Left Hanging

by Patricia McLinn

  I gestured to acknowledge that and to indicate he should get on with whatever he was driving at.

  “A rope’s a whole different animal from an extension cord. Not to mention you’re about to cut off circulation in Mike’s hands.”

  “Thank you,” breathed Mike.

  It was that male allies thing, and it drove me nuts. Even though I was far from ready for any zinging, and might never be, there was the promise of a definite zing with each of these men. So shouldn’t they be at each other’s throats, instead of going all buddies and teaming up against me?

  “I wanted to simulate the restriction of movement. All you had to do was say it hurt.” I started undoing the knotted extension cord. Maybe I had been overzealous.

  “I did. You said that would have been more motivation for Landry to try to get free. I couldn’t offer rope without going out to my place,” Mike said to Tom, “and she didn’t want to wait.”

  “I wasn’t the only one, Mr. Gung Ho Investigator. You—”

  “I have rope in my truck.”

  Tom was dispatched to get it, while I finished freeing Paycik.

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  He rubbed his arms briskly. “I know you’d have let me loose if I’d really hollered, Elizabeth. I just didn’t want to really holler.”

  His grin twisted, and I responded with a mock severe, “Men.”

  A brief knock announced Tom’s return. “This is old ranch rope. It’d be better if we knew what kind Heather throws. Did your expert say, Elizabeth?”

  “Just a rope.”

  They both looked at me as if I’d blasphemed.

  “First off, like I told you, there’s poly or nylon—they’ve pretty much replaced the old hemp or rawhide,” Mike said. “They’re less changeable in cold or wet, so you know what you’re throwing no matter the weather.”

  “Then come the real choices,” picked up Tom. “Right twist, left twist, treated, untreated, what scant you like, what kind of lay. ’Course that depends a lot on what you’re roping. Softer for calves. Stiffer if you’re heeling.”

  Back to Mike. “And the length. Too long, and you got that extra weight. Too short, and you’re compensating. And there’s the feel. Got to work it, see how it fits your hands, how it throws a loop. ’Course, there’s also braided—”

  “Mostly bull riders,” Tom said.

  “Heather Upton was not riding bulls,” I said. “Can we—”

  “True,” Mike said—to Tom, not me. “The kind of hondo, too.”

  “Hondo?” I repeated. “What on earth?”

  “The eye of the rope, to make the loop,” Mike tossed over his shoulder to me before returning to Tom. “A breakaway hondo would have popped open under the pressure when he was hauled up.”

  “Good point, Mike. She must have been using a regular hondo. That would narrow which of her ropes—”

  “All right, all right,” I said. “If they ever find the rope, you two have convinced me they’ll be able to positively ID it as Heather’s and probably determine when, where, and how that specific chunk of rope was made. But in the meantime, can we do something with this rope, or do we have to wait for a twin of the rope she used—grown from the very same plant or—”

  “Like I said,” Mike started, “poly and nylon have—”

  “—mostly replaced plant ropes. I swear, I’ll study ropes—but after this murderer is found.”

  “Sounds like a trip to King’s is in order,” Tom said.

  “Good idea,” Mike agreed.

  “What’s King’s?”

  “King’s Saddlery and Ropes in Sheridan. It’s a great place for an education on ropes.”

  “Fine. I’ll go, I’ll take a class or—” They chuckled. This male bonding had passed the annoying threshold a while back. “—or whatever. If we can get on with this, forget the delightful nuances of all things rope, and return to trying to find a murderer.”

  “Your rope’s a lot closer to whatever she used than that extension cord,” Mike said to Tom.

  He nodded back. “And without that wad of knots.”

  I had a strong urge to blow them both raspberries, which I do well, having had a great deal of practice in my youth in commenting on my siblings’ doings.

  “There’s no room in here to throw a loop. And I doubt this is a demonstration you’d want in your yard for neighbors to see?” Tom made it a question with one raised brow to me.

  “No thanks. Don’t want Neighborhood Watch after me.”

  “So, we’ll place it like it would have ended up on Landry. You’ve done your turn, Mike. Why don’t you do the tying, and I’ll take the role of Landry.”

  Mike shook his head. “Your rope, you do the roping. Besides, I’ve got experience now.”

  I noticed neither offered to let me do the tying. The wad of knots on the extension cord hadn’t been that big, though Tom was significantly more efficient handling the rope than I had been with the extension cord.

  The rope had a small loop tied at one end—a hondo, I realized. The rest of the rope had already been passed through it, so all Tom had to do once he’d passed that bigger loop over Mike’s shoulders and down to his waist was tug the loose end to tighten it.

  “He couldn’t get out of this?” I asked. “Spread his arms and open the circle wide enough that it drops, and step out of it.”

  Mike shook his head, demonstrating by trying to stretch his arms. “If she uses a leather burner, that would add friction and make it harder for the ropee to release it,” he said.

  “The angle, too.” Tom looked around. “Mike, if you kneel by the door to the kitchen, we might be able to mimic some of that.”

  Mike prepared to kneel without a murmur of protest—despite having bad knees that ended his NFL career.

