Winterkill (19 page)

O
n 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.

J
udging
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 than 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.

“Please excuse me for my stupidity,” Klein continued, “but I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying up there. Those of us not used to speaking in government rhetoric have a hard time following you.” More laughter rumbled through the room.

Joe looked around quickly. All of the faces were turned to Herman Klein. Joe recognized more of the attendees than he had thought he would. Several of Klein’s fellow ranchers were scattered throughout. Outfitters who used the forest for hunting and packing trips were there in full force. Local hunters made up the rest of the crowd. In a hunting community like Saddlestring, that meant doctors, lawyers, retailers, and teachers. Spud Cargill and Rope Latham, the roofers, wore their company jackets with the logo of a winged T-Lock shingle on the backs. Joe remembered them from the First
Alpine Church. But as far as he could tell, there were no Sovereigns in the room. He had wondered if any of them would attend.

Melinda Strickland was falling into a trap that was being baited by Herman Klein. It was the “I’m just a poor dumb country boy” ruse that locals loved to spring on outsiders and especially government officials. Joe recognized the trap from experience.

“My understanding is that just about half of all the land in the state of Wyoming is owned and managed by the federal government,” Klein said, “Whether it’s the Forest Service, or the BLM, or the Park Service, or whatever. In any case, half of our state is run by federal bureaucrats. Not that I have anything against federal bureaucrats, of course.”

The crowd tittered and even Joe smiled. Melinda Strickland stood with her hands on her hips and her eyes cold. One of her employees started to sit down beside her and she shot him a withering look. He stood back up.

“The problem I got with this,” Klein continued, “is that there is no accountability. If all this land was run by the state, or even local politicians, we could vote them out if we wanted to. If it was run by a corporation we could buy stock and go to board meetings and raise hell. But because it’s run by bureaucrats who nobody elected—all we can do is come to meetings like this to hear what you’re going to do to our forests and our countryside.” There were murmurs of assent.

“Excuse me,” Melinda Strickland interrupted. “Excuse me. Our agency manages the resources on behalf of the public. We’re not dictators here, ya know.” She looked to the back of the room for approval. The two men standing next to Robey Hersig nodded to her.

“That may be,” Herman Klein agreed, smiling. “But by saying you’re managing things on behalf of the public you’re basically saying that those of us here in this room who live here
aren’t
the public, because you sure as hell never asked us anything.”

“That’s the purpose of this meeting!” Melinda Strickland countered, exasperated.

“If that’s the case,” Klein asked, “why did you try to shut me up just a minute ago when I stood up?”

“Because there needs to be order,” Strickland said, her face flushed. “We can’t do things based on mob rule.”

Herman Klein feigned surprise. He slowly looked around the room. “This doesn’t look like a mob to me,” he said. “This looks like a group of concerned local citizens who came out on a cold-ass night to participate in a public meeting.”

“Nailed her,” Hersig whispered. “He nailed her.”

Joe nodded.

“This,” Melinda Strickland said, her voice rising and her finger pointed at Herman Klein, “This is an example of the problem. I’ve had a district supervisor murdered and a hardworking BLM employee assaulted because of this kind of hateful attitude.”

“Me?” Klein asked, genuinely hurt. “What in the hell did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything, as far as I know,” she said. “But this kind of antigovernment attitude allows things like that to happen! It practically guarantees that things like that will happen!”

Hersig turned his head and he and Joe exchanged glances. The air had been sucked out of the room. Melinda Strickland had, within a minute, successfully shamed the crowd.

“What are you going to do about those Sovereigns?” someone asked.

Melinda Strickland jumped at the chance to change the subject, and compound her momentum.

“A plan is in place to evict the violators,” she said. “I’m not at liberty to explain the steps that are being taken, other than to say that a well-thought-out, strategic plan is in place that will end in the desired results.”

Several people in the crowd clapped with approval. While they did, Herman Klein quietly sat back down.