Buch lesen: «The Man From Oklahoma»

CHAPTER ONE

Oh, most beautiful of women,

You will wear the white of happiness.

My soul will slide into your soul.

I could never be lonely when I am with you.

—from an ancient Native American song to attract affection

Three years later

“IN THE VALLEY behind me, you can see the Hart Ranch, home of Tulsa philanthropist, Nathan Biddle. Biddle, known for his many efforts on behalf of disadvantaged children, has been living as a recluse in his childhood home here in these Osage Hills for three years, ever since his wife, oil heiress Susan Claremont Biddle, disappeared. But early this morning, authorities—Dammit!” Jamie Evans lowered her hand mike and tossed a hank of honey-blond hair out of her eyes. “The wind up here is absolutely ridiculous! Sorry, Dave. We’ll have to reshoot.”

Jamie sighed as she tottered across the gravel road on high heels toward the Channel Six van, wondering why she’d spent so much energy convincing her news director they needed this footage. All this work, all this setup, for ten seconds of film that would be obsolete by eleven o’clock tonight. But her instincts told her that this time she was on to something big. There was more to this story than a missing oil heiress whose remains had finally been found. As if that wasn’t enough. But the strange way Nathan Biddle had kept himself hidden in these hills, completely cut off from his former life only an hour away in Tulsa…

“You know, maybe we should forget about shooting from this plateau.” The lanky young cameraman tugged at his earring and made a disgruntled face at the forbidding isolated terrain below. “Aren’t we trespassing?”

Jamie glanced over her shoulder. Why was Dave so edgy? The ink was barely dry on his degree, but Dave Reardon was normally as aggressive as the most seasoned photojournalist. “Trespassing? On a ranch this big? Come on,” she chided, “look at that view—the meanders of the river and everything. You can see the entire ranching complex.” She fanned an arm toward the buildings below: a two-story native-sandstone house with a plantation-style porch stretching across its front; two long modern steel horse barns; and an old-fashioned gambrel-roofed barn, complete with a charming hay door tucked under the peak. Hart Ranch was a venerable old establishment, dating back to territorial days.

“That’s one fantastic visual.” She turned and made a face at her reflection in the side mirror of the Channel Six van. “Everybody wants to know what Biddle’s ranch looks like—especially now. I’m telling you, this’ll make a terrific teaser.” She yanked the door open, grabbing a brush and a can of hairspray off the front seat.

“None of the other stations have time to get out here and back to Tulsa before the newscast. They’ll all run the same old head shot of our ugly DA, preening and posturing about solving this heinous crime.”

She made a couple of determined chops at her thick hair, then stopped. “Wonder if I can show a close-up of the mysterious Mr. Biddle’s face at ten o’clock? By then they might have the dental records matched, maybe even know the cause of death, and I’ll have my second source confirmed, et cetera, et cetera.”

Dave was studying the landscape through the camera lens. “Dream on,” he muttered. “Nobody’s caught him on film for at least two years.” He lowered the camera. “Unless you’re gonna pull a Jamie and go banging on his front door or something.”

“I might.” Banging on the door was exactly what she would do in most cases. But this wasn’t like most cases. She knew the Biddles’ story too well. This man would undoubtedly be in shock, in pain.

“I’ve got to think that one through.” She gave her hair one last swipe and started spraying. “Man! How on earth can a place be this windy and still be so warm in the middle of October?”

Her panty hose were sticking to her legs like plastic wrap, and her cream-colored linen suit couldn’t be more wrinkled if she’d slept in it. She’d probably look like holy hell on camera. But, hey, that’s life. Jamie had been working on this story ever since she transferred to Tulsa from Kansas City, and she wasn’t about to blow an opportunity like this—a one-of-a-kind six-o’clock teaser about the biggest breaking story in ages.

Her only regret was that she hadn’t come out to the ranch to sneak this footage before now. But who would have imagined the body would be found way out here in Osage County? It sure paid to have sources in the DA’s office. Still not satisfied with her hair repairs, she gave up and glanced back at Dave.

“Who would actually choose to live out in the middle of this godforsaken prairie?” She tossed the hairspray back onto the front seat.

