Page 58 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

DAY SIX

THURSDAY

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Last night, I’d said I needed to work today, to wrap things up before the wedding and honeymoon.

Only Tom probably recognized I wasn’t talking about KWMT-TV duties.

But I did go there after stopping at the fire station on the way.

Kam Droemi wasn’t there. The only person who was there was an older man, who cheerfully gave me Kam’s phone number when I asked with no further explanation than please. Why can’t all sources be like him?

Kam didn’t answer calls or messages.

At KWMT-TV I was typing notes of what happened so far, hoping they would point to questions to follow up on, when Mike shouted my name across the nearly empty bullpen.

Nothing like a bellow to get your attention.

He had his head stuck out of his office. Diana was approaching him from the other direction.

“Need you in here, Elizabeth. C’mon in, Diana.”

So she’d been summoned, too.

When I reached the door, I asked, “What’s up?”

He gestured me into the office and closed the door behind me. I joined Diana, who already sat in one of the visitor chairs.

Mike swiveled his screen around to face us, then dragged his chair to our side of the desk.

“Hey, Jennifer. You there?”

“Uh-huh,” came a voice from off-screen. “Using the time to pack. Got to catch my flight. So, I was telling Mike that I was researching our chicken-you-know-what cop and—”

“With the killing of Nance, plus this, are you keeping up with your work for your program?” Diana interrupted with her mom voice.

“Sure. I’m ahead on that. The guys are still working on trying to recover more from the forum. This is for fun.”

“Fun?”

“Wait until you hear what I found out. You’ll all think it’s fun, too. But first, there’s another factor—”

“Tease,” Mike said.

She tried to suppress a grin with a grimace.

“After Elizabeth said we needed to be sure the guy in the background of your photo from the Haber House Hotel lunch was the same one from the bad cop videos, I looked at law enforcement’s NDI listing — the National Decertification Index.

And there he was, Kyle Quetcher, and the photo sure matches the guy from your lunch photo.

I started looking for connections with Wyoming. And . . .”

Heightened interest was universal.

“. . . he has relatives here. In Sherman. Found a family tree online and they’re second cousins.”

“Who are?” Mike didn’t seem to mind supplying the grease to keep her going.

“Our infamous cop and—” No grimace this time, only a triumphant grin. “—Randy Hollister.”

“Randy . . .?” Diana repeated.

“Hollister . . .?” I contributed.

“The Sherman police officer?” Mike completed, matching our blank tones.

We all looked at each other, trying to make this fit. The officer with the tiny Sherman Police Department was gangly, he was not assertive, he was only mildly effectual.

He was — dare I say it — sweet.

“Randy Hollister did not bring a disgraced cop here, family or no family,” Diana said.

None of us disputed that.

“He might not have done it on purpose,” Jennifer said.

“But that’s where this gets really good.

The listing in the DNI was for Kyle Quetcher.

That was the name in all the news stories, too.

But when I found him in the genealogy information that led to Randy, it lists four names for him — Kyle Vaughn Quetcher Moser. ”

“So, Randy could know him as Kyle Moser, not even remember the middle part, and have no reason to check him against that index,” I said.

“Exactly,” Jennifer said.

“Still, we add digging into Randy’s relationship with his cousin to our to-dos.”

“I’ll do it, Elizabeth,” Diana said.

“Great. Anybody have anything else?”

Diana sighed heavily. “The sheriff’s department is looking over an application. For sure.”

I might have muttered an expletive.

“How seriously are they looking at this guy?” Mike asked.

Diana shook her head. “I don’t know. And there’s more. I can’t be a hundred percent sure and I’m not going to give you the complete context because . . . Because.”

Back to those multiple loyalties. I won’t say divided, because she gave full loyalty to both.

“Understood,” Mike said.

“Okay.” Those two syllables also doubled as an unspoken thank you. “So, the thing is, confirming they’re looking at his application was connected to—. No, that’s too strong. It was near the same time as they were talking about Nance’s murder.”

* * * *

That stopped us all.

I could practically hear the others’ brains whirring — and feel my own clunkily doing the same — as this bomb scattered pieces of what we knew.

“I’m not saying they’re absolutely connected,” Diana continued. “But the timing . . . I can’t be sure. Either way.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” I said slowly. “But you wouldn’t have brought it up if you thought there was no chance.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” She sounded more than half miserable.

“But how?” Jennifer asked. “How would they be connected? This bad cop’s from South Carolina—”

“But has a cousin here. Maybe he’d been to see his cousin before. Maybe he’d had contact with Nance. Maybe there’d been a confrontation.” Mike ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. A lot of maybes. Diana—?”

“I know. I need to mine my sources about the relationship with Randy. But . . .”

We all agreed with her doubt.

Trying to put Randy Hollister into the role of conspirator challenged the imagination.

She picked up more formally, “In the meantime, we need to talk to Russ immediately — you need to, both of you, Elizabeth and Mike. You two go now. I’ll check with Russ. If there’s an issue, like he’s not there— I’ll call before you get there.”