Left Hanging

by Patricia McLinn

  She shrugged at each of my questions. “I found her right before you came in. I’ll keep digging.”

  “Thanks, Jennifer. Something else . . . I’ve done the basic searches, but do you have other suggestions for finding someone? With a last name like Osterspeigel, you’d think I could find her.”

  She turned. “Sonja Osterspeigel?”

  How on earth . . .? “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “She was in my homeroom in eighth grade. We keep in touch.”

  “Do you have her phone number?”

  “No, but I can IM her and ask for it. Want me to?”

  “Yes. See if there’s a time I can talk to her this evening.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll let you know when I hear back.”

  Mike smirked at me and said under his breath, “The pleasures of small-town journalism.”

  MOST TABLES AT the Haber House Hotel’s dining room were empty when we arrived.

  The Haber House celebrated its status as a historic hotel with quantities of red plush that seemed more in keeping with a historic bordello. But the food was several steps above Hamburger Heaven, and the chocolate pie was worthy of acclaim. Though not after an Aunt Gee meal.

  While I contemplated how to find out which server was the Kelly that Tom had mentioned this morning, Mike applied his smile to the hostess and had the answer. Kelly was the black-haired young woman heading out a side door.

  We were slowed by people exchanging greetings with Mike. I was antsy she’d be gone, but when he opened the door onto a closet-sized space nearly surrounded by brick walls, she eyed us through cigarette smoke and heavy eye makeup. She might have given off a goth vibe, if she hadn’t been wearing a white blouse and a frilled red apron with black slacks.

  “Customers aren’t supposed to be out here. Employees only.”

  “We’d like to talk to you a few minutes,” Mike said with a smile. “Hope you can help us out with something.”

  For the first time, we encountered a female who did not appear entranced with the prospect of helping Michael Paycik with anything and everything.

  “I’m on break.” She took a last, deep drag on the cigarette, dropped it to the ground, and stepped on it at the same time she pulled out a pack of gum. “Hate this crap, but tips go to hell if your breath smells like smoke.”

  Ah. That book on dogs I’d read might not have been a waste of time after all. We’d established Kelly was not Paycik-motivated, but adding in what Tom had said, she just might be tip-motivated.

  “We realize we’re taking your time. We’ll compensate you for what you’re losing in tips.” I ignored that she’d have missed out on tips regardless, since she was on a cigarette break.

  She ignored that piece of logic, too. “Yeah?”

  “Yes. That is if you can give us information about the lunch Wednesday that included Keith Landry, the rodeo contractor who was killed.” She continued to look blankly at me, so I added, “The lunch the sheriff’s department asked you about?”

  “Oh, yeah. You don’t want to know like what the people ate or anything, do you, because that was days ago, and about a million tables ago. I have no—”

  “Not what they ate. But did you hear what they said?”

  “No. Deputy asked that, too, especially if there’d been any yelling. That I would’ve remembered, especially considering all the yelling that guy did at dinner when the manager told him to get out. But there wasn’t anything exciting about the lunch. Like I told that deputy, I was too busy doing my job and avoiding that dead guy’s roving hands. Not that he was the dead guy then. Though I wouldn’t have minded if he had been, because his hands wouldn’t have been all over. And I wasn’t the only one. That girly-girl could’ve used a fly swatter to keep his hand off her leg. The boyfriend would’ve used a shotgun if there’d been one handy.”

  “How do you know if you don’t remember what they said?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Like you have to memorize words to get the atmosphere. You gotta be good at reading people to get good tips. Like reading body language shit. Know when to leave ’em alone, when to ask if they want more. I’m good. I get great tips.”

  “So, what was the atmosphere?”

  “Nasty. Real, real nasty. Like a big pot of nasty stew.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  She cracked her gum and stared at the side of the building. “Girly-girl was pissed at Boyfriend, but as the lunch went on, she was even more grossed out by Mr. Hands. When he wasn’t trying to feel me or Girly-girl up, Mr. Hands was trying to get Boyfriend to do something, and getting fed up with Boyfriend not toeing the line.

  “That was all said hush-hush between the two of them. No, don’t ask. I didn’t hear any of it, and besides, I’d’ve forgotten it along with the rest by now.” She frowned slightly. “Wasn’t clear if Boyfriend was dense or being a Boy Scout.”

  “How about the other man at the table?” Mike asked.

  “Oh, yeah, Mr. Double-Double-and-Keep-Em-Coming. He was trying to drown something that was eating at him. And from a couple looks Mr. Hands sent that way, he was the one doing the chewing, and ready for his next big bite. Mr. Hands was no slouch on the double-doubles, either, by the way. Boyfriend was split between worried and disgusted with Mr. Double-Double. Seemed like he thought he was on his own to handle Mr. Hands.”

  We asked a few more questions, but it was clear these impressions were all she had.

  I forked over a twenty, got a smile and a blast of wintergreen riding on a wave of cigarette smoke.

  WE SAT IN THE hovel’s driveway in Mike’s four-wheel-drive and went over what we had. His vehicle was considerably more comfortable than the couch inside.

