Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(42)
“No, ma’am, Izzy’s a bit tuckered out. It’s a long drive from Cody to here. I parked her at the hotel so she could take a nap.”
“You drove here from Wyoming?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, having a seat and placing the hat in his lap. “Took some time to find people to look after our livestock, so we didn’t leave until Friday morning. We had twenty-four hours and forty-six minutes of pure driving time, divided up over four days. Driving straight through wasn’t an option. We ran into some real bad weather in Colorado—a blizzard that pretty much stopped us in our tracks for the better part of a day and a half.”
Joanna sat down to face him, and Lyndell continued. “Most people might’ve flown at a time like this, but Izzy’s folks died in a plane crash when she was just a little girl. She hasn’t set foot in a plane all her life, and she’s not about to start now.”
“How can I help?” Joanna asked.
“Well, ma’am, “ Lyn said, “seeing as how my son has turned up dead, I’d like to know the reason why.”
“You do realize this isn’t my department’s investigation,” Joanna began. “Since one of my officers was involved—”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know,” Lyndell Hogan said impatiently, waving aside her objection. “Officer-involved shooting and all that. And if I could get that Dave Newton fella to call me back, I’d be talking to him. But he hasn’t, so I’m talking to you, and I’m asking you straight out. Just how much did Madison Gale have to do with it?”
Joanna blinked at that. “Madison Gale?” she repeated.
“Leastways that’s the name she was going by at the time Leon married her. So answer my question.”
Joanna knew her reply needed to be circumspect. “We know that Madison was at the scene when all this happened,” she said, “but so far we have no hard evidence to suggest that she was directly involved.”
“I’d bet money she was,” Lyn said. “Was she screwing around with that officer who shot Leon by any chance?”
“Absolutely not!” Joanna declared. “Deputy Ruiz went to your son’s residence to deliver a protection order. Armando Ruiz is a good guy, a married man with a wife and three kids. To my knowledge, prior to this week he’d had no previous interactions either with your son or with Madison.”
“Wait,” Hogan said. “You’re saying my son finally wised up and asked for a protection order against that witch? We’ve been telling him to do that for months.”
“I’m afraid it was the other way around,” Joanna replied. “Madison swore out a protection order on him.”
“That’s ridiculous, when all this time she’s the one who’s been beating the crap out of him.”
“You knew she could be violent, then?”
“Absolutely,” Lyn asserted.
“If she lied to get the protection order, maybe we should start by having you tell me what you know,” Joanna said quietly. “But would you mind if I invited one of my detectives to join us?”
“Not at all,” Hogan said. “The more people who know the truth about that little hussy, the better off we’ll be.”
When Joanna called over to the bullpen, Ernie Carpenter was the only guy available. He lumbered into her office, where after a brief introduction he took a seat next to her visitor.
“Mr. Hogan here seems to be under the impression that Madison might have had something to do with his son’s death. I’m hoping he can provide us with some background information.”
Ernie nodded sagely. “Seems like a good idea,” he said. “So how about if you start at the beginning, Mr. Hogan?”
Lyn heaved a deep sigh and ran his hands around the brim of his hat as if searching for a place to start. “You need to understand that me and my boy didn’t always see eye to eye,” he said finally. “Fact is, once Leon hit high school, the two of us butted heads most all the time. We’ve got this cattle ranch, you see. I wanted him to go off to college, be an aggie, and then come home and take over running the place, but he didn’t want nothin’ to do with it—not with running the ranch and not with going to college neither. Soon as he was old enough to do so on his own, he enlisted in the army. Told his mom he wanted to be a mechanic and the army would train him for that for free. And he was right about that. They evidently turned him into a first-rate mechanic.
“I was mad as hell when he left, but you know how mothers are. Izzy stayed in touch with him the whole time. I kept thinking he’d wise up and come home. He did three two-year hitches, spent some time in the Middle East, and then ended up being stationed at Fort Huachuca, working in the motor pool. That’s when he hooked up with Madison.”
“How long ago was that?” Joanna asked.
Lyn shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. Four years ago, maybe?”
“Wait,” Joanna said. “The two kids are seven and five. Are you saying your son wasn’t Kendall and Peter’s biological father?”
“Nope,” Hogan replied. “Madison and the two kids came as a package deal, but I can tell you, once things started going downhill, those kids were the only reason Leon stuck around. He had adopted them, you know. Kendall had some other last name to begin with. I forget what it was, and Peter’s last name was Gale. When Leon adopted them, they all ended up with the same name—his. And that was the one thing that kept him from filing for a divorce, you see. He was their adoptive father, and their stepfather, too. He didn’t think there was any way in hell that the courts would grant him a shared-custody arrangement, much less full custody. Especially when Madison told him that if he ever tried to divorce her, she’d say he’d been molesting the little girl—which he hadn’t, by the way. My son loved that little girl beyond bearing.”