Page 52 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

I wasn’t shocked.

Tom’s behavior had narrowed my guesses to Jardos or, possibly, Nance.

I easily recognized Frank Jardos from photos that ran with Nola’s reports, despite several days’ growth blunting his gray buzz cut.

My first thought was that this man being alive left another man dead, wearing similar boots, burned in a fire, with a bullet hole in his skull.

My second thought was that if I’d known from the start that Jardos wasn’t dead, I could have spared myself talking to Hiram Poppinger.

Okay, okay, I still would have had to talk to Poppinger to get background on the owner of the cabin where a dead man was found. An owner who then disappeared.

Although I wouldn’t have felt as beholden to the grump.

Those thoughts dispatched, I was free to focus on the man and the setup.

A tent that resembled a camouflage igloo, a camouflage camp chair, a camouflage tarp strung high in front of the tent, another camouflage tarp over a low rectangular pile. Pretty much camouflage everything that wasn’t natural.

Under the bigger tarp and positioned well for the chair and tent a ring of rocks sheltered a fire, with stones encircling the rocks, as a fire break.

The rocks and stones appeared settled into place, reflecting the camp’s air of permanence I doubted came from the few days Jardos had been here.

The topography meant a small fire would be mostly masked, with even the smoke blending into the leafed-out trees.

Jardos sat in the camp chair. And yes, he wore camouflage fatigues, well-worn.

Tom rose from his seat on a stump and gestured for me to take it. Considering no other seats were in sight, that was gallant.

“Frank, this is Elizabeth Margaret Danniher and Mike Paycik.”

The man looked up, alert. “The football player?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “Elizabeth, Mike, this is Sergeant Frank Jardos.”

It can be hard to judge height when someone’s sitting, but I guessed the man wasn’t a lot taller than me with a solid torso and legs. The bottom two-thirds of his face was square, almost ordinary if you weren’t paying much attention.

It was his forehead where all the action was.

Maybe the contrast struck me because I’d become accustomed to Tom and other men in Wyoming who wore cowboy hats when they were in the toughest elements. Their foreheads weren’t going to win any smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom contests, but they were shielded more than this man’s had been.

Unless he was born with creases deep enough to resemble fissured Wyoming landscapes. They echoed the curve of his eyebrows, making his eyes more intense. They crossed and splintered in the center. And they sent offshoots into his hairline.

I imagined that forehead exerted a powerful effect on his soldiers. I did not want to see those creases activated by a frown and he didn’t have the power to put me on latrine duty.

Tom still had the floor.

“Elizabeth, you don’t have a lot of time. Called Wayne Shelton, too. Not right away, though.”

I grimaced at him but didn’t waste time or words wishing to undo what was already done . . . and predictable for him.

Without giving orders, his voice picked up authority. “Elizabeth’s going to ask you questions, Frank. Wayne Shelton’s a good deputy, but these two and their colleagues are your best chance to figure out this mess.”

Jardos grunted.

I sat on the stump.

I waited. Just long enough to get our breathing in sync. It’s no magic key, but sometimes it helps.

“You know a man’s body was found in your cabin.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.” Not a blink, not a hesitation. “Walked in and there he was. Dead. No question.”

What he presented was a scenario we hadn’t focused on. There were going to be angles and nuances to this . . . Starting with whether he was telling the truth.

But the first step was to get his account.

“How had he been killed?”

“Shot in the head. Smaller caliber. Head was mostly intact. Blood pool.”

He darted a challenging question in a quick jerk of his gaze toward me.

“So he was killed there, not killed elsewhere and brought to the cabin.” That answered his question. “Did you know him?”

“Ron Sam Preet.”

“Nance.”

He looked at me — really looked for the first time.

I didn’t wait for accolades to roll in. I’d wait a long time. “Why did you disappear, Sergeant?”

“Why do you think? Dead man in my cabin. Couldn’t explain it. Wanted time to figure out how that came to happen.”

There was, of course, another explanation. A more straightforward one. That he was responsible for the death and wanted to hide it and disappear.

Though most in those circumstances would want more distance built into their disappearing act.

“Have you figured it out?”

