Page 2 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

“I don’t—”

Crawford didn’t let me finish. Again.

“That’s what the theory is, correct? That despondent and lonely after the death of his wife, Sergeant Jardos shot himself in the head and somehow his cabin caught fire. Alternatively, he started the fire, then shot himself.”

That pretty well covered it.

Except where was the gun? Had I missed that in the coverage?

No.

No mention of a gun.

That was potentially interesting.

Also potentially of no import.

Either way, it wasn’t my goal in this conversation to strengthen the colonel’s contention that Frank Jardos did not commit suicide.

Matter of fact, I wasn’t sure I had a goal.

“You don’t buy that theory?” I asked mildly.

“Not for a second.”

“The suicide rate among vets—”

“I know those stats.” The gravel in his voice turned rougher.

I kept going. “Add those to the stats about rural suicide, with rural men’s rates much higher than urban. And older men—”

“Not Sergeant Jardos.”

“How can you be sure?”

Without unbending his erect posture, he pushed back into the chair, surveying me for a long moment before he spoke.

“The same way you knew what that phone call you skipped from your mother would have entailed.”

He wasn’t showing off, either. After all, there had been that clear M-O-M on the phone’s screen before I dismissed the call.

We regarded each other for a couple dozen seconds.

“Have you been to the site?” I asked.

“Not close enough to see much. Police tape. Significant perimeter.”

That surprised me. Not that he’d respected the police tape around the scene, but that he hadn’t found a way to see despite it.

“Can’t see the body, either. Even for identification purposes.”

“Let’s get lunch,” I proposed. “I’ll check in with my assignment editor and we can go.”

“I’ve eaten. And have a plane to catch before long.”

“Even better. I can eat and you can talk.”

If I read him right — not a paltry if considering his demeanor — he did not look forward to his portion of the agenda, but remained determined to do his duty.

* * * *

My comment about checking in with my assignment editor was pro forma.

Audrey Adams probably did want to know where I was, on the chance that flying saucers landed at the Sherman Rodeo grounds. Every assignment editor thought about staffing for such contingencies.

Barring flying saucers, she didn’t care about me taking time away from my planned task. I was wrapping up segments for Helping Out!, my official consumer affairs beat, basically clearing my desk before the wedding. Though it wasn’t necessary, because of an accumulated backlog of those segments.

My other duties included helping oversee a couple young reporters and being a resource for Mike Paycik, who’d bought KWMT-TV late last year.

He had once been a colleague here at the station and still was in certain inquiries we pursued.

Now I was helping him search for more staff, particularly a news director and a half-time anchor.

Not a lot of progress so far.

We had a reprieve on the half-time anchor, because the opposite half-time anchor would take up her duties in ten days and cover that job until mid-fall. That meant the staffer who’d been carrying the anchor load despite loathing the job would get a break . . . and not kill Mike.

Good news all around.

The news director job wasn’t a matter of life or death — except for the newsroom’s future.

We needed a news director with sufficient experience to lead and teach a mixed bag of staff with a projected influx of youngsters. That meant we needed one who loved a challenge. Oh, yeah, and who’d come to the smallest news market in the country.

Oddly, it was turning out to be a hard position to fill.

After the wedding, I intended to buckle down to scouring the TV news world for the right person.

But for now, my focus was Colonel Crawford.

If he’d been eating, I would have opted for Hamburger Heaven, but since he wasn’t, I chose the café, with more privacy winning over male-preferred menu.

He followed my SUV in a rental.

That gave me time to call Dale, the news aide, and have him read the colonel’s career highlights as I drove. Impressive.

As we walked in, having rendezvoused outside the door, I spotted Tullie, the primary server at the café and the niece of Penny Czylinski.

The former mattered for getting the seat I wanted.

The latter mattered because Penny, the doyenne of the Sherman Supermarket checkout was also the most thorough news-gathering source for the northwestern quadrant of Wyoming. She sucked in information rapaciously, shredded it into bits, and filed the shreds in a system known only to her.

Don’t take this to mean she was a careless gossip. She ingested information at a vastly greater rate than she expelled it.

Now and then, she would share a few shreds with humble petitioners like me. Never in order, never in direct response to a question.

And — back to Tullie and the café — her niece was one of Penny’s sources.

“May we have the table in the corner?”

Tullie blinked at me, probably thinking it could sit five or six. But this was well past what passed as the lunch rush, so she wasn’t missing out on the prospect of more tips. “Sure.”

I ordered on our way to the table — one less interruption we’d have, one less opportunity for Tullie to overhear anything and share it with Penny.

“How do you know Frank Jardos?” I deliberately made my opening question to the colonel present tense.

He knew it was deliberate, too, but he still relaxed a fraction of an inch.

“He was sergeant for my first command. Years ago. Crusty, experienced, wily. He didn’t precisely take me under his wing, that’s way too soft.

More like knocked me around enough to make me stagger, but didn’t let me fall — all while saying Yes, sir!

like he meant it. Set my teeth on edge from the start.

I wanted to battle it out, but there was never anything overt enough to battle over. ”

He shook his head at memories.

“My wife saw it first. Said he was rocking the boat on purpose to force me to get my sea legs before we were out on the ocean.” His mouth quirked. “I wanted to drown him. Even after we were deployed and I started recognizing why I’d needed to know what he’d forced me to learn.”

He fell silent. Memories playing behind his dark, protective eyes.

Most times, I’d let the silence extend to see where the memories brought him as a reentry to the present. It wouldn’t tell me details of the gap, but could sketch a thread spanning the silence.

But Tullie arrived with my BLT and coleslaw, interrupting his reverie.

So, I went for direct. After all, the man had a plane to catch. Besides, I had a sandwich to eat and getting him to talk would give me time for that.

“That relationship changed at some point.”