Chapter Three

This was apart of the county where I hadn't spent much time.

The western part of Cottonwood County climbed up the eastern slope of a portion of the Rocky Mountains mostly known as the Absaroka Range. Mostly because to flatlanders like me, mountain ranges are not neatly segmented like county or state lines. They blur and blend.

Or, they strike out on their own.

Take the Big Horns. They sit well east of here, with a hundred miles of Big Horn Basin stretching between them and the Absarokas, yet the Big Horns are also considered part of the Rockies. Does that make sense? No.

But back to the Absarokas being part of the Rockies, which does make sense, even to this Illinois-bred reporter.

In the southern corner of Cottonwood County, the semi-arid basin reaches farther west than in the rest of the county, with the mountains barely beginning their rising march before you run out of county.

That's where Elk Rock Ranch was located.

From the flatter land, you had a better view of mountains than once you're in them. As the road started climbing, pines obscured more and more of our line of sight. An s-curve-laden dirt road brought us to the classic pole ranch entrance with a top crossbar. A hanging wood sign with wood cutouts announced Elk Rock Ranch.

As we drove in, a familiar vehicle coming out slowed for the driver to raise a hand in greeting and the passenger to wave with a broad grin.

Rubbing it in.

The passenger was Needham Bender, owner and editor of the Sherman Independence, the driver was Cagen, his reporter.

They not only got to the story before KWMT-TV, but they were done before we arrived.

My consolation was that we'd have the story on-air multiple times before Needham's next edition came out Friday.

Their being here first and our reporting the story first would be parsed in every detail when we next had dinner, most likely cooked by Needham's wife, Thelma.

It required a couple more s-curves on this entry road before the pines retreated and we crossed a wooden bridge over a creek, reminding me of arriving at the home ranch of Tom's Circle B. But instead of a ranch house and multiple working buildings, what we saw ahead here were cabins. Lots of cabins.

Close by, clusters of two or three cabins nestled into the trees and contours of the land, roughly circling a large timber building with a front porch that nearly dwarfed its two stories.

Diana drove to where the road became a dirt loop, connecting the inner grouping of cabins, the big house, a paddock, and, farther back, a large, wooden barn, with other outbuildings nearby, like chicks around a hen.

It all had the air of a well-equipped stage without any actors.

Not a person. Not an animal.

Back past the outermost of the outbuildings, I spotted three cabins that appeared to be the oldest of any I could see. One had yellow crime scene tape around it.

"Back there," I pointed out to Diana.

"Uh-huh. I see the road to get there."

She followed what was less a road than a route lightly passed over by a couple horse-drawn wagons a hundred and fifty years ago. But she did get us close.

The middle cabin had the door in the middle and a window on either side. The other two were mirror images of each other, with the door to one side and the pair of windows on the other. The one with crime scene tape was on the left.

The good news was there was no sign of a current official presence. The Cottonwood County Sheriff's department had been here, done its work, and departed, leaving only the crime scene tape to mark its territory.

The bad news was there was no sign of anyone else, either.

Except — finally — one living creature. A solitary, medium-sized dog, flouting the crime tape by sitting on the porch inside it.

As it took in our vehicle, it slid into a dejected down, chin on paws.

We were not the hoped-for arrival.

I opened the NewsMobile's door slowly, watching the animal's reaction. It didn't move. It didn't look toward us. Its gaze remained focused toward the direction we'd come from.

Also slowly because I was not in any hurry to leave even the NewsMobile's dubious protection from the wind that gave blustery a bad name. The day's bright blue skies were false advertising.

I grew up in Northern Illinois. I know wind. You've heard about Chicago being the Windy City, right? Well, the wind doesn't stop at the city limits. It gets an unencumbered sweep off Lake Michigan, true. But I've come to believe that farther out, it can get up an even better head of steam without all those pesky buildings in its way, especially across the flats of winter-shorn corn fields.

In Cottonwood County, the wind feels like an out-of-control skier, coming down the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, picking up speed all the way and bringing along with it the snow-fueled bite of the peaks.

The door of the cabin on the right opened.

That stopped me from wrapping the scarf around my neck and protecting my lower face. Oddly, many people resist being interviewed by a mummy.

A woman came out, settling a cowboy hat into place as she came, shading her face, especially with the sun behind her. She carried extra weight under a pair of overalls that covered a jeans jacket and she moved like she might have arthritis, but wasn't letting it stop her.

"You with the deputies? They didn't say anybody was coming back today." She had a low, rather rusty voice.

Granted, the NewsMobile is not a slick, modern TV news mobile unit, but it does have KWMT-TV News, Sherman, Wyoming in bright red and blue letters.

Asking a potential interview subject if they can't read is not the way to win them over. That left stating the obvious as my best option. "We're with KWMT from Sherman, Ms....?"

She picked up the dangling invitation as she walked toward us, calling out, "Brenda Mankin. Needham Bender's already been here."

