Читать книгу: «Lost Rodeo Memories»

ONE

“She’s alive!”

Melanie Graham wasn’t sure if she just heard someone yell something, or if she’d been asleep and dreaming. Feeling groggy, she lifted her heavy eyelids and found herself gazing at a dark night sky, dotted with spiky silver stars. Her view was silhouetted with pine-tree branches high overhead that shifted back and forth in the cool, swirling breeze.

That was odd.

When she’d gone to sleep last night, it was in a bed in a hotel room. Her lodgings were across the street from the Community Attractions Arena in Leopold, Wyoming. After three hectic days the Wild Ride Rodeo had come to an end. She’d carefully packaged up all the jewelry she had left in the sales booth she’d rented in the merchandise-and-concessions area—and there wasn’t much left over, as sales had been good—and then she’d gone to her hotel to relax and get a good night’s sleep. She distinctly remembered setting her alarm so she could wake up early and start the four-hundred-mile drive back home to Bowen, Idaho, just as the sun came up. So what was she doing lying on the ground?

“Ma’am, are you Melanie Graham?”

She shifted her gaze to look at the young man kneeling on the ground beside her. He was holding a flashlight and wearing a jacket with the words Event Security written across the front in big silvery reflective letters.

Apparently he’d been talking since she’d first opened her eyes, but his words hadn’t registered. The sound of them was like hearing someone speak on TV, in another room, when she wasn’t watching the program. It felt like what he was saying had nothing to do with her.

Except, maybe it did. Whatever was happening right now wasn’t a dream. It was real.

A jolt of terror shot through her chest, and she sat up, screaming and trying to crawl backward, away from the man, even though she wasn’t sure why. The sudden movement made her head spin, throwing off her balance until she found herself pathetically crawling on her side, tearing her hands on exposed rock and pine cones and tree roots, but she didn’t care. From deep inside something screamed at her that she had to get away.

A second man stepped through the trees, into the small clearing. He was bigger than the event security guy. He, too, carried a flashlight. When he got closer, she could see the light shining on a badge, and that he wore the uniform of a Miles County, Idaho, deputy sheriff. The county where her home was located. It was one more thing that didn’t make sense.

Confusion made her head pound. And then she realized something else was making her head pound. It actually felt sore.

“Confirm, we’ve found Melanie Graham,” the deputy said in a deep voice into his collar mic. “Get emergency medical services moving toward my location.”

At the same time Melanie reached up to touch her sore, aching head. Her hair felt damp. Even before she looked at her fingertips in the glow of the two flashlights, she knew by the coppery scent that she’d touched blood.

What had happened to her?

Her body began to tremble. Her head started to spin even faster. She couldn’t catch her breath.

“Melanie.” She heard the deputy say her name, but she couldn’t stop staring at the blood on her fingers. Couldn’t stop trying to peer past the shrouded memories in her mind and figure it out. How did she get here?

“Melanie.” The deputy’s deep voice was louder now and it broke through her trance. She turned to him. He crouched beside her. Dark hair, dark eyes, the expression on his face focused and thoughtful, yet compassionate at the same time. “You’re safe,” he said.

Safe from what?

“I’m Lieutenant Luke Baxter,” he said. “I’m a deputy sheriff.” He reached out his hand, but didn’t actually touch her. He waited for her to make the first move.

Finally she took his hand. “What happened?” she asked, struggling to sit up.

“Wait,” he cautioned, while holding up his other hand in a staying gesture. “It would be better for you to wait until the medic checks you out before you start moving around too much.”

“What happened to me?” she repeated.

He lifted an eyebrow. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I don’t even know where I am.” Her voice caught and she could hear a sob rising up in her throat. She’d never felt so lost in her life.

The deputy squeezed her hand a little tighter. His touch, along with the feeling of calm and strength emanating from him, made her feel a little less panicked. “You’ve obviously sustained a substantial blow to your head,” he said. “That can leave anybody addled. We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as we can.”

She heard tree branches snapping, boots stomping on hard-packed dirt, and people talking, and then an emergency medical crew stepped through the trees and into the clearing.

“What’s the last thing you can remember?” the deputy asked.

Melanie got the impression he was in more of a hurry now. That he wanted to get all of the information he could from her before the paramedics transported her to the hospital.

She tried hard to think back, but the last thing she could remember was being in the hotel in Wyoming. A flare of panic threatened to push the sobs she’d been swallowing back up to the surface again. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She squeezed the deputy’s hand a little harder, because right now he seemed like the only certain thing in her life. The only anchor she could hold on to.

Which was crazy, because she’d only just met the man. But she didn’t want to face any more strangers right now. Didn’t want to feel any more bewildered and overwhelmed than she already did.

“Oh, dear Lord,” she began to pray softly, uncertain what she would say next. And immediately the thought came to her. I will be with you always.

