Winterkill

by C. J. Box

  Judge Oliver was massively fat, with a wispy beard and heavy-lidded eyes. A single green-shaded banker’s lamp threw garish shadows across the judge and across the room. When he met with them, Oliver wore an ancient three-piece suit that was shiny from wear and stained with grease spots. Because of an attack of gout, Oliver explained, he was forced to wear slippers on his feet instead of shoes. She saw the slippers under his desk. They were big, like elephant slippers.

  Jeannie had pleaded her case for April while Clem sat next to her, holding her hand. Judge Oliver listened impassively, his fingers intertwined across his stomach.

  When she was through, the judge asked Jeannie to leave the room while he talked with Clem.

  She had waited outside the door for less than ten minutes when Clem came outside to retrieve her. He nodded and told her things were going to be okay.

  “I have remanded custody of your daughter to you upon your request,” Judge Oliver told Jeannie in a wheezy voice. “My clerk is preparing the order as we speak, and we will fax it to Twelve Sleep County.”

  Jeannie actually cried with joy, and reached across the desk to shake his huge, crablike hand. She was so happy, and so grateful, thanks to Judge Oliver.

  Oliver smiled back, but his eyes were on Clem.

  Clem ushered Jeannie to the back of the room while the judge sat at his desk. She could tell when she looked at him that Clem had done something awful.

  “The judge asked about compensation,” Clem had whispered nervously. “I told him we couldn’t pay him very much.”

  “Clem, you asshole,” Jeannie had whispered back, furious. “We can’t pay him anything!”

  Clem had hesitated, then gulped, then pulled at his collar.

  “What, damn you?” she asked. Her whisper was loud enough, she thought, to be heard by the judge.

  Clem continued to look at his own boots. Then she understood. The judge wanted compensation.

  She turned toward Judge Oliver and smiled sweetly.

  “I’ll wait for you out in the truck,” Clem mumbled, still looking down.

  “You bet your bony ass you will,” Jeannie said over her shoulder, through smiling teeth.

  “I guess I don’t get it why you want to go into that school and get her,” Clem said. “With that order and all, you could march right up to their house and take her.”

  Jeannie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Clem, sometimes you’re even stupider than usual.”

  He looked away, stung.

  “It’s been three long years,” she said. “Do you want to drag a crying, screaming kid out of somebody’s house?”

  Clem frowned. “But you’re her mother. She’ll want to go with you.”

  She glared at him. “Who knows what kind of crap and filth about me they’ve put into her head? Who knows what they’ll tell her tonight, now that they know we’ve got this here order?”

  Clem shook his head, confused. But it was obvious he didn’t want to argue.

  “What this order means,” Jeannie said, “is that they can’t get her back.”

  Clem dropped his eyes to the floorboards of the truck. “I’m just sorry what you had to do to get it.”

  Jeannie snorted. “I’ve done worse.”

  For once, Jeannie Keeley was lucky. She remembered the layout of the school well enough to walk straight to the office without asking anyone where it was.

  Her heels clicked on the tile floor and her green dress swished with purpose as she walked down the hallway. Most of the classroom doors were open, and the sounds of children and teachers came and went like radio stations set on “scan” as she walked.

  The school office was empty except for a secretary who sat at a computer behind the front counter. Jeannie had been thinking about this for a long time. This was a small town. Everybody knew damned near everybody else. She had not been inside the school for four years, since April was in kindergarten. She doubted she had made enough of an impression to be remembered. When she finally decided how to play it, it was simple. She operated on one premise: What would Marybeth Pickett do? When the secretary looked up, Jeannie smiled at her.

  “Hi again. I’m April Keeley’s mother,” Jeannie said with such familiarity and assurance that the secretary should be ashamed for not recognizing her. “Third grade. I’m here to take her to the dentist.”

  The secretary looked befuddled, and plunged into a spiral notebook on her desk. “I’m filling in today for the secretary because she came back from Christmas vacation with the flu,” the woman explained. “I’m trying to figure out how this works.”

