right. But five-fucking-fifteen! He won’t listen. Just walks away. How will we ever—?”

“We’ll be right there. Paycik’s here. He can do something. And I have ‘Helping Outs’ in the can.”

“I know. I checked, but the one booked for first says it’s not done.”

“I can get it done in time. And Audrey, you’re the producer. You are the
producer
.”

She gulped in two shaky breaths. “Okay. I’ll be okay.”

“Good. We’re on our way.”

All three of us were out the door and down the steps before I turned to Tom. “We forgot. You came to tell us something.”

“It’ll hold. Go fix your hole.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

WE DID. BY THE skin of our teeth. And with no help from Thurston Fine.

He insisted the time would be fine, and Audrey was panicking. Kept insisting it, despite the numbers consistently coming in at more than six minutes short. Stubbornly insisted on it with another refusal to approve Audrey or Mike using anything from the network feed. Went on insisting it while I gave the Gift Card Burglars package a lick and a promise, and Mike knocked together a sports report.

Serenely insisted on it, until the instant when he took back the toss from Warren Fisk after the shortened weather segment allotted under the Thurston Fine regime
 . . .
and saw he had nearly seven minutes of airtime left.

He blanked. Utterly. Completely. Potentially fatally.

Temptation to let him stew in his own hubris rose. Professional instincts won out. I slid into the seat Jerry, who served as both floor director and cameraman, had set up over Fine’s protest, and launched into my solo lead-in.

The piece looked better than I had any right to hope it would. With Fine still apparently comatose, I did the wrap-up I’d written for him and ad-libbed a toss to Mike for his teaser.

In the commercial break before the meat of Mike’s report, I eyeballed Thurston. He blinked twice. Presumably he was still in there.

“Can he do the close?” came Audrey’s disembodied voice.

Jerry and Mike looked at me. I looked at the control booth and said, “Ask him.”

After a pause came a tentative, “Thurston, can you do the close?”

Nothing.

“Elizabeth, is he conscious?” Jerry asked.

Now on the camera side of the anchor desk, I went close and bent to look into his face.

I don’t know what came over me. I reached across the desk, grabbed his suit where one lapel crossed the other and yanked him forward until his ribs must have connected with the desk, because he stopped abruptly.

“Thurston! You are doing this close, you hear me. You will sign off this show like a professional, or you sitting here like an idiot will go viral faster than you can say former anchorman.”

“Coming back, in five, four—”

“He’ll do it.” I wasn’t sure if it was a prediction or a threat.

“—three, two, one.”

Mike came through beautifully. He turned it back to Fine with only enough time for the simplest of sign offs.

We held our breaths as one second went by and a second started—a lifetime in live TV.

“That’s all from KWMT-TV news until your updated report at ten p.m. I’m Thurston Fine, saying I’ll see you then.”

“And we’re clear.”

Fine walked off the set without once looking at anyone.

As soon as the set door closed behind him, we saw a pantomime of jubilation through the window of the control room.

WE ALL TROOPED out to a hurried but giddy dinner at Hamburger Heaven. All except Thurston and one poor soul left to man the phones.

Surviving near-catastrophe is a rite of passage for any newsroom with pretensions to being a true working news unit. Even those who had not been here tonight would catch the reflected glow of overcoming the odds.

Back at KWMT, Audrey gave instructions for the late news with a new crispness. She said she was covered for the half-hour, which would include the shorter version of the package I’d prepared, and we didn’t need to stay. She thanked us again and strode away with purpose.

“A producer is born,” Mike said under his breath.

Jennifer hurried up, clutching her laptop to her chest. “Elizabeth, are you leaving?”

“I guess so.” I gave Mike a questioning look, but he didn’t respond.

“Can I come to your house to do the next part of
 . . .
you-know-what?” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “While we were at dinner, Fine asked Dale how to track employees’ Internet searches. It wouldn’t matter even if Dale told him and Fine managed it, because I’m not on the station’s system, but it’s
 . . .
creepy. And I can’t go home because Mom’s got bunco, and even with headphones I can’t shut them out. Those women are
loud
.”

