by C. J. Box
It was too much, too fast. Then his cell phone rang.
“This is Nate Romanowski,” the voice said. Romanowski spoke with a kind of drawled sarcastic lilt. “I’ve got one phone call and I’m calling you, buddy. Can you meet with me?”
“Why aren’t you calling a lawyer?” Joe asked, stunned.
“Because I’m calling you,” Romanowski said, sounding annoyed. “Because I thought about it for two days and I’m calling you, mister.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“It sure is,” Romanowski agreed. Joe assumed Romanowski was referring to the case against him. “I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll clear my schedule.”
“Clear your . . .”
But Romanowski had hung up.
A few minutes later, his phone rang again.
Joe snatched it up.
“Please hold for Melinda Strickland,” an unfamiliar female voice commanded.
“How did you get my number?” Joe asked. He knew he’d never given it to Strickland.
“Please hold for Melinda Strickland.”
Joe held, anger welling up inside of him. He heard a click as the call was put through.
“Uh, Joe, why is Nate Romanowski calling you?” Strickland’s voice was strained, as if barely under control.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Joe answered. “But how did you know that, and how did you get my cell phone number?”
“I don’t like being kept in the dark about things like this,” she said icily, ignoring his questions.
Joe was confused.
“He just called. Just minutes ago. And why should I report that to you, anyway?”
“Because, Joe Pickett, I am in charge of this investigation. A man was murdered, you know.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm. “I need to be kept in the loop. I can’t have this kind of thing happening behind my back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joe said, raising his voice. He felt his scalp twitch. “And there’s nothing going on behind your back.”
“He called you!” she shouted. “The man who murdered a federal employee on federal land called you, of all people!”
Joe stared at his cell phone as if it were a hyena. Then he raised it to his ear. She was still shouting.
“I’m losing my signal,” he lied, then turned the phone off and tossed it angrily aside onto his truck seat.
Eleven
Bucking a rooster tail of plowed snow in the county building’s lot, Joe parked in the designated visitors section and got out. Three floors of institutional blond brick housed the sheriff’s office, the jail, the attorney, the court, the assessor, the treasurer, and other county administration offices. The sandstone inscription over the front doors read:
TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY—
WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS
AND THE WEST BEGINS
The slogan was an endless source of amusement, especially among a group of retired men who drank coffee every morning at the Burg-O-Pardner. They’d petitioned the Saddlestring Roundup for years with slogans that they preferred:
TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY—
TRAILHEAD FOR THE INFORMATION COWPATH
TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY—
MILLENNIUM? WHAT MILLENNIUM?
TWELVE SLEEP COUNTY—
TEN YEARS BEHIND WYOMING,
WHICH IS TEN YEARS BEHIND EVERYWHERE ELSE
Joe was still shaken from the events of the morning. The word “custody” hung in the air and wouldn’t go away. Joe hoped like hell that Brockius was wrong. And where was Jeannie Keeley, if she wasn’t in the camp?
Melinda Strickland’s rantings had angered and confused him further. She had sounded unhinged, hysterical. When would she go away?
And now this. Nate Romanowski.
After hanging up on Strickland, Joe had decided to visit Nate at the county jail. He was curious as to why the man had called him. He hoped as well that talking to Nate would dispel the lingering doubts he had about his guilt. And Joe also hoped it would really piss off Melinda Strickland. A newly installed metal detector and security desk were manned by a semi-retired deputy wearing a name tag that identified him as “Stovepipe.” He’d received the nickname years before in an elk camp when he fell over a woodstove in a tent and brought the chimney down all over himself. Joe had met Stovepipe during the previous summer when Joe had driven up on him to check out his fishing license. Stovepipe had fallen asleep on the bank of the river, where he had been bait fishing, and was angered to discover when he awoke that a trout had not only taken his bait, but had dragged his rod into the river.
This time, Stovepipe was awake, although barely.
“You ever find your fishing rod?” Joe asked, while he unbuckled his gunbelt and slid it across the counter.
