Left Hanging Read online

  Other Patricia McLinn Titles from Bell Bridge Books

  The Caught Dead in Wyoming Series

  Sign Off - Book One

  Left Hanging - Book Two

  Left Hanging

  by

  Patricia McLinn

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-310-8

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-293-4

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2013 by Patricia McLaughlin Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Landscape (manipulated) © Kevin Eaves | Dreamstime.com

  Hat (manipulated) © Olivier Le Queinec | Dreamstime.com

  :Ehlk:01:

  Dedication

  To Cathy & Joe,

  who know how to treat houseguests with two legs or four.

  DAY ONE

  THURSDAY

  Chapter One

  DEATH IN THE Bull Ring.

  KWMT-TV anchor Thurston Fine’s intoned words swelled across the newsroom, emanating from TVs hung from the ceiling like clusters of Chinese lanterns, so every staffer could see a screen. His televised expression remained solemn, despite the indignity of wearing a haphazard beard of pink and yellow Post-it notes.

  More on the tragic demise of long-time rodeo contractor Keith Landry after we come back.

  Actually, Fine didn’t wear the beard. His televised image did. As a number of his colleagues—professional to the core—watched the five o’clock news and lobbed wads of sticky notes at the image. Only the best throws stuck.

  “Oh, good one, Elizabeth!” a co-worker congratulated me. “Right in the eye. A buzzer-beater, too.”

  The giddy mood of cynicism that overtakes a newsroom when a big story combines with management ineptitude had infected the half-dozen staffers on hand. It’s harmless, if tasteless.

  Adrenaline churned up by a big story has to go somewhere. It certainly wasn’t going into our coverage. We were the outsiders, the ones well beyond Thurston Fine’s circle of trust. As a newcomer and the possessor of a one-time vaunted career, I was the farthest outside that circle, and that suited me—if you’ll excuse the expression—fine.

  “Thank you, thank you.” I took a bow for my final shot before Thurston’s face gave way to an ad for the Sherman, Wyoming Fourth of July Rodeo scheduled to start the end of next week. As if everybody in KWMT’s viewing area didn’t already know every detail. Especially after today’s unnatural death of one the rodeo’s main figures.

  “So, tell us, Elizabeth Margaret Danniher,” said sports anchor Michael Paycik into the fist he presented as a mock microphone, “did you feel the pressure to get that shot off before time ran out?”

  I leaned over and spoke to his fist from an inch away, glancing up to make eye contact with a non-existent camera. “I take ’em one at a time, Mike.”

  “How does the thrill of hitting Thurston Fine in the eye with the sticky-note version of a spitball,” he intoned in a plummy voice unlike his natural on-air delivery, “measure against years of spitting in the eyes of scumdom’s major-leaguers?”

  “I’ll tell you, Mike—and I wouldn’t lie to you—Thurston Fine ranks right up there.”

  “That sure as hell is true,” Mike Paycik grumbled, dropping his assumed voice.

  He nursed a grudge, because our anchor had decreed that coverage—done by guess-who—of stock contractor Keith Landry’s death would be allotted all of the five o’clock evening news as well as the entire 10 p.m. newscast. Except weather. He’d left the weatherman a few seconds to report that the sky had not fallen. That’s right. No national news, no international news, no features, no sports, and certainly no consumer news, which meant my scheduled contribution was staying in the can.

  “Editorial comment creeping into your reporting, Paycik,” I said.

  “Your comments haven’t been exactly unbiased, either. Especially not when Fine passed down his edict. God, who’d ever think I’d miss Haeburn.”

  Les Haeburn, who passed for a news director at KWMT, had gone on vacation earlier this week and left Fine in charge. It wasn’t clear if Haeburn hadn’t said when he was returning, or if no one had been interested enough to ask.

  “That’s where I benefit from having an older and wiser head, experiencing many years in this business while you were still in leading strings—”

  “In what? Is that a synonym for playing pro football?”

  I waved off that irrelevance. “—while you were playing pro football and otherwise frittering away your time. I don’t miss Haeburn even in this extremity.”

  Commercials ended and, too soon for my taste, the face of Thurston Fine reappeared.

  Keith Landry and his partner built their business up from their roots in Enid, Oklahoma, and had been stock contractor for the Sherman Fourth of July Rodeo in previous years. Glorious, successful years for our community’s greatest event.

  The screen cut to a choppy montage of Cottonwood County notables riding in convertibles in parades.

  “What do you know?” came from the back of the room. “Fine got in a shot of himself doing the parade wave.”

  The montage continued with western-clad young men in various rodeo events, rodeo clowns playing tag with lumbering bulls, and a string of girls with big smiles, big cowboy hats, and increasingly outdated hairstyles. Going backward in time was a disorienting finish to the over-long, under-relevant package.

  But last year, under new and inexperienced committee chair Linda Caswell— Back live, Fine’s voice and face registered grave disapproval.

