Cold Wind jp-11

by C. J. Box

  Schalk signaled to Jack Pym to cue the PowerPoint projector, and once again the list of phone calls between Bud and Missy was shown.

  She said, “This document was produced by the phone company. It lists a series of telephone calls between your cell phone and the main landline at the Thunderhead Ranch or from Missy Alden’s private cell phone. Do you recall the telephone conversations that took place?”

  Joe noticed that Bud hadn’t turned his head to look at the screen.

  “Mr. Longbrake?” Schalk asked gently. “Can you please turn your attention to the screen?”

  As if suddenly awakened, Bud jerked on the stand and swung his head over at the list, squinting.

  Judge Hewitt cleared his throat and held up an outstretched palm to Schalk to wait on the next question. Hewitt said, “Mr. Longbrake, are you all right to continue? You seem to have a little bit of trouble focusing on the proceedings here. Do you need a glass of water or a break before we continue?”

  Bud looked dolefully at Hewitt. “Nah, Judge, I’m okay,” he said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep,” Bud said. Then: “I’m real sorry, but sometimes I kind of fade in and out. I think it’s getting worse. It is getting worse. You see, Judge,” Bud said, reaching up and tapping his temple with the tips of his fingers, “I got this inoperable brain tumor the size of a baseball in my head.”

  Marybeth gasped and dug her fingers into Joe’s knee.

  Dulcie Schalk stood her ground, but she was clearly shaken. She shot a murderous look to Sheriff McLanahan that Joe caught. Either she wasn’t aware of the tumor, or McLanahan-who had supervised the depositions-had downplayed its effect on Bud to her.

  “I have good days and bad days,” Bud continued, “and believe it or not, this is one of the good days. I’m okay. Sometimes I just need things repeated, is all.”

  Hewitt’s face softened as Bud talked. He said, “Then let’s continue.” To Schalk, he said, “Please keep Mr. Longbrake’s condition in mind as we proceed.”

  “I will, Your Honor,” she said.

  “Please repeat the question,” Hewitt said.

  She asked him again if he recalled the phone conversations.

  He said, “Yep. Every damned one of ’em.”

  Joe, despite himself, sighed with relief. Bud seemed to be back, at least temporarily.

  Schalk was also visibly relieved. She looked down at her pad for her next question. As always, she was faultlessly prepared and her questions scripted to elicit a clear narrative in the mind of the jurors.

  Marybeth prodded Joe with her elbow, and when he looked over, she chinned toward Missy at the defense table. Missy had tears in her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. When she looked up at Bud, her face was not angry but sympathetic.

  Joe was surprised. Didn’t she hate this man? He thought about the offer Missy had made Marybeth minutes before. He looked at his mother-in-law in a sudden new light.

  And under that light, other things fell into place. The reason for Bud’s mood and personality changes now made sense. Joe recalled the collection of medications in Bud’s bathroom over the bar, and kicked himself for not noting the names of the drugs. Then there was the fact of Bud Jr. and Sally coming back. Plus, Orin Smith’s reference to a rancher who was ill. And Keith Bailey saying Bud was “under a shitload of pressure and pain right now.”

  He wanted to punch himself for not putting it together.

  Dulcie Schalk said to Bud, “Let’s begin with this first phone call back on July 2 that was placed from the Thunderhead Ranch phone to your cell phone. Can you tell the jury who called you and what was discussed during that call?”

  “Yep.”

  Joe, like the jury and everyone else, waited. Bud just sat there.

  “Mr. Longbrake,” Schalk said, “can you tell the court the subject matter of that July 2 call?”

  “I can.”

  “Well, please tell the court, Mr. Longbrake.”

  Bud rotated his head as if stretching out a stiff neck. He said to her, “Miz Schalk, can I just cut to the chase?”

  Behind Joe, one of the bar regulars chuckled at the response.

  “I’d rather we do this methodically, Mr. Longbrake,” Schalk said, gesturing with her legal pad filled with questions.

