Chapter 38
I stand in the doorway and watch her. She’s no longer curled up with her face smooshed into her pillow. She’s stretched out, nose up. Finally asleep, she breathes rhythmically and deeply. She looks peaceful, but I’m going to ruin whatever few brief moments of calm she’s found through sleep.
Jess looks frail, too. She’s lost even more weight and her cheekbones are even sharper.
I draw and release a deep sigh and have begun to make my way over to her when the doorbell rings. Jess flinches awake and sees me.
“Stay put,” I say. “I’ll get it.”
I hurry back into Jess’s office and drop her file where I got it and go to the front.
I peer out the windows to see who’s there.
Alderson and Greene. And the officer assigned to Jess and Sam.
They introduce me to her. Turns out she’s from the Kalispell Police Department, not the county, like Zane, my protective detail.
I don’t recognize her, but that doesn’t mean anything.
The department is getting bigger as the valley grows, and in this situation, involving the FBI, they’ll use resources from whichever department they can.
“You guys can’t get enough of me, can you?” I say.
Alderson chuckles. Greene still doesn’t find me amusing and doesn’t even crack a smile, but both sets of their eyes are energized. I wave them in.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Trying to get some shut-eye.”
“We need her, too. Our tech guy has sent us close-ups of the tattoo.”
Jess is in the bathroom throwing water on her face. I tell her who it is and what it’s about while she dries up with a towel. “I’ll be right out,” she says.
Alderson doesn’t wait for Jess. “In addition to the overlap list you created for us, we’ve added all the individuals you arrested while you were on the force,” he says. “We need you and Jess to look through it and identify anyone Jess might have also known in some way.”
A flash of Coleman hitting the ground, a bloom of red spreading from his chest to the carpet, the knife on the floor when he smashed the coffee table on his way down.
It all comes zinging back into my mind, even the tequila and lime slices flinging into the air like they’re in slow motion.
The smell of nitro. The metallic scent of Coleman’s blood.
Of course, Coleman was never arrested. Railes took that opportunity away from him, so even though Jess and I both knew him in some way, he is not on the list and is not an issue here and now.
They’ve taken seats in Jess’s living room like they belong.
Greene on the sofa, Alderson in the easy chair.
I’m sitting next to Greene to leave space to my right for Jess.
Greene shifts closer to the armrest as if I’m invading her space.
She grabs her laptop while Alderson opens a briefcase and fishes out some paper.
He hands me a printout and pulls out another one.
“Here are names of all the people that your sister worked on at Rotical in which either of you enlisted their help or they enlisted yours once you opened your PI practice. Study each name and tell us if there was anything that occurred that could make any of them angry. And we need you to tell us if there’s anyone suspicious that you know of who is not on the list.”
In addition to Paxton’s name, the list has only about ten other names.
“Or anything that jumps out at you for any reason at all would be useful,” Alderson continues. “You both know that with investigative work, sometimes the smallest, oddest thing can lead you somewhere.”
Jess walks into the room as he hands me the second paper.
I try to read her, but her face is blank, still drained.
The sky outside has become dark and bruised, so I ask her if she can switch on the light so we both can see the lists better.
I get through the second sheet of names quickly and hand it to Jess.
There’s nothing about anyone that strikes a chord with me other than Paxton.
Then I study the one with all my arrests, which is also short.
When I see no connection to Jess in any of these names, either, I ask, “What about the tattoo?”
“Yep. Just came through.” Greene angles her laptop toward me.
It’s a little blurry, but it’s a rough, almost hieroglyphic capital R, depending on how you view it from the position of his arm.
On the image, because his arm is reaching for the ground, the letter is upside down, but if the owner of the tattoo were looking down at his own arm, it would be right side up.
“Have you seen this before?”
I squint at the screen.
Greene clicks a button and enlarges it.
“Son of a bitch,” I say, shaking my head in annoyance. “The Crazy R.”
“Clearly an R,” Greene says. “But crazy?”
“Yeah, I remember it from when I went to the Ridgeways’ ranch.
Just a few days before the sketch came out.
The R is supposed to be viewed by others, so it’s meant to be upside down.
An upside-down letter in ranching often means crazy.
It’s basic, almost a cave-like design, because to brand cattle you have to keep it simple since you’re burning hide.
