Page 31 of Rope Burn

Note: Wilson is the last individual photographed with CANUTSON, SANDY prior to her disappearance. The behavioral pattern Carrick describes is consistent with the Canutson contact circumstances at Lubbock.

Nothing personal belongs in this field report. That is technically true and operationally dishonest, and I type around the distinction.

What happened in this bed has no line item. A field template can't capture a man's thumb brushing moisture from the corner of your eye, and a report form doesn't account for a convicted felon falling asleep beside the woman who carries his federal file in a locked bag at the foot of the bed.

The report header stares back at me from the screen: PERSON OF INTEREST: CARRICK, SLADE.

The designation sits on the screen in the blue light. I look over my shoulder at the bed. The man it describes is breathing on the pillow with his open hand resting on the sheet where my body was.

I close the laptop and pull Clint Wilson's competition schedule from my case materials. I cross-reference every event on the Southwest Circuit where Wilson registered for team roping against the circuit calendar and the transport manifests I've been pulling since my first week on the grounds.

Clint registers across the full season, giving him routine access to nearly every venue and back lot and loading area on the circuit. That access is ordinary for a ranked team roper.

What's less ordinary is the pattern that emerges when I lay his roping registrations beside the Thornton transport logs.

At several events over the past three seasons, Clint registered for team roping and then scratched before competition. Late scratches happen. Horses go lame, partners get injured, scheduling conflicts arise. But Clint scratched at events where Thornton trailers were logged as arriving off-schedule, and he remained on the grounds after withdrawing from the only discipline he competes in.

At each scratched event, timestamped circuit photographs still place him on the grounds after his withdrawal. Behind the chutes in Tucson. Beside a Thornton trailer in Roswell. In the competitor lot at the Las Cruces event where Grant Corbin died in the arena.

The first hints of gray push through the curtain. The highway noise thickens toward the morning commute.

I look at the schedule, the manifests, the circled dates. A cowboy with an easy grin withdrew from competition at each one and stayed within walking distance of transport rigs that arrived outside their documented windows.

A team roper who scratches and stays isn't roping. He's working.

Behind me, Slade reaches across the empty sheet and finds nothing.

The circuit moves today, and Clint Wilson will be on it.

9

SLADE

The circuit is getting smaller. Not the venues or the distances between them, but the spaces where a man can stand without running into the wrong face at the wrong time.

Clint Wilson is at the team-roping trailer when I pull into the competitor lot. His truck is parked nose-in behind a Thornton rig that doesn't appear on today's load-in schedule.

I know this because I've been pulling the livestock arrival sheet from the posting outside the intake office since I started watching Clint's movements. The active-yard list covers every rig cleared to remain inside the livestock enclosure. The old Thornton rigs are logged under their new carriers for designated windows. The rig next to Clint's truck isn't any of them.

The morning runs through the chutes without event. Barrel racers cycle through the pattern, and stock handlers push cattle toward the holding pens. The announcer works the crowd with the tireless cadence that fills every dead second between performances. I tape my wrists near the contestant parking and watch the lot.

Steve Hendricks crosses the grounds between the intake office and the grandstand with a tablet under his arm. He stops to shake hands with a stock contractor, gestures toward the loading area, and moves on.

The man carries the settled authority of someone whose office signs every document that matters and whose name appears in none of the conversations that should follow.

He passes Clint's truck without glancing at the Thornton trailer behind it. That could be someone who doesn't notice equipment his own office certified. Or someone who doesn't need to check on operations he already approved.

The designation on the sealed packets I used to carry was S.H. The compliance codes on Neil's routing instructions carried the same initials. I saw those letters on every envelope, every delivery receipt, every approval that moved through my hands during the months I spent running errands for Neil Vogt. Administrative shorthand.

I never pinned them to one person because the directory gave me more than one S.H., and I didn't ask questions that would make Neil wonder why I cared.

Hendricks crosses behind the intake building and disappears into the portable compliance office. S.H. Steve Hendricks. The letters fit. The authority fits. Whether the fit is coincidence or confirmation is a question I can't answer standing in a parking lot.

I compete in the afternoon session with Neil somewhere on these grounds and Steve Hendricks's initials fresh in my memory.

The sorrel I've been borrowing takes me out of the box at a full sprint. The steer breaks left, and I leave the saddle with both hands reaching. The catch is clean. The time is my best of the season. I walk back to the chutes knowing that if either man was watching, they saw me compete under my own name without flinching.

Wade finds me behind the chutes after the bulldogging. He leans against a stock panel with his hat pushed back.