by C. J. Box
Timberman’s face told Joe nothing beyond what he said, which was, “He’s usually here by now.”
“So you haven’t seen him this morning?”
Timberman shook his head. He nodded toward Bailey, who shrugged as well.
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“Could be.”
Joe sighed and smiled. This is why everyone trusted Buck Timberman.
Joe leaned in toward the barman, speaking very low. “Did Bud talk a lot about his ex-wife Missy?”
Timberman looked away, but nodded almost imperceptibly. He didn’t want the cowboys at the end of the bar to see him answering the game warden’s questions. Now Joe understood.
“You heard what happened, right?”
Another nod.
“Do you think Bud hated her so much he’d try to pin something on her?”
Timberman shrugged noncommittally.
Joe said, “I’m not asking you to tell me something I’d ask you to repeat in court. I’m just trying to sort things out for myself. I know Bud to be a kind man, but pretty mule-headed at times. He’d focus on things until they got done. I remember when I worked for him, he’d bring up the same section of loose fence at breakfast every day to his ranch hands until I’d go out and fix it myself just to shut him up. I’m wondering if he was focused on getting back at Missy.”
“He did have some choice things to say about her from time to time,” Timberman conceded.
“Me, too,” Joe said.
Timberman reacted to that with a slight smile—no more than a twin tug up on the corners of his mouth.
“Word is,” Joe said, “Bud’s the star witness for the prosecution.”
Timberman said, “Hmmmm.” Then: “Maybe I ought to cut down on my Jim Beam order. I might not be pouring as much in the next few weeks.”
Joe finished his coffee. “Did Bud ever talk about wind turbines?”
Timberman looked up, puzzled. “Everybody does these days.”
Joe sighed. This was hard work getting anything out of Buck Timberman. “Did he seem to have any opinion of them either way?”
“Not that I can recall. More?” Timberman asked, chinning over his shoulder toward the pot.
“You’ve got more?” Joe said, not meaning coffee.
“Not really.”
“Then I’m fine.”
Joe slid off the stool and put a five on the bar.
“Don’t worry about it,” Timberman said, waving at the bill as if trying to get it out of his sight.
Joe left it, and said, “If you see him, give me a call, will you? My wife is pretty concerned about what’s going on.”
The slight nod. Then, “He lives upstairs. I’ve rented the rooms to him for a while. He pays in cash and on time, and there haven’t been any complaints.”
“Does he entertain guests?” Joe asked.
“Not that I’ve ever noticed.”
“No one recently, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Thanks for the coffee, Buck.”
“Anytime, Joe.”
Joe hesitated before opening the door to go outside. He glanced up the street, to see Deputy Sollis striding back angrily from Sandvick’s Taxidermy, barking on his radio.
“One thing,” Buck Timberman said softly, and Joe realized he was talking to him.
Joe turned and raised his eyebrows in surprise. Timberman had left his order on the counter and stood in the crook of the bar close to Joe and as far away from the four cowboys as possible.
“Nice-looking lady in here a week ago. She and Bud seemed to get on pretty well. She said her name was Patsy. Don’t remember a last name.”
Joe shook his head, not following.
“Before she met Bud, she asked me if I knew where she could find your friend.”
Joe felt his scalp tighten. “Nate Romanowski?”
“That’s the one,” Buck said.
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing to tell as far as I’m concerned.”
Joe nodded. Then he got it. “You said she got along with Bud, though. Think she asked him about Nate?”
“Couldn’t say for sure,” Timberman said, but Joe could read between the lines.
“Interesting,” Joe said. “Will you let me know if Patsy comes back?”
Timberman nodded his slight nod before turning and going back to his order form. Cutting down on his order of Jim Beam.
Justice of the Peace Tilden Mouton held the preliminary hearing. After a recap of the charges and the evidentiary testimony by Sheriff McLanahan but without an appearance by Bud Longbrake, Mouton bound Missy over for arraignment before Judge Hewitt on Monday.
