Sign Off

by Patricia McLinn

  Diana looked at me, I knew that, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun.

  “Move!”

  Diana came away from the door.

  Still with his eyes on me, Hunt stepped to the other door, the one I’d guessed was a private entrance. Even at this time of night, could he really get away with leading two women out of the courthouse at gunpoint? The jail was so close . . .

  And then I remembered the utter quiet, the sense of desertion as we’d slipped into the courthouse. No one had noticed that.

  “I don’t believe either of you has seen all the features of our courthouse, have you? It was built in the nineteenth century, you know.” He opened the door, and used the gun to gesture first Diana, then me toward it.

  Diana took a step in, then looked up, before she looked back to me and Hunt, lined up behind her.

  “Go ahead,” he ordered.

  Diana shifted the camera on her shoulder, and I realized it was still running.

  As I followed her through the door, I saw why she’d glanced up. Inside the door was a two-and-a-half-foot square landing, then a steep, narrow stairway up to the left. Diana was about four steps up, listing slightly as she struggled with the camera.

  Not out of the courthouse, but up. Up to the top of the tallest building in Sherman, overlooked by nothing but a dark Wyoming sky.

  Lulling hadn’t worked. Try something else. Anything.

  “To the roof? That’s stupid, Hunt.” Provoke him. Unsettle him. “Somebody will see us.”

  He chuckled. Unprovoked, totally settled. “In this town? At this time of night?”

  He was right. If we screamed, who would hear us? The nearby businesses were deserted. Maybe someone inside the jail . . . . Not likely. And even if someone did hear and reacted immediately, less likely that they’d be in time. We were on our own. With a double murderer who’d come equipped with a silencer.

  As if he’d heard that thought, he said, “I brought the gun in case Ambrose happened to come to his office tonight, and I decided he needed to commit suicide. It’s his, you know. Took it at his annual Christmas party as a precaution, and now it’s come in quite handy. In fact, everything’s worked out very well. Took some doing to get Widcuff to let Ambrose out tonight, but it was worth it.”

  The thought came to me that if Hunt succeeded, Diana’s two children would be orphans. And the shadow dog—would anyone feed him?

  “Go on.” Hunt jabbed me in the back with the gun.

  Starting up those stairs, my throat closed at the anguish my family and friends would feel. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry to do this to you.

  Other voices echoed in my head.

  Sometimes you learn as much about the truth from the questions that don’t get asked.

  You fear that the truth you seek might not be a truth you like.

  Mrs. Parens was right. I had feared the truth. And that was one of the truths I should have learned about myself by following Tom Burrell’s advice and looking at the questions I wasn’t asking.

  Not about the case, but about myself.

  Five months I kept telling myself—five months before I reclaimed my old life. But I’d never asked myself what I wanted from my future life. No more than I’d asked myself why my marriage had gone wrong, and why I’d stayed in it so long after it had. Because I’d focused on the professional fallout of my divorce while I hid away from the emotional ones. In fact, I had a whole pile of questions I hadn’t asked.

  They wouldn’t get asked or answered if I died now.

  “They’ll find us,” I tried again. “They’ll figure out it was you.”

  “Don’t be modest, Elizabeth, I doubt anyone else will put it together. As for finding you, there’s a shed up on the roof that won’t be used until they pull out the Christmas decorations. By that time, what with our hot summer sun, there won’t be much of your bodies for forensics to bother with.

  “But if you two are found sooner, no one will believe any alibi Ambrose might have. Not in his desperate situation, and with you shot by his gun and found where only his office has access.”

  So maybe the window blinds had been open not because nobody would see the light but because he hoped someone might—and report there’d been activity in Claustel’s office tonight.

  He’d thought of everything.

  Diana stumbled slightly as she reached the top, balancing the camera with difficulty as Hunt ordered her to open the door there.

  We stepped from the dim light of the stairwell into the dark of a moonless Wyoming sky that seemed to wrap around us like cobwebs. No ambient light from the town pierced it. When they rolled up the sidewalks in Sherman, they took all the light with them.

