Run for Cover

by Michael Ledwidge

  52

  They set out at nine that morning from the Casper Best Western after the complimentary hotel breakfast, and it was coming on ten when Kit, at the wheel of the Armada, saw the low-gas indicator light flash in the dashboard display.

  She drove on for another mile before she spotted a blue-and-white gas pump symbol on the sign for the next exit. As she hit the clicker, she yawned.

  “What’s up?” Gannon said, yawning himself and sitting up from where he’d been half snoozing in the passenger seat.

  “Gas,” Kit said.

  The station was down the exit and under the highway overpass to the left. It had a sun-bleached white clapboard old general store attached to it with a dirt road alongside it that led back to an empty fenced field.

  A plastic sign tied to the wood slats of the fence said Welcome to Glendo, Friend-o.

  Kit shook her head at the lonesome prairie farmhouse store. She half expected Ma and Pa Ingalls and Half Pint to step out as she slowed before the dusty pumps.

  She had just pulled to a stop and was looking around for tumbleweeds when she got the call. She went into her bag and lifted out her vibrating iPhone. She was surprised that there was service.

  “Shit, it’s my new boss,” she suddenly said.

  “Your new boss?” Gannon said.

  “Sinclair.”

  “He call you regularly?”

  “Never,” Kit said. “This is a first.”

  Gannon reached over and killed the engine for her.

  “You should probably see what he wants,” he said.

  Kit chinned the phone, opened the door, got out and grabbed the phone again in her free hand. She kicked the door shut behind her as she thumbed the Accept button.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hey, Kit. How are you?” Francis Sinclair said.

  “Great, Francis. Never better,” she said as she wandered slowly past the pumps toward the grass highway berm. “What’s up?”

  “Where are you? In a wind tunnel?” he said.

  “Out on my deck,” Kit lied as she glanced back at the car. “There’s a breeze. I’m repainting one of the Adirondack chairs.”

  “Wow. Ambitious.”

  “Why not?” Kit said, squinting as she came to the edge of the station’s worn asphalt. “It’s not like I have anything else to do, do I?”

  “Well, that’s why I’m calling, Kit,” Sinclair said. “Great news. You can put the paint can away. I went to bat for you, and I hit one into the bleachers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got a buddy who works for the deputy director and he told him what was going on—about you being mothballed—and he really flipped his wig. I don’t know the details, but he must have pulled some major strings.

  “Last night, I got an email straight from the seventh floor to turn the investigation back on with you as the lead. Congratulations, Kit. Things are back to normal. You’re back on the case.”

  “Francis, thank you,” Kit said, smiling. “This is awesome. When can I come back in?”

  “Immediately.”

  “Monday morning?”

  “Yes. Monday morning eight o’clock sharp, I want you at your desk. And Kit, even better news. I just got an email from the lab that says the DNA results on the Grand Teton Jane Doe are coming in, so there’s going to be a meeting.”

  Kit looked out at the empty cattle field, wondering if she should mention she already knew that the victim’s name was Tracy Sandhurst and that she already had her address in Cheyenne.

  Kit looked up the berm at the highway as a tour bus went by heading west.

  She decided not to. Not yet. She needed to think about it. Let things settle a bit. She knew she needed to unravel this whole crazy thing with care.

  “By the way, what are your plans for tomorrow? We’re having a barbecue. The whole gang is coming,” Sinclair said.

  “Thanks, Francis. But I’ve got too many things to wrap up.”

  “So you’d rather watch paint dry. I guess I deserve that,” Sinclair said and laughed.

  Kit laughed with him.

  “I’ll see you at the office Monday at eight.”

  “Eight sharp it is,” Kit said.

  53

  After Kit hurried back to the car and told Gannon the good news, he stood staring at her steadily with his slate-blue eyes.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he finally said.

  “What are you talking about?” Kit said, hurt.

  Gannon was filling the tank. When the pump clicked, he ripped the nozzle out of the car and rammed it savagely back into the pump holder.

  “First they say go away and you go away,” he said as he capped the tank and slapped the cover shut. “Now they say come back and you want to go back? Sort of brings to mind that old Elvis love song. What was the name of it again? Oh yeah, now I remember. ‘Puppet on a String.’”

  He got in behind the wheel.

  Kit peered at him coldly as she slowly sat down in the passenger seat beside him.

  “I got my job back. I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  “Okay,” Gannon said. “Whatever you say.”

  “You think I can’t affect this case more efficiently by officially being in charge of it?” Kit said slamming her door. “You think it’s better for everyone if we illegally skulk around some more?”

  “Yes,” Gannon said, nodding emphatically. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Our illegal skulking around is the key to our success. It’s the only reason we’ve gotten anywhere at all.”

  “Gee, Mike. Don’t hold back. Tell me what you really think.”

  “Your beloved team members are burying this case down a bottomless pit,” Gannon said. “You know it and I know it, too. Going back to Washington reeks of total bullshit, especially now that we’re actually getting somewhere.”

  “I see. Now we’re into conspiracy theories.”

