Cold Wind (39 page)

Joe said, “I think I agree.”

“Then we don’t need to talk about it anymore,” Nate said.

Joe liked that.

“So,” Nate said, “where did that son-of-a-bitch Bud Longbrake go?”

 

 

Before Joe could speculate
on an answer, he heard the sound of motors outside and the quick whoop of a siren that blew open the quiet night. Flashing red and blue lights filled the window and danced across the walls and made the living room seem like an unlikely party scene.

Joe stepped over and parted the curtains with the back of his hand. “The sheriff is here,” he said. Two department vehicles: Sollis’ SUV and McLanahan’s pickup. There were two heads in Sollis’ unit, but the sheriff was alone in his.

“You want me to take them out?” Nate asked, reaching for his .500.

“I’ll catch you later then,” Nate said, retreating toward the mudroom. Joe watched him. He doubted the sheriff had sent anyone around the back to block the back door since he’d arrived with such fanfare at the front.

“My house,” Joe called after him, and Nate was gone.

Joe laid the shotgun
on the couch and cautiously opened the door before McLanahan could bang on it. He wanted to show himself in the open, and that he offered no threat.

The sheriff looked purposeful and self-satisfied in the flashing lights of the vehicles. Sollis stood smugly behind him and to the left, with his hand on his holstered weapon. Deputy Reed was farther back, looking solemn.

“Hello, Joe,” McLanahan said. Then to Sollis, over his shoulder, “Arrest this man for breaking and entering and attempting to tamper with a witness. Maybe trespassing as well, if the club wants to charge him.”

Joe sighed. “Except I didn’t do any of those things.” He pointed out the boot on the floor, the reason he had probable cause for entering without a warrant or notice.

“I’ve got photos of what I saw,” Joe said. “I really did think Bud Longbrake was dead or hurt, so I entered. The garage door was unlocked.”

“Anybody with you?” McLanahan asked, peering over Joe’s shoulder.

“No.” Thinking: Nate should be sprinting across the lawn out back toward the edge of the property. Still, he felt guilty for misleading the sheriff.

McLanahan rocked back on his heels and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops so he could lean back and look down his nose at Joe. McLanahan twitched his mustache from side to side, and said, “Not sure I’m buying it.”

Joe shrugged. “I’m not trying to sell you anything.”

“How’d you get access to the club, anyway?”

Joe caught himself before he looked away. “I know the keypad combination.”

“Right,” McLanahan said, snorting. Joe thought he was caught, and he felt cold dread in his belly.

“Probably got it from your dear mother-in-law,” McLanahan said, sure of himself.

Joe felt the dread dissipate. He said, “Rather than screw around with me, I’d suggest you put out an APB on your star witness, Bud Longbrake. He’s gone.”

The sheriff grinned and looked over his shoulder at Sollis, who smiled back at him. Reed found something interesting to stare at on the top of his boots. They knew something he didn’t.

“No need for that,” McLanahan said. “Bud’s safe and warm in sheriff department custody, but I ain’t sayin’ where. He’s probably enjoying a cocktail to calm his nerves. He called us because he heard you were coming after him. He said he feared for his life.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Joe said. “I’d never hurt Bud.”

“Poor old guy,” McLanahan said, ignoring Joe. “He’s under so much pressure, and you make it worse. He’s a sick man, you know.”

Joe shook his head. He recalled Orin Smith saying something similar. “I don’t know about that,” Joe said. “I just need to talk to him.”

“Not before the trial,” McLanahan said, shaking his head. “Not unless he tells me to let you in. Even then, you’d have to get through Dulcie Schalk, and I don’t think you’re real popular with her right now.”

Sighing, Joe said, “You’re on the wrong track, McLanahan. You’ve been wrong since the murder. Bud wants revenge on Missy and he’s using what happened to get back at her. I don’t blame him, but this crime . . . there’s a lot more to it. Things you’ve never even considered or looked at.”

“Yeah, yeah yeah,” McLanahan muttered, dismissing him. Then to Sollis, “Take this yahoo in and get his statement. Then we’ll decide if we want to arrest him and on what charges. Reed, you drive his truck down to the county building. I’ll call Dulcie and see how she wants to proceed.”

Joe said, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Sure I do,” McLanahan said, turning aside to spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the lawn. To Joe, he said, “Why aren’t you out there trying to catch poachers or something? Shouldn’t you be doing your job instead of mine? You ever think about that?”

“I do,” Joe said. “I just figure one of us needs to do your job.”

Reed snorted a laugh and looked away quickly.

McLanahan froze, and Joe saw something ugly pass over his face. Joe squared up, ready if McLanahan swung.

The sheriff took a deep breath and said to Sollis, “Cuff the son-of-a-bitch.”

 

 

On the way through
the grounds of the Eagle Mountain Club, handcuffs biting his wrists, Joe thought that he was pleased to have hooked back up with Nate. But he couldn’t help thinking it might be too late to affect the outcome of the trial. And he’d never imagined spending a night in a county cell.

He thought of his daughters. Their grandmother up for murder, their father in jail.

April’s words mocked him: “I guess maybe
I’m
not the only one in this
perfect
little family who makes
mistakes
.”