She was never alone, even if she felt alone. How many times had she reminded herself of that over the last couple of years, as she’d pieced her life back together? Lots of times. Her lungs were tight with fear, but she managed to take a deep breath and blow it out. She loosened her grip on the deputy’s hand without actually letting go of him and answered the paramedic’s questions as best she could.

During pauses in her conversation with the medic, Melanie spoke to the deputy. “The last thing I remember is going to sleep in my hotel room in Wyoming.”

By his long silence she could guess he was trying to decide what he should say to her.

“I realize I must be back home in Miles County,” she said.

“Where do you live?”

“In Bowen.” The biggest city in the county. Which didn’t mean it actually was a big city. Some people probably wouldn’t call it a city at all.

They were interrupted while one of the medics talked to her, shined a pen light in her eyes several times and felt around for any apparent broken bones. Her head still pounded, but at least the dizziness had subsided.

“You aren’t far from town,” Luke said while the medic called in to the county hospital’s emergency room, with an update on Melanie and a request for further directions. “You’re in the woods just south of the county fairgrounds.”

“Oh, that’s a weird coincidence,” she said. “I’m going to have a booth there, where I’ll sell my jewelry during the rodeo in a couple of weeks.”

“Tonight was the last night,” Luke said.

“Of the rodeo? How can that be? It’s two weeks in the future.”

“It ran this past week, as scheduled.”

So she’d lost two weeks of her life? That wasn’t possible. Panic started to raise its ugly head again. She could feel her heartbeat speeding up. Her face getting warmer.

“How did you know to come out here, into the woods, looking for me?” she asked, not certain she wanted to hear the answer.

Once again he took his time in answering. Probably concerned any information he gave her might traumatize her even more.

“Please tell me,” she said as calmly as she could. “I have a pretty vivid imagination. And sometimes that isn’t a good thing.”

He tilted his head slightly. “You had an assistant working your booth with you.”

“I always do that. So I can take a break without having to lock everything up.” And then a terrible thought crossed her mind. “Peter Altman. Is he all right?” She held her breath while waiting for the answer.

Melanie rented space to sell her handmade jewelry, as well as antiques and small pieces of restored furniture, in The Mercantile, downtown. Peter was a year out of high school, looking to work as many hours as he could to save money for college. The owner of The Mercantile had recommended Peter, and it had worked out great.

Luke nodded. “The rodeo was over. Many of the vendors had already cleared out. You’d packed up your inventory and were ready to leave when you gave Peter permission to grab something to eat.”

“A lot of the food sellers will give away leftover cooked food rather than throw it in the trash, when they’re closing up.” Melanie was trying to picture what Luke was telling her. And trying to guess what he would say happened next. Maybe even remember what happened next. But she couldn’t.

“Peter was surprised when he came back and you weren’t in your truck, waiting for him. And worried. He tried to call you on your phone, but you didn’t answer. Then he started literally calling out for you, all around the exhibition hall, where you’d been located, and then outside.

“He got event security out searching for you. And then one of the searchers heard gunshots from this direction. Several people called in, reporting they’d heard gunfire, and I got here as quickly as I could.”

Melanie stared at him, trying to take in everything he was telling her. None of it seemed the slightest bit familiar. Moving slowly and feeling a little bit queasy, she once again reached her hand up to her head. “Have I been shot?”

Luke looked to the medic who’d been taking her initial assessment.

“Melanie, we need to roll you onto this backboard,” the medic said in response. “Once we get you checked out at the hospital, we’ll have all the facts.”

“I can probably walk,” she said.

“No, we don’t want you to do that,” he responded. “We don’t want you walking until we know the extent of your injuries.”

She turned to Luke as he slowly let go of her hand. “I need to get to work on finding out exactly what happened to you,” he said. “But first I have to ask, do you have any enemies? Anyone you think could have done this?”

“No.”

“Has anyone ever threatened to harm you? Kill you?”

“No.”

His questions seemed ridiculous. But then the seriousness of his line of reasoning began to sink in. Was it really possible someone had wanted to kill her? Why?

And if so she had no idea who that person might be. Which meant they could walk right up to her and try to kill her again. And the next time she might not be able to get away.

* * *

“Is this all you have for security footage of the parking lot?” Luke asked impatiently. “It’s not much help.”

“That’s all there is, Lieutenant.” Don Chastain, the chief of event security for the fairgrounds, rubbed his hand over the sprinkling of gray stubble on his chin. They were standing in his office.

“Luke, you’ve responded to calls here before,” Don added. “You know our biggest problem is geniuses trying to break into the exhibition halls or the main office, in the middle of the night, because they apparently think we store chests full of gold in there.” He shook his head. “Normally we just deal with your garden-variety foolishness. And drunk and disorderly, of course. We’ve never had to worry about people getting shot at before.”