“Sure. What about you, Mike? We’ll go over—”

“Sorry. I’ve got something I’ve got to do. I’ll call you in the morning. ’Night, Elizabeth, Jennifer.” And he was gone.

I did wonder
 . . .
but he was entitled to a personal life. Though this was not the most convenient time. And it was his damned rodeo.

Jennifer rode with me. She said her father drove her to work, and she would have gotten a ride home from Dale, who I realized was the tall, skinny aide who walked with his head tucked, as if afraid it might hit the ceiling.

She came out back with me while I put out fresh water for Shadow, though there was no sign of him.

Back inside, Jennifer settled in on the couch, opened her laptop, and poised her hands over the keyboard like a pianist. “Want me to keep working on the DBA woman or something else?”

“Something else right now. Use the list of where Landry’s been as stock contractor and find the names of women who have been rodeo queen in those places the years he’s been there.”

This had been the upshot of my earlier triangle doodling with the women’s names and Landry’s pattern. I’d been about to ask her to track this when Mike’s call about Heather took precedence.

Her eyes widened. “Oh. You think he’s been going after rodeo queens from way, way, way back when it was Heather’s mom right up to Sonja. And not just here?”

I wasn’t sure Vicky would appreciate that many “ways.” I didn’t correct Jennifer in thinking Sonja had been his last Sherman rodeo queen target. Apparently, Jennifer didn’t subscribe to the Penny News Flash, or she’d have known about his chasing Heather.

“I’m wondering.” My phone rang. “And I’d like to know,” I added, before answering.

It was Matt. I took the call in the kitchen.

He confirmed most of what I’d suspected. Roy Craniston was a bit player at best among hard-core animal rights protestors, viewed as an opportunist, rather than a true-believer. As a bonus, Matt said his sources acknowledged they’d never protested the Sherman rodeos—nightly or the Fourth of July—because they
weren’t as bad as the worst
. “Pretty high praise from these folks,” he inserted.

Craniston’s usual female companion was Eleanor Redlaw, who came from El Paso, Texas. Matt’s sources said she was the brains, and Roy was the ego of the outfit.

I rewarded Matt by asking him to find out about a girl in her late teens/early twenties with a wide streak of blue in her hair who protested at the Sherman rodeo and other, unnamed, rodeos.

“Gee, why not make it really challenging,” he grumbled.

“C’mon, a swath of blue in her hair. Used to be all pink. Said to be from Oklahoma. That’s hardly a challenge to the mighty Matt Lester.”

“Yeah, I love you, too. Call you if I get something.”

“
When
you get something,” I said, catching a corner of a chuckle before the line clicked dead.

AFTER JENNIFER had a few names, I searched for phone numbers on my laptop, then started calling. The first two acknowledged only a vague recollection of Landry as the stock contractor the year they were rodeo queen. The next wasn’t available.

Then I hit a familiar story.

An attractive rodeo cowboy pursued the rodeo queen. After the queen’s favor had been won, attractive cowboy dumped her abruptly and with no warning. Landry swooped in on the heartbroken as the understanding and comforting older man. He’d enjoyed the spoils, then performed a similar dump. Like a vulture swooping in to snap up what was left over by the wolf.

That wasn’t my image. It was Mandy Abernathy’s. Call Number Seven, Confirmation Number Two.

After Mandy, we switched to possibilities in the Pacific Time Zone because it was getting late to call in the Mountain Time Zone.

We found three. The first Pacific Time Zone woman was another in the pattern. The next hung up when I said Landry’s name. The third vaguely recalled the name.

The math in my head felt like it might be about to give me an answer, then came another incoming call.

“Elizabeth.” It was Mike.

“Hey. We’ve made progr—”

“I’ve got to talk to you. Wanted to be sure you were home so I didn’t waste time.” He sounded both shaken and resolved. “Can you be ready to go when I get there?”

“Go wh—? Yes.” The question was reflex. The
yes
was in response to his tone.

