“Yeah? So what. So were a lot of other people. You accusing me of trying to off that old has-been?”
“Did you?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“No problem. I’ll say. You were there. When Oren Street—” Her eyes flicked toward him. “—got down behind the truck and started trying to pull the hose out of the tailpipe, he called to you, asking for help. Didn’t you, Oren?”
“I tried to pull it out, and I hollered for help, but I couldn’t say I saw this girl or anybody in particular.”
I didn’t need his confirmation. “We’ll leave that for now, because what was at the core of all this was Keith Landry. Who he was. How he operated. The pattern he followed—in business and with women.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“KEITH LANDRY didn’t just take advantage. He set up situations so that taking advantage was a sure thing.”
A faint stir let me know some of my audience didn’t know what I meant.
“Let’s start with business. He played hardball in getting rodeo contracts—everyone’s acknowledged that. We have found proof he did more. He paid bribes, and—”
Newton tensed, but the protest came from my left, from Oren Street. “Hey!”
I held up a stop-sign hand. “You’ll get your opportunity to speak. But there is proof.” I glanced at Richard. “I’m sure law enforcement will look into it carefully. But at this point, none of the paper trail on Landry’s fraudulent business activities implicates Oren Street.”
I addressed the broader group. “Landry began setting up dummy businesses at least four years ago. Presumably using a hired front man, he would have the dummy business offer an unmatchable bid for a rodeo. As the rodeo neared, the dummy business informed the rodeo committee it was bankrupt, disappeared, and left the rodeo committee in a bind. Landry would reappear, prepared to rescue the rodeo by providing the livestock for a hefty bonus. Sound familiar? It should, because Sweet Meadows was one of his shell companies.”
“Oh, God,” came Linda’s voice, along with other mutters.
“This fraud could mean a motive for murder for anyone who cared about the Sherman Fourth of July Rodeo. Or it could be a motive for murder to mask a role in the fraud. Even with potentially incriminating documents destroyed—”
I caught a small motion, then saw Tom Burrell place a large, calming hand on Cas’ shoulder.
Everyone else’s attention was on Street’s interrupting shout. “I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know anything—”
Again, I addressed Richard. “We have the paper trail well-started, and you’ll add official documents we couldn’t access.”
More accurately, that I’d told Jennifer not to hack into. No sense worrying Richard about that. Especially considering the bluff I was about to pull.
“We’ll have to ask Watt what he knows about this fraud,” I said. “What he does know about is another of Landry’s patterns. This one involved women. Oh, didn’t I say? Evan Watt’s regained consciousness and is talking.”
The stir in the room rose quickly, threatening to swamp me if I didn’t gain control. Richard took a step forward, then stopped.
“Yes,” I said loudly, “Watt has admitted that numerous times Landry paid him—and others—to woo a girl, dump her abruptly and viciously, leaving Landry the perfect set-up to have his own fling with a girl who would not otherwise look at him.
“Maybe it happened fortuitously early-on. At some point, though, Landry decided not to leave it to chance. He liked the power too much. He’s worked his scam for years. He planned to work it again this year in Sherman.
“But nothing was going right for Landry last week. Oren Street showing up early put a cramp in his plans. How could he squeeze one last bonus out of the committee to get the stock here when it was already here? Plus, he was crumbling by this point, drinking heavily, and shouting at everyone he came across. He had a physical fight with Roy here.”
“Hey! He started it,” Craniston whined. “He was going after my women.”
“Your women,” Pauline muttered in disgust.
“Trying to protect you,” he grumbled.
“Her? Or Ellie?” I demanded.
Every set of eyes turned to the faded woman. Roy glared at her, his order that she keep quiet apparent to everyone in the room.
“Ellie’s legal name is Eleanor Redlaw. Eleanor Redlaw was a rodeo queen in Texas fifteen years ago. At one of the rodeos Landry put on. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Roy said. “I don’t have anything to do with it. I don’t know her past or anything. We just hooked up—”
I interrupted. “Is that true that you just hooked up, Ellie?”
She met Roy’s gaze as she said, “No.”
“You b—”
Richard held up a hand that quieted him. Ellie looked at me with a tiny smile at the corner of her dry lips.
“Landry came after you fifteen years ago in his usual routine?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“And you told Roy.”
“Yes. I recognized Landry in a newspaper clipping this spring and told Roy. Told him everything. We talked about using that to get media coverage for our protests. After that, Roy kept track of where Landry was. But we couldn’t afford to go down to where Landry was at the time. We had to wait for him to come farther north. This was our first opportunity.”
I turned to Roy. “You came to this rodeo this year because Landry was here, you lied about when you arrived, and you fought with Landry.”
“I didn’t even hit him—I missed!”
No one paid that protest any attention. Richard shifted so he could keep an eye on Roy.
