Cold Wind

by C. J. Box

  Merle still stared at his boots. “Yeah. But it’s been a long time since a girl looked at me that way. When she said to come along with her and meet her sister . . . hell, I just took my apron off right there at the grill and followed her out the door. I don’t think I even locked up the place and I sure as hell forgot to let you know I was leaving. I hope you can forgive me just a little.”

  “Hmmm,” Nate said.

  Large Merle took a deep breath and chanced a smile. He acted as if a huge weight had been lifted from his neck and shoulders. “All I want is a little understanding,” he said. “And I swear to you right now I’ll help you find them. I’ll stick with you until we find those bastards.”

  Nate shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, Merle, but this is all mine.”

  “Really, I want to help. Do you think it was The Five? Did they finally get a bead on you?”

  Nate reached up and scratched his chin. “It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t The Five, Merle. They were just sloppy amateurs and they left evidence behind. That only makes it worse. It’s just a matter of time before I find them.”

  “You got names?” Merle asked. “Locations?”

  “Not yet, but I’ve got fingerprints and DNA. I need to get them analyzed and I’ll have my boys do that. What I don’t know yet is who put them up to it and why. And who gave them my location. That bothers me.”

  “It wasn’t me, Nate,” Merle said. “If it was, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here now.”

  Nate nodded.

  “Hell, that girl took advantage of me. What a disappointment, you know?” Merle moaned. “Turned out she wanted me around as muscle so she could intimidate her sister into moving off the family ranch so she could move in. It was complicated as hell, but my gal left the place a long time ago and wanted to come back and claim it. Once I found out what the deal was about, I slunk back to Kaycee with my tail between my legs. That’s when I saw what happened to your place while I was gone. When I saw the wreckage . . . I thought they’d killed you. I was so damned happy when you called me. Women,” Merle said sadly. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.”

  “Not all of them anyway,” Nate said.

  Merle looked up sharply. “One of them was a woman?”

  “That’s what my sources tell me,” Nate said. “She wasn’t the shooter, but she may have put them up to it.”

  “No name on her, either?”

  “I’ve got a good idea who it is,” Nate said.

  They drove up the mountainside in Merle’s Power Wagon with the box on the bench seat between them. The road leveled on a long plateau of short grass and knuckles of rock that stretched out flat several miles as if the terrain were gathering its strength before thrusting upward into the Salt River Range. An old barbed-wire fence stretched out parallel to the road.

  Nate picked up the box and hefted it in his hands. Heavy, and not quite right.

  “This isn’t a .454 Casull,” Nate said, looking over at Merle. “I thought we talked about the right weapon.”

  “Jesus,” Merle said. “You can tell by the weight?”

  “Couple of ounces different,” Nate said. “Lighter.”

  Merle whistled. Then: “You amaze me. You’re right; it’s not a .454. Seems Freedom Arms has a new model, and I thought you might want to give it a try.”

  Nate frowned back, perturbed.

  “Tell you what,” Merle said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back for a .454 this afternoon and get the scope swapped. But at least make an informed decision.”

  “What new model?” Nate asked.

  “It’s called a .500 Wyoming Express,” Merle said. “Stainless steel five-shot revolver, just like what you’re used to, only bigger: fifty cal. A little over three pounds without the scope. It’s got a Model 83 chassis just like the .454 so it should feel the same in your hand. Seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. Shoots 1.765-inch belted cartridges at 35,000 psi. Twice the power of a .44 magnum. The belted cartridge allows them to cut down a little on the cylinder weight.”

  Nate raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

  “It’s not as fast as your .454,” Merle said, “but the knockdown power is greater. The .454 has a TKO of 30, while the .500 goes 39. And according to the man who sold it to me, it’s like getting hit by a freight train as opposed to a car. It’ll knock down a moose or a cape buffalo or a grizzly like nothing else. The penetration is incredible. The bullets just blow through flesh and bone and are rarely ever recovered afterward, which is an attribute I thought you might appreciate.”

