Chapter 25
Still tense and angry, Colly sped north along the Old Ranch Way. Damn Lowell. He’d cost her three days’ work on what increasingly appeared to be nothing more than a complicated red herring. But she had to be sure. Gripping the steering wheel, she worked to slow her breathing and relax her aching jaw muscles. When she arrived at the ranch house, Russ’s SUV was parked in front of the garage. The rear hatch stood open, and he was digging through a toolbox in the back.
As Colly climbed out of her car, he looked up, smiling. “Just got here, myself. How fast did you drive?”
“We need to talk.”
Russ pulled a pair of leather work gloves from the toolbox and closed the hatch. “What about?”
“I came from the turbine plant.” Colly glanced towards the house. Nadine the housekeeper was watching them from the dining room window. “Is there someplace more private?”
Russ stuffed the gloves in his back pocket. “I’m riding up to the north pasture—I want to get there before the setup crew breaks for lunch. Come along. We can talk on the way.”
Colly hesitated. “On horseback?”
“You can ride Maisie. She’s gentle.”
Colly, who’d spent most of her childhood in the urban sprawl of New Jersey, had rarely seen a horse before her first visit to the ranch with Randy. Even if she’d been a confident rider, conducting an interrogation on horseback wasn’t ideal. “Can’t we take the highway up to the access road?”
“Access road’s blocked with equipment. Come on, even Satchel rode Maisie.”
Colly sighed. She didn’t want to cool her heels at Mollison, making small talk with Iris until Russ returned. Pushing aside her misgivings, she followed him around the garden walk and along a path to the barn. It was a handsome fieldstone structure designed in the traditional western style with a breezeway down the center. One side was unpartitioned and served as a makeshift machine shop for the repairing of ranch equipment, while the other held a dozen stalls and a tack room.
As they entered, two barn cats darted for cover behind a tractor tire. The air smelled of hay and manure. Colly sneezed into the crook of her arm while Russ saddled a fidgety bay gelding and a pinto mare.
He helped her onto the pinto and adjusted the stirrups. “You won’t fall off Maisie unless you jump.”
“I’m not good with reins.”
“Just hang onto the horn. She’ll follow me.”
“We can’t talk if I’m ten feet behind you.”
“I know a place we can talk on the way back.”
Russ mounted the gelding and led the way out of the barn. To Colly’s relief, Maisie followed placidly. At the bottom of the hill, they turned onto a trail heading north. Russ’s mount, frustrated at being held back, snorted and tossed his head but eventually settled into a walk.
Russ was a relaxed and confident rider, Colly thought. He moved with the animal as naturally as if he’d sprouted from the saddle, hitching one shoulder slightly higher than the other, just as Randy used to. It was these little similarities that got to her the most, especially when she wasn’t prepared for them. Why had Russ lied to her the other day? Did he know about the crimes at the turbine plant? If he was complicit, then what? The thought made her stomach churn. She felt nothing but contempt for Lowell. But it was different with Russ. Though she seldom admitted it even to herself, Colly was lonely. And in the last few days, there’d been moments with him when she’d felt—something. Was it only that he looked like Randy? Was her treacherous subconscious making some pathetic substitution, trying to recover what she’d lost?
She couldn’t afford to think about it now. With an effort, she forced herself to focus on the rocking rhythm of the pinto’s easy gait.
For half an hour, they rode through the scrubland. The ground began to rise, gently at first and then more steeply. Finally, they crested a ridge, and Colly found that they were on top of a low bluff overlooking a grassy plain. Near the base of the bluff stood an enormous white circus tent surrounded by booths and food trucks. Shading her eyes, Colly saw workmen, ant-like in the distance, stringing lights along walkways and marking off a makeshift parking lot with orange traffic cones. At the booths, vendors busily arranged merchandise. A crew of men in hardhats was assembling a Ferris wheel at the eastern edge of the grounds. From the top of the bluff, the whole scene looked like a child’s toy model.
“I pictured something smaller,” Colly said.
Russ nodded. “When Dad was a kid, it was one tent and some bleachers by the highway. Now we get hundreds of people.”
“Ever have trouble?”
“Not much. A few pickpocketing incidents, maybe a fight or two. I have every cop I can spare running security, plus a few guards from the turbine plant.”
“I meant with the snakes.”
“Oh.” Russ laughed. “A handler got bit on the thumb a while back, but never any civilians. We keep a paramedic and some antivenom on-site, just in case. Are you coming?”
“Satchel’s begging me, but I don’t know. When does it start?”
