C. Box - Cold Wind

“Sure I do,” McLanahan said, turning aside to spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the lawn. To Joe, he said, “Why aren’t you out there trying to catch poachers or something? Shouldn’t you be doing your job instead of mine? You ever think about that?”

“I do,” Joe said. “I just figure one of us needs to do your job.”

Reed snorted a laugh and looked away quickly.

McLanahan froze, and Joe saw something ugly pass over his face. Joe squared up, ready if McLanahan swung.

The sheriff took a deep breath and said to Sollis, “Cuff the son-of-a-bitch.”

On the way through the grounds of the Eagle Mountain Club, handcuffs biting his wrists, Joe thought that he was pleased to have hooked back up with Nate. But he couldn’t help thinking it might be too late to affect the outcome of the trial. And he’d never imagined spending a night in a county cell.

He thought of his daughters. Their grandmother up for murder, their father in jail.

April’s words mocked him: “I guess maybe I’m not the only one in this perfect little family who makes mistakes .”

On Wednesday morning, the day Bud Longbrake was to take the stand to testify against Missy Alden for the murder of Earl Alden, Joe sat next to Marybeth in the eighth row of the Twelve Sleep Country Courthouse and dug his index finger into his shirt collar to try to loosen it against the tight cinch of his tie. It didn’t give much, and he felt that he was slowly strangling to death.

He surveyed the room. Everyone seemed to have taken the same seats they’d occupied the previous two days since the trial began.

Judge Hewitt’s courtroom was full and warm and close. Family members, local gadflies, civic leaders, Bud’s drinking buddies from the Stockman’s including Timberman and Keith Bailey, law enforcement personnel, the all-male morning coffee crowd from the Burg-O-Pardner, and local, state, and regional press took every seat. There was a low murmur as everyone waited for what the Roundup called “pivotal Day Three” to begin. All the players were in one place, Joe thought. He whispered to Marybeth that if Stovepipe’s metal detector was malfunctioning again and a bomb were to go off inside, Saddle-string might as well close down and sell off the fixtures.

Marcus Hand and Dulcie Schalk were at the bench discussing the schedule and rules for the day with Hewitt, who stood and leaned down toward them so the conversation could be kept confidential. Hand wore a dark charcoal suit, white shirt, bolo tie, and his pointy cowboy boots. A silverbelly Stetson sat crown-down on the defense table, but Joe never saw Hand actually put it on. It was solely for effect.

Schalk was dressed sharply in a dark pin-striped business suit and skirt with a cream-colored bow at her throat. Her hair was pulled back so she looked severe and serious. And older.

Monday had been spent selecting a jury. Like everything that took place in Judge Hewitt’s courtroom, it had gone like lightning. Twelve local jurors and two alternates were selected out of a pool of thirty. Joe knew most of the jurors: seven women and five men. All were white and middle-aged except for a Shoshone woman who lived outside the reservation. Although Hand had worked to challenge as many of the blue-collar types as he could, apparently assuming they would more easily convict a nasty woman of means like Missy, Marybeth observed to Joe that Hand seemed to do it halfheartedly, more for the show than from determination. Like he had something up his sleeve, and the makeup of the jury didn’t matter.

Marcus Hand only needed one juror to nullify a guilty verdict, Joe replied. He couldn’t determine which one or two who’d been selected met Hand’s satisfaction. Maybe the unemployed city worker who couldn’t find a job in the bad economy hated the world and would love to stick it to The Man? Or maybe the Shoshone woman, filled with years of resentment and the existential burden of her white lay-about husband, could finally get back at the system?

Joe had spent most of previous Thursday in the sheriff’s department interview room after being taken from the Eagle Mountain Club. Deputy Sollis had checked in on him from time to time with a grin on his face, explaining that they were waiting for Sheriff McLanahan to return for the questioning to begin. Joe knew it was a stall and an attempt to humiliate him, and conceded that it was working pretty well. No charges were filed that he was informed of.

Finally, mid-afternoon, Dulcie Schalk blew into the room. She was angry with Joe for trying to contact Bud Longbrake and with the sheriff for holding Joe without questioning him or pressing any charges. Right behind her was Marcus Hand in his black turtleneck and fringed buckskin jacket.

She said to Sollis, “Let him out of here now. ”

Joe thanked her, and she snapped, “Do not speak to me.”

On the way to his pickup after retrieving the keys from a very sheepish Deputy Reed, Hand draped his arm around Joe’s shoulder and whispered, “You hate us until you need us. That’s the way it works.”

The past weekend with Marybeth and Nate was interrupted only by a call into the break lands east of town from a citizen reporting a wounded antelope staggering around on the road. Nate had gone with him in the truck, and Joe spent hours filling him in on the murder, the investigation, and what Joe had learned from Smith about Rope the Wind.

“I’d put my money on the boys from Chicago,” Nate said, after listening to Joe and after the game warden had dispatched the suffering animal. “I could see them sending someone out here to shut up The Earl once and for all. They came, shot him, and hung him from the windmill, and they were on a plane back to O’Hare by the time you found him.”

“It may be what happened,” Joe said, “but it’s speculation at best. Marcus Hand sent two of his investigators east, and they may come back with something before the trial is over. But they may not. What I have trouble with in that scenario is how this Chicago hit man would know to frame Missy.”

Nate said, “They had an insider.”

“And who would that be?”

“The same guy who told Laurie Talich where she could find me.”

“Bud?”

“Bingo,” Nate said. “It took a while for me to figure it out and there are still some loose ends I’d like closed, but it makes sense. Missy knew vaguely where I was living because she talks to her daughter, and last year she tried to hire me to put the fear of God into Bud, remember? She might have let it slip to her ex-husband that if he didn’t stop pining over her, she’d drive to Hole in the Wall Canyon and pick me up. Somehow, Bud found out where I was. And by happenstance, he meets a woman in the bar who has come west for the single purpose of avenging her husband. Bud has contacts with the National Guard who just returned from Afghanistan, and he was able to help her get a rocket launcher. Then he drew her a map. He must have been pretty smug about how it all worked out. He thought he was able to take me out of the picture without getting his own hands dirty.”

“Bud-what’s happened to him?” Joe asked, not sure he was convinced of Nate’s theory. “Why has he gone so crazy on us?”

“A man can only take so much,” Nate said, “especially a good man. His no-good kids abandoned him. His new wife cuckolds him, and then cheats him out of his ranch. And to add insult to all this misery, the new husband figures out how to make a killing on the land Bud had in his family for a hundred twenty years. They took away most of his dignity, and then they stomped on what was left. And for no good reason, because Bud was a good man who only wanted to support the community and pass along his ranch to his children. I can see where he went crazy. No one deserves what they did to him.”