Justice At Morgan Mesa
“I’ll need a list of the places where you stopped to talk to people,” Levi said. “And the names of anyone back in Vegas who might be angry with you. Disgruntled clients. People who are upset because you successfully defended someone who they thought should have been convicted. Jealous colleagues, bitter exes—whatever you can think of. It’s all worth looking into. And if you can think of anyone who physically reminds you of the man who attacked you, add that name to the list, too. We’ll check them all out.”
Levi could almost physically feel how desperately this family wanted answers. Right now, though, he couldn’t give them any.
Sam cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. Levi could see the frustration in the older man’s eyes, along with the fear that had likely triggered the dressing-down he’d been giving his granddaughter when Levi first arrived.
“Are you familiar with what happened to Vanessa’s father?” Sam asked. “You would have been a kid at the time it happened, but you still might remember. It was all over the news.”
“I did grow up here, sir. I remember very well when it happened and I’m sorry for your loss. I want you to know I’ll definitely be investigating that angle, but I can’t assume what happened on the mesa last night is related to your son’s murder. I need to keep an open mind and collect as much information as I can.”
“Along with the other places I mentioned, I also stopped by the O’Connell ranch, where my dad was employed when he was murdered,” Vanessa added. She glanced at her grandpa. “Mr. O’Connell wasn’t there. Neither was his son, Trent. I talked to a couple of ranch hands, but neither of them were employed at the ranch back when the murder happened.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “It’s hard to believe that my asking simple questions after all this time would get somebody upset enough to attack me. Nobody had anything useful to tell me. Maybe it really is related to something back in Las Vegas. Or something I accidentally stumbled across.”
“Why are you asking people about your dad now?” Levi asked. When he’d asked her last night about the timing of her investigation, her answer had been vague. Now he wanted specifics. “This can’t be the only time you’ve come back to town to visit since you moved away.”
“I’ve thought about coming home, asking questions and trying to stir up interest in my dad’s murder case before, but I never had the nerve to do it. Not that I ever thought anyone would attack me,” she quickly added. “I suppose I was afraid I’d learn something about my dad I didn’t really want to know. Or that I’d hear some new detail about how he died or what his body was like when he was found that would give me nightmares.”
Levi felt a sympathetic twinge in the pit of his stomach. He could imagine the horrible nightmares she’d had about her father’s murder over the years. The terrible things she’d imagined when a dark mood settled over her. He’d experienced all of those things and more due to his combat experience. He knew the raw feeling a person was left with in the aftermath.
“So why did you decide to go through with it now?” he asked.
“My grandmother passed away recently. And that reminded me that I’m running out of time to find someone who might know what happened. At some point, any potential witnesses will pass on, too, and I’ll never be able to get an answer to the question of who murdered my father.”
“It’s not your job to find the killer,” Sam said, focusing his gaze on his granddaughter.
Vanessa reached for her coffee mug and took a sip. “It’s not anyone’s job, anymore—no one’s looked into it in years. If I don’t find answers, who will? I do some investigative work for my job, but I’m not a professional investigator,” she said to Levi. “But I thought maybe I could get some small piece of information, something that changes the timeline of events or brings somebody’s alibi into question, and I’d pass that along to the police. Anything to make my dad’s cold case active again.”
“Are you telling me you haven’t gotten that little bit of information you’re looking for yet?”
She opened her mouth as if to answer, then closed it and looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’d forgotten about this until just now, but about midday yesterday I stopped to get something for lunch and my phone rang. I answered it, but whoever it was hung up. I remember the number was the local area code and prefix but I didn’t have a name associated with it in my contact list. I called back, hoping it was someone I’d talked to earlier who wanted to speak to me in private, but no one answered. I suppose it could have just been a misdialed number. But maybe not.”
Levi took out his phone and tapped the screen a couple of times. “What’s your phone number?”
