Winterkill Read online

  “Sheriff Barnum?” Reed said into the radio, “How fast can you get over to the Forest Service building? We just got a call about the fact that the door was left open and the lights were on at seven at night, so I checked it out and . . . well, we’ve got a situation.”

  Joe looked quizzically at Reed, and Reed nodded toward the hallway where Melinda Strickland’s office was. Her door, like the front, was ajar.

  He stepped inside and walked across the reception area. The Saddlestring cop was upset. Something he had seen down the hall made him lurch to one side and throw up in a small garbage can. Joe was grateful that both Reed and the cop were too preoccupied to ask him why he was there.

  Joe rounded the reception desk and looked into Melinda Strickland’s office. What he saw seared the alcohol out of his system.

  Strickland was still in her chair, but was slumped facedown over her desk in a dark red pool of blood. The wall with the framed cover of Rumour and photo of Bette was spattered with blood, brains, and stringy swatches of copper-colored hair. Strickland’s stainless-steel nine-millimeter Ruger semiautomatic pistol was clutched in her hand on top of the desk. A single shell casing on the carpet reflected the overhead light. The room smelled of hot blood.

  Joe gagged, then swallowed. The bourbon tasted so bitter this time that he nearly choked on it.

  He knew it wasn’t suicide. Just a couple of hours before, he had stared into that woman’s soul and there was nothing there to see. Strickland had not succumbed to some sudden pang of guilt. No, Joe thought, someone had made it look like a suicide.

  He started to push the door open farther but it stiffened. It wouldn’t open enough for him to get through. He looked down and saw that he had shoved the bottom of the door over something that had jammed it.

  In a fog, he bent down to clear the door. He pulled the obstruction free, and looked at it.

  It seemed as if something had sucked all the air out of his lungs and out of the room itself. He wasn’t entirely sure the groan he heard was his own.

  The item jamming the door was a single Canadian-made Watson riding glove. It was one-half of Joe’s Christmas present to Marybeth.

  Thirty-seven

  Joe checked both ways as he left the Forest Service office in the heavy snowfall. There was no traffic on the street. He heard a siren fire up several blocks away. That would be either Barnum or the police chief. The glove was jammed in Joe’s pocket.

  He was soon out of town and rolling on Bighorn Road toward his home before he allowed himself to think. He was ashamed of what he was thinking. It was unfathomable.

  Marybeth’s van was parked in front of the garage and the porch light was on, but the windows were dark. When he entered, he noticed immediately that the house was cool and that the thermostat had not been turned up since they had left in the morning.

  Sheridan and Lucy, who should have been watching television or doing homework, were nowhere to be seen.

  “Marybeth?”

  “Up here.” Her voice was faint. She was upstairs.

  He bounded up the stairs and found his family in the bedroom. Lucy was sleeping on the top of the covers at the foot of the bed, and Sheridan and Marybeth were sitting on the side of the bed cuddling.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “We were just talking about April,” Sheridan said, her voice solemn. “We were feeling kind of sad tonight.”

  Joe looked at Marybeth, trying to read her. She looked drained and wan. She did not look up at him.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  Sheridan shook her head.

  “Please take Lucy downstairs and get yourselves something,” Joe said. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

  Marybeth untangled herself from Sheridan, but she wouldn’t look at Joe.

  When the girls were gone, Joe eased the door shut and sat next to Marybeth on the bed.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she said. “I can smell it.”

  Joe grunted.

  “Marybeth, we have to talk about this,” he said, pulling her glove from his coat pocket.

  He watched her carefully when she looked at it.

  “I didn’t realize I lost it,” she said, turning it over in her hand and squeezing it into a ball.

  Joe felt something hot rising inside of him.

  “You know where I found it, don’t you?”

  She nodded. Finally, she raised her eyes to his.

  “I saw your truck,” she said, her voice flat. “So I went inside the building. Melinda Strickland was sitting at her desk, and her blood was on the wall . . .”

  The relief Joe felt was better than the bourbon ever was. Then he realized something that jarred him.

  “You think I did it,” Joe said.

  The same emotion Joe had felt a moment before was mirrored in Marybeth’s face.

  “Joe, you didn’t do it?”

  He shook his head. “I found her like that after you did. And I saw this glove . . .”

  “Oh,” she cried, instantly aware of what he must have thought. “Oh, Joe, I knew you went there and I thought . . .”

  They embraced in a furious swirl of redemption. Marybeth cried, and laughed, and cried again. After a few minutes, she pulled away.

