The Drowning Man by Margaret Coel

his feet. “I’ll call the retirement home and have them arrange to fly Lloyd to Riverton. If you don’t mind, think I’ll turn in. It’s a long, boring drive up here. Not much to see.”
    â€œYou don’t like driving through the wide-open spaces?”
    Rutherford moved toward the doorway, then turned back. “I’m glad you do,” he said.

8
    STATE OF WYOMING v. Travis Birdsong. Charge: Murder, first degree. The Honorable Mason Harding presiding. Michael Deaver, prosecutor. Harry Gruenwald, defense.
    Vicky flipped through the court transcript, glancing down the pages to get the gist of what had happened. The defense attorney, Harry Gruenwald, had intended to file an appeal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have ordered the copy of the transcript. Yet Amos said that no appeal had been filed.
    It had surprised her how thin the transcript was when Annie dropped it on her desk this morning. Now she saw the brief statements, the few witnesses, and the hurried examinations. Murder trials were usually more complicated—witness after witness, a methodical introduction of evidence. But Travis Birdsong’s trial had lasted only a day and a half. The jury reached the verdict in two hours. The evidence must not have been strong enough for a murder conviction, so Travis was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, a crime of passion. There was a hurried sense, almost like an odor, lifting off the pages, as if Travis had certainly been guilty of something.
    The phone was ringing again in the outer office. It had been ringing all day. Routine matters that probably went to Roger Hurst, the new associate. Important matters, like the proposal for the BLM that would protect Red Cliff Canyon—those were the matters that she and Adam handled. They were building the kind of practice Adam wanted. They both wanted, she reminded herself. She’d finished the proposal a few minutes ago and e-mailed the copy to members of the Joint Council.
    Now she thumbed backward through the transcript of Travis Birdsong’s trial until she came to the prosecutor’s opening statements. Michael Deaver, assistant prosecuting attorney seven years ago, elected county and prosecuting attorney last fall. She’d faced the man in court numerous times. He was tenacious and confident. And he could be brutal, like a predator waiting to tear to pieces the testimony of any witness who gave any hint of stumbling. In the cases she’d defended against Deaver—burglary, assault, fraud—she’d sat on the edge of her chair, ready to jump to her feet and object to his tactics. She’d won a number of cases, and Deaver was not the kind of prosecutor who appreciated losing. She could imagine the way he had commanded the space between the prosecutor’s table and the bench at Travis’s trial, shooting pointed glances at the jury, the spectators, the defendant, everything in his tone and manner affirming that Travis Birdsong was guilty of murder, no question.
    Â 
    Members of the jury, the state will show beyond a reasonable doubt, indeed beyond any doubt whatsoever, that the defendant pointed a shotgun at the victim, Raymond Trublood, a man who had been his friend, a man who had trusted him. The defendant pulled the trigger, firing the shot that ended his friend’s life. We will produce the evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury…
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    Vicky paged through the rest of it. She could almost hear his voice, rising at certain points— beyond any doubt whatsoever —and lowering to a whisper at just the right moment— a man who had trusted him. Oh, he was good, Deaver.
    She read through the testimony of Deaver’s first witness, Mrs. Marjorie Taylor, owner of the Taylor Ranch.
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    Deaver: Mrs. Taylor, please tell the court of your association with Travis Birdsong and the victim.
    Taylor: I hired them. They worked for me, both those Indians. They came around in the fall, said they