She told him and he entered it into his phone. “Obviously we don’t have your phone,” he said. “But that incoming call should be listed in your phone records. I’ll check with the phone company and see what we can find out about whoever called you.”
“All right.” She nodded her agreement. Her shoulders slumped forward.
Levi could tell her energy was running low. And with good reason. She’d been through a lot last night, and probably hadn’t slept well.
He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s my contact information. Email me a list of all the potential suspects you can think of from Vegas, as well as the names of the businesses where you stopped to talk to people up on the mesa. I’d like that by this afternoon.” He really wanted that information right now, but if he put too much pressure on her, he was afraid she might accidentally leave out something important.
“I’ll get all of that to you as soon as possible,” she said, taking his card. “But I’ve got a meeting with our accountant downtown at one o’clock today to go over some things, so we can get this guest ranch up and running on schedule. I can’t miss that.”
“The accountant can wait,” her grandpa said firmly, but Vanessa shook her head, not backing down.
“I’ve got to keep that appointment.” Vanessa glanced at Levi. “My boss is expecting me back at work in a couple of weeks. I’ve got a schedule of things I want to accomplish while I’m here in Torchlight and I need to stick to it. But I’ll make sure I get you that information today.”
“Thank you.” Levi got to his feet.
Sam Ford also stood and reached out to shake Levi’s hand. “Thank you again for helping my granddaughter. You come out here and ask questions anytime you need to.”
Levi nodded. “Thank you, sir. I will.”
Vanessa walked him to the door. When she pulled it open, the old calico cat that had been sitting in the rocking chair made a surprisingly fast dash into the house and toward the kitchen. Clearly, she knew where the feline breakfast was being served.
Vanessa smiled as the cat ran by her feet. Seeing that smile on a face marked by bruises made Levi’s chest ache. Vanessa had already suffered through so much. But apparently somebody wanted her to suffer even more.
“When you go into town this afternoon, don’t go alone,” he said as he headed down the steps.
“I’ll be careful,” she assured him.
“Good.”
Once he was clear of the porch, he stopped, turned and waited for her to go back into the house and shut the door.
The problem with being careful was that sometimes it simply wasn’t enough. You couldn’t predict every single thing that could go wrong. He’d learned that in a war zone overseas. He’d witnessed it again as a cop after he came home.
If someone was willing to attack Vanessa with a hammer, there was no telling what they might do next. And no way to be prepared for their next move.
THREE
Vanessa was once again behind the wheel of her grandfather’s reliable old truck. Just like last night, she hoped that driving would give her a sense of control as she steered it into town. So far it actually had helped her calm down a little. And it gave her mind something to do other than replay the terrifying scenes from last night.
“Maybe I should scrap my plans and stick with you,” Rosa said as Vanessa pulled into a parking space and left the engine idling.
Grandpa had wanted to come with them, but Vanessa eventually convinced him to stay at the ranch. Physical work would calm him down, which was exactly what he needed and what Vanessa wanted. Plus, Rosa had her pistol. She could protect Vanessa quite adequately if it came to that.
“Rosa, I’ll be fine.” Vanessa’s response came out sounding like a snarl. That was not her intention. She tried again. “You’re just making excuses so you don’t have to let Marisol Beltran’s granddaughter show you a thing or two about technology,” she added, while focusing on making her tone sound lighter and putting an awkward smile on her lips.
Truly, she was grateful to Rosa for accompanying her into Torchlight, but she didn’t want to be coddled. She wanted the long list of tasks assigned to everyone to be completed on time so they could open the Silver Horse Guest Ranch on schedule.
Rosa had already made arrangements for today to meet with a technology coach to get help upgrading the simple website she’d set up to include an online reservations system. She’d been miffed to discover her “coach” was only twenty years old and the granddaughter of a friend. Rosa had held her when she was a baby and that didn’t seem all that long ago.
Rosa opened the door, but instead of getting out she turned to Vanessa. “Maybe instead of you dropping me off, I should drive you to the accountant’s office and make sure you get inside safely.”
