Winterkill (6 page)

During the game, while the sand ran through the one-minute timer and the designated “artists” drew frantic sketches on pads for their teammates to guess at, Joe found himself paying special attention to April. She was the most determined artist on his team, and she drew very deliberately. When her pictures were complete, she was deliriously happy with herself, and she beamed. Joe had noticed before that April didn’t have the lively features and sparkling eyes that Sheridan and Lucy had. Marybeth had said that “the sparkle
got beaten out of April early on.” He remembered that phrase as he watched her now.

After a round that Joe and Missy won by correctly identifying April’s drawing, April whooped and punched the air with pure joy.

“I like it that you’re getting more normal,” Lucy said to April. “You’re not so weird anymore.”

“Lucy!” Marybeth said, alarmed.

But April didn’t explode and start swinging, or withdraw and freeze her face into a pinched glare, as she had in the past. Instead, she smiled and reached across the table and mussed Lucy’s hair. Both girls laughed. Joe thought April seemed flattered. Sheridan beamed with relief, her eyes sliding from her mom to her dad.

During the second game, with Joe about to draw and Sheridan poised to flip the timer over, Joe suddenly looked up.
“Listen,”
he said.

“What?” Missy asked, alarmed.

“Do you hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s right,” Joe said. “The wind stopped.”

“Too bad,” Sheridan chimed, turning the timer over and setting it down. “This is fun.”

“Sherry’s right,” Lucy smiled, her eyes wide. “Storms are good for our family.”

Joe smiled and sipped his bourbon, enjoying the moment despite the ticking of the timer. April tugged on his sleeve, her face was urgent.

“DRAW SOMETHING!”
April pleaded. “We’re running out of time!”

I
t was two
days before they could get back onto the mountain, and they needed three borrowed Sno-Cats to do it. The meeting point was at a clearing outside Winchester where the road ascended into the mountains. There were more people in the assemblage than Joe expected.

After the weather delay, the DCI agents had arrived in their state plane at the Twelve Sleep County Airport with two additional passengers, a U.S. Forest Service official and a female journalist. The Forest Service official had also brought two small dogs with her, a Yorkie on a leash and a cocker spaniel that she clutched to her breast. Joe noticed an attractive, dark-haired woman with the official who seemed to be keeping a close eye on the proceedings. A lone Saddlestring
Roundup
reporter, a twenty-three-year-old blonde wearing a Wyoming Cowboys basketball parka and driving a ten-year-old pickup, approached the gathering carrying a notebook opened to a blank page.

The Forest Service official intercepted the reporter in mid-stride, and an interview was begun. Joe was helping a deputy hook his snowmobile trailer to the back of a Sno-Cat, and he was close enough to overhear their exchange.

“My name is Melinda Strickland,” the Forest Service official said. She spelled her name for the benefit of the reporter.

“I’m here on special assignment on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service as the head of a special investigative team that needs to remain classified and off of the record for the time being.”

“Why?” the reporter asked vacantly. Joe wondered the same thing. The Forest Service was not a law enforcement agency, although individual rangers had some regulatory responsibility within their jurisdiction, and while Joe assumed it was possible, he had never before heard of a “special investigative team” sent by the agency. He thought it more likely that the agency would ask the FBI to intervene.

“You’ll be told in due course, if we confirm some of our suspicions,” Strickland said.

The reporter obviously didn’t know how to react. The woman sounded so . . . offical.

The Yorkie pulled at Melinda Strickland’s pant cuff, but was ignored.

“You’ll be the first to get the information when we decide to release it, but if you burn me by printing something before that, I’ll have your ass,” Melinda Strickland said, her eyes narrowing.

This got Joe’s attention, and he watched the reporter nod meekly. The brittle edge in Strickland’s voice seemed out of place and unnecessarily severe.

What,
Joe asked himself,
is she implying, beyond the murder itself? What suspicions is she referring to?

The Yorkie, frustrated, growled and pulled on Strickland’s pant leg, nearly knocking her off balance. She wheeled, and Joe watched with alarmed interest as she drew back a foot, seemingly about to kick the dog hard in the ribs. But something stopped her, and she quickly looked up to see Joe looking at her. To the side, the Yorkie yipped and cowered.

“That dog is going to get seriously hurt if he keeps it up,” Melinda Strickland said through gritted teeth. “I picked him up at the shelter to be a companion for Bette, here,” nodding at the cocker spaniel she held in her arms. “But it
isn’t
working out.”

