Striking Range

by Margaret Mizushima

  “Hey, we’re shorthanded and you can’t cover everything. It’s not a big deal, and I doubt if he would call in for help anyway.”

  Rainbow was scanning her computer screen. “I do have all the calls from stranded motorists logged in here, and he’s not among them.”

  “Thanks for checking. So the sheriff and Brody are here?”

  “Yeah, the sheriff wants to meet as soon as you can. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  “Right. I’ll grab some coffee and get Robo settled. Would you ask Garcia to come to the briefing room when he arrives?”

  “Sure will.” Rainbow lifted her phone receiver and punched the intercom button for the sheriff while Mattie turned away to head for the staff office with her dog following behind. She met Stella in the hallway, carrying her coffee mug decorated with a caricature of Sherlock Holmes, one eye huge as he peered through a magnifying glass.

  “The sheriff wants a meet soon,” Mattie warned her as they passed each other.

  “Sounds good.”

  Robo trotted into the room ahead of Mattie and pounced on the red cushion beside her desk. She gave him a treat with the intent of getting him settled for bed, but with his pricked ears and wide-open eyes, it looked like he was ready to go again. His nap in their unit must have been all he needed. She fixed coffee for herself, lacing it with almond-flavored creamer, snatched up some notepaper, and headed for the briefing room, saying, “Come with me, Robo.”

  Stella was already there with her laptop open, tapping keys and scrolling through screens. Brody, carrying his laptop with him, came in right behind Mattie, and McCoy followed soon after. Mattie rolled the whiteboard over to a spot near Stella before taking her seat and settling Robo on the floor beside her. It was time to summarize Tonya’s case.

  But McCoy started elsewhere. “Just got an update from the hospital. Johnson’s injuries are mostly orthopedic. He was able to tell the ER doctor his name and where he worked, so that’s an excellent sign. He didn’t seem to know what happened to him, but maybe that will come back to him—then again, maybe not. He’s in a lot of pain, so they have him heavily medicated.”

  Stella looked solemn. “What are the orthopedic injuries?”

  “Both legs broken in several places, a fractured pelvis, and a few fractured ribs. Bruising across his torso but no ruptured spleen or internal bleeding. Small miracle there. The doctor thinks someone hit him and then ran over him.”

  Stella released an audible breath.

  “That’s the story at the scene too,” Brody said, his voice a growl. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

  McCoy rubbed his temple. “It’s possible he dragged himself off the shoulder and rolled into the ditch. He might have saved himself.”

  “The EMTs tromped down the edge of the ditch above him, so I couldn’t tell if he did that or not,” Brody said, “but it seems possible.”

  “I’ll release a media bulletin asking for citizens to come forward if they have any information about a hit-and-run involving one of our deputies.” McCoy opened the notebook he’d placed on the table in front of him. “I’m also offering a reward for information leading to an arrest, including the report of bumper or fender damage as well as any suspicious behavior or verbal confessions related to the incident.”

  Mattie thought that was a good move, though McCoy looked as discouraged as she felt. Most hit-and-run accidents went unsolved, much less hit-and-runs that had been done with malicious intent.

  The sheriff passed his hand over his face, rubbing the dark stubble on his chin, where Mattie noticed that patches of gray stood out in contrast against his dark skin. The sheriff had always been a mentor to her and perhaps even a father figure; it bothered her that he was beginning to show his age and that it might lead to his retirement before she was ready.

  “Okay, let’s discuss Tonya Greenfield,” McCoy said. “What do we know, and what are our leads?”

  Stella rose from her chair, opening her notebook before rolling the whiteboard closer. She picked up a red marker and wrote Persons of Interest on the upper right side of the board. “First of all, we need to find a young man named Skylar Kincaid. He’s the baby’s father.”

  Brody leaned forward, narrowing his eyes as he watched Stella write the name on the board. “Did he agree with the adoption?”

  Mattie thought that an astute question—Brody was apparently of the same mind-set as she and Stella.

