Several people said hello to Myrna as we ordered at the Sandwich Shop. I suggested we eat in the park since it was a nice day.
We found a bench across from the courthouse. A fluttering wind licked at the paper wrappings of our sandwiches and swirled her curly hair into a froth.
“How did your son and Frank Claustel get to be friends?”
“Through the track team, I think.” She chewed slowly, methodically, a woman eating for sustenance, not pleasure. We sat slightly skewed toward each other. We could have made eye contact if we’d both wanted to. She didn’t.
“When was that?”
“His sophomore year. He was flattered a junior like Frank would be friendly with him. Frank was real popular. With girls, I mean. He’s very good-looking.”
“Yes, he is, judging from the picture I saw in Judge Claustel’s office.”
Her mouth tightened, but that was all. Was she scared? Angry? Bitter? Or simply wary. I kept on. “Did Rog Junior date?”
“He was too young. He had a lot of friends, though.”
“How about Frank? You said he was popular with girls—did he date?”
“I suppose.”
“Any girl in particular?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know why you’re asking me these things.”
“I think you do, Mrs. Johnson.”
“No.” She started to shake her head, then stopped in mid-motion. I followed the direction of her stare and saw a flash of red turn the corner. It could have been Mona Burrell’s red Mustang. Or it could have been a fire truck for all I saw of it. “No,” Myrna Johnson repeated more firmly, “I don’t.”
“How about any reason your nephew Brent might not want people asking questions about Rog?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t know what any of this has to do with this story on Foster Redus. Now that you know he’s dead, shouldn’t you be looking for his killer?”
“I am.”
No doubt this time. She was scared.
She stood, wadding the sandwich wrapping in her fist. “I have nothing more to say to you, Ms. Danniher. And neither does my husband. Or my nephew. Leave us alone. All of us.”
I stood, too. “Mrs. Johnson, Myrna—I don’t want to hurt anybody.” I didn’t want to get hurt myself, either. Particularly by a shot put to the head. “But I’m going to keep trying to find the truth. I would think you’d want the truth, too. It’s the only way to reach justice.” Lord, that sounded pompous, even though I meant it. “Now that we know Redus was murdered, it’s more important than ever to know what kind of man he was. I think what happened the night Rog Junior was arrested can tell me a lot about that.”
She shook her head, two sharp jerks. Her eyes focused over my shoulder. She was so much shorter than me it looked as if she were studying a treetop.
“I told you, I have nothing more to say.”
She walked away.
I turned around to see what she might have been looking at over my shoulder. In the window of the third-floor corner office of the courthouse, where Judge Ambrose Claustel hung his hat on an antler rack, a shadow shifted, then retreated out of sight.
* * * *
“Is Judge Claustel in?”
His assistant looked at me oddly, perhaps because I was huffing enough after taking three flights of stairs at top speed to lift the papers on her desk. But it was other muscles that I could feel stretching and flexing—mental muscles.
“Judge Claustel and Mr. Hunt just left.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“Mr. Hunt had something for the judge, so most likely to his office.”
I thanked her and headed to the back of the building.
Hunt’s assistant was stowing away her purse in a bottom drawer.
“Hello, Mrs. Martin, is he in?” I asked breezily as I moved toward the door to Hunt’s office. Before she could object, I knocked once and opened the door.
Ames Hunt, seated behind his desk, looked up in surprise. He was alone.
“Hello, Ames. I was hoping to catch Judge Claustel.”
“He just left.”
“Where?”
“He has court.” A frown tucked his even brows. “Did we have an appointment?”
Chasing Claustel into open court was not an option, so I made use of the bird in hand. I smiled. “No. I’m presuming on your saying to stop by any time.”
“I suppose I have a few minutes.”
I closed the door and took the same chair as before. “I’m interested in your take on the Redus case, now that his body’s been found.”
“I’m not sure finding a body changes the outlook much, unfortunately.”
“But there’ll be physical evidence.”
He shook his head. “Not much good from a crime scene horribly compromised. Including—” He compressed his lips. “—by the media, from what I am told.”
“Only following in the footsteps of others—literally.”
He rested his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his fingers in front of his chest. It resembled the pose of an ancient Asian deity.
“Be that as it may, I’m afraid the physical evidence is not going to be tremendously helpful in our investigation. Although it might help as circumstantial evidence in trying the case eventually.”
“You thought you had enough evidence several months ago to arrest Burrell—what do you mean, no?” I demanded of his shaking head.
“That was not my decision. You might not be aware, but I was out of town at the time Sheriff Widcuff made that arrest.”
I was aware, of course. I’d hoped by this round-about route to find out what Hunt really thought of the case against Burrell. “You didn’t think there was sufficient evidence to arrest Burrell?”
“Not at that time.”
So he was simply being a cautious prosecutor. One with political ambitions, who would want to look as good as possible in this high-profile case. He would take no risks.
“Do you now?”
“Is Tom Burrell under arrest?” he parried.
“But you’re working on it.”