  We were on a narrow portion of the roof, a slice of horizontal between the four-story drop to the ground and the rounded base of the conical tower that peaked thirty feet above us.

  “Here, let me take that camera, Diana.” She started to protest, but I jostled her to hide a low growl of “do it,” and she handed over the lump that I cradled like a load of firewood.

  “Easing her burden, Elizabeth? How thoughtful.” Hunt moved around us. “Though soon you both will be eased of all burdens. Stand over there.” He gestured with the gun farther around the curve of the tower, to a narrow opening between the tower and a metal box atop the addition’s roof. The shed.

  He was right that nobody would find us here by accident. Although Hunt probably had thought the same thing about Redus’ body. The chance of our bodies being found someday was not, however, a major consolation.

  “You know, I almost had to do this at the construction trailer when you and Paycik blundered in. Maybe I should have.”

  “What about Claustel?” I asked desperately. As a kid I used to try to extend my bedtime by asking my parents all sorts of questions. Mom never fell for it. Dad did. I prayed it was a gender thing.

  “You really were quite amazing in his office earlier, Elizabeth. Although you had a few little things wrong, like that Redus came up with the idea of going after the Claustel boy. That was me—redirecting his greedy attention so he didn’t ruin everything. And of course thinking Claustel had the brains to be running things.”

  “Were they in on it—Claustel and Widcuff?”

  He tsked. It echoed eerily against the wall behind us.

  “Those buffoons? They weren’t in on anything. Claustel swallowed having Redus as liaison like a lamb. He thought it was his idea, because Redus had caught his son with another boy in a backseat. And all I had to do with Widcuff was drop a hint here and there, and he held off searching for Redus. I will say his making a mess of the investigation was mostly on his own, though I dropped a word about how he wouldn’t want the state guys coming in and taking all the glory. But arresting Burrell too soon—I will take credit there. A nice touch, don’t you think? Burrell got to squirm in jail, then I come back and look like the even-handed voice of justice and let him free. Of course by then, everyone thought he might be a murderer.”

  He raised the gun. “No more delaying.”

  “Hunt . . .”

  “Please, Elizabeth, you’re not going to say something clichéd like I’m not going to get away with it, are you?”

  “No.” I shifted the camera.

  A voice echoed up the narrow stairway like liquid up a straw. It was Mike, calling my name, then Diana’s.

  Ames Hunt’s eyes flickered to the open door. His arm straightened in front of him and his finger stretched toward the trigger as he turned to us.

  That flicker wasn’t much, but it was the only opening I had. I hefted the camera higher, and as Hunt turned, I threw it at him with all my strength.

  The man had no reflexes. Any normal person would have dropped the gun and tried to catch the camera. He did neither.

  The camera hit him high on the chest and the right shoulder. He staggered back a step from the impact, trying to twist around to keep the gun on us. Fighting for balance, his left foot crossed over his right. His left shin cracked against
the low edge of the stone railing. He seemed to hang there an instant, then he tipped like a falling tree and disappeared.

  His scream echoed in the man-made canyon where we huddled, long after Ames Hunt had come to earth.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The jockeying for position was something to behold.

  Sheriff Widcuff kept trying to get a hand on the side rail of the gurney carrying seriously injured Ames Hunt to make it look as if he had the murderer in custody. He succeeded in looking superfluous, since Richard Alvaro and the state investigators already flanked the EMTs. The Sherman police chief had better luck by walking ahead, pretending to clear away the swarms.

  There were no swarms, but there were a pair of interested bystanders from the jail, along with Needham Bender, his photographer from the Independence and Diana—operating a spare camera from the van Mike had driven back—Mike and me. We trailed behind in a strange procession to the ambulance.

  Thurston Fine showed up as the ambulance doors closed.

  “There’s been a mistake,” he proclaimed.