  “Evidently not.” Stella went on to summarize the information they’d learned about Skylar’s surprise appearance in Timber Creek. “According to the Greenfields, Tonya planned to meet with Skylar after her midwife appointment. We need to track this guy down as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Tonya’s father didn’t know how to reach him. Her father doesn’t think her phone has a tracer on it either. We’ve got the number, though, so I’ll see if we can ping it, and I’ll get her records from her provider.”

  “If we can’t locate Kincaid some other way, we can put a BOLO out on him in the region, including Nebraska. It’s possible he’s already headed home.” McCoy made a note in his spiral book before looking at Brody. “Could you see if you can track down a vehicle registered to that name?”

  Brody nodded, already typing on his keyboard.

  Stella tapped the marker against the table. “Tonya’s father gave me the name and phone number of her best friend. I’ve left a message for her to call me, and I’m hoping she can give me information about how to contact Skylar. Or anyone else we need to talk to.”

  “All right,” McCoy said. “Keep me posted.”

  Mattie spoke up. “I asked Rainbow to have Garcia check in with us when he gets here. Ben Greenfield thought Skylar was planning to sleep in his car in the park Friday night, and I thought Garcia might have spotted him either there or somewhere else here in town.”

  McCoy acknowledged her words with a nod.

  Brody turned his laptop so they could see the screen. “No car registration under that name, but there’s a driver’s license. Here’s his picture.”

  His face stony, Skylar’s most outstanding feature was his hair—long and bleached on top with dark, buzzed sides. He also had a scruffy dark beard and hazel eyes. Using his birth date, Mattie calculated his age at twenty years and some odd months, and she jotted down his address, which was in Omaha.

  Stella was writing Employee at Midwife’s on the whiteboard. “I don’t have a name for this woman yet—she’s a lead we got from Ben Greenfield. Apparently she didn’t approve of Tonya’s adoption plan and said so. This might be nothing, but we need to talk to the midwife anyway, and we might as well interview this woman at the same time.”

  McCoy referred to his notepad. “The midwife is Carla Holt, and here’s her number.” He rattled off the digits.

  Mattie made a note of the name and number in her pocket notebook. This would be a good place to start come sunrise.

  And then Stella wrote Reagan Dawson on the board, the name of the ginger-bearded man who’d found Tonya’s body. She added his cronies Cutter Smith and Wyatt Turner to the list below his name.

  They keep turning up, and evidently Stella didn’t clear them after their interview. “What do you think of those guys?” Mattie asked her.

  “They seemed to check in with each other a lot, lots of shifting eye contact. They hadn’t been out hunting yet and they didn’t have a campsite. Dawson said he was walking through the far ranges of the campground looking for a place to car camp when he found the girl. They were also in a hurry to leave. They said they didn’t have camping gear that would hold up to the elements, so they’d called to make a reservation at the Big Sky. I made an appointment for them to come in and talk to me some more here at the station at ten this morning.”

  “They agreed to that?”

  “They did. I figured if they didn’t show up, that would tell us something.”

  “Did you find any other persons of interest there?” McCoy asked.

  “I have a list of everyone who is camping
there and their contact information. It’s a tough situation. No one seemed to notice a vehicle drive into the area and go back to that site. Most of the campers said they were away for the afternoon, hunting up in the foothills.”

  Brody cleared his throat. “Stella and I both talked to Dusty Spencer, the guy you were concerned about, Mattie. Then I followed him back to his RV to take a look inside. He was at the campground all day and didn’t go up to hunt with his buddies. Said he was in charge of cooking dinner, but there didn’t seem to be any evidence of cooking. He had his own vehicle there, so he could have left the campground without taking the RV … that made me wonder if he could’ve left, brought the girl back, and dumped her. Long shot, I know, but still.”

  Stella wrote Dusty Spencer on the whiteboard. “Let’s leave him on the list for follow-up. It’s hard to think someone would dump a body in their own backyard, but it happens. Especially when folks are unfamiliar with the area.”

