Winterkill (32 page)

Joe didn’t hear anything behind him until something clubbed his neck and sent him sprawling, and turned the world into exquisite aquamarine.

H
e
could hear gunshots, shouts, and motors being started somewhere in another world. He wasn’t part of it anymore. There was a dull hum in both ears, and a stinging feeling in his face. When he opened his mouth to breathe, there was no air. He opened his eyes to beautiful, comforting light blue. Then his anger, and the pain, brought him back and he realized he was where Munker had left him—facedown, smothering in deep snow.

Joe thrashed in the snow, moaning, not sure for a moment where
up
was. As his senses surged back, he felt not only the dull roar at the base of his skull but also the searing bite of his broken rib, the barbed-wire slashes on his legs—and an overwhelming, almost physical hurt he felt over April.

W
hen
Joe was able to sit up, Nate Romanowski was gone, but Joe could hear the whine of a snowmobile from where he had stood. And on the road, Dick Munker mounted an undamaged sheriff’s department snowmobile and sped off toward the hill. Nate hadn’t hit Munker with that first shot after all.

J
oe
staggered through the deep snow until he reached the packed powder of the roadbed and climbed back up. The stench of the burning trailer filled his nose and mouth.

As he reached his snowmobile, Melinda Strickland and Elle Broxton-Howard ran toward him. Strickland’s little dog leaped like a jackrabbit to keep up with her in the snow. Joe noted that Barnum was huddled over a disabled snowmobile and didn’t look his way.

“Joe, I . . . ,” Strickland started to say, but Joe ignored her. He noticed that both Stickland and Broxton-Howard’s
clothing winked from bits of glass in the folds and creases. He guessed they had huddled on the floorboards of the Sno-Cat when the windows were shot out.

He pulled his shotgun from beneath the elastic cords on the back of his snowmobile and racked the pump. Strickland stopped, puzzled.

Fire a warning shot,
she had told Munker. His eyes bored holes into her, but she looked back blankly.

“Get out of the way,” Joe said, starting the engine. Both women quickly and clumsily stepped aside for him as he roared into the trees on Munker’s tracks.

As he topped the rise where he had last seen Romanowski, he looked over his shoulder at the skirmish line and compound far below. Black-clad members of the assault team stood around their disabled vehicles, some gesturing, most still. In the compound, the big roll of black smoke obscured the remains of Wade Brockius’s trailer. The rest of the compound was now empty of Sovereigns.

F
ollowing the two
snowmobiles through the trees was easy, and Joe did it through half-lidded eyes that were burning in their sockets and with a twelve-gauge shotgun across his lap. Munker had stayed exactly in Nate’s tracks, packing the trail even harder, and Joe knew he would gain speed on both of them.

He had no helmet, and the wind and snow tore at his exposed face and ears and pasted his hair back. He paid no attention to it, concentrating instead on the track in front of him and anticipating the first sight of Munker ahead. He had no doubts about what to do when he caught up to him. Focus was not a problem now.

He followed the tracks across an open meadow and back into the dark timber on the other side. Because he couldn’t hear anything but his own motor, he couldn’t tell if Munker had Nate in his sights or if he, like Joe, was simply following the trail.

The trees got thicker, flashing by on each side, and Joe had to slow down to stay in the track and not to hurtle into the timber. Nate had obviously tried to shake Munker by diving into the deep woods, making hairpin turns around pine trees, and ducking under low-hanging branches. The trail zigzagged
through the trees, sometimes banking sharply near trunks or outcroppings.

The single thought in Joe’s mind was to find Dick Munker and kill him. He knew it would mean prison. He didn’t care. Today Agent Dick Munker of the FBI needed to die by Joe’s hand.

The terrain suddenly cleared, and the track went up the middle of a treeless hill. Joe hit his accelerator and the snowmobile whined, blindly surging up the rise.

He was going so fast, that he almost didn’t see the tracks he was following split in two as he plunged down the hill’s other side. One track had turned sharply to the right and the other plunged straight down the steep ridge into a dark and tangled mass of violently uprooted trees. Out of control, Joe rocketed down the slope, trying to avoid the trees while decelerating with one hand and crushing the handbrake with the other. He caught a glimpse of a smashed snowmobile below him, pieces of it scattered in the tangle of downed trees, and the black shape of a body in the snow. The body was sprawled out flat on its back, as if making a snow angel. When Joe’s machine finally stopped, his left front ski was six inches from Dick Munker’s head. Hanging in the air directly in front of him, where his windshield should have been, was the broken-off end of an upturned lodgepole pine that would have skewered Joe if he hadn’t been able to stop.

