Reaction Shot (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 9)

by Patricia McLinn

Had he misspoken?

  Didn’t he want his former employee to be treated better than an animal?

  Or did he mean it the denigrating way he’d said it?

  I picked up a murmur of animal — impossible to trace its source. It sounded less like the murmurer’s objection to the treatment of York than confirmation that the description fit.

  Norman Clay Lukasik reminded me of an old-school actor my parents had taken the family to see when I was a kid. He’d projected his voice to every corner of that theater.

  This guy managed the trick even outdoors in Wyoming, with lusty competition from the wind.

  “This is my employee who has been murdered. My long-time employee.” He started with long strides toward the police tape, aiming directly for where Hiram Poppinger stood between the two deputies.

  Lloyd Sampson said, “Sir, you need to stay back.”

  Lukasik ignored him. “The foreman of Lukasik Ranch, operating in his capacity as my ranch’s representative. My—”

  “My crime scene.”

  At Shelton’s flat words from a distance, Alvaro stepped directly in front of Norman Clay Lukasik, only the tape separating them.

  Lukasik stopped advancing.

  He was smart enough to recognize he might have gone through or around Lloyd Sampson, not Alvaro.

  Then he compensated for stopping by projecting his voice even more.

  “Furman York was my trusted foreman—”

  Hiram, his mouth working like he’d swallowed something sour, snorted. I thought at trusted, rather than foreman.

  “—for more years than many of you have been alive. Not—” He dropped his voice. “—including you, Sergeant Shelton.”

  Shelton remained impassive at the possible slight. Though how it could be a slight when the speaker’s trunk clearly had more rings around it, I didn’t know.

  “My foreman,” Lukasik belted out.

  “Impressive,” I muttered to Needham. “I wouldn’t want to be standing next to him.”

  “Not even his best performance. Should have seen him at the beginning, in all his glory.” The dryness of his glory would fan a wildfire.

  Hiram tried to advance, stopped when Lloyd clasped his arm. Richard still separated him from Lukasik.

  “The foreman you’re boo-hooin’ about didn’t do diddly squat for your cattle numbers. How long you been stuck at near enough the same number to make no difference? Some foreman. Anybody who’d hire Furman York to clean out a barn, much less be foreman deserves what he gets. More like foreman of your playpen than a real ranch. Ranching’s not your business, not your livelihood. Never has been. Not like the rest of us.”

  “Good thing it’s not my livelihood. With the herd barely staying even, much less growing like you’d expect from the births, it’s no way to get rich. Don’t understand how you all do it. Oh, that’s right—” Lukasik smirked and his voice turned sharp. “—you don’t.”

  He jerked his head toward Tom. “Burrell with the paving company, that neighbor of his working at the airport. Makes us all part-time ranchers.” That effort to include himself in their community twanged with insincerity. “Your other jobs just aren’t as lucrative as mine.”

  Ah, now that sounded sincere. And self-congratulatory.

  “None of us puttin’ murderers back on the street, either,” Hiram snapped. “We can live with ourselves.”

  A low sound like a vibrating wire indicated agreement from others. No one spoke it, though.

  The upper corners of the lawyer’s lips retracted. “I have no trouble living with myself when someone I represent to my fullest ability is found not guilty by a jury of his or her peers. That’s what our justice system is all about. Innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Or until you buy off a juror.”

  “Watch it, Hiram.” Sharp and short, those words sounded nothing like Lukasik’s others. Out of control? Or a deliberate effect? “I’ve been thinking a case out of criminal court could be interesting. Slander has a lot of appeal. And those few acres of yours would make a nice little addition to my ranch. Have to be brought up to my standards, of course, which the house couldn’t be, so the bulldozer—”

  “Why you—” Hiram’s surge forward stretched Lloyd’s arm to the max. The deputy held on.

  Good thing he doesn’t have a shotgun now, I thought.

  Didn’t need to say it, since I saw similar thoughts reflected in other faces.

  Tom was right. Hiram might be in trouble.