“Good.”

I’d given Jennifer the run of the house, grabbed my bag, and opened the door before his vehicle pulled in to the driveway. I was in the passenger seat, and he was backing out with no wasted time.

He also wasted no time in explaining. “I was at the sheriff’s department, trying to get more out of Lloyd. They were keyed up about something, but wouldn’t tell me what. There was a report on the counter—where that hallway leads back to the offices.”

I nodded, but wasn’t sure he saw.

“It was upside down. I wouldn’t have thought of it if it hadn’t been for what you and Needham said, but I read enough of it. It was about the fibers found on Landry, what kind of rope those fibers would’ve come from. There was a list of names—people who’d bought that kind of rope. One name was circled.”

We’d expected Alvaro to arrive at this point. We’d just expected the piece of material snagged on the post to be the breadcrumb he followed. And we’d hoped for more time. “Heather’s.”

“No,” Mike said. “That’s just it. It was Cas Newton’s.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

VICKY UPTON’S small truck was in the drive, and she answered the door.

“Absolutely not,” she said to my request to see Heather. “She’s in bed, and I will not disturb her.”

I considered her determined face. Persuasion wouldn’t cut it. I stepped past her into the house. “Heather!” I shouted, giving Mike a look.

“Be quiet! What are you—?”

“Heather! Heather Upton,” Mike thundered, pulling the front door closed behind him. “We have to talk to you. It’s about Cas.”

A door down the short hallway opened. I suddenly realized why the house seemed familiar. It was the mirror image of the house I rented—mirror image, well-maintained, and painted more than every four decades.

“I’ll call the police right now if you don’t leave immediately,” Vicky said.

“It will be better for your daughter if we talk to her before the police do, Vicky,” I said. “If we don’t talk to her, we’re going straight to Deputy Alvaro, who’s investigating the murder of Keith Landry.”

“Murder—? That’s—”

“What about Cas?” Heather demanded from the doorway.

With no makeup and her hair pulled back in a scrunchy, she looked better than I’d ever seen her before. Except for the fear and worry in her eyes.

“You go back to bed, right now,” Vicky said. “I’ll take care of this.”

Heather ignored her mother and repeated to me, “What about Cas?”

“The sheriff’s department knows about the rope. They have Cas at the sheriff’s department right now.”

“How could they—?”

“What are you talking about?” Vicky demanded.

I answered Heather. “They identified fibers and connected it to Cas’ rope.”

“But they can’t
know
.”

“They know Cas’ kind of rope was used to lasso Landry,” Mike said. “They can tell the fibers and the twist. They know.”

“Was what you told us all a lie to protect him?” I demanded.

“No! It was the truth. It was all the truth.”

“Except you didn’t mention using Cas’ rope.”

“I never meant—I’d grabbed it when
 . . .
I didn’t even think about it.”

“Heather, you are not to say another word.”

“You had to know it wasn’t your rope,” Mike said, overriding Vicky.

“Of course I did, but I never thought—are you sure they know it’s Cas’?”

“Yes. What they don’t know is that you threw that loop.”

“No!” Vicky shouted. “She didn’t! She couldn’t have. I tell you, she was here, right here all night. You’re lying. I’ll tell the police you’re lying.”

“I can’t let Cas take the blame, Mom,” Heather said, apparently contemplating her bare feet.

Vicky sucked in a breath, and it seemed to restore her usual calm. “You’re not going to do this. Cas will be okay. His family’s powerful. They have money. They’ll take care of him. There’s no need for you to do this. To risk
 . . .
There are things—” Her gaze cut to Mike and me. “Private things.”

“We know,” I said.

“You can’t.” Vicky’s voice lost its usual certainty on the next words. “Nobody can. Nobody can know. Ever.”

Her daughter raised her head. She looked both older and much younger than Rodeo Queen Heather Upton. “
I
know.”

“I told you only because
 . . .
only—”

“Because you were afraid I’d have sex with my father.”

“
Heather
. Don’t.”

