Three

Arn Anderson never planned to take a job as a range detective when he retired from Metro Denver Homicide. All he could think about was that he’d be associated with the last famous range detective: Tom Horn. Unlike Horn, Arn had no intention of getting himself hung for bushwhacking. But his pension didn’t come close to paying the bills, especially now that he’d undertaken the restoration of his boyhood home in Cheyenne, which he referred to as the MP—the Money Pit. And his pension didn’t allow him the luxury of buying another vehicle, like a pickup that would be better suited to driving the pastures and back country roads than his Oldsmobile 4-4-2.

He opened the gate and let himself into the field. “Wooly” Hank Doss, rancher and victim of considerable sheep thefts recently, had called this morning. Wooly Hank belonged to the Wyoming Wool Growers Association and, within the last year, had joined the group of ranchers who’d pooled their resources to hire Arn as a stock detective. “It’s damned sure the Midnight Sheepherder,” Wooly Hank had sputtered over the phone.

Arn had quickly washed up just enough to go out in public. “How many sheep are you missing?” he asked as he knocked his whiskers down with a disposable Bic.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you at least have a general idea of how many got stole?”

“No, I do not,” Wooly Hank answered. “I haven’t been out to my pasture this morning.”

“Then how do you know you have sheep missing?”

“Last night,” Wooly Hank said, as if that were the only explanation needed, and Arn waited for the punch line. “Trucks woke me and the missus up last night.”

“Did you call the sheriff’s office?”

“I thought about it. We’ve had trouble with kids sneaking into the east pasture and drinking beer. Partying. Damned near burned some grassland this spring with a bonfire you could’ve seen from the space shuttle. But by the time I pulled my britches on and drove to the pasture last night, the last outfit had roared off. I didn’t think I’d get an accurate head count of missing livestock until daybreak, so I went back to sleep. Figured I’d count up the stolen ones this morning and call the law then.”

Arn groaned. Getting any information from Wooly Hank was like pulling hen’s teeth. “So, did you count them this morning?”

“I figured I might as well wait for the range detective—that be you—to do the counting.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Arn took his time dressing. Danny—his formerly homeless houseguest and cook par excellence—had left some cinnamon rolls under a cake plate, and Arn snatched one on the fly. He’d stop by Starbucks on the way—Wooly Hank could just wait a few moments for Arn to wake up.

By the time he pulled off the county road into Wooly Hank’s pasture, overhead lights of a sheriff’s Expedition reflected from water trickling into a stock tank in the pasture. Wooly Hank stood by his truck staring at the sheriff’s unit. When he spotted Arn, he waved him over. Arn climbed out of his car and stretched, catching Wooly Hank grinning at his Olds.

“What you gonna do in that pretty car when it snows?” the rancher called.

“Chain it up,” Arn answered and chin-pointed to the sheriff’s vehicle. “You must have found some sheep missing.”

“They’re not here for that.” Wooly Hank beckoned with a bony finger, and Arn followed him across the pasture. Yellow evidence tape flapping in the wind—anchored by stakes sealing off a crime scene—caught Arn’s attention. “The deputy said not to come any closer.”

Arn moved laterally along the perimeter of the evidence tape before he spotted a body on the ground forty yards inside the barrier tape. A uniformed deputy and another man squatted by the corpse taking pictures. “Did you shoot the Midnight Sheepherder?”

“I would have if I’d have caught him,” Wooly Hank answered, then shook as he recalled the body he’d found that morning at daybreak. “After I phoned you I came out here to start the count when I spotted … a body. I’m no trained lawman, but I knowed right off she was dead.” He rubbed his temple. “I never noticed a body when I drove out here last night. It—she—was just laying there hidden by those clumps of sagebrush and buffalo grass. Naked from the waist up, she were.”

“Know her?”

Wooly Hank stuffed Copenhagen into his lower lip. He offered Arn a dip, but he waved it off. “She’s Jillie Reilly. Little Jim Reilly’s daughter.” Little Jim was, as Arn recalled, half-again as large as his teammates when he’d played line for University of Wyoming decades ago. Arn had the misfortune of delivering the death notification when Little Jim’s wife had died in a car accident when Arn worked for Cheyenne PD years ago. He was grateful someone else would notify Little Jim about his daughter.

“Deputy Slade there said he’s got to secure the pasture until the crime scene technicians arrive.”

“Mike Slade, I’m guessing.”

Wooly Hank nodded.

When Arn worked the Butch Spangler homicide last winter, Ned Oblanski, the Cheyenne police chief, had warned him to stay clear of Mike Slade. “He hates big city cops,” Oblanski had said. “Especially big city detectives. Slade’s one of the SO’s investigators and fancies himself a sharp officer. Even drives up to the academy in Douglas to give rookie classes every session. He has delusions of adequacy.” Yet here Arn was, standing in a pasture with Sergeant Mike Slade approaching, that delusional swagger coming out. He could have been a poster boy for DQ, with his long, lean legs, his bleached blond hair slicked back and pasted down with … Vaseline?

