Chapter Twenty-Five

As I continuedtoward Sherman, I tried to put concern about Tom and his father aside and stick to the murder investigation.

I replayed the conversations with Mrs. P and Gee in my head. It felt like trying to put pieces of confetti back together into a whole when the scraps originally came from dozens, maybe hundreds of different sheets.

Needham Bender emerged from the courthouse and started in the direction of the Sherman Independence as I drove up.

I pulled alongside him, lowered the passenger window, and said, "Want a ride?"

"Hey, Elizabeth. I probably should walk — according to Thelma, I'm about a negative thousand steps a day. But for the pleasure of your company, I'll risk my wife's ire."

"Brave man."

He chuckled as he got in.

"Something big at the courthouse?" I asked.

"Wouldn't tell you if there was."

"Fair enough."

"I like that youngster you folks have hired — Nala Choi."

"So do we."

"More coming?"

"Hiring is going slow. Excruciatingly slow."

"Young folks don't want to come out here? Where's their spirit of adventure?"

"It's not the younger would-be hires. We have a good crop of submissions there. It's the established TV news folks that are hard to line up."

"Don't want to come to the country's smallest market, huh?"

"Surprisingly, that's not the obstacle. Some of them sounded downright eager to try a place where there's no place but up. And they like the idea of coaching the rookies, especially with less of a news load on their plate. The issue is they're entrenched. Sometimes in the job — needing more time for a better retirement or up for a promotion or addicted to the pace. And even if it's not the job, it's the spouse's job, kids' school, aging parents nearby. One guy even said he didn't want to leave his cardiologist. Even though I pointed out he might not need a cardiologist if he eased up on the stress, cigars, and drinking."

"That's the way to recruit, Elizabeth," he said dryly.

"He wasn't coming anyway." I sighed. "Mike thinks we need an attraction. Something that makes Cottonwood County famous, alluring."

I recounted our brainstorming along those lines.

He didn't join in with more outrageous ideas the way I thought he would. Instead, he seemed to grow more serious. But when I finished, he said, "I might have an idea." So perhaps I misjudged him.

"What? Happy to take anything back to Mike."

"What about a newspaper person."

It took a second to shift from an idea to promote the county to an answer to our hiring situation. "A newspaper person? To run a TV newsroom?"

"Sure. The news is the news. They'd need someone to cover them on what's peculiar to TV news — and I do mean peculiar — as well as tech stuff. At least to start. But reporting, news sense, working a beat or the phones, all the core requirements they'd be great at."

When I found myself wondering if my Philadelphia buddy Matt Lester might have any leads on individuals, I knew Needham's suggestion might work.

"Here's the other thing." His voice sounded heavy. "There's a good number who need jobs. It's not good times for newspapers. Buyouts when they're lucky, layoffs otherwise, and bankruptcies affecting retirement plans all too often. I've had people reaching out for leads on jobs — including joining our minuscule staff here. People who should be running this place."

"Nobody could run the Independence the way you do."

"Thanks. But I mean it. At least half of them could teach me a thing or two."

"That's really interesting, Needham. Let me talk to Mike. We would need to fill the broadcast knowledge gaps for someone with a newspaper background..."

Although, with KWMT being so far from the cutting-edge of technology that it was like a distant contrail in the Wyoming sky, that was never going to be our selling point. Grounding in the fundamentals and the opportunities to do a lot of flavors of work fast were the big selling points we pitched to young hires.

"Do you ever think we're fighting a losing battle, Needham? Seems like half the people don't want news, but only confirmation of what they already think, and the other half puts their faith in crowd-sourcing."

He grunted. "Crowd-sourcing news isn't news. It's also not new. It's been around forever. It's otherwise known as gossip."

I snorted in appreciation and agreement.

"A long tradition from the original tabloids to what now gets churned around as celebrity news — with huge, disbelieving quotes around that use of the word. In the early days of this country, the newspapers were not many steps above that. They were frequently the voices of parties or factions, without a thought to being factual, much less fair, and balanced. What was new — for most of journalism — in the twentieth century was an emphasis on those qualities. The outlets that didn't achieve it were dismissed as rags."

"So, we're returning to the bad old days?" I asked as I pulled up in front of the Independence building, whose century-plus old brick fa?ade demonstrated a good aspect of the old days.

"We aren't. Some might, including those consuming the euphemistically titled crowd-sourced news, but we're still aiming for those goals of factual, fair, and balanced." He exited the SUV, then leaned back in. "You and me and a lot of others, Elizabeth. Still doing it right. Battle's not over."