  Chapter Nine

  Confirmation of that came far faster than I could have guessed.

  Though not immediately.

  “Get him over there, away from the tape,” Shelton directed Lloyd. He told Lukasik, “You get back, too. Quit with the stump speeches.”

  Before Lukasik could object, Shelton turned his back and gestured for Tom to return to where they’d been at the start.

  With a self-satisfied smile convincing enough to mask that he obeyed Shelton, Lukasik pivoted away from the tape.

  Almost as if by accident, he pivoted in our direction.

  “Ah, representatives of the media. Michael Paycik, good to see you, even under these circumstances.”

  “Norman.” Mike’s handshake was nearly as brief as his greeting. “These are co-workers from KWMT — Elizabeth Margaret Danniher, Diana Stendahl. You know Needham.”

  Needham crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the man.

  Lukasik smiled, unperturbed.

  After the lawyer acknowledged Diana with a nod, I came under the spotlight of Lukasik’s gaze.

  I’d dismissed his eyes too easily.

  They weren’t Lincolnesque, yet they had power, along with his mouth.

  “Elizabeth Margaret Danniher.” The way he said it had me searching my conscience for wrong-doing. For a fraction of a second, still long enough to recognize his power.

  Power stemming from a talent and expertise at eliciting the response he wanted.

  Good thing I had experience and skill at resisting.

  “Sorry, you have the advantage of me.” I extended my hand. A handshake can convey considerable information.

  A flicker of annoyance showed in his face. Good. It put him off balance.

  Not long, though.

  He had experience and skill at resisting, too.

  He met my hand with his large one — bony, pampered.

  “Norman Clay Lukasik, owner of the Lukasik Ranch where this poor soul so brutally murdered worked. Also a practitioner of law.”

  His handshake was firm and accompanied by his left hand gripping around my forearm. Lightly, but conveying it could tighten if he chose, intimating he could maneuver me as he chose.

  Without releasing his handshake, I stepped sharply to the side — not away from that hold by his left hand, toward it. Fast enough that he couldn’t adjust and it bent his left wrist back sharply, possibly painfully. He released that hold.

  We ended the handshake at the same time.

  His metaphorical man-spreading tactic, trying to take up all the space in the Jelicho Table to make me feel small and insignificant, hadn’t worked. Unlikely he’d give up. Something to look forward to with our next encounter.

  “Do you know for a fact he was murdered?” I asked.

  “Ah, facts.” He dismissed the paltriness of facts and possibly me, with an open-handed sweep of his arm, returning to group of civilians.

  I might have been tempted to make him pay for that dismissal — of facts, not of me — except activity claimed my attention.

  One of the scientific types came from behind the screening and gestured for Shelton to join him.

  Shelton said something to Tom, who remained where he was, then went to the scientific type. He listened for some time, all the while staring at Tom. Absentmindedly? The closest place to rest his eyes? Or with intent?

  Even after Shelton gave a brief nod and the scientific type returned behind the screen, he remained where he was.

  Shelton dropped his
head for a beat, then, as he raised it, he surged forward.

  Not toward Tom.

  Not toward us.

  Hiram.

  “Turn around, Hiram,” Shelton said abruptly.

  “What for?” The older man didn’t move.

  “To put handcuffs on you. You’re going to the sheriff’s department.

  “What for? Because I’m tellin’ the truth? If that isn’t just like you deputies. Tryin’ to shut up somebody tellin’ the truth.”

  Shelton sent Alvaro a look I couldn’t interpret. Alvaro, though, didn’t look confused.

  “Because we’re detaining you as a material witness. You said you know things. And we want to know them, too. You won’t turn around? I’ll cuff you in front.”

  Shelton reached for the older man’s arm.

  Hiram put both hands behind him, like a naughty kid.

  Alvaro secured one handcuff faster than I could see or Hiram could feel. He had to work harder for the second, with Hiram reacting.

  So that had been the communique from Shelton.

  “Hey! Hey!” Hiram protested. “You dirty ba—”

  “Watch it, Hiram, or you’ll make me testy.”

