Redemption (29 page)

“I figured.” He didn’t look up as he filled in everything but the amount on the check.

“She told me something really interesting.”

Frank stopped dead and slowly looked up. “I told you not to talk to her.”

“That girl staying over the store. She’s the daughter you’ve denied for seventeen years.”

Frank considered himself a peaceful man. It took a lot to rile him. “Billy,” he said between gritted teeth as he stepped around the desk to stand over the former deputy.

Taken by surprise, Billy tried to swing his boots off his desk to stand, but Frank was on him, holding his legs where they were as he tilted the former deputy’s chair back until it was dangerously close to tipping over.

“I’m going to give you five seconds to give me the information,” Frank said in a voice that brooked no argument. “Then I’m going to write you a check and walk out of here.”

“Get off me,” Billy cried.

“Are we clear on that, Billy?” Frank asked, ignoring him. “Because if I tilt your chair back any farther, I fear you might go out that second-story window. I doubt the fall will kill you, but I can only hope.”

“You can’t
threaten
me,” he blustered, though it lacked much conviction.

“I’m not
threatening
you. I’m just trying to get out of this office with the least amount of bloodshed.”

Billy visibly swallowed and reached for his desk.

Frank let go of him so he could sit up. Billy opened a file on the desk and pulled out a slip of paper with an address and a phone number.

Frank took it from his hand. “I changed my mind. Bill me.” He started for the door.

“But I got you what you wanted.”

He stopped and turned to look back at Billy. “I would imagine since you talked to her I won’t be able to reach her at either the number or her address,” Frank said, folding the note and putting it into his pocket. “If that’s the case, then I won’t be paying you, Billy, because you didn’t do the job I asked of you. Consider this a learning experience. Your next client just might push you out that window.”

“I’ll take you to court.”

“You do that,” Frank said, and walked out.

* * *

A
T FIRST,
H
ITCH’S WORDS
were indistinguishable from his screams. But when the words finally registered, Jack pulled Hitch back from the edge of the cliff.

Hitch collapsed on the ground.

“Tell me that again,” Jack ordered.

Hitch gasped for breath. When he finally looked up, he was pale, sweating and at least partially sober. “My mother let me take the new pickup the night your father died. I wasn’t even driving the old blue one. I swear. I went to a kegger down on the Yellowstone. It wasn’t until the next morning that I went out to get into my old truck to get feed and it was gone. That’s when my mother told me to call the sheriff and tell him that someone had stolen the truck. She said it must have been some kids who took it for a joy ride. We both thought it would turn up, probably wrecked.”

“But it never did.”

Hitch shook his head. “That’s all I know. I swear.”

“And the bull in my corral?”

Hitch looked down at his lap for a moment before he mumbled, “I didn’t have a choice.”

Those were the words Jack had heard through the man’s screams as he’d dangled him at the edge of the cliff.

“Everyone has a choice, Hitch,” Jack said.

“I couldn’t get another DUI,” he cried. “My mother was threatening to cut me off. I was going to lose the ranch, lose everything.”

“So what did you do?” Jack asked.

“Judge Hyett offered me a deal,” he said, crying now.

“And that deal?”

“I thought he just wanted to teach you a lesson,” Hitch said. “He said you were dating his daughter, getting serious, that you needed a wake-up call before it was too late, that it was a little joke on you, bring you down to size.”

Jack nodded. “And you’ll swear on it to the sheriff, because if you renege, I’ll see you at the bottom of this cliff one way or another.”

Hitch nodded solemnly. “I’ll tell the sheriff.”

“Then let’s go pick up Cody West so he can verify your story.”

“You know about Cody, too?” Hitch asked in surprise.

“I do now.”

* * *

F
RANK DIDN’T CALL
Pam’s number. Not right away. He had little hope that she would answer when he did, so he was shocked when she picked up, since it was so late.

“Hello?”

Hearing her voice, he realized Tiffany was right. He didn’t want to talk to her. He wanted to scream obscenities at her.