  A tap came at the door, and Garcia poked his head in. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “Come in, Deputy,” McCoy said.

  Garcia entered, his strides quick and assertive as he approached the table. Mattie had seen Garcia in action when they once broke up a bar fight together, and she knew that although the heavily muscled man might be short in stature, he was mighty. He drew himself up to his full height as he stood beside the table.

  His posture triggered the same response in Mattie, and she straightened too. “We’re looking for a guy from Nebraska who might have tried to sleep in his car in the park Friday night. I wondered if you noticed someone on your rounds,” she said.

  Garcia’s eyes narrowed and he reached for his pocket, drawing out a spiral notebook similar to Mattie’s. He flipped open the pad and read from a page. “Eleven PM, Community Building parking lot, black Jeep Grand Cherokee, Nebraska plates.”

  Mattie recorded the plate number he gave them in her own notebook. “Did you talk to the driver?”

  “No, the car pulled out almost as soon as I drove into the park. Nothing wrong with the vehicle and no reason to stop him. I recorded the plate in case I saw the same car loitering in town later.”

  “Which you didn’t.” Mattie guessed there had been no such luck, or Garcia would’ve filed a report.

  “That’s right. Looked like there were no passengers, so I guessed it was someone driving through town that thought he might catch a few z’s before moving on. Or he’d already had a nap before I moved in on him. I followed him to the highway, and he turned toward Hightower. Didn’t see him again.”

  “Thank you, Deputy,” McCoy said. “Do you have any other information about that particular vehicle?”

  “No, and that was the only car with Nebraska plates that I noticed that night.”

  Brody cleared his throat, his eyes on his screen. “Here it is. That vehicle is registered to Roger Kincaid of Omaha, Nebraska. Here’s an address and phone number.”

  “I’ll call it,” Stella said, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. They waited in silence while she dialed and listened. Mattie felt disappointed when the detective ended up leaving a message saying they were looking for Skylar Kincaid and for someone to call her back.

  “Is that all you need from me?” Garcia asked. “I hear a cup of coffee calling me.”

  “After you get your coffee,” McCoy said, “go out to relieve Frank Sullivan at Deputy Johnson’s crime scene. I’ll take call on patrol for the rest of the night. That’s all, Deputy.”

  Garcia gave a casual salute as he turned and left the room.

  Stella eyed the whiteboard. “That’s all we have on the list so far. Tonya’s father didn’t know of anyone who might have caused Tonya harm.”

  Mattie recalled Eliza’s disapproving words, which seemed inappropriate under the circumstances, and thought she needed to say something. “I don’t think the aunt, Eliza Greenfield, would have necessarily harmed Tonya, but she evidently disapproved of her, and she seemed unhappy about Tonya and her dog staying at her house.”

  “I noticed that too.” Stella raised her arm to write on the board but then lowered it. “I don’t think it warrants adding her as a person of interest. Let’s just keep her in mind as we go. I’ll add her later if it looks like we should.”

  Stella wrote COD for cause of death on the whiteboard, followed by the words Fentanyl Overdose and a question mark. “Dr. McGinnis found four fentanyl patches on Tonya, which supports the conclusion that overdose is what caused her death, but as you know, it hasn’t been confirmed yet by autopsy. Manner of death? Could be accidental overdose—she might have been in pain after giving birth and self-medicated. It’s a prescription med, though usually given to cancer patients or people with intractable pain.”

  I wonder if that’s what Johnson is on right now, Mattie thought.

  Stella continued, “We need to find out if and where she might have obtained the patches. Her father said he had no idea where they might have come from and to his knowledge, Tonya had never used the medication before.”

  Three of the strings that Mattie wanted to tie together dangled in her mind. “I know the John Cobb homicide probably has nothing to do with Tonya, but Hauck notified me that Cobb’s death was caused by fentanyl, and we know Tonya’s death was also caused by fentanyl. We don’t know yet, but I suspect it was fentanyl that we found buried in the cave at the backside of Redstone Ridge.”