The deputy stepped over the evidence tape and stopped in front of Arn, looking down. He had Arn by two inches, and he stood a little taller on his toes to accentuate his size difference. He puffed his chest out like it meant something. “Look who showed up—the old retired Denver investigator. Playing range detective, I hear.”

“When I can.”

“And I hear you haven’t actually caught this Midnight Sheepherder after damned near half a year looking?”

“You heard right,” Arn said.

“Well, that’s just what I want to be when I retire—a stock detective. That’s only slightly above sneaking around to get the goods on a cheating spouse.”

Arn breathed deeply to calm himself. Even though Jillie Reilly was no concern of his, his cop DNA wanted to know more about it. And right now, Slade was the only soul who could tell him. “Homicide?”

“You are sharp,” Slade said. “You figure that out just by looking at the body from forty yards away?”

“No. I figured you and your partner wouldn’t be squatting next to a corpse if she just died naturally,” Arn said. “We call that critical thinking in the big city.”

“Well, stay out of my hair—”

“What was the cause of death?”

Slade turned back and faced Arn. He put his hands on his hips and smiled. “Cause of death will prove to be cerebral hypoxia.”

“Just say the victim was strangled?”

Slade’s smirk faded.

It was Arn’s turn to smile. “At least that’s what you would tell your rookie officers in class.”

Slade’s face turned red and his jaw muscles tightened.

“And while you’re at it, what was the mechanism of her death?”

“You damned civilians don’t need to know anything about this investigation.”

“Look,” Arn said. “I worked your side of the street for thirty years. Call it professional curiosity.”

Slade kicked at a clump of sheep shit with his shiny cowboy boot. “I suppose your bud Ned Oblanski will tell you anyway.” He jerked his thumb toward where the other deputy had just collapsed his camera tripod. “Victim was strangled and left where you see her.”

“Any theories?”

Slade stroked his handlebar mustache. “Way I figure it, Jillie was with the Midnight Sheepherder last night. Like she always was, as I figure it. The two had an argument, maybe over the split from the night’s theft. Maybe something else, like she got a case of conscience and threatened to expose their operation. Either way, her partner killed her and dumped her there.”

“Hank says he came into his field and chased a truck down the hill.” Arn nodded to the bank leading to a steep drop-off.

Slade glared at Wooly Hank. “He should have called right off.”

“You guys never caught any kids partying before,” Wooly Hank said. “How do you think you’d catch this guy?”

“He’s got a point,” Arn said. “All you got to do is find the truck that Hank put the run on and you might have your man. You might catch a break and find a tire print on down the hill you can cast for comparison when you find a suspect.”

Slade waved his hand around the tall grass prairie. “Sure. All we got to do is find a distinctive tire pattern in grass. Now if there’s dirt or gravel where the killer drove through—”

“There is.” Arn motioned for Slade to squat beside him. He looked back into the sun and pointed out where the grass had bent down in the direction the truck fled. Just like Wooly Hank said. “Over that hill it’s mostly dirt where the sheep have cropped the grass close. If it were me—and you understand this is just a range detective talking—I’d send my crime scene tech down there and look for tire impressions.”

Slade’s face turned red once again. “Maybe I already told my tech to do just that.” He turned on his heel and stomped across the field toward a mobile crime scene lab entering the pasture. “Just stay out of my way, Anderson.”

Wooly Hank watched Slade swagger toward the approaching van. “Might be a while before that damned fool is finished. Let’s drive up to the house and have some coffee and jaw for a spell until they’re done.”

After two pots of coffee that thoroughly woke Arn up, and an apple fritter that Wooly Hank’s missus baked, Slade and his evidence van left the pasture. Arn climbed back into Hank’s old Dodge dually truck and they bounced across the field toward where Hank’s sheep grazed. “And you’re certain you didn’t lose any sheep last night?”

“I just looked them over quick like.” Wooly Hank downshifted, and the gears on his old truck gnashed in protest. “I’ll do a detailed head count later now the law has left, but I’d bet they’re all here.”

“Then let’s go back to where you found Jillie’s body,” Arn said.

Wooly Hank looked sideways at Arn. “Did the Association hire you to solve Jillie’s murder?”

“They did not,” Arn answered, his head out the window looking for anything the killer might have dropped from his truck. “So as of now—with none of your sheep missing—I’m officially off the Association’s time clock. Just accept it that I wish to spend my free time looking at what happened.”

“No offense, Arn, but that seems a little … sick, wanting to get wrapped up in a murder investigation.”

“Can’t argue there.” Arn wanted to explain that after years of looking at murder victims, there was a profound satisfaction in bringing a killer to justice. Even if it meant wading knee-deep into the sinister side of life and imagining how a victim died. “Stop there.” He pointed to where Slade had driven stakes into the ground to cordon off the murder scene.

They stopped and Arn looked at the tracks, obliterated up to that point by sheriff’s office vehicles. Past the tape all the way to the edge of the pasture, tracks stood out sharply in the afternoon light. “Way the grass is smeared, he must have been hauling butt last night.”

Wooly Hank nodded. “He flew off that hill like he was racing in one of those off-road rallies. No way was I going to follow him down there.” He turned red. “But if I’d knowed he was a killer, by gawd I would have chased after him.”

