C Box - Winterkill

Eventually, they had petitioned the court for consent to adopt, and Judge Hardy Pennock had started proceedings to terminate Jeannie Keeley’s parental rights. But then Pennock had been hospitalized with a brain tumor, and the proceedings languished in his absence. Finally, the matter had gone to another court-but the original paperwork had been lost. Another delay had resulted when the new court received a letter from Jeannie Keeley saying she was coming back for her daughter. But that was six months ago now, in the summer, and Jeannie Keeley had never come. A technicality in Wyoming law stated that parental rights couldn’t be terminated if there had been contact from the birth parent at least once a year, and the letter qualified, which again delayed the proceedings. Judge Pennock was now back on the bench, but hopelessly backlogged. Joe had tried to expedite the case, with some success, but the rights hearing had not yet been held.

The legal proceedings had been frustrating and endless, but Marybeth and Joe had remained optimistic that a resolution would come.

“As soon as you can, you need to look into this,” Marybeth said.

“I will,” Joe said.

“That woman scares me, Joe. If she’s back, we’ve got real trouble on our hands.”

“That we do,” he said, and put his arm around her, pulling her close.

“I’ve got to lead the sheriff to the crime scene first thing tomorrow,” Joe said. “Then I’m sure they’ll want to get rid of me, so I should have some time.”

“Wherever it stands, when school starts back up, we’ve got to try and pick up the girls ourselves after school,” Marybeth said, her voice rising. “I don’t want to take the chance that something will happen to April.”

Joe nodded, trying to fight sleep. He knew Marybeth needed him, that she’d been worried about this all afternoon with no one to talk to about it. He wanted to say something that would make her feel better, that would calm her, but his tongue felt thick and heavy and his eyes kept dropping shut. He felt immensely guilty about not being able to emerge from the problems and horrors of the afternoon and night he had just experienced, because he knew that her concerns were real. But he was slipping away, into unconsciousness.

Two hours later, Joe awoke sweating. He had dreamed that he was back in the timber, suffering under the weight of Lamar Gardiner. The wounded man’s coat had been caught in the branch of a tree, and Joe had swung his shoulders to tear it free. A spatter of bright red blood had flecked the snow…

He rose quietly and went to the window. An icy breeze flowed under the sill-he would need to pack it with insulation tomorrow, he thought.

It was still dark, still snowing, and the wind was still blowing.

He turned and looked at Marybeth, who had finally fallen asleep under the quilts. Then he tiptoed downstairs and looked in on Sheridan-Maxine was asleep at the foot of her bed-and on Lucy and April, who shared a bunk bed. He could not see their faces, only tangles of blond hair. After gazing at them for a moment, he returned to his bedroom.

He stared out at the storm, mesmerized. The wind had increased. There was now a bare spot on the front lawn where the brown grass showed through. It was never just the snow in Wyoming that caused problems. It was always the snow plus the wind that sculpted it into something hard, shiny, and impassible. A foot-high stream of blowing snow, like cold smoke, coursed across the ground.

It struck Joe as he stood there, the floor cold beneath his bare feet, that Lamar’s murder had an oddly personal feel to it. Saddlestring was not a violent place, and murders were almost unheard of, yet someone had hated Lamar Gardiner so much that he not only shot him with arrows but slashed his throat open, bleeding him like a wounded deer.

Joe wondered if the killer was still out there, caught in the storm. Or if the killer, like himself, had made it off of the mountain. And he wondered if the killer was also standing at a window somewhere, his gut churning, his mind replaying what had happened that day, as the storm pummeled Twelve Sleep Valley.

Joe was being gently shaken awake by Marybeth, who held a telephone out to him.

“It’s Sheriff Barnum,” she said, cupping her hand over the phone. He sat up quickly in bed, rubbed his face hard, and looked around. Marybeth was fully dressed. The curtains were drawn, but on the ceiling and walls were blooms of muted light. The digital clock radio showed that it was 8:20 A.M. That’s impossible, Joe thought.

His immediate fear was that Barnum had assembled his deputies, the state Division of Criminal Investigation unit, and the county emergency team, and that they were in town-all waiting for him.

Marybeth read the panic in his eyes, and shook her head. “Don’t worry,” she said, her hand still covering the telephone. It was his cell phone, instead of the handset to the telephone near the bed. “You won’t believe the snow outside.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?” Joe asked, groggy. “I can’t believe I slept this late.”

“You needed the rest. And I don’t think anybody is going anywhere this morning.”

Joe took the phone while he swung out of bed. “Sheriff?”

Barnum’s voice was gravelly. “Have you looked outside?”

“I’m doing that now,” Joe said, opening the curtains. The blast of pure white light temporarily blinded him. For a moment, he got a sense of vertigo. There was no sky, no grass, no trees or mountains. Only opaque white.

“I can’t even see the road,” Joe marveled.

“Neither can the snowplow drivers,” Barnum grumbled. “We’ve got thirty-six inches of snow and the wind’s supposed to hit fifty miles per hour this afternoon. Everything’s closed-the highways, the airport, even our office officially. The phone lines are down again, and half the county doesn’t have power. The DCI boys started up here in a state plane and made it as far as Casper before they turned back. The storm was right on their ass, so they had to outrun it and ended up somewhere in Colorado.”

Joe squinted. He could make out ghostly shapes of his pickup, and a snow-covered pine in his yard below.

“So what’s the plan?” Joe asked.

“Shit, I don’t know,” Barnum sighed. “I’m trying to get ahold of a Forest Service Sno-Cat to take up there. But I can’t reach anybody who can find the keys.”

Joe thought briefly about using snowmobiles but it was too far.

“Keep your cell phone on,” Barnum barked. “As soon as we can move around here we’ll try to assemble and get up there. You’ll have to get to town when that happens so you can show us where Gardiner got rubbed out.”

“I’ll chain up all four tires,” Joe said, ignoring the “rubbed out” comment. “I’ll be ready when you are.”

“You’ve got power, then?” Barnum asked.

“For now.”

“Keep that cell phone charged,” Barnum said again. “Who knows when they’ll get the lines fixed.”

“Sheriff?” Joe asked, before Barnum hung up.

“What?”

“Good thing I brought him down, wouldn’t you say?” Joe turned to Marybeth, who had a satisfied look on her face.

Barnum hung up.

“Are you up for making pancakes?” Marybeth asked. “The girls want to know.”

Joe looked again out of the window. What little he could see looked like a freeze-frame of a storm at sea, with bucking waves of snow and ground blizzards instead of spray.

“You bet,” Joe said, smiling. “I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

“The girls will like that.”

Then he remembered: “Your mother.”

“What about her?”

“Oh,” Joe moaned, “nothing.”