Reaction Shot (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 9)

by Patricia McLinn

  “The latter is possible,” she acknowledged. The lines in her face seemed to deepen as I watched. “It is very possible. However, it is certain that if wrongdoing occurs in Cottonwood County, it is not forgotten or forgiven.”

  * * * *

  As we said our good-byes, Mrs. Parens delayed me with a light touch to my arm.

  “Elizabeth.”

  I turned back to her.

  With the others gone ahead, she said, “I have another thought to share about the barn cat my family had.”

  At her uncharacteristic pause, I said, “The excellent mouser.”

  “Yes. It also was a thoroughly unpleasant animal. None of the other animals on the ranch would go near it, no cats, dogs, horses, or cows. The humans, as well, gave it a wide berth. It not only enjoyed the hunt, it enjoyed the kill.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What did Mrs. P say?” Mike asked as he held open the truck’s front passenger door for me.

  “That Norman Clay Lukasik is a dangerous adversary and we should be careful.”

  “She’d already said that. The stuff about relentless and ferocious.”

  I met his gaze. “She upped the ante.”

  Mike whistled softly.

  * * * *

  Ernie’s was the oldest restaurant in O’Hara Hill. Essentially also the sole restaurant in O’Hara Hill, unlike the oil boom days Mrs. P had told us about.

  It also had good food.

  When Mike suggested we stop there for dinner before the drive back to Sherman, he sold the idea by adding, “We could pick up news. Or at least rumors and gossip, and you always say those can be helpful, Elizabeth.”

  All true. But he really wanted to go for the burgers and fries.

  Since the rest of us were hungry, too, he received no argument.

  Ernie’s décor is mostly the result of wherever there was space on a wall when a new item arrived. It tells the history of the place and its town in enough layers to delight an archeologist. It’s a look several chains have tried to duplicate without rising above the level of plastic trying to duplicate a tree.

  After we’d found a spot among the tables on the left side — the right side was reserved for an impressive bar that ran from near the entry to the back of the room — and ordered, I got up to examine a group of photos on the wall behind the front door and near where the bar began.

  Unlike the rest of the restaurant’s wall-hung collection, these represented O’Hara Hill’s history in roughly chronological order, as reported by the dates noted on most of the photographs.

  Something had caught my attention as we’d sat at the table. I wanted a closer look.

  In contrast to Mrs. Parens’ collection, this display could not be moved wholesale to a museum. It was an informal and idiosyncratic gathering. The photographs jumbled individuals in various poses around the restaurant with landscapes, town events, a news article or two, and snapshots and postcards stuck into the corners of more formally framed pieces.

  And it included not a single item from the period we’d heard about from Mrs. P.

  I went from top to bottom again, in case those years had been misplaced.

  Nope.

  Back at the table, I reported my observation, concluding, “It’s like those years didn’t exist or the restaurant didn’t exist during those years.”

  Mike frowned. “I don’t ever remember Ernie’s not being here. We’d come see Aunt Gee, and sometimes we’d come here for lunch or supper. I always got a chocolate milkshake. Only time I got to have them. I was a kid, but I’d remember if there was a gap in chocolate milkshakes.”

  “The photos say it was here before and it was here after, and you’d think with the town booming that business would be great and they’d have marked that period.”

  “Maybe with all the competition from the pop-up restaurants, bars, and other, uh, facilities, Ernie’s had to close temporarily,” Diana suggested.

  “Or they didn’t want to remember—”

  Mike broke off as the door opened.

  Jack Delahunt entered and received the Cottonwood County version of the “Norm!” greeting on the old TV show Cheers — without looking at him, the stool-sitting lineup of regulars along the bar to the right and most of the diners at tables nodded briefly and silently. That way they acknowledged his arrival without placing any obligation on him to reciprocate.

  Jack was the long-time foreman of a big cattle operation butting up against the Montana state line. Mike had worked for him summers when he was in school.

