Winterkill (11 page)

Joe shifted in his chair, uncomfortable.

“How can I prove you didn’t murder Lamar Gardiner?” Joe asked. “They’ve got your bow and the arrows, you were seen coming down from the mountain that afternoon, and you’ve got a motive. You’ve got to give me something to go on.”

Romanowski snorted. “I
was
coming down that road. I was coming from the Longbrake ranch, where I had returned a certain item of clothing to Mrs. Longbrake.”

“A certain item of clothing?” Joe asked.

“Her black thong underwear. I found it under a juniper bush at my house. I guess it had been there since the summer.” Romanowski paused. “Mary Longbrake and I had a certain
thing together. She would come out to my place when Bud was out of town. I’d wait for her naked in my tree. When she got out of her truck, I’d come down and get her. We would do it outside. Sometimes on my picnic table, sometimes on the bank of the river, sometimes
in
the river. She was a lonely woman, and I helped. Hell, I made her
whoop
!”

Joe didn’t know whether to laugh or call for Reed to let him out.

“So did you tell the sheriff?”

“I did,” Romanowski sneered. “He said he called Mary and she swore she’s never heard of me. When she talked to Barnum she was packing for an around-the-world cruise and planned to be gone for a few months. She’s lying about me, I understand that. Not about the cruise, though. Besides, Bud would pound her into jelly if she came clean.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “What about the bow and the Bonebuster arrows?”

Romanowski nodded. “I’ve hunted with a bow, and I own that brand of arrows. But it’s not my weapon of choice. Even for a lowlife like Gardiner, I would use my weapon of choice.”

“Which is?”

“My .454 Casull,” Romanowski said, smiling. “A five-shot revolver made by Freedom Arms in Freedom, Wyoming. It’s the most powerful handgun in the world. It’s four times more powerful than a .44 Magnum.”

Joe remembered hearing about it, and seeing the butt of the revolver in a holster at Romanowski’s home.

“And the motive?” Joe asked, as if playing the game through.

“I already told you, I would have likely popped Gardiner given the circumstances, but I wasn’t there. He was a bureaucratic little turd, floating in a bowl. He shut off the roads to where I trap falcons, and imposed policies and restrictions on the citizens of this county that were heavy-handed and dictatorial. I sincerely disliked the son-of-a-bitch, but somebody got to him first. And good for them.”

Joe thought:
That ought to convince a jury.
The cadence of Nate’s words was odd as well—a series of short, edgy pulses. Joe couldn’t decide if he was credible or not.

“When we came to your place,” Joe said, “You seemed to be expecting us.”

Romanowski nodded.

“But when Barnum and Melinda Strickland started accusing you of Lamar Gardiner’s murder, you looked confused. Did I read that right?”

“Absolutely,” Romanowski said, nodding. “Absolutely.”

“So explain.”

Romanowski sighed, and looked away. “Let’s just say I got into a little trouble a year and a half ago in Montana. I know there’s a warrant, but I wasn’t sure when they’d find me. So when the vehicles pulled up out there, I figured my time had come to go back to the Treasure State.”

“What did you do up there?” Joe asked.

Romanowski winced. “I don’t know how it can help me to tell you.”

“You’re probably right about that,” Joe said. “But you’re asking me to trust you. How can I trust you if you won’t tell me the truth?”

A slow smile tugged at Romanowski’s mouth. Joe waited.

Romanowski turned back. “I was in the Special Forces in a unit that doesn’t officially even exist. If you try to check up on me, you won’t find anything about it. I was involved in some things in other countries. Some of the countries are friendly, but most of them aren’t. It was covert, and it was nasty.

“But I had a conflict with a supervisor,” Romanowski said, weighing and measuring each word in an attempt, Joe thought, to tell his story without getting too specific. “I guess I don’t deal with authority all that well, especially when there’s a philosophical difference with regard to policy. Like when I get sent out to do things to people simply to further the career of a supervisor, and not to serve my country. In my opinion, at least.”

Joe nodded for him to go on.

“So I quit, which isn’t an easy thing to do in the first place. But I sent some letters about my supervisor before I left, and I named names and literally told them where some bodies were buried. That didn’t make me very popular with my superiors, and they tracked me down. I knew they would, eventually.”

Romanowski gazed at the ceiling, pausing. Then he lowered his sharp eyes until they locked with Joe’s.

“The people they sent after me met with some trouble in Montana. Up by Great Falls. A car crash or something. Somebody told the local authorities that I might have been involved, might have seen something. But they couldn’t find me, because I had left the state.”

Joe sat silently as Romanowski finished, trying to judge what he had just heard. Romanowski was a convincing speaker, although his admission that he “didn’t deal with authority all that well” didn’t help his case. Lamar Gardiner had certainly been “an authority.”

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.”

T
hat
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.

T
he
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?”