“We are pursuing the investigation with vigor. Especially now that we have confirmation that Deputy Foster Redus was murdered.”
He was in full interview mode, even without a camera. “Are you investigating any other suspects?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t expected such an unequivocal answer. “You are?”
He allowed the tiniest of smiles. “Yes. Deputy Redus was not, unfortunately, the best-liked man in the county, nor the best-liked law enforcement officer.”
“So you’re investigating Redus’ activities as a deputy?”
“I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”
“Aw, c’mon, Ames.” I held up my empty hands. “No camera, no notebook, no tape recorder. Tell me on background.”
“Not even on background.” The tips of his fingers tapped against each other. “But I will tell you, we are not ignoring the obvious.”
I frowned and rubbed at my neck. “You mean Burrell?”
He shrugged, but I knew I’d missed the answer somehow. The obvious . . . “You mean his nearest and dearest?”
“The perpetrators of most murders do fall into that category,” he said.
“Okay, I can see Mona and Marty killing one another, but killing him? They both wanted him around too much. It wasn’t like he’d chosen one over the other.”
“How do you know?”
Sure that I was on firm ground, I shook my head. My neck tightened, and I rubbed at it again. “First, he wasn’t the type. Second, he wouldn’t have done it voluntarily, so the winner would have had to nag him into it. Which means that woman would have known he was going to give the other one the heave-ho, and there’s no way she would have kept quiet about that.”
“I’ll defer to your greater knowledge of females. But jealousy isn’t the number one reason people murder within their, shall we say, family circle.�
�
“Money. Did Redus leave Mona a bundle in his will?”
“He was not the type of man to consider his own mortality. He did not have a will.”
“So that knocks the stuffing out your nearest-and-dearest possibilities.”
He adjusted one earpiece of his glasses. “Not completely.”
“Gina? But they were getting divorced. She certainly showed no sign of wanting to hold onto him, and she would have gotten a decent settlement.”
“And now, she’ll get it all, the insurance, widow benefits, the house.”
My hand stopped in mid-rub. “She still gets the insurance and benefits even though they were getting divorced?”
“They weren’t divorced yet.”
“Gina said she’d filed the papers.”
“She did. But the divorce wasn’t final when Foster disappeared, and she stopped proceedings. Separated or not, she was officially Redus’ wife when he died, so she’ll get his insurance and survivor benefits.”
“Are you sure?”
Hunt gave me a superior smile. “I do know the laws of Wyoming.”
“Of course. I’m just . . . surprised, I guess.”
“That a hick Wyoming gal would see those angles and play them? Don’t let Gina fool you. She’s clever enough to trick a fox. She just doesn’t show it a lot. We went to school together, and she could have been top of our class, only she always had such an itch for Tom, she let him finish ahead of her.” His tolerant amusement acquired an edge that lifted his upper lip. “Because Tom couldn’t ever be anything but the best.”
“But I thought you were second behind Tom?”
Hunt blinked at my question. Then he laughed, starting with a rather rusty sound, but ending in a genuine chuckle. “So I was, so maybe Gina wasn’t quite as good at figuring the numbers as I always gave her credit for, because there’s no way she would have let me finish ahead of her on purpose. You might have just given me a different view on this whole matter.”
I was certain he didn’t mean the issue of rank from his high school graduating class, but instead, the matter of whether Gina thought herself clever enough to try to get away with murder.
Chapter Twenty-One
Matt had left another message on my home machine.
“What are you doing there so late?” I asked when I got through to him. Dinnertime in Wyoming was way past his usual working hours in Philadelphia.
“Our night cops reporter broke her leg sky-diving—can you believe it? And I lost the pool to fill in this week. It’s not so bad, as long as the mean streets don’t get any meaner than usual. It’s kind of interesting, actually. Like when we first started?”
“Yeah, I remember.” And I understood.
I heard nostalgia in his voice. Matt had been doing project pieces for the Inquirer for several years. Just the kind of in-depth work we’d dreamed of when we were starting and reporting by the seat of our pants, writing stories in our heads as we dictated by phone from notes while we stood in the rain.
What we didn’t realize then was that when we got out of the rain, we would miss some of that messy, adrenaline-pumping, elemental reporting.
“So how can you think about giving it up and doing a damned talk show?”
So much for nostalgia. “I have to do something, Matt. I’ve been stuck in neutral since fall. Longer, really, because I knew something was wrong with Wes, with us, and I just wouldn’t look at it. I’m sick of neutral, sick of this limbo. If the network . . . but it’s not going to happen. I can’t go back, not to how things were. So I have to go forward. My future’s ahead of me.”
“Whose isn’t?” he muttered, and despite the stinging in my eyes, I grinned. I’d tossed Mona’s phrase out there knowing he’d jump on it. And he did. The world was still spinning on its axis. “Fine, go forward. Just don’t do a talk show. You’re too good a journalist, even if you did get seduced by damned TV. I know you, Danny. You’ll hate it if you give up doing stories completely.”