Arn patted the old man’s shoulder. “I’m certain you would have. Now let’s go see what the killer saw.” He walked bent over, looking into the sun. When he got to the edge of the field, he spotted scuffed shoe prints of undetermined size and kind. And something else—the paw prints of a dog. Wooly Hank spotted it, too. He grabbed his cell phone and started punching numbers. “I’ll call Slade. Bet he didn’t cast that print.”

Arn reached over and closed Hank’s phone. “Don’t waste your time. Casting this paw print would be about as useful as trying to lift a fingerprint off a rock. The only thing it tells us is that someone squatted here with a dog alongside them.” He started for the truck. “Let’s drive down there and see what Slade’s evidence tech found.”

Wooly Hank said the hill was too steep to drive down in his old Dodge, so he drove a meandering trail he regularly used that skirted the steep hill. When they reached bottom, Arn pointed out the impression in the dirt where the evidence technician had set his frame to pour the plaster of Paris–like concoction over a tire impression. Dots of hardened white casting material had balled up when it dropped into the fine dust.

Arn walked around the pasture that had been cropped flat by sheep. “What do you make of this?” He pointed to a flat scrape mark several feet wide. It started close to the bottom of the hillside and continued all the way to Hank’s gate.

“Looks to me like they were dragging something,” Hank said.

Arn thought so too. With no sheep missing, and the tracks indicating the truck had driven out of the pasture at a high speed, he could only think of one explanation. “We know the Midnight Sheepherder’s been using dogs. And with a trailer big enough to hold thirty or thirty-five head, a good dog can gather them up and the rustler can be gone within minutes.” He knelt and ran his hand over the scrape mark. “I think Slade’s way off base thinking Jillie and the killer were in the rustling game together.”

Wooly Hank wiped tobacco juice off his stubble with his shirtsleeve. “What you getting at?”

“You’re not missing any sheep.”

“I told you that first.”

Arn closed his eyes, reconstructing the murder scene as he often did throughout his years as a homicide detective. “The trailer ramp is down. The rustler has his dog out and is ready to gather your flock. But I think he’s interrupted by the killer.” Arn motioned topside to Wooly Hank’s upper pasture. “He scrambles up the bank with his dog. Sees the killer strangling Jillie Reilly. The killer spots him, and the rustler flees so fast he doesn’t even bother to raise the ramp.”

“So that’s why the rustler didn’t steal my sheep?”

“That what I figure.”

Wooly Hank picked at his whiskers with a chipped fingernail. “If what you say is true, then the Midnight Sheepherder is the only witness to Jillie’s murder. That makes sense, but—no offense, Arn—you ain’t had any luck locating the rustler yet. How you going to find him now?”

“With that.” Arn squatted next to the gate. Paint transfer from a fender, perhaps the box of a pickup, had been smeared on the wooden gatepost as the truck passed. Arn opened his pocket knife and dug around the wood until he could pull the paint chip free. He tore a sheet from his pocket notebook and fashioned a mini-envelope to put the paint chip in. “We now know the color of the rustler’s truck.”

“Whoa,” Wooly Hank said. “I followed you up until you came up with that cockamamie notion. Maybe that paint chip came from the killer’s truck.”

“It didn’t. Look.” Arn broke off a piece of sagebrush and circled a tire track. “When I looked at one of the tire tracks topside, I noticed the killer’s truck has a chunk of sidewall missing. This one that brushed the gate and left this paint mark doesn’t.”

“But Deputy Slade said you can’t see tire tracks in the grass.”

“Slade knows just enough about police work to be dangerous.” Arn stood and stretched. “If he’d looked closer, he would have spotted them as well.”

“Maybe the witness left these, too.” Wooly Hank kneeled by the gate. He brushed dirt away and picked up two slivers of plastic that he handed to Arn.

“Good eye.” Arn turned the plastic shards over in his hand. It looked like a piece of broken taillight or a side marker light—not enough to determine what make or even type of vehicle. But now he had one more thing to look for: a navy blue truck with a broken marker or taillight.

“That’s just great.” Wooly Hank threw his hands up. “Now you’ll be trying to find Jillie’s killer rather than investigate our sheep thefts.”

Arn clamped a hand on Wooly Hank’s shoulder. “I’ll still be at the Association’s beck and call. Except now I have something to do between those calls.” He started for Wooly Hank’s truck, then stopped and turned back to where he’d picked up the shard of plastic.

“Now what’d you find?”

Arn squatted in the dirt and ran his hand through tiny mounds. He stood and arched his back. “It’s what I don’t find. I don’t find the rest of this marker lens.”

“So maybe it didn’t fall out of the truck when it hit the gate,” Wooly Hank said. “Maybe it’s still stuck in the fender.”

Arn turned the broken plastic over in his hand. Ridges showed that the light’s base had broken. “It broke off, all right. And it’s not here.”

“So?”

“So, if it’s not here, I’m certain by these tracks the person that hit the gate didn’t dawdle long enough to pick it up.” Arn looked up the hill, envisioning what kind of killer would be after the witness. “That means the killer stopped and picked the lens up. And is probably looking for a match to it right now.”