Cold Wind

by C. J. Box

  He got warmer the higher he climbed. He wasn’t sure if the temperature inside actually increased or it was from the exertion of the climb itself. His forearms ached from pulling himself up rung by rung and he tried to control the quivering in his thighs that he attributed to a combination of fatigue and terror. There was a thin film of grease on every surface from the working machinery far above and it made the rungs slippery. The sharp odor of machine oil hung in the tower. He tried to think of other subjects to take his mind off falling and how far he had climbed from solid ground.

  He was puzzled by McLanahan’s reference to the “crime scene,” as well as the sheriff’s admonishment not to investigate. Since there had been no chatter over the radio about the situation prior to him calling it in, Joe wondered if McLanahan had inside knowledge—or a tip—of what was going on. Or was what Joe had found linked to an ongoing sheriff’s department case?

  Halfway up, he stole a look down between his knees and the sensation of seeing the very distant sunlight from the open portal on the tower floor—it looked like a pinprick—made him swoon. He gripped the ladder hard and hugged it. His boot soles rattled on the rungs and he breathed hard, in and out, in and out, until his fear eased. There was a step-out within sight, and he climbed the next three feet to get to it, which was the hardest thing he’d done yet. For a moment he couldn’t feel his legs, as he swung them one after the other to the grated metal plate. When he was assured the grate was solid and he could stand on it and lean against the inside tower wall for a few moments, he exhaled and tried to calm himself.

  “You okay?” Newman called down. He was a long way up.

  “Fine.”

  “Good. I’m almost to the nacelle. Just remember, when you get up here it’s all about safety first. The winds up there could blow you right off the top. So make sure you clip your harness hook to one of the eyebolts. Don’t even take a step without making sure you’re secured, okay?”

  “Okay.” Then: “Bob?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t touch anything up there. Wait until I’m with you. It’s likely going to be a crime scene.”

  Newman laughed harshly. “Yeah,” he said. “I know the drill. I watch them shows.”

  When Joe’s muscles stopped quivering and his breath returned to normal, he stepped back on the ladder and resumed climbing. Fifty feet higher, Joe noticed a round two-inch hole punched through the steel wall of the tower. A shaft of light lit up a larger orb on the opposite wall. When he reached it, he paused. In a strange optical trick, the hole projected a sharp view of the landscape outside on the opposite shaft wall, as if it were a movie lens. He could see the long row of turbines, the roads that connected them, a bird flying by. Joe didn’t know enough about physics to explain the phenomenon, but he found it fascinating and bizarre. He could even clearly see a small four-vehicle convoy in the distance bearing down on the wind farm. Three of the units were sheriff’s department SUVs and the fourth a white company pickup that could be a twin of Newman’s. Although he’d kept his hand-held turned off, he could imagine a red-faced McLanahan hollering into this microphone, trying to raise him. As Joe climbed through the projected scene, he could see sharp images of the convoy slide down his red and now greasy uniform shirt.

  He could hear a steel plate hatch being thrown open far above him and the sound echoed down the length of the tower. He glanced up and saw a distant blue square—the sky—that was then filled by Newman as he scrambled from the ladder to the floor of nacelle itself.

  Twenty seconds later, Newman called down. His voice was tight. “It’s worse than I thought,” he called down, words bouncing back and forth down the tube. “I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden. I hope it’s been a while since you ate.”

  5

  Joe was breathing hard when he reached the open hatch. The wind was ferocious. Despite it, he could hear the epic slicing of the blades turning and feel the vibration of the turbine motor through the metal of the ladder. Joe looked up as Newman’s helmeted head filled the open square.

  “You are not going to believe this,” he shouted. “And don’t worry. I haven’t touched anything I didn’t have to. Besides, I’m wearing gloves.”

