by Mike Markel
A half-dozen roughnecks started walking toward the construction trailer where we were heading. Ryan walked up one of them, a burly guy whose full beard was encrusted with ice. “Can you point me to the foreman?”
He pointed to the trailer. “Jim Doering. In there.”
I thanked him and we walked up the wooden steps to the trailer. I knocked.
“Come,” we heard from inside. We walked in, wiped our feet on the rubber mat just inside the doorway, and I introduced us. “Can we have a few minutes with Bill Rossman?”
“As long as you need. We could be down for an hour, maybe more.”
“Could you point him out to us?” I said.
Doering stood and walked over to the window. He pointed. “The young guy over there. With the goatee.”
Ryan said, “Bill didn’t ask for any time off? You know, about his father?”
Doering shook his head and walked back to his desk. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
“Why do you think that is?” I said.
“If he was any other guy on my crew, I’d say he doesn’t want to lose the pay. But Bill? No idea.”
“So he doesn’t talk to you,” Ryan said.
“Far as I can tell, doesn’t talk to anyone.”
I thanked him and we went back out into the sleet. The wind was picking up, the sleet coming in sideways and stinging my face. We caught up with Bill. I told him who we were. “Is there somewhere we can talk for a couple minutes? Out of the weather?”
He nodded and started to walk toward the derrick. He led us into the base of the unit, a little enclosure, open at the sides but with a steel roof and floor. The space was packed with control panels for all the electronics. Another guy came in and flipped some switches to shut down the generator powering the main drill rig. Except for the clanging of chains and the whooshing of some orange water still flowing into the pit twenty yards away, it was finally quiet enough for us to hear the sleet drumming on the steel roof.
The guy who had shut down the generator made some notes on a clipboard. He looked at Ryan in his suit and black wool overcoat, then he glanced at me. He gave us an official nod, as if we were from corporate, or maybe the government.
“First, Bill,” I said, after the other roughneck left the little room, “we want to say we’re very sorry for your loss. We’re the lead detectives on the case. Our chief knew your dad, and he’s promised us every resource we need to solve it.”
Bill Rossman nodded again. He still hadn’t said a word. His dark brown eyes, almost black, looked at me intently, like he was trying to figure out what we really wanted. Then he turned to Ryan and looked at him for a long moment, too. Apparently, he wasn’t automatically buying the idea we wanted to catch whoever killed his father. Or maybe he wasn’t confident we’d succeed.
“Tell us about why you work out here.” My arm swept across the room. “Are you learning the business to take over for your father?”
“I have no idea what my father’s plans for me were. He wasn’t real hands-on. I work here because I like it.” Bill was a little over six feet, with his father’s broad shoulders but no fat on him.
“What do you like about it?”
“It’s physical. No games, no lies. Spin the bit fast enough, it’s going to crack the shale.”
“Unless the bit breaks,” I said.
He rewarded me with a hint of a smile. “That can happen.” Then he started to take off his heavy, rubber-coated gloves. His hands were cracked and red. He clenched and unclenched his fists slowly, as if he was trying to get the blood flowing back into his fingers.
“Can you tell us why you aren’t back in Rawlings with Florence?”
He tilted his head, like that was an odd question. “I don’t think she needs me there.” He paused. “She’ll be fine. She has friends.”
“What do you mean? You’re family.”
“Not really. Not blood.” He slid his gloves into the big pockets of his muddy orange overalls, then looked up at me. “She has plenty of money, she looks good. She’ll be fine.”
“Are you coming back to Rawlings, I mean, for your father’s service?”
“I’ve talked with Aunt Cheryl. She’ll keep me informed of that.”
“That’s Cheryl Garrity?”