Stovepipe shook his head sadly. “That was a hundred-dollar Ugly Stik with a Mitchell 300 reel. I bet you that fish must have been seven pounds.”
“Maybe,” Joe said, patting his pockets for metal items.
“Don’t worry about it,” Stovepipe said conspiratorially, leaning forward over the counter to see if anyone else was around. “The machine’s broke anyway. It hasn’t worked since July.”
The sheriff’s office and county jail were on the second floor. Joe mounted the steps and pushed through frosted glass doors. Barnum’s door was shut and his office was dark, but Deputies Reed and McLanahan sat at desks, staring into computer monitors.
“Which one of you told Melinda Strickland that Nate Romanowski called me?” Joe asked.
Reed was obviously puzzled by the question. That left Deputy McLanahan. When McLanahan looked up, Joe noticed two things. The first was a barely disguised hatred—a snake-eyed, thin-lipped countenance similar to a horse about to bite. The second thing he noticed were the stitches that appeared to fasten McLanahan’s nose to his face.
“What can I help you with, Mr. Pickett?” McLanahan asked, the question posed as a bored statement.
“What happened to you?” Joe asked, taking his coat off and hanging it on a hook. He kept his cowboy hat on.
“Nate Romanowski happened to him,” Reed volunteered from across the room. McLanahan glared at Reed.
“When did he do that?”
“Two days ago,” Reed answered again, ignoring McLanahan.
“What are you, my goddamned mouthpiece?” McLanahan asked, rising from his desk. He turned to Joe.
“I looked in Romanowski’s cell and he was on his bed trying to choke himself. He had his hand in his mouth, and I told him to knock it off,” McLanahan explained, his voice nasal due to his injury. “He wouldn’t quit, so I went in there to make him stop.”
“And Romanowski decked him,” Reed said, pointing toward McLanahan. “Romanowski cleaned McLanahan’s clock, then kicked him outside his cell, and shut his own door. He doesn’t like Deputy McLanahan very much.”
“SHUT UP!” McLanahan seethed. Reed looked away, obviously hiding a smile.
Joe looked from Reed to McLanahan. McLanahan’s face was red, and his anger had caused tiny beads of bright red blood to leak through his stitches.
“He didn’t try to escape?” Joe asked. “Seeing that you were on the floor and he could have stepped over you and walked away?”
McLanahan shook his head. “Maybe he knows what I would have done to him if he’d tried.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” Joe said, deadpan. Reed continued to look away, but Joe could tell he was smiling by the way Reed’s cheeks bulged out in profile.
McLanahan tried to gauge Joe’s comment. He looked ready to fight—and if not Joe, then Reed. Anybody. But, Joe thought, McLanahan is at his best in a fight when he’s surrounded by armed agents and his opponent is defenseless. Like Nate Romanowski was.
“Has he admitted to the murder?” Joe asked.
“He denies everything,” McLanahan said. “He hasn’t even requested a lawyer. Instead, he called you.”
“Maybe you should have hit him again with your rifle butt,” Joe said.
&nb
sp; Reed turned back, expectant. McLanahan tried to grimace, but it clearly hurt his face to do so.
“Why exactly did he call you?” McLanahan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why the game warden and not a lawyer?” Reed wondered.
Joe shrugged.
“You going to meet with him?” McLanahan asked, looking at Joe with a suspicious eye.
“That’s why I’m here.”
McLanahan and Reed exchanged a glance, each waiting for the other to make a decision of some kind.
“It’s his funeral,” Reed said dismissively, “If Romanowski wants to talk to the game warden, he has every right to do so.”
McLanahan crossed his arms over his chest. “Something about this doesn’t sound right to me.”
“Me either,” Joe said truthfully. “I don’t know the man.”
“You’re sure?”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m sure.”
Reed stood up, jangled his ring of cell keys, and threw Joe a “follow me” nod.
“You left your gun and everything with Stovepipe, right?”
“Yup.”
“Watch that son-of-a-bitch,” McLanahan called after them. “If he jumps you, I may not hear it.”