“We’ll leave that for now and look at what was happening with Landry. Watt was going downhill as a setup man, and he was delayed getting into town to start the scheme working. Landry tried to pressure other people into playing the role.” I felt Alvaro’s sharp look, but didn’t return it. “But they wouldn’t cooperate, despite his best blackmailing techniques. Finally convinced they wouldn’t do his bidding, Landry called Watt and said to get to Sherman right away no matter what.”
If my listeners had the impression that Watt was the source for this information, all the better.
“Then Landry stumbled on to an opportunity to take matters into his own hands. That did not go well for him. The episode left him humiliated and confined by a tightened lasso. Phone records that investigators have in their possession will prove he managed to call someone he fully expected to release him, so he could continue to pursue . . . his goals. Instead, the person saw an opportunity and used it to be rid of Landry for good by stringing him up,” I finished, as a small nod to Dex.
I let that sink in. Most of the people in the room knew who these oblique references were to, but I’d decided it was smarter to tip-toe around naming names for now.
“The motion of hanging shifted Landry’s body close to the bulls’ pen. Maybe that gave the murderer the idea. When Landry was dead, the murderer dropped the body into the aisle beside an occupied pen, removed the rope, then shifted portable fence panels so bulls would be crammed into a tight space with the body. In a pen where no pen previously existed.
“It was a clever idea. It almost succeeded in selling the death as an accident. It certainly confused us. It also dispensed with a lot of physical evidence.
“But not the rope. The rope was taken by the murderer, perhaps with a thought to not throw suspicion on the person who’d lassoed Landry in the first place.” A number of glances shot Heather’s direction, with a few skipping to Vicky. “I believe that rope is now hidden in plain sight, mixed in with all the other ropes around the rodeo grounds with the hope it will never be singled out. But the murderer’s wrong about that. Forensics will find it.”
“But to the murderer, the biggest threat was Watt. His memory of history that someone wanted forgotten, his mouth loosening with drink, and, possibly, his conscience pricking him were problems for the murderer. Especially when Watt was overheard calling me, saying he wanted to talk. The murderer couldn’t let that happen. So we come back to where we started. Last night and the attempt on Evan Watt.
“Step one was to get Watt and his truck away from the rest. A promise of any kind of job would have done that. Then it was simple. Hit him on the head, rig up the hose, close the windows, turn on the truck, and close the door with the lock depressed. It’ll be hard to get fingerprints because of all the people who swarmed around to help rescue Watt . . . except on that door lock button. Only one person had reason to press that button.”
Another twitch from Alvaro. I didn’t care that it wasn’t likely. As long as the murderer wondered if a print could be lifted, I’d added another layer of pressure, as well as distracting from the fact that I wasn›t saying what account Watt had of last night.
No reaction from the others. I kept my gaze moving.
“That left plenty of time for step two—keeping me away long enough to let the carbon monoxide work. The murderer went back to what helped before—bulls. You were all here—”
“We left—” Vicky started.
“That’s—” Newton sputtered.
“Quiet!” And they were. “You all had opportunity to hit Watt on the head and set up the attempt on his life. Most of you were here on the rodeo grounds. The Uptons could have circled back. Grayson was the first on the scene.”
Every face turned toward the figure at the back.
“I was,” he said.
“How’d that happen?”
“I saw his pickup.”
“It was very dark under those trees by the creek. How did you see the pickup?”
“I was looking for it.”
“Why?”
“His pickup had been parked next to mine since we pulled in last week, one right after the other. He hadn’t gone anywhere, scraping by, picking up work where he could. I gave him food—”
“Real generous,” interrupted Newton. “I heard you refuse to give him money. That’s why I tried him in concessions, but he was a disaster, complete disaster.”
“He used money to buy booze from other guys.” Interesting that a mild tone could sound so contemptuous. “When his pickup was gone last night, I was worried. Went looking.”
“Why look on the rodeo grounds?” I asked. “Why not think he’d left Sherman far behind?”
“Because I knew the truck was almost out of gas.”
“So you say,” muttered Newton.
“So I say,” confirmed Zane.
“But there’s no dispute that Zane was there first last night. As I said earlier, Oren was there. Pauline, too. Stan and Cas were. I saw them, so did Mike Paycik and Tom Burrell. Vicky and Heather could have been there, staying out of sight. Roy and Ellie, too. How about you, Linda?”
“I was in the rodeo office. When I heard the commotion, I came out. By that time, he was out of the truck and being helped. I called to make sure an ambulance was on the way.”
I gave a neutral nod. “There were a lot of people around Watt’s truck, trying to help, to get to him, to figure out what happened. Now we know one end of a hose was in the truck’s back window and the other end duct-taped into the exhaust pipe, but it wasn’t obvious at the time, because the truck had run out of gas. The engine wasn’t running. No one initially knew what was wrong, except that Watt appeared passed out in his locked truck.
“Yet you—” I looked at Oren Street. “—went immediately to the back of the truck, dropped down in front of the tailpipe, and started undoing the tape. Tape you identified to Cas Newton as duct tape even before there was light to see it.”