Joe killed the engine and climbed off his snowmobile. He instantly sunk into the snow to his waist. Using a heavy-legged swimming motion, he approached Dick Munker.

It was clear from the two sets of tracks what had happened. Munker had followed Romanowski’s trail over the ridge and plunged down into the maw of a violent forest blowdown. Trunks and branches had been wrenched and snapped, and were nakedly exposed. A stout branch had impaled the hood of Munker’s snowmobile and thrown Munker into the blowdown. Romanowski had no doubt led him to this spot deliberately.

Munker’s eyes were on Joe as he waded to him. Joe detected no movement from Munker other than in those eyes. Only when he was practically on top of Munker did Joe catch the ripe scent of hot blood and notice the steam wafting from the crotch of Munker’s white camouflage suit. Joe stared. It
was Munker’s upper thigh, near his groin. A sharp branch had pierced Munker’s suit.

“Didn’t make the turn, huh?” Joe said dully, lowering the muzzle of his shotgun to Munker’s forehead. Both heard the dull snap of the safety being thumbed off.

Munker started to say something, but decided against it. His sharp eyes moved from the muzzle to Joe’s face. Joe noticed that a little clump of snow was packed into Munker’s nostril.

“You murdered my daughter,” Joe said. “No one in that compound needed to die.”

“She wasn’t even yours, was she?” Munker asked weakly. His eyes showed contempt.

Joe grimaced. This man
wanted
to die.

“Joe, don’t do it.”

It was Nate. He must have shut off his machine in the trees and struggled back through the snow on foot to check on Munker. Joe hadn’t heard him coming.

“Why shouldn’t I, Nate?” Joe said, feeling strangely giddy. He looked down to see if Munker was moving yet, trying to slap the shotgun away. But all that moved were Munker’s sharp eyes.

Nate stopped to catch his breath. He leaned against one of the downed trees, puffing steam that billowed like a halo around his head.

“Because you’re not scum like Munker. You don’t murder people in cold blood.”

“I do now,” Joe said. God, his head hurt.

“You’re a good guy, Joe. You don’t do things like this.”

Joe looked up. “I’m tired, Nate. I just lost a daughter.”

Nate nodded. “If you shoot this guy, who will take care of Marybeth? What about Sheridan? And Lucy? Her name’s Lucy, right?”

“Right.” Joe thought Nate was being horribly unfair.

“Who will take care of them? They need their dad.”

“Goddamn you, Nate.”

Romanowski grinned slightly.

“Besides, I think Munker here severed an artery, and he’s probably a few quarts low already. My guess is that he’ll go naturally and quietly in your heroic attempt to rescue him.”

Joe looked down, and knew that Nate was right. Munker’s eyes blazed, but his face was ashen. His lips were already blue. The snow packed into his nose had not melted.

Joe cursed bitterly, raising the shotgun.

“Can you help me lift him up, please?” Joe asked Nate.

A
s
Joe roared away from the blowdown with Dick Munker slumped in the seat in front of him, he had second thoughts about Nate’s idea. As far as Joe could tell, Munker’s life was worth nothing. Joe couldn’t think of any value that Munker had brought into the world. Nevertheless, he gunned the engine, hoping against hope that he could deliver the FBI agent to the skirmish line alive. It was more than acceptable if Munker died while Joe transported him, he thought. But he had to give it his all. He couldn’t deliberately slow down and dawdle while Munker suffered. That went against his grain, as much as Joe hated the man. Joe knew it didn’t make sense, but he would have rather blasted Munker with his shotgun than be responsible for his death because he’d driven back in a half-assed way.

But Dick Munker died before Joe even got him as far as the meadow they had crossed. Joe knew it the instant it happened, because Munker stiffened and then went limp and heavy and nearly fell off of Joe’s snowmobile. Joe stopped, and used his bungee cords to secure the body before continuing on to the compound.

