Reaction Shot (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 9)

by Patricia McLinn

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I called Needham Bender and invited him to lunch.

  “I accept. But instead of us going where we have to watch what we say, how about you get takeout for three, I’ll call Thelma to set the table, and we’ll meet at the house.”

  “Sounds great.”

  On the way, I placed a call to a source in the Washington, D.C., area who’d become a kind of friend over the years. The call might find him at FBI headquarters or at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, depending on his duties.

  “Hi, Dex. How are you?”

  “The ranch foreman shot on grazing association lands appears to be quite straightforward, Danny.”

  I smiled. Both at his telephone manner — talk about straightforward — and the use of the nickname we’d established back when I was a well enough known national reporter that talking to me could have gotten him in trouble. The nickname spread among colleagues, friends, even family. But, oddly had not caught on here in Wyoming.

  Or maybe not so oddly. Maybe that was a nickname for a different person.

  “There are one or two points,” I told him.

  “Of interest to me?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  I described the scene and the scenario.

  “You don’t believe that man shot the ranch foreman,” he said at the end. “Why?”

  “Tom? No, I don’t believe—”

  “The other one. The one who called authorities.”

  “Oh. Hiram. I could believe he’d shoot a man.”

  “But not this man?”

  “I could believe that, too, but… None of this is scientific…” I told him about Hiram, the deputies’ interplay and the logic behind thinking it wasn’t someone else’s gun. “…York’s gun seems most likely, but Hiram would have blabbed if he’d seen it, so… Could it have been under the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen that happen before?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s another thing, they screened off a larger area than right around the body.” I hesitated. If I hoped Dex would jump in and make a guess, I should know better. “Any ideas?”

  “I could not posit any without examination of the crime scene photographs at the least.”

  Fat chance I could get those out of Shelton. The shots Jenks took for KWMT would have the screen covering the area we were interested in. “Sorry, no crime scene photos, Dex.”

  “Do you have other evidence?”

  He meant that would interest him. “No, sorry. I’ll—”

  He hung up.

  You either hated Dex or loved him. I grinned as I finished. “—talk to you later.”

  Needham, his wife, and I had salad and burgers from Hamburger Heaven. Needham complained about the lack of fries, but I knew Thelma worried about his cholesterol. Besides, she added dessert of homemade angel food cake and fresh strawberries drizzled with dark chocolate.

  As soon as she presented it, along with coffee, she insisted on clearing the rest of the table and leaving us, “So you two can talk freely.”

  “You know I tell her everything anyway,” Needham said to me.

  “I figured.”

  “Never mind, the pair of you,” she scolded with a smile, pushing the swing door to the kitchen with her backside.

  “Well?” Needham invited before the door’s first rebound swish.

  “Did you cover the murder of Leah Pedroke or the trial?”

  Needham’s gray eyebrows hiked toward his receding gray hairline. “That’s the angle you’re pursuing?”

  “Can’t say we have an angle. We have bits and pieces. Would like to have a few more, by hearing what you have to say about it. If you were around then.”

  “Oh, yeah, I was. Didn’t own the Independence yet, but covered both stories, along with doing most of the other jobs around the place.”

  “Was that the first time you crossed paths with Norman Clay Lukasik?”

  “No. I’d covered some of his cases. At that point, he wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was.” He stroked his chin. “Still isn’t. Not sure he could be that good. Or anybody else, either.”

  “Maybe he can’t be as good as he thinks he is, but there is one thing about him.”

  He raised his brows, inviting me to continue.

  “He has power. In fact, a superpower when it comes to being a high-profile defense attorney.”

  “Superpower?” He sounded amused.

  “He’s excellent at raising doubt.”

  His amusement vanished. “Explain, Elizabeth.”

  “You agree he’s excellent at raising doubt?” He jerked his head, agreeing without liking it. “Not the reasonable kind of doubt a juror must get past to convict Lukasik’s clients, but the unreasonable kind that could make those around Lukasik — juror, prosecutor, judge, witness — doubt himself.”

  Or herself.

  “That would always give him a second path to a not-guilty verdict. Attack the evidence on one level and undermine everyone’s certainty on the other. Even if it lasted only a second or two, how many — especially jurors — let an instant of deep self-doubt manufactured by Lukasik bleed over to their verdict? After all, if they doubted themselves, how could they not doubt their judgment about the evidence? And wasn’t that reasonable doubt?”

  “Insidious,” Needham said.

  “Part of his power. Part of his talent and expertise at eliciting the response he wants.”

  “Also known as manipulation.”

  “Oh, yes. He’s a grand manipulator. Did he get the York case by chance?”

  “No. It went to Haus.”

  “Jay Haus? The divorce lawyer?”

  “Back then he wasn’t settled into family matters. Just starting to practice, wet behind the ears. Lukasik didn’t have to do much persuading to get him to give it up, though how he got Haus to say the things he did about his inexperience… True, though you don’t often hear lawyers talk like that. Ah. Your superpower theory.”

  “That’s it.” I smiled at him. “So Lukasik went after the case. Did it look like it would make him a name?”

  “Not a good name. Not around here. Not the way people felt about what happened and Furman York.”

