Winterkill

by C. J. Box

  Joe was just finishing up his report when he looked up to see Sheridan, April, and Lucy crowding the door. They were still wearing their pajamas and slippers.

  “If we don’t eat breakfast soon, I think I shall faint,” Lucy said dramatically.

  Breakfast actually went quite well, the euphoric mood of his children carrying them all through it. Joe flipped pancakes to them from the stove, and they caught them on their upraised plates while squealing. For Marybeth and Missy Vankueren, Joe delivered pancakes to the table. Missy picked at her breakfast, foregoing both bacon and syrup.

  “Do you have any idea how many fat grams there are in these pancakes?” she asked Joe. The three girls looked up, waiting for his answer. He didn’t disappoint them.

  “Ten thousand apiece?” Joe speculated. Even Marybeth laughed at that. Missy made a dismissive face.

  For his girls, a storm that forced all the adults to stay inside, play with them, and cook for them constantly was the best of all possible worlds. With the mood created by the Christmas decorations and the wrapped packages under the tree—as well as the unexpected visit by their grandmother—there was simply no better time. Sheridan said she loved storms. She declared that the worse the storm, the better she liked it.

  As the girls ate, Marybeth did an inventory of her cupboards and the refrigerator, and declared with obvious relief that they had enough food and milk to last for several days without a trip to the grocery store. Joe added that the freezer in the garage was filled with elk and pronghorn antelope steaks, roasts, and burger.

  “We can’t just eat red meat!” Missy protested.

  “Why not?” Joe asked. The three girls laughed.

  “He has a captive audience,” Marybeth observed to her mother.

  “I see that,” Missy said, sipping her coffee

  Although it looked impossible, Joe wanted to see if he could get his pickup running and free of the drifts. Wearing insulated Carhartt coveralls, a knit cap and facemask, and knee-high boots, Joe turned away from the wind and let the snow hammer his back. Despite the heavy clothing, the pure relentless ferocity of the storm chilled him. He’d had to dig into a drift that had formed around his pickup to find the tires before he could even start putting the chains on them. It had taken an hour on his hands and knees to slide the chains over the rear tires and secure them, and the icy steel links had frozen his fingers through his thick gloves. Two tires down, two to go. He kicked through the heavy snow until he found his already covered shovel.

  As he dug out the front wheels, he looked up at the house. Lucy and April were watching him through the window. They were still in their pajamas, and both had candy canes stuck jauntily in their mouths like cigars. They waved, and Joe waved back. They watched him for a while as he put the remaining snow chains on. When he finally stood up and knocked packed snow from his clothes, they were gone.

  Joe found himself staring at the window even though they were no longer there, specifically the spot where April had been.

  April had appeared after Marybeth had been shot in the stomach, and their own unborn baby lost. There would be no more children. If Jeannie Keeley was in town and wanted April, there would be a battle. Marybeth wouldn’t stand idly by. Neither would Joe.

  Shaking his thoughts aside, Joe climbed into his pickup and started the engine, slamming the truck forward, then back, letting the chains bite into the drifts. Gradually, he was able to maneuver around so that the truck faced the road. In an emergency, it would be easier to go forward than to try to back out. That was as much as he could do for a while, he thought, until the road was cleared. No one was going anywhere today.

  Lumbering through the drifts like a monster, he fought his way back to the house.

  Inside, after shedding his outer clothing, he found Marybeth, Missy, and the three girls crammed into the small room that housed the washer and dryer.

  “Dad, you’ve got to see this,” Sheridan called out.

  They parted to let him look.

  The dryer’s door was open, and snow filled every inch of it. Apparently, the swirling winds outside had forced snow up through the outside wall vent, packing it inside.

  “This is amazing,” Marybeth laughed.

  Joe smiled—it would be a day of playing board games, baking cookies, and unusual proximity in their small house. As much as he felt he should get back out to the mountain, he simply couldn’t. He listened on his radio as one of Barnum’s deputies tried to reach the mountain by snowmobile, only to get lost in the blizzard, clip a tree, and turn back. All Joe could do was to stay in contact with dispatch and wait out the storm like everyone else.

  He finally resolved to embrace his immobility, and he changed from his uniform to sweat clothes and made chili for everyone for dinner. He cubed elk steaks to brown with diced onions and peppers in his cast-iron pot. As the chili simmered, he added more ingredients and the aroma of tomato sauce, garlic, and meat filled the house. It was a good smell. Cooking also meant he got to stay in the kitchen while Marybeth and Missy visited in the living room, which was fine with all of them.

  That evening, the girls cleared the chili bowls and silverware from the table while Missy tried in vain to call her husband on her cell phone.

  “He never leaves it on,” she said angrily as she sat down at the table. “He only turns it on when he wants to tell somebody something.” Her tone was bitter, and Joe exchanged glances with Marybeth. Neither really knew Missy’s third husband well, but there had been rumors lately about the possibility of his indictment for land-use fraud. Missy had said little of this, except that the impending “issues” were one of the reasons they’d wanted to get away to their condominium in Jackson Hole in the first place.

