Putting two fingers below the jaw, under the ear, he shook his head. But he also tried the strangely slanted wrist. And shook his head again.
I pulled out my phone, taking pictures and video.
Less of the victim than of the marks in the dirt.
They looked like all horse’s hoofs except for the pulse taker’s single track in. That might be significant. It meant the reenactors — smartly — had mostly stayed back.
“What are you doing?” A paunchy guy who appeared to be the oldest of the nine riders asked me suspiciously.
“Documenting the scene as we found it. At least as I found it. Could be important to prove that none of you went near the body, except to check for signs of life. So stay back, the rest of you.” By now I’d moved around for photos of the other side, using zoom and staying back myself. “Someone should call the authorities. Right away.”
The guy who’d summoned me said, “We don’t have phones here. They’re down with our stuff.”
No place to keep them, with no saddle and wearing so few clothes.
I stopped taking photos long enough to try the phone.
“No connection.”
“That’s the other reason not to bother with phones up here,” the summoner said.
“Anybody know who he is?”
My question received a couple negative grunts and otherwise silence.
Paunchy said, “Who’s going to ride down and get one of the organizers?”
“No riding, either.” I looked over the horses. “They’ll want to look at your horses for, uh, evidence. They shouldn’t be ridden until that. It would be best if you keep them quiet and calm so they don’t move around a lot, too.”
The reenactors looked back at me with varying degrees of comprehension.
I exhaled. “I’ll go.”
I was the logical choice, since I’d be of little use in keeping the horses calm.
“You sure?” This was the summoner again. He was far from the oldest, yet seemed to be the unofficial leader. “It’s a hard climb on foot for uh…”
An old lady danced on the end of his tongue. He’s fortunate it didn’t fall off the edge.
“I made it here.”
“Yeah,” said the youngest rider. “And it’s downhill.”
He made it sound like curling up and rolling down wasn’t past even me. He skidded right off my list for favorite reenactor.
“I might get connection without going all the way down. I’ll check as I go.”
I went back the way I’d come.
Sergeant Wayne Shelton of the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department probably wouldn’t thank me for it, even though he should, because I was really thinking of him. If I’d taken the other way, going down in full view of the recreated miners’ camp and shouting to the audience that someone needed to call the sheriff’s department, what were the chances his crime scene would be left as it was now?
I’d intended to check for phone connection sooner, but those loose stones and dirt kept me occupied with keeping my balance on the first, skidding descent.
No connection here, either. And this, too, came under the heading of probably a good thing, because nobody would have understood my words amid the huffing and puffing.
I continued down. Two more times I tried. I swear one time it had negative bars.
Finally, more than halfway down with the butte no longer looming over me as much, I had connection.
Okay, maybe Shelton still wouldn’t thank me.
Because my first call was to Diana.
“Can you see me?”
“Yeah.”
“You need to get up here right away. Drive the Newsmobile as far up as you can, then we’ll have to climb.”
In true Diana style, she said, “Okay.” And hung up.
My second call also wasn’t to Shelton.
So, he really wouldn’t thank me.
“Mrs. Parens? It’s Elizabeth. Don’t make an announcement, but something’s happened up at the butte. Can you get a ride up here? Can you see me? If you catch Diana and—”
“I will be there shortly.”
Even ending the call immediately, she wasn’t in time to catch Diana, because I saw the four-wheel drive Newsmobile chugging away from the parking area.
My third call… Nope, not Shelton, either.
I called the station and asked for Audrey. I really, really wished Jennifer was around. I could send her the video and she’d squirrel it away someplace Shelton would never think of, along with digging up information.
As Audrey answered, I did a mental head thunk. But before I could act on it, I needed to give her the heads-up that a body had been found before the reenactment could start, but that was all I knew. With her speaking phrases that could not be put together on her end as there being breaking news — at least not by Thurston — we’d postpone his tantrum over my working this story.
Not that Thurston would have come out here anyway. Wind, dust, sun. No way he’d subject his coif to that triple threat.
I kept the conversation short, promised more as soon as I knew it, and called Jennifer in Chicago. That was my head-thunk. Just because she wasn’t here, didn’t mean she couldn’t do her magic. I got her voicemail. Confident she’d read between the lines, especially since this wasn’t our first rodeo, I said I was sending her an attached video and would she please deal with it as she thought best to be sure it was preserved.
With the Newsmobile now approaching, I called Shelton directly, rather than 911.
“How did you get this number?” he growled. He was in a vehicle, moving fast.
“I have my sources. Do you want to know why I called?”
“No, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“Because it’s my civic duty.”
“It was your civic duty before you started making other calls.”
“How—? Do you have spies here?” Had to be Mrs. Parens. Diana wouldn’t have called him.
“I have my sources,” he echoed back with a growl. “What’s going on?”
I told him.
“You sure he’s dead?”