Joe said nothing. Strickland turned from him back to the reporter, whom she dismissed with a few short words. Joe watched Strickland turn and look at the idling Sno-Cats as if nothing had just happened.

Joe was taken aback. She had restrained herself at the last possible moment, but it was obvious to him by the Yorkie’s reaction that he’d been kicked before. The incident left Joe feeling unsettled.

The DCI agent-in-charge, Bob Brazille, turned away from another conversation, and walked up to Joe. Brazille had an alcoholic’s mottled face and heavy-lidded eyes, and he made the introductions.

“Melinda Strickland, this is Game Warden Joe Pickett and Sheriff Bud Barnum.”

With a chilly smile, Melinda Strickland stepped forward and extended a gloved hand from under the belly of the cocker spaniel. Barnum shook it; Joe followed suit, but more warily. He expected her to mention the Yorkie again, but she just smiled as if nothing had happened.

Melinda Strickland had wide hips, medium-length copper-colored hair, a long sharp nose, and dark eyes that made Joe think of a raven’s. Wrinkles framed the corners of her mouth like parchment parentheses. She smiled with her mouth only—the eyes remained dark. Her manner of speaking contained lilt and chuckle, as if she were leading up to a punch line that didn’t come.

“I understand there are some folks up here who aren’t real crazy about the Forest Service, or the U.S. government, you know?” she said, as if sharing common knowledge. “And that Lamar Gardiner wasn’t well liked because he strictly interpreted Forest Service policies.”

“I doubt that was the reason,” Joe answered, puzzled.

“I’ve been
hammered
by calls from people who want to know what’s going on up here,” she said, as if Joe had just agreed with her assessment.

“We need to get going,” Barnum interjected, and for once Joe was grateful for the sheriff’s brusqueness.

I
n
a rumbling, clanking, slow-motion procession, the tracked vehicles ascended on the still-unplowed road. Joe Pickett was
in the one in front, sitting next to the driver, with two DCI agents wedged into the backseat. Joe’s snowmobile and trailer-sled were hitched to the back of the Sno-Cat. Breathing diesel fumes and keeping the windows clear of fogging with a towel, Joe pointed out the turnoff from the highway into the forest, which had been transformed by the heavy snowfall. In the second Sno-Cat were the sheriff, his two deputies, and a photographer from the Saddlestring police department. The third vehicle contained Melinda Strickland, the attractive journalist shadowing her, two more DCI agents, and Melinda Strickland’s two dogs.

The sky was sharply blue and the sun’s reflection off the cover of snow was blinding. They passed from sun into shadow and into sun again as they approached the Wolf Mountain bowl. Snow ghosts—pines so packed and coated with snow that they looked like frozen spectral beings—stood sentry as the three battered, spewing vehicles passed below.

“So he grabbed your handcuffs and locked you to the steering wheel, huh?” Bob Brazille asked Joe from the back. Brazille was overdressed in a mammoth down parka, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

“Yup,” Joe answered over the engine noise. His voice was flat.

“That son-of-a-bitch, huh?” Brazille said.

“Turn here,” Joe told the driver.

“The Feds are hot about this, judging by the temperament of that Strickland woman,” Brazille continued, shouting over the roar of the engine. “Governor Budd got a call from some Washington mucky-muck. That’s probably why Strickland is here. They don’t like it when a federal employee gets whacked. The governor showed special interest in you, I was told. How does he know you?”

Joe felt a hot, embarrassed flush spread up his neck. “I arrested him a few years ago for fishing without a license.”

Brazille’s eyes widened, and he shook his head from side to side. “So you’re the one, huh? I heard about that.”

Joe nodded and looked away.

After a half-hour of silence, Brazille tapped Joe on his shoulder to get his attention.

“That info-babe with Strickland is a looker, eh?” Joe agreed, although he refused to admit that to Brazille. The journalist with Melinda Strickland was tall and thin and dressed in chic ski-wear: black tights, faux fur-lined boots, and a puffy yellow parka. She had short black hair, green eyes, very white skin, high cheekbones, and bee-stung red lips.

“What did you say her name was?” Joe asked.

“Elle Broxton-Howard,” Brazille said, using a mocking British accent. “She’s actually American, but she’s lived in London for fifteen years or so. Some stuffy Brit magazine has her writing a story on Melinda Strickland.”

“What’s so significant about Melinda Strickland that they’d do a story on her?” Joe asked.

