Winterkill

by C. J. Box

  “She’s evil.” Nate frowned. “Leaving her on the street will result in somebody else getting hurt wherever she lands.”

  Joe thought about it. “That’s as far as I’m willing to go, Nate.”

  “You’re sure?” Nate asked.

  Joe nodded. He was well aware of the fact that he was crossing a line. But, he thought, it was a line that needed to be crossed in these circumstances. If he was wrong, there would be a world of trouble for him. If he was right, there could still be trouble. The easy and safe thing would be to simply let things run their course. But that was something he couldn’t do.

  “Maybe a little more,” Joe said, feeling both elated and guilty at the same time.

  “There’s my boy.” Nate smiled and nodded and clapped Joe on the back of his coat. “Then we need to persuade her to retire and leave,” Nate said. “So we need leverage. How well do you know her?”

  “Not well enough,” Joe said. “I’m not sure anyone really knows her.”

  “But you know her well enough to have a good idea about what she likes, what’s important to her, right?”

  Joe thought about it. He thought of two things. They went inside to Joe’s office and Joe asked Nate to wait a moment. He went upstairs to check on Marybeth. She had been crying. Joe tried to comfort her, but she didn’t want comforting. Seeing her like that steeled Joe’s determination to do something. He left Marybeth, went downstairs to the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of bourbon, dropped ice into two waterglasses, and carried it all into his office. He shut the door.

  For the next two hours, they discussed it. Eventually, they agreed on a plan.

  It began to snow.

  Thirty-five

  At 4:52 the next afternoon, Joe Pickett entered the U.S. Forest Service office in Saddlestring and sat down on a vinyl couch that looked as if it had been purchased during the Ford Administration. While he brushed snowflakes off the manila folder he had brought with him, he smiled at the receptionist.

  “I’m here to see Melinda Strickland.”

  The receptionist glanced at the clock on the wall. The office would close in eight minutes. She had already put her purse on her desk and gathered up her coat. Joe knew from experience that no one in the office worked a minute past five. It was the same situation at most state and federal offices.

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “She should be,” Joe said, “but I doubt it.”

  “Your name?”

  “Joe Pickett. And please tell her it’s important.”

  The receptionist was a new employee, someone recently hired by Melinda Strickland to replace the last receptionist, who was one of the two women who had filed the grievance. Joe recognized her from a previous job she had held in a local credit union. She was unsmiling, and squat, brusque. He watched her as she rapped on Melinda Strickland’s closed door. Then she went inside and shut the door behind her.

  Joe heard the murmur of voices, one of them raising in pitch. In a moment, the door reopened and the receptionist returned to her desk for her purse and coat.

  “She asked that you make an appointment for later in the week.”

  “I see,” Joe said. “Did you tell her it was important?”

  The receptionist glared at Joe.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell her it was about her dog?”

  She was suddenly flustered. As Joe had suspected, the receptionist had been there long enough to realize the special relationship Strickland had with her cocker spaniel.

  “No. What about her dog?”

  Joe shook his head. “I need to talk with Ms. Strickland privately, please.”

  The receptionist huffed and turned on her heel and went back into Strickland’s office. Behind him, Joe heard a brief rush of employees turning off lights and closing office doors. It was five, and they streamed out of the building so quickly that the outside door never shut between them.

  Melinda Strickland opened her door, clearly agitated. She stood to one side to let the receptionist back through so she could go home. Strickland’s hair was the coppery color it had been when Joe first met her three months before.

  “What is this about Bette?”

  Joe had forgotten the name of her cocker spaniel. He stood up.

  “Do you have a minute?” he asked.

  Strickland’s eyes flashed. She hated surprises, but she loved her dog. Joe knew that.

  “Ms. Strickland . . . ?” the receptionist asked, poised behind her desk.

  “Yes, go on home,” Strickland snapped at her employee. “I’ll lock things up in a minute.”

  Joe pushed by Melinda Strickland in her doorway and walked into her office. The room was in a shambles. Papers, notebooks, and mail were piled on the chairs, on the desk, and in the corners. She had made quite a mess in a short period of time. He cleared a hardback chair of papers and sat down across from her desk to wait for her.

  Peeved that he had entered her office uninvited, she strode around her desk and sat down facing him. “What?” she demanded.

  He coolly looked around the room. The only things of a personal nature on the side wall were a framed cover of Rumour magazine and a photo of Bette.

  “Joe, I . . .”

  “Your actions killed my daughter,” Joe said simply, letting the words drop like stones.

  She recoiled as if stung.

  “You and I both know what happened up there on the mountain,” he said, holding her eyes until she looked away. “Your agency exonerated you. But we’re talking about the real world now. I was there. You caused her death, and the death of three other people.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she spat. “You are a sick man.” She looked everywhere in the room except at Joe.

  “You didn’t even send my wife a note.”

  “Leave my office this instant, Warden Pickett.”

  Joe leaned forward and cleared a spot on her desk for the manila folder he had brought with him. He placed it there but didn’t open it.

  “There’s no way you can bring April back,” Joe said. “But there are a couple of things you can do to at least partially absolve your guilt.”