  “How did they feel?”

  “It was a shock when that girl was killed. Stranger to most in the county, of course, but a young woman like that, every appearance of being an upright citizen, working hard. Pretty to boot. No denying that tugged at people. And then Gisella Decker’s connection with her.”

  He tipped his chin.

  “Rough time she’d had with her husband dying like that—”

  Like what?

  “—and everybody knew it.”

  I shook my head. “I can imagine how hard that was for Gee.”

  “Don’t know about it, do you?” If he’d been wearing suspenders, he’d have hooked his thumbs in them and rocked back and forth in high delight with himself.

  I could deny him his satisfaction or I could find out what he knew — some of what he knew.

  No contest.

  “No, I don’t. What happened?”

  “Well, now, that’s still the question, isn’t it?”

  “Needham,” his wife called from somewhere else in the house. “Stop teasing Elizabeth.”

  “Always rushing a story. She’s as bad as an editor cutting from the top.”

  I chuckled, which drew a fleeting smile from him.

  “It was a single truck accident. Off the road, into a steep ditch. No sign he hit anything. Just went off the road. No brake marks, no skids. Smashed up the cab bad.”

  “Medical event?”

  “No history. No sign on the postmortem.”

  “Suicide?”

  “They ruled it an accident. That didn’t stop some from drawing the other conclusion and wagging their tongues. Hard on Gee. Strong as she is, it was real hard. Losing her husband, her life turned upside down, compounded by the questions, the not knowing.” He rub
bed his chin. “Not knowing, for a woman like her…

  “She’d started coming around, training to be a dispatcher. Even more when Leah Pedroke rented a room from her. They got on from the start. Brought life into Gee’s house. They’d bake together. Gee taught her things. Leah brought plants for the garden. A shame. A real shame.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  Needham heaved out a breath. “But would that cause the death of Furman York yesterday?”

  I lifted a shoulder. “It’s an avenue to explore. So are more recent events.”

  He side-eyed me. Waiting.

  “You know about the reports of rustling.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “But you don’t have enough to run a story or you would have. And neither of us particularly likes that angle because it points at Tom as a possible murder suspect. Although there are others who had cattle rustled. The Chaneys, Clyde, for instance.”

  “That wouldn’t make me much happier,” Needham grumbled.

  “Well, what about Hiram Poppinger? Do you think he could have shot Furman York in the chest?”

  “Yep, I do. In a fit of anger, in a scuffle. What I can’t imagine is him denying it up, down, and sideways. But you know there’s something else…”

  I waited while he either considered what or how he’d tell me.

  He started, “There was a guy ran a feedlot over in Dakota—”

  “Bernie Madoff of the West?”

  “That’s the one. Thing is, I’ve heard rumbles York tried to pull in a few people here. Never approached Tom, but tried the Chaneys, who told him to get lost on general principle. That couple who bought the Pecklies’ place, the McCrackens? They’ve started running cattle in a small way. Well, Sam McCracken starts asking for all this financial information and York couldn’t run away fast enough.”

  “But someone else didn’t?”

  He exhaled shortly. “Clyde wrote a check. The guy was on the way to the bank with it when law enforcement took him in. That’s how close-run it was from Clyde. He blamed Furman York, as he had full reason to.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I drove to the dentist’s office a block off Cottonwood Avenue and spotted Diana emerging. Perfect timing.

  As I pulled over to pick her up, two women emerged from opposite sides of a little silver car parked four spots down the street.

  Recognizing the older one, I did something I never would have done in most places I’ve lived. I jumped out of my SUV, leaving the door open and the engine running.

  “Odessa Vincennes, how wonderful to run into you this way.”

  She recoiled momentarily.

  The younger woman with her slowed, then looked back, surprised when she realized Odessa had fallen behind.

  “I left a message, apologizing for cutting short our interview so abruptly yesterday. And—”

  “Yes. No problem. No problem at all. Excuse me.”

  She’d restarted at higher speed, clearly intending to walk past me.

  With the double benefit of plenty of experience at walking-and-talking with interview subjects and significantly longer legs than Odessa, I pivoted and moved along with her, catching a look between her and the younger woman.

  Warning?

  “Hi, I’m Elizabeth Margaret Danniher,” I said to the pretty, younger woman while I kept up with the elder and we all came together on the broad sidewalk. “I was interviewing your…”

  “Mother.” She returned my smile tentatively. She was medium height, which made her taller than her mother. Slender, with enough curves to avoid boyishness. Hair streaked to be a bit blonder than nature had established, fair skin, and blue eyes. Concerned at the moment.

  “Of course. Your mother. It’s a pleasure to meet you…”

  “Asheleigh,” she supplied. Unlike her mother, she was almost too easy to nudge into answers.

  Her name registered in the next fraction of a second. “Asheleigh?” Could it be? The Asheleigh with an ‘e’ described by the Stendahl kids? Also the girlfriend of Gable Lukasik? The dating possibilities for their age group couldn’t be expansive in Cottonwood County, which certainly made it possible. “Are you a teacher?”

  “I am. How—?”

  “I met your boyfriend, Gable Lukasik, this morning.” If that led her to think Gable had been my source, that didn’t worry me.