“No.” Hard to tell how much of his sourness was directed at me and how much at himself. “And now it looks like I won’t have the chance. Why the colonel went to you . . .”

Tom muttered, “Told him how you folks got involved.”

I said, “You burned down your cabin. Why?”

He didn’t balk at my assumption. “Make whoever killed him unsure what happened. Slow things down. If someone thought they’d killed me, let them keep on thinking it. If someone thought otherwise and knew they’d killed Nance, throw them off.”

Truth? Or a conspiracy tale?

At least we know he’s not prone to believing conspiracy theories about Denver International Airport . . .

Diana’s words wrapping up our dip into gargoyles and Satanic elites echoed in my head.

“But you prepared for a fire, what you told Hannah Chaney, giving her the quilts.”

“Yeah, I prepared.”

“Why?”

“Thought you knew,” he said with a sourness that extended to Tom, who must have told him at least some of our activities to get him to agree to this talk.

Wouldn’t have asked him if I knew. Wasn’t going to give him the advantage of voicing that.

“Why would someone kill Nance at your cabin?”

His forehead creased in impatience. “He was coming to finally tell me what was bothering him and that’s where they found him? He arranged to meet somebody there? That’s part of what I was trying to figure out.”

“Did you succeed?”

“No.”

“Why’d you come here?”

“Knew Nance camped here sometimes when he was in the area and didn’t want to be elsewhere.”

His head tipped to the northwest, indicating the group of veterans living in that direction.

“Didn’t want to draw them in,” he added.

He didn’t? Nance didn’t? Was there also an element of not wanting them to know because he or Nance or both suspected their involvement?

“Let’s talk about you taking care of the veterans.”

That surprised him — he’d expected the focus to stay on the death, on the cabin fire.

Not asking him now might not make it great when we did get there, but still better than now.

Assuming I got to that topic before Shelton arrived.

“I wasn’t taking care of them.” He sounded disgusted by the suggestion. “They took care of themselves.”

After a moment, he added, “Mostly. They’re not any of them fond of going into town. Most will if they have to, but if I can do the town runs for them, it’s all to the good. Supermarket, post office, hardware, bookstore. Now and then someplace else where they might need or want something particular.

“Irene was real good at spotting things they weren’t saying. Me, I gotta ask or they gotta tell me. It’s not as good as when she was here, but we’ve rubbed along okay. Better as time’s gone by.”

“What have you done to help them toward buying property?”

“Not much.”

That wasn’t particularly believable. But whether as an attempt at hiding information or natural dismissiveness of his efforts, I didn’t know.

“They’re putting together the deal — their money — I get that, but you’ve been their—” I didn’t want to say front man, too negative a connotation. “—representative. And I know it’s progressing, though slower than you and the guys would like. Was there a dispute about that?”

He said crisply, “No.”

If I took Colonel Crawford’s assessment of this man as gospel, that was the absolute truth.

On the other hand, I didn’t know the colonel other than our one meeting and background research.

“Tell me about Nance. How did he fit in?”

This look was sharp. “Nance was up with the others for a while. That’s how we met. He had troubles.”

“More than the others?”

“Different.” The creases flickered. “Couldn’t keep focus sometimes, but wasn’t so much that way he didn’t know he had that trouble. He’d heat up for no cause, saying he wasn’t going to listen to somebody calling him stupid even though nobody had.

“Next thing any of them or me knew, he’d drifted off.

He’d done that before. No one heard from him or about him for a stretch.

Word came he’d been in Cheyenne, got help from the VA medical center there.

Mental health. But then we heard he’d left before they wanted him to.

Had another gap with no word of him before a friend of a friend of one of our guys ran into him in Idaho.

Boise. They have mental health programs, too.

“Sometimes it takes a few tries for a vet to stick. Gotta get themselves to the point where it will sink in.

“But then he showed up back here. Here,” he emphasized, differentiating it from where the other vets were.

Seemed like he was in a good place. Better than I’d seen him.

Focused. Had his truck.” He tipped his head toward the first parked vehicle.

“Came to the cabin. Brought me here to show me his set-up. Said he was straight and had his stake for the group, but had one last thing to clear up, then he’d see the others. I bought it. Bought it all.”