J
oe
Pickett leaned against his snowmobile and watched the deputies load Munker’s body into the back of the only Sno-Cat that was still operational. Across the fence, the compound was deserted. Joe watched a few of the assault team check out trailers and RVs that were now empty. Nate’s intervention, and the chaos that resulted, had allowed the Sovereigns to proceed with a clearly well-rehearsed escape plan. They had vanished, leaving their belongings and vehicles. Nate’s disabling of almost all of the sheriff’s Sno-Cats and snowmobiles had prevented any attempt at chasing them down. All that was left were their deserted homes, dozens of exiting snowmobile tracks, and the smoking remains of Wade Brockius’s trailer.

“You tried to save him,” Elle Broxton-Howard said, putting her arm around Joe.

“Yup,” he said. He hadn’t been thinking about Dick Munker.

“Too bad about that little girl.”

Joe shook her arm off and walked far away from her, far away from everybody. He couldn’t even speak. He stared at the smoldering carcass of the trailer. It had scorched the snow and exposed the earth beneath it—dark earth and green grass that didn’t belong here. Melted snow mixed with soot had cut miniature troughs, like spindly black fingers, down the hillside. When he stared at the black framework, all he could see was the face of April Keeley as he last saw her. She was looking out of the window, her head tucked under the chin of her mother. April’s face had been emotionless, and haunted. April had always been haunted. She had never, it seemed, had much of a chance, no matter how hard he and Marybeth had tried. He had failed her, and as a result, she was gone. It tore his heart out.

Joe stood there as the snow swirled around him, then felt a wracking sob burst in his chest taking his remaining strength away. His knees buckled and his hands dropped to his sides and he sank down into the snow, hung his head, and cried.

T
wo months had
passed, and except for an occasional morning dusting, it hadn’t snowed. Even in March, normally the snowiest month of the year in Wyoming, it didn’t snow. A combination of high-altitude sunshine and warm Chinook winds that swept down and roared across the face of the Rockies had melted the snow on the valley floor, although there were still six to ten feet of snow in the mountains.

At the Sovereign Citizen compound, the disabled Sno-Cats still sat as silent hulks. The empty trailers, campers, and vehicles of the Sovereigns hadn’t been removed either, and probably wouldn’t be until late spring, when the mountain roads were open and tractors and flat-bed trucks could get up there.

Except for investigators and a very few journalists, there had been almost no visitors to the compound since it had erupted. For all practical purposes, it looked the same as it had on that day in January.

A
n
internal Forest Service investigation had been launched immediately to determine whether or not policies had been breached and regulations followed. The FBI announced a similar investigation into the actions of Special Agent Dick Munker.

Robey Hersig had tentatively put out feelers to the attorney general in Cheyenne about an investigation on a statewide level. He was rebuffed on the basis that it was a federal matter.

Wade Brockius was among those found in the burned trailer. His body lay on top of Jeannie Keeley’s as if he had been trying to shield her, and April’s body was found beside her mother. Eunice Cobb’s body was also found and identified. She had been the victim who had run burning from the trailer. The Reverend B. J. Cobb announced that he intended to file a wrongful-death suit against the U.S. Forest Service and the FBI, and that he would start a legal expense fund based at his church. Cobb had been told to expect that the suit would take as long as five years to culminate in a trial, if it ever went that far.

Cobb had noisily objected to the “internal” nature of the investigations carried out by the federal agencies. He called for an independent investigation instead and proposed that the U.S. Justice Department should form a task force. His proposal gained no traction.

In the meantime, Melinda Strickland had remained in Saddlestring. She had been named interim district supervisor, and had taken over Lamar Gardiner’s office and desk. Two female employees had already filed a grievance, claiming that Strickland had hurled books at them in a rage.

J
oe
and Marybeth Pickett paid for the funerals of April and Jeannie Keeley with money they didn’t have. Although they still had legal bills from the lawyer they had hired to get April back, they went further into debt to pay for the plots and coffins in the Twelve Sleep County cemetery. The plots were located next to the grave of Ote Keeley, the murdered outfitter who had been buried in his pickup four years before. The fact that they paid for the funerals raised some eyebrows in Saddlestring, and it became a topic of conversation at the Burg-O-Pardner restaurant.

T
he
“Shoot-out at Battle Mountain,” as it had been dubbed, faded quickly as a mainstream national news story, and didn’t linger much longer than that within the state and region, except within pockets of the suspicious and dispossessed. Robey
Hersig explained to Joe that the reasons for this had been the inaccessibility of the compound, the lack of media buildup, more pressing war news, and the absence of television coverage. Without visuals, Hersig said, there was no news. He gave the late Dick Munker credit for that.