  “I guess you’re stuck with us,” Sheridan said as she opened the box of a Monopoly game.

  Missy patted her on the head. “I enjoy being with you, darling.” Sheridan rolled her eyes as soon as Missy looked away.

  “Sit with me, Princess,” Missy directed Lucy, who gladly did as she was told. Missy liked Lucy’s sense of style, and Lucy liked Missy’s huge traveling bag of makeup and hair-spray.

  After a protest from April, Sheridan returned to the table with Pictionary instead of Monopoly. They divided up into teams. Joe was on Missy’s team, which meant that he gave himself permission to have another bourbon.

  During the game, while the sand ran through the one-minute timer and the designated “artists” drew frantic sketches on pads for their teammates to guess at, Joe found himself paying special attention to April. She was the most determined artist on his team, and she drew very deliberately. When her pictures were complete, she was deliriously happy with herself, and she beamed. Joe had noticed before that April didn’t have the lively features and sparkling eyes that Sheridan and Lucy had. Marybeth had said that “the sparkle got beaten out of April early on.” He remembered that phrase as he watched her now.

  After a round that Joe and Missy won by correctly identifying April’s drawing, April whooped and punched the air with pure joy.

  “I like it that you’re getting more normal,” Lucy said to April. “You’re not so weird anymore.”

  “Lucy!” Marybeth said, alarmed.

  But April didn’t explode and start swinging, or withdraw and freeze her face into a pinched glare, as she had in the past. Instead, she smiled and reached across the table and mussed Lucy’s hair. Both girls laughed. Joe thought April seemed flattered. Sheridan beamed with relief, her eyes sliding from her mom to her dad.

  During the second game, with Joe about to draw and Sheridan poised to flip the timer over, Joe suddenly looked up. “Listen,” he said.

  “What?” Missy asked, alarmed.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s right,” Joe said. “The wind stopped.”

  “Too bad,” Sheridan chimed, turning the timer over and setting it down. “This is fun.”

  “Sherry’s right,” Lucy smiled,
her eyes wide. “Storms are good for our family.”

  Joe smiled and sipped his bourbon, enjoying the moment despite the ticking of the timer. April tugged on his sleeve, her face was urgent.

  “DRAW SOMETHING!” April pleaded. “We’re running out of time!”

  Five

  It was two days before they could get back onto the mountain, and they needed three borrowed Sno-Cats to do it. The meeting point was at a clearing outside Winchester where the road ascended into the mountains. There were more people in the assemblage than Joe expected.

  After the weather delay, the DCI agents had arrived in their state plane at the Twelve Sleep County Airport with two additional passengers, a U.S. Forest Service official and a female journalist. The Forest Service official had also brought two small dogs with her, a Yorkie on a leash and a cocker spaniel that she clutched to her breast. Joe noticed an attractive, dark-haired woman with the official who seemed to be keeping a close eye on the proceedings. A lone Saddlestring Roundup reporter, a twenty-three-year-old blonde wearing a Wyoming Cowboys basketball parka and driving a ten-year-old pickup, approached the gathering carrying a notebook opened to a blank page.

  The Forest Service official intercepted the reporter in mid-stride, and an interview was begun. Joe was helping a deputy hook his snowmobile trailer to the back of a Sno-Cat, and he was close enough to overhear their exchange.

  “My name is Melinda Strickland,” the Forest Service official said. She spelled her name for the benefit of the reporter.

  “I’m here on special assignment on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service as the head of a special investigative team that needs to remain classified and off of the record for the time being.”

  “Why?” the reporter asked vacantly. Joe wondered the same thing. The Forest Service was not a law enforcement agency, although individual rangers had some regulatory responsibility within their jurisdiction, and while Joe assumed it was possible, he had never before heard of a “special investigative team” sent by the agency. He thought it more likely that the agency would ask the FBI to intervene.

  “You’ll be told in due course, if we confirm some of our suspicions,” Strickland said.

  The reporter obviously didn’t know how to react. The woman sounded so . . . offical.

  The Yorkie pulled at Melinda Strickland’s pant cuff, but was ignored.

  “You’ll be the first to get the information when we decide to release it, but if you burn me by printing something before that, I’ll have your ass,” Melinda Strickland said, her eyes narrowing.

  This got Joe’s attention, and he watched the reporter nod meekly. The brittle edge in Strickland’s voice seemed out of place and unnecessarily severe.

  What, Joe asked himself, is she implying, beyond the murder itself? What suspicions is she referring to?

  The Yorkie, frustrated, growled and pulled on Strickland’s pant leg, nearly knocking her off balance. She wheeled, and Joe watched with alarmed interest as she drew back a foot, seemingly about to kick the dog hard in the ribs. But something stopped her, and she quickly looked up to see Joe looking at her. To the side, the Yorkie yipped and cowered.