  If Jack walked in and went straight to a stool — usually the same stool, apparently left open for him — without speaking, no one would speak to him, including the bartender as he placed a beer in front of him. I’d seen exactly that happen a few times while eating here. At least twice he’d never spoken a word before leaving with a general nod to the bartender and whoever else cared to catch it.

  Today, as he came in, he looked toward us, then raised his hand to the bartender and pointed to our table.

  “Jack, come join us.” Mike half-stood, aiming for an empty chair from a nearby table.

  Had Mike missed that Jack had already invited himself, or was he certifying the welcome the man had assumed. Correctly, as it happened.

  On a sudden suspicion, I asked Mike in a low voice, “Did you call and tell him to meet us here so I’d be satisfied this was a good use of our time?”

  Palm flat on his collarbone, he protested, “Me? When would I have had time to do that? Besides, no need. Jack’s here most every night.”

  Jack beat him to the chair, succinctly asked the table’s occupiers’ permission with a single raised eyebrow, received an equally succinct nod in return, which he replied to with a tug on his hat. Consider it Wyoming sign language.

  Jack spun the chair around with an easy twist of his wrist, inserted it between Diana and Mike, and sat.

  He nodded to Diana, me, and Mike, leaving a slight pause before nodding to Jennifer.

  Mike got the message. “Jack, this is Jennifer Lawton, our colleague at the station.”

  Jack ignored that identifier and went straight to the important matter in Cottonwood County. “Faith and Kent’s daughter,” he said. “Known them and your uncle Rob most their lives. Good people.”

  “Yes, sir.” That was a rare deference to age or authority for her. I wondered which it was.

  The bartender arrived with Jack’s beer. He drank deeply.

  Then, with the social niceties addressed, he rumbled, “Shame about Furman York.”

  Both of Mike’s eyebrows rose.

  Jack nodded. “Shame it didn’t happen a lot sooner. At birth, say. Would’ve saved this world a stretch of misery.”

  “Because he killed that girl way back,” Jennifer said wisely.

  “That was the worst. But he had being no good down to a science. My ma had a saying — begin as you mean to go on, and he sure went by that.”

  “You had dealings with him, because of the ranch?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t entirely avoid it once Lukasik made him foreman. Cattle can make for a small world. Mostly good folks. Can’t always sidestep any who aren’t.” I had the impression Jack would have spit in disdain if we’d been outside.

  I was glad we weren’t outside.

  Was the disdain for York? For Lukasik? For York being a lousy foreman? Or for Lukasik putting him in that position?

  Before I could formulate a question to negotiate among the possibilities, Mike asked one of my questions, “What kind of foreman was he?”

  “Bad kind.” Jack Delahunt clearly took personally what he deemed a besmirching of the title he occupied with pride and integrity.

  I got that. I’d felt that way now and then about some individuals identified as journalists.

  “How bad — I mean in what way?” Mike asked.

  “Bad with cattle. Bad with horses. Bad with hands. Bad with vehicles. Bad as a neighbor. Bad with his employer’s money. And lazy.” Jack continued, “N
ot entirely stupid, though, which made it worse. A cautious man clapped his hand on his wallet the second Furman York came into view. Even so, heard credible accounts of his roping in otherwise cautious men. You know he was involved with that fella over in Dakota who ripped off all those people?”

  “I heard that rumor.” In an aside to me, Mike added, “Feedlot operator who took friends, neighbors, fellow ranchers for millions with reports of phantom cattle. Consider him the Bernie Madoff of the West.”

  Another nod from Jack. “All those and family, too. Man ripped off his family. Going to take them decades to recover and those are the lucky ones who can get back on their feet. And it was more than rumor. Heard all about it from law enforcement over that way. They were darned near sick about how that fella only got a few years in prison.”

  “Those otherwise cautious men… Anyone specific?”

  Jack gave me a level look. “Not firm enough to tell a reporter.”

  I wanted to know. Of course, I wanted to know. The itch to keep at him gnawed at me. The knowledge that the only thing it would firm up was his determination not to share kept me from scratching that itch. For now.