  Bud squinted at the pad and said, “I might be dead by the time we get through that whole damn list.”

  Several people in the galley laughed at that, and Hewitt looked up in warning. The judge turned back to Bud and seemed to assess his condition, then said to Schalk, “Given the circumstances and Mr. Longbrake’s condition, let him cut to the chase. The prosecution can follow up with background questions later if necessary.”

  Schalk said, “Your Honor, in order to establish-”

  “I know how much you adore your lists,” Hewitt said, cutting her off. “But if we can move along here, we might avoid a very uncomfortable situation.”

  His meaning was clear: Let’s get this over before the old man dies right here on the stand.

  “Cut to the chase, Mr. Longbrake,” Hewitt said.

  “Thanks, Judge,” Bud said. He took a moment to gather his thoughts, then cleared his throat. Joe found himself holding his breath waiting.

  “Here’s the deal, Miz Schalk,” Bud said. “I’m dying. I knew I was sick, but I didn’t know how sick. I know I shoulda gone to the doctor years ago when I started getting headaches and blacking out, but I just thought I was hung over. Now it’s too damned late and nothing can be done. My brain is being replaced by a damned orange. But I can’t go to my grave knowing what I know without coming clean.”

  Dulcie Schalk stood there helplessly, with her arms at her side, pleading with her eyes to the judge.

  Bud said, “I shot that son-of-a-bitch.”

  Joe felt Marybeth dig her fingers into his leg so hard it made him cringe.

  Bud said, “I planned it for a while, and I got madder every time one of those god-awful turbines went up. I started calling McLanahan there telling him Missy was up to no good. Setting her up. I knew McLanahan would fall for it because he’s dumber than a box of rocks and he needs to get reelected somehow.

  “I knew how to get into the house through a basement window that didn’t lock and I took that Winchester out of my old gun case. I drove right up on old Earl and shot him in his goddamned heart, which was so small I shoulda used a scope. Then I threw him in the back of my pickup and drove him to his goddamned wind farm and hoisted him up and chained him to the blade of that windmill. And to get back at all Missy done to me, I hung it all on her by putting the rifle in her car and calling the sheriff.”

  Joe was stunned. He wasn’t alone.

  Bud turned to Missy. He said, “I’m so sorry, Missy. I wanted to make your life as miserable as mine was. But something changes when you find out you’ve got maybe a few weeks to live, and that’s what the doctor told me this weekend. It tends to focus the mind, and I figured that if I can’t savor my revenge, then what’s the damned point of getting it? Plus, if I’m meeting God in a few days, I don’t want to have to explain what I done, because there’s no way He will let me off the hook. So I was gonna say you asked me to kill him, and when I said no, you did it yourself. But now I just can’t.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said directly to her. “I don’t feel bad about Earl. He was a prick. But damn, I never shoulda blamed it on you.”

  Schalk stood stock-still, her mouth open. Hewitt was frozen behind the bench, his eyes blinking madly. Sally Longbrake suddenly shrieked a long, mournful wail.

  Missy sat back in her chair with her fists clenched at her chin, her eyes streaming tears.

  Behind Joe, one of the Stockman’s regulars said, “It’s like fuckin’ Perry Mason!”

  Bud Longbrake wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He looked pale and spent. He said to Judge Hewitt, “Judge, I said what I wanted to say. But right now I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden.”

  Marcus Hand stood up slo
wly and said, “Your Honor, I move for an immediate acquittal.”

  Dulcie Schalk seethed. She strode the courtroom floor and slammed her pad of questions on her table, her eyes boring holes into Sheriff McLanahan, who looked away.

  Joe sat astonished. It was like Perry Mason. All that buildup and a last-minute courtroom surprise? He was happy for Missy-well, happy for Marybeth, anyway-but something loomed just beyond the peripheral vision of his mind’s eye.

  Why did he feel like a large rock was about to drop on his head?