Vanessa took a deep breath and squeezed the steering wheel as tight as she could before releasing it. It was a tension-relieving technique she’d learned years ago and at the moment it was helping a little.
She understood the concern behind Rosa’s offer, but having her loved ones hover just made her feel more anxious. Of course she was afraid. Every time she’d glanced at the truck’s mirrors on the drive over she’d seen the dark purple bruises. A reminder that if Levi hadn’t shown up when he had, her night could have had a far worse ending.
But she was determined not to let fear paralyze her. She’d seen what had happened to her mother after her father’s death. And again, after her mom had married a man whose attitude and behavior were poisonous.
Vanessa did pro bono legal work for women living in a shelter in Las Vegas. And as so often happens, in helping others she’d received more than she’d given away. Among other things, she’d heard counselors talk to the women about being cautious and safe, but also about doing their best to not let anxiety torment them and create a stronghold in their minds.
Vanessa was not going to let some idiot with a hammer torment her. She was not going to let some violent jerk control her the way her stepfather had controlled her mother.
She would be cautious. Smart. Reasonable.
“I’ll be fine,” she said to Rosa, managing to keep her tone light and easy. “I’m going to the accountant’s office and then by the library. And the police station is smack in the middle of town so it’s close to both places. Everything will be fine. Now, you get in there and learn something about the exciting world of online reservations processing.”
Rosa hesitated for a few seconds before finally nodding in agreement and exiting.
Vanessa steered the truck back onto the road, drove a couple of blocks over and found an open spot where she could park on the street directly in front of the public library. She cut the engine and sent her grandpa a text, as promised, on the phone Pablo had lent her, letting him know she had arrived safely.
And then, sitting alone in the truck, she realized she didn’t feel quite as brave as she had a few minutes ago. But she couldn’t just sit there. She turned in her seat and took a look through the windows all around the truck before she opened the door, just in case someone was there waiting to jump her. A trio of cars slowly drove by and she found herself closely watching them, heart in her throat, half expecting to see that nutjob from the mesa with his hat pulled down low and a bandanna over the bottom of his face riding inside one of them.
Of course, that was not the case. They were just normal people going about their business in a small western town in Nevada. Nothing threatening about that.
So much for willing herself to be calm and fearless.
Dear Lord, I pray for Your presence and protection and I thank You for it.
Why was prayer so often the last thing she thought of for comfort when it should have been the first?
Pondering that, she crossed the street heading for the accountant’s office. Hopefully, talking about numbers would take her thoughts off her other worries for the next hour or so.
Her grandparents and the Sandovals were not wealthy people, but they’d been willing to take a chance and invest their retirement savings in the guest ranch because all of them wanted to live and work in the horse-friendly kind of setting they loved. When they discovered they didn’t have enough money to buy the property they’d chosen and pay for all the repairs and renovations they’d need to convert the operation and pay the bills until the business started to turn a profit, Vanessa had contributed her own money to the venture.
And they’d promptly assigned her as the person to deal with the accountant because none of them wanted to do it. But she hadn’t minded. A genuine smile crossed her lips as she thought of how blessed she was to have such good and loving people in her life. She would think of them every time the image of that hammer-swinging stalker up on the mesa tried to worm its way back into her mind.
Vanessa had an awkward first few moments with the accountant as she explained the bruises on her face and what had happened to her. Fortunately, after checking to make sure she was all right and didn’t need to postpone their discussion, the accountant followed her lead and they quickly redirected the topic to the financial issues concerning the ranch. After an hour and a half of talking numbers, Vanessa was finished and she headed back across the street to the library for the next item on her list of tasks.
This wasn’t for the ranch, but for her research into her father’s murder. There were many articles about the case, but they yielded frustratingly few details. Vanessa pored over them carefully, hoping to find some detail previously missed or ignored, but her hope dwindled as the hours passed.
