by C. J. Box
Romanowski seemed to be reading his thoughts, because he lowered his voice, leaned forward so that Joe was less than two feet from him, and said: “Forget Lamar Gardiner. He was an insect, and not worth swatting. Melinda Strickland is who you need to watch out for.”
Joe was genuinely surprised at this, and he cocked his head.
“Why?”
“She’s a psycho. She’s real trouble.”
“Do you know her?” Joe asked.
Nate shook his head. “I could feel it when she approached. It emanated from her. She reminded me a lot of my former supervisor, in fact.”
Joe sighed. For a moment there, he’d been taken in.
Romanowski held up his hand. “No, I don’t mean she is my former supervisor. She just reminds me of her. You just have to look into her eyes to realize she’s trouble.
“I know these things,” Romanowski said, looking hard at Joe. There was no hint of a smirk now. “That’s why I ended up here in Wyoming. As far away from government bullshit as I thought I could get. How was I to know I’d find another one like her?”
“What are you talking about?” Joe asked, leaning back away from Romanowski.
Romanowski’s eyes got hard. “Make no mistake, Joe—Melinda Strickland is a cruel woman, who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. I knew I was in the presence of someone evil. Even though that idiot deputy knocked my teeth in, I recognized him for the dumb, redneck cracker he is. There’s a hint of evil with that sheriff, but nothing like what I felt from Melinda Strickland. It’s like my gut seized up when she looked at me.”
“Do you know who killed Lamar Gardiner?” Joe asked abruptly, breaking into Romanowski’s monologue. Joe suddenly realized that he had crossed over; that he believed Nate Romanowski was telling the truth. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to believe that, but he did.
“I don’t have a clue. But from the details I’ve heard, I think it was a local thing, maybe a business or a family thing, even,” Romanowski said.
Joe tried not to react: to say that Romanowski had just echoed his own thoughts from before.
“The bastard who did it is still out there,” Romanowski said. “You might even know him.”
Joe felt his own stomach knot. This was exactly what he had been thinking.
“Can Melinda Strickland really be as bad as you say?” Joe asked.
Nate held Joe’s gaze for a long count. “Maybe worse. She’ll climb over the dead body of her mother to get what she wants.”
Joe sat and thought in silence, staring at Nate Romanowski, not sure what to think of this dangerous, fascinating man.
“I believe in right and wrong, and I believe in justice,” Romanowski said. “I believe in my country. It’s the bureaucrats, the lawyers, and the legal process I have a problem with.”
“Okay, then,” Joe said, slapping his knees and standing up. “I think we’re through here.” He admitted to himself that he was thoroughly conflicted, and confused. He had not entered this cell expecting to be convinced of Romanowski’s innocence.
Joe stood, looking at Romanowski as he would a suspect, trying to assume that the man was guilty. He looked for a facial tic, for the averted eyes, bitten lip, or furtive glance of a liar. But Romanowski exuded calm, even a hint of righteousness. Or arrogance. Or self-delusion.
“So what was the other favor?” Joe asked.
“My birds,” Romanowski said. “I’ve got a peregrine falcon and a red-tailed hawk out at my place. I left them pretty abruptly, as you know. They’re probably circling, hanging around. I fed them just before I left, and there are wild rabbits and ducks around the river, but I’m worried about them. I was hoping you could go out there and feed them.”
“I think I could do that,” Joe said. “But understand that I’m doing it because I don’t want the birds to starve, not because I believe you.”
“The peregrine is a suspicious little bitch,” Romanowski said. “But she was coming around. She just doesn’t know who to trust.”
“Sounds familiar,” Joe said, thinking of his own predicament.
Romanowski smiled in an understanding, slightly defeated way.
“Do you know a man named Wade Brockius? Or the people who call themselves the Rocky Mountain Sovereign Citizens?” Joe asked, watching Romanowski carefully.
“I’ve heard of them,” he said, his tone conversational. “I don’t know any of them, but I overheard the deputies out there talking about some camp in the mountains.”
