Astride a Pink Horse Read Online Free Page B

sport coat. “We’ve got the story of the decade staring us in the face, man. Might as well take a shot at priming the pump. Let’s get inside.”
    Freddy pushed his way through a set of double doors and headed down a hallway toward the courtroom with Cozy at his heels, to find standing room only in the courtroom. They carved out a space for themselves between a Denver-based freelance news photographer whom Freddy knew and a group of four ponytailed spectators. The ponytails, two men and two women, appeared to Cozy to be in their early fifties and looked as if they’d been shot from some 1970s antinuclear-demonstration cannon. When one ofthe women appeared to wave, Cozy cocked a suspicious eyebrow at Freddy, then scanned the rest of the room. A half-dozen agitated-looking teenagers, all of them black, occupied a front courtroom bench. A balding, overweight man sitting at the end of the bench seemed to be in charge of them.
    Prosecuting and defense attorneys’ tables sat to the right and left of a lectern at the front of the courtroom. As many cameras and lights and microphones as Cozy had ever seen at a news conference streamed or beamed down on the lectern and tables. Behind the tables in a TV-equipment-free buffer zone, the sheriff stood talking to a tall, fit-looking air force officer with shiny silver colonel’s eagles on his shoulder epaulets. The only other person Cozy recognized among four other people standing behind the tables was the air force major he had seen at Tango-11.
    No longer dressed in fatigues, the major now wore air force dress blues. Her skirt was figure-flattering, and she looked provocatively striking in a military-advertising-poster kind of way. As she turned toward him, Cozy noticed pilot wings pinned just above the edge of the welt pocket of her uniform and found himself wondering why on earth a pilot would be assigned to an OSI unit.
    When Bernadette Cameron caught him staring at her, she averted her eyes, took a seat, and began talking to the man seated next to her. Turning to Freddy, Cozy was about to point her out, but for some reason he decided, momentarily at least, to keep the major to himself.
    Watching Freddy nod, then smile at the four ponytails surrounding them, Cozy had the sense that Freddy was doing everything he could to communicate silently with them. He was aboutto ask Freddy if he knew them when Sheriff Bosack stepped up to the battery of microphones, thumped the center mike, and said, “Glad to see everyone here tonight.”
    As Freddy mouthed,
Sure
, the sheriff was off and running. Indicating to the assemblage that after his remarks and those of Colonel Joel DeWitt from Warren Air Force Base there would be a short Q and A, the sheriff detailed the day’s events. For most of the people in the room, his dry summation was no more than a rehash of what they already knew. Confirming that the murdered man found at Tango-11 was retired Master Sergeant Thurmond Giles, whose identity had been conclusively proven via a dental records review, and that a joint Platte County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations inquiry was under way, Bosack ended his surprisingly brief remarks by thanking the air force, Colonel DeWitt, and the people of Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, home of the 90th Missile Wing, for their assistance. Then he sat down.
    The word
blowhard
coursed through Cozy’s mind within seconds of Colonel Joel DeWitt stepping up to the microphone to paternalistically announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you first and foremost that today’s break in and breach of security at the decommissioned Tango-11 site in no way represents a risk to our nation’s security.”
    With an
I’m in charge
look plastered on his face, DeWitt then delivered several minutes of uninformative platitudes, thanking seemingly every elected and law enforcement official in the state of Wyoming, from the beaming Deputy Sykes, who stood just a few feet from