The more complex, the bigger the risk of infection. ”
“The Ridgeways?” Jess asks. “You mean Clarissa Haynes’s case?”
“Yes,” I say.
Alderson turns to Jess. “This whole Ridgeway thing. Crosbie has told us about Clarissa, and we’ve got someone from the agency pulling records of Teton Valley’s investigation of it. But how exactly do you know him?”
“Clarissa and her brother, Paxton Rhoads, contacted me initially because of my work at Rotical to see if they actually were blood relatives in addition to being foster siblings. Later, after Clarissa passed away, Crosbie advertised her new PI services on my show. So Paxton called me to see if I thought she might be able to help him. When I spoke highly of Cros, he called her.”
“And this guy”—Alderson points at the screen—“whoever he is, has Ridgeway’s ranch logo on his arm?”
“Yes, apparently,” I say.
“Does Ridgeway have a tattoo like this?” Greene asks.
“No, not on his arm anyway. When I went over to the ranch to talk to him, it was a warm day and he had his sleeves rolled up. I’d recall if he did.”
“Did you notice if anyone else there on the ranch had one?”
“I didn’t see anyone else besides Ridgeway.” I think about surveilling Lasserio the night before. He was wearing a long-sleeve thermal-type shirt. His sleeves were down the entire time.
“Did you look into the forensics reports from Teton County on Clarissa’s investigation like I asked you to?” I ask.
“Yes, actually,” Alderson says. “They grabbed moldings of the tire treads at the trailhead in the area Clarissa was last seen. We’re having them reanalyzed, but there’s nothing conclusive yet.”
I’m delighted and surprised that the Teton County Sheriff’s Department cared enough to pull moldings in the first place.
As long as there weren’t too many other tracks in the area to make them useless, the evidence might prove useful.
I think of that pack Lasserio took back into the shed.
If things weren’t so crazy today, I’d have already made it back there to snoop around.
I tell Alderson and Greene about it, show them the video, and suggest they use FBI muscle to get access to that shed before Lasserio returns, probably this evening after his Wednesday poker fest. That is, if he’s not too drunk to drive.
“I’ve already called the storage business owner,” I say.
“Lasserio isn’t even renting it. It’s registered in Robbie Ridgeway’s father’s name, David Ridgeway, who is no longer alive. ”
“Interesting,” Alderson says. “Establishing probable cause over a guy carrying a random backpack out of a shed isn’t feasible, but I’ll see what we can do.”
I know he’s right, that my video of a guy moving a pack around means nothing, but I can’t get over how suspicious Lasserio looked and the way he got so nervous when a stranger pulled in.
Alderson fishes around in his notes until he finds his information on the Ridgeway lead. He makes phone calls while Greene taps away on her keyboard. Jess excuses herself to take a shower, and I go outside to finally scrub our cars.
After about forty-five minutes, the agents come out with Jess trailing them. They announce they have three people they plan on contacting who currently or have recently been ranch hands at the Crazy R Ranch.
Before they get in their car, Alderson tells us both not to hesitate to contact them if we think of anything else or notice anything suspicious at all.
He directs it to Jess more than to me, probably because he senses she needs it more than I do, since I’ve been getting used to the drill.
“And,” he adds, handing her his card, “you might want to consider renting vehicles for a few days. Especially you.” He points to me.
“Now that you’ve been filmed coming out of your place, everyone knows what you’re driving. ”
I brush it off, but I know he’s right.
I stand beside Jess as they drive away under the darkening sky.
“Jess,” I say. “We need to talk.”
“Oh.” She looks at her phone. She’s holding Alderson’s card, her brow tight with worry.
“But I have to pick up Sam from school.” She glances at her car.
“You got all the writing off. Thank you,” she says.
“Is it okay to drive, though? Maybe we should both swing by the airport and grab rentals, as he suggested.”
“That’s not going to matter. They know—” I stop. I don’t want to worry her more than she already is.
“They know what? Where we live?”
I nod.
“That’s obvious.”
I don’t reply.
“Jesus,” she says, shaking her head angrily. “What have you gotten us into?” She’s glaring at me with an anger I haven’t seen since we were younger and in the throes of hormonal teen rages.