“Is that you, Frank?” she asked, as if she hadn’t already known from caller ID. She’d obviously been waiting for his call.

He counted to ten before he said, “Why, Pam? Just tell me why.” He heard the defeat in his voice and knew she did, too.

“I’m sorry, why what?”

“Stop. I know what you did. I can even guess why. But Pam, you knew how badly I wanted a child. Why did you have to do this?”

Silence filled the line and he thought for a moment she might have hung up.

“You lost all rights to me and the child I was carrying seventeen years ago.” Her voice sounded brittle and merciless. He’d heard it before, but others only saw her innocent-looking face, the one she put on to hide what lay just below the surface—a heartless ability to be cruel and spiteful, to use an innocent child to get revenge.

“It was one thing to keep Tiffany from me out of spite, but to tell her lies about me? You know I never meant to hurt you.”

“Oh, please.”

“It’s the truth. I tried, Pam.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Don’t you realize how much worse that made it? I saw you trying every day. You had to try so hard to love me, didn’t you, Frank?” Her voice broke and he felt a stab of sympathy for her. He hadn’t realized how much he’d hurt her. “Something that was so easy with Lynette was impossible with me. Was I that unlovable?”

“No.” The sympathy he felt for her was overshadowed by the malevolence in what she’d done. “Pam, you did a horrible thing to your own daughter, and all in an attempt to hurt me, you’ve hurt her.”

“Oh, please,” she snapped. “She’ll get over it. You will, too. I could have told her you died. I’m sure you’ve told her your side of it. So what real harm is done?”

Did she really not know how much harm she’d done to their child? “Do you hate me that much?”

Her laugh was like glass breaking. He felt a chill run through him. As a sheriff, he knew there was nothing more ugly or dangerous than a woman scorned.

“I’m sorry that you’ve spent the past eighteen years plotting misery,” he said. “I doubt it has enriched your life or made you happy.”

“You’re wrong about that,” she snapped. “I swore when I left you that someday you would feel what I felt.”

“Well, you’ve achieved what you set out to do. It must give you a real sense of accomplishment.”

“It does. I just wish there was more I could have done to hurt you,” she said. “She’s your daughter now. I want nothing more to do with her.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do. I told her if she left to go find her father not to bother coming back.”

“Pam, how could you—” But he realized she’d already hung up.

Poor Tiffany. His heart broke at the thought of what she must be going through. He wadded-up Pam’s phone number and address and threw it in the fire. He wouldn’t look for her again, because he knew that if he found her, he couldn’t trust himself not to kill her.

At the sound of a vehicle, he looked up to see Hitch McCray’s pickup pull into his ranch yard. “What the devil does Hitch—” To his surprise, Jack French climbed out from behind the wheel. A moment later, Cody West got out of the passenger side, followed by a clearly half-drunk Hitch McCray.

* * *

S
HERIFF
F
RANK
C
URRY
listened as Jack related what he’d discovered about Judge Hyett. That Jack had been framed didn’t come as a surprise. He’d suspected there were others involved and that Jack had covered for them. He’d even suspected the reason the judge had thrown the book at Jack had something to do with Hyett’s only daughter.

That the judge had been involved caught him completely off guard. “Is this true?” he asked Hitch.

The man smelled like a brewery. It was apparent that he’d only recently sobered up. “I had to take the deal or do jail time,” Hitch said. “My mother couldn’t run the ranch alone.”

Frank knew Hitch was more worried that his mother would disown him. Hitch needed to stay on his mother’s good side if he ever hoped to get the family ranch. Everyone in the county knew that. Ruth McCray had bailed out her son two other times. This time could have been the last straw, and Hitch would have known that.

“What about you?” Frank asked Cody West. The kid was in his late teens, nice looking like the rest of the West men, and all cowboy.

“Yes, sir, I did help Mr. McCray take the bull and put it in Mr. French’s corral. The judge led me to believe it was a prank. I never would have done it if I’d known Mr. French would be sent to prison.”

“And after you realized that was the case?” Frank asked.