  “You want a conspiracy theory?” Gannon said. “I’ll give you a conspiracy theory. The eight-hundred-pound one we’ve been dancing around since Casper. Where’s the autopsy report?”

  Kit thrust the manila envelope into his chest.

  Gannon slipped it out and peered at the top of the first page.

  “I knew it. See? Here’s the printout of the email Dr. Thompson sent to your office along with the report. What’s the date at the header there?”

  “Monday of last week. So what?” Kit said.

  “The FBI receives the lead on the breast implant ID Monday. Massive lead. But they sit on it for some mysterious reason. Then four days later on Friday, Dr. Fletcher, swinging tata king of Casper, Wyoming, out of the blue takes a sudden dirt nap and all his files go missing. That’s some crazy coincidence there, don’t you think?”

  “You’re out of your paranoid mind,” she said. “You really are crazy.”

  Gannon took a breath.

  “I get it, Kit. You’re in it, so you can’t see it. It’s understandable. But to my objective eyes and ears, this bird’s not only waddling and quacking now, it’s linking arms with Mickey Mouse and dancing out in front of Epcot Center.”

  She stared at him as she pointed at her phone.

  “So you’re saying my boss, Sinclair, is lying now?”

  “Listen to me,” Gannon said. “Here’s what’s going to happen. When you go back to DC, you’ll go to this useless meeting and then this lead we have right now becomes the hardest dead end you ever saw in your life. That’s what I think. And then the case will be over. Over and out.

  “Somebody must have noticed your keystroke entries or whatever, and they know you’re out here snooping and now they want you back in DC on a tight leash where they can see and control you.”

  Kit looked down at the floorboard of the car. She was biting her lip.

&
nbsp; “This guy killed your partner,” Gannon said. “And Owen and the sheriff. Not only that, he shot you. He put a bead on you with his rifle and pulled the trigger and put a round through your back and chest like you were a fall season deer. He didn’t do that to them, right?

  “None of them got to feel what it’s like to get a hole blown through them. None of them got to horrifically live through their own personal episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive. Not your boss, Sinclair, not Dawn Warner. Only you, Kit. You’re the one owed justice on this. You. The only living person anyway. The important question is this. You want it or not?”

  “Of course,” she said with a sudden flash of anger in her eyes. “Why do you think I’m doing this? What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying how about me and you keep on this trail like we’ve been doing. We’re getting closer, Kit. I can feel it.”

  “What do I do though? I said I’d be back.”

  “Yeah, well, looks like you came down with the flu,” Gannon said. “These summer ones are the worst.”

  They sat for a minute. There was a pop and a low rumble and Gannon looked up the berm as an old leather-vested biker went by on a panhead Harley, his gray hair streaming behind him.

  “You’re right,” she finally said quietly. “They really do want this case buried, don’t they?”

  Gannon nodded.

  “Well, screw that,” Kit said, suddenly clicking on her seat belt. “Cheyenne, here we come.”

  “That’s the spirit, partner,” Gannon said, smiling as he turned the engine over. “Cheyenne, here we come. That sounds like a country-and-western hit to me.

  “I’m sorry, by the way. I’m told I can be blunt.”

  “Blunt? You?” Kit said, peering at him.

  “This is what I hear,” Gannon said, leaving dust as he peeled out of the station.

  54

  They pulled into Cheyenne two hours later and went straight to Tracy Sandhurst’s apartment building.

  It was in the east part of town down a kind of cul-de-sac centered between an auto parts store and some railroad tracks. Her apartment was 2B and they parked and got out and went up the set of breezeway stairs and knocked. And knocked again. Even after five minutes, there was no response.

  A freight train loaded with rusty shipping containers was clacking past on the tracks beyond the parking lot as they came back down to the ground floor. Around the side facing the auto parts store, they found a door with a “manager” sign on it. A young man with buzz-cut black hair answered it. He was barefoot and had on a Cheyenne fire rescue T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. He looked like he’d just woken up.

  “Hi, we’re looking for Tracy Sandhurst. Lives up on two,” Gannon said.

  “What are you guys? Police?” he said squinting at them.

  Kit showed her badge.

  “FBI?” the black-haired manager said, suddenly wide-awake. “What on earth did she do?”

  “She died,” Gannon said.

  “Died? No! What happened?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Could you let us into her apartment?”

  “Yeah, I could do that,” the man said, staring at them. “I mean, if this isn’t some kind of trick or something? Like you’re not pulling a sting on her, are you? You’re serious, right? She’s really dead?”

  “You want to see the autopsy photos?” Kit said angrily, glaring at him.

  “Wow. No,” the guy said. “Sorry. Let me get the keys, then.”

  The train was still clinking past as they went around and up.

  “Her rent was due three days ago,” the manager said as he unlocked the door. “I was going to knock on her door today in fact. She usually slips it under my door on the day.”

  “How long has she been living here?” Kit said as they went in.

  “Year and a half,” he said.

  “You own this place?” said Gannon.

  “No, I’m a fireman in the city. My uncle is the owner, but he lets me stay for free to keep an eye on everything.”

  “Where was Tracy from? Here in town?”

