Jenna Night - Justice At Morgan Mesa

“Yeah.” He held up her phone. “Do you recognize this?”

She nodded and reached for it. “That’s mine.”

“It was found a pretty good distance from where our trackers believe you tripped.” He handed it to her. “I haven’t heard back from the phone company about accessing your records yet. If you want to punch in your password and read off the number from the hang-up call you received yesterday, I can send it to our tech guy to trace. Hopefully, it’s not an anonymous prepaid number.”

She tapped a few digits on the screen until it unlocked. She quickly found the number and read it off. Levi sent his text.

“Is there anything else you need?” she asked.

“That’s all for now. But I’m going to hang around until you’re safely back in your truck and on your way.”

“Thank you.” Vanessa shifted the stack of articles she held in the crook of her arm as she reached into her purse for the truck keys, but she shifted at the wrong angle and the papers fluttered down, fanning across the grimy sidewalk. She snuck a look over to the officer standing by her side. What would be his reaction when he saw that they were all articles about her father’s murder?

* * *

Levi leaned down to help Vanessa pick up her dropped papers before the breeze sent them out into the street. A slight gust blew one of the sheets over as he reached for it, displaying a screenshot of a front-page banner headline: “Cowboy Shot Dead on Morgan Mesa.”

A picture filled the top half of the page and showed a smiling young man wearing a gray cowboy hat and a Western shirt. He had Sam Ford’s thick mustache and longish face. But his hair was the same pale blond color as Vanessa’s. Below the picture, in smaller type, the caption read “Local rodeo champ Josh Ford dead at twenty-eight.”

Vanessa gently tugged at the paper in his hand and he let go of it. Her eyes were red and starting to shimmer. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to have to read something like that. Never mind the heartache of having to live through it as an eight-year-old child.

“I remember my parents talking about this when it happened,” Levi said as he helped her collect the rest of the dropped pages. “They didn’t know your dad personally, but they’d seen him competing at Torchlight Rodeo Days a couple of times.”

Vanessa straightened the papers in her hands and nodded to let him know she’d heard him. Tears fell from the corners of her eyes and rolled down her face.

Levi took a step forward, about to wrap his arms around her. But then he realized what he was doing and stopped himself. This was a line he did not want to cross. He was a professional, and that was reason enough to hold himself back. He could never acknowledge that spark of personal concern he felt for her. It would only lead to trouble.

Still, he wanted to offer her some comfort. She’d probably just spent at least an hour looking over articles containing awful details and looking at her dad’s picture.

There are some experiences you don’t ever get over. He knew that from personal experience. He’d seen friends closer than brothers and sisters mortally wounded in combat zones. He still thought of them every single day.

Finally, he reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He might have already told her that at the ranch, but he’d tell it to her every day if she needed him to.

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath and appeared a little steadier. He let his hand drop back down to his side.

“Nobody was ever brought to trial for what happened to your dad, right?” he asked, trying to remember what had happened in the aftermath. There would be records of the investigation in the police department storage. They would include details that had not been made public.

“No one was charged with the murder,” she said. “A few people were brought in for questioning. Two men, Kenny Goren and Eddie Scott, were brought in more than once. People anticipated one or the other would eventually be arrested and charged, but it never happened.”

It would be interesting to know if those two men had been cleared of the crime, or if there just wasn’t enough evidence to charge them.

While she was talking, Vanessa unlocked the truck and set her papers and purse on the passenger seat.

“I’ll follow you back to the ranch,” Levi said. “Make sure you get there safely.”

“That’s not necessary. I won’t be going alone. Rosa’s in town, too. I’m going to pick her up and we’ll ride back to the ranch together.”

Levi wasn’t convinced that was enough protection.

“Don’t worry,” Vanessa said as she climbed into the truck. “Rosa brought her gun.”

Levi stepped back so she could close the door. Then he watched her start up the truck, cautiously pull away from the curb and then head down the road.

Conducting a murder investigation could be a dangerous undertaking for anyone. Even if the murder was a case that had run cold years ago.

That harrowing attack on the mesa last night might not even be about her dad’s murder. But now that Levi had started thinking about her father’s case, he couldn’t stop. Maybe it was time for the police department to focus on it once again.

Levi walked down the street and into a sandwich shop where he ordered a couple of roast beef subs and two cups of coffee. While he was waiting, he received a text from the police department tech giving the name associated with the hang-up call Vanessa had received. Marv Burke. The name didn’t ring any bells for him, but maybe it would mean something to Vanessa.

He carried the food and coffees back to the police station and strode directly to the chief’s office, where he knocked on the open door and waited for the chief to stop typing on his keyboard. Finally, Chief Haskell leaned back in his chair and barked out, “Enter.”

Levi dropped one of the sandwiches on the desk in front of the chief and set a cup of coffee close to it.

The chief rubbed a thick hand across his freckled bald head and peered suspiciously at Levi. Then he reached for the sandwich. “You obviously want something.”

Levi didn’t bother trying to deny it. “Chief, do you remember the murder of that cowboy, Josh Ford, up on Morgan Mesa about twenty years ago?”

“Of course.” He unwrapped his sandwich. “I was a patrolman back then. Heard the original call go out over the radio after a motorist found the body. You would have just been a kid back then.” He popped open the lid on his coffee and took a sip.

“What do you remember about it?”

The chief sighed. “Poor guy was found lying dead in the middle of a road up on the mesa. Single point-blank gunshot to his chest. The newspaper was calling it ‘Murder Mesa’ for a while. His pickup truck was parked on the edge of the road, the driver’s-side door hanging open and the engine still running when he was found.”

“What kind of leads did you get?”

“A lot of chatter, but not much physical evidence. There were a couple of suspects that looked good for it, but both got cleared for some reason or other.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame we were never able to lock anybody up for it. Josh Ford worked on the O’Connell ranch, it was payday and they paid cash, and his wallet was missing. Most of us figured it for a robbery gone bad.

“There were some wild theories about there being a psycho on the loose up there, but on the whole, most people wanted to believe the killer was some transient who was long gone. They get some seasonal workers up there who come and go and nobody ever knows who they really are. Could have been one of them, I suppose.” The chief shrugged and Levi got the feeling he didn’t really believe that was the case. “There was also talk that murder might have been the motive and the scene was just set up to look like a robbery. But nobody could ever find anything to prove that.”