  Mike growled, “Wrong again, Fine.”

  —the rodeo signed with a new company. In an effort to save money.

  “It had to save money after losing sponsorships because the former committee chair and Fine’s great buddy was disgraced,” Mike inserted.

  “Details, details,” I murmured.

  But when that new, cheap rodeo producer turned out to be a chimera—

  “A what?” chorused his newsroom audience. He’d pronounced it like shimmering, confusing those in his audience who knew its Greek mythology origins, along with everyone else.

  —Keith Landry returned to Sherman in its hour of need and rescued this rodeo that he continued to love, even after it had thrown him over for another contractor.

  “And was paid a big fat bonus for his trouble, which Fine would know if he’d listened to my reports,” Mike said.

  Photos on the screen showed a middle-aged man, his belt dropped low by the bulge above it. His hair was going gray under the inevitable cowboy hat. In all but one photo, he’d posed wearing sunglasses, smiling broadly and with at least one arm slung across th
e shoulders of a companion. The exception was a candid that caught puffiness under his small eyes and his mouth in an arch of displeasure.

  Then, tragically, the white knight of the Sherman Rodeo—a groan filled the newsroom—lost his life before he could enjoy the fruits of his rescue efforts by seeing next weekend’s spectacular rodeo.

  “Yeah, boy, I bet he’d’ve been happy to be stomped to death by bulls if only it had happened after the rodeo. Don’t even know why the bulls were there anyway.” Mike added in a mutter low enough that only I heard, “We should be on this story.”

  Yes, the long, successful, storied association between Keith Landry and the Sherman Fourth of July Rodeo came to a tragic end today in the Sherman rodeo grounds’ bull ring. Fine shifted to a ghoulishly chipper tone to add, More on that when we come back, including exclusive video from KWMT.

  “Twice! Twice the jerk called it a bull ring, like Keith Landry was a matador. God, I told him in the pre-rodeo meeting that it wasn’t a bull ring. I told him three times.” Paycik’s dour mood was beginning to worry me.

  “That isn’t even where Landry was found. He was in a bull pen, not the arena,” said a cameraman named Jenks. Since he and Fine had been first on the scene—literally—he should know.

  They’d arrived at the rodeo grounds for an early morning interview, then discovered Keith Landry would not be granting any more interviews. Unless he answered questions from St. Peter.

  “I bet you never saw a case like this in your big-city reporting, did you, Elizabeth.”

  “You’d win that bet, Jenks.”

  After a career-long, steady climb on the TV news ladder, I’d had the ladder and my job yanked out from under me. Call it a final, surprise clause in my divorce decree from my network exec ex. To complete my contract, I’d been ordered to work in a market struggling to attain the status of small.

  When I arrived in Sherman this past spring, my coworkers were wary. The attitude of some had undergone KWMT’s version of global warming since Mike Paycik, a camerawoman named Diana Stendahl, and I put together a special about a murder case a few weeks ago. News Director Les Haeburn and Fine, however, remained rock solid on their polar caps. The other holdouts were primarily Fine’s pets. Until today, that had included Jenks.

  “We should be out there reporting this,” Mike grumbled. “It should be my story, anyway.” He was the only full-time sports reporter, in addition to being sports anchor.

  “You’ll have to take that up with our fearless leader,” I said.

  He grumbled a suggestion, the fulfillment of which would have required far more flexibility on Fine’s part than he’d shown any evidence of possessing.

  Diana Stendahl, the KWMT shooter I most often worked with, peered around the doorway that separated the battered and cramped newsroom from a hallway. I waved her in. She said, “This is something, huh? I can’t ever remember a death where a bull was the weapon.”

  “Is it still a weapon when it’s an accident?” debated Audrey Adams over my shoulder. She was one of KWMT’s utility infielders—officially an assignment editor, but frequently used as a producer/director. At the lower pay level, of course.

  “Sure,” I declared airily. “If someone’s accidentally shot, the gun’s still a weapon.”

  “Is it weapon or weapons when it’s a bunch of bulls that did the killing?”

  Such debates can go on for days in a newsroom not otherwise kept busy. I’ve seen editors come to blows over a comma versus a semicolon—and that was for on-air copy when no listener could tell the difference.

  Everyone had something to add.

  “Weapon if you can pin it on one bull.”

  “Weapons. It’s the cumulative effect.”

  “Weapon, since the herd of bulls did the killing, and you view herd as a collective noun.”

  “It’s the Murder on the Orient Express of rodeo. You know they each went through and stabbed him, not knowing who really did the deed.”

  “Shh! Fine’s back on. Don’t want to miss this.”

  Before we show the next piece of video, I want to warn our audience that it is not for the squeamish. Parents should consider before exposing children to this sight. Mr. Landry’s remains—

  “Not much remaining,” muttered Jenks.

