Cold Wind (8 page)

Schalk nodded, “I’ve heard some things, and you have my word I’ll do what I can to keep this from turning into a circus. But she does have a tendency to rub people the wrong way. So I never had any personal dealings with her.”

“Lucky you,” Joe said. Then: “So the theory is she shot The Earl and hung his body from that wind turbine?”

Schalk eyed him closely, paused, then said, “That’s our working theory right now.”

Joe took off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. “Have you seen a turbine up close? How high it is? And hang his body up in public? What was that supposed to accomplish?”

“Maybe to throw us off the trail,” she said. “Alden was a very controversial figure as well. He had plenty of enemies, and you know that wind farm of his hasn’t been popular with some of his neighbors.”

Joe was aware of some of the complaints, particularly those from ranchers Bob and Dode Lee. They hated Rope the Wind, and especially the new transmission lines planned to be built across their ranch, which Alden had arranged by getting a swath of their land condemned by eminent domain.

“Are you gonna talk to the Lees?” Joe asked.

“Joe, please.”

He said, “So the first part of the theory is a crime of passion was committed, probably without premeditation, since she didn’t get rid of the rifle or even wipe it down. But the second part is a conspiracy designed to throw everyone off the track.”

She nodded her head, but Joe saw a glimmer of doubt in her eyes when he put it like that.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t ask anything more about the internal investigation because you can’t tell me. But I’ve got to wonder about motive. I know Missy, believe me. I know what she’s like. And it took her a lifetime of trading up to finally hit the jackpot.” He gestured toward the mansion-in-progress on the river bluff. “Why would she risk that, and all of this? This is what she always wanted.”

Dulcie Schalk’s eyebrows arched and she started to answer, then apparently thought better of it.

“So you’ve got a motive, then?” Joe said, surprised.

“Not that I can speak about yet,” she said. “But I’m comfortable enough with what we know so far to press charges.”

“Wow,” Joe said. “
Wow
. You’ve got enough that you really think she’s guilty.”

“I think we better go back to the press conference,” Schalk said. She turned away, then stopped, and looked back at Joe.

“If I were you,” she said gently, “I would stay away from this and keep your head down. I’m not saying that as a threat, Joe. I’m not like McLanahan. But this is from me, because I like you and I’m close to Marybeth, as you know. This is a solid case, Joe. I’m approaching it with even more caution than usual. I don’t want you to go out there and embarrass yourself, and I don’t want us to be in a situation where we’re butting heads. But so far, and this I
can
say, it doesn’t look good for your mother-in-law. Not at all.”

Joe said, “I’ve had a fantasy about this over the years, I have to admit.”

Schalk smiled. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“And I shouldn’t have said it.” He felt ashamed. Then: “Did she admit anything?”

“You’ll have to take that up with her lawyer.”

“She’s already lawyered up?”

“Yes. She’s retained Marcus Hand, and he advised her not to say a word until he gets here.”

Joe was rocked. “Marcus Hand? You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were,” Schalk said.

Marcus Hand was a Wyoming legend, and was known nationally through his years of cable television legal punditry. Tall, whitemaned, brilliant, and given to Stetsons and fringed buckskin clothing, Hand had won millions for clients (and himself) in tort cases against pharmaceutical companies and doctors, as well as securing innocent verdicts for scores of notorious, but wealthy, clients in criminal proceedings. Joe had not met Marcus Hand personally, but he’d been in the courtroom for a case in Jackson Hole where Hand had persuaded the jury that the developer Joe was certain had killed his wife was not guilty.

“I’m looking forward to going up against him,” Schalk said.

“You are?”

“Like I said, we’ve got a strong case. And he needs to get knocked down a peg.”

Joe thought,
You poor tough, but naïve, girl
.

He could see why Marybeth liked her.

 

 

Dulcie Schalk joined McLanahan,
who was fielding questions from the press. Joe sauntered over near the GMC where Missy was being held. Sollis came over to intercept him, but not before Missy slid the window down a few inches and turned her head toward him. The air of dignity was back, and coupled with something Joe had seen before—a cold and ruthless defiance.

“I know we’ve had our differences, Joe,” she said, “but for the sake of my daughter and your children—my grandchildren—you’ve got to help me.”

Before he could answer, she rolled the window back up.

“That’s enough,” Sollis said. “Step aside. We’re taking her in.”

With shaky hands,
Joe fished his cell out and opened it. He texted a message to Marybeth.

Joe closed the phone and folded his arms and leaned back against the grille of his pickup. He wondered what Nate Romanowski would have made of all this, if he’d been around to hear about it. Nate had never liked Missy, either, but he’d always had a special connection with Marybeth. For the fiftieth time in eleven months, Joe wondered where Nate was now and what he was doing. And if they were enemies now or still friends, or something in-between.

As if there could be an in-between with Nate Romanowski.

Nate Romanowski
woke up worried, and the feeling persisted through the cool August morning. Even his three birds, the peregrine, the red-tailed hawk, and the golden eagle, seemed edgy and bitchy in their mews as he fed them chunks of bloody rabbit for breakfast.

Dawn came two hours late in Hole in the Wall Canyon, as it always did. The sheer walls prevented sunlight from pouring over the rims until mid-morning, but when it did there was a special intensity of light and heat because of the lack of wind to cushion it. As he returned to the cave, he scanned the canyon wall opposite where the trail wound down. The trail was a tan scar against the scrub and brush that switchbacked down from the top and he could see nearly all of it from where he stood. That was one primary reason he’d chosen the location four years before, because it was a natural phenomenon practically designed for hiding out. He could clearly view the only approach into the canyon, but from the trail it was all but impossible to locate his cave without intimate familiarity. On the rare occasions when people appeared—and they were usually fishermen making their way to the Middle Fork of the Powder River down below—he’d never been discovered. That was the way he wanted it.