Later, when Vanessa stepped out of the library, she gazed out at the dusky horizon to the east. She should have left sooner. But she’d gotten so caught up in old newspapers that she hadn’t realized how late it was until a librarian told her they needed to close. She texted Rosa to tell her she was on her way. Rosa replied that she, too, had gotten caught up in what she was learning and had also lost track of time. She would be waiting outside the tech coach’s office for Vanessa to pick her up.
Vanessa had printed a few articles at the library and now held the pages in the crook of her arm. Current editions of the Torchlight Beacon newspaper were available online, but older editions were not. There were no digitized archives she could access and she’d had to do her research the old-fashioned way by looking at spools of film at the library. At least the clunky old last-millennium viewing machine she’d had to use was connected to a printer.
She started down the steps to the sidewalk and spotted a familiar figure in a dark blue police uniform standing by her grandfather’s truck. She glanced around to make sure she hadn’t missed a no-parking sign. “Don’t tell me you’re giving me a ticket,” she said to Levi as she walked up to him.
He responded with a half smile and Vanessa’s heartbeat sped up a little. Then he shook his head. “No ticket. I just thought I’d hang around until you came out of the library to see how you’re doing. And also thank you for sending me the information I’d asked for.”
“So you’re following me now?” she teased him a little, hoping to see that fleeting bit of a smile again. Most of the time, he looked so serious and professional. Which was fine for a police officer. But that hint of a smile threw something boyish into his appearance. And Vanessa wanted to see it again.
“I didn’t have to follow you. I was in the neighborhood.” He hooked a thumb toward the police department headquarters on the opposite side of the street the next block down. “The truck you’re driving is distinctive. I noticed it when I was at the ranch.”
The right front fender of grandpa’s truck was canary yellow while the rest of it was sky blue. “I came out to grab something for dinner and spotted it. I went inside the library to see if you were the driver. You looked pretty engrossed in what you were doing. I didn’t want to disturb you, and I knew you’d be out soon since it was just about closing time. So, here I am.”
He’d been waiting for her. She felt like smiling but didn’t let it show.
The tickling sensation in her stomach had to be part of the emotional aftereffects from the attack last night. Vanessa Ford did not get giddy over men she barely knew.
“Well, I’m fine,” she said, her voice coming out a little higher pitched than normal. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yeah.” He held up her phone. “Do you recognize this?”
She nodded and reached for it. “That’s mine.”
“It was found a pretty good distance from where our trackers believe you tripped.” He handed it to her. “I haven’t heard back from the phone company about accessing your records yet. If you want to punch in your password and read off the number from the hang-up call you received yesterday, I can send it to our tech guy to trace. Hopefully, it’s not an anonymous prepaid number.”
She tapped a few digits on the screen until it unlocked. She quickly found the number and read it off. Levi sent his text.
“Is there anything else you need?” she asked.
“That’s all for now. But I’m going to hang around until you’re safely back in your truck and on your way.”
“Thank you.” Vanessa shifted the stack of articles she held in the crook of her arm as she reached into her purse for the truck keys, but she shifted at the wrong angle and the papers fluttered down, fanning across the grimy sidewalk. She snuck a look over to the officer standing by her side. What would be his reaction when he saw that they were all articles about her father’s murder?
* * *
Levi leaned down to help Vanessa pick up her dropped papers before the breeze sent them out into the street. A slight gust blew one of the sheets over as he reached for it, displaying a screenshot of a front-page banner headline: “Cowboy Shot Dead on Morgan Mesa.”
A picture filled the top half of the page and showed a smiling young man wearing a gray cowboy hat and a Western shirt. He had Sam Ford’s thick mustache and longish face. But his hair was the same pale blond color as Vanessa’s. Below the picture, in smaller type, the caption read “Local rodeo champ Josh Ford dead at twenty-eight.”
Vanessa gently tugged at the paper in his hand and he let go of it. Her eyes were red and starting to shimmer. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to have to read something like that. Never mind the heartache of having to live through it as an eight-year-old child.
