C. Box - Cold Wind

Joe sat back, listening. While Hand talked, the thighbone bounced up and down in his mouth.

Hand said, “The second type is what I call the ‘makers-of-things.’ These are your entrepreneurs, the risk-takers. Most of them started out humble and figured out a way to make a product or a service that customers want to buy. These are the truly creative, mad geniuses. They’re quintessentially American . They produce real things-widgets, ideas, devices, inventions, you name it. Many of them started out at the lowest level of their fields and rose up. Although they aren’t self-destructive like the trust-fund babies, they’re fighters for what they’ve earned. They’d rather go to court to prove their innocence than take a plea and pay a fine or go home. I usually end up in arguments about my fee with them, for example,” he said, smiling.

Hand paused. “Earl Alden is a charter member of the third type. Earl is-was-a skimmer. He’s like many of the Wall Street and Big Business types we’ve heard so much of in recent years. Earl started with some money, but he learned early on to work the system and take a cut. He produced nothing of record and made nothing of note. But he worked the politics and figured out ways to be there when the money flowed. He didn’t care if the gusher of cash made sense or if it was moral or ethical. He just concentrated on the gusher itself. And apparently Earl saw the value of ethanol before the farmers did. Ethanol uses more energy to produce than it generates, and it deprives the Third World of corn to eat, but the politicians and the agribusiness firms benefit. And he foresaw wind power before the ignorant ranchers could. Earl was the best skimmer I ever studied.”

“I find that repugnant,” Marybeth said softly.

“If it wasn’t Earl,” Hand said, “it would have been someone else. At least Earl was here to take care of your mother, and your family to some degree. And for once he was actually building something himself instead of skimming only.”

Missy didn’t weigh in. The method of wealth had never interested her, Joe thought, only that her man had it. She was similar to her ex-husband in that she couldn’t see past the gusher.

Joe said, “I learned a lot from Bob Lee and I’ve got some leads to track down. Bob is a bitter man. He doesn’t exactly mourn the untimely death of Earl Alden. He thinks Earl cheated him out of that windy ridge-which he didn’t. Earl had a better use for the ridge than grazing cows.”

“When you say he’s bitter,” Hand said, learning forward and plucking the thigh out of his mouth and tossing it aside, “the question is how bitter? Bitter enough that maybe I should send my investigators over to have a talk with him as well?”

Joe shrugged. “He’s a tough old bird. That might not work out in your favor. Plus, he’s not in good shape. He’s on oxygen and can barely move around. There’s no way he hoisted Earl’s body to the top of that turbine.”

“Is there anyone around who could have done it?” Hand asked, arching his eyebrows.

“Well,” Joe said, “he has a son.”

“Wes,” Missy said, as she narrowed her eyes. “He’s a big guy. He’s some kind of biker or hot-rod type. I think we’ve run that redneck off our land more than once.”

Joe held up his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m making no accusations here. The Lees are solid folks and don’t you dare smear them without solid proof, which we don’t have. My point is Earl had enemies other than his lovely wife.”

“Shame on you,” Missy hissed toward Joe. “Of course he did.”

“Have the sheriff and the comely Miss Schalk interviewed the Lee family?” Hand asked, gently sweeping his plates aside with his arm so he could steeple his fingers on the table and think aloud.

“No,” Joe said, nodding toward Missy. “They’ve had blinders on. They’ve got one suspect and they’re bound to convict her come hell or high water.”

“Thanks to Bud,” Marybeth said.

Missy said, “Yes, thanks to Bud.”

Joe turned to his mother-in-law. “How did the rifle end up in your car?”

Her eyes flared, and she took a breath to speak. Joe expected Marybeth to intervene, but she didn’t. She was just as interested in the answer.

“Never mind that,” Hand interjected. “Missy, don’t answer. It’s water under the bridge. Obviously,” he said to Joe, “whoever framed her put it there.”

“Don’t you want to hear from your client?” Joe asked.

Hand sat back, incredulous. “No,” he said finally, as if Joe had asked the most ridiculous question in the world. Then with a wipe of his hand through the air, he changed subjects.

“This is all getting very interesting,” Marcus Hand said. His eyes were lit up. “Do you realize what you’ve just done, Mr. Pickett?”

Joe and Marybeth looked over. “What?”

“You’ve established another theory,” Hand said, resting his chin on the top of his steepled fingers. “You’ve introduced a reasonable doubt in the prosecution narrative.

“Joe!” Marybeth said, surprised. Then to Hand: “But that doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t prove Mom is innocent.”

“Doesn’t have to,” Hand said to Marybeth, suddenly professorial. “Our job here isn’t to out the killer. That’s the job of law enforcement and the prosecution. This isn’t Perry Mason. Confessions on the stand just don’t happen. All we need-and what your clever husband Joe might have given us-is the eight percent of doubt I need to build on.”

Missy said nothing. Joe didn’t expect her to shower him with gratitude. She simply leaned back in her chair with her most pleasant face. As if she’d been anticipating this and it was all her due.

Joe and Marybeth went outside toward Joe’s pickup as Marcus Hand stayed behind to give a new set of marching orders to his team. Joe heard enough to know Hand was building on the new theory, and dispatching personnel to blanket Twelve Sleep County and others to start collecting affidavits and interviews.

Marybeth walked with Joe in silence. As Joe opened the door for her, she said, “I was hoping this would all be a matter of proving her innocence. Something clean.”

Joe said, “It’s rarely like that in a high-profile murder case or when money and ambition are involved on both sides. Or when the defendant. ” He bit his lip.

“I’m going to check on Lucy and April to make sure they haven’t killed each other,” she said, digging her phone out of her purse. Joe reached across her lap and found his citation booklet in the box of documents and regulation books he kept on the floorboards. “Back in a second,” he said.

Missy met him at the front door. Over the years, both had made conscious efforts not to be anywhere alone with the other for fear of what would be said. Joe saw her standing in the shadow and he paused for a moment before continuing. She waited for him in silence. He realized she was sneaking a cigarette, and the cherry glowed red in the dark.

He said, “Here’s Marcus Hand’s ticket for poaching those grouse. See he gets it.”

She took it without a glance. “You never fail to disappoint,” she said, blowing smoke and keeping her voice down so her daughter couldn’t overhear her across the ranch yard.

“Thanks for the reminder,” Joe said.

“I know you’re doing what you’re doing more for your wife and daughters than for me. I understand that.”

Joe didn’t argue with her.

“You think I’m a heartless bitch,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes. You’ve nothing but contempt for me. Look around you,” she said. “Then think about it later. You think this has been easy, don’t you?”

Before he could respond, she said, “I was the last of eleven children and my parents never failed to remind me I was their mistake , as they put it. We moved every year to a new farm in Missouri or Arkansas, wherever my father could get hired. I never had a home. We slept two or three to a bed. The clothes I wore had been handed down through six different girls, so by the time I got them they were rags. I once was forced to go to school wearing boots my brother made of duct tape .”