Joe nodded and turned to call for Reed, then remembered that one question was still unanswered. “Why did you call me?” he asked.
Romanowski nodded. “I know about you. I’ve been watching you for some time. I followed the situation with the Millers’ weasels, and what happened at Savage Run.”
Joe said nothing. It unnerved him to know that someone had been observing him.
“You like to fly under the radar,” Romanowski said, locking eyes again with Joe. “When you see something that’s wrong, you don’t give up. You value being underestimated. In fact, you encourage it. Then, if you have to, you turn fucking cowboy and surprise everyone.”
“REED!” Joe yelled, turning, ready to get out.
“I trust you to do the right thing,” Romanowski said evenly to Joe’s back.
Joe looked over his shoulder. “Don’t put that on me.”
“Sorry,” Romanowski said, smiling as if he had just touched Joe Pickett during a game of Ultimate Tag. “You’re the only guy between me and a needle.”
That night, Joe worked in his garage. Under a bare hanging lightbulb, he replaced the spark plugs and belt from his state-issued snow machine so it would be ready when he needed it again. The clear, sunny day had birthed a crisp and bitterly cold night. When he’d last checked, it was fifteen below zero outside and even with the propane heater hissing in the corner of the garage, he could see his breath. The thick gloves he wore made it tougher to unscrew the plugs with his ratchet, but when he took them off, the steel tool burned his skin with cold.
Earlier, after dinner, while he and Marybeth had done the dishes, Joe poured out everything from the day: seeing the Sovereigns, hearing of Jeannie Keeley’s intentions, the call from Melinda Strickland, the meeting with Romanowski, and the possibility that the real murderer was still out there. Marybeth listened in silence, her expression becoming more tense and alarmed as he talked. He noticed that she was washing the same plate twice.
“I don’t know what to think, Marybeth,” he confessed. “And I’m not sure I know what to do about any of it either.”
“I wish Jeannie Keeley would have been up there, so you could see how serious she really was.” Marybeth was focusing on the part most important to her. Earlier in the evening she had told Joe she’d spoken with a lawyer and that the lawyer hadn’t been very optimistic about their chances if Jeannie Keeley sincerely wanted April back.
“Why is she back now? It’s been five years, Joe—why the hell is she back now?”
Joe looked at his wife, her face pale with anger and fear and wished he had an anwer for her.
The side door opened and Marybeth stepped in wearing her parka. Her arms were crossed, her hands clamped under her armpits.
“It’s not much warmer in here than outside,” she said, closing the door and huddling back against it. “Are you coming in soon?”
“Is everyone in bed?”
“You mean my mother?” Marybeth sighed. “Yes.”
“I’ll be in in a minute,” Joe said, ratcheting a plug in. It had been a year since he’d replaced the spark plugs.
“I’ve thought about what you told me tonight. Brockius, Romanowski, Strickland, all of it. I wish I had been with you.”
Joe looked up. “Me, too. Maybe you’d have a better read on these people than I do.”
“Do you put any stock into what Nate Romanowski said about Strickland?” Marybeth asked. “Could she really be that bad? Or does she just remind him of somebody he hated?”
> Joe’s socket wrench slipped on a spark plug and he struck his knuckles hard against the engine block and cursed. He looked up. “I don’t know, Marybeth. But that woman gives me the willies. There’s something . . . off . . . about her.”
“Then you believe him? Do you think he’s innocent, like he claims?”
Joe pulled the wrench out of the engine, slipped off his glove, and examined his skinned knuckles. His bare fingers immediately stiffened in the cold.
“He’s either innocent, or he’s an excellent liar,” Joe said.
“I do know one thing he might not be lying about,” Marybeth said, arching her eyebrows. “Mary Longbrake was seeing a much younger man. It could have been Nate.”
“How in the . . .” Joe caught himself, and rephrased, “How could you possibly know that?”
“From the library,” Marybeth said, smiling. “A couple of the women who work there used to play bridge with Mary every week. I guess they talk about all sorts of things in that club. Apparently, Mary made it very clear that her life had changed for the better since she had met this man.”