“I remember my parents talking about this when it happened,” Levi said as he helped her collect the rest of the dropped pages. “They didn’t know your dad personally, but they’d seen him competing at Torchlight Rodeo Days a couple of times.”
Vanessa straightened the papers in her hands and nodded to let him know she’d heard him. Tears fell from the corners of her eyes and rolled down her face.
Levi took a step forward, about to wrap his arms around her. But then he realized what he was doing and stopped himself. This was a line he did not want to cross. He was a professional, and that was reason enough to hold himself back. He could never acknowledge that spark of personal concern he felt for her. It would only lead to trouble.
Still, he wanted to offer her some comfort. She’d probably just spent at least an hour looking over articles containing awful details and looking at her dad’s picture.
There are some experiences you don’t ever get over. He knew that from personal experience. He’d seen friends closer than brothers and sisters mortally wounded in combat zones. He still thought of them every single day.
Finally, he reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He might have already told her that at the ranch, but he’d tell it to her every day if she needed him to.
“Thank you.” She took a deep breath and appeared a little steadier. He let his hand drop back down to his side.
“Nobody was ever brought to trial for what happened to your dad, right?” he asked, trying to remember what had happened in the aftermath. There would be records of the investigation in the police department storage. They would include details that had not been made public.
“No one was charged with the murder,” she said. “A few people were brought in for questioning. Two men, Kenny Goren and Eddie Scott, were brought in more than once. People anticipated one or the other would eventually be arrested and charged, but it never happened.”
It would be interesting to know if those two men had been cleared of the crime, or if there just wasn’t enough evidence to charge them.
While she was talking, Vanessa unlocked the truck and set her papers and purse on the passenger seat.
“I’ll follow you back to the ranch,” Levi said. “Make sure you get there safely.”
“That’s not necessary. I won’t be going alone. Rosa’s in town, too. I’m going to pick her up and we’ll ride back to the ranch together.”
Levi wasn’t convinced that was enough protection.
“Don’t worry,” Vanessa said as she climbed into the truck. “Rosa brought her gun.”
Levi stepped back so she could close the door. Then he watched her start up the truck, cautiously pull away from the curb and then head down the road.
Conducting a murder investigation could be a dangerous undertaking for anyone. Even if the murder was a case that had run cold years ago.
That harrowing attack on the mesa last night might not even be about her dad’s murder. But now that Levi had started thinking about her father’s case, he couldn’t stop. Maybe it was time for the police department to focus on it once again.
Levi walked down the street and into a sandwich shop where he ordered a couple of roast beef subs and two cups of coffee. While he was waiting, he received a text from the police department tech giving the name associated with the hang-up call Vanessa had received. Marv Burke. The name didn’t ring any bells for him, but maybe it would mean something to Vanessa.
He carried the food and coffees back to the police station and strode directly to the chief’s office, where he knocked on the open door and waited for the chief to stop typing on his keyboard. Finally, Chief Haskell leaned back in his chair and barked out, “Enter.”
Levi dropped one of the sandwiches on the desk in front of the chief and set a cup of coffee close to it.
The chief rubbed a thick hand across his freckled bald head and peered suspiciously at Levi. Then he reached for the sandwich. “You obviously want something.”
Levi didn’t bother trying to deny it. “Chief, do you remember the murder of that cowboy, Josh Ford, up on Morgan Mesa about twenty years ago?”
“Of course.” He unwrapped his sandwich. “I was a patrolman back then. Heard the original call go out over the radio after a motorist found the body. You would have just been a kid back then.” He popped open the lid on his coffee and took a sip.
“What do you remember about it?”
The chief sighed. “Poor guy was found lying dead in the middle of a road up on the mesa. Single point-blank gunshot to his chest. The newspaper was calling it ‘Murder Mesa’ for a while. His pickup truck was parked on the edge of the road, the driver’s-side door hanging open and the engine still running when he was found.”