“Someone took his pulse. They said the guy who did was training as a paramedic, so he should know.” Also, there’d been no bleeding from the horse’s hoofs. Shelton didn’t need me telling him that. He’d see for himself when he got here. Including that some of the hoofs had shoes on them, which surely would have caused bleeding if there’d still been blood pumping.
“Identity?”
“I have no idea. No one else mentioned a name.”
He started asking more questions, but Diana had passed me in the Newsmobile. The vehicle was part mountain goat to be able to take on this angle. That might explain some of the noises it made. I started back up the incline.
“You’re breaking up. Sergeant? … Are you there? Can you hear me? I can’t hear anything. We must have gotten disconnected.”
“I can hear you and you can hear me, Danniher. Do not—”
I clicked off to the music of his swearing.
Diana had turned the Newsmobile sideways to the slope. I supposed on this gradient, the wheel-turning tricks I’d learned for Illinois wouldn’t cut it.
I joined her at the back of the Newsmobile as she pulled out gear.
“What’s up, Elizabeth?”
“There’s a body.” I jerked my head to the rock formation. “Up there. Where the reenactors were supposed to gather for the attack on the camp.”
“Of course there’s a body,” she muttered. “One of the reenactors?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I reviewed my take on how he was dressed and how the riders reacted, and repeated more strongly, “No.”
For the trek up to the butte, Diana donned a padded body brace for the camera, hitching the shoulder straps in place first, leading more straps over her chest, then buckling another set around her waist.
Her torso supported the camera this way, rather than only her arms.
Having the came
ra on her shoulder, while using a shoulder brace, was fine for level ground — on the rare occasions she found some in Cottonwood County — but this was best under these circumstances. She’d be ready to shoot at any moment and what she captured would be steadier.
“Want me to carry anything?”
I often asked that. She always said, as she did now, “Nope. This way I know where everything is if I need something fast.” Then she added, “Let’s go.”
As we started up, I saw a utility vehicle start from among several others parked on the far side of the tarps. It pointed toward the butte.
We climbed.
Chapter Fourteen
The horses had been moved, revealing the dark opening into a cave in the butte. It was as wide as a pickup truck is long and a person-and-a-half tall at the center. A bushy plant grew near the left side of the opening. The reenactors had moved the horses well to the left of this. Most important, the new position distanced the horses more from the body.
Someone — I suspected the young man I’d identified as being in charge — had drawn a large semicircle around the body with his foot. Other than those handling the horses, all the reenactors stood in a group safely behind that approximation of a police line.
Whatever low conversation there was stopped when Diana and I entered the channel between the butte and the rock formation.
“The sheriff’s department is on the way, but it will take a while,” I announced generally. I probably hadn’t needed to add the last phrase, since they knew about driving distances and times around here. An approaching sound prompted me to add, “I think some of the organizers will be here much sooner.”
As I turned to consider the body, I noticed only the in-charge reenactor and the would-be paramedic didn’t look the opposite direction.
Sure wished I could see the face of the dead man, possibly recognize him, at least take a photo for later identification.
No bulge of a wallet in either back pocket of his jeans. Some men carried a wallet in the front pocket.
Or he could be without ID.
I squinted at the yellow and red marks on his back. Something was different about them from the reenactors’.
I tucked that detail away and kept cataloguing. The jeans with no belt and the boots were unremarkable. The bare back was pale.
He had been older and less fit than the riders, even the paunchy one, who other than that paunch, had a tautness of muscle.
The utility vehicle arrived in the entrance to the channel nearer the reenactment. It paralleled the back wall formed by the butte, avoiding the flow of horse tracks that came in close to the rock formation.
I went to the passenger side of the utility vehicle, where Mrs. P sat. The driver was O.D. Everett, the tribal leader I’d met at an event last winter and been re-introduced to yesterday. Shooting footage all the while, Diana headed the same direction, but by a different route and stayed far enough away that few would realize she was in listening distance.
O.D. Everett moved as if to get out of the vehicle.
“You probably should both stay where you are, at least until Sergeant Shelton and his team get here,” I said. “The fewer people’s tracks there are, the less unhappy he’ll be.”
Everett gave a grunt that accepted the advice with a dry hint of amusement that indicated he’d encountered Shelton.
With no hint of amusement, but absolute calm, Mrs. Parens said, “Elizabeth, I asked Tom to call the sheriff’s department to say there had been a … mishap that required their attention.”
“I called Shelton, too,” I said. “They’re on their way.”
At that moment, the young reenactor who’d summoned me went to the driver’s side, exchanging a look with Everett that likely had lots of substance known to them, but impenetrable by me.
“Grandfather. Mrs. Parens.”
He seemed to view that as the end of what he was going to say.
“I’m Elizabeth Margaret Danniher with KWMT-TV in Sherman.” When that didn’t elicit a response, I went for blunt, “What’s your name?”
It was O.D. Everett who responded. “He is my grandson, Paytah Everett.”
The young man declined his head in acknowledgment.
