Chapter Five
“I got a call from the landowner at that new construction project,” Detective Hanson said later that afternoon.
He motioned for his partner to join him in an empty interrogation room.
The moment the door closed behind them, his partner demanded, “What are you doing asking for the key to that house in the new subdivision to have another look around?”
“There’s something about this case that bothers me,” Russ said with a shrug.
“There is no case,” Hanson snapped.
“The call you got from the landowner, did you happen to ask him how well he knows Jack Marshall?”
Hanson let out a string of curses. “Look, the chief wants this forgotten. It looks bad for the department as well as for an upstanding local businessman with far-reaching connections. I’m warning you. Leave this alone.”
“Doesn’t this whole thing make you a little suspicious?”
His partner let out an irritated grunt. “I could tell Ms. Brand got to you, but she’s a nutjob. There was no murder. The man has an airtight alibi. Come on, Russ, there is no smoking gun.”
“He killed her with a knife, and we never really checked his alibi out.”
“Seriously? I just said there was no murder. I hope I don’t have to keep telling you that. We aren’t going to spend taxpayers’ dollars chasing a murder that didn’t happen.”
Russ wished he could back away from it. But his doubts kept him awake at night.
Yes, Amy Sue Brand had been more than a little rattled and upset, but who wouldn’t be if she’d just witnessed a murder?
It was odd that she’d ended up in that new addition when there obviously wasn’t a place to rent.
But she wouldn’t be the first person to get scammed online.
Why would she make up a story like that?
He didn’t think she would. After digging into both Marshall and Brand, he hadn’t found any connection between them.
She’d never purchased a car from him, never even had one worked on at his dealership, and it appeared that the two had never met.
Nor did they seem to share any relatives or friends.
Their more than a decade’s difference in age would have kept them from any high school rivalries even if Billings and Dry Gulch played sports at some point.
So, if it wasn’t personal, what would her motivation be to accuse an innocent man of murder?
It made no sense. Watching the woman during the interview, he didn’t believe it was personal.
Nor had her testimony wavered. She’d sworn the killer was Jack Marshall even when told he had an airtight alibi.
What hurt her testimony was the lack of a body.
There was no reason to believe a murder had even been committed by anyone, let alone Jack Marshall.
During his late-night arguments with himself, Russ admitted that he should forget about it and move on.
If Amy Sue Brand was wrong about the man she swore was the killer, didn’t that mean she was wrong about everything else since so far not only had a dead body not turned up but there hadn’t been a report of a missing woman?
Except he kept seeing her the night she came into the police department to report the crime she’d witnessed not forty-five minutes before. Russ remembered the shock and terror on her bloodless face. He’d been haunted by the pain he’d seen in those blue eyes ever since.
Amy Sue hated to admit that her sister was right. How could she even go about proving what she’d seen? Jack Marshall had money, influence and an airtight alibi, and he had destroyed or hidden any evidence including the woman’s body.
Because there was no sign of a crime, Amy Sue appeared irrational, confused, untrustworthy. Add to that Marshall’s alibi—he wasn’t even in town the night of the murder hence she couldn’t have seen him.
He couldn’t have made her look more foolish for accusing him.
But that wasn’t what ate at her. There would be no justice for the woman he’d killed.
The odds were too against it. Amy Sue couldn’t put it out of her mind.
She kept seeing the murder as if in slow motion and stewing over the police not taking her seriously and arresting Jack Marshall.
With a curse, she told herself she just needed to go into Dry Gulch for some supplies to get her mind off it. Her sister was right. What could she do, if the police weren’t going to act? Nothing.
Once in her SUV and driving down the road toward town, she did feel a little better. On each side of the road was land that had been in the family for years. She took in the familiar landscape. It made her feel safe and protected.
Her sister thought she was trapped here, obviously not realizing how much she loved this ranch. Their grandmother had always believed that Amy Sue would be the one who would choose to leave. That was why Gram had left the ranch to Josie, so the place would always stay in the family.
It was hurtful. But she’d never shared the bond Josie did with their gram.
She’d always believed it was because her sister had their grandmother’s second sight and she didn’t.
But maybe it was because her grandmother didn’t trust her youngest granddaughter to be capable of the responsibility.
After all, hadn’t Josie always gotten her out of trouble even when they were growing up and even more recent than that?
Maybe they were right not to trust Amy Sue, since she’d made some bad decisions lately. Like the night of the murder. Why hadn’t she listened to that spooked part of her? Why hadn’t she turned around and gone to a hotel the moment she sensed something was wrong?
When she’d left that subdivision, she’d been running scared. She should have driven just far enough away to call the police and make sure he didn’t get away. Maybe the cops would have gotten there in time to catch Jack Marshall loading the woman’s body into his fancy SUV.
She realized she was obsessing all over again.
The idea of driving into town was to get her mind off the murder.
She hadn’t even been paying attention, because she was startled and had to swerve when a large SUV came roaring up behind her going too fast. From the tracks in the muddy road behind her, she could see that the SUV had just come off the ranch road.
What had the driver been doing on her property?
And now the driver was riding her bumper trying to get around her.
As soon as she pulled over a little to let him pass, instead of shooting past her, the driver slowed to come alongside her. She looked over, a curse on her lips until she got a look at the man behind the wheel.
Shock sent her pulse racing at even the sight of Jack Marshall again.
But when he pointed his index finger at her like a gun and pretended to pull the trigger she was so startled, so astonished, that she swerved.
The left-hand front tire caught in the soft earth at the edge of the rural road and pulled her toward the ditch.
It took all of her strength to get her vehicle back on the road.
By then Jack Marshall had sped off, disappearing over the horizon.
Shaking badly, she hit her brakes, coming to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road as she tried to calm down.
She gripped the wheel, fighting to rein in her emotions.
It was scary enough that the man had been on their ranch.
But he’d actually threatened her? She couldn’t believe this was happening.
She’d thought that if she could put it out of her mind, she could accept there was nothing more she could do.
But he’d come to her ranch. He’d threatened her.
At first, she had wanted to turn around and race back to the ranch house where she’d always felt safe.
She knew she’d been hiding there for years, but especially after last year.
As the initial shock waned, she felt her anger boil up. This man thought he could intimidate her. Why? So she would take back her statement to the police? Or to keep her from causing him any more trouble? Either way, it made her furious.
She’d already had one man lie, manipulate and ultimately threaten her. Not this time, she swore to herself. Jack Marshall thought no one could take him down. While he might be right about that, Amy Sue was damned sure going to try.
Detective Russell Tate had always loved a good mystery. It was why he’d gone to the academy and worked his way up to detective. His family hadn’t understood why he would leave his life on the ranch outside of Roundup, let alone become a cop.
“You sure one of those wild horses you’re always trying to break didn’t kick you in the head?” his brother Patrick joked.
“Leave him be,” their father said. “The ranch will always be here when he’s ready to come back.
” John Russell Tate Sr., just assumed the day would come when his youngest son would get so lonesome for wide-open spaces, the smell of horseflesh and leather beneath him that he’d come back home.
“He’s got to try somethin’ different to be sure of where he belongs. ”
“You can take the cowboy to the city, but you can’t take the cowboy out of a man,” his mother Maggie had said with a laugh.
Russ always took the good-natured kidding with a smile because it was true. It came with the territory. A lot of his friends had left the state for an education or a better job. A lot of ranchers had to sell because their offspring had no desire to ranch.
Russ was a cowboy through and through. He had no idea what the future held, just that right now he was also a cop and he had a mystery, one he was determined to solve.
The way he saw it Amy Sue Brand had seen a murder, but the killer wasn’t Jack Marshall.
Or the woman was confused as his partner was determined to believe.
Or Jack Marshall killed the blonde just as the Brand woman had said and now Marshall was going to get away with it, if Russ didn’t figure out how he did it.