  Jeannie tried not to whoop with jubilation. She hoped she hadn’t looked too elated.

  What would Marybeth Pickett do?

  “No hurry at all,” Jeannie said. “I sent the note with April this morning, so it could be that it didn’t even get to you. I don’t mean to cause any problems.”

  The secretary flipped page after page in the notebook, then looked up. Her face was red with embarrassment. “There’s nothing here, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t bring in the note.”

  Jeannie made a “What can you do?” gesture.

  Twenty

  Sheridan and Lucy stood waiting at the curb when their father pulled up to the school to pick them up. Sheridan held Lucy’s hand. It was darker than it had been all day, and mist tendrils reached down from the sky like cold fingers. It wasn’t really snowing, but ice crystals hung suspended in the air.

  “Where’s April?” her dad asked, as Lucy climbed over the bench seat to the narrow crew-cab backseat and Sheridan jumped up beside him.

  “Mom came and got her this afternoon,” Sheridan said, pulling the seatbelt across her.

  Her dad nodded, and began to pull away from the curb. Then something seemed to hit him and he slammed on the brakes. Lucy yelled “Dad!” to admonish him, but Sheridan turned in her seat to face her father.

  “Sheridan,” he said slowly, enunciating clearly, each word dropping like a stone. “How do you know your mother came and got her?”

  “I heard the announcement from the other room,” she said. “The secretary came on and asked for April to report to the principal’s office. That’s what they do.”

  Lucy came to her older sister’s defense. “They made an announcement like that for me when Mom came and got me to take me to the dentist. Whenever they do that it means your mom or dad is waiting in the office for you.”

  “Did you see her?” her dad asked. “Did you see your mom?”

  Both girls shook their heads. Sheridan had seen a woman in a green dress pass by her classroom door. But it wasn’t her mother. She had no idea why their father seemed so upset. Then she realized what must have happened—Jeannie Keeley must have come for April and taken her away. Sheridan clapped her hand to her mouth. She had been afraid something like this would happen. Her parents had never spelled out what was happening with April, but Sheridan knew whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

  “Your mom was at work all day at the library and the stables,” he said.

  And their sister April was gone.

  Sheridan began to sob, and Lucy joined her. Sheridan felt awful. April was her responsibility because she was the oldest. Her dad closed his eyes tightly, then opened them and drove. He did not say It’s okay, it’s not your fault.

  “I need to call your mother,” her dad said, his voice resigned.

  Joe lay awake in bed and waited for Marybeth to join him. It was late, and he was exhausted. He watched Marybeth brush her teeth and clean her face in the vanity mirror. He could hear the murmur of late-night television from downstairs, a nightly habit of Missy Vankueren’s.

  Marybeth had amazed him once again that night. By the time Joe got home, Marybeth had again channeled her rage and frustration into usefulness. Her ability to push her emotion aside and develop a strategy was stunning, Joe thought.

  She had calmed Sheridan and Lucy as well as she could, and made dinner for them all. While she cooked, she methodically called both th
e principal and the sheriff to notify them of what had happened. She left after-hours messages with the county attorney and three local attorneys, asking them to call her in the morning.

  While the girls bathed and watched television with Missy, Marybeth filled a suitcase and several boxes with April’s clothing and toys. At the first opportunity, she announced to Joe, they must make sure Jeannie received April’s belongings. She said it with a kind of chilly determination that had unnerved him.

  “Jeannie got April before we could prepare our little girl, or kiss her goodbye,” Marybeth said. “I will never forgive her for that.”

  Missy always thought—and often said—that Marybeth would have made an excellent corporate lawyer if she hadn’t married Joe Pickett and started having children. Now Joe could see what an efficient and cold-blooded lawyer she could have become.

  Marybeth turned the vanity light off and came to bed. Joe held her.

  “We’re going to get April back,” Marybeth said through gritted teeth. “We’re going to get her back, Joe.”

  Three times during the night, Marybeth left the bedroom. Joe slept so fitfully that he woke up and noted her comings and goings each time. He knew what she was doing. She was checking to make sure that her other two girls were still there.