Biting back his impatience Luke once again watched the shadowy, low-quality video of the parking lot. Just in case he’d missed something the other three times he’d watched it.

He hadn’t. The single fixed camera was focused on a section of the parking lot, far from the spot where Melanie Graham was seen standing beside the cab of her pickup truck, prior to the attack. The images didn’t show anything notable. Just people walking to their vehicles and leaving.

All right, that was a dead end. Time to try something different. Luke turned to the rail-thin eighteen-year-old kid standing a couple of feet away from him. Technically being eighteen made the guy a man. But dressed in an oversize green-and-white plaid flannel shirt and sharply creased blue jeans, sporting a big silver belt buckle, he really did look like a six-foot-tall boy.

“Peter, did you see anybody walking up to Ms. Graham when you left to get something to eat?”

“No, sir.”

“Any odd behavior on her part? Did she seem worried or nervous?”

Peter shook his head.

Luke was hoping to get some kind of lead quickly. Right now one team of deputies was searching through the woods, trying to pick up any trail of a fleeing perpetrator. A second team, together with two forensic specialists, was combing the area where Melanie Graham had been found.

Once Melanie had been driven away in the ambulance, Luke had gone looking for Peter. So far he was the closest thing Luke had to a witness. But the kid was understandably shaken up. Hoping he’d be able to offer some useful information once he’d calmed down, Luke had asked him to hang around for a bit.

“I guess the guy got away with all Ms. Graham’s money,” Peter said, shaking his head sadly.

“It wasn’t a robbery,” Luke said. Or if it was meant to be a robbery, it wasn’t successful. Melanie’s purse had been recovered from her truck, complete with her wallet, phone and about forty dollars in cash. He’d seen it for himself, and he’d tucked the purse beside her, on the backboard, after she’d been loaded into the ambulance.

“So, I guess that means you found the lockbox?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

“What lockbox?”

“A blue metal box she had on the front seat of the truck.”

Luke had looked through the truck and arranged for both the truck and trailer to be securely stored at the fairgrounds until Melanie could have someone come get them. The trailer had been closed up, with padlocks threaded through the door latches, and there was no sign that anyone had tried to break into it.

“What did she keep in the lockbox?” Luke asked. “Money? Her receipts for the day’s sales?”

“Yes,” Peter said. “She also put some of her more expensive jewelry in there. The things she made out of gold. There’s not very much of that. Most of it is silver.”

If the thief tried to pawn the stolen jewelry, that would give them the start of a lead on who they were looking for.

Maybe what happened to Melanie Graham tonight was a simple strong-arm robbery, but it seemed odd. There were several other vendors who would have pulled in a lot more money, particularly the food-and-drink sellers, who typically dealt in cash.

There was that small window of opportunity when Peter went to get food and Melanie was left alone, but who would have known she’d have cash and be by herself at that exact moment?

So, what might have happened? Somebody walked by at just the right time, saw their opportunity and tried to rob her? She grabbed the box and ran, and they chased her and then shot at her? For an unknown amount of money? With witnesses around?

That was hard to believe. But anything was possible. And he really wanted to catch whoever had done this.

Luke had spent a few years in the military. He’d been injured several times. Been knocked unconscious twice. He knew what it was like to open your eyes and be disoriented. It was a hollow, lonely feeling. He’d recognized that lost feeling in her eyes. He’d been relatively fortunate with his own injuries, and his disorientation hadn’t lasted for long. He hoped the same was true for her.

He pulled out his phone and punched in the number for a deputy working the crime scene in the woods. “Any chance you’ve found a blue metal lockbox?” he asked when the deputy answered.

“No. Are we looking for one?”

“Apparently there was one in the cab of her truck, but it’s gone now.”

“I’ll pass the word to keep an eye out for it.”

“What have you found so far?” Luke asked.

“Bullet casings. Partial footprints. A tree branch with blood on it and a few strands of hair. It was lying on the ground, near the spot where Ms. Graham was found. Of course we’re going to check to see if the blood and hair are a match for her or if they belong to someone else.”

“She’s been admitted to the hospital, so I’m going by there later this evening to check on her. Maybe she will have recovered some of her memory by then.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll be back over there at the crime scene in a few minutes.”

Luke disconnected and turned to Peter. “Is there anything else you can think of to tell me?”

Peter cleared his throat. “No, sir.”

The kid was still pretty pale and his hands were trembling. After ten years in the military, including several tours of combat, and his time as a deputy sheriff, it was hard for Luke to imagine how he would have reacted at the age of eighteen to having his employer attacked while he was just a short distance away.

He’d played football in high school and grew up on a ranch, so when he was eighteen he’d thought he was tough. But he wasn’t. Witnessing how inhumanely people could treat each other was shocking. You had to learn how to keep your emotional distance so you could be useful at your job. So you stopped being shocked by brutality. Or told yourself that was the case, anyway.