  SEPTEMBER 15

  Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

  (OCCAM’S RAZOR: “THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION IS USUALLY THE CORRECT ONE.”)

  39

  The rock fell the next day.

  It was the season opener for pronghorn antelope in the rest of the hunting areas throughout Twelve Sleep County, and Joe called to Tube and they were out of the house two hours before dawn.

  As he rolled down Bighorn Road in the dark, he called dispatch. “This is GF53 heading out.”

  “Morning, Joe,” the dispatcher said.

  He ate his sack lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple on the same sagebrush knoll he had used weeks before when he discovered Earl Alden’s body. He tore off small pieces of bread crust and fed them to Tube while he looked over vistas of sun-drenched terrain complicated by sharp draws and hidden arroyos. The mountains filled his rearview mirrors.

  He could be seen for miles. His presence on the perch, his green Ford Game and Fish pickup, was enough to remind most of the hunters to keep their noses clean and follow regulations.

  All the work that had once been going on at the wind farm had ceased. He saw no Rope the Wind employees or vehicles out. The Tinkertoy assemblage of wind turbine parts sat where they had when he first saw them. And the assembled turbines turned slowly in the wind, generating empty power that went nowhere.

  He’d spent the morning checking hunters and inspecting their harvest, but he’d done it by rote and felt disconnected to his task the entire time. Joe’s mind was still in the courthouse, if his body wasn’t.

  Cars and pickups were scarce on the two-lane blacktop of the state highway leading up to the mountains. He paid no attention to them unless they slowed and left the pavement and turned into the hunting areas.

  For some reason, though, he noticed the yellow van towing a trailer on the highway, and swung his spotting scope toward it. It was the same van he’d seen leaving Earl Alden’s funeral. The back of the van was covered with bumper stickers. The van was moving slowly, as if the driver were looking for something. Joe zoomed in on the plates: Montana. Then he focused on the driver.

  Bud Longbrake Jr. was at the wheel. His sister, Sally, sat next to him, slumped over. Joe sighed and sat back, assuming the vehicle would continue on. But then it slowed and turned onto the gravel road and under the elk antler arches to the Thunderhead Ranch. Were the siblings out to take a last look at the place they grew up? And why take a trailer?

  The van stopped at the gate, and Bud Jr. got out and worked the keypad. It swung open.

  He watched the van roll down the distant gravel road until he could confirm that it took the road that led to the former Longbrake ranch. He watched it through his scope until all that was left of its appearance was a long trail of settling dust.

  He was wondering how Shamazz knew the keypad combination when Marybeth called on his cell phone.

  “Mom called,” she said. “They’re having an acquittal party at the Eagle Mountain Club tonight.”

  “An acquittal party?”

  “That’s what she called it. She wants to know if we’ll come.”

  Joe winced.

  She said, “If she asks us about her offer, what are we going to say?”

  “You mean, do we want to take over a multi-million-dollar ranch and never have to worry about financial difficulties ever again in our lives?” Joe said.

  “When you put it that way. ” Marybeth said, but didn’t finish her sentence. “Did you hear about Bud?”

  “No,” he said, expecting the worst.

  “He’s in a coma. No one expects him to come out of it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Joe said.

  “It’s awful. It’s just awful. I suppose I should feel good about all this-not about Bud, of course, but about how the trial went-but I guess I can’t wrap my mind around it yet.”

  “Me neither,” Joe said, thinking about Bud Jr. and Sally driving to the ranch with a trailer attached.

  When it hit him, he felt something cold and sharp shoot through his stomach and chest. The calls between Missy and Bud. The rifle in her car. Bud’s last-minute revelation and recanting. Missy’s odd behavior from the arrest to the end of the trial. As if.

  He said, “I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to check something out.”

  “So what about tonight?”

  “I may not be able to make it. I’ll let you know,” he said, closing the phone.