  Joe cleared the hatch and stood shakily on the corrugated metal floor of the nacelle. Newman had unbolted the cover wings and pushed them open to expose the nacelle to the sun and wind. The nacelle itself was deep and long, shaped like a coffin, and filled with the long prone steel body of the turbine. The lines on the outside were clean and purposeful, and inside it was like straddling an engine that was all business. The ledge between the turbine and the inside wall was barely enough for them both to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Newman gestured to an eyebolt mounted in the side of the nacelle, and Joe unclipped the fall-arrest mechanism and was keenly aware of the few completely untethered seconds it took him to turn and clip the harness hook to the eyebolt so he wouldn’t blow away.

  When he looked up again, he followed Newman’s outstretched arm. Cold wind pummeled his bare face.

  The speed of the blades was remarkable up close, almost a blur. But like frames of film being fed through a movie projector, the image appeared in an eerie stop-motion effect. It was a body, all right. One end of a chain had been looped under the arms in a double wrap and around the shaft of the blade on the other. There was about four feet of chain between the blade and the body. The victim flew through the air. It was a man. Joe could make out the face, although there was something off about it. But no doubt it was The Earl.

  Earl Alden’s eyes were closed and his face looked strangely thin, gaunt, and jowly, as if he’d lost a lot of weight since Joe had seen him last. But as he spun, Joe realized why. The Earl’s legs looked huge and fat, like sausage stuffed into the casing of his jeans, which were splitting over the tall black shafts of his cowboy boots. His boots, too, seemed several sizes too large and were misshapen into squared-off blocks. At first glance, Joe thought The Earl was wearing heavy dark gloves until he realized with horror that the swelled blue-black objects protruding from his cuffs were Alden’s grossly misshapen hands. The Earl’s shirt and jacket were in tatters but hadn’t yet been completely removed by the force of the wind. The cloth was soaked with dark blood and lighter-colored liquids. Joe thought he could catch a glimpse of the bruised hole of a gunshot on Alden’s left breast.

  “Oh, man,” Joe moaned.

  “Look what the centrifugal force is doing to him,” Newman said, and Joe could hear the amazement in his voice. “It’s squeezing all his fluids out toward the bottom. Like if you hung a toothpaste tube on a spinning propeller or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Me, neither,” Joe said, feeling his stomach churn. He turned away and covered his mouth. A spout of acid burned in his throat and chest.

  “Is it who I think it is?” Newman asked.

  “Yup,” Joe said, fighting nausea.

  Newman said, “I met him a couple times. At the Christmas party and such. He seemed all right to me. I’ve heard the stories, but he treated me and the guys all right. I guess we know how he had a key to the hatch down there.” He paused.

  “He’s no spring chicken,” Newman said. “Why in the hell did he climb up here?”

  Joe shook his head. He didn’t think The Earl had done any climbing, but he wasn’t ready to say.

  “He must have come up here for some reason,” Newman speculated. “Maybe he brought that chain with him. Maybe he was going to try to loop it around the blade and stop it from spinning or something, and it took off on him and pulled him over the side. Man, what a way to go. What a horrible fucking way to go.”

  Joe looked around on the nacelle. On the inside of the structure near the front he could see a brown smear on the wall. He tapped Newman’s shoulder and pointed at it.

  “What’s that?” Joe asked.

  Newman shrugged. Then a look of recognition passed over his face. “Looks like blood,” he said.

  Joe said, “Is there any w
ay to get a body up here if he can’t climb the ladder on his own?”

  Newman nodded. “There’s a hoist over there. We use it to bring up tools and parts when we need to work on the turbine. I heard of a guy down in Texas having a heart attack up top and they had to lower him down by the hoist. So I guess you could winch somebody up here. It’ll hold two hundred fifty pounds of equipment.”

  Joe guessed The Earl was about that.

  “Who in the hell would do this?” Newman asked. “It’s a lot of damned trouble to bring a body up here.”

  “Unless somebody was making a statement,” Joe said. He looked back over his shoulder at The Earl spinning by. He thought, No one deserves a comical death. He had once been on a case where two humans had been blown up by a cow. It had been tragic, and horrendous. And people still laughed about it.

  Newman whapped the side of his hard hat with the heel of his hand. “Oh, now I get it. Why they didn’t want you coming up here. He’s your father-in-law. Man, oh man.”