“It was smart to keep people back, Paytah. Are you sure you don’t know the man?”
“Not one of ours,” he said under his breath, directed solely to his grandfather.
When he saw I’d heard him, he clammed up.
I raised an eyebrow to young Paytah. He pretended not to see it.
So I spoke the question.
“I’d understood a couple different groups are participating. Are you sure or are you concluding he wasn’t part of the Native American contingent because you don’t know him? Could he be a member of another group?”
He looked at Everett, who looked at Mrs. Parens, who looked at me. I returned her look with open, guileless honesty and integrity.
She frowned.
Then she sent the round-robin back the other way, looking at Everett, who held her regard for an uncomfortable amount of time, before turning to Paytah.
This outgoing message from Everett was shorter. But after Paytah collected it, he took his time and didn’t complete the circle by looking at me. But he did speak.
“All the reenactor riders met here last week to practice. All rode up from the staging area. Then down. He was not among us last week. He was not among us today.”
I accepted the information and the logic with a nod. “Anything else?
“None of ours wore jeans. Authenticity,” Paytah said.
“The painting,” muttered O.D. Everett, who had good eyes to have spotted that. Though the body was visible to both occupants of the utility vehicle.
“Yeah,” Paytah agreed. “That, too. Also not ours. Don’t mean anything.”
Was that what registered about the marks? That they were just marks and not symbols? Maybe.
No, there was something else.
Even where the paint on the dead man remained, the edges of the marks looked smudged, indistinct compared to the reenactors’ painted symbols. Plus, those areas where little paint remained.
“When did you put your paint on?” I asked Paytah. Again, the round robin of him to Everett to Mrs. P to me, then back.
“About an hour ago.”
“Do you make your own paint?”
“Most don’t for this kind of thing. The traditional stuff has a lot of—” He started a gaze toward Mrs. Parens, stopping short of the destination. “—uh, stuff in it. We use tempera. Comes off after.”
“Even this paint should not be used this way,” said O.D. “Disrespectful.”
“Did you bring the paint this morning?”
This round robin moved faster. That was progress.
“Some. We had told the organizers we had little red or yellow. It was there when we came.”
“Did you use paint last week for the practice?”
Apparently, he considered that question not worthy of checking with anyone else, because he just said, “No.”
“And none of you know who he is?”
Paytah shook his head. O.D. Everett simply looked back at me. Mrs. Parens said, “It would be exceedingly difficult to identify anyone under these circumstances.”
Good point.
I took out my phone and zoomed in the camera to see if I could get a view of the dead man’s face from this angle.
Nope.
However, I did see an expensive watch with a dial that looked like it had come off the instrument panel of a classic sports car.
I snapped a couple pictures of that. Then showed the photo to my panel of three.
“Do any of you recognize this watch? Associate it with someone you know, perhaps?”
Paytah shook his head. O.D. Everett did more of the silently looking at me. Mrs. Parens said, “I cannot claim any expertise at identifying watches.”
Before I pursued that with any of them, Paytah turned toward his grandfather, possibly
intending to shut Mrs. Parens and me out. If so, he hadn’t dealt with journalists at a death scene before.
“Grandfather, can you talk to Jeremiah? He is upset. He was the first— Others of our horses landed blows, but his horse was first.”
“Even as an accident, he must accept it if his horse caused this man’s death and—”
“He didn’t.”
Paytah said it at the same time I did.
He jerked his head around to me. “Why do you say that?”
“You first.”
Before he answered, if he’d intended to, one of the reenactors called to Paytah. “Deputies.”
Chapter Fifteen
Shelton’s first priority was having deputies back us all up behind police tape.
I made a tactical decision to stay closer to the reenactors than to the utility vehicle and against the butte. Diana stayed with me.
The deputies enclosed the utility vehicle inside the tape, leaving Mrs. Parens, O.D. Everett, and Paytah outside it and on the far side of the utility vehicle, well away from the other reenactors.
They continued the police tape in a big semicircle with either end connected to the rock formation.
It enclosed the body, of course, adding considerable territory to the impromptu line Paytah had drawn with his foot.
With a jerk of his head to the unfamiliar deputy stringing police tape, Shelton indicated a desired extension. Following the direction of that head-jerk, I saw why.
Needham Bender, owner and editor of the Sherman Independence had arrived, along with Cagen, one of his reporters. Usually, they split up to cover more territory, but Shelton had blocked that move with that added tape.
For once I appreciated the sergeant’s sneakiness.
I greatly respected Needham. That didn’t mean I wanted him to get a story before me. Before KWMT-TV.
Shelton started young Deputy Richard Alvaro into the group of reenactors, gathering names and details. And sent a Sherman Police Department officer named Hollister into the cave behind us.
I watched that with interest. I suppose it was possible someone had hidden in the cave. I should have thought of that.
Then Shelton strode to near where Diana and I stood.
Body Brace (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 10) Page 7