  He tossed the rest of his sandwich out the window, put his pickup in gear, and nosed the vehicle off the knoll in the direction of the wind farm.

  Joe parked next to the wind turbine where he’d discovered Earl Alden’s body. He got out and called for Tube to follow him.

  His dog was ecstatic to be out of the truck on such a fine clear day. He wasn’t as pleased when Joe looped a chain around his middle and started hoisting him up inside the tower.

  40

  A few minutes before midnight, Joe saw a sweep of headlights across the interior walls of the house and heard the crunch of gravel outside in the ranch yard. The garage door opener growled, and he stood up in the dark, approached the window, and parted the curtains to see Missy’s Hummer enter the open door. She was alone, it appeared. Good. He doubted she’d been able to see his vehicle, which was hidden behind the shop.

  He checked to see if anyone was right behind her, but there were no other headlights on the entrance road. Yet. He sat down on a plump leather couch burned tastefully with Thunderhead and Longbrake Ranch brands, checked the loads in his shotgun, and waited.

  In a minute, sounds came from the kitchen; the clinking of glass and the scuffling of cabinets being opened and closed. As he approached, he could hear her humming lightly to herself.

  Joe stood at the threshold of the kitchen in the dark hallway, watching her fill the coffeemaker with grounds and water and pull down a half dozen mugs and set them on the counter. She held a full glass of white wine and sipped from it as she worked. She looked stunning, Joe thought, in a snug dark blue dress and oversized pearls. She’d kicked her heels off on the floor and padded around on small bare feet.

  When she saw him standing there, she gasped and let out a squeak and dropped the glass to the floor.

  “Joe!” she said, hopping back from the broken glass and spilled wine. “What are you doing here? You scared me to death.”

  He said, “I assume Marcus Hand and his crew are on the way. How long before they get here?”

  She looked up at him, quickly regaining her composure. Her brows furrowed and her face became the porcelain mask she’d perfected. “They won’t be long. Everybody had plenty to drink, and I wanted to have some coffee ready. You missed the party.”

  He nodded and entered the kitchen and put the shotgun on the counter next to him, letting her see it.

  She shook her head, then let some anger seep through the mask. “Does Marybeth know you’re here? What are you doing, measuring the drapes? Checking out your new office?”

  He tried to smile, but couldn’t. He said, “I saw Bud Jr. and Sally today on their way to move in to their new digs. You don’t actually expect them to live there and work it, do you?”

  A flash of terror-finally! — shot through her eyes and her nose flared. She didn’t breathe for a moment. Then, almost as quickly, she raised her chin and set her mouth with bitter resignation. “No,” she said, “I expect them to sell it back to me after a reasonable length of tim
e. The old place was appraised at six million dollars, you know.”

  Joe said, “You probably could have bought their silence for less than that.”

  “Probably,” she said. “But Bud told them the price, and I suspect they’ll hold me to it.”

  Joe nodded. He said, “It’s just you and me here. You can’t be retried for murder, and we both know it. So walk me through how it all worked.”

  She looked at him as if she was determined not to give an inch.

  He said, “When you decided to make your last upgrade, your last trade-up, and get rid of Earl, you contacted Bud. You knew he’d take your call because for some reason he still loves you, despite everything. And you offered him his ranch back if he’d take Earl out of the picture. After all, you still had this place and all the other property holdings you and Earl combined when you got married. You probably even hinted that the two of you could get back together someday. Am I right so far?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  Joe said, “And Bud said of course, he’d do it. But he was sick. He didn’t know at the time how bad off he was, and it turned out he wasn’t sure he was physically capable of pulling it off. But he sure wanted that ranch back, if not for him, then for his kids. He always wanted them to have it.”

  She shook her head and said, “Even though they shit on him all their lives, he still wanted them to have it.”

  “That kind of selflessness just doesn’t work for you, does it?” Joe asked.

  Her eyes drilled into him. “Some children these days can be so ungrateful. They feel entitled to things they didn’t earn.”