  Joe thought, Too bad it wasn’t his wife. He said nothing, but checked to make sure his harness hook hadn’t somehow magically come undone before grasping the sidewall of the nacelle. He leaned over and looked down. The convoy surrounded the tower. The vehicles were tiny from his vantage point, and the sheriff and his deputies were scurrying around like ticks. He could see one of the deputies pulling on a climbing harness with help from the Rope the Wind employee who had accompanied them out.

  “The sheriff will be sending someone up now,” Joe said to Newman. He patted his uniform for his digital camera. “I want to get some evidence shots of my own before they take over the crime scene.”

  “Sheriff McLanahan?” Newman said.

  “Yes.”

  Newman shook his head. “He’s a tool. I’ve had a couple run-ins with him. Thinks he’s some kind of Old West cowboy lawman, when he’s just a goddamned ass-hat.” Then he realized what he’d said and who’d heard it and quickly added, “I’m sorry. He might be a friend of yours.”

  “He’s no friend,” Joe said.

  Taylor was visibly relieved. “I see his reelection signs all over the damn county. I hope he loses.”

  Joe nodded. He didn’t want to agree in public. McLanahan had spies everywhere, and he kept a meticulous count of who was with him and who wasn’t. The sheriff made it a point to make life hard for those opposed to him, and had turned it into a career when it came to Joe Pickett.

  As they waited for the deputy to scale the tower, Joe withdrew his cell and speed-dialed Marybeth. She should just about be at the library to start work, he thought.

  When she picked up, he told her where he was—noting that, whatever his location, it didn’t seem to shock her anymore—and said, “Tough news, honey. We found The Earl’s body.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I’ll drive out to the ranch to tell your mother,” Joe said, already dreading it. “It should probably come from me.”

  “What happened? Did he get bucked off his horse?”

  “Worse,” Joe said. “Much worse. My first guess is somebody shot him and then they hung his body from one of his own wind turbines.”

  “Oh, my God, Joe,” she said again. “That’s awful.”

  “It is.”

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “I’ve got another call coming in.” Joe could hear the click. “It’s my mother.” There was panic in her tone, which was out of character.

  “I better take it,” she said. “What should I tell her, Joe?”

  “Tell her that as soon as I can get down off this tower, I’ll be there.”

  “As if that will hold her off,” she said. “You know how she is.”

  “Do I ever,” Joe said.

  He’d scarcely closed his phone when it lit up again. Marybeth.

  “Joe,” she said. She was frantic. “She said someone she trusted at the county building just called her in secret to tell her Sheriff McLanahan is sending someone to the ranch now. Not to break the news, but to arrest her! For murder, Joe! They think she had something to do with this.”

  Joe was grateful he was secured to the nacelle by the cable, because he suddenly felt lighter than air.

  “That’s kind of crazy,” he said, turning away from Newman who was eyeing him closely. He was afraid he might be grinning.

  “You don’t sound very . . . upset,” Marybeth said icily.

  “I am,” he pleaded. “Really. It’s just . . . McLanahan is nuts. There’s no way a sixty-year-old woman shot the guy, drove him to the wind farm, climbed a two-hundred-fifty-foot tower, hoisted a body to the top, and tied it to a blade. Of course, if any woman was mean enough do such a thing . . .”

  “Joe.”

  “I’m kidding.”

  “This is not the time,” she said, and he realized she was crying.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel horrible. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. Joe, despite what she is and what she’s done, she’s my mother. And she’s your daughters’ grandmother. Do you want them to think their grandmother is a murderer, for God’s sake?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, and he could imagine her wiping at her tears angrily so no one could see her crying. Open displays of emotion in front of co-workers wasn’t her style. “Call me when you know something.”

  “I will,” Joe said, closing the phone.

  “Sounds like you stepped in it,” Newman said.

  Before Joe could respond, Deputy Mike Reed’s helmeted head poked through the hatch. He was red-faced and breathing hard. Joe extended his hand and helped Reed up into the nacelle. When Reed could catch his breath, he reached out and put both of his hands on Joe’s shoulders, looked into his eyes, and said, “The sheriff wants your hide, Joe.”