  “How widely known was it that York might have been involved?” I asked.

  “Thinking someone might have decided to hand out more direct justice?” Approval tinged that. “Not impossible. But with the folks who were hurt the worst in Dakota near the head guy, more likely they’d do something to him. York was involved more around the edges. Not to say he couldn’t have been cooking up somethin’ else with that piece of—” He swallowed the epithet along with a mouthful of beer. “Nah, I’d say Furman York going to his just rewards today is more likely the result of something closer to home.”

  “That old murder? But—”

  Cutting across Mike with, “And something more recent,” Jack had all our attention.

  He made sure of that with a pause before speaking a single word.

  “Rustling.”

  He said it quietly, yet I could swear the word caught the attention of everyone in the place.

  There are some words that vibrate loudly in a group sensitive to them no matter how softly spoken. I once saw a similar reaction when someone mentioned a book title that included the word assassinate in a roomful of Secret Service agents.

  No head-turning gave away the people in Ernie’s, but the abrupt stillness and silence couldn’t be an accident.

  Jack continued, “Not a word I say lightly. There’s been trouble with rustling these past few years, up to Canada and down through Texas. Ranchers have lost a lot of money. Mostly small operators who can least afford to have three, six, eight go missing.

  “Lot of the rustlers doing it for drug money. Had a new hire get hauled in last month. Usually spot the signs of a druggie. He slipped by. Earning his pay wasn’t enough for him. He and some others took a trailer from a repair shop, scooped up a dozen head from a few places and went east to sell them. Then put the trailer back. Would’ve gotten away with it, too, if the guy at the repair shop hadn’t noticed the trailer that had been clean as a whistle wasn’t the next time he looked. Law enforcement put together reports of the missing cattle and the hauler being used.”

  My thoughts snagged on logistics. “A rustler takes the cattle and then what?”

  They all looked at me like I’d asked what a sound bite was.

  “They sell them,” Mike said. “And keep the money.”

  “Thanks, I figured that. Where? How? Who buys them? They’ll have other people’s brands on them. Won’t the buyers be suspicious? Don’t the brands give them away?” I asked.

  “West River it would.”

  I knew the individual words Jack spoke, but looked to Mike for the phrase’s translation.

  “West of the Missouri River,” he said. “You must have seen a sign when you crossed the Missouri on I-90 in South Dakota saying you were entering the livestock ownership inspection enforcement area.”

  He had to be kidding. First, I’d made that drive a year and a half ago, when I moved here. Second, the trip was with my parents, who had not yet given up the notion that I should move back into my childhood bedroom and remain there until transferring to a retirement home.

  Across South Dakota, I’d been fighting to hold onto my autonomy and adulthood, not watching for road signs that sounded like gibberish to me — then and now.

  Apparently recognizing his comment as misguided, Mike continued, “Most folks just call it West River. The Missouri about cuts South Dakota in half. West River and East River have a lot of differences — geography, roads, agriculture. For instance, mostly farms in East River, ranches in West River. The biggest difference might be how they handle brands. West River, brands are required, but not East River. And East River livestock markets aren’t required to get proof of ownership. Some do, but…”

  “Some don’t,” Jack said grimly. “And for not asking questions, they get a good price, gain a fatter margin. Do that enough and you’re sitting pretty.”

  “How about for the rustlers? Is it lucrative?”

  “Yep. Hardly costs the rustlers anything. A bag of feed to gather the cattle, fifteen minutes to load ’em in a hauler, then they’re on their way to an East River auction. Get there, settle up, and they’re headed back next day.”

  “What makes you think Furman York was involved with rustling?”

  “Same thing that makes me think a skunk stinks.”

  That clearly sufficed for him. Wouldn’t for law enforcement.

  For us? Might be enough to start digging. Nowhere near enough for a conclusion.

  “Anything consistent with the rustling, Jack?”