“Shit,” breathed Cas. “That’s right. It was dark as hell—no way could you have seen . . .”
“You already knew it was duct tape, and you knew it had been used to keep the hose in place, and you knew where the tailpipe was because you had put it all together.”
Street did a slow head shake. I kept going.
“A while ago I said you shouted at Pauline for help getting the hose out, but that’s not true, is it? You yelled at her to get out because—”
“So he yelled at me to get out, so what?” Pauline interrupted. “All these people yell at me to get out all the time. None of them want me around. He’s no different from the rest.”
“Yes, he is different from the rest. Because he’s your father. And he murdered Keith Landry.”
FROM THE JUMBLE of voices, including Roy’s high-pitched “I told you I didn’t do it,” I heard Pauline Street say, “You can’t prove he is. You don’t know—”
“Of course I can prove he’s your father. I have a copy of your driver’s license from Oklahoma with your last name, photo, and date of birth. Your home address is the same as his. And your birth certificate lists your father.” When I said have it was in the most generous sense of can possibly get my hands on.
Street didn’t even bother shaking his head. No tension came from him, as if he weren’t really very interested in the proceedings now.
“But you said he wasn’t part of the fraud,” protested Linda. “Why would he kill Landry?”
“I said the paper trail we’ve found so far doesn’t implicate him. But as a partner in the company, he benefited from the scam. And he had to have known what Landry was doing. Because it affected the movement and use of the livestock he looks after so carefully.
“Landry kept stock uncommitted in anticipation of these last-minute gouge jobs—even for the Fourth of July. The way Street looks after those animals, he had to be aware the company was going to get the last-minute contracts and how many animals would be used.” I flicked a look toward the still-silent Alvaro. “That will take some digging.”
“My God, he killed Landry to protect the livestock?” Newton said.
“No, he did it to protect his daughter.”
I let that be absorbed, then went on. “No one knew better than his partner that Landry was crumbling. And that he would not be stopped in his pursuit of his scam—financial or sexual. When Street learned that Landry had his sights set on Pauline, he came here immediately to put a stop to it.”
“He wouldn’t . . .” Pauline whispered. “He’s never cared . . .”
Street reacted at last. He looked at her and said, “It’s true. I did it for you, baby.”
Richard handcuffed Oren Street and recited his rights. Everyone else remained silent and frozen.
Street suddenly seemed to relax.
“I understand I have the right to stay silent, but not much sense in that with Evan Watt telling you about last night,” Street said mildly. “Staying silent’s what Keith expected of me all the time. He screamed so much I hardly heard it any longer. Not the screaming, and not the other. He called me from here Wednesday and started saying things were so fu—sorry, ma’am,” he said to me, “screwed up that he was setting up a backup plan with a second-string piece of—girl. Said she had a streak of blue in her hair. I hadn’t seen Pauline in two years, not since she run off, but she stopped to see her mama last month, and she had a streak just like that. I thought it couldn’t be, but there was the streak, and my girl doing protests and such, because she loves animals.”
And because a rebellious girl thought it was a way to get the attention of her father.
“I had to know if it was my girl. I couldn’t let Landry . . . I came right up here.”
That was why Linda and Stan and Tom had all denied that an
yone on the rodeo committee told Landry they wanted the stock here early. Because they hadn’t. Nor had Landry demanded the stock be brought early. Oren had dropped that lie early on, and I’d swallowed it whole.
Until I started wondering about when a cover-up isn’t a cover-up, and the answer had come: When there’s nothing to cover up.
In Street’s push to get to Sherman, the truck with the panels got left behind, with the result that the stock was overnighted in the pens near the arena. That meant Heather had to alter her route, which let her blouse get caught, which allowed Landry to spot her . . . and the sequence rolled on to murder.
“He was . . . he was . . . It was like he had a fever or something,” Street was saying. “Sense couldn’t break through to him. Not one bit. I tried talking to him, kept trying. I went to Pauline, tried to get her to leave.” He ducked his head, as if in apology for such effrontery. “She wouldn’t talk to me.”
A small, sucked-in breath came from Pauline, but her expression showed nothing.
“That night, well, he called and said to get to the pens right quick, and if I asked why, he’d kill me. I got there quick. He was trussed up and mad as fire. He started up yelling at me to get him loose. Screaming and saying things . . . horrible things about that girl who’s the rodeo queen.” His brows dipped. “Or maybe it was her mama. He was screaming so much it was hard to tell.
“I started working the loop loose from around his arms and middle. But I stopped, because he’d started saying things about Pauline . . . Those same things. I told him it was my daughter, my baby, he was talking about. And he said I’d best stop thinking about her as my daughter, because her being my daughter wasn’t going to stop him. And she was no baby. That he’d seen her . . .”
He dropped his head, slightly muffling his voice.
“The rope was there. Right there. And he was still yelling at me to get it off him and stop standing there like a fool. All the time he was saying that about my baby. All the time.”
He appeared to examine the toe of his right boot.
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