C. Box - Cold Wind

Joe nodded glumly.

His phone lit up while he was buying a fancy new wristwatch for Marybeth at a Western-wear store downtown. She’d accidentally dropped her last one in a water trough while grooming her horses. She liked Brighton watches. He stepped away from the counter and plucked his phone out of his breast pocket and saw it was coming not from Coon but from Marybeth.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

He cradled the phone between his shoulder and neck while he dug his wallet out of his back pocket to hand the clerk a Visa card.

“Not well,” he said. “I’m stymied in Cheyenne, waiting to talk to Orin Smith.”

“Sorry,” she said. “So where are you now?”

“In a store.”

“A sporting goods store?”

“No.”

“Joe, you don’t go to stores.”

“And I never will again, either,” he said. “I need land, lots of land under starry skies above.”

She chuckled, which was a good sound, but it ended abruptly. She said, “When my mother is cleared of this stupid murder charge, I think I want to kill her.”

“Sounds good,” he mumbled. He was distracted as the salesclerk behind the counter handed his card back and said, “Sorry, sir, but it’s been declined. Do you have another card we can try?”

He knew his face was flushing as he replaced the Visa with a debit card. He didn’t want to use the debit card because Marybeth kept close track of their checking account balance, and she might see he’d gotten her a gift before he had a chance to give it to her.

“Do you know why the Visa card won’t work?” he asked her. “This is kind of embarrassing.”

“I’m late paying bills this month,” she said. “You know how it’s been. I’m sorry. What are you buying, anyway?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

“Joe, don’t get me anything. I don’t need anything, and we’re tight this month.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, trying to get her off the subject. He was relieved when the sales clerk swiped the debit card and it seemed to be processing.

“Did you even hear what I said?” she asked, annoyed.

“Yes. Let’s kill your mother.”

The sales clerk glanced up at that and Joe turned away, embarrassed again.

“She’s sashaying around town like a school girl on Marcus Hand’s arm,” Marybeth said. “She’s all giggly and silly and spending money like it was going out of style. Joe, she drove the Hummer-the very car they found the rifle in-and bought Hand an elkhorn chandelier display at the furniture store for fifteen thousand dollars. Just bought it outright and asked them to deliver it to the ranch. Then she took him to the country club and paid the golf pro to keep everybody else off the course while she and her lawyer played a round in private. She acts like she doesn’t have a care in the world, and everybody’s talking.”

“Don’t pay attention to them,” Joe said.

“It’s not about me,” Marybeth said. “It’s about her. She acts like she’s just above it all-above the law with her big-shot Jackson Hole lawyer. If she deliberately set out to make a bad impression around town-to taint her jury pool-she couldn’t do a better job.”

He sighed. “I don’t understand her,” he said.

“I don’t, either. But now even her country club set is turned against her. She’s not thinking.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Joe said. “Your mother never does anything that won’t benefit her in some way. She’s got something going-we just don’t know what yet.”

“That was a cruel thing to say.”

“But true,” he said. Then: “You know, I could just come home and, you know, let the chips fall where they may.”

Silence.

He said, “I didn’t mean that. I’m just frustrated. I drove all night and I’ve got nothing to do but wait for a call. Meanwhile, your mother is buying chandeliers for her lawyer.”

“I know,” she said. “She’s her own worst enemy sometimes.”

“I thought I was,” Joe said, as the sales clerk gestured to him asking if he wanted the watch wrapped. He nodded yes.

“No,” Marybeth said, “you’re the one who is going to save her skinny old ass despite herself.”

Joe thought about the forty-five miles over the mountains to Laramie from Cheyenne and looked at his watch. He didn’t know Sheridan’s class schedule, but he found himself driving south down Lincolnway toward an exit ramp to I-80 West. As he merged onto the highway he speed-dialed her cell phone.

“Dad?” She was clearly surprised. He could hear wind and other voices in the background, like she was walking along in a pack of students.

“Hi, honey.”

“Dad, is everything all right?”

“Fine. You sound frantic.”

“You never call me, okay?”

He started to argue but had to concede she was right. “I’m in Cheyenne. What’s going on?”

He heard her tell someone, “Just a minute, I’ll be right there.” Then to him: “Ah, nothing. I’m still trying to figure out my way around. It’s all a little confusing and I’m tired all the time.”

“Are you getting enough sleep?”

She laughed, “What do you think?”

He dropped it. “What’s your afternoon look like?”

The hesitation made him think for a moment the call had been dropped. “I’ve got class and then I’m meeting some friends for coffee. Why? Were you thinking of coming over?”

Joe said, “You drink coffee?”

“Daaad.” She lengthened the word out.

“Of course you do,” he said. His ears felt hot. He said, “No, I just had some time to kill so I thought I’d check on you. See how you were doing.”

Another hesitation. When her voice came back it was soft, as if she was trying not to be overheard. “It’s not like I wouldn’t love to see you, Dad, but. it’s hard. I’m just starting to feel like I’m really at college and not at home. It would kind of be tough right now to change plans and see you. It would set me back.”

“I understand,” he said. “Really.”

“Remember what the orientation lady said. Six weeks. Try to go six weeks before seeing your parents and it will be easier.”

“I remember.”

“Are you on the way over?” she asked.

“Not at all,” he said, pulling over to the side of the highway. He cleared his throat, and said, “So you’re doing okay? Eating well? Getting along with folks?”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” she said. She sounded relieved.

“You know what’s going on with your grandmother?”

“Mom keeps me well briefed.”

“We miss you,” he said.

“I miss you guys.”

“Remember,” he said. “Keep in touch with your mother.”

“I will, Dad. And thanks for calling.”

He squinted and dropped his phone into his pocket, then drove slowly along the shoulder for a place to turn around to go back to Cheyenne. In his mind’s eye he pictured her drinking coffee with students her own age.

His heart wasn’t broken, he thought, but it was certainly cracked.

After steaks and three beers with Chuck Coon and his family, Joe sat at the desk in his hotel room and sketched out a time line from the murder of Earl Alden to the present time, bulleting each fact as he knew them. He hoped that by writing everything down, something would jump out at him.

He was wrong.

For the fiftieth time that day, he checked his cell phone to see if he’d missed a call from Coon or Orin Smith’s lawyer. He hadn’t.

As he was once again punching in the number for Nate’s satellite phone, just in case, he had an incoming call.

Coon said, “Surprise, surprise. Orin Smith will talk to you first thing in the morning.”

Nate Romanowski drove slowly down South State Street in a rental car on the South Side of Chicago with his windows down and his carry-on within reach on the passenger seat. The air was a warm stew of humidity: gasoline fumes, cooking food, and ripe garbage from Dumpsters. The sun had sunk and the last of it danced on the waves of Lake Michigan, igniting the sky and the west-facing sides of the downtown buildings, and now it was dark enough that the lights came on.