  He tried to open the ambulance doors to be sure it was truly Ames Hunt, the owner of the coattails Thurston had intended to ride, who was in there. Finally, Widcuff convinced him, adding that Hunt had still been clutching the gun when the medics got to him. Fine turned his back on the departing ambulance and shifted the gears of his ambition. Mike had to physically block him out of Diana’s shot of Widcuff’s statement.

  Fine was still wailing about that when we all arrived back at the station.

  “They had no right. My contract clearly says I have the lead story. Five and ten, Monday through Friday. I get that story. I get that story!”

  Haeburn stepped in. “Give it to me, Diana.”

  He meant the camcorder. Diana had told me there was a chance the tape from the camera that went over the edge with Hunt could be recoverable. We’d decided to tell no one beyond Mike until we knew for sure.

  I’d told her I was sorry about her camera, and I’d get her a replacement—a modern, compact, top-quality replacement.

  She’d given a wry smile. “We’ll be lucky if Haeburn doesn’t claim that since it saved our lives, we have to go back to using those all the time.”

  Not if I had anything to say about it. And I intended to start saying things. Right now.

  “Not yet,” I told Haeburn. “We have some things to decide, then we—”

  Haeburn’s face went red—all over, all at once, as if someone had put a red filter over a lens. “I make the decisions here.” He tried to snatch the camera from Diana.

  Mike stepped in.

  What little Mike had said in the past hour had been to blame himself. He shouldn’t have left Diana and me. He should have known Hunt was the killer. He shouldn’t have asked me to get involved. He should have returned to the square earlier when there was no sign of Claustel. He should have thought to try the courthouse door sooner when he found my car empty. He should have run up the stairs faster. He should have prevented every evil in the world.

  Someday we’d have to talk about his megalomania. Mike Paycik might have great shoulders, but Atlas he’s not. Now, however, wasn’t the time for that talk.

  With Haeburn trying to dodge around Paycik, I picked up as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Then we can start acting like real journalists. We’ll give Fine the story for the newscasts, but Mike’s on-camera stays, and we—” I gestured to include Mike, Diana and myself. “—do the editing. That doesn’t interfere with his contract. And—”

  “She can’t, she can’t,” Fine spluttered into Haeburn’s face, sending a fine spray across his glasses, “dictate to me.”

  I easily hurdled this interruption. “And the three of us get a free hand for a half-hour news special to go on at ten thirty tonight, after the early news tomorrow and to be repeated at least twice this weekend.”

  “What makes you think you can dictate the coverage by this station?” Haeburn’s face went from rose to cherry. “What makes you think—”

  “We have the story. If you want it, you take those terms. Or no story.”

  “You are employees, you have to—”

  “You suspended us, remember? This was done all on our own time. For that matter, Diana did most of the shooting with her own equipment. Which reminds me, that’s another condition: reinstatement.” I considered. “And veto power on assignments for Mike and a raise for Diana.”

  “You can’t . . . she can’t . . . they can’t . . .” Fine kept spluttering.

  “How about you?” Diana asked.

  I considered asking to be left in peace, but letting Fine and Haeburn know what I most wanted didn’t seem like a good idea. “I want twice weekly promos for ‘Helping Out’ for the next six weeks.”

  Les Haeburn is a lot of things, but he is not totally stupid. “Okay. Get busy on that damned wrap-up show.”

  We left him wiping his glasses. And Fine still sputtering.

  * * * *

  The clip of the stretcher holding County Attorney Ames Hunt being escorted by law enforcement officers as it was put into an ambulance made a great teaser. It drew interest from several tabloid TV shows. When Hunt died on the operating table, the networks got interested. None of them could resist the idea of a murdering elected official killed by a TV camera. Haeburn, naturally, handled all dealings with them.

  Mike, Diana and I, with assistance from Jenny and Diana’s cronies on the technical end, slammed together the wrap-up show. The only timeout I took was a quick call to my family. I don’t know if they’ll ever get over the shock of my calling just to say I loved them all.

