C Box - Winterkill

“I’m losing my signal,” he lied, then turned the phone off and tossed it angrily aside onto his truck seat.

Bucking a rooster tail of plowed snow in the county building’s lot, Joe parked in the designated visitors section and got out. Three floors of institutional blond brick housed the sheriff’s office, the jail, the attorney, the court, the assessor, the treasurer, and other county administration offices. The sandstone inscription over the front doors read:

TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY

WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS

AND THE WEST BEGINS

The slogan was an endless source of amusement, especially among a group of retired men who drank coffee every morning at the Burg-O-Pardner. They’d petitioned the Saddlestring Roundup for years with slogans that they preferred:

TWELVE S LEEP COUNTY -

TRAILHEAD FOR THE INFORMATION COWPATH

TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY -

MILLENNIUM? WHAT MILLENNIUM?

TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY -

TEN YEARS BEHIND WYOMING,

WHICH IS TEN YEARS BEHIND EVERYWHERE ELSE

Joe was still shaken from the events of the morning. The word “custody” hung in the air and wouldn’t go away. Joe hoped like hell that Brockius was wrong. And where was Jeannie Keeley, if she wasn’t in the camp?

Melinda Strickland’s rantings had angered and confused him further. She had sounded unhinged, hysterical. When would she go away?

And now this. Nate Romanowski.

After hanging up on Strickland, Joe had decided to visit Nate at the county jail. He was curious as to why the man had called him. He hoped as well that talking to Nate would dispel the lingering doubts he had about his guilt. And Joe also hoped it would really piss off Melinda Strickland. A newly installed metal detector and security desk were manned by a semi-retired deputy wearing a name tag that identified him as “Stovepipe.” He’d received the nickname years before in an elk camp when he fell over a woodstove in a tent and brought the chimney down all over himself. Joe had met Stovepipe during the previous summer when Joe had driven up on him to check out his fishing license. Stovepipe had fallen asleep on the bank of the river, where he had been bait fishing, and was angered to discover when he awoke that a trout had not only taken his bait, but had dragged his rod into the river.

This time, Stovepipe was awake, although barely.

“You ever find your fishing rod?” Joe asked, while he unbuckled his gunbelt and slid it across the counter.

Stovepipe shook his head sadly. “That was a hundred-dollar Ugly Stik with a Mitchell 300 reel. I bet you that fish must have been seven pounds.”

“Maybe,” Joe said, patting his pockets for metal items.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stovepipe said conspiratorially, leaning forward over the counter to see if anyone else was around. “The machine’s broke anyway. It hasn’t worked since July.”

The sheriff’s office and county jail were on the second floor. Joe mounted the steps and pushed through frosted glass doors. Barnum’s door was shut and his office was dark, but Deputies Reed and McLanahan sat at desks, staring into computer monitors.

“Which one of you told Melinda Strickland that Nate Romanowski called me?” Joe asked.

Reed was obviously puzzled by the question. That left Deputy McLanahan. When McLanahan looked up, Joe noticed two things. The first was a barely disguised hatred-a snake-eyed, thin-lipped countenance similar to a horse about to bite. The second thing he noticed were the stitches that appeared to fasten McLanahan’s nose to his face.

“What can I help you with, Mr. Pickett?” McLanahan asked, the question posed as a bored statement.

“What happened to you?” Joe asked, taking his coat off and hanging it on a hook. He kept his cowboy hat on.

“Nate Romanowski happened to him,” Reed volunteered from across the room. McLanahan glared at Reed.

“When did he do that?”

“Two days ago,” Reed answered again, ignoring McLanahan.

“What are you, my goddamned mouthpiece?” McLanahan asked, rising from his desk. He turned to Joe.

“I looked in Romanowski’s cell and he was on his bed trying to choke himself. He had his hand in his mouth, and I told him to knock it off,” McLanahan explained, his voice nasal due to his injury. “He wouldn’t quit, so I went in there to make him stop.”

“And Romanowski decked him,” Reed said, pointing toward McLanahan. “Romanowski cleaned McLanahan’s clock, then kicked him outside his cell, and shut his own door. He doesn’t like Deputy McLanahan very much.”

“SHUT UP!” McLanahan seethed. Reed looked away, obviously hiding a smile.

Joe looked from Reed to McLanahan. McLanahan’s face was red, and his anger had caused tiny beads of bright red blood to leak through his stitches.

“He didn’t try to escape?” Joe asked. “Seeing that you were on the floor and he could have stepped over you and walked away?”

McLanahan shook his head. “Maybe he knows what I would have done to him if he’d tried.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Joe said, deadpan. Reed continued to look away, but Joe could tell he was smiling by the way Reed’s cheeks bulged out in profile.

McLanahan tried to gauge Joe’s comment. He looked ready to fight-and if not Joe, then Reed. Anybody. But, Joe thought, McLanahan is at his best in a fight when he’s surrounded by armed agents and his opponent is defenseless. Like Nate Romanowski was.

“Has he admitted to the murder?” Joe asked.

“He denies everything,” McLanahan said. “He hasn’t even requested a lawyer. Instead, he called you.”

“Maybe you should have hit him again with your rifle butt,” Joe said.

Reed turned back, expectant. McLanahan tried to grimace, but it clearly hurt his face to do so.

“Why exactly did he call you ?” McLanahan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why the game warden and not a lawyer?” Reed wondered.

Joe shrugged.

“You going to meet with him?” McLanahan asked, looking at Joe with a suspicious eye.

“That’s why I’m here.”

McLanahan and Reed exchanged a glance, each waiting for the other to make a decision of some kind.

“It’s his funeral,” Reed said dismissively, “If Romanowski wants to talk to the game warden, he has every right to do so.”

McLanahan crossed his arms over his chest. “Something about this doesn’t sound right to me.”

“Me either,” Joe said truthfully. “I don’t know the man.”

“You’re sure?”

Joe rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m sure.”

Reed stood up, jangled his ring of cell keys, and threw Joe a “follow me” nod.

“You left your gun and everything with Stovepipe, right?”

“Yup.”

“Watch that son-of-a-bitch,” McLanahan called after them. “If he jumps you, I may not hear it.”

As they entered the hallway, Reed looked over his shoulder at Joe. “I’ll hear it,” he said.

Nate Romanowski lolled on his cot with his hand in his mouth, just as McLanahan had described. His other arm was flung over his eyes. One of his feet was on the concrete floor of the cell and the other hung over the foot of the bed. He wore a sky-blue one-piece county jumpsuit and standard-issue slip-on boat shoes-no belt or shoelaces that he could harm himself with.

The cell was ten feet by ten feet square, with a cot, an open toilet, a desk and chair bolted to the wall and floor, and a stainless-steel sink with a faucet that leaked a thin stream of water into the basin. The single window was thick opaque glass reinforced with wire.

Joe Pickett had never been in the county jail itself. He had been in the anteroom, where, on two occasions, he had brought in game violators because they were either drunk or drugged and he didn’t want to run the risk of leaving them out in the field. Unlike Lamar Gardiner, they had sat quietly in Joe’s pickup while being transported to town.