  After a pause, I summed up, “It could be anyone we’ve talked about. And it’s not impossible it’s someone we know nothing about.”

  “Yup. And the rodeo folks will scatter when the Fourth of July Rodeo ends eight days from now. Unless it’s canceled, then they go any minute. What do we do?”

  “Go back to the beginning to find more inconsistencies. Hope we scrounge up more leads to follow. Hope Jenny—”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Damn, I was doing so well, too. Hope Jennifer comes through. And hope my law enforcement source has something wonderful for us.”

  “That’s a lot of hoping.”

  I agreed and said good-night.

  ONE HOPE WAS fulfilled. Jennifer texted me Sonja’s phone number.

  “Hi, Sonja, this is E.M. Danniher with—”

  “Oh, hi! Jen said you couldn’t find me because of the name.” She giggled. She did that a lot in the next forty-five minutes. This, the first giggle, was for the fact that she’d changed her name to her step-father’s last name of Davidson when her mother remarried last year. “Because, really, Osterspeigel? Do you have any idea how many ways people mess up a name like that?”

  I did after she spent five minutes telling me.

  I broke in to ask—to try to ask—about her experience as rodeo queen. I had to break in to that answer to say I’d understood she had a relationship during her reign as rodeo queen.

  She giggled. Then she sighed. Then she told me her version of what Penny Czylinski had conveyed in a few succinct sentences.

  A circuit rodeo cowboy whose name meant nothing to me (but which I noted to check with Mike or Diana), had swept her off her feet two days before the rodeo started. “The best sex ever. I mean, ever,” she said, and giggled. It had continued as an intense, whirlwind relationship until immediately after the rodeo. She had then heard from a third party, a jealous bitch of a third party, whose expectations of being rodeo queen had been laughable, that her cowboy had told others he intended to leave town without a word of farewell.

  She had rushed to his camper . . . it was gone.

 
She’d been sitting in her truck by the empty spot, bawling over the tarnishment of her crown—her phrase—when the passenger door opened and Keith Landry got in, gathered her in a hug, and offered her the solace her lacerated heart required—again, her phrase.

  Then ensued a period of six days, spent mostly in a motel room. To my relief, she did not describe these days or the sex, other than to say that was what had occupied them.

  Until the evening Landry left to get takeout, he’d said, but he’d been gone an awfully long time—and Sonja received a phone call. The same jealous bitch of a third party informed Sonja that Landry was at the Kicking Cowboy talking about her.

  Sonja had arrived at the Kicking Cowboy in a swirl of righteous anger. There’d been shouting. There’d been glass breakage. There’d been a slap. There’d been remonstrations from Badger. There’d been a law enforcement escort out for her.

  “I was so young.” She giggled. “And such a fool.”

  I thanked her. She giggled. I told her Landry had died. She said she’d heard, then giggled, though it sounded nervous. She said to call back if I needed anything more. And giggled.

  I went out, sat on the back steps to look at the light-pricked expanse of sky over my head and to listen—not to silence, because there were the usual night sounds of trees and animals moving, two voices, a car-door closing at a distance. But no giggling.

  I spotted Shadow living up to his name as he slipped around in the darkest patches, yet somehow giving me the sense he was keeping me company. Maybe it was wish fulfillment, but I don’t think so.

  Sunday ended, and I had not gone to the Sherman Supermarket once.

  Penny Czylinski is off on Sundays and Mondays.

  DAY FIVE – MONDAY

  The phone on my desk rang as I walked into the KWMT newsroom Monday morning.

  The Denver contact had come through, getting approval for me to use their video. We finalized arrangements, including the courtesy super that credited his station.

  “Oh, one last thing—that rodeo contractor you asked about?” he said. “Turns out a rodeo committee nearby was in deep trouble because the new contractor they’d hired evaporated at nearly the last minute, and your guy mounted a rescue mission.”

  That was not the last thing in our conversation, considering the similarity to Sherman’s situation. I had dozens of questions. He only had answers to two—the town’s name and a possible contact.

  It was intriguing, but I forced myself not to jump to a conclusion, because that was a sure way to prematurely close mental doors.

  In a rendition of the time-honored Pass the Reporter game, the possible contact sent me to someone else, who in turn referred me to the committee chair. I had partially dialed the number for the committee chair when my cell rang.

  It was Dex.

  I stopped dialing, told Dex to hold on a minute, and headed outside. No way was I talking to him inside the KWMT newsroom.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “THEY FOUND FIBERS,” Dex said as soon as I reached the parking lot and told him to go ahead. The sun was beating down on my head. I should have worn a hat. And a vat of sunblock.

  “Fibers from somebody’s clothes?”

  “No. Fibers that could be consistent with the appearance of hanging.”

  I had a vivid image of the wooden beam that had so interested the deputies Saturday. “He was hanged, and that’s what caused the ligature marks.”

  “Fibers were found that could be—”

  “Fine, fine. Consistent with the appearance of hanging. So, fibers were around his neck.”

  “The area of the neck that would be consistent with hanging was too compromised. But fibers were found inside his collar and on his chest.”

