C. Box: Cold Wind

Like the gate itself, the fence was perfect and new, stretched tight. His bolt cutters bit cleanly through the shiny metal wire. Each strand snapped back into a curl until he had clearance for his vehicle. He was surprised what pleasure it gave him to break through the fence.

Joe was familiar with the layout of the wind farm, although he had never approached it from this direction. The rough two-track gave way to a smooth, graded, and banked gravel road that was part of the development, and he was able to switch from four-wheel drive to two and increase his speed. He roared toward the slowest turbine.

The rapid development of the installations across Wyoming and the West had created new wildlife and environmental concerns. Wind turbines required a significant footprint on the land, at least fifty acres per structure, or three rotor distances apart from one to the other. Alden’s huge project of one hundred units stretched across five thousand acres of his land, not counting the well-engineered roads connecting them all. As yet, no transmission lines coursed over the horizon to export the electricity to downstream substation transformers.

Because wind companies obviously chose open areas with plenty of wind, they were often located in untrammeled terrain where there had been no previous impact and no person in his or her right mind would want to build a home. Unfortunately for the wind developers, many of these locations brought out concerns regarding impacts on the winter range of big game animals and their migration routes. The impact on the sage grouse population-strutting, flinty native game birds about the size of chickens-was of immediate concern. Since half of all the sage grouse in existence in North America were located in Wyoming and the population of the game birds had been declining for years, the introduction of wind turbines on their habitat was an issue with environmentalists, hunters, and the Game and Fish Department, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

One of Joe’s new directives was to assist in monitoring the sage grouse activity in areas where wind development was occurring and send memos of his findings to Cheyenne. Although he couldn’t honestly link one to the other on his forays into the wind farms, he had noted a number of dead birds (not sage grouse) and even more bats crumpled up dead at the base of the towers. Bats, apparently, had their natural radar fouled by the air pressure of the spinning blades and they’d become disoriented (so the theory went) and fly headlong to their death into the steel of the towers.

As he approached the first row of turbines, Joe noted another vehicle coming fast in his direction. He thought it might be the first of the sheriff’s deputies to the scene until it got closer and he recognized it as one of several of The Earl’s company pickups by the Rope the Wind logo on the door. Rope the Wind was Alden’s newest enterprise. He’d shown Joe and Marybeth a mock-up of the logo, expecting their enthusiastic approval at a dinner they’d attended with their girls at the ranch. He said he’d bought the company and the name recently, anticipating the wind energy boom. The logo was a drawing of a large cowboy straddling the nacelle of a three-megawatt turbine. The cowboy’s hat was bent back by the oncoming wind, and he was tossing a lariat into it.

“It combines the historical figure of the frontier cowboy with the new frontier of renewable energy in the twenty-first century,” The Earl had said with typical bombast. “I love the hell out of it and it cost me big money to some of the hippest graphic designers in Portland. It’s perfect. So, what do you think? ”

Joe had said he liked it just fine, but apparently not with enough enthusiasm. The Earl had huffed and rolled up the design and stomped away. He was a man who valued those who agreed wholeheartedly with him, and discounted those who didn’t. Joe had been discounted.

The company pickup arrived at the base of the tower at the same time Joe did. The driver swung out and faced Joe with his hands on his hips. He was in his mid-twenties and beefy, with a full red beard and a crisp new jacket with the Rope the Wind logo on his breast. “You seeing what I’m seeing?” he asked Joe.

“Tell me it’s a joke,” Joe said, shutting his door gently on slobbering Tube.

“I wish to hell it was,” the worker said, leaning back and craning his neck up. “I can’t figure what the hell it is or how it got up there.”

“It looks like a body.”

“Yeah,” the worker said, rattling the door latch on the tower to confirm it was locked. “But that’s just crazy. You need a key to get inside one of these to access the ladder. There’s no way to go up the outside and the only other explanation is it flew through the air and landed on the blade. That ain’t likely.”

“Nope.”

“Well,” the worker said, digging into his jacket for his keys. “Let’s go see.”

While the worker unloaded hard hats and other equipment from his vehicle, Joe grabbed the handheld radio from the cab of his truck. He turned it on and it was instantly alive with voices, and one of them was addressing him directly.

“Joe Pickett, this is Sheriff McLanahan. Do you read me?”

Joe considered ignoring him, but thought better of it. Although the two had clashed repeatedly over the years, it was the sheriff’s jurisdiction.

“I read you,” Joe said.

“Are you on the scene?”

“Affirmative. I called it in.”

“Okay, well, hold tight. We’re on the way. Under no circumstances are you to climb that tower and compromise the crime scene.”

Joe bristled at the command. “How do you know it’s a crime scene?”

Silence. Then, from miles away, someone-probably a highway trooper monitoring the exchange-said, “Good point.”

“Did you hear my initial command?” McLanahan asked, with the put-on Western drawl he’d adopted since moving west from Virginia ten years before. “Under no circumstances. ”

Joe clicked the radio off and slipped it into the holder on his belt. McLanahan seemed to know something Joe didn’t, and he didn’t want to share what it was, which was typical of the sheriff. Joe looked up and said to the worker, “I’m ready if you are.”

“Then let’s go. Here, let me show you how this works.”

“Have you done this a lot?” Joe asked, gesturing toward the tower.

“I’ve been a turbine monkey half my adult life,” the man said.

The worker handed Joe a nylon harness. Joe fed his arms through it and pulled twin buckles up from between his legs and snapped them tight to receivers secured on his chest. The worker clipped a carabiner through a metal loop on Joe’s harness that supported a metal fall-arrest mechanism that hung by a steel cable. The man showed Joe how to fit the mechanism around the taut cable inside the tower that ran parallel to the ladder from the top of the tower all the way to the floor. The mechanism was supposed to seize tight and prevent him from falling if he lost his balance or slipped off the rungs.

“It’s two hundred fifty feet to the top,” the man said. “That’s a lot of climbing. Plus, the handholds are kind of slippery in there. You’ll see.”

Joe nodded and followed the worker through the open hatch door at the base of the tower. It was instantly dark inside except for a bank of glowing green and amber lights from a control panel mounted on the wall. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. He looked up and could see the narrow ladder and safety cable disappear up into the darkness.

“I’m guessing you have an idea what we’re gonna find up there,” the man said. He’d softened his voice because the sound carried with resonance inside.

“I have a theory,” Joe said. “But I’m hoping I’m wrong.”