  Her hands thumped on the desktop. “I’m guilty of nothing!”

  “Of course, it’s not even close to enough . . . ,” Joe continued, opening the folder as if Strickland hadn’t spoken, “ . . . but it’s something. It will make my wife feel better. And it will make me feel better. It might even make you feel better.”

  “Get out of my office!” Strickland screeched, her face contorted with rage. It was clear to Joe she wasn’t used to people ignoring her orders.

  Joe went on, directing his attention again to the paper he was reading. “The first document here is a press release creating the April Keeley Foundation for Children,” he said. He glanced up and saw that she was listening, although her face was white and tense. “The initial twenty-five thousand dollars for the Foundation is to be donated by you from the trust fund your father set up for you. If you can give more than that, it would be even better.”

  He searched the document so he could quote directly from it. “The purpose of the Foundation is to ‘advocate for better protection and legislation for children in foster care.’ You’ll be a hero again. Maybe there will be a story in a magazine about you not only saving a forest but also protecting foster children.”

  “What is this?” she said. “Where did you get that?”

  “I wrote it up last night,” he said, shrugging. “Press releases are not my specialty, but I think it’s okay.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Release it under your signature. Then call one of your press conferences and announce it.” An edge of sarcasm had crept into his voice, and a slight smile tugged at his mouth.

  Strickland was clearly aghast. Joe hadn’t seen her face so contorted before.

  “And something else,” he said, removing the other document from the folder. “Your resignation letter. You c
an sign it and announce it during your press conference. It will look like you’re quitting in order to do good work for children. Everybody likes that. The real reason will be our little secret.”

  The resignation letter had been easy to write for Joe. He had simply used the one he had been working on, and changed the names.

  “Sign these, and we can both go home,” Joe said, placing the documents in front of her.

  “This is sick.”

  “No, it’s not sick.”

  “I should call the sheriff.”

  “No, you should sign these documents. There’s a copy for you and one for me.”

  Joe leaned forward in his chair, and any semblance of a smile left his face. “Look, call the sheriff if you want. Tell him I’m threatening you with two pieces of paper. Tell him why this is so upsetting to you, that I would want you to create a foundation for children. That should play pretty well with the media as well, don’t you think?”

  Strickland erupted violently, lashing out with the back of her hand and sending a stack of paperwork that was piled on the edge of the desk fluttering toward the wall like a flock of wounded birds.

  “GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!” she shrieked. “JUST GET OUT!”

  Joe snatched the release and the letter before she could destroy them. Watching her carefully, he leaned back in his chair and shouted over his shoulder.

  “Nate!”

  He watched her eyes as they swung from him over his shoulder toward the door. He heard a shuffle behind him, and watched as her eyes widened and the blood drained from her face.

  Joe glanced back. Nate Romanowski stood inside the office now. He cradled Bette in one arm and held the gaping muzzle of his .454 Casull to the head of the cocker spaniel.

  “Sign your name,” Nate said, “or the little dog gets it.”

  Despite the situation, Joe almost smiled.

  “You’re monsters!” Strickland whispered. “My poor Bette.”

  Joe turned back to her. Silently, he slid the documents back onto her desk. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and took its cap off. Handing her the pen, he said, “Let’s get this done.”

  Relief surged through him as she absently reached out for the pen.

  He turned the documents around and pointed to the blank signature lines. Strickland leaned forward and her hand hovered over the papers for a moment, but then he saw something dark and malevolent wash over her face angrily twist her features. Suddenly, she threw the pen aside.

  “Go ahead and kill the dog,” she snarled. “I’m not signing anything. What’s in this for me? Huh? What do I get out of this? Nothing! Fucking nothing.”

  Joe hoped she was bluffing. But when he looked into her eyes, into the cold fury of madness, he knew she wasn’t. He had horribly miscalculated.

  Behind him, he heard the metallic click of the hammer being pulled back on the revolver.

  But Nate cocking the revolver made no difference. When he looked at Melinda Strickland, he saw a grotesque shell filled with venom and bile. He did not see a glimmer of human feelings. Even the death of her dog, the only thing she appeared to have feelings for, could not break through the armor of her narcissism. He was outmatched, and felt utterly defeated. He knew he wasn’t capable of pushing this any further. To do so would be to join her in her malediction.

  “Nate, let the dog go,” Joe said, sighing.

  “What?” Nate’s voice was hard with anger. “What are you saying?”

  “Let the dog go.”

  “Joe, you’ve got to go through with . . .”

  He rose and turned. “It’s not going to work.”

  Nate narrowed his eyes as he studied the leering face of Melinda Strickland, then came to the same conclusion Joe had. The dog licked his hand.

  Nate released the hammer and shoved his revolver back into his shoulder holster with indignation. He bent and freed the dog.

  “Get out of my office,” Strickland said coldly, triumphantly. “Both of you.”

  Then she called her dog.

  Joe walked past Nate into the reception area. He was crushed, humiliated. Nate joined him a beat later. They stared at each other in the reception area, both confounded by what had just happened.

  “Bette, damn you, come here!” Strickland shouted from inside her office.