This time Bill just stared at me, like it was a dumb question. Like, of course, everyone knows that when Bill Rossman says “Aunt Cheryl,” he’s referring to Cheryl Garrity, the director of operations for his dad’s company. Because it’s impossible that there could be two women named Cheryl in Montana. And therefore I should assume that Aunt Cheryl is Cheryl Garrity so as not to waste his time. And if it turns out we assume there’s only one Cheryl but there’s really two and therefore we don’t figure out who killed this guy’s damn father, well, that’s okay, we’ll just suspend the lead detective, the moron named Karen Seagate, who’s standing here with slush soaking through her shoes and one foot’s already numb and the other one’s tingling. I turned to my partner.
Ryan said, “Tell us about that arrest last year. You know, that fight you got into?”
“I’d been drinking. I really have no memory of that.”
“You don’t even remember what the fight was about?” Ryan stepped a little closer to Bill Rossman.
Rossman didn’t move. “I don’t remember what it was about. Or who it was with.”
“His name was Kirk Hendrickson,” Ryan said. He and Bill Rossman were standing about a foot apart.
“If you say so.” The tone wasn’t obnoxious. Just matter-of-fact.
“Can you tell us where you were Sunday night?”
“I was in town here somewhere. Not exactly sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was with a girl, at her place.”
“Can you give us her name?”
“Don’t know her name.”
“Address?”
He just smiled.
“Well, Mr. Rossman,” I said. “Again, we’re sorry for your loss.” I handed him my card. “You get in touch with me—anytime—with information. Anything at all.”
He took the card, turned, and left the small metal room underneath the derrick.
I put up my collar and followed Ryan out to the Charger. I got in and turned it over as he started working on the windshield again.
“Did you pull that kind of shit when you were single?” I said when Ryan got in the cruiser.
He was brushing the sleet off the sleeves of his overcoat. He stopped, furrowed his brow, and turned to me. “Exactly what kind of shit are you referring to, Karen?”
“The manly man working with his hands because it’s real?”
He laughed. “No, that doesn’t work for Mormons.”
“How’s that?”
He put on a seductive voice. “‘I want to serve the Lord and the Church and my family.’ Is that turning you on?”
“I see.” I put my hands over the vent, which was pumping out the hot air. “So is Billy Boy completely full of crap, or just mostly?”
“I think his roommate figured him out pretty well.”
“Him being all about beer and pussy?”
“I believe him about being out with some girl Sunday night—and not even knowing her name.” Ryan adjusted the vent on his side of the dash. “I mean, it’s plausible. There’s no shortage of bars here in Marshall, and no shortage of girls looking for guys with a lot of time on their hands and money in their jeans.”
“Now that you mention it,” I said, “it’s a pretty good line of bullshit he was peddling. If the girl sees herself as deep, then he’s her soulmate and he gets laid. If she isn’t into that shit, she knows he’s got three hundred bucks and he gets laid anyway.”
“Works either way,” Ryan said.
“But we still don’t know where he was Sunday night.”
“Very true. He might have taken a drive to Rawlings to stab his father.”
“The father who wasn’t very hands-on,” I said.
“
You notice his step-mother isn’t family—”
“But Aunt Cheryl apparently is?” I shook my head. “Yes, I did notice that.”
“You believe him that he doesn’t remember getting arrested?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “After twenty or thirty collars, you start to forget some of the early ones. But a potential felony? Earlier this year? You remember that one.”
“Even if you were drunk?” Ryan said.
“Sitting on a wooden bench in Holding for eight or ten hours clears your head.”
Ryan was writing in his notebook. “We’re going to want to learn a little more about Kirk Hendrickson.”
“Yeah, but if it turns out Bill was telling the truth—that the fight was just about beer and pussy—we don’t know one fucking thing more about Bill Rossman than we did this morning.”
“We just keep spinning the bit, breaking the shale.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I want to do.” I leaned against the door and lifted my right leg up and rested my wet shoe on the vent. “Can we go home?”
“You want to get some sensible shoes and come back again?”
“Yes,” I said. “Because it’s so lovely here.”