  “Wait a minute.” I grabbed a cushion from the ratty couch and put it directly under where his knees would hit. “Kneel on this.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Use it, you bull-headed—”

  “Sorry, Mike, I forgot. We’ll switch and I’ll—”

  Before Tom or I finished our protests, Mike was down, but at least he was on the cushion. “This doesn’t bother them much.”

  “All those knee surgeries and this doesn’t—”

  “Elizabeth, if you’d move out of the way.” Burrell’s interruption was a barely veiled order to shut up and quit lecturing Mike.

  I moved. I shut up.

  Tom passed the rope coil over the open kitchen door, then disappeared behind it. I followed. He was tying off the rope around a chunky leg of the kitchen table. We returned to the living room.

  “Can you move?” Tom asked Mike.

  “Not much. Going over the door and being this low made it harder. Would have been even more so going over that beam.” As he spoke, he worked his shoulders forward and back, tried to pull out one arm, then the other.

  “Is that loosening the rope?” I asked.

  “Some.” He frowned in concentration. “Very little.”

  “Enough to get out?”

  “Not any time soon.”

  “Landry did it somehow, because the rope went from his middle to his neck.”

  “Mike can’t reach the hondo. If Keith Landry could, that would have helped,” Tom said.

  “That’s an if and a could. Not the strongest material to work with,” I said.

  Mike stopped trying to pull his arms up, instead trying to slide his right elbow to the middle of his back. His motion had his shoulder rotating in a way shoulders should not rotate. “Mike, you’ll pull something out of its socket if you don’t—”

  “Almost . . . there . . . almost . . . Got it!”

  I’d been watching his elbow and shoulder. I hadn’t noticed the tips of his fingers sl
ide inside his front jeans pocket, scissoring his phone out. Now he manipulated it into his palm and pressed a number.

  “Brilliant, Mike—his phone. Of—” I was interrupted by my phone ringing.

  Mike grinned. “No need to answer. Just demonstrating.”

  “Some guys keep their phone clipped to their belt,” Tom said. “If Keith Landry did, that would have made it easier.”

  “Much easier,” Mike said. “Unless he had a lot of time to work free, the phone might answer the issue of how the rope got loose. Because it had to be loosened to get from his waist to his neck.”

  “A friend?” Tom said. He put a hand between Mike’s back and the rope and tugged. It loosened the loop. Mike started to maneuver it toward his shoulders. “Not yet, Mike. Leave it where it was.”

  As soon as Mike complied, Tom went around the door, and the rope went taut again.

  Tom came back to our side of the door. “Didn’t take much.”

  “The cell phone records,” I said. “We have to get a look at those records—the complete records.”

  Tom said, “You’re thinking early calls could have been made by Landry. At least one, the call Heather heard when he arranged to meet someone before he spotted her—”

  “If she’s telling the truth,” Mike inserted.

  “—or, if he got to his phone the way Mike did, then a call to someone asking for help after Heather left.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Whoever he calls arrives, loosens the rope, and Landry starts to pull it up to get free.”

  “But his friend has left the rope over the beam and at the right moment, yanks it tight,” Tom picked up. “The friend stands in front of Landry, holding the end of the rope. He’d see exactly when to do it. As soon as it was tight, Landry didn’t have a chance.”

  We were silent, all envisioning the scene, I suspected.

  “You think a woman could have done it?” Mike asked Tom.

  “Hard to know for sure based on this experiment, but a strong woman, used to ranching . . . I’d think so.”

  “Especially one fueled by anger, adrenaline, or both,” I said. “There’s one problem—at least one. We don’t know how Landry ended up in the bull pen.”

  “I’ve got an idea about that,” Mike said. “Tom, go back in the kitchen, give me a count of three, and give the rope a good, hard pull.”

  “Why? What—”

  “Just watch, Elizabeth,” Mike ordered.

  Tom counted. On Three the rope went taut, hauling Mike up several inches.

  He tucked his legs like for a cannonball into a pool. For three seconds he swung, held only by the rope around his middle. The rope eased, and he came back to the floor.

  “Did you see that, Elizabeth? Did you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  Tom came around the door. “See what?”

  “He swung. Mostly sideways.”

  “The angle across the beam,” Mike said. He stood, and Tom loosened the rope. “Not only was Landry yanked off his feet, but he was yanked sideways. Over the bull pen.”

  “Would it get him over the top rail?” I asked.

  “It could take some doing,” Mike acknowledged. “The height of the beam would make a difference. And the strength of the person pulling.”

  I brought a chair over, stood on it and looked at the top of the door. Faint marks ran perpendicular to the door’s face. A deeper groove cut into the edges at an angle from when Mike let the rope take his full weight.

  “Grooves. Similar to what Lloyd described to you, Mike.” I removed a chip of paint loosened by the experiment and shook my head. “The sacrifices I make.”

  “All in the interests of justice,” Mike said.

  “And at the expense of my security deposit.”

  “Good lord, you paid a security deposit on this place?”

