Sarah had to find a way to convince him. “Layton is wrong. It was the sheriff and two of his men who killed Randy. They were trying to cover up another murder, and Randy got too close.”
Glenn pointed the barrel at the ground and rubbed his sweaty forehead. “I wondered what the hell was going on.”
“What?” Eric stepped forward. “Do you know something about the sheriff?”
Glenn looked from Eric back to Sarah. His square shoulders slumped a little, as if it was taking a lot out of him to face what he was about to tell them. “I heard Sheriff Gillette talking to Keith. Said something about getting justice.”
“Getting justice? For what?”
“I don’t know. Every damn thing.”
Sarah didn’t know what to think. Here she thought Glenn was the law-and-order guy. The man who loved cop shows and novels. The man who wanted to be a cop and would do anything to help someone like the sheriff, if he believed his cause was just. She always thought Keith was built more along the lines of a vigilante. The perfect recruit for a homegrown militia group, maybe, but a man who chafed at government and had no patience for law. “How did Keith react?”
“He has the kid all fired up. It’s all Keith can talk about. People getting what they deserve and what all.”
She pictured the cowboy hat at the back of the smokey bar. The shaggy blond hair and rangy face underneath. She glanced at Eric. “I thought I saw him at the Full Throttle just now.”
“The cowboy hat at the back.”
She nodded.
“Don’t surprise me. He left the ranch around lunchtime and didn’t come back. He ain’t been anywhere he’s supposed to lately.”
Sarah straightened. Things were starting to add up, and she didn’t like where they were going. “There were other times he left work? When?”
Glenn adjusted his hat with one hand. “Man, I don’t know.”
She did. “The day Randy was killed?”
He narrowed his eyes and stared at the garage wall, as if counting back in his mind. “Was that the day we took the herd out to the BLM?”
Sarah nodded. She had a feeling she might know what was coming. A bad feeling. She braced herself.
“Yeah, he disappeared that day.”
“When?”
“After we loaded up. Didn’t even say where he was going. Layton went out to look for him, but never found him. I had to unload the cattle alone.”
She glanced at Eric, trying to read if he was thinking the same thing. Then she brought her focus back to Glenn. “Has Keith said anything else to you?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, anything about Randy or a place called Saddle Horn Ridge?”
“He talked about Randy. How he saw him at the Full Throttle talking to some drug dealer.”
Sarah nodded. “He told me that, too.”
“How about a man named Larry Hodgeson?” Eric asked. “Has Keith mentioned him?”
Glenn started to shake his head, then paused.
“Think of something?” Sarah fought the urge to lean toward him and grab his shoulders, shake him into remembering whatever it was that made him pause.
“Yeah. Hodgeson. He was in the news a while back, wasn’t he?”
“He has been. Did Keith mention him?”
“Yeah. Last summer he was all mad. Said this Hodgeson took a payoff to let some drug dealer go, and now he was going to make things even worse. Keith said people like this Hodgeson were what was wrong with law enforcement. Is Hodgeson a cop or something?” Glenn’s eyebrows pinched together, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.
“No.”
Glenn let out a shaky breath.
Sarah’s mind whirled with Glenn’s words. Make things even worse? Hodgeson no longer worked for the crime lab. He hadn’t for years. How could Hodgeson make things worse?
“We’d better get out of here, Sarah.” Eric’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Where’s the ATV?”
She pointed to the other side of the garage.
“Tell you what,” Glenn said. “Why don’t you take my truck?”
She scanned his face. He seemed sincere. Like he wanted to help. But if she couldn’t trust one of her hands, could she really afford to trust the other?
“Things are strange around here,” Glenn said. “Real strange. I don’t know what to think, but I don’t think you’d kill your brother. And I don’t want to see you pay for something you’d never do.”
She nodded. She hadn’t thought anything bad about Glenn Freemont in the time he’d worked for her. Not until this mess. But he really was a good guy. And he really did seem to care about her. It felt good to know she’d been right about someone. That everyone she knew wasn’t harboring some secret that would come back to hurt her. “Thanks, Glenn.” She gave him a hug, and he slipped the truck’s keys into her hand.
Eric wheeled the ATV to the mouth of the garage. “Let’s take this, too. It’ll give us some flexibility.”
After Glenn helped Eric heave the vehicle into the pickup bed, she passed the keys to Eric and climbed into the passenger seat. A second later, they were speeding out of the gravel driveway and down the road. For a moment, she just stared out the window at the landscape rolling by, trying to absorb how little she knew about some people in her life. Randy. Now Keith. “Do you think Keith is in on this thing with the sheriff, whatever it is?”
“Could be. Or Glenn is.”
“Glenn?” She shook her head. She must not have heard him right. “Why Glenn?”
“Think about it. The only thing we know about Keith Sherwood is what Glenn told us.”
“And that he was at the Full Throttle.”
“Which means nothing. From the sound of it, he hangs out there all the time.”
“True.”
“And being out at the Full Throttle ties Keith to Burne more than the sheriff. Either that or he just has a simple drinking problem.”
“Good point. But none of that suggests Glenn has anything to hide. He helped us. Gave us his truck.”