  Twenty-one

  On Friday night, the public meeting on road closures in the national forests was held in the cafeteria of Saddlestring High School, home of the Wranglers. Joe Pickett arrived late. He parked in the last row of cars in the lot and shuffled through vehicles toward the building. It was bitterly cold, with a clear sky. The stars looked blue-white and hard, and he could hear the rattling hum of an overworked power transformer mounted on a light pole. A set of fluorescent pole lamps cast chilling pools of light on the snow and ice in the gravel lot. The storm predicted by the National Weather Service had skirted the Bighorns and slammed full-force into the Tetons, the Absarokas and the Wind River mountains to the west. Twelve Sleep Valley had received only a skiff of light snow and single-degree temperatures.

  Before he had left his home office, Joe had sent a report to his supervisor outlining the doubts he had about Nate Romanowski’s guilt, and saying that he thought there was a connection between Lamar Gardiner’s murder and Birch Wardell’s crash in the foothills. Joe wrote that he didn’t have enough information to take his suspicions to the sheriff or Melinda Strickland, but that he hoped to draw out the driver of the light-colored vehicle. He ended his report to Terry Crump by saying that due to personal circumstances relating to his foster daughter, he might need to request time off in the near future. Then he had sent the e-mail, gathered his parka, walked out through the cold to his pickup, and left to attend the meeting.

  Judging by the number of vehicles in the parking lot, Joe expected a full house inside for the meeting. A blast of warm air greeted him as he opened the cafeteria door, and he could see that the room was filled with locals sitting in metal folding chairs. This was definitely an outdoor crowd—hunters, fishermen, outfitters, ranchers. Most of the men wore heavy coats, boots, and facial hair. Melinda Strickland was speaking from behind a podium. Maps were taped to the wall behind her. Joe worked his way toward the back of the room. A few men Joe knew in the audience nodded greetings to him.

  Behind him, Melinda Strickland paused in her briefing about the meeting’s protocol.

  “Glad you could make it, Joe!” Melinda Strickland said with surprising enthusiasm.

  Joe waved and felt his face flush as nearly a hundred men turned in his direction before they settled back around toward the podium. For a moment, Joe wondered why she had greeted him so warmly and publicly. When a number of the faces lingered on him with narrowed eyes, he realized why. It was Melinda Strickland’s way of announcing to the crowd that he was on her side. The realization left him cold.

  Several men were already standing behind the crowd, their backs to the wall, surveying the participants. Two of them, one with curly gray hair and another with hawkish eyes, stood with their arms folded, barely contained smirks on their faces. Joe recognized them as the men who had asked Sheridan for directions. Elle Broxton-Howard, looking smashing in a black outfit with a fleece vest, was there as well. She scribbled earnestly in her pad. Robey Hersig, the county attorney, still wore his jacket and tie from the office and stood off to the side of the crowd, against the wall. He slid over to make room for Joe.

  “Any progress with April?” Hersig asked in a whisper out of the side of his mouth.

  Joe shook his head. “Nope.”

  “It’s a matter of time,” Hersig said. “That’s what I told Marybeth. If we can charge Jeannie with abuse or neglect, we can move in and get April back.”

  Joe turned his head and stared at Hersig. His neck was hot. “That’s great, Robey. Let’s hope April gets abused or neglected. We’ll pray that happens.”

  “Joe, you know what I meant.”

  Joe didn’t respond.

  “Come on, Joe.” Hersig leaned over and gently prodded Joe in the ribs. “You know what I meant.”

  Joe nodded, but didn’t look over. Joe knew he was being unfair to Hersig but he didn’t care. He was haunted from lack of sleep and frustration.