AUGUST 27
Funeral by funeral, theory advances.
—PAUL A. SAMUELSON
17
The funeral for Earl Alden took place at the Twelve Sleep County Cemetery on a warm still morning. It was a small affair.
Joe wore his dark suit and stood with Marybeth, April, and Lucy in the sun. As the Rev. Maury Brown read the eulogy about a man he’d never met, Joe felt a drip of sweat snake down his spine beneath his shirt. He looked up and took in the scene around them.
The cemetery took up ten acres on the top of a hill west of Saddlestring. From where they stood, he could see the cottonwood-choked river below them, the town itself, and the Eagle Mountain Club perched on a bluff on the other side of the river. Insects burred in the turf, and while he was looking, a big grasshopper landed on the top of the casket with a thump. The air was ripe with pollen and the dank smell of dug-up dirt. A massive granite monument had been delivered to the site on a pallet. It was nearly as high as the large tarped mound of fresh dirt it sat next to.
Missy stood across from the casket and the hole in the ground. Small and black and veiled, she was flanked by Marcus Hand on one side and Sheriff McLanahan on the other. After the funeral, she’d be returned home on bail. A small knot of ranch hands and construction workers from the Thunderhead Ranch stood together apart from the other mourners. Joe wondered if they were there to pay their respects or to find out when and if they’d get their last paychecks.
He didn’t hear much of what Rev. Brown said. Instead, he observed Missy. Her veil hid her face and he couldn’t tell if she was crying, she seemed so still.
When the Rev. Brown turned to her and cued her to toss a handful of dirt on the casket that had been poised over the hole, Joe heard Missy say, “No thank you.”
On their way down a dirt pathway to the parking lot, Marybeth said how odd it was to attend the funeral for a man she barely knew, and she wondered aloud why members of Earl’s extended family hadn’t shown up.
Joe shrugged, wondering the same thing himself.
“I’d like to know how much that monument set Missy back,” Joe said. “It’ll be the tallest thing in the cemetery now.”
April and Lucy argued about where they wanted to go eat since it was Saturday and lunch out had been the incentive offered to attend the funeral.
“I couldn’t tell,” he said. “Was your mother crying?”
“Who knows?”
Joe reached out and found Marybeth’s hand and squeezed it. As he did, he heard a motor start up in the parking lot.
He looked up to see a boxy old-model yellow van back out of a space unnecessarily fast and race away.
“Who was that?” Marybeth asked Joe.
“I’m not sure. I thought I saw two people in the front, but I couldn’t see their faces.”
“I wonder if they were coming to the funeral and got here late. It would have been nice to have a few more mourners.”
“Yup,” Joe said, watching the van descend over the hill as if it were being chased by bees.
AUGUST 29
You cannot make a wind-mill goe with a paire of bellowes.
—GEORGE HERBERT
18
Joe escorted Marybeth up the stone steps of the Twelve Sleep County Courthouse for the arraignment of her
mother in the courtroom of Wyoming District Judge Hewitt. The building had been erected of rough granite blocks and topped with a marble dome in the 1880s, and it reflected the original grandiosity of what the town was predestined to become but never did. Joe opened the heavy door for her.
“Your mom isn’t the first celebrity tried here,” he said. “Big Nose Bart was found guilty here back in the range war days. Lots of Old West outlaws were tried here. Most of them found innocent.”
“Joe,” Marybeth said with exasperation, “my mother is not an outlaw.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just trying to provide some historical perspective.”
“That doesn’t help,” she said. “My colleagues at the library tiptoe around me like there was a death in the family.”
“There was,” Joe said, before he could catch himself.
She turned on him. “You are not being helpful. What I mean is, good people don’t know how to act around me. I don’t know how to act around me, either. Do I go about my business as if my mother wasn’t accused of murder, or do I walk around with my head down, ashamed?”
Joe reached out and stroked her cheek. “Keep your chin up,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
She nodded and thanked him with her eyes. “Which way?” she said. “I’ve never been in this building before.”