Because of the fishermen who’d recently come to the area, he’d dismantled the fatal booby traps on the lower half of the trail and replaced them with sensors, motion detectors, and a pair of game cameras that could broadcast an image to his laptop. He’d observed the few people who’d come down into the canyon recently and they had no idea their progress down to the water had been viewed through the crosshairs of a scope.

But he saw nothing out of order. It was quiet and calm, and the early-morning chill in the air was an ally because of how it carried sound. There were no unfamiliar sounds.

He returned to his cave in the rocks and quietly gathered his fly rod, flies, and wide-brimmed hat. Alisha Whiteplume, his lover, was there for the weekend. She was still sleeping in the mass of quilts, and he paused for a moment to admire her face in repose: dark silken hair fanned across the pillow, the smooth high cheekbones of the native Shoshone, long lashes, sweet lips turned down on the ends, as if she were worried, too.

She liked trout for breakfast and he wanted to catch her a couple.

Because of that feeling he had which he couldn’t explain, he slipped his leather shoulder holster over his arms and fitted it snugly over his sweatshirt. The butt of his powerful .454 Casull five-shot revolver faced out above his left hip, so he could draw it out with his right hand in less than a second and fire. The handgun was scoped and Nate was an accurate shot within several hundred yards.

He paused for a moment and looked at himself in the mirror he’d slung from a root on the cave wall. Nate was a few inches over six feet tall and had broad shoulders. His long blond hair was tied into a ponytail with a leather falconry jess, and his eyes, even to him, looked sharp and cruel and haunted. His nose was thin and sharp, his jaw prominent. He always wondered if by simply spending so much of his life with falcons—he was a master falconer—that he’d taken on the characteristics of his birds, like a fat man and his pet bulldog or the society fashion doyenne and her poodle.

He slipped back outside. Again, he scanned the canyon wall across from him and slowly studied every foot of the trail. He watched as well as listened, because the natural sounds—birds, the high-pitched whistle of fat marmots in the rocks, the off-chord caws of two chickensized ravens cruising the rims—told him as much about the situation as anything he could see. There was no concern expressed in their talking. Worse would have been complete silence, and complete silence meant an intruder had come.

Despite the blue-black cloud of doom that lingered in his consciousness, he discerned nothing out of order.

Still, as he picked his way down to the river between boulders the size of trucks, and the natural music of the creatures was replaced with the burbling and tinkling sound of the river, he knew he wouldn’t be long for this place.

 

 

He returned an hour later
with three twelve-inch rainbow trout, to find Alisha up and dressed and brewing coffee on his camp kitchen. She’d tied back the heavy covers that hung across the opening to facilitate fresh air and morning sunlight, and she’d made the bed. Their clothes, which had been discarded the night before as if they were on fire, had been folded into his and hers. The coffee smelled good.

“I’ll fillet these,” he said, laying out the fish on the cutting board like three shiny shards of glistening steel.

“Wonderful,” she said, smiling. “When did you learn to fish so well? Was it Joe?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “But anyone could catch these fish. They were easy and hungry and they came right for the fly.”

She nodded and he could feel her trying to read his face. She had recently started asking about Joe Pickett, and he always deflected the inquiry.

“You haven’t talked much about him recently,” she said.

“No, I haven’t.”

Alisha Whiteplume was a schoolteacher on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Since her return from the outside world, where she’d been a married electrical engineer, she’d plunged into reservation life. She was practical and charismatic and, in addition to being named to the tribal council, was also in charge of a club that encouraged teenage Shoshone and Northern Arapahoe to start up and manage small businesses. She had nothing but disdain for U.S. government paternalism and handouts that, she felt, had held her people back for generations. She was the mentor for a half-dozen young entrepreneurs who had started businesses that included a small local newspaper, the crafts shops, a video rental store, and a sub sandwich franchise. She was also the guardian of a five-year-old girl who stayed with Alisha’s mother while she sneaked away to visit Nate. He not only loved Alisha, he admired her strength, stamina, optimism, and loyalty. He felt guilty they couldn’t get married because of his problem with the Feds. She was too good a woman to have to sneak around the way she did in order for them to be together, as if they were both cheating.

She said, “So you and Joe—you’re still working things out?”

“You’re going to keep hammering away, huh?”

“I don’t hammer. I just keep asking politely until I get an answer.”

He sighed as he cut the fillets. He’d put a dollop of shortening into a cast-iron skillet and it had dissolved and had begun to smoke. After dipping the trout fillets into buttermilk, he’d dredge them in cornmeal and lay them in the skillet.

“Joe’s the one who needs to work things out,” Nate said. “I’m clear where I’m at.”

The year before, in the Sierra Madres of southern Wyoming, Nate and Joe had encountered a set of violent twin brothers who wanted to be left alone. Joe had special orders to go after them and he’d done so, relentlessly, even when the circumstances for their isolation were revealed. Nate wanted to ride away. In Nate’s mind, it was a disagreement about what the law said and what was right. Joe chose the law.

“I never thought I’d say this,” she said in her musical voice, “but I think maybe you need to make the effort.”

“You never liked it when we got together for a case,” Nate said. “What changed your mind?”