C Box - Winterkill

As the cab warmed, Joe could smell her scent. The far-off light from the fluorescent pole lamp profiled her against the window. She was lovely.

Suddenly, Elle leaned across the seat toward him. “I’m starting to think you’re the key to my story.”

“What?” Joe asked, confused. “I thought you were writing about Melinda Strickland.”

“Well… it’s about her. But you seem to be a pivotal character in all of this.” She stared deeply into his eyes as she spoke. Her eyes glistened. Her lips were parted ever-so-slightly. Her scent seemed even stronger now, somehow. It both troubled and excited him.

“I heard that you’ve shot three men? That you wounded two men three years ago and that you killed a man last year at a canyon called Savage Run?”

Joe broke off their gaze and stared out the windshield.

“Who told you that?”

“Oh… people around town.”

He felt his throat constrict, and tried to recover.

“We need to talk… soon,” she said. “How about dinner?”

She smiled. Her teeth were white and perfect.

“Sure,” Joe said, pausing. “At my house. With my wife Marybeth and the kids.”

The light went out of her eyes, and although the smile remained it decreased in wattage. She assessed him coolly.

“I guess that would work,” she said, businesslike. “Although I was kind of thinking of something more…” The sentence trailed off into nowhere. He didn’t prompt her to continue.

“I’ll give you a call,” she said, withdrawing and opening her door. “Your number’s in the wonderful little half-inch-thick Saddlestring telephone book, I presume?”

“Yup.”

“Do you have a fax machine?” she asked suddenly, half-in and half-out.

He told her the number.

“I’ll fax over the list of things I can’t eat,” she said, and was gone.

Driving home, he tried to put the evening into some kind of perspective. He failed. All he could foresee, as he thought about it, was inevitable tragedy. Dick Munker troubled him. The man exuded a smug, chip-on-the-shoulder fanaticism, and he had Melinda Strickland’s ear. Munker didn’t seem like the kind of person who could defuse a situation, as he claimed, but the kind who would ignite one. The kind of guy who would spray a campfire with gasoline. Munker, and Portenson, seemed disdainful of the Sovereigns, the community, and Joe himself. They seemed to revel in being insiders with guns, specialists finally given a green light to do what they saw fit. Munker, Joe thought, was the kind of guy who would kill somebody and later claim it was for the victim’s own good.

He opened his window and let a knife-edge of icy air cut into his face. Maybe, he hoped, it would sweep the scent of Elle Broxton-Howard’s perfume from the cab of the pickup.

Joe felt like his head was caught in a vise. And every day, someone applied another half-turn.

Missy was awake in the dark, watching television on the couch when Joe got home. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw things more clearly. There was an empty wine bottle on its side near the foot of the couch, and a half-full bottle gripped in her other hand. Her face was shiny with tears.

“Are you okay?” Joe asked tentatively.

She raised her head, and her unfocused eyes settled somewhere to the left of his nose. She was very drunk.

“Okay?” she asked. “I’m just fucking wonderful.”

He regretted that he had asked.

“It’s my BIRTHday,” she slurred. “I’m sixty-three. Sixty-three goddamned years old without a house, without a husband, without even a boyfriend for the first time in my life.”

Yes, you’re old, Joe thought, old enough not to act like this. He began to mount the stairs.

“It’s been a long night,” he said, hoping she would stop.

“Stuck here in the middle of nowhere-land, getting older by the minute, and missing my granddaughter April.” She sipped from her glass and a bead of red wine ran down her chin. “Even though she’s not really my granddaughter.”

Joe stopped and turned. “That’s right,” he snapped. “Even though she’s not ‘really’ your granddaughter. How generous of you. I can tell you’re pretty busted up about it. You’re so upset, you even opened a bottle of wine.”

Missy’s face fell. “I can’t believe you said that to me,” she said, tears glistening in her eyes.

“Sorry,” Joe said, his voice unsympathetic. “Happy Birthday.” He turned and resumed climbing the stairs.

“Ah, you don’t really care,” Missy said behind him. “You know, Joe Pickett, if you weren’t my son-in-law, I’d say you were a very self-absorbed man.”

Joe hesitated again on the stairs, thought better of it, and proceeded. He heard the clink of the wineglass against her perfect, six-thousand-dollar teeth.

Although the bedroom was dark, Marybeth was awake.

“Joe, were you arguing with my mother?”

Joe stood still, trying to tamp down his anger from a moment before. Instead, something he had been bottling up gushed out.

“Is she going to live with us?” he asked. “Is she going to stay here?”

Marybeth turned on her bedside lamp. “Joe, she’s going through a tough time. I can’t believe you’re acting this way.”

Joe couldn’t quit. “ She’s going through a tough time? Look at us, Marybeth. All she has to do is snag another husband and she’s home free. We’ve got the situation with April, and lunatics are running everything… I’ve got a guy who somehow expects me to save his life, and I’m pretty sure there’s a murderer out there running loose…”

“Joe, lower your voice,” Marybeth said sternly.

“… and I’ve got a mother-in-law downstairs feeling sorry for herself.”

“JOE.”

He stopped and caught himself.

“I don’t need you to remind me what’s going on.” Marybeth’s eyes flashed. “What do you want me to do, throw her out into the snow? All day long I’ve been trying to blot out this… ‘situation’ … with April and do something constructive. And you lose your temper and bring it all back.”

Joe looked at her, noticed the tears forming in her eyes. But he was still too angry to apologize.

In a silence that was deafening, Joe got ready for bed and climbed in. She switched off the lamp, turned her back to him and he thought she was pretending to sleep. He touched her shoulder but she didn’t respond.

You’re right, he wanted to tell her now, I’m sorry .

Joe rolled back over and stared at the ceiling and listened to the icy wind outside rattle the window.

Joe woke a few hours later, the remnants of another nightmare skittering in his head. He quietly slid out of bed and went to the window. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and wondered how everything had gotten so bad so quickly.

Things are building up, Joe thought. His family was coming unhinged, and he was not blameless. Somehow, he thought, I need to do more. To try and fix things. Take some kind of action before everything explodes.

The next morning, Joe was eating breakfast early and alone when Marybeth came down the stairs. He could tell by the way she walked that she was still angry with him, and he watched as she went silently into his office, and came out with something in her hand and a glare in her eyes.

“You got a fax.” Her voice was not kind. “I heard it come in late last night.”

Joe winced, and reached for the single sheet.

“It’s from Elle Broxton-Howard,” Joe said, reading it.

“I know.”

“She wants to interview me. I invited her to dinner with us.”