Eric nodded. “His truck, which is equipped with a GPS.”
Sarah gasped and held her hands against her chest. Again she’d been so trusting. So blind. That Glenn had been offering his truck for a reason, to trap them, had never occurred to her. “You think the sheriff is using it to track us?”
“Not anymore. I turned the damn thing off.”
Chapter Fifteen
Eric didn’t want to take a chance.
They took Glenn’s truck as far as the campground outside Norris. There, they left it among a dozen vehicles belonging to early summer tourists and hiked the rest of the way to his guide friend’s cabin on foot.
The cabin wasn’t exactly rustic, more like a tiny house on the outside of town than a real cabin. But the neighbors were few and far between, no one in the area nosed into others’ business, and most important of all, he knew where to find the key.
Throughout the entire trek, all Eric could think about was their close call at the Full Throttle. How little control of the situation he’d had. How he’d almost lost Sarah for good. Add that to what had happened with Glenn Freemont, and he was reeling.
He needed to put an end to this. And he would do whatever it took.
He found the cabin’s key hidden in its usual place under a flap of loose siding, opened the door and ushered Sarah inside.
The cabin was tiny, only one real room. One end of it formed a small kitchen, the other a living area with a full sized bed in one corner and a television in the other. Definitely a bachelor pad. A bathroom the size of a closet was tucked against the wall.
The place smelled dusty, the air dead. At least out here the weather was so dry they didn’t have to worry about mustiness and mildew. But it wasn’t exactly homey. “Dev probably hasn’t been here for a while. We’ll have to keep our eyes out for scorpions and black widows.”
She nodded, unfazed. “It’s nice.”
“I don’t know about that,
but it’s safe. At least for a while.”
She gave him a sad smile. “These days ‘safe’ is the same as nice to me.”
He knew the feeling.
Sarah strolled deeper into the cabin. He followed her in time to see her lower herself to the bed and let out an exhausted sigh. For a second, he had the urge to sit beside her, to take her in his arms, to lay her down and show her how much he wanted to take care of her. How much he had changed.
“There’s only one bed,” she said.
Warmth fanned out over his skin. He’d like to think that by the tone in her voice, she was thinking the same thing. But he’d probably be fooling himself. Last night in the restaurant, she’d told him she couldn’t take a chance on him. He doubted anything had changed. At least not with her.
He was a different story.
With every minute Eric was with her, he grew more sure she was what he wanted. Her and the baby. Maybe the turmoil he felt just wasn’t that big of a deal to him in light of the crazy turn their lives had taken, a simple matter of perspective. Maybe moments where he could glimpse what it would be like to lose her had made him want to hold her that much more. Maybe the thought of the baby—of a family—was responsible for his change of heart, but he didn’t think so.
The maelstrom of emotion that came with caring about her, of maybe even falling in love with her, made him feel as if he was climbing without the safety of a belay, but it also made him feel more alive than ever before. And like climbing, dangerous or not, he wanted more.
God help him, he wanted everything.
“What about this money Burne says I need to pay?” Sarah’s voice didn’t sound inviting this time. It sounded shaken. Scared. She held the cell phone Burne had given her, turning it over and over in her fingers. “How am I ever going to come up with it with the sheriff watching? I can’t exactly walk into a bank.”
Eric shoved his thoughts to the back of his mind. It wasn’t the time for fantasy. Even if by some miracle Sarah decided to give him another chance, he couldn’t take it until she was safe. Until this was over.
His stomach clenched at the thought of the dead-eyed meth dealer, the way he’d threatened Sarah. The way he’d touched her, pulling her head back by her braid. The way Eric had had to just stand there and watch with a knife to his throat. But as much as he’d like to take care of that guy, they couldn’t get distracted. Having all law enforcement in the state of Wyoming after them made a single drug dealer seem insignificant. They had to solve the more pressing problems first. “Burne is the least of our troubles.”
“Do you think Randy was selling drugs? Or making them? Do you think that’s why he was in debt?” Her voice dipped to just above a whisper, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear, even though there was no one around but them.
Maybe she just didn’t want to hear her own questions and the answers that likely went with them. He couldn’t blame her one bit.
Eric lowered himself to the mattress next to her. Just a few seconds ago, he was thinking about rolling around on the bed together. He still wanted that, but now he needed more. To comfort her. Reassure her. Make everything all right, something he knew he could never fully do.
Randy had brought Sarah a lot of worry and pain. To think he’d stooped to depths so vile in his quest for easy money was hard to reconcile with the brother she loved. Something like that was hard enough for Eric to swallow about the man he’d thought of as his friend. “Was he selling drugs? I don’t know. Maybe we’ll never know for sure.”
“Maybe…or maybe that’s what this whole thing is about. Burne, Randy, Larry Hodgeson, the sheriff—maybe they’re all involved in drugs or profiting from drug money.”
He considered this. “It’s possible. Only it didn’t seem like Burne was very eager to see the sheriff this afternoon.”
Sarah looked down at the phone clasped in her hands. “Burne wants his money before the sheriff gets ahold of us. That could change things.”