“I asked Elle Broxton-Howard that,” Brazille answered, butchering the accent even worse than before. “She said Melinda Strickland heads up some task force on the increase of violence against federal land managers by local yay-hoos ‘out here in the American outback,’ as she put it. And Melinda’s a woman in a man’s world, so yada-yada-yada.”

Joe turned to ask Brazille what “increase of violence” he was referring to, but the driver downshifted and the racket within the cab was too loud to continue the conversation.

T
he
Sno-Cat nosed over the rim, and the wooded bowl was spread out in front of them. The brilliance of the snow hurt Joe’s eyes. The snow had changed everything; the melded, muted greens, grays, and blues of the meadows and tree-covered folds of before were now portrayed in stark black and white, as if someone had adjusted the contrast of the picture to its most severe. The day had warmed up and the sunshine was lustrous. Pinpricks of reflected light flashed like sequins from the snow in the flats and meadows.

The next thing Joe observed was that something was wrong in the meadow where the elk had been killed. The area should have been undisturbed, but it was criss-crossed with tracks. Tapping him on the shoulder to get his attention, Joe asked the driver to stop, and swung outside the Sno-Cat. Standing on the running board, he raised his binoculars. Behind him, he heard the other two vehicles approach and stop, their motors idling.

It looked like a circus down there. He could see where the snow had been dug up and piled in places, and spots where the snow was discolored.

Joe reentered the cab and closed the door. He turned to Brazille. “When you boys are through with me I need to take my snowmobile down there and look around.”

“What’s the problem?” Brazille said.

“It looks like somebody found those elk,” Joe said.

“Who in their right mind would be up here?” Brazille asked. “Who would give a shit about dead elk in these conditions?”

Joe shook his head. He was wondering the same thing. He turned back toward the front. “Me,” he said, more to himself than to Brazille.

“If we find whoever it was, we’ve got to question them about Lamar Gardiner’s murder,” Brazille said. “Maybe they heard something, or saw something.”

Joe nodded.

“Hell,” Brazille said, raising his eyebrows, “Maybe they were the ones who did it.”

J
oe
led all of them through the heavy timber toward the tree where he had found Gardiner. The snow was thigh-high, with the consistency of flour. The men grunted and cursed behind him, and Joe felt a thin film of sweat growing between his skin and his first layer of clothing.

“How much farther?” Deputy McLanahan called out, between breaths.

“It’s right up ahead,” Joe answered, gesturing vaguely. It was hard to get his bearings, and he hoped he wouldn’t walk beyond the tree.

“You
carried
Lamar all this way?” Barnum asked, his voice wheezing. “Jesus!”

“The snow wasn’t as deep,” Joe explained.

“Can we rest for a minute? I need some air,” Melinda Strickland said, supporting herself against a tree trunk while she got her breath.

“Plus I’ve got some important calls to make,” she said as she pulled a cell phone from her coat. She looked at the phone. “Shit, I don’t have a signal up here.”

“Don’t you remember me saying that I couldn’t get a signal from up here?” Joe asked, annoyed that she hadn’t listened during the briefing that morning.

“Let’s take a break before proceeding,” she said, as if Joe hadn’t spoken.

“You’d think she was leading the investigation,” Barnum grumbled, although not loudly enough for Strickland to hear him. But the reporter, Elle Broxton-Howard, caught his remark and shot him a withering look.

“I don’t think you’re being fair to her,” Broxton-Howard sniffed. “She is an amazing woman.”

“Right,” Barnum coughed, rolling his eyes toward Joe.

“When a man takes charge like that, he’s a leader,” Broxton-Howard said. “When a woman does it she’s a nasty bitch.”

Joe waded away from them in the fresh snow. He felt a sharp tug in his stomach.
First, an elk slaughter. Then a murder. Then a storm. Now this Melinda Strickland. What in
hell
is her official involvement?

H
e
found the tree, spotting it by the glint on the twin shafts of the arrows. He had been concerned that the killer might have returned and dug them out of the soft wood with a knife blade. Finding the arrows brought a sense of relief.

Joe stopped and pointed. “I found him right there.”

The party stopped and caught their breath. Billows of steam rose from them and dissipated above. The morning was eerily quiet, almost a vacuum. The storm had stilled the birds and the squirrels, who usually signaled the presence of strangers. The only natural sound was the occasional hushed
whump
of heavy snow falling from tree branches. One of the DCI men slid his day-pack from his shoulders and let it drop at his feet before unzipping it to dig out his evidence kit.

Joe stepped aside while the sheriff’s officer and DCI men approached the tree.