Luke’s brother, Jake, had warned him on one of Luke’s visits home on leave that he was getting too good at the emotional-distance thing. And after he’d moved back to Idaho to help Jake with his kids, Luke had tried to work on that. Leaving the Army after his enlistment period ended was a tough decision. But it was one he’d had to make, because he’d had no idea how long his brother would need his help.

“How are you holding up?” he asked Peter. “You’ve been a lot of help, and I appreciate it. Do you need me to have a deputy drive you home?”

“No, sir. I called a friend to come pick me up and he’s waiting in the parking lot.”

After Peter left, Luke wrapped things up with Don and went back to the crime scene to see how the investigation was going. The perpetrator hadn’t been found, but he’d left a trail through the woods that looped back to the two-lane highway winding through this part of the county. The guy could be anywhere by now.

If Melanie could eventually remember what the perpetrator looked like, there was the slim chance they could find an image of him on video. And from there, maybe link him to a vehicle license plate. A purchase made with a credit card at the fairgrounds. Something.

Confident that everything was being properly taken care of at the crime scene, Luke headed for the hospital. He arrived just as visiting hours were ending. When he stepped into Melanie’s room, he was immediately greeted by a young red-haired woman who introduced herself as Melanie’s cousin, Anna.

“How is she doing?” Luke asked Anna in a quiet voice. He could see Melanie lying in bed, a blanket pulled up nearly to her chin, looking tired and groggy.

“She has a concussion,” Anna told him. “But no fractures. And no gunshot wounds.”

“Thank You, Lord,” Luke said softly.

“Amen,” Anna agreed. “They’ve given her some painkillers and a sedative so she’ll sleep.”

“Has she regained any of her memory?”

Anna shook her head. “She still doesn’t remember anything since she left Wyoming two weeks ago.”

Melanie’s eyelids fluttered open and she called out to Luke. “Hey, deputy.”

Luke walked over to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Sleepy.” She had bandages on one side of her head, and dark circles under her eyes. “Thank you,” she mumbled, giving him a half smile. “And please thank the event security man who found me.” Her smile started to falter and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “Something happened to me,” she said, with confusion evident in her eyes. She reached her hand up to touch the bandages on her head and gave him a pleading look. “What happened to me?”

“I’m going to do my best to find out.”

Over the intercom, a voice announced the end of visiting hours.

“I’ll talk to you again later,” Luke said to Melanie as he headed for the door. And then to Anna, he said, “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

She followed him out into the hallway, calling back to Melanie that she wasn’t actually leaving for the night just yet.

“Do you have any theories on who might have attacked her?” Luke asked. “Does she have an angry business partner? Maybe a boyfriend she broke up with?”

“She has an ex-husband, Ben,” Anna said. “But he was the one who insisted on the divorce—told her he wanted to start a new life without her—so I wouldn’t suspect him. I really can’t think of anyone.”

Luke glanced up and down the hallway, frustrated that he had no idea what the perpetrator looked like. “Do you know how long she’ll be in the hospital?”

“There’s a good chance she’ll be able to leave tomorrow morning.”

“Do the doctors have any idea how long it will take for her to regain her memory?”

“They said it could happen as early as tomorrow morning. Or it could take a few weeks.” Anna’s eyes teared up. She looked away and blinked rapidly. “Or the memories of the past two weeks might be gone forever. So she’d never be able to remember who attacked her, and that criminal would get away with it.”

Luke sighed. He could not let that happen.

* * *

“When you get home try to relax as much as you can,” the doctor said to Melanie as she tapped the information for Melanie’s prescription into an electronic tablet. “You need to heal from the emotional trauma, as well as the physical injury. So don’t try to force yourself to remember things. Otherwise you could end up right back here in the hospital again.” The doctor’s smile was kind, but she also managed to make it clear that she wasn’t kidding.

Melanie remembered waking up in the woods last night. But prior to that, she still only remembered going to bed at the hotel in Wyoming. Not trying to remember what happened during those missing two weeks was difficult. Like trying not to scratch an itch.

The doctor left and Melanie turned to Anna. “All right, cousin. Let’s roll.” Hospital protocol required Melanie to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed out to the parking lot, even though she felt like she could walk.

“I need you to take me back to the fairgrounds, to get my truck and the trailer,” Melanie said as soon as they were in Anna’s sedan.

Anna turned to her with a cheery smile. “No.” Despite the upbeat tone, Melanie could see the dark circles under her cousin’s eyes, and the paleness of her skin made the freckles scattered across her face stand out even more defiantly.

Melanie wasn’t the only one suffering in the aftermath of this bizarre attack on her. Anna had already done so much for her. And she had a husband, Tyler, serving in the military, overseas. Anna had enough weight on her shoulders. She didn’t need anything added to that.