for their land. Morton’s brain was tied into knots by his father’s suicide and what he saw as his failure to get revenge on the people who’d caused them to lose their farm.”
I digested that. “But the method—that’s a horrific method, eight prescription-strength patches.”
“Jail should have had a suicide watch, no doubt about it.”
“His mother says the patches were on his back.”
“He could have persuaded a guard to put them on.” Ramirez’s tone was indifferent. “The guards had a lot of sympathy for him, believe it or not.”
“What, was he some kind of local hero?” I couldn’t keep the outrage out of my voice.
“No-o, but—hard to explain. They knew he’d done the murders, but they thought he was a victim, too. In the end, I think the mother made a mistake, letting the Chicago lawyers take over—the jury were local people who reacted badly to a big-city firm. Even I, Mexican-American that I am, was preferable because I grew up around there. If that’s it—?”
I was thanking him for his time, when he said, “I just remembered one other thing. Morton said he thought someone was lurking nearby when he was in the cave. He told me he kept thinking he was hearing footsteps overhead. If he was, probably a coyote or a bobcat. There are a lot of wild animals in the canyon. Thing is, he claimed there was another shot when he stopped firing. But those AR-15s, they make a hell of a noise. I doubt he was wearing ear protection.
“I told the Chicago team—even though I didn’t believe him, it still was a good distraction. Or I thought. They didn’t agree. Maybe they were right. You can’t ever figure out what a jury will or won’t believe, not a hundred percent.”
“What made Morton stop firing when he did?” I asked.
“Oh, that—he was a sitting duck himself—he could see the security people had pinpointed his location and were heading his way. He had a mountain bike at the ready and took off, leaving most of his weapons behind.”
He hung up. I wiped my fingers on the marsh grasses to get the mud from them, over and over until my fingers were raw from the spiky edges of the plants. All the grasses of Kansas . . .
Bear came to me, muddy himself, but giving me a softer look than I’d seen on him before. It reminded me that I’d forgotten to ask Ramirez whether he knew Coop. I caught him as he was leaving for court—an emergency hearing in the late afternoon. Ramirez didn’t know Coop but he remembered a man outside the courthouse with a big dog, buttonholing people for news of the trial.
I looked Bear square in the face. “Were you up on that hillside overlooking the canyon? Is there any way to find out what Coop knew or did?”
If only someone had been photographing the cave—I stopped midthought. Of course people had been photographing. Crowd sourcing. Facebook, Instagram.
I’d brought my laptop, but it would be easier to search on one of the big monitors at the library. The library was open until nine. I logged on to Facebook, which reminded me that it had been six years and forty-three days since I’d last posted anything. I joined the Tallgrass Meet-Up group as well as Friends of Kanopolis State Park, the park where Horsethief Canyon was located. I began combing through their back posts until I got to the festival.
There were hundreds of pictures, mostly of the crowd, and of the performers onstage. There was a seemingly endless number of Lydia Zamir in a flowing green dress, some of her with Hector Palurdo, some by herself. She shook hands with fans, posed for selfies, posed with her guitar. Her smile was genuine and warm and made my gut twist when I compared her face from four years back with what she looked like today.
There were pictures taken from hills and ridges above the concert venue, showing me what it had looked like as the crowd gathered. It wasn’t a formal outdoor theater as I had imagined, but a portable stage placed on a largish flat space in the middle of the canyon. One post included a report that the park service estimated the crowd at fifty-five hundred—a big gathering for a venue that was a half-day’s drive from the nearest airport.
People had taken shots of the roadies setting up the stage and sound system, they’d photographed the organizers, the crowd, the banners advertising the sponsors, and,