  “Oh,” Brody interjected. “I ran a presumptive field test on the contents of that bag before I sent it to the lab for confirmation. It was positive for fentanyl.”

  “Good to know,” Mattie said.

  “We’ve had an increase in deaths by fentanyl across the state during the past year, though none in Timber Creek,” Brody muttered. “Tonya’s would be a first. And then to find a stash of the damn drug that we assume John Cobb hid outside of town—doesn’t seem so far a stretch to make you wonder if they’re connected.”

  As they talked, Stella had continued writing. Under the heading Manner of Death, she’d written Accident, Suicide, and Homicide, all followed by question marks. “Let’s strike off suicide,” she said as she drew a line through the word, “but we have to wait for official word from the ME regarding the other two. Mattie, we need to see if the midwife prescribed fentanyl patches for Tonya, although I can’t imagine that she would.”

  Mattie couldn’t imagine it either, not for a pregnant woman. “Can a midwife even prescribe that type of opioid? You know what I mean—is it within her scope of practice if she’s not a licensed physician?”

  “Good point.” Stella squinted at her as she rubbed the back of her head.

  Mattie could tell Stella felt off her game. It was late, and even a mild concussion could slow her thinking. “And another thought I had about Johnson. It seems odd that he would be attacked on that stretch of road between the campground and Timber Creek on the night a body was found. I can’t help but wonder if Johnson’s case is related to Tonya in some way.”

  Stella nodded. “As in, did he pull over to help a motorist who actually had something to do with Tonya’s death?”

  “Exactly.”

  “We have a lot of questions tonight that I hope will come clear soon,” McCoy said. “And Mattie, one more thing about the John Cobb investigation. Sergeant Madsen arrived with three other dog handlers this evening, and they’re all staying at the Big Sky. They can go out with Detective Hauck tomorrow to continue the search. He was able to bring dogs with the specialties that he wanted.”

  Mattie was relieved at the news, because she already knew her assignment would be to work Tonya’s case. She wished she could join up with the dog teams, but she trusted Jim Madsen to do a thorough job. “They’ll have it all covered.”

  “And Cole and Garrett plan to go with them. I hear you have an area up high that still needs some excavation. If they start low and work their way up, they should be able to reach the high country by midafternoon. Or at least I hope so. There’s no way of knowing how much snow Redsto
ne Ridge got this evening.”

  “We didn’t have time to search the middle area where the trail forks, so they’ll have plenty to do in the morning.”

  McCoy addressed the group. “I think you all need to go home and grab some sleep. Be back here by seven in the morning. By then, we should be able to reach some people and get some answers.”

  McCoy and Brody left the room, and Mattie gathered her things while watching Stella write notes in her spiral pad. At one point, she frowned as she stared at the page for several seconds, apparently searching for what she wanted to remember before jotting it down. Not at all Stella’s typical brisk demeanor, and her face appeared drawn and haggard.

  Mattie waited until Stella looked up at her. “You’re coming to my house to sleep. You can have my bed, and I’ll take the couch.”

  Robo stood and ambled toward the door, where he stopped, staring at Mattie as if willing her to come.

  “Oh no.” Stella winced as she shook her head. “That’s not going to happen. We only have a couple hours, and we’ll sleep better in our own beds.”

  “Okay … Robo and I will stop off at our house, grab a few things, and I’ll be over to sleep on your couch.” Mattie turned to leave.

  “Why? It’s not necessary.”

  “I need to keep an eye on you. I’m not going to let you slip into a coma tonight from a brain bleed.”

  Stella scoffed. “I’m not going to have a brain bleed. You’re overreacting.”

  Mattie opened the door to leave the room. “I’ll see you at your house.”

  Stella released an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll come stay with you. It’s easier for me to make a change than for you and Robo. But I will take you up on your offer to sleep in your bed. I’ve been on the couch before, and it kind of sucks. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Mattie heard Stella mutter, “Stubborn cop,” as she left the room, and it made her smile. It takes one to know one, she thought as she followed Robo back to the staff office to get her coat.