As they entered the hallway, Reed looked over his shoulder at Joe. “I’ll hear it,” he said.
Nate Romanowski lolled on his cot with his hand in his mouth, just as McLanahan had described. His other arm was flung over his eyes. One of his feet was on the concrete floor of the cell and the other hung over the foot of the bed. He wore a sky-blue one-piece county jumpsuit and standard-issue slip-on boat shoes—no belt or shoelaces that he could harm himself with.
The cell was ten feet by ten feet square, with a cot, an open toilet, a desk and chair bolted to the wall and floor, and a stainless-steel sink with a faucet that leaked a thin stream of water into the basin. The single window was thick opaque glass reinforced with wire.
Joe Pickett had never been in the county jail itself. He had been in the anteroom, where, on two occasions, he had brought in game violators because they were either drunk or drugged and he didn’t want to run the risk of leaving them out in the field. Unlike Lamar Gardiner, they had sat quietly in Joe’s pickup while being transported to town.
Although it was uncomfortably warm, the bare walls and metal furnishings made the cell seem cold. Not for the first time that day, Joe asked himself what he was doing here, and questioned whether he should have come. He wondered if he was thinking clearly enough after his encounter with Wade Brockius and the Sovereigns. Maybe, he thought, he should have run this by Terry Crump, his supervisor.
But the door closed behind him, and Nate Romanowski was sitting up, both his feet on the floor now, fixing sharp, cold, lime-green eyes on Joe. Romanowski’s head was bowed forward slightly, and he was looking out at Joe from under a thick shelf of brow bone that made him seem even more menacing. Romanowski was lanky and all angles, his sharp elbows and long arms jutting out from broad shoulders, his nose beaklike above a V-shaped jaw. His blond hair was thinning on top.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. His hand remained in his mouth slurring his voice.
“I’m not sure why I’m here,” Joe said honestly.
Romanowski smiled with his eyes, then ever so slowly withdrew his fingers from his mouth. Joe noticed that Romanowski was working his mouth gently with his tongue, probing his teeth. Then he realized what Romanowski had been doing: holding the teeth that had been knocked free by the rifle butt in the sockets they had come from, so they would reattach.
“Think that’s going to work?” Joe asked, impressed.
“It seems to.” Romanowski shrugged. “They’re loose—but my two front teeth are back in. They should stay there and firm up as long as I don’t use ’em.”
“You mean, like eating?”
Romanowski nodded. “Soup’s okay. Broth is better.”
“There are dentists in Saddlestring,” Joe offered. “One could be sent up here.”
Romanowski shrugged again. “It gives me something to do. Besides, I don’t know if Barnum would be that helpful.”
Romanowski’s voice was low and soft. The cadence of his speaking rhythm was sarcastic, making him sound a little like Jack Nicholson. Joe strained to hear him.
Romanowski seemed oddly comfortable with his surroundings. He was the kind of man, Joe thought, who was probably comfortable in his own skin wherever he was. He was cool, confident—and intriguing. And charged with murder, Joe reminded himself.
“Why’d you clean Deputy McLanahan’s clock?” Joe asked.
Romanowski snorted and pulled down the collar of his jail overalls. Joe could see two small burn marks, like snakebites, on Romanowski’s neck. Joe recognized the marks as the aftereffects of the Taser stun-gun that McLanahan carried on his belt. McLanahan, Joe guessed, hadn’t been checking up on Romanowski as he’d claimed. He had been harassing him, probably trying to elicit a confession.
“I’ll get right to it,” Romanowski said. “I want to ask you two favors. If you can do either one of them I’ll be in your debt. If you can do ’em both, I’ll owe you a life. Mine, I mean.”
Joe shook his head. What was this?
“First, you should try to get me out of here.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because,” Romanowski said, displaying either a smirk or a smile—Joe was unsure which—“I didn’t kill Lamar Gardiner. Not that I might not have if I was given the chance and considering the circumstances. I heard about those dead elk. Any asshole that shoots seven elk deserves a couple of arrows in his heart. But I’m innocent on this one.”