“Tomorrow night. Runs all weekend. Lowell and me will be here most of that time keeping an eye on things.”
He goaded the gelding forwards. The bluff, which appeared steep, actually shelved down to the plain in a series of jagged stair-step formations. They descended a switchback trail along these natural steps.
At the main entrance to the big tent, they dismounted. Colly rubbed her backside. “I forgot how sore that makes me.”
Russ grinned. “Only cure’s practice.”
He tied their horses to a signpost, and they went inside. A few workers were moving about, but the preparations seemed fairly complete. Bleachers ran along the two longer sides of the tent, while at either end, booths, tables, and portable kitchens were clustered. In a line down the center of the huge space stood four circular enclosures, like the rings of a circus. The walls of the rings were chest-high and fitted at intervals with plexiglass windows so young children could look inside. From within the ring nearest to them came a muted buzzing noise, like a thousand maracas being shaken in the distance.
Colly moved instinctively backwards. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s okay. Come on.”
Russ took her hand and led her across the grass. As she peered over the wall of the ring, Colly went cold. The floor was covered a foot deep in a dappled tangle of writhing snakes. Some lay motionless. Others squirmed on their backs, trying to right themselves, their pale bellies making cream-colored streaks in the dark, mottled heap. A few slithered over the top of the living mass like crowd-surfers at a concert. A strong, rancid odor rose from the pen. Colly cupped her hand over her nose and mouth.
“This is the holding pit,” Russ said. “Don’t worry, they can’t climb the walls.”
“Are—are these all from the ranch?” Colly stammered.
Russ shook his head. “Only a couple hundred. Most are from off-site. We pay by the head, so the locals bring them to us. Helps with population control in the area.”
As he spoke, a young Latino workman wearing a greasy straw Stetson and dusty Wranglers entered from behind a partition marked “Staff Only.” He was carrying a broad, flat plywood box.
“Hiya, boss,” he said to Russ.
“Hey, Pete. How’s the prep going?”
Pete grimaced. “Some of the new crew’s the laziest SOBs I ever seen—but I been ridin’ herd on ’em. We’ll be ready.”
Balancing the box on the edge of the snake pit, Pete flipped it over, and a hatch dropped open. A knot of rattlesnakes slid out onto the writhing heap, setting off loud rattles of protest.
“How many this year?” Russ asked.
“Over two thousand. Gonna be a good Rodeo.” Pete shook the box to make sure it was empty, glancing curiously at Russ and Colly as he did so. Colly realized that Russ was still clasping her hand. She pulled it away.
“This is my sister-in-law, Colly,” Russ said belatedly.
Pete nodded and tipped his hat. “Y’all have a good one.” He left the tent with the snake box balanced on his shoulder.
“Pete’s Felix’s nephew,” Russ said. “He’s taken over most of the ranch-foreman work since Felix’s arthritis got bad.”
“You trust him?”
“Pete grew up here. He’s one of us.”
Whoever murdered Denny is probably one of us, too , Colly thought. “What’s in the other rings?”
“The next one’s the show pit, where the snake handlers do demonstrations.” Russ pointed down the row. “After that’s the slaughter pit, and the last one’s the skinning pit. The meat gets cooked and served at the food-prep stations, and the skins go to make wallets and belts and things.”
Colly’s stomach heaved. “This is barbaric.”
“You’d feel different if you lived around here. Every year someone reaches into a woodpile or steps in the wrong spot and ends up maimed or dead. This makes a lot of money for charity. Serves a scientific purpose, too. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
He led Colly across the tent and past the “Staff Only” partition she’d noticed earlier. They went through an opening into a long, narrow side-chamber that, in the tent’s circus days, had been used as a staging area and informal greenroom. Five or six people, all in their mid-twenties, sat on upturned five-gallon buckets around a card table at the far end of the room, chatting and eating what looked like carnitas wrapped in soft taco shells. When they saw Russ, they looked up briefly to wave hello.
“More ranch hands?” Colly asked.
“Grad students from A&M. This room’s the research station.”
Worktables laden with stainless-steel scales and other scientific instruments lined the walls. Not far from where the students were eating stood another round plywood pit, like the ones in the big tent, but smaller, with slightly shorter sides.
“Every rattler’s weighed, measured, and sexed before it goes into the holding pit,” Russ said. “And they’re milked for antivenom. The data’s sent to Texas Parks and Wildlife, and the antivenom’s shipped to hospitals all around. The Rodeo’s a win-win for everyone.”
“Except the snakes.”