****

Backtracking slightly, Icame around to the museum's rear entrance.

My goal of catching Clara without being announced — and thus cutting her time to build resistance to talking to me — failed, because she was there, doing something in the open back of the museum's van. It was as well-aged as the NewsMobile, which was more appropriate for a history museum than a news station, but not as durable.

She groaned when she saw me.

So did the other woman standing on the ground beside the open van doors. Vicky Upton worked in the museum's gift shop and baked delicious brownies sold there. She also held a grudge against me about a murder investigation focusing on her family.

Some people are overly sensitive.

Although we had reached an entry-level of détente over another inquiry a few months ago.

"Elizabeth, I really don't have time," Clara said immediately. "I need to get all these boxes inside and Vicky's leaving me—"

"I already made ten trips and I told you I had to leave—"

"We're nowhere near done and—"

"I'll carry boxes."

My words stopped them both.

Vicky swung around and put the box she held into my hands. "Great. I'm going, Clara. It's way past when I said I'd stay."

"Don't go inside empty-handed," Clara ordered as she pushed boxes from deeper inside the van toward the doors. "Take a box on your way."

Vicky took the box out of my hands. "Fine. I'm going."

As she left, I said to Clara, "I'll carry boxes if you'll talk while we work."

Clara's eyes narrowed. She jumped down from the back of the van and put a box in my hands. Then she stacked a second on top, watching me with narrowed eyes. When I didn't object or drop the boxes, she said, "Deal."

****

I discovered anotherreason my sometimes cohort Wardell Yardley could be drawn to Clara Atwood.

The woman had endurance. I was huffing and puffing but she kept talking as we went in the museum with one set of boxes and came out with another. Trip after trip.

At the start, I let her ramble over the general top of Wild West outlaws — it was a tactic to relax her. Not just because I was trying to get a rhythm along with catching my breath.

"You know," she said as we headed back toward the van, "for all the talk — and movies — about Butch Cassidy robbing banks and trains, he was never imprisoned for that."

"Really?" The boxes heading this direction tended to be lighter, presumably because extraneous material was removed, so my huffing wasn't as obvious as the inbound trip. "I thought I'd seen a photo of him from prison. Square-faced guy giving nothing away."

"One of the two most-frequently used photos of him. The other is the one called the Fort Worth Five — Sundance and Butch sitting on either side with Ben Kilpatrick in the middle and John Carter and Kid Curry — Harvey Logan, officially — standing behind them. Curry was the one law enforcement really wanted. He killed around a dozen men, most of them lawmen."

"But Butch Cassidy never killed anyone?" Sam McCracken had said that.

"Well," she drew that out. "He and Sundance were said to have claimed they never did. But, if the shootout in Bolivia was their final act, then witnesses who saw the bodies identified as Butch and Sundance said Sundance had a number of wounds, with one to his forehead. While Butch, next to him, had one in his temple — the inference being that, with no means of escape, Butch shot his badly injured partner, then himself. If that's true, he did kill someone — Sundance."

"If that's true? You believe they got away?" Don't think I was mocking her. From the first time I saw the movie as a kid, I've been in the They got away camp.

With those boxes in the van, I took two more. So did she.

"Belief is immaterial. And the evidence is inconclusive, starting with comparing photographs of them from better days to ones taken of the dead gunmen in San Vicente, Bolivia."

"They have photos of their dead bodies?"

"So some sources said. I've never seen them. Not authenticated ones."

"Non-authenticated? There's a black market in photos of corpses?"

"Used to be the done thing. There's a photo of Ben Kilpatrick's dead body being held upright by the guys who objected to him trying to rob their train and killed him with the proverbial blunt instrument to the head."

"And people talk about the violence now."

"They've done forensic DNA tests on some bodies in the San Vicente cemetery where Butch and Sundance were said to have been buried in an unmarked grave. At least one set of remains that was supposed to be Butch was proven absolutely to have not been. And no other tests have definitively linked bodies there to Butch or Sundance. But who's to say one of the many other bodies buried there isn't one of them? Bodies weren't interred with a lot of organization," she said dryly. "They'd have to test every body to be able to say they weren't there."

I put my boxes on the growing stack in the storage room and sucked in air.

"Maybe they did make it out. And maybe the reason Etta disappeared from the records is that Sundance — and presumably Butch — made it out of Bolivia. Maybe she went to join them wherever they were, whether back in the United States or somewhere else."