  “So did she kill herself?” she asked.

  Joe shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “Then who?”

  He paused a beat.

  “Nate.”

  She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the snow.

  “He went back after we left, while I was in the bar. He must have watched me go into the Stockman’s to make sure I’d have a good alibi before he went back to her office. I thought I had just lost him. I wasn’t thinking very clearly at that point. Somehow, he got Melinda Strickland’s gun away from her and shot her point-blank in the head.”

  “My God,” Marybeth said, turning it over in her mind.

  “He told me once that he didn’t believe in the legal system, but he believed in justice,” Joe said. “We tried it my way and it didn’t work. His way worked.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Joe sighed, and rubbed his face. He felt Marybeth watching him anxiously, felt her searching his face for an indication of what he was thinking.

  He looked up at her and spoke softly.

  “I’m going to make Melinda Strickland a hero,” he said.

  She was clearly puzzled.

  “There are some papers on her desk we left there. They’ll find them when they investigate the crime scene. But it will take a few days to analyze everything. Tomorrow, I’ll call Elle Broxton-Howard and give her that interview she wants. In fact, I’ll give her the mother of all interviews—the exclusive inside story of Melinda Strickland’s last day on earth. I’ll tell her that ever since the shoot-out at Battle Mountain, Melinda Strickland has been tortured by the death of April Keeley, that it was eating away at her. Strickland told me all about it in the meeting we had in her office, when she described the foundation she was creating. Her secretary will corroborate the meeting.

  “She just couldn’t overcome the guilt,” Joe said. “So she took her own life. Before she did, though, she wrote out her resignation and established the April Keeley Foundation as her legacy.”

  The story was taking shape as he spun it out, and he was becoming convinced it would work. He stopped for breath, and looked to Marybeth for confirmation.

  Marybeth looked at him with eyes that shined. “Sometimes you amaze me,” she said.

  “It’ll be a hell of a story,” he said, shaking his head.

  There was a long pause.

  “What are you going to do about Nate?”

  Joe thought, and hesitated for a moment. He had crossed a line. He couldn’t go back and pretend he hadn’t crossed it. He would have to ride it out.

  “I’m going to ask him to teach Sheridan about falconry.”

  He rose and joined her at the window and they looked out at the storm. A burst of wind sent
snow tumbling toward them, and Joe felt the lick of icy wind on his hand near the window frame. He would need to put some insulation in the crack later. He had forgotten about it.

  He leaned forward and looked down into the front yard. The heavy, wet spring snow was being carried by the wind and was sticking to the sides of the fence and the power poles. There were three small Austrian pine trees in the front yard that Joe had put in the previous spring. The girls had helped him plant them and, at the time, each had claimed a tree. The tallest was Sheridan’s, the next was April’s, the smallest belonged to Lucy. Joe found himself staring at April’s tree, watching the blowing snow pack hard into the branches, changing it into a snow ghost, and felt oddly comforted.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m deeply indebted to those who gave their time and expertise to make this novel as accurate as possible. It should be noted, however, that any mistakes are mine alone.

  Bob Baker of Freedom Arms in Freedom, Wyoming, demonstrated the quality workmanship and tremendous firepower of his fine revolvers. My ears are still ringing.

  Gordon Crawford, one of my oldest friends, was the first to introduce me to the art of falconry. Gordon corrected my first-draft errors about falconry, and offered other valuable suggestions.

  Mark and Mari Nelson once again assisted with details and procedures in regard to a real-life Wyoming game warden (and family), and provided me with professional guidance and encouragement.

  Andy Whelchel, my agent, is always there behind the scenes, making things work.

  Don Hajicek is the resident genius behind www.cjbox.net.

  Attorney Thomas Lubnau, of Gillette, Wyoming, provided invaluable assistance in the legal issues involved with foster care and parental custody.

  Ken Siman, my hardworking publicist, does an unbelievable job, and does not own a funeral home—at least not that I know of.

  My deep appreciation, once again, goes to Martha Bushko, my brilliant editor. The professionals at G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Berkley are the best of the best—Carole Baron, Dan Harvey, Leslie Gelbman, the entire team—and I am honored to have the privilege of working with them.

  C. J. Box

  Cheyenne, Wyoming

  Contents

  PART ONE Severe Winter Storm Warning

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  PART TWO Snow Blind

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  PART THREE Whiteout

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  PART FOUR Snow Ghosts

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven