Left Hanging (12 page)

“No. Under Widcuff—”

Burrell’s low voice talked over me. “What do you think, Cas?” And he was right. Arguing with Stan was not productive.

The boy stood tall and met his elder’s eyes. “Deputy Alvaro seems all right.”

“About the animal rights protestors,” Tom pursued.

“They could stand to take more showers, sir.” Red charged up his neck again. I wondered if he and Blue Hair had indulged in simultaneous showering. “And things’d be a lot better off if they used their mouths for something other than talking all the time.”

This kid had
cajones
. If he knew I’d seen Ms. Blue Hair using her mouth for something other than talking with him—an activity that gave him ample opportunity to assess if she needed a shower—he had a major set of them. Even if he didn’t know, to toss around those hot potato words under these circumstances was impressive. Or foolhardy.

“But mostly we ignore them,” Cas concluded, glancing at his father. And now I knew who he’d been rehearsing for.

I looked at Stan, saw only satisfied pride. Then at Cas, straightforward, upright, and in all ways a young pillar of the community. This was getting us nowhere, and with Stan on guard duty there was no hope of getting into useful territory. I wrapped it up, leaving an opening for a return visit.

Once inside Tom’s truck and starting the trek back toward the turnoff, I said, “If that Ma’am-ing and Sir-ing is what passes for rebellion in Wyoming, you folks need a course in tattoos, piercings, drug abuse, and foul mouths.”

“Oh, we got those, too, but that’s not always the most dangerous kind. Sometimes it’s the quiet, hidden rebellion that can cause the most trouble. And heartache.” Without looking at me, he added, “Go ahead, ask your questions.”

“How’d you know I’d met Cas last night?”

“Linda. She’d heard some from Cas, some from Vicky Upton.”

I grunted acknowledgement, then played back what I’d recorded, absently watching clouds pile up on the northern horizon—which, considering the distances out here, could mean it was raining in Canada—while I listened. When it completed, I said, “If one of those animal group people ended up dead, I’d sure want to look at Stan a lot closer.”

“For an accident?”

I sidestepped. “Not sure it would have been an accident if it involved Stan and the animal rights people.”

I played the recording again. The third time, I took notes. “Cas seems pretty sharp,” I commented as we neared town.

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“I get the feeling he was hiding something.”

“Kid that age? Sure.”

I slanted a look at him, but his face gave nothing away. Did he know about Cas and Miss Blue Hair? More importantly, was there any way to find out without giving away what I knew? No.

“It’s a lot simpler,” he said, “if you just ask if I knew Cas was running around on Heather with one of those protestor girls.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?”

“You didn’t ask.”

I forced myself to breathe in and out. “That is not how this works if you want to be part of what Paycik and I are doing.”

“They’re kids. I don’t see their love lives being a factor in the rodeo’s future.”

“We don’t know enough to eliminate
anything
. Cas Newton is running around with one of the animal rights protestors his father hates. Not to mention he appears to be treating this like a short-term hook-up, and he sure wouldn’t want to have Heather find out and lose his permanent good thing.”

“You’re pretty worked up about this. Maybe your personal history has something to do with that.”

I stared at him, too stunned at his using
personal
after ignoring the personal elephant that had propped its butt between us since the night he’d kissed me at my door, to even pretend to fend off whatever it was he’d clearly decided he wanted to say.

“Your divorce. It’s natural you’d see it from the point of view of the woman. Women scorned, you could say.”

“Or not say,” I snapped as we bumped into the KWMT lot.

“Want to talk about it?”

“You want to talk about my divorce, when you have not said word one about—about other things?”

Give him credit. He did not ask
What other things?
He did say, “Not up to me.”

“The hell it’s not.”

His mouth twitched. The credit he’d accrued dipped. “You could have mentioned it.”

“I—
I
could have!”

“Yup. Any time. If you’d wanted to.”

I restrained myself, heroically under the circumstances. “Your actions, your responsibility for discussing it or not.”

“I wasn’t acting alone for long, as I recall.”

I gathered myself and my dignity. “I’m working, and I’m going inside now.”

“I’ll walk you in.”

Short of shooting him, I couldn’t think of how to stop him.

Chapter Thirteen

INSIDE KWMT, it was a case of good news-bad news, which seemed appropriate.

The good news was Mike was back and nearly done with his regular work for the day.

The bad news was he said to Burrell, “Why don’t you come with us to Elizabeth’s place tonight. We’ll pick up pizza and talk about where we are with this.” That was bad news on multiple levels, including that I hadn’t invited Paycik, and here he was inviting someone else.

Burrell said, “Not tonight. I’m picking up Tamantha from camp and only have a couple days before she heads to my sister’s.”

“Busy social life for a second-grader,” Mike said.

“Third-grader,” he corrected, leaving no doubt he was echoing his daughter.

Tamantha was the light of his life. And one scary short person. When it came to determination, she could make a Navy Seal look wishy-washy.

Burrell left, and Mike got back to work, while the good news-bad news trend continued on the “Helping Out” front.

The good news was the Cheyenne contact had called, leaving a detailed message at my work number after, he said, receiving a not-in-service message on my cell. More and more of Wyoming had coverage, but leaving both numbers was easy insurance.