  My cell and the landline rang almost simultaneously. I answered when I saw it was Audrey from KWMT. By habit I checked my watch—four twenty-seven. Before I finished hello, she shouted, “He’s short! Thurston. He’s short. He says a minute, and Warren can fill in on the weather. But I’ve looked at it twice, and it’s five fifteen short. Five-frigging-fifteen! Maybe more. And he won’t do—”

  As the wail continued in my ear, I covered the phone’s mouthpiece and said, “Problem at the station. Paycik and I have to go right now.”

  “—anything about it. And there’s nothing from yesterday I can grab because—”

  “Hole,” I said to Mike’s questioning look. “Five fifteen.”

  “Holy shit!” He rustled through notes on the coffee table for his keys.

  “—it was all him, and this is all him, and he won’t approve using anything from the feed, and oh, my God, we’re going to have six minutes of dead air, even if Warren gives the weather from around the entire fucking globe!”

  “Audrey, calm down. And you can stop calling my other number now.”

  “Oh. Right. But five-fucking-fifteen! He won’t listen. Just walks away. How will we ever—?”

  “We’ll be right there. Paycik’s here. He can do something. And I have ‘Helping Outs’ in the can.”

  “I know. I checked, but the one booked for first says it’s not done.”

  “I can get it done in time. And Audrey, you’re the producer. You are the producer.”

  She gulped in two shaky breaths. “Okay. I’ll be okay.”

  “Good. We’re on our way.”

  All three of us were out the door and down the steps before I turned to Tom. “We forgot. You came to tell us something.”

  “It’ll hold. Go fix your hole.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  WE DID. BY THE skin of our teeth. And with no help from Thurston Fine.

  He insisted the time would be fine, and Audrey was panicking. Kept insisting it, despite the numbers consistently coming in at more than six minutes short. Stubbornly insisted on it with another refusal to approve Audrey or Mike using anything from the network feed. Went on insisting it while I gave the Gift Card Burglars package a lick and a promise, and Mike knocked together a sports report.

  Serenely insisted on it, until the instant when he took back the toss from Warren Fisk after the shortened weather segment allotted under the Thurston Fine regime . . . and saw he had nearly seven minutes of airtime left.

  He blanked. Utterly. Completely. Potentially fatally.

  Temptation to let him stew in his own hubris rose. Professional instincts won out. I slid into the seat Jerry, who served as both floor director and cameraman, had set up over Fine’s protest, and launched into my solo lead-in.

  The piece looked better than I had any right to hope it would. With Fine still apparently comatose, I did the wrap-up I’d written for him and ad-libbed a toss to Mike for his teaser.

  In the commercial break before the meat of Mike’s report, I eyeballed Thurston. He blinked twice. Presumably he was still in there.

  “Can he do the close?” came Audrey’s disembodied voice.

  Jerry and Mike looked at me. I looked at the control booth and said, “Ask him.”

  After a pause came a tentative, “Thurston, can you do the close?”

  Nothing.

  “Elizabeth, is he conscious?” Jerry asked.

  Now on the camera side of the anchor desk, I went close and bent to look into his face.

  I don’t know what came over me. I reached across the desk, grabbed his suit where one lapel crossed the other and yanked him forward until his ribs must have connected with the desk, because he stopped abruptly.

  “Thurston! You are doing this close, you hear me. You will sign off this show like a professional, or you sitting here like an idiot will go viral faster than you can say former anchorman.”

  “Coming back, in five,
four—”

  “He’ll do it.” I wasn’t sure if it was a prediction or a threat.

  “—three, two, one.”

  Mike came through beautifully. He turned it back to Fine with only enough time for the simplest of sign offs.

  We held our breaths as one second went by and a second started—a lifetime in live TV.

  “That’s all from KWMT-TV news until your updated report at ten p.m. I’m Thurston Fine, saying I’ll see you then.”

  “And we’re clear.”

  Fine walked off the set without once looking at anyone.

  As soon as the set door closed behind him, we saw a pantomime of jubilation through the window of the control room.

  WE ALL TROOPED out to a hurried but giddy dinner at Hamburger Heaven. All except Thurston and one poor soul left to man the phones.

  Surviving near-catastrophe is a rite of passage for any newsroom with pretensions to being a true working news unit. Even those who had not been here tonight would catch the reflected glow of overcoming the odds.

  Back at KWMT, Audrey gave instructions for the late news with a new crispness. She said she was covered for the half-hour, which would include the shorter version of the package I’d prepared, and we didn’t need to stay. She thanked us again and strode away with purpose.

  “A producer is born,” Mike said under his breath.

  Jennifer hurried up, clutching her laptop to her chest. “Elizabeth, are you leaving?”

  “I guess so.” I gave Mike a questioning look, but he didn’t respond.

  “Can I come to your house to do the next part of . . . you-know-what?” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “While we were at dinner, Fine asked Dale how to track employees’ Internet searches. It wouldn’t matter even if Dale told him and Fine managed it, because I’m not on the station’s system, but it’s . . . creepy. And I can’t go home because Mom’s got bunco, and even with headphones I can’t shut them out. Those women are loud.”

  “Sure. What about you, Mike? We’ll go over—”