“Why aren’t you telling your lawyer this?”
Romanowski fixed his gaze on Joe. “My public defender is a twenty-six-year-old named Jason. He still has notes from college classes in the same legal pad he brought with him to see me. I’m his second client ever. When he was making conversation, he asked me if I listened to hip-hop.”
Joe listened blankly.
“My lawyer is a twenty-six-year-old named Jason,” Romanowski repeated, his voice rising for the first time.
It was if Romanowski had said all he was going to say about this subject, and Joe should readily agree. But Joe didn’t.
“Maybe you ought to be calling a real private-practice criminal lawyer instead of me.”
Romanowski shifted slightly, and closed one eye as if to see Joe Pickett from a different angle.
“But I didn’t. I called you.”
Joe shifted in his chair, uncomfortable.
“How can I prove you didn’t murder Lamar Gardiner?” Joe asked. “They’ve got your bow and the arrows, you were seen coming down from the mountain that afternoon, and you’ve got a motive. You’ve got to give me something to go on.”
Romanowski snorted. “I was coming down that road. I was coming from the Longbrake ranch, where I had returned a certain item of clothing to Mrs. Longbrake.”
“A certain item of clothing?” Joe asked.
“Her black thong underwear. I found it under a juniper bush at my house. I guess it had been there since the summer.” Romanowski paused. “Mary Longbrake and I had a certain thing together. She would come out to my place when Bud was out of town. I’d wait for her naked in my tree. When she got out of her truck, I’d come down and get her. We would do it outside. Sometimes on my picnic table, sometimes on the bank of the river, sometimes in the river. She was a lonely woman, and I helped. Hell, I made her whoop!”
Joe didn’t know whether to laugh or call for Reed to let him out.
“So did you tell the sheriff?”
“I did,” Romanowski sneered. “He said he called Mary and she swore she’s never heard of me. When she talked to Barnum she was packing for an around-the-world cruise and planned to be gone for a few months. She’s lying about me, I understand that. Not about the cruise, though. Besides, Bud would pound her into jelly if she came clean.”
“Okay,�
�� Joe said. “What about the bow and the Bonebuster arrows?”
Romanowski nodded. “I’ve hunted with a bow, and I own that brand of arrows. But it’s not my weapon of choice. Even for a lowlife like Gardiner, I would use my weapon of choice.”
“Which is?”
“My .454 Casull,” Romanowski said, smiling. “A five-shot revolver made by Freedom Arms in Freedom, Wyoming. It’s the most powerful handgun in the world. It’s four times more powerful than a .44 Magnum.”
Joe remembered hearing about it, and seeing the butt of the revolver in a holster at Romanowski’s home.
“And the motive?” Joe asked, as if playing the game through.
“I already told you, I would have likely popped Gardiner given the circumstances, but I wasn’t there. He was a bureaucratic little turd, floating in a bowl. He shut off the roads to where I trap falcons, and imposed policies and restrictions on the citizens of this county that were heavy-handed and dictatorial. I sincerely disliked the son-of-a-bitch, but somebody got to him first. And good for them.”
Joe thought: That ought to convince a jury. The cadence of Nate’s words was odd as well—a series of short, edgy pulses. Joe couldn’t decide if he was credible or not.
“When we came to your place,” Joe said, “You seemed to be expecting us.”
Romanowski nodded.
“But when Barnum and Melinda Strickland started accusing you of Lamar Gardiner’s murder, you looked confused. Did I read that right?”
“Absolutely,” Romanowski said, nodding. “Absolutely.”
“So explain.”
Romanowski sighed, and looked away. “Let’s just say I got into a little trouble a year and a half ago in Montana. I know there’s a warrant, but I wasn’t sure when they’d find me. So when the vehicles pulled up out there, I figured my time had come to go back to the Treasure State.”
“What did you do up there?” Joe asked.
Romanowski winced. “I don’t know how it can help me to tell you.”