  Joe shrugged. “Won’t be the first time.”

  Joe had known and worked with Deputy Reed for a number of years. He liked him. Reed was low-key and dedicated, and had managed to stay out of McLanahan’s web of intrigue and influence. He had surprised practically everyone by filing papers to run against the sheriff in the upcoming election. And McLanahan had surprised everyone by not immediately cutting Reed loose from the department.

  “I’m surprised he sent you,” Joe said.

  Reed chuckled. “He didn’t want to, but he ran out of guys, and he’s too fat anymore to even think about climbing that ladder.”

  “Where are his homeboys?” Joe asked. McLanahan had recruited three young deputies who spent most of their time in the weight room or appreciating McLanahan’s original cowboy poetry recitations. Joe had met most of them and saw they aspired to follow in the sheriff’s footsteps, and therefore they were to be treated with caution.

  The deputy looked hard at Joe. “I think you know.”

  Reed’s radio crackled to life. Because of the proximity to the trucks below, McLanahan’s voice was strong and clear. “Deputy Reed, have you reached the top?”

  “Almost, sir,” Reed said, and winked at Joe and Newman.

  “Get a move on,” McLanahan ordered.

  Reed took a deep breath.

  “I’m surprised you’re still around,” Joe said. “But I’m glad you are.”

  “He keeps his friends close and his enemies closer,” Reed said. “He wants to be able to keep an eye on me. So,” he said, looking over Joe’s shoulder at the body spinning by, “it’s true then. Earl Alden. This is gonna be a big deal.”

  Joe nodded. He filled Reed in on what little he knew, from the missing person’s report to the riderless horse to the climb up the tower with Newman. He pointed out the hoist and the possible smear of blood. The whole time, Reed simply shook his head in disbelief. Then he called down on his radio and repeated the whole thing to the sheriff.

  “We’ll need the evidence tech,” Reed said. “There might be some traces, and we might have some blood.”

  McLanahan said, “You want me to send Cindy up there? She weighs what, three hundred? How we goin
g to get her up there?”

  “I don’t know,” Reed said.

  “Can’t you at least stop that damned windmill from turning?”

  Reed looked to Newman, who said, “Yeah. We can disengage the rotor. Joe told me not to touch anything.”

  “He was right,” Reed said, and then nodded toward the radio, “but you heard the man.”

  “And get that son-of-a-bitch Joe Pickett off there,” McLanahan said. “He’s got a built-in conflict. We can’t have him up there.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Reed said.

  “You’ll ask me,” Joe shot back.

  “Please?”

  “Okay,” Joe said. “But first you have to tell me why McLanahan sent his deputies out to my mother-in-law’s ranch. There’s nothing I’d like better than to see her in prison just to give her a scare, but come on. She can’t really be your suspect.”

  Reed shrugged. “From what I understand—and nobody really tells me anything directly—the sheriff has been getting calls for a while about the possibility of this”—he gestured toward The Earl’s body as it flew by—“happening. He got another one last night, I guess. He didn’t act on it because he couldn’t believe it, either. But whoever called—all I know is it was a male—gave us enough detail ahead of the discovery to implicate her. I don’t know all the details, Joe. McLanahan didn’t share them. Maybe he’ll tell you.”

  Joe snorted.

  As he unclipped from the nacelle and reattached the fall-arrest mechanism to the cable to prepare his descent, he heard McLanahan tell Reed they were in the process of locating an industrial crane that would go high enough to unhook the body from the blade. And that he’d already contacted the state DCI (Division of Criminal Investigation) to send their best forensics team north.

  “I want this thing puncture-proof,” McLanahan told Reed. “No mistakes. No cut corners. Now stay up there and secure the crime scene, Reed. I need one of my guys here when the crane shows up. I’m headed out to the Thunderhead Ranch to oversee the arrest and the search. And don’t let anyone else up there unless you clear it with me.”