Russ laughed. “Don’t talk like that around Lowell. Last year, some animal-rights folks showed up with signs and a bullhorn. I had to stop him running them off with a shotgun.”
For an hour, Colly tagged along as Russ made the rounds, inspecting the progress of the setup and chatting with the crew. It was after one o’clock when they mounted their horses for the ride back.
“You said there’s someplace we can talk?”
Russ turned in the saddle. “Up ahead.”
They reached the foot of the bluff and picked their way slowly up the switchback trail.
Halfway to the top, Russ stopped. “There’s a good spot along here, but it’s safer on foot.”
They dismounted at a wide place in the trail and tethered the horses to a scrubby cedar growing out of the cliff face. Colly followed Russ down a path that ran along one of the natural shelves of rock, hugging the crumbling wall on her left and trying not to think about the dizzying drop on her right. After a while, they rounded the shoulder of a stony outcrop. There, the shelf widened out to a platform a dozen feet wide, north-facing and shaded by the cliff behind it.
“Randy and me used to come here when we were kids. It was our hideout.” Russ picked up a chunk of flat sandstone the size of a dinner plate, turned it over, and handed it to Colly. It was covered in faded but still legible characters scratched in a child’s hand. The characters were unfamiliar to Colly. She looked questioningly at Russ.
“Our secret outlaw-code. Randy made it up. He was the smart one.” Russ sighed. “I don’t come here much anymore.” Throwing himself on the ground, he leaned against the cliff wall and stretched out his legs. “What’d you want to talk about?”
Holding the stone covered in her husband’s childish scrawl, Colly felt suddenly depressed. She sat down facing Russ and gathered her thoughts.
Finally, she laid the stone aside. “I know everything, Russ. I know about the money Lowell took, and about Hoyer cooking the books for him—and why a random bird strike was enough to make that blade come apart and kill that woman.”
Russ said nothing. The color drained from his face, but he nodded for her to continue. In a low voice, she recited the details of her conversation with Lowell that morning and with Jace Hoyer the day before. Russ listened quietly, staring off into the hazy distance.
After a few minutes, Colly paused. “None of this is news to you, is it?”
She waited, but Russ didn’t answer.
“Well?”
His eyes darted quickly to hers. “What do you want me to say?”
Colly’s earlier ambivalence vanished in a flash of anger. “Were you involved in this mess?”
Russ sighed. Taking off his Stetson, he set it on the ground and rubbed his eyes. “Not on purpose.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I was an accessory after the fact, I guess you’d say.” He tilted his head back against the stone wall. “I should’ve seen it coming. I knew Lowell gambled. Then his drinking got worse, and he was pissed off all the time—but I figured it was the divorce. I should’ve guessed.”
“When did you learn the truth?”
Russ exhaled slowly. It was last April, he said, a month after Jace Hoyer’s dismissal. Lowell had called and asked to talk. They met on the porch of Willis’s cabin one evening while Willis was up at the house with Iris. Lowell blurted out the whole ugly story. He’d just found out that Denny Knox was seeing Brenda for therapy. What if Denny knew something? If Brenda found out about the embezzlement, she’d destroy him—he’d lose his kids, maybe go to prison.
“How’d you react?”
“I cussed him out, said something like, ‘Do you realize the bind you’re putting me in? If I don’t arrest you, I’m an accessory. I’ve got to send you to prison or break the law myself.’”
“And you chose option two.”
Russ paused. “A lot was at stake, Col. Momma’d been so depressed since Randy and Victoria died, but she was finally coming out of it—going to dance classes, dating Talford. The scandal would’ve destroyed her and the company both. I was thinking about the kids, too. All the kids, including Satchel. Their futures would’ve been gone, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I did my best. I insisted on a generous settlement for the dead lady’s family, more than they asked for. And I told Lowell that if Brenda, or Jace, or anyone else blew the whistle, my hands would be tied—I’d have to turn the matter over to the county sheriff.”
“That’s awfully noble. How’d Lowell respond?”
“All he cared about was stopping Denny from blabbing anything to Brenda. The judge in Denny’s arson case is a friend of the family. Dad helped him out of a financial jam once. Lowell wanted me to trump up some parole violation against Denny, then get the judge to incarcerate him.”
“You’re joking.”
“I said if I found out he so much as nodded hello to Judge Appleton, I’d tell Brenda the whole story myself.”
Colly sighed. Her initial anger was draining away, leaving a cold, sick feeling in its place. “Tell me the truth, do you know who killed Denny?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Could it have been Lowell?”
“I don’t see how.”