  We slept about three-and-a-half minutes, then, fueled by caffeine and adrenaline, tore apart the show and with the help of other reporters, editors and photographers, updated the version that ran after the next day’s early news.

  The updates included that the gun registered to Tom Burrell and kept at the office of Burrell Roads was found in the shed on the roof of the courthouse. Presumably Hunt had taken it when he put Redus’ gun in the cabinet, then stashed it as another link to Claustel. Also, Gina, in exchange for agreeing to tell everything she knew about Redus’ schemes, would get probation for spending ill-gotten money.

  The judge who agreed to that deal was not Ambrose Claustel. Claustel had resigned.

  Richard Alvaro and Aunt Gee didn’t think Claustel would be charged, because there was insufficient proof he’d dismissed any cases so Redus could benefit financially. I’d been wrong about that—there was no money trail, because Claustel had gone along with Redus only to keep the deputy quiet about Frank Claustel’s sexual orientation.

  No reports surfaced on KWMT, the Independence or the radio about Frank Claustel’s role in his father’s downfall, but I wondered how long it would take to circulate through the grapevine. And I wondered how Roger and Myrna Johnson and Brent Hanley would deal with it when the talk included Rog Junior.

  But those were thoughts for lying awake and staring at the ceiling, not for the frenetic activity of putting together that wrap-up show. We were still applying finishing touches when the five o’clock news started, but it wasn’t quite as close a call as the obstacle-course-running character had in Broadcast News to get a story into the network feed on time. There are shorter halls and fewer obstacles to hurdle at KWMT.

  No one left the newsroom. Staff clustered around the TV monitors and watched in near silence. I think I held my breath through the full half-hour—including commercials. When it was over, they didn’t applaud. They did better. They wandered past where I sat and said good night, or gave me a wave, or passed an every-day comment. You don’t do that to a shark or a queen.

  “C’mon, Elizabeth, let’s go.” Mike held out my purse to me.

  “Go? Where?”

  “Your house. Some folks are getting together.”

  “At my house? But it’s awful.”

  “Sure, makes everybody comfortable. Nobody has to worry about spilling anything.”

 
; Diana laughed—she could. She hadn’t seen my place yet. “Wasn’t it nice of Paycik to volunteer you to have us all over for dinner?”

  “Dinner?” I hadn’t even had time for medicinal grocery shopping lately.

  “Quit looking panicked,” Mike said. “I ordered pizzas. All you need to provide are napkins. Now, c’mon, or we’ll be the last ones there.”

  Mike, Diana, Jenny, Smitty, Billy and Jenks came from the station. Needham Bender, his wife Thelma, and Cagen from the Independence and, to my surprise, Mike’s Aunt Gee, Mrs. Parens, and Deputy Sheriff Richard Alvaro. My next-door neighbors stopped by, as did the nice elderly lady from across the street, too. Several guests had brought wine. Beer appeared (the elderly lady from across the street knocked one back in record time.) Someone else brought a case of soft drinks. The pizzas arrived in good order. I had no napkins. Paper towels did just fine.

  “What I don’t understand,” Jenny said into a hush of people lulled to silence by full stomachs and empty glasses, “is how you knew it was Hunt and came up with that great bluff of accusing the judge.”

  “That was no bluff. That was stupidity. I thought it was Judge Claustel.” I twirled the inch of ruby liquid remaining in my glass. My ex had insisted on using Baccarat for wine. I’d discovered that knowing a glass would line up nicely in the dishwasher added a certain sweetness to its contents. “It was only when I was hearing my own words that I realized they could apply another way.”

  I explained about the spider webs as best I could, and in the process reminded myself I had a call to make to a certain distant in-law lawyer who’d spun his own benign web around me at KWMT. “If Claustel had been the murderer, it would have meant that Tom Burrell was just a handy scapegoat. But the sort of web I kept seeing had been spun around him as much as around Foster Redus.”