  He’d told Fine not to use this. Not only had Fine insisted—at suppertime, no less—but he’d screamed at Jenks, demanded a new shooter, and sent Jenks back to KWMT, where the convert to the not-so-Fine camp entertained us with footage of the tantrum. It was captured because one of Fine’s rules is to never stop rolling until he says so. He’d been too busy having a fit to say so.

  That was not the only footage Jenks shared. He’d also shown us what had happened when he and Fine encountered the body.

  It started with Fine’s fussy instructions over exactly what B-roll to shoot. From the arena, Jenks and Fine had moved around the end chute used by bull riders to mount bovine tornadoes and started down an aisle beside a holding pen, with close-ups of bulls’ massive bodies, intimidating horns, and occasionally malevolent expressions.

  “What’s that?” Jenks’ sharp question was caught by audio, as he’d zoomed in on a lump that trailed partially out of the pen.

  Fine’s peevish voice demanded Jenks stay focused on what he wanted—texture, he kept saying. His foot came into the frame. Then everything happened fast.

  Jenks snapped, “Stop. Don’t step on it. I think . . . I think it’s somebody.” The camera bobbled.

  “That’s ridic—”

  The sound of Fine screaming. I would describe the high-pitched sound as being like a little girl, except I know a number of little girls who would never scream like that.

  The camera kept running as Jenks used one hand to fumble out his cell phone for 911.

  The camera caught two early-arriving rodeo workers coming at a run, attracted by the noise. Oh, yes, and a shot of Thurston vomiting—adding, I’m sure, to the forensic team’s pleasure.

  —are visible. As well as blood and agricultural byproducts. And—

  “Agricultural byproducts?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t trampled. Maybe he was smothered in agricultural byproducts.”

  “If bullshit killed, we’d all have died the day Haeburn arrived.”

  Jenks had kept a copy of his footage, handing the original to the sheriff’s department. “Thought about what Diana did with the Redus murder case,” he said now. “If I’d known Fine would air it, I’d have skipped making a copy.”

  An unnatural quiet settled over the newsroom as the humans inside the wise-mouthed journalists looked on the televised version of violent death. A swath of green resolved itself into the remnants of a shirt. The shot panned up, toward a recognizable shoulder, jerked sharply to the side before reaching an ear, veering away.

  “Holy shit,” breathed someone behind me.

  “Was that his . . . face?”

  “Yeah. Fine wanted me to pan all the way, but . . .” Jenks swallowed. “There wasn’t much there.”

  The camera’s focus shifted back to a distorted torso in green.

  “Jesus.”

  “Grim,” came a murmur.

  The cut to commercial left a momentary silence in the newsroom.

  “We shouldn’t have aired that.”

  “Once it was shot, we had to air it.”

  “That’s crap. Journalism requires judgment, and leaving out things is part of judgment.”

  The newscast ended with a surfeit of platitudes from Fine about tragedy and an exhortation that the rodeo must go on.

  The now-subdued newsroom quickly emptied, until it was only Mike, Diana, and me.

  I spoke the thought that had been tugging at me for a while: “Why are we sitting around?”

  “Because Haeburn’s an idiot.” Mik
e was definitely bitter. “We thought it would be better after the Redus case, but first chance he gets, Haeburn goes and puts Fine in charge.”

  “My question is: Why are we paying attention to them?”

  His sour expression lifted slowly, then his grin came in a flash. “All right. Let’s go.”

  “The Newsmobile’s out front, equipment’s loaded,” Diana said.

  “You are a gem.”

  “I know.”

  Now that it was almost July, and I was a veteran of my first month of Wyoming’s summer, I snagged a jacket from the back of my chair. Bright sun made it plenty warm now, but just wait.

  “How do we approach this?” Mike asked eagerly.

  I eyed him. “Gee, Jimmy, what do you think we should do?”

  “Jimmy? What . . . oh, Jimmy Olsen, huh? Nice, Danniher. Just because I want to learn from one of the best in the business—”

  “First time you call me Lois Lane or Clark Kent, this friendship is over.” He slanted me a look I didn’t meet. “We do what Fine won’t—report the hell out of the story. Accidents happen, but they still have who, what, when, where, how, and why. We find people who knew Landry, and we ask. What was his last day like? Why on earth would he have been in that bull pen?”

  “Where do we start?”

  “With inconsistencies.” I spun back to him. “What was that you said before? Something about the bulls, and not knowing why they were where they were. We start there. And let’s grab Jenks.”

  Chapter Two

  “I’VE BEEN working since early morning,” Jenks objected.

  “A couple more hours,” I bargained. “You were there at the beginning. Besides, with you along, we have two teams. We can cover lots more territory.” Diana had gone ahead, checking equipment in the station’s aging four-wheel-drive she drove.

  “One hour, and ask your questions while we drive out,” Jenks countered.

  I batted innocent eyelashes at him. “Questions? Whatever do you mean?”