Cody West looked down at his boots and nervously turned the brim of his Stetson in his fingers. “I spoke to Judge Hyett, and he warned me to keep my trap shut or something like that could happen to me.”

“So you kept quiet.”

“I didn’t want to, but it would have been my word against the judge’s,” Cody said. “Also, I didn’t want my father to find out what I’d done.”

“I’m going to need your statements,” Frank said. “I need all of it—what the judge told you, how this worked and everything that happened that night.”

“Jack, it might be best if we left you out of this,” he said. “Once this hits the fan, you can file a lawsuit for wrongful imprisonment if you’re interested.”

“I’m not,” Jack said. “I just wanted to set the record straight.”

Frank nodded. “Leave that to me.”

* * *

“
W
HAT HAPPENS NOW?”
Hitch asked after he and Cody had written down their statements and given them to Frank.

“There will be an investigation and complaint. Judge Hyett committed willful misconduct in office and violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics. He will have to face discipline from the Judicial Standards Commission, a regulatory committee under the auspices of the state supreme court.”

“What will they do to him?” Cody asked.

“It depends,” Frank said. “Public censure or suspension. Or they could force him to retire.”

“He should have to go to prison like Jack did,” Cody said.

The sheriff shook his head. “That won’t happen. But Judge Hyett isn’t fool enough to try something like this again—if they don’t force him to retire.”

Frank looked to Jack.

“It’s enough,” Jack said.

“I’d stay away from his daughter, though,” the sheriff added. “Just to be on the safe side.”

Jack laughed. “No problem there.”

Frank thought about warning him away from Kate LaFond. But while he liked Jack—might have had a son his age if he and Lynette had stayed together—he couldn’t save Jack French from himself.

But maybe this would help Jack turn things around. Frank sure hoped so.

He thought of his daughter, Tiffany, and wished there was something he could do to help her. He felt just as helpless when it came to her.

* * *

C
ODY PROMISED TO
drive Hitch home after dropping Jack off at the bottom of the mountain below his cabin. “I’ll see that he gets his truck back tomorrow,” Cody said.

Both Cody and Hitch had had little to say after the three of them had left the sheriff’s house. Both had confessed to what they’d done. The sheriff had made each of them put it in their own writing and sign and date it, telling them they would probably both be called to testify before a judicial committee at some point.

Now as Jack climbed the side of the mountain to his cabin, the sun was just coming up in the east. He’d thought he would feel better. His name would be cleared. He would no longer be a felon, but there was no getting back the two years it had cost him.

The sheriff had warned him that probably not much would happen to Judge Hyett. “Jack, there is a range of possible disciplinary actions that could be taken, private admonition to forced retirement. My guess, though, is if he has no other prior misconduct complaints, he will get public censure and that will be the extent of it.”

“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already figure.”

The sheriff had laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, Jack.”

He was sorry, too. Sorry he didn’t feel a sense of satisfaction; but what had taken place between him and Kate earlier weighed on him more than having just cleared his name.

All he could think about now was climbing into his bed and losing himself in the oblivion of exhausted sleep.

As he topped the hill on which his cabin was set, he saw the SUV parked behind his and swore under his breath. He was in no mood for this.

The moment she saw him, she climbed out of the SUV and started toward him. Clearly she hadn’t had any more sleep than he had. He could smell perfume and alcohol on her, an all-too-familiar concoction.

“What the hell are you doing here, Chantell?” he said as he walked on past her. “I’m really not doing this right now.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home. You have to talk to me.” She followed him up on the porch and into the cabin. “Jack, my father was waiting up for me when I got home this morning. He said you’re spreading lies about him.”

He turned to look at her as he pulled off his boots and socks, then discarded his shirt. The rising sun silhouetted her in the cabin doorway. He realized how crushed she would be when she found out the truth about her father. Or maybe, like the judge, she’d deny it. Either way, he figured she wouldn’t be hanging around Big Timber after everything came out.

“Goodbye, Chantell,” he said as he stepped to her and, taking her shoulders in his hands, moved her back until she was standing on the porch. “We won’t be seeing each other again.”