“Hey, talk shows do stories in a way, so—”
“Bullshit.”
I laughed. “Tell me what you really think. Listen, Mel’s just looking into possibilities. I promise I’ll talk to you before I make a decision. And in the meantime, I am working a story. Want to hear about it?”
He wanted to keep arguing, but even more he wanted to hear what I was working on—as always with Matt, curiosity won out.
“Tell me.”
So I did. When I finished, he whistled. “Interesting doings out there in the Wild West. And I’ve got my little bit to add to it. I got something on Claustel.”
Which was a lot better than I’d done with his father, who’d left the courthouse for the weekend when I’d left Ames’ office to try to track him down. Maybe that was for the best. It gave me time to do more digging before I tackled him again. Including whatever Matt had found.
“My God, already? What is he, famous back there?”
“Guess you could say he’s famous in a very small way in a very small world. One of our copy aides is a junior at Temple. Smart kid. I asked if he’d heard of this Frank Claustel, figuring that might be a start. Bingo! Claustel has made a name by being very active in gay causes. He was named editor of a gay newsletter in January when the previous one quit—first freshman to be editor.”
Was that the sort of achievement Judge Ambrose Claustel was likely to brag to his friends about?
“Other than that, nothing too remarkable. He’s solid academically, but not genius level. No discipline stuff. Nothing to make him stand out.”
Not in Philadelphia, but would he stand out in Cottonwood County, Wyoming?
“So, is this what you were looking for?” Matt asked.
“I told you, I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
“But you’re not surprised, are you, Danny?”
“No, I’m not.”
* * * *
Saturday morning was predictably quiet at KWMT. A few reporters and cameramen wandered in on the way to or from assignments, but the skeleton crew that would produce the evening news didn’t come in until they had to. Especially on a crisp day with a sky so blue it looked as if it might vibrate.
So I figured I would have solitude to look through KWMT’s back copies of the Sherman Independence. No one else would be stupid enough to be inside on a day like this, especially inside the windowless library that would beat out a bomb shelter on any least-cheerful-places to spend a sunny day list.
I was almost right. About twenty minutes into my dusty duty, Thurston Fine wandered into the tape library.
“Oh,” he said with a studied start. At the same time he tried to read what I’d written on the legal pad I’d covered with my forearms. “I didn’t think anyone was in here.”
I didn’t believe him. For one thing, my car was easily identifiable as a rarity among a society of pickups and four-wheel drives.
“Working on a story?” he asked.
“Getting familiar with the area. I don’t have the background since I haven’t been here as long as you.”
Blotches of color marked his cheeks. “I haven’t been here that long,” he snapped. “And I was the youngest anchor in the region.”
“I just meant you know the area well,” I said mildly. “I’m still trying to get names and faces straight.”
“Yes. Well.” He stretched his neck, like a goose smoothing down its feathers. “It will come, eventually.”
I ground my teeth at that condescension, but didn’t retaliate. “What are you doing here on a weekend, Thurston?”
“I need a file to prepare for an important meeting of county leaders this afternoon in O’Hara Hill.” He opened a drawer and took out the first file in it, which I identified as he headed to the door. He called a breezy goodbye and was gone.
He should have signed out the file, but I didn’t suppose anyone would be too upset that he’d taken the file on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration. That should be some meeting this afternoon.
The first year after Redus joined the sheriff’s department, he made a high percentage of the arrests. But a good number of times the charges were quickly dropped, and almost every one of those dropped cases involved someone I had heard of, even in my short time here. A drunk driving charge against the owner of the county’s biggest insurance agency, a speeding ticket and resisting arrest against the president of the Chamber of Commerce, and others. All dropped.
Then, the number of arrests Redus made fell significantly, even before he was moved to the courthouse. For nearly the entire year before he was murdered, I didn’t recognize a single name as I copied the list of his arrests onto my legal pad.
Most interesting.
The hum of the overhead lights resurfaced. I straightened, stretched, then froze. I rubbed the stiff muscles connecting my neck and shoulders. For the first few years of our marriage, Wes gave me the greatest shoulder and neck rubs. They faded away like our promises and dreams and future.
Early on, I’d teased him about being a control freak. It turned out to be no joke. What had started off as massages of my career and image had turned into manipulation. Not that I saw that until long after everyone else did.
Wes carried a leather notebook-sized portfolio with phone numbers, addresses, names, connections, reminders, notes of relationships, lists of to-dos. Even as others switched to electronic equivalents, it never left his side. The past few years, when we sat on the couch side by side the few evenings we were both home, that portfolio sat between us.
I once mentioned the symbolism of that. He gave me a blank stare. I asked him to humor me by moving it. He did—to his other side.
I sipped from a can of soda that had been warming on the table.
Of course. I felt like slapping my forehead—Foster Redus had had his own version of my ex’s portfolio. That’s what had been nibbling at the edges of my mind when they hauled up his truck. That’s what was missing. The leather case that several people had mentioned Redus never let out of his sight. The only thing Mona had asked about.
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