“Money can change a lot of things.” He thought of Hodgeson, of the fingerprint evidence in the case against Burne. “Maybe Hodgeson was bought. Maybe the sheriff was, too. But that doesn’t tell us why Gillette would want Hodgeson dead or want to cover up the murder.”
“And it doesn’t explain Burne, either. Even if someone found out he paid Hodgeson off, he can’t be tried on the drug charge again, can he?”
“I suppose he could face bribery charges, if they can prove it.”
“Would he kill for that? I don’t know. But if not, neither the sheriff nor Burne had a reason to kill Hodgeson.” She sounded as bereft as when he sat down.
Some comfort he was. Of course, he doubted anything but answers would provide comfort for Sarah. “They didn’t have a reason that we have found. Not yet, anyway.”
She raised her eyes to his. “So how do we find it?”
He thought of the library, the detail in the articles he’d read about Hodgeson. He glanced at the phone in her hand. “We call the reporter who wrote about those cases. Dennis Prohaska.”
“You think that’s the writer Joy was talking about? The one she said was giving her husband a big head?”
“I don’t know. But if he isn’t, he might know who is.” He pushed himself up from the bed and crossed the room. He opened one cabinet near the phone, then another. Sure enough, there was a big fat telephone book. He called the number for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. Although they wouldn’t give him the reporter’s phone number, they promised to pass along the message.
“It’s urgent,” Eric said. “It has to do with the manhunt for that murderer. If he’d like an exclusive interview, I can arrange it. Tell him to call back at this number right away.”
Prohaska called back within the hour. They had eaten some canned chili and turned on the television while they waited, and Eric stepped into the kitchen so he could focus on the call. Sarah stayed in the living area, watching him. “Thank you for calling,” Eric said. “I have a few questions.”
“I usually ask the questions.” His voice was brusque over the phone, in a hurry. “I thought you had information about the manhunt for Eric Lander.”
“Bear with me, will you?” He took a deep breath and held Sarah’s gaze. “What can you tell me about Larry Hodgeson? He’s a fingerprint analyst with the state crime lab.”
Silence.
At first Eric thought the reporter had hung up on him. Then the soft whoosh of an expelled breath shuddered over the line. “Why are you asking about Hodgeson?” His voice was measured, interested, whatever he’d been in a hurry about forgotten.
“You know the man?”
“Of course I know him. I’ve covered Wyoming criminal trials for years.”
“When is the last time you heard from him?”
“He’s retired. I haven’t heard anything from him in almost a year.”
Almost a year. “So you had contact with him after his retirement?” He met Sarah’s big brown eyes.
“I really need to know who this is. What does this have to do with the manhunt?”
Now it was Eric’s turn to be silent. Apparently his questions about Hodgeson had struck some kind of chord with the reporter. “Why are you so protective of Hodgeson?”
“Not protective. Curious. Hodgeson was a special project of mine.”
A special project? Eric’s mind raced, trying to figure out what that could mean.
“Who is this? Can I meet you, face-to-face?”
“Not possible.” Maybe Eric could get the reporter to give him what he needed if he came at it from another angle. “What about Walter Burne? What can you tell me about him?”
“He was arrested for producing and selling methamphetamine a good five, six years ago. He was acquitted.”
“And Larry Hodgeson worked on that case,” Eric said.
“Pick a place. I’ll meet you there.”
“Why are you so eager to meet?”
The reporter paused. “Okay. I’ll level with you. I’m writing a book.”
> A book. Of course. Being the subject of a book might give anyone a big head. “About Larry Hodgeson?”
“About the Wyoming criminal justice system. But yes, partially about Larry Hodgeson. At least it used to be, before I lost contact with him. So your questions piqued my interest.”
The story seemed legitimate. Still, meeting in person was risky.
“This is Eric Lander, isn’t it?”
Eric bit the inside of his bottom lip. He hadn’t wanted Prohaska to know who he was, but when it came right down to it, his identity probably didn’t change anything.
“I won’t call the law.”
“How do I know that?”
“I want the story, not an arrest. You have my word.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.” If there was anything Eric had learned while going through this mess, it was that taking people at their word was a fool’s move.
“What if I tell you that Hodgeson’s disappearance wasn’t random? That something happened to him, and I might know what?”
Eric pushed up from the counter and paced across the kitchen half of the room.
“Meet me. Choose a place. I’ll drive through the night if I need to. The worst that could happen is it’ll be a waste of your time.”
No, that wasn’t the worst. Eric stopped and focused on Sarah. He thought she would be hanging on his every word, trying to use them like clues to figure out the other side of the conversation. But she stood with her back to him, her attention fully absorbed by the television, both arms cradling her abdomen as if trying to protect their baby.
She must be watching news of the manhunt. Or maybe something went down at the Full Throttle.
Their close call in the tavern still trilled along his nerves. He could have lost her. Either to a drug dealer or the sheriff. He had to get some answers. Whatever the risk, it couldn’t be greater than what they already faced. He had to end this craziness now. “Be in Thermopolis by noon. I’ll call you and tell you where we’ll meet. Give me the number for your cell.”
Rocky Mountain Fugitive Page 13