  “No. I think she was from Pine Bluffs. I saw her at a football game there once back in high school. She was real pretty then, a cheerleader, I think. Almost positive it was her, though I never asked. My uncle’s office might know. They do all the application stuff. You want me to call them?”

  “Maybe,” Kit said as she went inside. “You can hold off for now.”

  The one-bedroom apartment was messy but not excessively so. College kid messy. There was plenty of food in the fridge. They examined the door lock, the window that faced the breezeway. There was no sign of a break-in or struggle.

  Gannon went into the single bedroom. On the wall opposite the window on the other side of the bed there was a photograph collage board. He looked at the pictures tucked into the crisscrossing lavender ribbons.

  They were mostly from high school. A blond pretty Tracy with a bunch of her pretty friends. At football games, at concerts, at a beach. A lot of laughing and smiling. Tracy with a nice-looking red-haired college football player. The last one on the bottom showed the two of them giving a beautiful baby a bath in a sink.

  He looked around the room. No baby stuff. No toys.

  “What happened to you, Tracy?” he whispered as he opened the closet door.

  It was full of clothes hung up and neatly folded. When he got down on the floor, he spotted a knapsack under the bed. Inside of it was a couple of thousand dollars in cash along with a bunch of prescription pill bottles and about half a pound of marijuana in a Ziploc bag. He shoved it back where he found it and came back out.

  “Is her car in the lot?” he said to the manager standing in the doorway.

  “I don’t know. Let me see,” he said, stepping away.

  “No,” he said as he came back a second later. “She drove a blue Toyota, a used one. A Camry, I think. I don’t see it.”

  “This happened almost three weeks ago. You didn’t notice her gone that long?” Kit said.

  He shook his head.

  “No, I’m not the prying type. And people go on vacation in the summer, right? I thought maybe she went on vacation.”

  “You ever know her to go out to Jackson, Wyoming, for any reason?” Kit said. “Or Grand Teton National Park? She do any camping?”

  “Jackson? No, she wasn’t a skier or a camper. Tracy wasn’t the outdoor type, or even the go-out-during-the-day type. She was real skinny especially of late. I think she might have been a drug addict,” he said.

  Gannon shook his head as he thought about the picture of her with the Gerber baby at the sink.

  “Did she have a boyfriend?” he said.

  “Not that I know of,” he said, shaking his head. “But wait. You said Jackson? That stuff on the news? Those cops that were shot? Holy crap. Tracy wasn’t the girl who was murdered by this NATPARK killer, was she? That was Tracy?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Kit said.

  “This is just bonkers,” the manager said, staring at the floor. “Bonkers. You know Tracy was a stripper, right?”

  “No,” Kit said. “Where? Here in town?”

  “No, it’s called Dynamite Dolls,” the manager said. “It’s off I-25 right by the Colorado border.”

  55

  Dynamite Dolls didn’t open until four on the weekends, but after they called the number on the website, the owner, Rollie Dettmar, agreed to immediately meet them there.

  As they pulled into the lot, they saw a bald biker type of about sixty with a lot of tats sitting in the open door of a cherry-red Dodge muscle car. He had on a Metallica concert tee and was talking on his phone. He hung up when they pulled in beside him.

  “Oh, my,” Kit said as the man stood and they saw that Rollie Dettmar had to be six-foot-five.

  “Di
tto on that,” Gannon said as they got out.

  “I appreciate you meeting us, Mr. Dettmar,” Kit said after she showed him her credentials.

  “No problem,” the large man said, closing his door. “You said on the phone this is about Tracy?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to tell you but she’s deceased,” Kit said.

  The completely collapsed look that immediately overcame the TV-wrestler-sized man’s weather-beaten face was as heartbreaking as it was unexpected.

  “No,” he said. “No, no, no. How?”

  “She was murdered,” Gannon said. “About three weeks ago.”

  He put his elbows atop the roof of his car and covered his face with his huge hands. They watched as he wept openly.

  “We’re really sorry, Mr. Dettmar,” Kit said.

  “Oh, I knew it,” he said, snuffling loudly as he wiped at his eyes. “I knew it. Tracy was sweet. She would have called. She wouldn’t have just left. These girls get into such crazy things.”

  I wonder why, Gannon, thought getting a bit tired of the big man’s sob routine.

  “I was going to give it a few more days and head by her apartment.”

  “When was the last time she worked?” Gannon said.

  “I’m not positive,” he said, wiping his eyes with the edge of the concert tee. “But I can check. The time sheets are in my office.”

  The inside walls of the large open barnlike building were painted all black like there had been a fire. They stepped past mirrors and black leather seats. The dark laminated mirror-like surface of the pole stage was so glossy it looked slippery.

  Gannon counted six security cameras as they followed Dettmar through the warm stuffy air.

  “Okay. We’re looking at the second,” Dettmar said as he sat with a binder in his lap in the back office. “Tracy’s last night was August second. That was a Tuesday. She worked first shift which goes two to ten.”

  “She got out at ten on Tuesday the second? You’re sure?” Kit said as she as she gave Gannon a look of confusion.

  Gannon was perplexed himself.