  “Oh.” Her face glowed at the mention of his name, adding credence to Jessica Stendahl’s report that they were really serious.

  “It was actually the news about the Lukasiks’ foreman being shot that interrupted my interview with your mother.”

  Just call me Elizabeth the Glow Killer.

  Asheleigh paled. This look from daughter to mother carried nervousness. I gave her a break.

  “Odessa, I’d like to schedule a time to finish our conversation, so we can get the information about the program out to our listeners.”

  “I’ll call you about that. Soon.”

  “As long as we’re both here now—”

  “Can’t. Sorry. We have to get to the dentist. We have appointments. Right now.”

  She cut across behind me, hooked her daughter’s arm, and steered her to the dentist’s office.

  “We’ll talk soon,” I said brightly, the last word spoken to the closing door.

  Diana watched me circle around the front of the SUV.

  She climbed in and closed the passenger door. “That was interesting. You sure know how to make friends. Nothing like making someone eager to see the dentist.”

  I did something else I wouldn’t do in many places I’d lived — I made a U-turn. “You recognized her?”

  “Oh, yeah. Her face and her voice. Also caught the bit about Gable Lukasik being her daughter’s boyfriend. Interesting. Could that explain her reaction? The connection to her daughter’s boyfriend? If she misunderstood…?”

  “You heard it.” I turned west on Yellowstone Street. “Mike was clear about the name. Never mentioned Lukasik or Gable. Even if she knew Furman York was the foreman of the ranch of her daughter’s boyfriend’s father, would you expect that reaction?”

  “No. Think she’ll call you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “O’Hara Hill. Hope to talk to Ernie and Dorrie.”

  “Hope? They’ll be there. They’re always there. Whether they’ll talk is another matter. Did you call ahead?”

  “That’s why I didn’t call ahead. Didn’t want to give them a chance—”

  My phone rang. ID said it was Jennifer.

  “—to say no or plan their responses.” I answered, “Hi Jennifer, what’ve you got for us?”

  “Us?”

  “Diana’s here.”

  “How’d you get away?” Jennifer asked Diana. After the explanation, Jennifer added, “Sheesh, Mike and I are the only ones stuck working.”

  “Tom—” Diana started.

  “No, he told Mike that he and Elizabeth were out to the Lukasik Ranch earlier.”

  Diana cut me a look. I returned it with limpid innocence, saying to both her and Jennifer, “We’ll tell you all about it when we’re all together. But there’s nothing earth-shattering. Certainly nothing that changes the direction or order of what we’re doing.”

  “What direction and order?” Jennifer asked.

  “Gathering information, focusing on the victim.”

  “Well, there’s plenty of information on him, like I said last night. I’m still pulling it. There’s so much from the trial it’s going to take some organizing. Not doing as well with that Odessa woman. Found lots about the group she’s part of.”

  “What group?” Diana asked.

  “They print warnings about scams, especially those preying on seniors and distribute them to groups doing home visits or delivering meals.”

  “What a great idea.”

  “It will be if they get funding,” I said. “They did a trial run, but the county’s budget to help
seniors is strapped. That’s why I wanted to have her on, hoping it would raise their profile and get more funding or donations.”

  “The station should sponsor it. In connection with ‘Helping Out’,” said Diana.

  “Can’t you just see Haeburn agreeing a.) to spend money on helping people and b.) having it possibly reflect well on ‘Helping Out’ or me.”

  “Go over his head. Go to—”

  “Hey.” Jennifer’s sternness stopped us. “Do you want to talk about this group and ‘Helping Out’ or the murder?”

  “The murder,” Diana and I said meekly.

  “Actually, there isn’t much to tell. As I said, lots on the group. Not much on her. She moved here in February. She and her daughter have an apartment. I have the address and phone number if you want those.”

  “Send those to me. And that’s a good start, Jennifer.”

  “Nothing before here, though.”

  “We have something more about her daughter.” I told her about Asheleigh Vincennes being Gable Lukasik’s girlfriend.

  “I’ll try the daughter and see if that will open up things.”

  “What about Odessa’s vehicle?” Diana asked. “Any luck with that.”

  “Oh, yeah. A two-door Toyota. Bright blue.”

  “That’s it. That’s the one I saw in the station’s parking lot, then at the grazing association. Seemed odd. Not getting out of the vehicle. Just sitting there. I was pretty sure it was the same woman when Jerry showed us that footage. The vehicle clinches it.”

  “So what she went out there? So did everybody else in the county,” Jennifer said. “By the time Walt and I got there we had to walk forever to reach the scene.”

  “That’s a valid point. Suppose it would be natural to be curious.” Diana deflated a bit.

  “Not everybody who was curious had the Lady of Shalott look,” I said.

  Diana rebounded. “Yeah. And now we know she was out there. Though that’s not the vehicle she was in at the dentist.”

  “You saw her, too, Diana?” Jennifer’s voice rose in accusation. “You two arranged to talk to—”

  “Hold on,” I said. “We just happened to see her going into the dentist’s office with her daughter. I’d called Odessa, she didn’t return my call, and seemed to prefer the dentist to me.”