“We should interview Mark Middleton.”
“Ah, shit.” I’d forgotten. “The guy who denies shooting up the Rossman equipment?”
“Yes, that Mark Middleton.”
“You know where he lives?”
Ryan pointed to the laptop. “I know where everybody lives.”
Chapter 13
We got back on 12, took it two miles east, then turned off onto Dry Creek Road, a one lane, unpaved, two ruts with grass growing between them, which led us almost a mile north to Mark Middleton’s spread. A metal sign, swaying in the sleet and wind, said it was the Double M Ranch.
At the end of a hundred-yard drive sat a modest one-story brick house with black shutters, probably from the fifties or sixties. Off to the side were a big unpainted barn and a couple of small outbuildings and tarp-covered hay-storage units.
White plastic fencing made to look like wooden post-and-rail rimmed the buildings. I stopped at the gate. Ryan got out and opened it, then we drove in toward the house. Off to the left we could see into the barn. I spotted a flatbed pickup for hauling hay, a couple of livestock trailers, a baler, and an ATV, all of them shiny and new, all of them white.
“Look at that.” Ryan pointed off into the distance, west of the house.
“I can’t see anything.” All of a sudden a flare of burning gas lit up a drilling rig. I heard the hissing sound coming in over the tapping of the sleet. Nearby were a couple of horse-head jacks, twenty- or thirty-feet tall, the horse heads bobbing up and down slow and steady.
The roof on the Middleton house extended out over a concrete patio that ran the width of the house. On the patio was a set of wrought-iron chairs and a table, all protected by plastic covers cinched tight at the bottom.
I knocked on the door. A thin curtain covering the window in the door slid aside for a moment, revealing a lined and leathery face of an older man. The door opened.
“Mark Middleton?” I said.
He was about sixty, wearing overalls and a blue work shirt. His baseball hat said Kawasaki. In his right hand, pointed at me, was a .45.
“Who are you?” His mouth was twisted into a scowl as he looked first at me and then at my partner. Scanning Ryan from top to bottom—the black topcoat, white button-down, and blue silk tie with a subtle paisley pattern—Middleton shook his head in disgust.
As I reached into my bag to pull out my shield, Middleton stepped back, wary, and raised his pistol. “My name is Karen Seagate. This is my partner, Ryan Miner. We’re police detectives from Rawlings.”
He looked puzzled. “Rawlings?”
“That’s right, Mr. Middleton.”
“What do you want?”
“Mr. Middleton,” I said, holding up my palms, “do you think you could put the pistol down? We’re hoping you can help us with a case we’re working on.”
“Let them in, Mark.” It was a woman’s voice from inside the house. “Where are your manners?”
Middleton didn’t say anything as he stepped aside. Ryan and I brushed some of the sleet off our shoulders and sleeves and walked inside the kitchen. I smelled tomato soup and something baking.
“My wife, Doris,” Middleton said, still scowling.
Doris Middleton remained seated at a worn wooden country table. There were four battered wood chairs with navy cloth cushions tied to the seats and the backs. Identical food at the two places: a bowl of tomato soup, a sandwich, and a cup of coffee. Along the wall behind the table were stainless-steel appliances. I couldn’t read a name on them, but they looked really nice, really new.
“We’re sorry to interrupt your lunch, Mr. Middleton.” I turned to her. “Mrs. Middleton. We’re just out here for a little bit and wanted to talk with you for a couple of minutes.”
“Of course,” Doris Middleton said. “Please sit down.”
“Thank you.” We left our coats on and took the two other chairs at the dining table.
“You’ll have to excuse my husband.” Doris Middleton took a sip of her coffee. “He thought you were from the oil company.”
“Rossman Mining?”
“Yes,” she said. “We’re in the middle of a conflict with them.”
“We read a little about that.”
“But if you’ve driven all the way from Rawlings, I imagine you’re not here to talk about vandalism.”
