I file that away and keep walking.
My target this morning is Quinn Gallagher. A team roper Grant was tight with on the circuit, placed third at last night's event.
I found his entry information in the program and tracked down his rig in the competitor parking area: a blue dually with a stock trailer hooked to the back and a pair of roping horses tied to the side.
He's sitting in a camp chair with a mug of coffee while his horses work through their hay nets. His phone plays country music from a tinny speaker propped against the trailer wheel.
"Quinn Gallagher?" I hold up my badge. "Kenna McEnroe. I'm writing a freelance article for one of the publications that follow rodeo. Mind if I ask you a few questions about the circuit?"
He looks up. Mid-twenties, sandy hair, the kind of open face that belongs on a recruiting poster for 4-H.
The friendliness shuts down the instant he sees my press credentials.
"Not really doing interviews," he says.
"It's not an interview. More of a background conversation." I keep my voice light, approachable, wearing the version of myself I built for this cover: curious, non-threatening, interested in rodeo culture rather than rodeo crime. "I'm writing a feature on the Southwest Circuit lifestyle. Travel, competition, the grind of the road. You knew Grant Corbin, right?"
The name lands on him like a physical weight. He sets his coffee down.
"Yeah," he says. "I did."
"I'm sorry for your loss." I mean it. Grant considered Quinn a friend, and the grief on his face is genuine. "He was a talented rider."
"He was the best." Quinn says it quietly, to his hands. Then he shakes his head, and something like a laugh comes out, short and bitter. "You know what kills me? Last time I saw him, I owed him forty bucks from a roping bet. He kept texting me this picture of a sad empty wallet. Every morning. Same picture. For two weeks straight." Quinn's throat works. "I'd give anything to get one more of those stupid texts."
He picks at the seam of his camp chair.
"Look, I'm not sure what you want me to say. Grant was my buddy. He was a good man and the funniest son of a bitch on the circuit, and what happened to him was—" He stops.
"An accident?" I supply.
His eyes snap to mine. The friendliness is gone. What's left is fear.
"That's what they said."
"Is that what you say?"
Silence. One of the horses noses Quinn's shoulder, looking for attention. He pushes it away gently. Behind us, the arena sound system crackles to life and dies again, someone testing the speakers for the afternoon event. The normalcy of it feels obscene.
"You talked to Holloway," Quinn says. Not a question.
"Last night."
"Then you've already heard more than you should." He stands, and the camp chair scrapes against the gravel. "Look, lady, I don't know who you are or what you're really after, but I'll tell you the same thing I told the last person who came around asking about Grant. Drop it."
"The last person?"
"Some insurance adjuster. Showed up about a month after the funeral, asked some questions, went away." Quinn glances over his shoulder like he's checking for witnesses. "The official line is that Grant drew a tough bull and got unlucky. If you want to keep working this story, that's the line you toe."
"And if I don't?"
He looks at me for a long moment. The fear in his face wars with something else.
Guilt, maybe. The particular kind that comes from knowing the truth and choosing silence.
"Grant was looking into the prize money," Quinn says, low and fast, like the words will burn his mouth if he holds them too long. "He found discrepancies. Payouts that didn't match official purses. Rider registrations that were faked, entry fees going somewhere they shouldn't. He thought the money was being siphoned through a company called?—"
"Thornton Livestock."