The bad news was the details he left included that his station didn’t have any footage similar to what I was looking for.

Good news—he thought Denver had run something, and he left the name and number of a likely contact—bless him.

The Denver contact said, yes, they’d run footage of a house stripped of its contents by thieves. He’d check with his boss and see about our using it.

The whole conversation took about five minutes. And that included my tacking on that I’d be interested if he heard anything about a rodeo contractor named Keith Landry who’d been at a rodeo somewhere near Denver the weekend before. With that lack of specifics—did I have any idea how many towns around Denver held rodeos?—he was understandably pessimistic, but said he’d let me know if he got anything.

If the video came through from Denver, I’d need to supplement it with something local. There was no Better Business Bureau in Sherman, and I doubted Les Haeburn would approve a trip to Cheyenne to interview the state rep there. Maybe someone from the sheriff’s department. But who?

That was the only reason I called Mike’s Aunt Gee. Absolutely the only reason.

She gave me a name of an officer who would talk about how to prevent being victimized. She also gave me the name of two more Cottonwood County bigwigs who apparently completed the list of the absent. She had learned from an unspecified source that a.) not even spouses knew a location, b.) everyone had left Wednesday morning by personal vehicle, and c.) the exodus had been in the works for a week before that.

I took note of all this, thanked her, then dropped in an oh-so-casual question about what she knew of a Sonja.

“Sonja? Which Sonja?”

Damn, I’d banked on there being only one Sonja in Cottonwood County. “I don’t know. Apparently she was involved with Keith Landry when he came through Sherman with the rodeo year before last.”

“Oh,” she said with significance. “Sonja Osterspeigel. She was rodeo queen two years ago. Not, perhaps, the committee’s most inspired selection. I do recall her having a whirlwind romance with a competitor. Soon after, she began an association with that Keith Landry. Disgraceful. He was old enough to be her father. And he dropped her flat. She made quite a scene at the Kicking Cowboy. He left town the next day.”

And then she had to go and move to Seattle, taking her whole family of potential suspects with her.

Sonja Osterspeigel further stymied me when Aunt Gee denied any knowledge of a phone number or address for the decamped Osterspeigels. They had been short-timers in Cottonwood County, having arrived only five years before her stint as rodeo queen.

I Googled Sonja as soon as we hung up. I found a couple items about her royal status, but no one by that last name was listed in Seattle or environs. Sonja was getting on my nerves.

“TELL ME ABOUT the trip out to the Newtons’ place. Anything interesting?” Mike asked that evening.

“Not a lot, but you can hear for yourself.”

I played the tape while we ate. Yes, it was pizza. Yes, it was in the dismal living room of the hovel.

Mike abruptly interrupted his considerable consumption of pizza to say, “He sidestepped there. About knowing Landry. Didn’t outright lie, but sidestepped.”

“A definite sidestep,” I agreed. “Good catch.”

He grinned. “I’ve done it often enough on the other side of the mic. And he lied about there being no talk about personal lives. I thought you were leading up to asking about that girl.”

“Blue Hair? No.”

“Why not?”

“He would have lied with his father there. Besides, I didn’t want to ask in front of Burrell.”

I watched as I told him about Jenny-now-Jennifer’s findings. I saw the bulldog in his eyes even before he said, “Tom might not have been given all the names. Or he could have forgotten those.”

As a kid, Mike had developed a case of hero worship for high school basketball hero Thomas David Burrell, and it didn’t seem to be out of his system. “Convenient coincidence.”

“Could have happened,” he insisted. But he turned the conversation. “Now, all these people out of town at the same time. That’s not a coincidence.”

I’d filled him in earlier on what Aunt Gee had said about the bigwigs and Sonja. He had no knowledge of the Osterspeigels, since he’d been away playing pro football when the family lived here.

“Also not a coincidence I believe in,” I agreed, with an added slice of meaning that he ignored.

“Where do you think the bigwigs went?”

“Somewhere underground? Like one of those bunkers for government officials. That would explain no cell coverage.”

“Don’t have to be underground for that. Lots of places in the mountains don’t get reception. But what do you think they’re doing? All of them together, out of town at the same time.”

“Back to the alien mothership to renew their human forms?”

He eyed me. “You’re more interested in Landry, aren’t you? I had a feeling this morning you were considering walking away from the entire Landry story, but not now. What was going on?”

“It’s not our story,” I sidestepped. Since I wasn’t thinking about my career, past and present, I sure wasn’t talking about it.

“Not the official one, maybe, but the one we’re finding—that
is
our story.”

Instead of answering directly, I said, “Let’s go to the rodeo. More precisely, let’s go almost to the rodeo.”

“What does that mean?”

IT MEANT PARKING along the highway outside the rodeo grounds gates, a hundred yards shy of the protestors’ camp.

It’s best not to approach groups like this directly. No plowing into the center and firing questions. I slowed Mike with a gesture that we should prop ourselves on wooden sawhorses that would be in their peripheral vision as they shook their signs at cars. It’s also best not to interrupt such groups while plying their trade.

