Vic used to work these pens.
Grant told me about Vic in that last phone call, the night before Las Cruces. Vic was the handler Grant turned into an informant, the one who recorded a confession on Grant's phone. After Grant died, Vic vanished. I tracked down his apartment a few weeks ago. The place was cleared out. The landlord said he left in the middle of the night with one bag and didn't leave a forwarding address.
People don't vanish, the journalist said last night.
On this circuit, they do.
I pull out my phone and call Flint. I've known the old man for years, long before any of this started. Retired stock contractor, been around the circuit since before I was born. If Grant was going to trust anyone with what he'd found, it would have been Flint, and the dying words confirmed it:'Flint has copies.'His number rings and goes to voicemail. I've left message after message over the past two months, and he's answered twice.
I’ve been out to his place. The first time, he didn't open the door.
I stood on his porch knocking, calling his name, and the house stayed dark and silent. I could see the glow of a television through the back window. He was home. He just wasn't answering.
The second time, about a week later, I drove back to his ranch outside Ruidoso and sat in his driveway until he came to the screen door.
He didn't open it.
He just stood on the other side with the mesh between us and the look of a man who's too tired to be afraid and too afraid to be brave.
"I can't help you, son," he said. "I'm sorry. Poking around in this thing already got too many people killed. The smartest thing you can do is walk away before you end up like Grant and Tyler."
"Flint, if you have copies of what Grant collected, I need them."
"I can't."
The screen door stayed shut. The deadbolt turned behind it.
I haven't tried the drive again. There's a line between persistence and cruelty, and an old man sitting alone on a ranch with a dead man's secrets locked in his closet is standing right on top of it.
My phone buzzes. It's not Flint, and it's not Torres. It's a text from the circuit's media coordinator, reminding all riders that press availability begins before the afternoon event.
I shove the phone in my pocket and walk back to my truck.
The Saturday event goes the way Saturday events always go. Barrel racing, team roping, the bronc riders doing their thing while the crowd works through funnel cakes and overpriced beer.
I draw a bull named Rattlesnake for the evening round. He's a good bull, honest, the kind that bucks straight and hard without the lateral spins that catch you off guard. Whoever's running the stock draws this weekend isn't trying to kill me, which is either comforting or means Merrick doesn't see me as a threat anymore.
That second option is worse. If Merrick thinks I'm harmless, it means the cover-up worked. It means Grant died for nothing.
Wade Ashcroft is listed in the saddle bronc rotation but scratches at the last minute. I find out why when I walk past the competitor trailers and see him sitting on the running board of his truck with his rigging in his lap and his hands shaking too hard to buckle it.
He sees me and his face goes through three expressions in a second — shame, defiance, and the blank mask he pulls over both.
"Don't," he says.
"Didn't say anything."
"You were about to. I can see the speech forming behind your eyes."
"I don't make speeches."
"Good. Because I've got a perfectly good reason for scratching that has nothing to do with the bottle in my center console."
"What's the reason?"
"The bottle in my center console." He drops the rigging between his boots. "See? Honesty. They say it's the first step."
"That's admitting you have a problem."