Judge Hewitt was small, dark, and twitchy. He’d been a judge for seventeen years and Joe appreciated Hewitt’s lack of pomposity and almost manic insistence on a fast, no-nonsense pace in his courtroom. He was known for cutting off long-winded questions and statements and ordering lawyers to get to the point. He often asked especially verbose attorneys, in front of the jury and their clients, “Are you being paid by the word?”
Joe and Marybeth entered the courtroom. It was narrow and ancient with a high stamped-tin ceiling and the acoustics were hollow and awful. The pine-paneled walls were covered by old paintings depicting 1940s versions of local Western history: politically incorrect renderings of Indian massacres filled with dripping scalps and war paint, cavalry charges, grizzly bear hunts, powwows, covered wagons loaded with cherubic children. Joe was intimately familiar with each and every one of them since he’d spent so much time over the years in the room waiting to testify in game and fish violation cases. Joe disliked being inside courtrooms nearly as much as hospitals, and always felt uncomfortable, constrained, and false when he was inside either.
“There she is,” Marybeth whispered, almost to herself.
Joe looked up. Missy sat in the first row on the left side with her back to them, next to the broad buckskin-covered shoulders of Marcus Hand. Missy had her hair up in a matronly bun and was wearing a light print dress. The effect, Joe thought, was that she looked older than her age. He was shocked.
He wondered if Hand had coached her. After all, she’d been at home on the ranch for a week since she made bail, sharing the rambling mansion with Hand and his team of attorneys, paralegals, and investigators. She’d had plenty of time to regroup since the arrest and to work on her appearance, to work her magic. But for those without that knowledge, it looked as though she’d thrown on a dress minutes before court in her jail cell and had been denied makeup or a mirror.
On the other side of the aisle, Dulcie Schalk studied notes on a legal pad. She wore a dark business suit with a skirt and black flats. Sheriff McLanahan lounged next to Schalk, arm flung back over the bench, chin up, and looking smarmy and bored, Joe thought.
Four people stood in front of the bench as Judge Hewitt glared down at them. The two men in the middle were in orange jumpsuits and boat shoes. They had long black hair and dark skin. Joe recognized them as Eddie and Brent Many Horses, Eastern Shoshones from the reservation. They’d been long-distance runners in high school and he’d checked their fishing licenses more than once. Bookending the Many Horses was public defender Duane Patterson on their left, and Dulcie Schalk’s deputy county attorney Jack Pym on their right.
“What’s going on?” Marybeth whispered to Joe, as they found a seat several rows back from her mother.
“Arraignment day,” Joe whispered back. “Judge Hewitt likes to do them one after the other each Monday. The Many Horses brothers are accused of stealing cars and dealing meth. Your mother is next in line.”
“My God,” Marybeth whispered, shaking her head. “This is too unbelievable.”
Joe sat back and took in the scene. Everyone, with the exception of the Many Horses brothers and their counsel, was waiting for the next event. Jim Parmenter and Sissy Skanlon sat amidst a cluster of a half-dozen reporters from various newspapers, radio and television stations. Several of McLanahan’s deputies, including Sollis, took over the seats directly behind Dulcie Schalk and the sheriff behind the prosecution table. A dozen or so local busybodies Joe usually saw clustered around coffee cups at the Burg-O-Pardner and the diner were scattered through the court, simply out of curiosity, he assumed. This was certainly a different feel from the initial appearance, and the gravity of the situation struck him. No doubt, he thought, Missy noticed it, too.
“She’s looking back,” Marybeth whispered.
Missy had turned in her seat to assess the courtroom crowd and her eyes searched slowly through the room until they found Joe and Marybeth. “She sees us,” Marybeth said.
There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin looked like parchment. She looked so sad, so small, so . . . wronged.
Marybeth clenched her fist in a “stay strong” gesture, and Missy smiled sadly and nodded. When she turned back around, Marybeth said to Joe, “I’ve never seen her look worse. How can anyone think she was capable of what she’s accused of?”
