Vickie Goowin
Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2 (Wednesday, August 13, 1997)
The beautiful clock Ken gave me for our 10th anniversary chimed seven times. I twitched awake and winced as Spice dug her claws into my leg. Ouch. I swatted at the empty spot where she lay all night. Sunlight brightened the room, hurting my eyes. Behind my eyes, an ache, dull as long as I didn’t move my head. Carefully, I glanced at the empty wine bottle on the floor. I stared at my glass, also empty. Damn, I didn’t remember drinking the whole thing. Maybe someone snuck in and drank it or maybe it was Spice? As if reading my thoughts, the cat gave me the look conveying that we both knew who the guilty party was.
I put the footrest down and hurried to the bathroom. Sitting on the stool, I looked up to see a tired face with puffy eyes. No wonder my husband left. Next, I scrounged in the kitchen for something to eat. I used to love cooking. When Ken had been home, the fridge and freezer had been fully stocked. Now there didn’t seem to be much point. While Spice coiled herself around my legs with each step, meowing for whatever cats want when they do that, I toasted a piece of bread and spread peanut butter on it.
Spice sharpened her claws on my leg. “You don’t like peanut butter.” I refilled her water bowl and checked her food dish, which was almost full.
The drawer in the fridge yielded an apple and cherry tomatoes for lunch. I’d make coffee when I got to work. Maybe I’d find out what Tim was up to the night before. Or maybe I could have a quiet day with no new crisis.
Half an hour later, I drove to the office and parked the car in the lot behind my building.
POWRE, Protect Our Wyoming Rural Environment, rented an office in an historic building in downtown Douglas with a steep flight of stairs. Some days my only exercise was climbing those twenty-nine steps. In summer, wasps flew around the hallway. But the office was air-conditioned. I made my own comfortable nest consisting of a cluttered desk, a computer that was only a little outdated and four rows of file cabinets.
The answering machine blinked. A stack of books two feet high sat on the floor near the desk. A week’s worth of newspapers, waiting to be clipped, lay on one of the extra chairs for the few visitors who dared to venture up to my eyrie. One of the file drawers hung open with a marker where the Department of Environmental Quality’s Water and Air Quality Rules folder resided. That file and three others lay haphazardly on my desk.
I started the coffee, turned on the computer and listened to the messages. The first message was from a POWRE member fifty miles to the west in Casper. Another ten-acre gravel pit was being sited in another scenic location. As usual, the people affected learned about it the day the trucks started rolling in. The second message told me the Sue Grafton book on tape I requested from the library was now available.
Checking the calendar, I was reminded that comments were due in thirty days on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the new pipeline planned through the Thunder Basin Grasslands in the northeast section of Wyoming. The EIS was the stack of books beside the desk.
Sighing, I took two aspirin to appease the pain in my head. As POWRE’s only community organizer in southeast Wyoming, I was engaged and challenged. It was fun – most days. Not so much on this Wednesday morning.
I had just started to write up notes on the visits of the previous day when the phone rang. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was 9:30.
“Rhonda, did you hear? They found Tim Morton’s body in the hog lagoon this morning about 5:30,” said Cindy Mills when I picked up. Cindy was the vice chairperson of Regional Environmental Equality Keepers, REEK, the POWRE affiliate group I was working with in Grainville.
“What?” I felt my blood pressure rise and heard my heartbeat in my ears.
“Yup! Tim Morton, manager of the stink factory.” Cindy’s breathing was audible.
She had to be mistaken. I saw his truck last night. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Well, you know my cousin Sally Kepler’s husband Bill is a deputy sheriff, right?”
“Yeah.” I held my breath waiting to hear the rest.
“Sally called her sister Susan, who works with my husband Mike. Susan told Mike and he called me.”
Typical small-town phone tree. “Go on.” Wish it worked this well for me.
“Mike said Bill got called out about 5:45 this morning when somebody saw a body in the lagoon. The smell was so awful they had to wear gas masks. Search and Rescue used a rubber raft to go out and get him.”
The conversation paused as I visualized the hog cesspool with bits of pig feces suspended in oily, brackish, brown liquid and the body face down in the middle. What an awful way to die.
“What happened? Did he slip and fall in?”
“Actually, Sally told Susan he was murdered.”
“Murdered? How?”
“Bill wasn’t supposed to say anything, so don’t spread it around.”
This too is typical of the phone tree, nobody could keep a secret and I wouldn’t be the one spreading it around because everyone already knew. But murdered?
“He was literally hog-tied; his hands and feet were bound together behind his back. Anyway, word is he drowned in the shit. Oops, I mean effluent.”
“Tim isn’t a big man but he’s not weak either, how did someone do that to him? I’d think he’d fight like hell. I know I would.”
“I don’t know, but that’s the word.” Cindy paused. “Rhonda, you remember that remark at the meeting, the one about someone dunking Morton in the lagoon.” All the excitement of sharing information was gone from her voice. Now it was lower, strained. More contemplative. “Do you suppose the murderer was there last night?”
My mind drifted back to the disruptive meeting of the night before. “Cindy, let’s not jump to conclusions.”
Changing the subject Cindy asked, “Did you ever get a hold of Joyce? It’s just not like her to not show up or call. I’m worried.”
Joyce was the chairwoman of REEK and one person I could always count on to follow through.
“No, have you talked to her today?” I realized it was a dumb question even as I asked it. Of course Cindy hadn’t talked to her. That’s why she asked me.
“I tried earlier but just got the machine.”
“I’ll try her later. And Cindy, please keep me up to date.”
I hung up the phone and sat there looking at it.
Tim.
Murdered.
Despite what I had said to Cindy it occurred to me that the manner of his death might well point suspicion at someone in REEK. The group had adamantly opposed the hog operation for two years. Members were currently doing a lot of ‘I told you so’ stuff with the odor problem.
Murder in Wyoming wasn’t an everyday occurrence. Disposal of bodies might be a bit more creative than other places. Bodies had been found in old trunks, cut up and put in closets, and wrapped in garbage bags in the basement. A body dropped out on the prairie would be torn apart by animals, the remains spread over a mile or two. A year, five years, or ten years later, when the bones were discovered, time had to be spent just identifying the person before law enforcement could even begin to try and figure out what happened to them. Dumping a person in a hog lagoon and leaving them to drown was a new one. But then, hog lagoons were a new feature on the Wyoming landscape.