I told Mike this as we deciphered their signs, watched interactions with spectators, and observed the group’s dynamics.

The guy who was in his early forties—or had lived even rougher than I’d factored in my estimation of his age—was the would-be leader. Would-be, because he acted like he was the leader, while few of the others acted as if he or anyone else were the leader.

Certainly Ms. Blue Hair didn’t accord him leader status. She kept herself apart and kept most of the group between her and Would-be Leader. He tried to circle closer. Moves not lost on a tired-looking woman in her thirties whose sign-waving was perfunctory.

A half-dozen others appeared to be college-age kids doing their best to meld James Dean dissatisfaction, later-day-hippiedom, and a dash of Greenpeace. A gray-haired couple who smiled gently at the cars going past, asking the occupants to reconsider what they were doing, appeared to me to be the most effective.

With the entering cars slowed to a trickle, I purposely headed toward the college-age kids.

“Hi, I’m E.M. Danniher from the local TV station. We’re considering a story on the protests, and we’d like background. What’s your name?” I asked a redhead nearly a foot taller than me.

“My name? Jonathan—”

“Wait a minute, Jon,” ordered a wiry brunette with a sharp chin. “What kind of story?”

“A piece for the evening news.”

“Cool,” came from one of the others.

Without removing my attention from the wiry girl, I was aware of Would-be Leader moving our way.

“Would it be on the Internet?” she demanded.

Which way to jump? Which answer would get me what I wanted? “Probably,” I hedged.

“Cool,” again came from someone.

“No,” the wiry girl said decisively. “We know what we’re doing is right, but it can be edited, taken out of context, and in this part of the country
 . . .
no. If it goes on the Internet, it’s there forever.” She looked at Jonathan. “First, you get into law school.”

“What’s going on,” came the rough voice of Would-be Leader, pushing to the front as the college kids melted away like ice at the Equator. Beside me, I felt Mike’s higher level of alertness.

I repeated my spiel about TV coverage. Would-be Leader immediately switched to Major Suck-Up. Mike relaxed.

“Roy Craniston.” He stuck out his hand.

I hoped the griminess was only from carrying signs. Oh, well, I’ve touched worse. I met his hand without hesitation.

“E.M. Danniher. And what’s your name?” I asked Ms. Blue Hair, tossing a pleasant smile toward where she stood a yard away.

“None of your damned business.”

“Is that n-u-n?” I asked sweetly.

That drew a sarcastic laugh from the woman in her thirties.

Roy snapped, “Shut up, Ellie.”

She did better than that: She stalked off to a nearby camper, slamming its door.

Mike gave me half an eye roll and deftly caught up with Ms. Blue Hair, who’d headed in the opposite direction from the camper.

That left me with the gray-haired couple and Roy.

“It’s about time the corrupt media began to pay attention to my work,” he started.

Great way to sell me a story
. But I nodded thoughtfully, listened for any place where what he said might overlap with what I was interested in, and kept the corner of my eye on the direction Ms. Blue Hair and Mike had taken.

Roy Craniston had shown no signs of running out of breath when I caught movement from that corner of my eye. Time to take control of this.

“Do you protest only rodeos?”

“Not at all. I believe that the panoply of society’s ills—”

“You came into town when?” I interrupted.

“Yesterday,” he said. The gray-haired couple had to be faster off the mark if they wanted to answer any questions. “As a symbol of Americana, this event called out to me to provide a conscience for those without one of their own. I have led protests in—”

“So far ahead of the Fourth of July Rodeo?”

His gaze flickered. Annoyance at not being allowed to list his achievements or something else? “I fel—”

“All of you came yesterday?”

“Yes. I set the agenda, the others follow.”

Before he went on, I pointed in the direction Ms. Blue Hair had gone. “I saw her around before yesterday.”

“Her? Yeah, I guess. She’s just a little local. She’s here all the time. I let her join us when we come in for big events.”

“Oh, not local, dear,” corrected the gray-haired lady. Roy scowled, which she appeared to take as interest in what she had to say. “You’re thinking that because she knows where everything is, but she’s from Oklahoma. From what I gather, she roughly follows the rodeo circuit. Not every event, but always rodeo. Since Sherman has this nightly rodeo, she has been here a number of times and knows it well.”

“Do you know her name?” I asked.

“No, dear. She says names are stifling. We call her Pinky.”

“Pinky?”

“Her hair was pink when we met. I do think the blue is more becoming.”

I bestowed a huge smile on the woman. “Isn’t that interesting,” I said, as Mike—alone now—headed toward us. I turned to Roy with flattering attention. “It must be difficult when officials try to intimidate you into leaving. I understand you’ve had run-ins—”

“That blowhard who owns the rodeo grounds tried telling us we couldn’t protest here, but I’d researched our legal rights—” The gray-haired man made a sound that called into question Roy’s description of who’d done that work. “—and he had to back down. Another guy came around pretending to be interested, but he was only after some tail. I ran him off to protect my women.”

I concentrated on widening my eyes and not letting my lip curl. “You did? What happened? Maybe Ellie can tell me
 . . .
”

“No need to talk to Ellie. Didn’t involve her. An old man going for a girl like— But I told him how things were and to get lost.”