On Wednesday morning,
the day Bud Longbrake was to take the stand to testify against Missy Alden for the murder of Earl Alden, Joe sat next to Marybeth in the eighth row of the Twelve Sleep Country Courthouse and dug his index finger into his shirt collar to try to loosen it against the tight cinch of his tie. It didn’t give much, and he felt that he was slowly strangling to death.

He surveyed the room. Everyone seemed to have taken the same seats they’d occupied the previous two days since the trial began.

Judge Hewitt’s courtroom was full and warm and close. Family members, local gadflies, civic leaders, Bud’s drinking buddies from the Stockman’s including Timberman and Keith Bailey, law enforcement personnel, the all-male morning coffee crowd from the Burg-O-Pardner, and local, state, and regional press took every seat. There was a low murmur as everyone waited for what the
Roundup
called “pivotal Day Three” to begin. All the players were in one place, Joe thought. He whispered to Marybeth that if Stovepipe’s metal detector was malfunctioning again and a bomb were to go off inside, Saddle-string might as well close down and sell off the fixtures.

Marcus Hand and Dulcie Schalk were at the bench discussing the schedule and rules for the day with Hewitt, who stood and leaned down toward them so the conversation could be kept confidential. Hand wore a dark charcoal suit, white shirt, bolo tie, and his pointy cowboy boots. A silverbelly Stetson sat crown-down on the defense table, but Joe never saw Hand actually put it on. It was solely for effect.

Schalk was dressed sharply in a dark pin-striped business suit and skirt with a cream-colored bow at her throat. Her hair was pulled back so she looked severe and serious. And older.

 

 

Monday had been spent
selecting a jury. Like everything that took place in Judge Hewitt’s courtroom, it had gone like lightning. Twelve local jurors and two alternates were selected out of a pool of thirty. Joe knew most of the jurors: seven women and five men. All were white and middle-aged except for a Shoshone woman who lived outside the reservation. Although Hand had worked to challenge as many of the blue-collar types as he could, apparently assuming they would more easily convict a nasty woman of means like Missy, Marybeth observed to Joe that Hand seemed to do it halfheartedly, more for the show than from determination. Like he had something up his sleeve, and the makeup of the jury didn’t matter.

Marcus Hand only needed one juror to nullify a guilty verdict, Joe replied. He couldn’t determine which one or two who’d been selected met Hand’s satisfaction. Maybe the unemployed city worker who couldn’t find a job in the bad economy hated the world and would love to stick it to The Man? Or maybe the Shoshone woman, filled with years of resentment and the existential burden of her white lay-about husband, could finally get back at the system?

 

 

Joe had spent
most of previous Thursday in the sheriff’s department interview room after being taken from the Eagle Mountain Club. Deputy Sollis had checked in on him from time to time with a grin on his face, explaining that they were waiting for Sheriff McLanahan to return for the questioning to begin. Joe knew it was a stall and an attempt to humiliate him, and conceded that it was working pretty well. No charges were filed that he was informed of.

Finally, mid-afternoon, Dulcie Schalk blew into the room. She was angry with Joe for trying to contact Bud Longbrake and with the sheriff for holding Joe without questioning him or pressing any charges. Right behind her was Marcus Hand in his black turtleneck and fringed buckskin jacket.

She said to Sollis, “Let him out of here
now.
”

Joe thanked her, and she snapped, “Do not speak to me.”

On the way to his pickup after retrieving the keys from a very sheepish Deputy Reed, Hand draped his arm around Joe’s shoulder and whispered, “You hate us until you need us. That’s the way it works.”

 

 

The past weekend
with Marybeth and Nate was interrupted only by a call into the break lands east of town from a citizen reporting a wounded antelope staggering around on the road. Nate had gone with him in the truck, and Joe spent hours filling him in on the murder, the investigation, and what Joe had learned from Smith about Rope the Wind.

“I’d put my money on the boys from Chicago,” Nate said, after listening to Joe and after the game warden had dispatched the suffering animal. “I could see them sending someone out here to shut up The Earl once and for all. They came, shot him, and hung him from the windmill, and they were on a plane back to O’Hare by the time you found him.”

“It may be what happened,” Joe said, “but it’s speculation at best. Marcus Hand sent two of his investigators east, and they may come back with something before the trial is over. But they may not. What I have trouble with in that scenario is how this Chicago hit man would know to frame Missy.”

Nate said, “They had an insider.”

“And who would that be?”

“The same guy who told Laurie Talich where she could find me.”

“Bud?”

“Bingo,” Nate said. “It took a while for me to figure it out and there are still some loose ends I’d like closed, but it makes sense. Missy knew vaguely where I was living because she talks to her daughter, and last year she tried to hire me to put the fear of God into Bud, remember? She might have let it slip to her ex-husband that if he didn’t stop pining over her, she’d drive to Hole in the Wall Canyon and pick me up. Somehow, Bud found out where I was. And by happenstance, he meets a woman in the bar who has come west for the single purpose of avenging her husband. Bud has contacts with the National Guard who just returned from Afghanistan, and he was able to help her get a rocket launcher. Then he drew her a map. He must have been pretty smug about how it all worked out. He thought he was able to take me out of the picture without getting his own hands dirty.”