Chapter Six
Josie had never wanted her sister to be wrong about something so badly. “You’re sure it was Jack Marshall you saw on the road?” she asked after Amy Sue rushed into her office and told her what had happened.
“Really?” Amy Sue said clearly exasperated. “You sound just like the police. You think I’m mistaken again? He pretended to shoot me. Believe or not, not all that many people want me dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Josie said quickly. “I just don’t want to believe he would do something so…dangerous as to stalk his accuser.”
“I told you he was arrogant. He knows I can’t prove he murdered that woman, so he feels safe,” Amy Sue said as she paced, too upset no doubt to sit.
Josie couldn’t blame her. This was very upsetting news. Jack Marshall seemed, if not smart, at least extremely careful. Why would he chance being seen on their ranch by the eyewitness in an alleged murder? It made no sense unless…
“For him to take a chance like this, he’s worried you’ll make more trouble for him and that makes him dangerous,” Josie said. “It’s not against the law for him to come to the ranch, but it is definitely suspicious. Did you happen to get the license plate number on the car he was driving?”
“Dealer plates.” Amy Sue told her, adding the make and model of the large black SUV. “The same cars he sells at his dealership.”
“As your lawyer, I’ll let the police know. They might want a statement from you and to see the photos you took of his tracks.”
Her sister rolled her eyes. “What is the point?” she demanded. “You know he’ll deny it or have a good reason to be near Dry Gulch, let alone on our ranch.”
“They need to know in case we have to get a restraining order on him.”
Amy Sue shook her head. “You’ve always said restraining orders aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”
“I’m just trying to cover all the bases.
It’s what I do.” Josie watched her sister finally drop into a chair across from her desk.
Her voice also dropped as she said, “He’s going to come after me, isn’t he?
That’s what he was doing. Scoping out the place to make sure he has an airtight alibi the night he comes to kill me. ”
Josie rose from her desk to sit in the chair next to her. “He isn’t going to kill you,” she said, adding silently, not yet anyway, I hope. “Wouldn’t it look suspicious if the eyewitness to the alleged murder he didn’t commit suddenly ended up dead?”
“You seem to forget who we’re dealing with.”
“No, I haven’t forgotten,” she said. Amy Sue didn’t know about the pressure she’d been putting on the police to investigate her sister’s claim more fully. Now she wondered if it had backfired. Feeling pressure, Jack Marshall had come to the ranch to try to scare her sister off.
Was he the one running scared? Or was it more like her sister said? Was he planning his next murder? Josie didn’t want Amy Sue to become a problem for the man given how he’d dealt with the last woman.
“I’m going to get security for the ranch,” Josie said, surprised at Amy Sue’s immediate response.
“Don’t waste your money.” Her sister shook her head and rose.
“I’m not going to be there. I’m going to Billings, and I’m going to find proof that he killed that woman.
I won’t be safe until he’s behind bars.” She no longer looked scared or upset.
She looked determined, which frightened Josie even more. She should be scared. Josie was.
“Don’t try to talk me out of it. I’m obviously not safe here, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for him to come for me.”
Josie understood her sister’s frustration only too well.
She also couldn’t argue that she wasn’t wrong about not being safe.
Just as she knew what the police response would be to Jack Marshall coming to the ranch and spying on Amy Sue.
The most the cops might do was talk to Marshall, which could make it even worse for her sister.
Jack Marshall would deny it and get away with it—just as he had the murder.
But she wanted it on the record in case this got worse.
“I don’t want you to be another of the man’s victims. We need to at least give the police a chance,” Josie said reasonably.
“Also if you could just wait until I’m finished with this trial up in Missoula, I’ll help you.
” She had hoped that after a few days, a few weeks, her sister would change her mind.
But after today, she could see that wasn’t going to happen.
“The only reason I’m telling you is so you know where I’ve gone and get me out of jail if I need a lawyer.”
“I’m more worried about you ending up dead than needing an attorney,” Josie said truthfully.
“Let’s not forget that this man is a murderer.
He’s gotten away with at least one murder that we know of.
What makes me think that he might not have done this before?
Look how well he’d planned this murder. If you hadn’t accidentally been there that night, no one would have seen anything and no one would have been the wiser. ”
Amy Sue stared at her. “If you really think he’s done this before, then you know he’ll do it again.
Even if he doesn’t come after me, he might have already found his next victim.
I have to stop him. Someone has to nail the bastard.
” Josie saw tears welling in her sister’s eyes.
“The woman he killed? While I couldn’t hear what was being said, I could tell what was going on.
She looked so young and hopeful, as though he was showing her a house where they were going to live together.
She was excited. I know what it’s like wanting to believe in a man only to find out he’s lying, or worse, wants you dead. If I can get this woman justice…”
She didn’t have to finish. Josie knew that her sister wanted closure on her own near-death experience at the hands of a killer.
She wasn’t going to quit until she got it for the woman she saw killed.
But it was her obvious determination that settled it.
Once Amy Sue made up her mind about something, there was no changing it. “Do you have a plan?”
“I will,” she said firmly. “Don’t worry.
I figure he’ll want to shut me up, but he can’t kill me because that would look suspicious.
Instead, he’ll use his clout and the legal system to protect himself.
Hopefully by the time he does, I’ll have enough damning evidence to put him away before he resorts to murder again. ”
“I certainly hope you’re right.”
“You just worry about your big trial. I appreciate all the help you’ve already given me, but we both can’t get arrested. Who’d get us out of jail?”
Josie couldn’t help being proud of the woman her sister had become, but at the same time she was terrified how this might end.
She wanted to try to talk her out of what she was thinking of doing but saved her breath at the look on Amy Sue’s face.
“Call if you need me.” Otherwise, she feared, it could be the police calling her with bad news.
Detective Tate hadn’t been surprised to hear that attorney Josie Brand Lander was calling. She’d been badgering the chief as well as Detective Hanson and himself to take her sister’s eyewitness murder report seriously.
He assumed this call was her wanting an update.
He wished he had something to tell her as he answered his phone.
Along with finding Amy Sue a reliable witness, he found her lawyer sister very sharp and competent.
Like her sister, it didn’t appear she was going to give up wanting to know the truth.
Short of Jack Marshall in handcuffs, he doubted anything about her sister’s claim was going to give her what she wanted.
“Jack Marshall wasn’t just on our ranch, he threatened my sister.” She went on to tell him the rest, her words coming as a shock.
Jack Marshall had gone out to Amy Sue Brand’s ranch, actually parked, and spied on her and the house?
Why would an innocent man do that? Nor did it sound like the man he’d come to know through the media.
Jack wasn’t just a celebrity, he was a prominent businessman with both social and political ties in high places.
He shouldn’t have even known about Amy Sue—unless he saw her the night of the murder and took down her license plate number.
With a silent curse, he recalled his partner telling Marshall the woman’s name. Russ had later argued with Hanson about that.
“Doesn’t he have the right to know who his accuser is?” Hanson had demanded. “How else could we find out if he knew of a grievance this woman might have against him?”
Still, Russ thought it more than risky and out of character for Marshall to go out to the Brand ranch, let alone apparently spy on Amy Sue and later threaten her. He wondered if the man would deny it when questioned. If not, what excuse would he come up with?
“I’m glad you called me about this,” Russ told Josie.
“I’m aware it will again be a case of my sister’s testimony against Jack Marshall’s,” she said.
“But it concerns me. This man who claims he’s innocent is suddenly so interested in my sister that he comes out to the ranch, parks where his rig can’t be seen and watches her in our house?
Later he makes a point of trying to scare her by pretending to shoot her? ”
He listened as she explained that Amy Sue had taken photographs of his tracks in the damp earth from the spot where he had been watching the house with her visible inside. She asked for his cell phone number so she could send them to him. He gave it to her, afraid this was going to prove nothing.
Josie also gave him a description of the vehicle Marshall had been driving with the dealer plates.
“This should concern you, detective, and make you as upset as it does me that he came anywhere near my sister. This is not the behavior of an innocent man. But it is the behavior of a man who believes he is above the law and thinks he can scare my sister into keeping her mouth shut. Doesn’t that sound dangerous to you, Detective? ”
“It does,” Russ said. “I will definitely take it up with Mr. Marshall.”
They fell silent for a few moments. “There is still nothing on the missing murdered woman?” she asked.
“I check missing persons every day. So far nothing. But I assure you, I am taking your sister’s allegations seriously.” He could hear in her tone that she questioned that. “Please don’t hesitate to call me if anything else comes up.”
“Until Jack Marshall is behind bars, you’ll be hearing from me,” she said, and hung up.
Russ replaced the receiver at his desk and looked at what the attorney had sent him on his cell phone.
Tracks in the soft damp earth still couldn’t prove that Jack Marshall had been there any more than Amy Sue swearing he’d threatened her.
He didn’t doubt that it had happened, but he needed solid evidence.
Again he checked for a missing woman about the age and description Amy Sue had supplied.
Still nothing. He knew from experience that the body might not turn up for years—if at all.
Montana had thousands of acres of mountains, rivers and ravines.
Jack Marshall, who’d grown up in Billings, could know a lot of places to bury a body.
If the man was a killer and had taken the time to dispose of the body outside of Billings before returning to Great Falls. That was a lot of ifs.
More and more, Russ suspected Marshall had done it.
The problem was proving it with his hands tied by the department.
The only way he could dig deeper into Jack Marshall and his whereabouts on the night of the murder would require probable cause that a crime had been committed.
Without a body or evidence, there was no way a judge would issue a warrant.