  Shelton had been testy as long as I’d known him. Apparently, he thought he had at least one more level of testiness to achieve.

  We — along with the other observers — watched them load the still-protesting Hiram into a sheriff’s department truck.

  Shelton returned to Tom, exchanging words we couldn’t hear.

  They stepped out of the police-taped area on the opposite side from the spectators and started along its perimeter, heading east, before disappearing from sight because of the screening.

  The vehicle holding Hiram started, pulling attention back to it.

  It drove overland to avoid other vehicles, and the knot around Norman Clay Lukasik loosened with a shifting of feet. Perhaps recognizing he was about to lose his audience, he made it seem as if he’d broken up the gathering. He clapped one man on the shoulder and said for us all, “Rusty. Glad you’re here. I wanted to talk to you.”

  The rest drifted away, with a few mini-knots lingering.

  They acted as if taking Hiram Poppinger to the sheriff’s department settled everything.

  Shelton’s intent?

  With a word to Mike and Diana, I moved away to call the Undlins. Zeb answered.

  “They’re both elbow deep in doughnut dough. Tamantha maybe a little higher than her elbow. First batch was quality taste. These two weren’t pleased with the shapes. I won’t argue.”

  “Sounds good, Zeb. I, uh, wonder…”

  “Yeah,” he groused without heat. “I’ll put the speakerphone on and hold it near Iris.”

  “Hello, dear,” his wife said a bit breathlessly. “Everything’s fine.”

  “We’re leaving the grazing association soon. I could come back now, but—”

  I heard Tamantha’s emphatic No, then more words. She must have been at the other counter, because her usually precise words were muffled. Iris said, “Tamantha says you should not come back. You should keep working. When we finish with these doughnuts, we’ll have supper, something nutritious like a good salad, because they have been nibbling more than a bit — yes, salad for you, too, Zeb. You’ve been way past nibbling. So, you see, everything’s fine here, Elizabeth. You keep doing what you need to do, we’ll be with her at your house if it gets to be her bedtime.”

  I’d said good-bye and was reporting this update, while Mike salivated remotely over Iris Undlin’s doughnuts, which he’d previously sampled, when a voice from behind us said, “Those do sound good.”

  We all spun around.

  An excellent reminder to be aware of who was around us when we talked. This had been innocuous doughnut talk, but you never knew.

  “Jennifer, what are you doing here?” Diana asked.

  Jennifer Lawton possessed computer skills — and a network of likeminded buddies — that largely went to waste in her job as a KWMT-TV news aide, but were integral to our group’s investigations.

  “Didn’t he tell Elizabeth I was coming out with Walt when Audrey sent him to cover the shooting? I could have sworn he did.”

  “Who?” My question was distracted, because I’d spotted Shelton and Tom, now on the east side of the police tape loop, heading toward the first clump of official vehicles. Spectators left in a steady stream.

  “Audrey sent Walt?” Mike’s disapproval came through clearly.

  “He’s all right,” Diana said. “More than all right.”

  Jennifer said, “Audrey tried to persuade Thurston to come out. Of course everybody knew he wouldn’t and we were right. Too much dust, bad for his hair, he said.”

  Fighting upstream against Walt’s competence or Thurston’s obsession with his hair, I asked, “Who could you swear had told me you were coming?”

  “Jerry. When—”

  “Why would Jerry tell me you were coming?”

  “I’m telling you. I told him I’d bring something out to you. He’d asked me for your number and I listened while he told you he wanted you to come in to see something. You said you were busy — and I knew what that meant. What was it that guy said in those movies you made us all watch last month, Mike? The ones with the guy in the hat.”

  I heard them in the background of my attention, as Tom got in the front passenger seat of Shelton’s vehicle, with the sergeant taking the overland route to jump ahead of civilians.

  “The game’s afoot. And it wasn’t those movies. It was the entire collection of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. To show you computers do not solve all mysteries.”

  “I like the newer guy. He uses computers.”

