A cowboy looked up from where he sat near his gear bag in the corner. He was dark, short, and compact. He had a scar on his cheek and warm brown eyes.
“That’d be me,” Tassel said.
Joe squatted down next to Tassel. “Tough go out there.”
Tassel shrugged. He said, “I rode that bull at Mesquite and got an eighty-nine. I thought I knowed him, but this time he zigged when he should have zagged.”
“Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“No, sir,” Tassel said.
Joe wasn’t used to being called “sir” twice in ten minutes. He introduced himself and dug out a business card.
Tassel read it. “Wyoming game warden? I don’t know why you want to talk to me. I ain’t never hunted there, and the one time I fished some beaver ponds outside Cheyenne, all I caught was a sucker.”
“I’m doing some follow-up on a guy I’ve been told you know. Dallas Cates.”
Tassel had the same reaction as Lucey, except more pronounced.
“I got nothin’ to say about that guy.”
“What is it about him?” Joe asked. “When I mention his name, people clam up.”
“Is he a friend of yours or something?” Tassel asked.
“Nope. He went out with my daughter and I never liked it one bit.”
“April Pickett?” Tassel asked, reading Joe’s name badge again and finally putting two and two together. “April is your daughter?”
“Yup.”
“Oh, man,” Tassel said, looking around as if he were hoping someone would throw him a lifeline. “Oh, man.”
“What?” Joe asked.
Tassel leaned closer to Joe. He said, “April’s a sweetheart. I couldn’t figure out why she hung around that guy.”
Joe waited for more.
Tassel said, “I used to travel with him. We roomed together for a while on the road.”
He paused and said, “He ain’t like all these other guys.”
“In what way?”
“Dallas,” Tassel said, “he’s just different. I ain’t sayin’ he’s the devil, and he’s a hell of a bull rider, but he ain’t one of the guys, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” Joe said.
Tassel nodded his hat brim at the other cowboys in the ready area. He kept his voice down.
“All these guys you see around here will lend each other a hand. They’ll see your draw and say, ‘That bull spins left and crow-hops right out of the chute.’ Dallas never done that. He couldn’t care less. If he’d rode a particular bull before, he’d tell a cowboy who drew him lies about what that bull would do. That’s so Dallas would keep the high score. We all learned we can’t trust him. He’s in this game just for himself. He’s one selfish dude. Maybe that’s how he stays focused and wins all the time, I don’t know. I just know nobody else acts like that. We all try to get along, you know?”
Joe nodded.
“Dallas earned more money than any of us,” Tassel said. “But he’d always be the first guy to leave the table at a restaurant and stick everyone else with the check. Or he’d say he’d split a hotel room with you and never pay it back.
“We’re all like a football team, you know? Lots of camaraderie, if that’s the right word. We watch out for one another and step in if a guy’s going to get himself in trouble. It’s easy on the road to take the wrong path. But Dallas, he’s like the crazy egotistical wide receiver who’s only in it for himself, you know? He’s always bein’ the big shot. Like he is better than anyone else and he makes sure you know it. And he is better. He’s an incredible athlete. But he don’t need to rub our noses in it, you know?
“That poor April,” Tassel continued. “She didn’t know Dallas had a girl or two in every town. He’d ask me to keep her busy so he could sneak off with every buckle bunny he could find. She is a nice girl, you know? You raised her right. I tried to tell her once what Dallas was like, but she didn’t want to hear it. He had her buffaloed, you know?”
Joe felt the anger rising in his chest.
He said, “Do you know if they broke up before Dallas got injured?”
Tassel looked surprised. He said, “Not that I know of.” Then: “Hell, if that had happened, I would have gone after April in a heartbeat . . .”
He caught himself and flushed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t say that to her dad.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Joe said, “but I’d be a lot more comfortable with you around than I ever was with Dallas.”
“Still, sorry.”
“One more thing,” Joe said. “Do you know if they left Houston together after Dallas got injured?”
Tassel thought about it. He said, “I guess I don’t know for sure. I sort of assumed they did, since all of a sudden they were both gone, but I didn’t see them leave together or nothin’.”
“Would anyone know for sure?” Joe asked.
Tassel shook his head. “I doubt it. Dallas did his own thing, like I said. I was his only friend, and that’s just because I’m stupid. He’s the kind of guy who would just leave without sayin’ nothin’ to anyone.”
Joe said, “Dallas told me that April broke up with him and played the field, trying to make him jealous.”
“That no-good son of a bitch,” Tassel said. He looked up at Joe with fire in his eyes. “Believe me, Mr. Pickett, that never happened.”
“I believe you,” Joe said, trying to keep his anger off his face. “Did he ever put his hands on her?”
“I never seen it,” Tassel said. “But I wouldn’t put it past him. I do remember she was wearing big old sunglasses for a week or so up at Calgary. She wouldn’t take ’em off, even indoors. But I never seen him hit her.”
“But you wouldn’t put it past him?” Joe said.
“I wouldn’t put nothin’ past Dallas Cates.”
Joe thanked Tassel and wished him the best of luck at the next rodeo.
As he turned to leave, Tassel said, “Mr. Pickett?”
Joe turned.
“You ain’t gonna tell Dallas we talked, are you?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be on the wrong side of that guy. Or his family.”
Joe paused. “What about his family?”
“I met ’em a couple of times when they came to see Dallas ride. They ain’t exactly a fun bunch, and that mom of his . . .”
“What?”
Tassel shook his head. “She’s just scary, man. She don’t want anybody to beat Dallas in nothin’. She’d say things to other bull riders like ‘You better let Dallas win or I’ll send my boys after you.’ Things like that.”
“Did you ever hear her say that?” Joe asked.
“Hell, she said it to me in Cheyenne,” Tassel said, shaking his head. “She’s got a thing about Dallas that ain’t healthy.”
That night, in his hotel room in downtown Denver, a few blocks from the federal forensics lab, after sending Governor Rulon his condolences regarding Cody McCoy’s ninety-two-point ride, he called Marybeth and told her what he’d learned about Brenda and Dallas Cates at the rodeo.
“It sounds like he was talking about Ma Barker,” she said.
“She scares men who ride sixteen-hundred-pound bulls,” Joe said. “That’s not nothing.”
21
At the same time, four hundred miles to the north of Denver, Liv Brannan heard the screen door slam at the main house and she stepped away from the rock she’d been working on in the wall of the root cellar.
She’d been at it all day. The tips of her fingers on both hands were raw and bleeding from digging around the rock, and she’d resorted to working by covering her hands with her shirt and wearing only her bra. She’d tried to pry one of the rusty shelf braces out of the wall, but didn’t have the leverage or the strength to get any out. She was finally able to bend and break a cross brace away from the angle iron early in the afternoon. When it finally came free, it was such an emotional victory that she stood and looked at the tongue depressor–sized piece of metal in her hand and cried.