Twelve
The closed-casket funeral for Lamar Gardiner was held on the morning of New Year’s Eve, while another dark winter storm front was forming and boiling in the northwest. The wind was icy and withering. The service took place at Kenneth Siman’s Memorial Chapel on Main Street in Saddlestring and was attended by about fifty mourners, most of whom were family, employees of the Forest Service office, or local law enforcement.
Joe sat with Marybeth in the next-to-last row of chairs. He wore a jacket and tie, and had left his hat on the coatrack. Carrie Gardiner, wearing black, sat in the front row with her two children. Behind them was Melinda Strickland, surrounded by Forest Service employees. Strickland’s hair, Joe noted, was a different color than when he had last seen her. Now it was tawny, almost blond. She wore her Forest Service uniform. Sheriff Barnum and his two deputies occupied a single row of chairs, but they all kept empty chairs between them. Elle Broxton-Howard, with her notebook in her lap, sat alone behind them all.
The ferocity of the wind outside made something flap and bang on the roof while the pastor spoke. Kenneth Siman, the earnestly sober funeral director and county coroner, appeared from a door near the front of the room, looked up to check that nothing within the building had been damaged, and silently disappeared.
When the pastor was done, Melinda Strickland approached the dais and withdrew a folded piece of yellow paper from her uniform pocket. Her demeanor was oddly melodramatic, and she consciously tried to meet the eyes of all of the mourners before she spoke.
“You’ve heard from Pastor Robbins about the life of Lamar, and I’m here to let you know that he didn’t die in vain. No Sirree Bob.”
No Sirree Bob? Joe felt Marybeth squirm next to him. And he felt it again when Melinda Strickland paused and forced a blazing, inappropriate smile.
Joe felt a cold shiver run through him. Was it just Strickland, he wondered, or was it Romanowski’s manipulation?
“Cassie,” Strickland said to Carrie Gardiner, getting her name wrong, “your dutiful husband was the casualty of a war that we must, and will, stop. When citizens turn against their federal government it will not stand, ya know?”
Joe tried to attribute Melinda Strickland’s words, gestures, and behavior to nervousness. She was certainly making Joe nervous. And Marybeth seemed to be trying to shrink into her chair.
“Ya know, this little war some citizens have with federal employees has gone too far, don’t you think?” She seemed to be looking straight at Joe, and she nodded conspiratorially.
“Ya know, a group of extremists have set up a compound on federal land. That’s kind of ‘in your face,’ don’t you think?”
Melinda Strickland went on for another five minutes. Her thoughts seemed random and disconnected, sound bites in search of a paragraph. Joe barely heard her, but he did hear Marybeth groan.
When she was through, Strickland approached Carrie Gardiner and her children, and grasped both of Carrie’s hands in hers.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Cassie,” Strickland said.
Joe noticed that Elle Broxton-Howard was scribbling furiously in her notepad. As Strickland rejoined her employees, she turned and handed her speech to Broxton-Howard, who accepted it with a grateful smile.
The reception/wake was held at the Forest Service building. Joe noted right away that the Gardiners hadn’t come. He felt sorry for Carrie, and especially for her children. The other mourners stood in the reception area, drinking punch in paper cups and eating cookies from plates on the office desks. USFS employees stood uncomfortably behind the desks, urging mourners to have another cookie with a lack of enthusiasm that led Joe to believe that they had been instructed to be good hosts by their immediate supervisor, Melinda Strickland.
Elle Broxton-Howard approached Joe and Marybeth and introduced herself. She wore a high-collared Bavarian wool jacket over black stretch pants. She handed Joe a card.
“Rumour Magazine,” Joe read aloud. He gave her his card, and she slid it absently into a pocket without looking at it.
“It’s very popular in the U.K,” Broxton-Howard explained. “It’s kind of a cross between your Maxim and People, with a little of The New Yorker thrown in for highbrow literary content. I also freelance.”
“I think my mother reads it,” Marybeth said, making conversation.