Dave shrugged. “A guy whose family has owned the place since before the Land Run, I guess.” He went back to studying the view through the lens.

Dave had done his homework, too. They were a great team, charging around the state scooping the competition on stories that were visually startling and chock-full of eyewitness accounts and pithy little sound bites. They were so good that Dave’s footage and Jamie’s voice-over had once been picked up by the network news.

Only four years out of journalism school, pretty as a peach and smart as a whip, Jamie Evans was the undisputed princess of Channel Six, the one who garnered all the awards. The one the viewer focus groups liked most. The one people phoned the station to gush about.

And call it luck or call it instinct, but Jamie Evans was also the reporter who managed to be in the right place at the right time.

“Hey!” Dave cried. “I think I spotted our man!”

“Get a shot! Get a close-up!” Jamie ran across the road as fast as she dared in the heels.

Dave was already filming.

“Zoom in on his face,” Jamie urged. She tiptoed at Dave’s side but couldn’t see much without the magnification of the camera lens. “It’s got to be Biddle. He lives out here all alone.” She peered down at the ranch house, the outbuildings and the corrals below as the thrill of the chase coursed through her. “Try to get a good clean close-up.” Her heart pounded when she spotted a big man in a cowboy hat emerging from the barn with a horse on a lead.

“Uh-oh.” The skinny photographer jerked back from the lens. “He spotted us, too.” He frowned as he refocused. “Man! That dude looks mean.”

“Lemme look.”

Dave held the camera steady while Jamie scanned the scene below.

“Where the hell is he?”

Dave adjusted the camera upward and the man came into focus. Jamie almost stumbled off her high heels at the sight of him.

He was mounting a big muscular paint, and as Jamie watched his movements, her throat went dry. He was long-legged, broad-shouldered, wearing tight jeans, a faded chambray shirt and a beatup black cowboy hat.

He pulled the horse’s head around and took off at a hard gallop toward a dirt road that disappeared into a stand of blackjacks. Jamie figured—feared—that the road led to this plateau.

And when he got here, he would run them off. Great.

“Dave, he’s coming. You have the red light disabled?”

“Always,” Dave said. He was already taking the camera off the tripod.

“Okay. Whatever he says, whatever he does, keep that camera rolling. Aimed at him.”

Dave made a face that said duh. “You really think I should film this guy?” he said, “I was thinking it’d be better to get a good clean close-up of these rocks.”

Jamie ignored him and chewed a nail, thinking. “And don’t be obvious about it.”

“Huh?” Dave’s sarcasm was replaced by genuine confusion. Normally the photographer rolled the camera openly while Jamie let fly a barrage of questions.

“We’re out here all alone,” Jamie explained.

Dave winced and tugged on his earring. “So I noticed.”

Shoving her misbehaving hair firmly behind one ear, Jamie took a deep breath and walked with Dave to the edge of the plateau where they stood in plain sight, looking like a couple of stranded motorists. Jamie checked behind her, down the sloping gravel road. “You’re sure he saw us?” she asked after a few uncomfortable minutes had passed with no sign of the rider.

“Yeah. Look, the wind’s picking up and the sun’s getting low. Wanna try to finish shooting the teaser?”

Jamie sighed. “Why not? At least we’ll look like we know what we’re doing.” She stood in her former spot, faced the camera and started to talk. “This is Jamie Evans, and behind me you see the Hart Ranch complex, home of Tulsa oil tycoon Nathan Hart Biddle—”

“Get off my land.” The voice—deep, powerful and sure—had come from above them. Jamie squinted up the wall of a rocky cliff on the other side of the road. With the sun behind him he stood out clearly, a striking silhouette among the black shapes of low cedars. The curves of his hat, the ragged tail of his hair blowing in the wind, the profile of the paint, all blended into a haunting image that made Jamie shudder.