  “That dog is going to get seriously hurt if he keeps it up,” Melinda Strickland said through gritted teeth. “I picked him up at the shelter to be a companion for Bette, here,” nodding at the cocker spaniel she held in her arms. “But it isn’t working out.”

  Joe said nothing. Strickland turned from him back to the reporter, whom she dismissed with a few short words. Joe watched Strickland turn and look at the idling Sno-Cats as if nothing had just happened.

  Joe was taken aback. She had restrained herself at the last possible moment, but it was obvious to him by the Yorkie’s reaction that he’d been kicked before. The incident left Joe feeling unsettled.

  The DCI agent-in-charge, Bob Brazille, turned away from another conversation, and walked up to Joe. Brazille had an alcoholic’s mottled face and heavy-lidded eyes, and he made the introductions.

  “Melinda Strickland, this is Game Warden Joe Pickett and Sheriff Bud Barnum.”

  With a chilly smile, Melinda Strickland stepped forward and extended a gloved hand from under the belly of the cocker spaniel. Barnum shook it; Joe followed suit, but more warily. He expected her to mention the Yorkie again, but she just smiled as if nothing had happened.

  Melinda Strickland had wide hips, medium-length copper-colored hair, a long sharp nose, and dark eyes that made Joe think of a raven’s. Wrinkles framed the corners of her mouth like parchment parentheses. She smiled with her mouth only—the eyes remained dark. Her manner of speaking contained lilt and chuckle, as if she were leading up to a punch line that didn’t come.

  “I understand there are some folks up here who aren’t real crazy about the Forest Service, or the U.S. government, you know?” she said, as if sharing common knowledge. “And that Lamar Gardiner wasn’t well liked because he strictly interpreted Forest Service policies.”

  “I doubt that was the reason,” Joe answered, puzzled.

  “I’ve been hammered by calls from people who want to know what’s going on up here,” she said, as if Joe had just agreed with her assessment.

  “We need to get going,” Barnum interjected, and for once Joe was grateful for the sheriff’s brusqueness.

  In a rumbling, clanking, slow-motion procession, the tracked vehicles ascended on the still-unplowed road. Joe Pickett was in the one in front, sitting next to the driver, with two DCI agents wedged into the backseat. Joe’s snowmobile and trailer-sled were hitched to the back of the Sno-Cat. Breathing diesel fumes and keeping the windows clear of fogging with a towel, Joe pointed out the turnoff from the highway into the forest, which had been transformed by the heavy snowfall. In the second Sno-Cat were the sheriff, his two deputies, and a photographer from the Saddlestring police department. The third vehicle contained Melinda Strickland, the attractive journalist shadowing her, two more DCI agents, and Melinda Strickland’s two dogs.

  The sky was sharply blue and the sun’s reflection off the cover of snow was blinding. They passed from sun into shadow and into sun again as they approached the Wolf Mountain bowl. Snow ghosts—pines so packed and coated with snow that they looked like frozen spectral beings—stood sentry as the three battered, spewing vehicles passed below.

  “So he grabbed your handcuffs and locked you to the steering wheel, huh?” Bob Brazille asked Joe from the back. Brazille was overdressed in a mammoth down parka, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

  “Yup,” Joe answered over the engine noise. His voice was flat.

  “That son-of-a-bitch, huh?” Brazille said.

  “Turn here,” Joe told the driver.

  “The Feds are hot about this, judging by the temperament of that Strickland woman,” Brazille continued, shouting over the roar of the engine. “Governor Budd got a call from some Washington mucky-muck. That’s probably why Strickland is here. They don’t like it when a federal employee gets whacked. The governor showed special interest in you, I was told. How does he know you?”

  Joe felt a hot, embarrassed flush spread up his neck. “I arrested him a few years ago for fishing without a license.”

  Brazille’s eyes widened, and he shook his head from side to side. “So you’re the one, huh? I heard about that.”

  Joe nodded and looked away.

  After a half-hour of silence, Brazille tapped Joe on his shoulder to get his attention.

  “That info-babe with Strickland is a looker, eh?” Joe agreed, although he refused to admit that to Brazille. The journalist with Melinda Strickland was tall and thin and dressed in chic ski-wear: black tights, faux fur-lined boots, and a puffy yellow parka. She had short black hair, green eyes, very white skin, high cheekbones, and bee-stung red lips.

  “What did you say her name was?” Joe asked.

  “Elle Broxton-Howard,” Brazille said, using a mocking British accent. “She’s actually American, but she’s lived in London for fifteen years or so. Some stuffy
Brit magazine has her writing a story on Melinda Strickland.”

  “What’s so significant about Melinda Strickland that they’d do a story on her?” Joe asked.

  “I asked Elle Broxton-Howard that,” Brazille answered, butchering the accent even worse than before. “She said Melinda Strickland heads up some task force on the increase of violence against federal land managers by local yay-hoos ‘out here in the American outback,’ as she put it. And Melinda’s a woman in a man’s world, so yada-yada-yada.”