  “But not around his neck? Then how would fibers get on his chest and inside his collar, and remain there to be found?”

  “Very good, Danny. They could be expected to come from whatever was used to hang him, both as he was yanked to a hanging position and during a period of struggle, which would be expected. That friction would cause fibers to detach. Fibers also would have been around the neck initially, but, since that area was exposed, those fibers would have been dispersed by the bulls. Fibers that slipped inside the front and back of his collar, however, were afforded more protection, being caught between his clothing and his body.”

  Remembering how little protection his clothing had provided parts of his body, I said, “Were there many fibers left?”

  “One can be enough,” Dex said. “And there were more than that, because they were protected by the multiple layers of fabric. The collar and placket were less disturbed than areas covered by a single layer of fabric.”

  Compromised. Dispersed. Disturbed. Somehow the euphemisms were worse than the fact.

  “They’re trying to identify the fibers?”

  “Yes, indeed. Looking first for class characteristics, then individual characteristics for a specific identity.”

  “Talking generally—” At his disapproving sound, I amended it to, “For the layperson, these fibers would be consistent with rope?”

  “In the broadest, least useful terms, yes.”

  “Thank you, Dex.” And I meant it, because I knew it pained him to talk in such terms. “Anything else? The autopsy—”

  “Showed compression of the carotid arteries that is consistent with hanging.”

  I whistled soft and short. Score one for Richard. Actually, score a couple thousand for him. If this evidence hadn’t been found to back his hunch, he would have been hip deep in agricultural byproducts for a very long time when the big shots returned.

  “Could it be suicide?”

  “Marks from the knot are wrong to be consistent with most suicides, and that region was not as severely compromised.”

  “Okay, Dex, I hear it.”

  “Hear what?”

  “That smug tone that says you’ve got something you know you’ll enjoy telling me. Spill it.”

  “Your deceased was strung up.”

  “Strung up? Is that the scientific term?”

  “It fits,” he said primly. “Either he stood still in that pen of bulls and let someone slip a lasso over his head, then let himself be strung up—”

  “You like saying that, don’t you?”

  “It sounds so Western. Or,” he picked up, “someone very good with a rope tossed it so it went over that beam—”

  “Wait a minute. How do you know about the beam?”

  “I’ve seen the crime scene photos, of course.”

  “The guy—your contact—sent them to you?”

  “Professional courtesy.”

  “Since it’s not an FBI case, you could send them to me and—”

  “Oh, no. That would be a slap in the face to a colleague who shared them with me.”

  I knew he wouldn’t budge on that.

  “As I was saying,” he resumed, “either he let someone put what was in essence a noose around his neck then toss the loose end of the rope over the beam, or someone very good with a rope tossed a looped rope over that beam in such a way that it came down around his neck. Either way, the person used the beam to yank him off his feet.”

  “But when Landry was found, there was no rope.” I’d have to triple check with Jenks, but I hadn’t seen one in the footage, and no one had mentioned a rope.

  “Nevertheless, a rope, or similar implement, was used. A definitive quantity of fibers was found.”

  “That throw would be pretty tricky, wouldn’t it?” Like champion-caliber roping. Unless, as Dex had said, the roper lassoed Landry first and then got the rope over the beam. No. Landry would have realized something was up and fought. “Somebody threw a rope over the beam and around a human head with all those bulls trampling around there?”

 
“It was only after he was dead that he was dropped and the bulls did damage,” he said without much interest.

  He wouldn’t dismiss those bulls so readily if he’d seen them up close. Or, perhaps, that aspect wasn’t geeky enough for him.

  He added credence to my second conjecture when he added, “But you’re not asking the most interesting question, Danny.”

  “I give. What’s the most interesting question?”

  “Was he dead or alive when he was roped and strung up?”

  “That is an interesting question,” I conceded. “Which was he?”

  “They don’t know yet.”

  “Dex!”

  “I said it was the most interesting question, not the most interesting answer. It’s quite fortunate they found evidence of the ligature considering the condition of the body, that he appears not to have been suspended for long, and the fact that he was—”

  “Strung up,” we concluded together.

  “Danny, there’s something else quite interesting.”

  “Oh?” I asked cautiously. Dex’s interesting often was other people’s disgusting.

  “As one would expect, there are rope marks on the beam.”

  “From when he was strung up.”

  “Those, yes. Also others. The marks from the hanging are angled and quite deep. There are other, as yet unexplained marks, at a 90 degree angle to the beam and not as deep.”

  “Made before or after the, ah, fatal marks?”

  “That has not been determined. Further tests will be required.”

  “Dex . . .” I closed my eyes. Sometimes, I swear, this mild, rather sweet scientist was the biggest tease on the planet.

  I CALLED MIKE inside KWMT and told him to meet me outside. While I waited, I called Jenks, on assignment covering the opening of a new exhibit at the local museum, footage that wouldn’t air unless Fine unexpectedly lifted his all-Thurston edict.

  “No rope,” Jenks said in response to my question.

  “Positive?”

  “Positive. Unless it was shredded.”