C Box - Winterkill

Hastily but clumsily, he slid off his stool and threw his last twenty on the bar.

“Gotta go,” he mumbled, sliding his coat up over his shoulders.

“You need a ride somewhere?” Klein asked, assessing Joe’s condition.

“I’m fine.”

Joe pretended not to hear Klein’s protestations as he weaved his way toward the door.

He spilled out into the darkness, his boots sliding on the three inches of fresh powder on the pavement. He clamped down his hat and buttoned his coat as he walked as quickly as he could down the street.

If Marybeth saw his pickup in front of the Forest Service office, she would probably go inside. Would Melinda Strickland still be there? If that was the case, Joe could only guess what could happen. I’ve never hated a woman as much as I hate her, Marybeth had said. But Melinda Strickland would surely have left her office right after he and Nate left, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she?

He wished he were sober.

He rounded the corner and could see through the waves of snow that a sheriff’s department Blazer, lights flashing, and a Saddlestring Police Department cruiser were parked in front of the Forest Service office. Blue and red wig-wag lights painted the street. The door of the Blazer hung open, as if the deputy had just jumped out. Joe’s truck was still parked in front, as was Melinda Strickland’s green Bronco. Marybeth’s van was not there, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

He did not want to see Melinda Strickland again. Had she called the sheriff on him? Had something happened between her and Marybeth after he’d left?

Joe approached the building and eased the door open far enough to stick his head inside. The bourbon had made him bold-or foolhardy, he thought. Probably both. Inside, it was just as he had left it, except that Deputy Reed stood in the reception area, his radio raised to his mouth. The Saddlestring policeman sat on the vinyl couch, still bundled in his winter coat, with a vacant, drained look on his face, like he had seen something awful.

“Sheriff Barnum?” Reed said into the radio, “How fast can you get over to the Forest Service building? We just got a call about the fact that the door was left open and the lights were on at seven at night, so I checked it out and… well, we’ve got a situation .”

Joe looked quizzically at Reed, and Reed nodded toward the hallway where Melinda Strickland’s office was. Her door, like the front, was ajar.

He stepped inside and walked across the reception area. The Saddlestring cop was upset. Something he had seen down the hall made him lurch to one side and throw up in a small garbage can. Joe was grateful that both Reed and the cop were too preoccupied to ask him why he was there.

Joe rounded the reception desk and looked into Melinda Strickland’s office. What he saw seared the alcohol out of his system.

Strickland was still in her chair, but was slumped facedown over her desk in a dark red pool of blood. The wall with the framed cover of Rumour and photo of Bette was spattered with blood, brains, and stringy swatches of copper-colored hair. Strickland’s stainless-steel nine-millimeter Ruger semiautomatic pistol was clutched in her hand on top of the desk. A single shell casing on the carpet reflected the overhead light. The room smelled of hot blood.

Joe gagged, then swallowed. The bourbon tasted so bitter this time that he nearly choked on it.

He knew it wasn’t suicide. Just a couple of hours before, he had stared into that woman’s soul and there was nothing there to see. Strickland had not succumbed to some sudden pang of guilt. No, Joe thought, someone had made it look like a suicide.

He started to push the door open farther but it stiffened. It wouldn’t open enough for him to get through. He looked down and saw that he had shoved the bottom of the door over something that had jammed it.

In a fog, he bent down to clear the door. He pulled the obstruction free, and looked at it.

It seemed as if something had sucked all the air out of his lungs and out of the room itself. He wasn’t entirely sure the groan he heard was his own.

The item jamming the door was a single Canadian-made Watson riding glove. It was one-half of Joe’s Christmas present to Marybeth.

Joe checked both ways as he left the Forest Service office in the heavy snowfall. There was no traffic on the street. He heard a siren fire up several blocks away. That would be either Barnum or the police chief. The glove was jammed in Joe’s pocket.

He was soon out of town and rolling on Bighorn Road toward his home before he allowed himself to think. He was ashamed of what he was thinking. It was unfathomable.

Marybeth’s van was parked in front of the garage and the porch light was on, but the windows were dark. When he entered, he noticed immediately that the house was cool and that the thermostat had not been turned up since they had left in the morning.

Sheridan and Lucy, who should have been watching television or doing homework, were nowhere to be seen.

“Marybeth?”

“Up here.” Her voice was faint. She was upstairs.

He bounded up the stairs and found his family in the bedroom. Lucy was sleeping on the top of the covers at the foot of the bed, and Sheridan and Marybeth were sitting on the side of the bed cuddling.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“We were just talking about April,” Sheridan said, her voice solemn. “We were feeling kind of sad tonight.”

Joe looked at Marybeth, trying to read her. She looked drained and wan. She did not look up at him.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

Sheridan shook her head.

“Please take Lucy downstairs and get yourselves something,” Joe said. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

Marybeth untangled herself from Sheridan, but she wouldn’t look at Joe.

When the girls were gone, Joe eased the door shut and sat next to Marybeth on the bed.

“You’ve been drinking,” she said. “I can smell it.”

Joe grunted.

“Marybeth, we have to talk about this,” he said, pulling her glove from his coat pocket.

He watched her carefully when she looked at it.

“I didn’t realize I lost it,” she said, turning it over in her hand and squeezing it into a ball.

Joe felt something hot rising inside of him.

“You know where I found it, don’t you?”

She nodded. Finally, she raised her eyes to his.

“I saw your truck,” she said, her voice flat. “So I went inside the building. Melinda Strickland was sitting at her desk, and her blood was on the wall…”

The relief Joe felt was better than the bourbon ever was. Then he realized something that jarred him.

“You think I did it,” Joe said.

The same emotion Joe had felt a moment before was mirrored in Marybeth’s face.

“Joe, you didn’t do it?”

He shook his head. “I found her like that after you did. And I saw this glove…”

“Oh,” she cried, instantly aware of what he must have thought. “Oh, Joe, I knew you went there and I thought…”

They embraced in a furious swirl of redemption. Marybeth cried, and laughed, and cried again. After a few minutes, she pulled away.

“So did she kill herself?” she asked.

Joe shook his head. “Not a chance.”

“Then who?”

He paused a beat.

“Nate.”

She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the snow.

“He went back after we left, while I was in the bar. He must have watched me go into the Stockman’s to make sure I’d have a good alibi before he went back to her office. I thought I had just lost him. I wasn’t thinking very clearly at that point. Somehow, he got Melinda Strickland’s gun away from her and shot her point-blank in the head.”