Broxton-Howard nodded at Marybeth, but turned again to Joe. Joe knew how well this would go over with his wife.
“I’m doing a long-form story on the battle between the rural militia types and the U.S. government,” Broxton-Howard said, “And I plan to feature Melinda Strickland as my protagonist. I see her as a strong-willed, independent woman in a man’s world. A Barbara Stanwyck of our time.”
She was interrupted, however, as Melinda Strickland joined them wearing her wide, inappropriate grin. Her cocker spaniel trailed behind her.
“I’m Marybeth Pickett, Joe’s wife,” Marybeth said, extending her hand, and smiling with a hint of malice, Joe thought.
“Joe’s been working very closely with our effort, and we appreciate that immensely,” Strickland said, looking at him. “He’s been such a help.”
“I didn’t get that impression when you called me on my cell phone,” Joe said.
Strickland reacted as if Joe had slapped her. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re referring to,” she said. Then her expression softened once again into her hostess face.
Wow, Joe thought.
“So tell me, Joe,” Strickland asked, “have the extremist tendencies in this area affected the job you’re trying to do?”
Joe thought for a moment. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘extremist tendencies.’ There are a few bad apples, but the community is generally supportive.”
Strickland cocked her head skeptically at Joe. “Really?” she said, in a way that indicated that she didn’t believe him, but didn’t want to cause a scene.
Joe shrugged. “Some folks might get a little eccentric and hardheaded when it comes to land policies and rules and regulations. But I’ve found you can deal with them, if you’re reasonable and fair across the board.”
“ ‘Eccentric’ is an odd term for the murder of a Forest Service supervisor, I would think,” Strickland said, looking to Marybeth and Broxton-Howard for confirmation.
Joe waded in, taking advantage of the moment, wanting to make a point while Melinda Strickland was in front of him.
“I want to let you know,” Joe interjected, “that I met a man named Wade Brockius a couple of days ago. He’s the spokesman of sorts for the—” But before Joe could get any further, Melinda Strickland suddenly noticed that the cookies were gone from the nearest desk and excused herself to admonish the employee. Broxton-Howard faded into the crowd.
Joe and Marybeth looked at each other.
“Well, she’s interesting,” Marybeth added. “In a bad kind of way.”
“You’re quoting a murder suspect, Joe,” Marybeth smiled.
“I’ll stop doing that,” Joe said sourly.
“But did you notice how Melinda was acting with you?”
Joe shook his head.
“She wasn’t talking with you or even listening to you. She was assessing you,” Marybeth said.
“Why?”
“To see if you’ll be any value to her personally; if you’ll buy into her agenda, her career path, or hurt it. Remember when you told me she almost turned back on the mountain? It sounds to me like when it got tough physically, she looked up and saw that probably nobody in that party really mattered to what was important to her. She saw a bunch of local yokels and the state DCI. A bunch of losers. The only person in that group who mattered was the journalist, and she was already in her camp. The rest of you meant nothing. She’s a user, and she’s dangerous.”
“You got all that from a two-minute exchange?”
“Yes.”
Marybeth nodded toward Broxton-Howard, who now commanded the attention of McLanahan and Reed.
“She’s nice-looking,” Marybeth said in a flat tone. “It takes hours to make your hair look that casually wind-tousled.”
Joe wisely said nothing.
While Marybeth searched for the bathroom, Joe sought out County Attorney Robey Hersig.
“What are your plans tonight, Joe?”
Joe rolled his eyes. Their New Year’s Eve plans were the same as they had been since Sheridan was born eleven years ago: They would go to bed early. Missy had asked about parties and celebrations in town, and hinted that she might want to go. Joe had offered her the use of their minivan, and she had wrinkled her nose, but accepted.
“Got a minute?” Joe asked. Hersig nodded and motioned Joe into an office behind them. He entered and sat on a desk and loosened his tie. Joe eased the door closed behind them. The office had been Lamar Gardiner’s, but was now, obviously, occupied by Melinda Strickland. A framed photo of her cocker spaniel stood on the desk. Joe hadn’t realized that she’d already moved in.