  He nodded twice at Diana. “Always close to a highway.”

  “Quick getaway,” Mike muttered.

  “Right. They look for spots they won’t be seen doing their stealing and can get on their way fast when they’re done. Particular kind of spot. The smart ones look for that.”

  “He was foreman of a big ranch. Why take the risk of getting caught rustling?” I protested.

  “Money.”

  “Was he into drugs like those others you talked about?” Jennifer asked.

  “Not that I heard. Drink and women, sure. Gambling, yeah.” He took another long drink of beer. “Thing is, being foreman’s sort of what you’d call a glass ceiling when it comes to advancement.”

  I blinked at glass ceiling, but got past it fast. Just because I didn’t know West River didn’t mean he didn’t know glass ceiling — possibly indicating his knowledge base was broader than mine.

  “He’d get raises, I suppose, but not big jumps. He’d moved up as far as he could in the Lukasik outfit without kicking the old man or his son out. Hell, he had more power than the son. Norman Clay Lukasik hardly ever questioned what York did, even when… Well, wasn’t the way I’d run an operation.”

  “Wait, wait, go back. What son? Lukasik’s or—?”

  Jack hiked one eyebrow. “Lukasik’s kid. Never heard of York having any. Gable Lukasik.”

  “Is he involved with the ranch?”

  “Sure. Works when he’s needed. Helps out other folks, too. Not a top hand, not worthless. Works hard. Getting better. Hell of a lot harder than York ever did.”

  Yet he’d worked under York as foreman? I wondered how that went over with the son of the owner.

  “I know Gable,” Diana said. “He helped coach Gary Junior’s summer baseball team a couple years. Nice guy.”

  Good. Diana could provide more information later.

  I turned to Jack. “You said you never heard of Furman York having kids, how about relationships. Married?”

  He shook his head.

  “Involved with somebody?”

  One shoulder rose, denying knowledge and declaring lack of interest.

  Knowing how to get information out of sources is a vital skill for journalists. Knowing which source is a good match for what information is another important skill.

  Jack was not a good source
for digging into York’s personal life. Maybe Diana’s acquaintance Gable Lukasik would be.

  “Jack,” I said, “you were talking about York being foreman and not getting big raises, is that enough to drive him to take the risk? Surely he’d lose his job if he were ever caught.”

  “Most owners would let him go on rumors of rustling,” Mike said. “It’s not tolerated.”

  “Lukasik’s not most owners,” Jack grumbled.

  I asked, “Do you think Lukasik’s involved in—?”

  “Whoa.” Jack shoved back. “Don’t go turning a calf into a bull. Never said anything like that.”

  Jack had been talking so openly I’d almost forgotten about Ernie’s eavesdropability. Both the ease of hearing other conversations and the penchant of customers to capitalize on that ease.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t putting words in your mouth. Simply following the idea up the chain of command. We’re all clear you didn’t add him to the conversation, I did.” Hoping that placated him, I brought the topic back to the main thread. “The talk about York being involved in… uh, selling cattle he didn’t own. Does anyone have proof?”

  “To take to court? What good would that’ve done? There was plenty of evidence he killed that girl years back and he got off scot-free.”

  He certainly had no issue expressing that opinion.

  “Did you know York then? Or Leah Pedroke? Or Lukasik?”

  “Didn’t know them. But everybody knew about her getting murdered that way.”

  “Jack,” Mike asked abruptly, “is there a reason Ernie’s doesn’t have photos or memorabilia from the years O’Hara Hill was in the throes of that oil boom?”

  “Yep. The reason’s Dorrie. That’s Ernie’s wife.”

  We waited. One of us less patiently than those accustomed to the ripening time required from some Wyomingites’ conversations.

  “Did they know Furman York? Or Leah?” I added, thinking about her renting a room from Gee so nearby.

  “Might’ve.”

  That evasiveness said yes to me. “How—?”

  “Tell us about the pictures, Jack,” Diana interrupted. She nudged my foot under the table.