Joe thought, Exactly.
Judge Hewitt whacked his gavel and set a trial date for the Many Horses brothers. The brothers and their attorney shuffled out in their boat shoes, throwing suspicious glances at the growing crowd in the courtroom who weren’t there for them.
“Next,” Hewitt said, glancing down at his schedule. “Twelve Sleep County versus Missy Alden on the charge of conspiracy and first-degree murder.”
Marybeth grasped his arm with both of her hands at the words.
“Showtime,” Joe muttered to Marybeth.
Dulcie Schalk looked young, sharp, athletic, and competent, Joe thought, as she ran through the charges for Hewitt. She outlined the county’s case with devastating brevity.
“Your Honor,” she said, standing and holding her legal pad in front of her but barely glancing at it, “the county charges the defendant, Mrs. Alden, of deliberately murdering her fifth husband, Earl Alden. Mr. Alden was about to file divorce proceedings against her, which would have left her without the majority of the financial empire she’d worked so long and hard to obtain. We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Alden, upon learning of the pending divorce proceedings, actively engaged in the pursuit of hiring a killer to carry out her plan. And we know this, Your Honor, because a man who was asked to pull the trigger will tell us so. He’ll also testify that when he was unwilling to commit the murder on the defendant’s behalf, the defendant did it herself. Our witness is working closely with the county and he’s been fully cooperative. He’s agreed to become a state’s witness and testify against her. We have phone records to prove communications between Mrs. Alden and the murderer-for-hire. We have the murder weapon and forensic evidence to prove it. And we will establish both motive and opportunity.”
Schalk paused to turn and point her finger at Missy at the next table. Joe followed her gesture and found Missy’s reaction discordant with the buildup. Missy looked demurely at the county attorney, moisture in her eyes. Her lips trembled. Despite his inclinations, Joe’s heart went out to her.
Schalk continued, “The people ask that the defendant”—she looked down at her pad—“Missy Wilson Cunningham Vankueren Longbrake Alden—be tried for these charges and punished to the full extent of the law.”
There were several gasps from spectators, as well as a whistle of satis
faction. Joe doubted most of the spectators in the courtroom were fully aware of Missy’s track record, and had certainly never heard the names of all of her ex-husbands strung together like that. It was a bit of theater that appeared to have worked. Sheriff McLanahan turned in his seat and glowed, basking in the reaction and by doing so taking credit for it. Marybeth’s grip on Joe’s arm had become vise-like, and he could no longer feel the fingers on his left hand.
“First things first, Miss Schalk,” Hewitt said, showing a cool edge of annoyance. “You seem to be getting ahead of yourself.”
He raised his eyebrows and took in Missy and Marcus Hand. Joe noticed a softening in the judge’s features when he beheld Missy, and it surprised Joe that Missy’s appearance and demeanor had created the desired effect even on the judge.
“Mrs. Alden,” he asked softly, “how do you plead to the charges?”
It hung out there for a moment while neither Missy nor Hand responded. Then, as if so filled with disgust that the mere effort of standing seemed to demean him, the attorney rose and slowly swung his shaggy buffalo head at Dulcie Schalk. Joe could see him in profile, and it appeared the skin of his face had been drawn back in pure white rage.
“Mrs. Alden?” Hewitt prompted. “What say you?”
Missy looked up at Hand in expectation. Hand continued to glare at Schalk. Schalk responded by looking away, but Joe could tell she was a little taken aback. He thought, Marcus Hand starts to earn his money now.
Finally, after a full minute of tense silence, and as Hewitt craned forward and his eyes narrowed in annoyance, Hand’s voice rumbled out low and contemptuous. “We reject this outrageous frame-up and plead not guilty to each and every charge the county attorney has filed and every charge against my client she and Sheriff McLanahan may dream about filing in the future.”
Hewitt blinked, then regained his footing. “Mr. Hand, that will be the last of your stage performances for the remainder of this trial.”