  Instead, the cocker spaniel tore through the door and leaped toward Nate. The dog wanted him to hold her again.

  Thirty-six

  Joe Pickett stood at the bar in the Stockman’s and ordered his third Jim Beam on the rocks. While darkness came and the snow fell outside and drinkers entered complaining about the weather, he stared at his face in the cracked mirror.

  He felt impotent and defeated, and the slow warmth of the bourbon spreading through him didn’t assuage his humiliation. When the glass came he threw back his head and drained it, then signaled to the bartender. The man looked skeptically at Joe for a moment, but poured another drink.

  It was probably dinnertime at home, but it didn’t register with him. Pool balls clicked in the back of the bar, but he barely heard them. He realized that somehow he had lost Nate as he walked the three blocks from the Forest Service office to the Stockman’s, and he hadn’t looked around for him until he was seated on the red leather stool. He didn’t want to think anymore. He wanted another drink.

  He had never felt like such a failure. He was a poor father and a poor husband. He hadn’t protected April and she was dead as a result. She had died because of lack of protection, like winterkill. Now, in confronting Melinda Strickland, he had failed April once again.

  Would it have been different if it had been Sheridan or Lucy instead of April? Joe wondered. Would he have reacted differently, been more aggressive early on and not depended on the legal system to work, if it had been one of his own flesh-and-blood daughters up there? Would he have “turned cowboy,” as Nate once put it, if it hadn’t been April? The question tortured him.

  He stared at his face in the mirror. He wasn’t sure he liked what he saw.

  “Waiting for your wife to join you?”

  The question startled Joe out of his malaise, and he spilled his drink on the bar. It was Herman Klein, the rancher. Joe hadn’t seen him walk into the Stockman’s, but he’d been so deep in thought that he hadn’t been noticing much. He was now on his fifth drink, and the bar lights were starting to shimmy.

  “Nope. Have a seat.” Joe recognized the birth of a slur when he said “seat.”

  Klein sat and removed his hat to shake the snow off.

  “I’m glad to see this storm,” Klein said, ordering a shot and a beer and another drink for Joe. Joe ignored the skeptical glare of the bartender, who wiped up the spill with a rag. “We need the moisture. That’s a strange thing to say after this January, but it’s true.”

  Joe nodded. He felt a burbling in his stomach. He wondered if he would need to throw up.

  They drank for a moment.

  “Why did you ask about Marybeth?” Joe said.

  Klein raised his eyebrows. “Because I never see you in here, and I saw her getting out of her van down the block. I just figured you were meeting her.”

  It took a moment for this information to filter through Joe’s lethargic brain. Then he was puzzled. What would Marybeth be doing in town? The kids would have been home from school for the last few hours, and she should have been at home with them. Was she looking for Joe? He hadn’t called her, after all. In fact, he had told her nothing of the plan he and Nate had come up with. It was rare for him not to consult with her, but this had seemed like something she didn’t need right now. Or more rightly, something he didn’t need. In the back of his mind, knowing her feelings, he had been a little afraid of how far she would have wanted to go with Strickland. It wasn’t something he wanted to see in his wife, if he could help it, or something he wanted to give her the opportunity to act upon.

  “How long ago was that?” Joe asked Klein.

  He shrugged. “Half-hour, I guess.”

 
Joe had left his truck at the Forest Service office. Maybe, he thought, she saw it there on her way home from her job at the library and stopped. Uh-oh.

  Hastily but clumsily, he slid off his stool and threw his last twenty on the bar.

  “Gotta go,” he mumbled, sliding his coat up over his shoulders.

  “You need a ride somewhere?” Klein asked, assessing Joe’s condition.

  “I’m fine.”

  Joe pretended not to hear Klein’s protestations as he weaved his way toward the door.

  He spilled out into the darkness, his boots sliding on the three inches of fresh powder on the pavement. He clamped down his hat and buttoned his coat as he walked as quickly as he could down the street.

  If Marybeth saw his pickup in front of the Forest Service office, she would probably go inside. Would Melinda Strickland still be there? If that was the case, Joe could only guess what could happen. I’ve never hated a woman as much as I hate her, Marybeth had said. But Melinda Strickland would surely have left her office right after he and Nate left, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she?

  He wished he were sober.

  He rounded the corner and could see through the waves of snow that a sheriff’s department Blazer, lights flashing, and a Saddlestring Police Department cruiser were parked in front of the Forest Service office. Blue and red wig-wag lights painted the street. The door of the Blazer hung open, as if the deputy had just jumped out. Joe’s truck was still parked in front, as was Melinda Strickland’s green Bronco. Marybeth’s van was not there, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  He did not want to see Melinda Strickland again. Had she called the sheriff on him? Had something happened between her and Marybeth after he’d left?

  Joe approached the building and eased the door open far enough to stick his head inside. The bourbon had made him bold—or foolhardy, he thought. Probably both. Inside, it was just as he had left it, except that Deputy Reed stood in the reception area, his radio raised to his mouth. The Saddlestring policeman sat on the vinyl couch, still bundled in his winter coat, with a vacant, drained look on his face, like he had seen something awful.