“Like I’d have sex with that gross old man.” She turned to us. “It was like I told you. He tried pawing at me, and I had to dodge him all over the place, and that night he was just
there
. And he was coming after me, only now I knew he was my
father,
and it was
 . . .
sick
.”

My stomach lurched with contagious nausea. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I
did
.” She sucked in a breath. “He said there was no use lying, and all he wanted to do was make me feel better since Cas had dumped me.” A frown tucked between her brows. “I didn’t understand that. Cas and I’d had a fight, but we didn’t break up, much less him dumping me.”

“What was the fight about?”

“How many buttons I had open on my shirt for the program pictures. He said I was showing too much.” She pivoted, tossing over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”

ALONG WITH HER clothes, Heather must have donned some of her Rodeo Queen armor.

Her head was high (though hat- and tiara-less) and her posture perfect when Richard escorted her and her mother into Interview Room Two. Vicky’s surface was ruffled, but I had the sense her inner resolve wasn’t dented.

It had taken persuading to get Lloyd Sampson to interrupt Alvaro and tell him we had important information.

Alvaro had come out of Interview Room One, looking as if he’d like to bite off our heads and swallow them whole. That didn’t change much when I said Heather had something vital to tell him, though after a glance at the girl, he gestured for her to go ahead of him. Over his shoulder, he glowered at Mike and me. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll talk to you two later.”

We’d been sitting on an uncomfortable bench across from the counter that divided the deputy on duty from the public for 14 minutes when the door to Interview Room One snapped open.

“—and you can’t stop me, Deputy. I demand to see Alvaro. I agreed my son could talk to you without a lawyer to clear up this crap, but not if we’re treated—”

Stan Newton’s voice preceded him. Once outside the door, he looked down the hallway, spotted us, turned red, and jumped back into the room, slamming the door behind him.

The next hour’s tedium was relieved only by Alvaro emerging from Interview Room Two and entering Interview Room One without glancing our way. Nineteen minutes later, he reversed the process.

Early on, Mike started to say something, but I cut my eyes toward Deputy Sampson, and that was the end of confidences in the sheriff’s department waiting area.

Mike had driven the Uptons in their car, to make sure there weren’t any detours on the way to the sheriff’s department, and I spent my time speculating on what might have been said during that trip. I also fell asleep.

Whispers woke me. I doubt if I’d have stirred for a full-voiced conversation, but whispers do it every time. That’s what comes of having older brothers who planned deviltry in whispers.

I elbowed Mike awake. Alvaro was finishing his whisper with Lloyd by the door of Interview Room Two. He gave Mike and me a brief, threatening death-stare as he went to the door of Interview Room One, then gestured to Lloyd.

Sampson opened the door of Interview Room Two. Heather came out.

Alvaro swung open the door to Interview Room One, said, “You can go,” and stood back.

The timing was perfect.

Cas stopped dead in the doorway of Room One as Heather sailed past.

Beyond the teenagers, the parents gave each other wary looks, unsure if secondary alliances conflicted with the primary allegiance each held to a child.

Before anyone else reacted, Cas ran the two steps after the girl and grabbed her by the arm to spin her around. “Heather?
You?
You used my rope? I thought maybe—” He bit it off, but it was too late.

“You thought it was that skank you’ve been buying flowers for.”

“Once. I got her flowers. Once. For her nineteenth birthday.”

“That bitch. You yell at me about a couple buttons open on my shirt, and you’re with
her
. That fucking Pauline.” Heather made the name sound like more of a curse than the f-word.

Cas paled. “You know her name? How do you know about
 . . .
and the flowers? How do you know?”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Caswell Newton? Do you think I’ve known you all your life without figuring out when you’re hiding something?”

She turned her back on him and walked out without looking left or right, with her mother hurrying to catch up.

“—AND WITHHOLDING evidence—”

“We did not withhold evidence,” I said. “We withheld conclusions. You had the pink fabric. You had the marks on the beam.”