"Yes. That's for the newspaper, the Sherman Independence. We're from the TV. The news. We heard about the death of Keefer Dobey—" I was careful to pronounce it the way Mike had. "And we wanted to talk to people who knew him."

She looked toward the dog, as if it held the answer.

The dog didn't move, didn't change focus.

"I don't know... The deputies..."

I didn't want her to finish that thought, making it more real, adding an official seal.

"Mike Paycik sent us up to get the story because he thought so highly of Keefe and — Do you know him? Michael Paycik? He played football here, then at UW—" I deliberately used the local shorthand for the University of Wyoming. "—and pro ball with—"

"Of course I know him. Know all his stats from high school, college, and the pros, too. Though the Bears never made full use of his talents the way they should have, always having him blocking for some other gaudy player, when Mike should've been carrying the ball himself."

Not having an immediate opinion on that topic — though I'd bet my dad did — I steered around it. "Yes, well, as I said, he thought highly of Keefe and wants to be sure our viewers know what a fine man he was — you know Mike bought the TV station?" An enthusiastic nodding of the cowboy hat rewarded my decision to skip details of minority ownership by employees and members of the community. "So when he tells us to get a story, we get the story."

Diana made a sound from the other side of the NewsMobile.

Mike would hear all about this. And I'd take ribbing about it.

I could live with that.

Because Diana was getting her equipment out, which meant she thought my approach was working, making it well worth the cost of ribbing.

"We'd like to get closer and film, if that's all right — That's his cabin?"

It's a little sneaky, but effective, asking for the permission, then tagging on the second question, so an answer to one became an answer to both.

The cowboy hat bobbed in a nod. Better yet, she adjusted her trajectory to meet us in front of the crime-scene-taped cabin.

"But the dog...?"

"Oh, Suzie Q's as friendly as can be. Couldn't have a dog on the place that's not, not during the season with all the people coming and going and kids and some adults not thinking or asking before they reach out. She was raised to it from a pup. She'll let anybody come up to her, pet her, take her food away, any ol' thing, but she's Keefe's dog, through and through."

The dog's ears flickered at hearing her owner's name, but wasn't fooled into lifting her head.

"She's—" Brenda cleared her throat and started again. "She's waiting for Keefe to come back. That's what she'd do if he ever left without her, which he didn't do often. Almost never if he were doing anything here on the place, but now and then if he went into town, somewhere she couldn't be. And now... That's the direction they took him out and she'll set here watching and watching for him to return."

She turned away from us and stomped closer to the crime scene-taped cabin.

At the bottom of the steps, she stretched out a hand to pat the dog, which had the coat of a lab, except for a longer top knot between prick ears. Suzie Q might have looked comical if not for the intelligence in her golden-brown eyes. Now swimming in concern.

Diana had her camera already running and focused when Brenda Mankin turned around toward us, the daylight revealing her face for the first time.

From the way she'd moved, I'd put her age at maybe mid-50s.

Her face had me thinking in terms of centuries.

Saying she had wrinkles doesn't convey the impact. The rippled skin of her face made me think of a Shar Pei made from linen, taken straight from the washer, and left to dry in a crumpled lump.

"I... I found him first thing this morning, you know. I called 9-1-1 right away but it's not like they can get here fast. We're all trained in first aid, including cardiac. Have to be. For the guests. Not breathing's one thing. Sometimes you can get them back from that, but even though I tried chest compressions, I knew Keefe was gone... Hard not to. He was cold as a witch's—"

She broke off that simile, perhaps in deference to Keefer Dobey's memory.

"That must have been a terrible shock."

"Sure was. He was right as rain last night. In fact, happy as a clam."

She looked up and smiled at us. The sun- and wind- and age- and expression-etched lines shifted into their rightful place — into her rightful face. This was how she'd come to possess those folds. This was how she was meant to look.

"All excited about getting his DNA test back."

My head came up. "DNA test?"

Forensics? Or—?

"For tracing his family. Never knew a lot about that kind of thing — his family history and all — and he's been dying to get it and—" She broke off with a sucked-in breath and a return to the sagging wrinkles at belatedly recognizing her verbal gaffe. "Poor Keefe. Poor Keefe. He was sure these test results were going to tell him he's descended from Oscar Virtanen and that had to give him an inside track on finding the treasure. Though it wasn't like Oscar Virtanen wrote instructions to where he hid what he stole."

"Treasure?" The single word covered my much broader confusion. I figured if I got an answer to that, I might also learn who Oscar Virtanen was and why Keefe wanted to have been descended from him.

But Brenda had another point to make. "Don't get me wrong. It wasn't like Keefe was ever dissatisfied with his lot. I don't want you to think he was one of those people grasping to be something other than he was. That's not true at all." The rustiness in her voice remained. It wasn't from lack of use, it was a permanent feature.

"The opposite. He loved living here year-round. Loved the solitude in the winter and the company in the summer. Loved working alone and loved teaming up with somebody. He was easygoing, that's what he was. Most easygoing person I think I ever did meet. I'm not one to get all worked up like some, but he always was way more that way even than me... Mellow. That's the word. Mellow. Sometimes he reminded me of those critters on the zoo shows that look like they're going in slow motion."