I liked that idea.

Clara didn't look impressed, however, as she pointed to the next boxes to go. "You're not the only one thinking that. There's a theory that a rancher in Utah was really the Sundance Kid. But, again, DNA said no. Only the proponents of that theory are saying maybe someone else's DNA got mixed up with the rancher's because the cemetery flooded. Or maybe Sundance was adopted by the Longabaughs and that's why a distant relative's DNA didn't match. Yeah," she said in response to my raised eyebrows, "they're grasping at DNA straws."

Couldn't argue with her there. "Let's go back to you saying Cassidy was never imprisoned."

"I didn't say that. I said he was never imprisoned for robbing a bank or a train. He was, in fact, in the Wyoming prison in Laramie after being found guilty of larceny of a horse, which he claimed he bought. Some historians say he might have bought the horse, but from a rustler friend. And some say he might have been an equal partner in the rustling. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. That's when it got really interesting."

"That's when it got interesting?"

"Uh-huh. He hadn't done a whole lot at that point. Oh, yeah, the judge who sentenced him said he also thought Butch had been guilty on a charge of rustling he'd been acquitted of the year before, but nothing like what he did later. And apparently he impressed a lot of people. The judge who sentenced him wrote to the governor asking that his sentence be commuted, saying he thought Butch could become a leader of men—"

I huh'd.

"For good," she clarified. "And the governor did it. Butch got out after eighteen months. There was a legend Butch told the governor he'd leave Wyoming alone. A promise he didn't keep.

"He organized robberies in Idaho and Utah, then, three and a half years after the pardon, came the job on the Union Pacific in Wilcox, Wyoming. The next month, Butch's best friend, Elzy Lay was arrested. That could be seen as the start of the disintegration of the gang, especially with several dying in shootouts with lawmen. Butch might have seen what was ahead, because Butch tried to reach out for amnesty. Accounts differ of whether the authorities ever seriously considered it."

Somehow she had to be picking lighter boxes than I had.

She had plenty of breath to say, "Probably also didn't help that some of his known associates pulled off other robberies and Kid Curry killed a number of lawmen around the same time. Maybe Butch saw it wasn't going to happen. He and Sundance and others robbed a Union Pacific train near Tipton, Wyoming, in August 1900 and amnesty was off the table.

"In December 1900 came the other photograph you've probably seen — him with Sundance and others in the ‘Fort Worth Five' the Pinkertons got ahold of and used for wanted photos. By February the next year, he and Sundance and Etta Place left for South America. And you know what happened — or didn't happen — there.

"A couple sidenotes. The governor who pardoned Cassidy in 1896, was not reelected in 1898. In fact, he wasn't even nominated by his party to run again."

"Because he pardoned Butch Cassidy?"

She rolled a shoulder. "Probably didn't help, but with him not winning his party's nomination, you've got to suspect more general politics at play. The other sidenote has to do with Elzy Lay."

"Butch's friend, sentenced to life for murder," I remembered.

"Right. In New Mexico. He became a trustee, even accompanying the warden on a trip. While they were gone, inmates took the warden's wife and daughter hostage. Lay was credited with persuading the inmates to let them go and was pardoned in 1906. As far as anyone can tell, he never committed another crime. Had a family. Lived in Wyoming, then moved to California, where he died in 1934."

"Is any of that history in these boxes?"

"Heaven only knows. Teague — blast his disorderly hide — sure didn't know. Or care."

"What about history closer to home, like Oscar and Pearl Virtanen?"

"Ah-hah. That's what you're after. To find out what — if anything — about them Keefe found in the boxes he looked in. Yes, Mrs. Parens told me about that. Of course she did — and that was before he was murdered." Her head jerked up as she deposited her boxes in the storeroom. "You don't think he was killed over something in the boxes—?"

"Can't know until we know what — if anything — he found. That's why I want to look through—"

"No."

"—or have you look through them immediately."

"No. There is a method to this and I will not jeopardize the work for the museum on a longshot." She hefted two more boxes and walked out.

I had to scurry to get my two and catch up with her at the outside door. "Murder. Justice," I huffed. "You couldn't move them up in the rotation?"

"No. But I'll tell you what," she said as we reached the van still holding a dozen boxes to move inside, with an equal number to come out. "You help me to the end and I'll let you know when I do get to those boxes."

"Deal."

I'd keep working on her to get to them sooner.