Therefore, what happened at Battle Mountain didn’t rank in the national conscience with Waco, Ruby Ridge, or the Montana Freeman standoff. Although the incident raged through Internet forums and simmered beneath the surface throughout the Mountain West, the lack of good information relegated the story to the back pages of newspapers. Robey told Joe that a few of the Sovereigns who had fled that day had contacted journalists in different parts of the country to offer their stories, but were generally deemed less than credible.

Melinda Strickland was hailed as a hero in a long-form feature in
Rumour
magazine written by Elle Broxton-Howard. Another feature in
Us
magazine—“Lady Ranger Bucks the System and Saves a Forest”—showed a photo of a shoeless Melinda Strickland on the couch in her home, with streaky blond hair, hugging her dog. A cable-television news crew came to Saddlestring and did a feel-good feature on Broxton-Howard and Melinda Strickland for a newsmagazine show.

As a result, Broxton-Howard’s U.S.-based publicist parlayed the segment, which showcased his client’s good looks, her on-screen presence, and an accent that seemed to have grown more refined and pronounced since she left Saddlestring, into a series of talk-show and twenty-four-hour cable-news bookings. Elle Broxton-Howard could now be seen on television several nights a week as a paid analyst specializing in gender and environmental issues.

Since January, Broxton-Howard had left three messages for Joe on his office answering machine. She still wanted to do his story, she said. She “smelled” a six-figure movie option. They could work out the details later, when they met, she said. Joe had yet to return her calls.

One night, while Marybeth was idly channel-surfing, Broxton-Howard’s face appeared on their television screen. Marybeth scowled at Joe and quickly changed the channel.

B
ud
Longbrake’s wife, the woman who had been Nate Romanowski’s secret lover and who had gone on a world cruise, sent divorce papers from somewhere in Nevada to her husband. He signed them. A week after that, Missy Vankueren moved to the Longbrake ranch.

N
ate
Romanowski had vanished. Joe was surprised to find out that Nate had not been identified by the assault team as the man who had fired on them. His bulky snowmobile suit and helmet had disguised him. They mistakenly assumed that the shooter had been a Sovereign who had somehow flanked them. Ballistics reports couldn’t positively identify the huge slugs that had disabled the Sno-Cats because the bullets were damaged beyond recognition. Joe realized that only two people could have positively identified Nate Romanowski as the shooter—Dick Munker and himself.

J
oe
told state and federal investigators everything he knew about the incident that day and the buildup to it, with the exceptions of Nate Romanowski’s identity and the conversation Joe had had with Romanowski as Dick Munker lay dying. He knew that his account was at odds with those of other witnesses, namely Melinda Strickland, Sheriff Barnum, Elle Broxton-Howard, and a half-dozen deputies. Joe was the only witness to claim that Munker’s “warning shot” damaged the propane pipe, or that Munker had manufactured the hostage situation on the fly when told that Spud Cargill was in custody. According to the others, the warning shot had been exactly that, as far as they knew. No one else claimed to have seen a severed copper gas line or heard escaping propane gas. Joe didn’t think the members of the assault team were lying—after all, they had been bundled up and wearing helmets that blocked sound, and none of them had been as close as Joe was on the road to the trailer and the severed pipe. The heat of the fire had damaged the pipe that Joe claimed was severed, literally melting it into the snow so Joe had no way to prove his allegations. Despite this, he hoped that his account would not be dismissed.

Several of the investigators asked Joe pointedly, and with obvious skepticism, if he wasn’t too far away to see with
certainty what had happened when Munker fired. They also speculated aloud that perhaps his personal interest in the entire event—and his obvious animosity toward Dick Munker and Melinda Strickland—had colored his interpretation. The working theory reached by DCI and the FBI was that the trailer burned from the accidental or intentional ignition of materials within the trailer itself.

One of the FBI investigators, a small man named Wendt, told Joe in confidence that he believed him. He also told Joe that his account would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove. Wendt said he was afraid that the internal investigation would be written from the point of view that Munker was a hero who had died in the line of duty. However it went, he said, Joe would also be commended for his attempt to save Munker’s life.