“You’re right, Mrs. Middleton.” I nodded. “We’re here because of the murder of Lee Rossman.”
Doris Middleton took a sip of her soup. “Excuse me. I’m going to heat this up.” She stood and walked over to a big microwave above the matching stove. She put the soup inside, hit a few buttons, and gave me a gentle smile as the machine hummed softly. A slim woman of sixty with perfect posture, she wore tailored corduroy slacks and a cashmere sweater over a simple button-front blouse. Her coiffed hair, a well-dyed auburn, was cut short. “Yes, we read about that.” The microwave dinged, and she retrieved her soup. She concentrated on carrying the bowl back to the table, and then sat down and took another sip. “Oh, that’s much better.” She looked up at me. “How can we help?”
“We’re interviewing a few people from Rossman Mining, and we were hoping, with your ties to the ranching community, you might be able to help us identify others we should interview.”
Mark Middleton cleared his throat loudly, as if to comment on what I’d just said. “How’d he die?”
I turned to him. “He was stabbed.”
“I’m surprised.”
“Why is that?” I said.
“Surprised anyone would be willing to get that close to him.”
“Had you ever met Mr. Rossman, Mr. Middleton?”
He shook his head. “The son of a bitch never took the time to come out here to talk to any of us. Not once.”
“You invited him?”
“Of course I did.” He barked it out, like I ought to have known it. “Many times.”
“He never got back to you?”
“Oh, he got back to us. He sent out the salesman. The same bastard who talked us into signing those leases.” He cleared his throat. “It was like he was rubbing our noses in it. First we’re going to take advantage of you. Then, when you finally realize what just happened and you want to know what we’re going to do about it, we’ll send the salesman back. The same damn salesman. That’s what we think of you.”
“Did the company go back on its contract?”
“I’ll show you what the company did.” He stood up slowly and walked over to the sink. He turned on the tap and looked at me. “Are you paying attention?” He picked up a butane lighter sitting next to the faucet, held it next to the running water, and flicked it. There was a popping sound as a foot-long flame shot up next to the stream of water. He pulled the lighter away, and the flame disappeared.
“That�
�s what the company did,” Mark Middleton said. “Then they send that damn salesman out here to tell us there was no proof the water wasn’t full of methane before they drilled. He points to something on page 18 of the leasing contract says the company won’t be responsible for pre-existing ‘methane migrations.’ He actually said that to my face. Used that phrase. Like half the ranchers in the whole county already had poisoned water before his company came to town. Now half the ranchers in the county can’t drink their own well water. Can’t take a shower in their own water. Can’t even water their livestock. You ever heard of a working ranch without water?”
He came back to the table and sat down. His Kawasaki hat slid back on his head as his hands came up and covered his face. He was crying.
Ryan said softly, “That’s a terrible thing happened, Mr. Middleton.”
Mark Middleton wiped at his eyes and turned to Ryan. “Now where do you get the nerve saying something like that to me? You, sitting there in your fancy suit and tie, what do you know about what happened?”
Ryan put his hands on the table and laced his fingers. He looked right into Mark Middleton’s eyes. “My father was a farmer. Outside Salt Lake City, in Utah. The farm had been in our family for four generations. It wasn’t much. Forty-five acres. Year-to-year, we never could pay off any of the loans. Not the bank for the machinery. Not the supply house for the seed, the fertilizers, the chemicals. It was a hard life, but it was an honorable living, and it meant everything to my father.” Ryan paused and gazed out over Mark Middleton’s shoulder.
“It was seven years ago, next month, on the nineteenth of December. My father had lost a long legal battle. It had gone on for almost three years. It was about access to water. I wasn’t home, but afterwards I found the sheets of paper on the kitchen table. He had done the calculations. What he realized that day was that he was worth more to our family dead than alive. He left the papers on the kitchen table. He didn’t need to leave a note. He walked out to the barn and raised his pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.”