  Tom wasn’t in custody. But if he’d driven here and Shelton insisted on him leaving in an official vehicle…

  “Benedict Cumberbatch? He’s good. No Rathbone, but—”

  “Hey,” I interrupted, the official vehicle out of sight, leaving behind no answers to my wondering. “Quit with the movies. What about this something you told Jerry you’d bring out to me?”

  “Oh, yeah. He was wound up about some footage. I loaded it on my phone.”

  With Jennifer holding her phone, we scrummed around her, trying to block the glare of the sun.

  The camera focused on Odessa Vincennes’ face as I began my question about verifying what they put in the brochures delivered to seniors. Then came Mike’s interruption.

  There’s been a shooting at Tom’s grazing association.

  The break before his next words seemed shorter than in real life.

  Not Tom. It wasn’t Tom. It was the foreman from another ranch. Guy named Furman York. Looks like murder.

  On the small screen the woman froze, not blinking or moving while my abrupt departure was caught as a blur in a corner of the screen. She stayed that way another full minute, until Jerry’s voice came on saying, “Sorry Elizabeth had to leave for that emergency. As she said, she’ll get in touch with you—” He turned off the camera.

  We all remained huddled around Jennifer’s phone, as if awaiting more.

  “I don’t get it,” Jennifer said. “Why was Jerry wound up about this? That woman was surprised, so what?”

  Mike shrugged agreement. “Shocked at a murder in little Cottonwood County.”

  “Or maybe she’d heard about your reputation for attracting them, Elizabeth, and then to have it played out in front of her…” Diana suggested.

  “Very funny. Jennifer, did Jerry say why he wanted us to watch this?”

  “Something about Lady Charlotte and a curse.”

  “Lady Charl—? The Lady of Shalott?” I heard my voice rise with surprise. Jerry knew Tennyson?

  “Maybe. Who’s that?”

  Absently, I explained about the lady in the tower, cursed to weave reflections of the world, until she dares to look directly at Lancelot. Then the curse really gets busy, the mirror cracking, and the lady dying before she can reach Camelot and Lancelot.

  �
�They thought that was a good story?” Jennifer said indignantly. “Just because the woman looks at a guy she dies? Why shouldn’t she look, huh? That stinks.”

  “I agree,” Diana said as we all started toward her truck. “But the point now is we’re not seeing anything extraordinary in this footage. We’ll have to ask Jerry about it. What next? Do we go to the station to ask him? Or go to O’Hara Hill to see Mrs. P?”

  Caution settled over Jennifer. “Mrs. P? What for?”

  Diana didn’t answer directly. “We should go see Mrs. P if Elizabeth wants to understand about Norman Clay Lukasik and Furman York.”

  I perked up at that. “If there’s history I should know, tell me.”

  I remembered now that when I asked her at Tom’s if she knew anything about Furman York she hadn’t answered.

  She shook her head. “It’s from well before my time. I could only give you half-remembered rumors. Probably the same for Mike.”

  “Is there a lot to know?”

  “Quit trying to lead me into telling you more.” This was the problem with good friends. They knew your tactics. “For the core history, Mrs. P is the absolute best source.”

  “Let’s go see Jerry,” Jennifer suggested.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Mike said as we reached Diana’s truck and he invited me to ride shotgun. Appropriate, though maybe not the best term under the circumstances.

  That didn’t distract me from amusement at Jennifer and Mike being wary of visiting their former teacher and principal. Barely five feet tall, the woman still wielded a big stick — literally in the form of a long pointer and figuratively in the memories of her former students.

  “We couldn’t get to the station before he’s occupied with prep for the Five. We might catch him between newscasts, but there’s no way we can do that and get to O’Hara Hill, because I need to get home to see about Tamantha. Mrs. P is the winner.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jennifer didn’t concede. “If Hiram’s the killer, the sheriff’s department already has him, and there’s nothing left for us to do.”

  “That’s a big if,” Mike said.

  “A very big if.” Three looks came my way.

  “Why’d you say it that way?” Jennifer asked.