Joe didn’t hold out much hope, but part of him wanted to believe that further investigation would somehow corroborate his version and justice would be done. He hoped that a deputy or other member of the assault team would confirm his account, or at least parts of it. Someone, he thought,
must
have heard the hissing of gas. Maybe time, and guilt, would make someone step forward. But he knew how unlikely that was, and he knew from experience how law-enforcement personnel stuck together and told the same story.

F
or
Joe and Marybeth Pickett, the two months following the death of April went by in a kind of bitter, dreamy fog. Joe relived the two days leading up to the deaths over and over, picking apart his feverish moves and decisions. He deeply regretted not pressing Cobb further when he’d first gone to his house, and not questioning Cobb’s reference to “sanctuary” that day. Cobb had misled him, but Joe had allowed himself to be misled. Because he hadn’t understood what Cobb was hinting at, he had gone on an errant trail and wasted almost sixteen hours when he could have intercepted Spud coming down the mountain. It gnawed at him.

Many nights, he didn’t sleep more than a few hours at a stretch. Several times, when he couldn’t sleep, he would wander downstairs to his office and rewrite his letter of resignation. He had once sealed it and stamped it—only to retrieve it
from his OUT basket the next morning. He had also written—but not submitted—a request to be reassigned to another district. The thought of sharing Twelve Sleep Valley with Melinda Strickland was loathsome.

Marybeth was mercurial, her moods swinging from pure anger to a resigned depression that was new, and disturbing, to Joe. On the nights when Marybeth locked herself in the bedroom, Joe cooked dinner for his girls and told them that their mother wasn’t feeling well. Sheridan had stared him down on that one, and had known without asking that he was using illness as an excuse.

Once, late at night, as Joe printed out the latest version of his resignation letter, he heard sounds from down the hallway. Marybeth had led Sheridan and Lucy into Joe and Marybeth’s bedroom to sleep, and was shuffling things in the children’s bedroom with a vengeance. When Joe found her, she was in the process of removing every last sign of April. She had bagged all of April’s clothes, school papers, and toys, and was now stripping the bed. He watched with sadness as she scrubbed down the walls near April’s bed, as if to remove any physical evidence of April having been there.

“I haven’t cleaned her sheets since she left,” Marybeth told him, her eyes strangely alert. “I don’t know why I haven’t done that. But I need to wash them and put them away now.”

Joe had watched her, not knowing what to do. When Marybeth finally paused long enough to cry, he held her.

“I’ve never hated a woman as much as I hate her,” Marybeth said. Joe knew she meant Melinda Strickland.

Joe had never seen her so angry, or so bitter.

“She’ll go to jail. The investigation will prove that,” Joe assured Marybeth, stroking her hair and hoping that somehow he was right. “It won’t bring April back, but at least Melinda Strickland will pay.”

Marybeth leaned her head back and met his eyes. “She never even sent a note. Think about that, Joe. Think how cold her heart is.”

Joe just nodded, knowing there was nothing to say.

O
n
the way home from the last basketball practice of the season, Sheridan sat quietly in the cab of the pickup, absently
patting Maxine’s head. Joe, driving, cast wary glances at the sky that filled the top half of his windshield. Thunderheads were moving in. It looked like snow.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”

“Is Mom going to be okay?”

Joe paused. “She’s going to be all right. It takes a while.”

“I miss April, too.”

“So do I, honey.”

“I know we’re not going to get April back,” Sheridan said. “But I do want my mom back.”

Joe reached over and put his hand on Sheridan’s shoulder. Her hair was still damp from practice.

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

Joe nodded.

“Are you and Mom mad at me for not watching April closer that day in school? For letting Jeannie Keeley take her away?”

Joe was hurt by the question, and pulled quickly to the side of the road so he could turn in his seat and face her.

“No, honey, of course we’re not angry with you,” he assured her. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I was responsible for her,” Sheridan said, fighting tears that seemed to come, Joe thought, much more easily than they used to.

“That’s never even crossed our minds, Sheridan,” Joe said. “Never.”

As they pulled out into the road, Joe restrained a heavy sigh. He felt badly that he hadn’t seen this coming, hadn’t thought to talk to Sheridan about this earlier.
Of course she would feel this way,
he thought. Despite her maturity, despite what she’s been through,
she’s still a child,
he thought. And she naturally wondered if the difficulties her parents were having were somehow her doing.