  Nate nodded. He liked that. “Range?”

  “Five-hundred-yard capability,” Merle said, “but it’s most effective within a hundred.

  “In the right hands,” he winked at Nate, “and with an adjustable scope, accurate one-thousand-yard shots are not impossible. Plus at close range, one could, you know, knock out a bulldozer.

  “Hell,” Merle said, “you’re Nate Romanowski. You’ve got the rep. You’ve got to have the baddest gun known to man or beast.”

  Nate said, “I’m getting interested.”

  He liked the way it felt in his hand, loved its balance and weight. Large Merle stood behind him, silent, letting him get acquainted with the weapon. Nate kneaded it with his hands, spun it on his finger through the trigger guard, checked out the scope, then opened the cylinder.

  He was well practiced with the model. He loaded one large shell, rotated the cylinder past an empty hole, then loaded the next three rounds. The idea was to leave the firing pin resting on the skipped cylinder for safety. Then he raised it like an extension of his right arm and cupped his left hand under his right. He kept both eyes open and cocked it with his left thumb. The snick-snick sound of rotating steel cylinder was tight and sweet, he thought.

  The fence they stood next to had warped wooden posts spaced every ten feet. He counted out fifteen posts from where he stood—fifty yards—and fired. The concussion was tremendous and it seemed like the air around them had been sucked away for a second. Large Merle cried out, “Jesus Christ! My ears . . . give a guy some warning.”

  The post was split cleanly down the middle. A wisp of smoke and dust rose from the top of the post. The barbed wire strands sang up and down the fence from the impact.

  Nate smiled grimly. “A different attitude than the .454,” he said more to himself than Merle. “The .454 is snappy compared to this. The .500 pushes straight back like a mule kick.”

  Then he counted out fifteen more posts and blew the top off one at a hundred yards. He let the gun kick back over his left shoulder near his ear, and as he leveled it, he thumbed the hammer on the down stroke. Another heavy boom, and a post a hundred fifty yards away shattered into splinters. He calculated, aimed down the fence line, and fired his last round.

  “My God,” Large Merle said, taking his fingers out of his ears. “But you missed the last one.”

  “No,” Nate said, “look farther down. At two-fifty.”

  The post at two hundred fifty yards was blown cleanly in two, and the top half sagged near the bottom half, held aloft by the strands of wire stapled to it.

  “It doesn’t need to be said, but that’s some shooting.”

  “Then why say it?” Nate asked. “You did well, Merle. This will do the job. How much?”

  “The .500 WE retails for twenty-three hundred dollars without the scope,” Large Merle said. “The shells alone cost three dollars each, so keep that in mind. But given the circumstances, you owe me exactly nothing.”

  Nate said, “I don’t like being obligated.”

  “Given the circumstances,” Merle said again, “it’s the least I can do. I really liked Alisha, you know. I know how you felt about her.”

  Nate said, “Let’s not talk about her, please.” And he raised the weapon and aimed it between Merle’s eyes.

  “Tell me again you didn’t know a thing about the people who killed her,” Nate said without inflection.

  Merle’s eyes got huge. He was
close enough he could no doubt see the half-inch round of bronzed lead seated in the long, dark end of the barrel and no doubt envisioned what it would do to his head.

  “I didn’t know a thing,” Merle whispered.

  “Okay,” Nate said, letting the hammer down easy and slipping the weapon into his new shoulder holster. “Just needed to make sure.”

  Large Merle collapsed back on the grille of his pickup as if his legs had lost their strength. He put a big paw over his heart. He said, “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.”

  Before they left the grassy plateau, Nate withdrew two one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, rolled them into a tight tube, and shoved it into one of the empty .500 brass cartridges. He jammed the brass into a crack in the first shattered target.

  “So the rancher can buy some new posts,” he explained to Merle.