Colly chewed her lip. “Then explain why Felix called you instead of 911 when he found Denny’s body. You said it was because his English is bad. But that doesn’t pass the smell test, to me.”
Russ winced. “You caught me off guard with that question the other day.”
“Tell me now.”
Russ picked up a pebble and rolled it between his fingers. The situation had turned out to be more complicated than he knew, he said. When he and Lowell met that night on the cabin porch, they’d had no idea that Felix was inside, cleaning Delilah’s pen. The windows were open, and he’d overheard them talking. Considering it none of his business, he’d kept the knowledge to himself. But months later, when he found Denny’s body by the stock pond and recognized him, Felix immediately understood the implications. A second murder at the ranch would bring a lot of scrutiny, particularly to Willis. But the fact that the victim was Jace Hoyer’s stepson would put the company—and Lowell—under the microscope, as well.
“Felix has worked for us since before I was born,” Russ said. “He’s loyal as hell, especially to Momma. I think he’s always been half in love with her. He didn’t want her getting hurt.”
It had been early morning when Felix called Russ, who raced to the ranch to examine the scene. “At first, I didn’t notice the rabbit mask. I was afraid Lowell might’ve snapped and done it. I called him out to the pond. I wanted to look him in the eye when I asked him.”
“And?”
Russ shook his head. “Lowell’s got no poker face—that’s why he’s a rotten gambler. When he saw Denny, he was floored. He thought Willis did it, which made sense to me, too, at the time.”
The brothers had debated what to do. Lowell wanted to bury the body on the property and pretend nothing had happened. When the Hoyers reported Denny missing, Russ could go through the motions of a search, conclude the boy ran away, and leave it at that. Delinquents ran off all the time.
But Russ had refused. He’d notified the county sheriff, who’d called in the Rangers.
“It’s nice to know you draw the line somewhere.”
Russ scowled and tossed the pebble over the cliff. “Keeping mum about Lowell is one thing. But you think I’d let Jolene Hoyer suffer not knowing what happened to her boy? Besides, once I saw the mask, I knew we had a serial killer. Whether it was Willis or somebody else, I couldn’t let some maniac go around killing kids.”
Colly studied his face. “I want to believe you. But you’ve lied from the beginning.” She gave him a hard look. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I swear.”
“For God’s sake, Russ, the case was already closed. Why’d you ask me to investigate if you didn’t want this stuff coming out?”
Russ’s forehead puckered into a frown. “Momma and Avery convinced me Willis didn’t kill Denny. And I knew Lowell couldn’t have, because he didn’t know about the first rabbit mask, back in ’98. A killer’s running loose. He might—”
Colly cut him off. “Wait—you said Lowell was with you in Paint Rock the day Denny was killed.”
Russ nodded, confused.
“Now you’re saying you knew he couldn’t be the killer because of the rabbit mask? Why would that matter if he had an airtight alibi?”
Russ stared. “Like you said, he could’ve hired a hitman—”
Colly scrambled to her feet. “That Paint Rock alibi’s bullshit, isn’t it?”
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and said nothing.
“Russ— why ?”
He was silent for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he sighed. “Lowell claimed he was in bed with a hangover most of that day. If the Rangers uncovered the embezzlement, I was afraid they’d think—” He shrugged lamely. “I didn’t see the harm in saying he was with me since I knew he didn’t do it.”
“I’m not the Rangers, Russ. Why’d you lie to me? You just swore there was nothing else.”
“It seemed simpler.” He looked up at her bleakly. “I know how that sounds. But if I told you I lied to the Rangers, you’d want to know why. The embezzlement’s got nothing to do with Denny’s murder. So I thought—”
“You thought you could use me to solve your problems while you made sure the family’s dirty laundry stayed in the hamper,” Colly snapped. “Is that why you showed up with wine last night? To play on my emotions, find out how much I know?” She felt something on her cheek and dashed the tears away angrily with her fingertips.
“Of course not.” Russ climbed to his feet. “I didn’t want to put you in the same bind I was in. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. I’m sorry, Col. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“That’s your problem, Russ—you’re weak. Weak people are dangerous because they can always convince themselves they’re doing the right thing.”
Russ stared at her miserably, then stooped to pick up his hat. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I need to think. I should demand your resignation. For now, you’re going to recuse yourself.”
“From this case?”
“From all police work. If you don’t want me telling everyone why, you better get the flu or think up some other excuse for taking a few days off.”
Russ was staring at the horizon, rotating his Stetson by the brim. “Okay.”
“Now get me the hell out of here. I want to go home.”