That stopped Deputy Alvaro. Or else he’d stopped for breath after a comprehensive lecture about interfering in an investigation. Even giving him the list Jennifer had developed of where Landry’s rodeo had been didn’t soften Richard.

“And as for interference, we’ve actually provided assistance,” I said. “As soon as we knew evidence had led you to Cas—”

“How
did
you know that?”

I ignored him. “—we went right to Heather to demand she talk to you and straighten it all out. Without us, you’d have followed the wrong path for days. Although I did wonder what motive you thought Cas—”

“Landry wasn’t exactly making a secret of going after Heather.” Alvaro glowered at me. “As you already knew.”

“How would I know?” I dropped the innocent act at his look. “Penny?”

“Deputies buy groceries, too, you know.” It was the closest he’d come to looking human since we’d walked in. “What else do you know?”

He looked at Mike, who shook his head, then at me. I raised helpless hands. He rubbed the back of his neck, and I realized some of his glare was from being dead tired.

“Listen, Richard,” Mike said, “we all want to solve this. And it’s clear we’re not putting stuff on air that would interfere with your case.”

“Thurston Fine won’t let you get on the air.”

“We could if we felt it was necessary,” Mike said.

Even if we had to lock Fine in a storeroom
 . . .
which had a lot of appeal. “But we’re not,” I added, both to Alvaro and to end my storeroom daydream. “What we are doing, is gathering information to try to figure out an answer to this as fast as possible. You’re short-handed and pressed for time and—let’s be honest—not experienced with investigations like this.”

“But Elizabeth is,” Mike slid in.

“We could help,” I said, “if we had more information.”

Alvaro was silent a long time before, “Like what?”

I was ready. “Where was Landry’s phone found?”

He gave me a quizzical look. “In the pen. Where’d you think?”

“Still in a pocket?” I felt Mike tense, but didn’t look at him.

“No. It wasn’t still in a pocket. Why?”

“How close to the body?”

“It was in pieces. Trampled.”

“The pieces were where? Do you know? Did you keep track?”

“Yeah, we kept track,” he snapped. “They were most a fair distance from the rest—from the remains.”

“How far?”

“I don’t remember precisely, not without looking at the report again. Four, six feet away.”

I sat back. “Ah.”

“Ah, what?”

“
Ah
that removes a potential stumbling block to a growing theory.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not prepared to say right now.”

“You can’t withhold evidence.”

“Not evidence. Theory.”

“Elizabeth. If you know—”

“We don’t
know
anything. We’re feeling our way.”

“Ms. Danniher, as an officer of the law—”

I raised one hand. “I swear, Deputy Alvaro, if we know something for sure, we’ll come to you and tell you the whole thing.”

“And not go after the murderer yourself? Ignorance can be damned dangerous in a murder case,” lectured the cop who was the age of some of my nieces and nephews.

“We’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, it would be helpful if you’d let us have a look at the detailed phone records.”

“The phone’s card is in Cheyenne. It’ll be a while before their forensic tools finish with it.”

Well, well. Young Richard had become subtle. What he’d said was no doubt true. What he left out was that they already had preliminary phone records from his brotherly connections. “When you get the information, you’ll share it with us?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“SO THAT’S WHY Heather was at the rodeo grounds so late—trying to catch Cas with the other girl. What did the Uptons say during the drive here?” I asked Mike as soon as we were in his night-cool vehicle.

I needed to fill him in on what Jennifer and I had been doing before his call, but I was too tired to do it tonight—or, technically, this morning.

“Not much that you don’t already know. Heather said she grabbed Cas’ rope by accident.”

“Ah, jealousy. I bet that was her in Cas’ bag Wednesday night. That’s when she found a receipt for the birthday flowers for Blue—uh, Pauline. She’s rooting around in the bag, sees Cas coming, grabs up her stuff, mistaking his rope for one of hers, and gets out of there.”

Mike’s thoughts seemed to be on a different track. “He has a point—Richard—about this being dangerous. You and Diana were nearly killed last time. Murderers are nothing to fool around with. Maybe you shouldn’t—”