  As they drove slowly down the mountain, Nate said, “Have you heard how Diane Shober is doing in Idaho?”

  Shober had been relocated via the growing underground network after what had happened the year before in the Sierra Madre with Joe Pickett. Nate hadn’t kept in contact with her, or with his friends who took her in.

  Merle said, “Changed her name and her hair color. She’s gained a little weight since she’s not running anymore. But from what I can tell, she’s settled in.”

  Nate grunted approvingly.

  “Learned to shoot,” Merle said. “She’s just waiting for the revolution, from what they tell me. Nate, what do you think? Will there be one? Will they come and try to take away our guns and our freedom?”

  “Don’t know,” Nate said. “I’ve only got one thing on my mind right now and it’s not that.”

  “I’m worried,” Large Merle said. “Everybody’s worried. But we ain’t gonna let it happen without a fight. What the bastards don’t really understand is what it means to have an armed citizenry.”

  Nate grunted again.

  “How you gonna get the fingerprint and DNA identification you mentioned?” Merle asked as they neared Nate’s Jeep.

  “I know a guy in law enforcement,” Nate said, looking away. “I’m pretty sure he’ll help.”

  “Is it the guy I’m thinking about? The one you had the falling out with over Diane Shober? The game warden?”

  Nate looked over and silenced Merle with a look.

  After a few beats, Merle said, “You want me to go down in the canyon and clean it up a little? Make it habitable again?”

  “No.”

  “So you aren’t coming back?”

  Nate shook his head. “If an angry woman and two yahoos can figure out where I am, The Five wouldn’t have any problem. No, I’m gone from there.”

  “Where are you gonna be?”

  “For now,” Nate said, patting the holster and the weapon, “I’m going hunting.”

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Merle said, pulling up next to the Jeep. “Money, ammunition, a home-cooked meal. Anything. Just let me know. And keep in touch.”

  Nate looked over. “Why?”

  Merle said, “In case we need you. If things turn real ugly, you know? Or if The Five decide to start taking out everybody from our old unit who’re still around. I know there aren’t many of us left, but as long as we breathe, we’re a threat to them.”

  Nate nodded, said good-bye with his eyes, and climbed out of Merle’s Power Wagon.

  As Large Merle rolled away, Nate got out of his shoulder holster and placed it on the hood of his Jeep. He withdrew the .500 WE and reached into his jeans pocket.

  He’d braided the three-inch length of Alisha’s hair into a stiff bolt and tied one end of it to a supple leather jess he’d last used on his murdered peregrine. Nate took the loose ends of the jess and knotted them to the end of the muzzle of his weapon, just behind the front blade site.

  He lifted the revolver and aimed it. The length of hair tilted slightly in the breeze. It would help when it came to gauging wind velocity for long-range shots. And it would remind him—as if he needed it—of the only thing he cared about right now.

  SEPTEMBER 2

  Speak not evil one of another, brethren . . . There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

  —JAMES 4:11-12

  22

  Friday evening, Joe and Marybeth took Joe’s pickup to dinner at the Thunderhead Ranch. Missy had invited them, and Joe had been dreading the event all week. Lucy couldn’t join them because of play practice, and when they raised it with April, she said, “If I’m grounded, I’m friggin’ grounded.”

  “Family events can be an exception,” Marybeth said.

  “One of the problems with you people is you keep changing the rules,” April said, stalking back to her room and slamming the door.

  Her favorite new phrase, besides “frigging” was now the accusatory you people.

  Joe held the front door open for his wife. As she passed him, she said, “Marcus Hand better be as good as they say, because if he isn’t, April gains in power.”

  “Ouch,” Joe said, flinching.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Joe said, as they turned onto the highway.

  “I know,” Marybeth said. “I can’t say I’m very excited myself. But my mother needs to know she’s got some support, Joe. Can you imagine how she feels?”

