Stalking Season

He started to ask her what she meant, but she was already climbing from the car. He opened his door, jumped out and caught up to her when she rounded the front of the vehicle. “I’m sure everything’s going to be okay.”

She looked up at him for a moment and then shook her head. “My parents did, too, and now they’re dead.”

Before he could respond, she walked past him and pulled open the door to the building. He didn’t move for a moment and then strode after her. His mind whirled with all the things she’d said since they’d met. Something told him he was about to hear a story that was different from anything he’d experienced since becoming a deputy in this small mountain community.

TWO (#ub2884f78-94dd-54ee-a807-b767ab5eea13)

Cheyenne stepped inside the building and stopped as Luke walked up beside her. A dispatcher at a desk in the entry looked up from her computer and smiled as they entered. The woman pushed a lock of gray hair out of her eyes as her gaze swept over Cheyenne and came to rest on Luke.

Her face lit up with a friendly smile. “Hi, Luke. You back for shift change?”

Cheyenne looked up at the deputy and frowned. “You didn’t tell me you were about to go off duty. I don’t want to delay you. I can give my statement to another officer, and you can go on home.

He shook his head. “It’s no big deal. We stay past our shift all the time if we’re trying to help someone in trouble.” He looked back at the woman behind the desk. “If Sheriff Whitman comes in, tell him I’m in the interrogation room taking a statement from Miss Cassidy. If he wants to join us, he can.”

The woman leaned forward with her arms folded on her desk as she smiled at Cheyenne. “Cassidy? Are you the trick rider who’s staying with Dean and Gwen Harwell out at the Little Pigeon Ranch?”

The question stunned Cheyenne, and her eyes widened. She’d been in town less than a week, and this woman already knew about her. Coming to the small resort town of Pigeon Forge had seemed like a good way to lose herself in all the tourists who poured through here each year, but perhaps she’d been wrong.

Cheyenne swallowed before she spoke. “Yes. How did you know?”

The woman waved her hand in dismissal. “This is really a small town, and all the locals know each other.”

Luke frowned and placed his hand on Cheyenne’s elbow. “And Clara knows everybody’s business.” He pointed down the hall. “Our interrogation room is down here. Let’s go in there so we can talk.”

Cheyenne looked over her shoulder as Luke guided her away from the desk. Clara had stood up and was watching them walk away. Her arms were crossed, and a smug smile pulled at her mouth. Cheyenne turned her attention back to Luke as he stopped and opened the door. “Here we are. Would you like something to drink before we begin? I can get you a soda from the vending machine or a cup of coffee, but I have to warn you that by this time of afternoon the coffee is strong enough to make a spoon stand up in it.”

Cheyenne smiled and shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Then go in and have a seat.”

She stepped into the small room and surveyed the space. It looked very much like the interrogation rooms she saw on the TV detective show she watched. A table with four chairs sat near one corner of the room and a mirror that appeared to be built into the Sheetrock covered most of the wall opposite.

Luke nudged her to the table and pulled out her chair, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the mirror. “I suppose that’s a two-way mirror. Is there someone on the other side watching us?”

He shook his head. “No, but I can’t promise you there won’t be by the time we get through. If Sheriff Whitman comes in, he may go in there instead of disturbing us. I will tell you, however, that there is a camera in the corner, and it will be recording our conversation. Is that all right with you?”

She shrugged. “I suppose so. Once I make a statement, it will on record anyway. This isn’t my first time to talk to a police officer.”

Luke’s eyebrows arched. “Really? And when was the first time?”

She sighed, closed her eyes and rubbed her hand across her forehead. “I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning—two years ago.”

Luke opened a notepad and wrote something before he glanced back up at her. “Go on.”

Cheyenne took a deep breath. “Well, we’ve already established the facts that I am Cheyenne Cassidy, I moved here a few weeks ago to become a trick rider with the Wild West show and, as Clara has let you know, I’m living at Little Pigeon Ranch.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “Clara is very good at her job, but she has a nose for news. She keeps up with everyone in town. Don’t take offense.”