The steely-eyed raven-haired man looking down at her seemed eerily familiar. Jamie chalked up the sensation to the fact that she had been studying archival news photos of the Biddles for the past couple of years. His face had surely been burned into her subconscious by now. But the Nathan Biddle staring down at her didn’t look anything like the sleek power-suited young oil-and-gas executive in those old news photos. The man up on that cliff looked…rough…wild, more like the aged sepia photographs she’d found of his Osage great-grandfather, Chief Black Wing.

She shaded her eyes with a shaky hand. “Hello. I’m Jamie Ev—”

“I know who you are. Isn’t this story getting a bit shopworn for your kind?”

Her kind? Well, she’d resent reporters, too, if she’d gone through what this man had. The media had insisted on going for the dramatic tear-jerker angle, focusing on the Biddles’ high-profile marriage—God, that must have been awful for him. Jamie began to feel sorry for the man.

“Could we talk to you, Mr. Biddle?”

“No. You are trespassing. Now leave.”

Jamie’s uneasiness intensified. He wasn’t acting like a man in shock, a man who’d just been given terrible news. But surely the authorities had already contacted him.

“Mr. Biddle, you really don’t know why we’re out here this afternoon?” She shot Dave a look and saw that the tape was rolling, though he had the camera braced casually under one arm.

The horse nickered in the answering silence. Then Biddle turned the animal and disappeared into the sun’s rays.

“What now?” Dave whispered.

“Just keep rolling.”

In no time horse and rider appeared around the base of the cliff. Man and animal seemed to move as one unit as they maneuvered expertly around leafless saplings and belly-high bluestem grass. In the saddle, Nathan Biddle looked relaxed, but his intense dark eyes remained fixed warily on Jamie as he rode toward her. Nobody said a word, so that as he reined the horse in, the squeak of leather and the crunch of gravel seemed magnified.

He stayed in the saddle, high above them. “Turn it off,” he said to Dave without looking at him. Dave made elaborate motions as if doing so.

“Talk,” Biddle said to Jamie while he gave her a once-over that made her want to run and crouch behind a limestone boulder. The close proximity of the massive horse didn’t help. Jamie had always been scared of horses.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Biddle,” she started, “we didn’t mean to disturb you. I work for Channel Six, as you know, and we’ve been following your story for some time—”

“I have my detectives, Ms. Evans. I know all about you.”

“Of course you do.” So how much do you know?

“Get to the point.”

Jamie swallowed and started again. “We’re shooting a teaser—I’m planning to do a package on the ten-o’clock news and—”

“A package? Why?”

It didn’t surprise her that he knew the terminology for a feature-length TV news story. “Why?” Jamie’s throat went dry.

His dark eyes narrowed at her hesitation. “The story of my wife’s disappearance is old, Ms. Evans. It’s…dead.”

“Well, uh, that’s just it. Something’s happened, I’m afraid. The authorities haven’t contacted you?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Biddle didn’t move.

“I don’t have any details, but…” Jamie, who could spew out lines for a snappy stand-up shot with no preparation, was having trouble finding words.

“What is this about?” Biddle demanded.

“Mr. Biddle, a source informed me about an hour ago that…that your wife’s…her remains were found this morning. By hunters. I’m…I’m sorry.” Jamie’s voice grew weak and the last word had come out almost soundless.

For one moment Nathan Biddle sat so still atop the paint that he looked like a statue. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Then he closed his eyes, swallowed and drew in a tortured breath. “Where?” he said through tightened lips.

“On a sandbar, a small island, out in the Arkansas River,” Jamie answered softly.

Biddle did not turn his head, but his eyes moved to the camera. “Use any of that—” he angled the hat subtly toward Dave “—and I will sue your asses off.”

Dave slid his fingers around and pressed the off button on the camera, this time for real.

Biddle turned the paint, heading back the way he had come. This time the squeak of leather and the crunch of gravel made an eerie counterpoint to the fading light and gusting evening air. He didn’t look back as he galloped across the road, up the embankment and around the rocky base of the cliff.

Jamie, with her gift for glibness, could only stare at his back as he rode away, unable to think of a thing to say. But what could one possibly say to a man who had just been told that after three long years, his wife’s remains had been found in this wild lonely country?

“I promise,” she finally murmured, “I won’t use the footage.” But Dave was the only one who heard her.