  He bit his tongue and drove. If the woman had made any effort at all to befriend the locals or even show some respect for them, he thought, she might have a few allies.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Marybeth said.

  “Can’t help it.”

  He’d taken a shower and changed into jeans and a Cinch shirt, but his face still burned from being outside in the wind and sun all day. Mourning dove season had opened on the first, and he’d spent the last two days in the field checking hunters and limits. There was no other season where all a successful hunter had to show for himself was a small bag of the soft gray birds that would barely make a single meal—even though it was a tasty one. But because mourning doves migrated out of the area as quickly as they arrived, it was a furious few days of hunting and work and he’d not been able to pursue his investigation further.

  Joe and Marybeth had not caught up because they’d been missing each other at home with his long days and her evening shift at the library.

  As they turned off the highway and passed under the magnificent elk antler arches that marked the entrance to the Thunderhead Ranch, he said, “I guess this will give me the chance to ask Missy a couple of questions that have been nagging me since my talk with Bob Lee.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  Joe chinned toward the north in the direction of the Rope the Wind turbine project. “The wind,” he said. “It blows.”

  Dinner was served at the regal long table in the rarely used dining room. José Maria had been pulled from duty with the cows and dressed in a black jacket to serve ranch-raised beef tenderloin, asparagus with hollandaise, garlic-roasted sharp-tail grouse, and red-skinned new potatoes. Missy sat at one end picking, as usual, at tiny bits of food. She wore pearls and a black cocktail dress that showed off her trim figure and youthful legs, and Joe wondered if she could possibly be the same wan person he had seen in the courtroom.

  Marcus Hand occupied the other end of the table. He wore a loose guayabera shirt over jeans and cowboy boots. His reading glasses hung from a chain around his neck. He ate huge portions and loudly enjoyed them and washed down each bite with alternate gulps of either red or white wine. Hand was well known as a gourmand, and he’d penned dozens of unapologetic essays about eating large quantities of rich food. In one piece Joe had read in a national magazine, Hand lamented that fried chicken was rarely offered in local restaurants and that elites should stop looking down on big eaters who enjoyed their food in quantity. Hand dismembered a grouse by pulling it apart and gnawed the meat off the carcass. Then he snapped the thighbones in two and sucked out the marrow.

  Joe and Marybeth faced each o
ther in the middle, shooting glances toward either end and exchanging puzzlement to each other when their eyes met. Joe had expected angst and gravity to accompany the meal, but not this. He couldn’t help but stare at the lawyer, who enjoyed his food with a kind of moaning passion that nearly made Joe feel like a voyeur.

  “This grouse,” Hand swooned, sitting back and letting his eyes roll back into his head while a half-eaten thigh jutted out of his mouth like a fat cigar, “may be one of the most succulent dishes I’ve ever had. And I’ve eaten well all over the world, as you know.”

  “It is good,” Missy said from the other end of the table. Her face beamed, and she seemed oddly relaxed. Marybeth obviously thought the same thing, and she had trouble hiding her agitation.

  “Fresh grouse,” Hand said, “is like fine wine. You can taste the pine nuts and the sage they eat in the meat itself, as if master chefs infused it. Few culinary artists in the world can come close to replicating the savory flavor of freshly roasted grouse no matter how many fancy sauces they cover the fowl with, or what they stuff it with.”

  “All these years,” Missy said, talking softly and directly to Hand as if Joe and Marybeth weren’t in the room, “I didn’t know how wonderful these birds could be. There they were, just flying around the place. I didn’t even know they were grouse. I thought they were just fat little birds.”

  Hand laughed and shook his woolly head. He was charmed by her, or doing a very good impression of it.

  “It’s like this dining room,” Missy said. “Earl never wanted to eat in here. He said it was too dark and he never liked to linger over fine food and wine. To Earl, food was just fuel. But it’s lovely, isn’t it? A lovely room to eat wonderful fresh grouse in.”

  “Mom,” Marybeth said sharply, “are you okay?”