  Hersig was an officer of the court, and Joe’s opinion of the legal process right now was poor and getting worse. He was ashamed of the whole system, and angry with the people who made it up. Joe knew Robey wanted to be helpful, but there was little he could do. The situation with April seemed practically hopeless. Judge Potter Oliver’s order was valid, if outrageous. An attorney Marybeth had hired (and who they didn’t know how they would afford) was filing paperwork to contest the order. If they were successful in a preliminary hearing, a full hearing would be scheduled. But even without inevitable postponements or delays, the hearing wouldn’t likely be for weeks or possibly months. The slow grind of the legal system was diabolical in circumstances like this, Joe had concluded. Who even knew if Jeannie Keeley would be around by the time a hearing was scheduled? And what would happen to April in the meanwhile? Marybeth had called the school to see if April was there, but Jeannie had kept her out of school and out of sight both Thursday and Friday, telling the school that April was sick with some kind of virus.

  With each day, April seemed farther away. The emptiness in their house seemed to shout at them. But the shouting would eventually fade. The most frightening thing of all, Joe thought, would be the day when he didn’t wake up thinking of April—because too much time had passed. The thought depressed him and he shook his head in an attempt to dispel it. He tried to focus on the public meeting at hand.

  Melinda Strickland was still talking, holding forth on the policy of road closures. Her voice seemed distant, disconnected, and singsong. Her hair color had been changed again, and was now off-orange.

  “What’s she saying?” Joe asked.

  Hersig quietly scoffed. “What we are witnessing is an amazing display of the most sanctimonious, dysfunctional, cover-your-ass, bureaucratic horseshit I have ever heard. And if you quote me on that I’ll deny it.”

  Taken aback, Joe turned to listen to Melinda Strickland. A retired electrical contractor had been called on, and he asked why a certain road in the Bighorns had been closed to vehicle traffic. He said that he had used the road all his life when he hunted, and that his father had used the road for fifty years before that.

  “I wish I had a choice in the matter,” Strickland was explaining to the crowd, “But it’s not as simple as that. I understand what you’re saying, but the policy is in place and there is very little we can do to change it at this juncture. We don’t have the manpower or resources to reevaluate grazing leases or timber allotments in this fiscal year . . .”

  Hersig was right, Joe concluded. Strickland was talking in circuitous paths leading nowhere, with confusing little asides thrown in to divert attention from her meaning just as it threatened to become clear. Joe knew that, like Lamar Gardiner, Melinda Strickland had much more discretion in decision-making th
an she let on. And like Lamar Gardiner, Strickland blamed all of her own unpopular decisions on unnamed, faceless higher-ups, nebulous policy documents, or public meetings that had never been public and that might never have actually occurred.

  “ . . . strike a balance between resource management, recreation, the health and welfare of the ecosystem itself . . .”

  As she droned on, several hands were raised in the audience. She looked over the tops of the hands as she spoke, as if she couldn’t see them. Joe could sense the rising tension in the room. Men fidgeted and cleared their throats. Many sat back with their arms crossed, staring at the ceiling.

  “ . . .A thorough, top-to-bottom assessment needs to be completed in order to determine the biodiversity needs of the resource in regard to input from a wide range of scientific and recreator-derived opinions . . .”

  Finally, one of the men who had raised his hand stood up. As he did so, his flimsy folding chair fell over backward. The sound caught Strickland’s attention, and her face betrayed a flash of terror.

  It was Herman Klein, the rancher Joe had shared coffee with the previous week. He introduced himself to Strickland and the room.

  “Public comments need to be submitted in advance so we can address them, and I don’t believe your name is on the list,” she said to Klein. “Additional comments can be registered after the presentation. So please, sir, take your seat.” Two Forest Service employees who flanked Strickland at the podium stood up to reinforce her statement. But they did so reluctantly, Joe noticed.

  Klein put his hands in the front of his jeans in an aw-shucks manner, but he didn’t sit down. “Ms. Strickland, I’ve been to enough of these things to know that by the time the ‘public comment’ period rolls around we’ll be either out of time or your decision will have already been made.”

  His words sent a ripple of laughter through the room. Joe watched Melinda Strickland carefully. Her face betrayed fear and contempt. She hated this. She hated the fact that someone would interrupt her.