Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(36)

It meant nothing to Joe, but he took a photo of it.

He carefully refolded the shirt top and placed it exactly as he’d found it, then sealed up the locker and slid it back under the bed.



* * *



—

Steck’s window slid down as Joe approached the SUV. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Not really, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask Norwood to analyze a footlocker under Bert Kizer’s bed. There might be some stray prints on it.”

“Gotcha.”

“See you in a minute with that pizza,” Joe said.

As he opened the door to his pickup, Joe’s phone chimed with a text message. Marybeth.


We’re starving. Are you on your way?



He replied:


Yup. Got sidetracked.





THURSDAY,

NOVEMBER 24


        The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;

    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

    —William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”





CHAPTER TWELVE


    Gargoyle


Marybeth snapped open one eye in the dark, reached for her phone on the bed stand, and looked at the screen. It was four thirty-three. She was on her side in bed with her back to Joe. As usual, they were spooning. His left leg was on top of her left thigh and his arm was thrown over her shoulder. He was deeply asleep, which she chalked up to his full and exhausting day, as well as the two bourbons he’d had when he got back with the pizza.

As gently as she could, she disentangled herself and slipped out from beneath the covers. He moaned and asked her what was up.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m going to put the turkey in the oven. Go back to sleep.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

It didn’t take much convincing. Joe could sleep anywhere, anytime.

She pulled on her robe and slippers and quietly shut the bedroom door behind her.

Marybeth liked how her house felt to her as she padded down the hallway. She loved it that all three of her daughters would be back together in less than six hours. It would be loud, it would be raucous, and she knew she’d love every minute of it.

She was wide-awake and happy.



* * *



—

After rubbing butter on the cold skin of the big turkey, she slid it into the oven and covered it with a sheet of aluminum foil. Then she heated a mug of water in the microwave for a cup of tea that, she hoped, might induce her to want to go back to sleep for a couple of hours. She doubted it would work because she was jazzed by the impending arrival of her family and friends. Tube heard her stirring and waddled into the kitchen and collapsed in a heap at Marybeth’s feet.

Joe had told her about finding the footlocker under Bert Kizer’s bed and she was curious about it. As she steeped the tea bag in the hot water, she found his phone and powered it on. She knew Joe wouldn’t mind if she looked at the photos he’d taken at the crime scene. After all, her past research in the library and on law enforcement databases had assisted him on investigations time and time again. He encouraged her to get involved in whatever he was working on.

She scrolled in reverse order through the shots of the army uniform and the insignias and back through his photo stream until she found the unopened locker. That’s where she stopped. Marybeth hoped that he hadn’t taken any shots of the burned victim earlier in the day and she had no desire at all to find out.

The cover of the old footlocker read:


R. W. Kizer

U.S. Army



She shook her head. She’d never met nor heard of R. W. Kizer. It was odd that in a single day she was confronted with two military relics from the bygone past, one German and one American.

Was R. W. Kizer Bert’s father? Joe seemed to think so.

She retrieved the album and her laptop from the pantry.

Marybeth booted up her device and googled the name. There were “Kizer Frames” for roller skates and a paper written by an R. W. Kizer on something called Nitrogen Narcosis for the 29th Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society Workshop in 1985. She doubted that was Bert’s dad.

There was a “Ray W. Kizer” on Ancestry.com and she clicked on it. She’d found something, she thought. Ray Kizer was listed as military and his name was taken from an archive called U.S. Navy Cruise Books, 1918–2009. Her excitement dissipated when it was revealed that he was a Lieutenant Junior Grade C in the navy. The photo on Joe’s phone was clearly an army uniform.

She could smell the aroma of the turkey heating up and it was enticing. So was the dizzying feeling she got when she was on the hunt.

Marybeth changed the search criteria. As far as she knew, Bert had lived in the area his whole life, which meant his dad might have been local as well. She keyed in “Kizer,” “Saddlestring,” and “Wyoming.”

She got a hit. It was a link to a short obituary from the Saddlestring Roundup dated February 5, 2000.

It was titled “Richard ‘Dick’ Kizer.”

    Longtime Twelve Sleep County resident Richard “Dick” Kizer passed away at the Bighorn Mountain Senior Center on February 2, 2000. He was 79.