"Sloths," Diana and I said simultaneously.

"That's them. Sloths. He moved like that. Not lazy, but not scurrying around, either. Deliberate like. He'd get to where he was going and he'd get the job done, but not with any hurry."

Her face, so naturally disposed to smiling, fell back into the folds of sorrow.

"That's what was so confusing, even before the deputies got here. When I was trying to figure out what happened."

She didn't appear to notice that I hadn't followed her segue from Keefer Dobey moving at sloth speed and her being confused about his death.

Perhaps because she needed more in this moment to say the thoughts in her head than to have them understood.

"There was blood. A lot of blood. Seemed to come from his head. Some of it was there, on the corner of the table by the kitchen, where he ate most times and did a lot of other things, too, because of the windows. Brings in the light. Guess my mind went to maybe he'd fallen, hit his head. You know, tripped over Suzie Q." She frowned fiercely. "But it doesn't figure. I've never known him to do such a thing. Because he moved slow, deliberate, like I said. Not like me. I'm forever turning around and finding Suzie Q or another creature behind me and nearly sending myself ass over teakettle.

"So I guess I was thinking of me. Real sure-footed — both of them, to tell the truth, Keefe and Suzie Q — but it could happen. Fact it hadn't before didn't mean it couldn't ever. Get your feet tangled and go down, hit his head, you know, on the corner of the desk. That was certainly what came to my mind, even though that didn't make sense because..."

She drifted away for a second, then jerked her head, apparently returning her mind to us.

"Course that was before the deputies said it looked like he'd been shot in the back of his head. Three times, I heard the medical guy tell that deputy named Shelton. Asked me all sorts of questions about what weapons Keefe had, like I kept an inventory of his belongings. And what weapons are around the place — might as well ask me how many sheets and such are around. Inventory's Wendy's area."

Wendy.

The same Wendy that Mike mentioned as the current owner? The county's billionaire?

Seemed likely. How many Wendys could you expect at an off-season dude ranch in one corner of Cottonwood County, Wyoming?

"Besides, I heard one of the deputies, one of them that was collecting evidence, say the blood there on the corner of the table looked to be from Keefe's hand — his hand putting it there, not his hand bleeding. He probably reached up to where he was bleeding from his head — natural reaction — then started to fall, tried to catch himself..."

Her gaze went unfocused again.

I wanted her to remember things, but not to drown in the speculative strain of what happened to her friend.

"You said earlier that Keefe getting tangled with Suzie Q was what you thought of first, then you said even though it didn't make sense because ... Because what?"

She blinked twice. "Oh, right. It didn't make sense because Suzie Q wasn't in the cabin. So it never could have been that way, which just goes to show I wasn't thinking right even before they said that about him being shot three times. Keefe must've let her out before. Unless she got out herself somehow after, though I don't see how, when the door was closed when I got there. She's smart, but to close the door after herself...?"

"Where was the dog?"

"Circling the cabin. Seeing her out here was what made me come to his cabin in the first place. It was real early, not dawn yet. I got up to use the bathroom, looked out to check around—"

"Why? Did you hear something?"

She nodded, but then contradicted it. "Not that I was aware of. But you're not always tuned into that sort of thing when you've been asleep. That's why I got in the habit of checking. Because sometimes when I get up in the night to use the toilet, it's 'cause something else woke me first." So she agreed with the concept, but ruled it out for this time. "Spotted a lot of bears and such that way. Also guests going for visits to other cabins," she added dryly.

I nodded acknowledgment and patched up my interruption. "So, you got up..."

"Used the toilet like I said, then looked out. And there was Suzie Q circling Keefe's cabin."

"Did she bark?"

"No. Not a sound."

I reserved judgment on that. A bark might have been what woke Brenda, without her realizing it.

She went on. "Couldn't be sure right at first, with the other cabin in between, that it was her."

"Does Wendy live there?"

"Hah. Her? No. She's got the main house. Whole thing all to herself this time of year. The center cabin's used for summer, visiting cooks and such. Empty now. But empty or full, it blocks seeing Keefe's cabin easy. And it was dark, so Suzie Q was mostly just a shadow moving. But third or fourth pass, I was sure it was her. Way she moved. Threw on some clothes and got out there."

"Would Keefe put her out during the night?"

"Never. That's how I knew something was real wrong."

She was pushing us to accept the dog being out was enough to raise her alarm, along with all sorts of trailing assumptions and conjectures.

But was that true?

"If she got out shortly before you saw her—"

"No. She'd been out a long time. Her coat was cold as ice and she was shivering."

That matched her description of Keefe's body temperature.

"Couldn't know if that was reaction to knowing something happened to Keefe or the cold or exhaustion from going round and round for however long she did — though she can run beside the horses all day every day, so I doubt it was that kind of exhaustion."

"What's going on here?"

A voice with authority despite being high and light, turned us all toward the figure approaching from the barn.