The Man From Oklahoma. Darlene Graham
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voice was emotionless. “The sheriff doesn’t notify the suspect’s private detective.”
Robert sat stone still for a moment before he slowly nodded. “Suspect. That occurred to me, too, when I was flying down the ridge on my bike. I didn’t see any cars around your house, and I thought, what if they haven’t contacted Nathan yet because…well…you know…”
“Because they think I killed her?”
Robert turned his head and let his sympathetic brown eyes speak for a moment before he said, “You are in danger, cousin, and you need powerful help.”
Nathan studied Robert’s serious expression and, despite his emotional turmoil, felt his face pulling into a crooked smile. “Robert, my man, don’t even think about that.”
“Just talk to him. Or come away with me for a few days. So we can plan, so we can think.”
“Talk to your crazy medicine man so he can blow on my face and make me invisible or something?”
“Mr. Elliott has the power to help you. I’m not asking you to go up there and stay forever. Just long enough to prepare yourself. If you went into hiding for a while, we might even have a half a chance of finding the real killer.”
“Be sensible, Robert.”
“Nathan, you be sensible. Van Horn hasn’t believed your story from the start. If he doesn’t get a conviction, he could lose the election next spring, and you’re the only suspect he’s got. Is that what you want? To go to prison, to die, for something you didn’t do? How does that help Susie? If we seek guidance from the shaman—”
“I’ll fight this battle my own way. I don’t need some old Indian guy singing chants and rattling turtle shells.” Nathan shifted and reached for the portable phone on the marble table in front of them. “I’d better call Frank.” His private detective was going to be less than thrilled to learn that his missing-person case had turned into a murder investigation. Frank was a sharp old dog, but he was about ready to retire. He wouldn’t like taking on something this complicated.
Robert threw up his hands, then stood. “Let me call him. But first let me get you some water. You look like hammered buffalo dung.”
“Bring some aspirin, too,” Nathan said. “I’ve got a killer headache. But don’t blow on ’em,” he added without looking up at his cousin.
Robert glanced back and said, “Humph,” before he disappeared behind the stairs, down the long hallway toward the kitchen.
Nathan eased his pounding head back onto the couch and stared up at the high cedar-beamed ceiling. For three years he’d been living with this nightmare. Would it never end? He thought about what lay ahead and the dark crossbeams above him blurred. But a steel-hard resolve quickly cleared his vision. He no longer cared about the ambitions of political phonies in Tulsa, about society’s judgment, their courts, their reporters. He no longer cared about anything at all except finding Susie’s murderer.
All along his gut had told him that Susie would never be found alive. And now he would probably be charged with her murder. A sensational suspect for a sensational crime.
JAMIE COULDN’T SHAKE OFF the haunting image of Nathan Biddle’s face when she’d told him about his wife. As soon as the news crew cleared out after the six-o’clock broadcast, she grabbed the sleeve of Dave’s faded flannel shirt. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Ah, man!” Dave whined and bounced backward on one sneaker. “Give me a break, lady. Just because you live, eat and breathe this crap doesn’t mean I have to. I have a life, you know.”
“I need you more than the boys at the Apocalypse Club. Come back to the archives and help me locate an old video of Nathan Biddle. The one on the horse.”
“You mean the stuff I shot at that fancy golf tournament for children’s medical research?”
“Correct.”
“I know exactly where that one is.” Dave bit at the challenge. “Follow me.” He set off with long lanky strides down the narrow corridor that led toward the editing bay.
The room, no bigger than a closet, was arranged like a command module: two Beta tape decks canted on the desk, two monitors angled inward on the shelf above. Dave took the chair without asking and popped in the tape he’d retrieved. Jamie hovered behind him.
He didn’t take long to locate the footage of Nathan Biddle sitting atop a horse in a white cowboy hat and western-style tuxedo, looking like the man who had everything.
“This what you want?” Dave asked as he toggled doorknob-size dials back and forth, cutting and moving footage to the blank tape in the other Beta deck. “I remembered exactly when I shot this, because how many people would think of using a horse, instead of a golf cart?” A close-up shot of Biddle resting his five iron across the saddle horn zoomed forward on the screen. Dave twisted the knobs again. “This kind of work will be a lot easier to do when we get the new AVID system,” he said. “We’ll be able to do enhancements, pull out nat sound, do perfect lay-downs, everything.”
More interested in her subject than the technology Dave adored, Jamie commented softly, “Biddle would pull any stunt to get publicity for his charities.”
“Man, his looks sure have changed.” Dave brought the face on the screen into sharper focus. “Doesn’t even look like the same dude.”
“Okay. You can go play now.”
Dave got up and gave Jamie the chair, but then he hovered at Jamie’s shoulder and studied the viewer as she froze a frame showing a young woman smiling in the background.
“Biddle’s wife,” Dave said, and Jamie nodded.
“Film often catches things you miss in real time.”
They watched while the pale-skinned brunette beauty glanced over her shoulder at someone in the crowd. When she turned back toward the camera, she looked pensive, biting her perfect lower lip.
After a gravid silence, Dave said. “God, she’s pretty. You think he did it?”
Jamie sank back in her chair, hypnotized by the image before her. Susan Biddle had indeed been a pretty woman. “Go get me everything else we’ve got, okay?”
“Jamie, come on. You’ve seen it all a dozen times.”
“Well, I want to see it again, okay? Now go.”
Dave bounded away.
Jamie transferred the segment with the wife onto the new tape, then loaded a different cartridge into the first tape deck. This was tonight’s video. The one she didn’t use. She fast-forwarded past the parts of herself in a fright wig and came to Biddle’s face. Just like in the golf segment, he looked down from high up in a saddle. But Dave was right. He did look different. It wasn’t just the ranch clothes and the fact that he’d let his hair grow out. His Native American blood seemed to stand out now. In the lines of his face she could see shadows of the Osage warrior depicted in the famous George Catlin painting. The same high forehead, wide mouth, prominent nose. But mostly it was his deep-set eyes that seemed changed, transformed, revealed. Handsome and energetic in the older video, they looked darker now, more still. The quiet bottomless eyes of a man who had suffered too much. Even so, something about his face radiated such strength, such compassion, such integrity that Jamie’s instincts told her this was a man who could never murder anyone, much less his wife.
Again she watched the reaction that Dave had surreptitiously captured. The shocked realization that passed over the whole man when she told him Susan Biddle’s remains had been found. Nobody could fake that. Could they?
She froze the frame and her stomach tightened as she relived that first encounter. It had been so long since she’d been genuinely attracted to a man that she’d just about given up. Her big sister, Valerie, oh-so-happily married and busy making babies with a nice ordinary mechanical engineer in Kansas City, claimed Jamie had