“I won’t. It just surprised me that she knew.” She settled back in her chair. “I moved to Pigeon Forge from Wyoming. My family raised horses on a ranch there, and my father coached the rodeo team at a college nearby. Ever since I can remember, my parents competed in rodeos. My mother did barrel racing and my father was a bronc rider. I started doing trick riding when I was young and began performing on the circuit with them when I was still in elementary school. I’ve been doing it ever since, until recently, when I decided to give it up.”

“Why did you quit?”

Cheyenne closed her eyes and let the memories she tried to keep at bay enter her mind. “About two years ago I started getting anonymous messages and flowers, always white roses, from a secret admirer. Everywhere I went I felt like I was being followed. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of a man in the shadows, but he was smart enough not to let me ever see his face. At first his messages were filled with words of how much he loved me, but that all changed when I starting dating a cowboy on the rodeo circuit. Then they became threatening and filled with ultimatums.”

“What kind of ultimatums?”

“He’d write things telling me I was his and if I didn’t want something to happen to my boyfriend, I’d better break up with him.”

Luke quit writing and looked up at her. “So what did you do?”

Cheyenne’s shoulders sagged. “I broke up with him. I was about to have a nervous breakdown, but that didn’t stop him. He broke into our house several times when we were away. The last time he did, he completely destroyed my room. The only thing missing, however, was a music box my father had given me years before.”

Luke glanced up at her and pursed his lips. “It sounds like he was following a pattern.”

“What do you mean?” Cheyenne asked.

“There are stages that stalkers progress through when they become obsessed with someone. The early stages include things like uncomfortable contact, intimidation and then threatening messages. Things begin to get out of hand when the stalker starts to destroy personal property.”

Cheyenne’s eyes narrowed, and she nodded. “That’s exactly how it progressed over a period of two years, but the police could never catch him. Then six months ago my mother and father left for a rodeo, but I didn’t go. He’d sent me a note telling me that we were finally going to meet, and I was scared. I stayed with some friends. While my folks were at the rodeo, somebody broke into the trailer where they were sleeping and murdered both of them.”

Luke’s lips clamped together and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “They were murdered?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe what she’d just said.

“Yes.”

“Did they find out who did it?”

Cheyenne shook her head. “That’s still a subject for debate. The police suspected it was the man who’d been stalking me because the killer left a note saying that their deaths were my punishment because I’d been unfaithful to him and hadn’t come to meet him. There were white roses scattered over my parents’ bodies.”

“So your stalker killed your parents.”

“That’s what the police thought. A few days after the murder, they found the body of Clint Shelton, a rodeo worker, in his truck. He’d left a note saying he couldn’t live with himself any longer, that he’d killed my parents because I had rejected him.”

“You don’t sound like you’re convinced this Shelton guy did it.”

She shook her head. “It just never made sense to me. I barely knew Clint. He was one of the best hazers in the business, but we weren’t friends. He was engaged to be married, so I couldn’t understand why he would become fixated on me.”

“But the police disagreed?”

“Yes. The detective who was in charge of the case was eager to close it, and he took the suicide note as proof that Clint was the killer. There was no DNA or any physical evidence that put him at the scene, though.”

Luke sat back in his chair a moment and stared at her as he tapped the pen he held on the desk. “Wow, I can’t believe all this. You’ve been through a terrible time.”

Cheyenne nodded. “Yes, I have. I tried to stay on the rodeo circuit, but after a few months I knew it would never be the same without my parents. That’s when Bill Johnson, who owns the Wild West show, contacted me. He was a friend of my father’s. In fact, his son Trace was on the rodeo team my father coached, and he has always been a close friend of mine. They wanted to help me put all my bad memories behind, so they offered me a job. Trace got it arranged for me to live out at Dean and Gwen’s ranch.”

After a moment Luke leaned forward and tilted his head to one side. “So I suppose that brings us to today. What happened that made you run into traffic without looking at where you were going?”

A chill ran up Cheyenne’s back as she recalled the incident inside the store. Then she began to speak, and the words poured out of her. She told him of the video of the stolen music box, and the cryptic text messages and phone call that told her he was going to give her one more chance to be with him.