Cold Wind

12

Joe Pickett was finishing his statement across the desk from Deputy Sollis in the County Building when Marcus Hand arrived. Dusk painted the windows and, despite the furious activity that had gone on throughout the day, the squad room was oddly silent. Most of the sheriff’s department was at dinner, except for Deputy Reed, who was still at the crime scene assisting the DCI forensics crew as well as the crane operators who, as far as Joe knew, were still trying to figure out how to lower The Earl’s body from the windmill without dropping it.

Joe’s cell phone was backed up with three messages from Marybeth, no doubt wondering what was going on, and he held the phone in his hand as if to alleviate his guilt at not responding sooner. Sollis was a two-fingered typist, and his fingers were as thick as his neck, and they’d spent most of the previous hour going over the circumstances related to the discovery, the climb up the tower, and the condition of The Earl’s body that Joe could recall. Every other word Sollis typed, it seemed, was misspelled or wrong, and he was constantly leaping backwards in the text and correcting his errors. When Joe offered to key it in for him, Sollis shot him a murderous glare.

“You say his boots looked big,” Sollis said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Centrifugal force,” Joe said. “He’d been up there spinning so long and so fast that the fluids in the body were driven toward his extremities. ”

“So you’re a forensic scientist as well,” Sollis sneered, rolling his eyes. “I thought you were just the game warden. Turns out you’re an expert on centrifical force, too.”

“Centrifugal,” Joe corrected. “I’d suggest you look it up, but it would take an hour for you to Google it using your sausage fingers.”

“Look, buddy,” Sollis said, turning in his chair away from his monitor and thrusting his meaty face halfway across the desk, “that’s about enough of that crap from the likes of you. ”

Joe leaned forward as well, fed up, nearly but not quite wanting Sollis to start something, when he noticed the deputy’s attention was elsewhere, his tiny eyes squinting over Joe’s shoulder.

“This is the sheriff’s department,” Sollis said over Joe’s shoulder. “Can I help you with something?”

The voice that responded was deep and smooth, like thick syrup: “Sir, I’m well aware of my location. I’m also well aware that you currently have a sweet, beautiful, and innocent woman-my client-sitting like a common criminal in your jail. I wish to speak with her immediately. My name is Marcus Hand.”

Joe craned around to the criminal defense attorney filling not only the doorframe but somehow the entire room. Marcus Hand was a big man in every respect. He stood six feet four and a half inches, according to the height scale mounted to the left of the door itself, and he had wide shoulders made wider by the shoulder pads of his thighlength fringed buckskin jacket. Hand had long silver hair that curled up neatly at his collar, and piercing blue wide-set eyes. His face was broad and smooth, his lips rubbery and downturned, his nose large and bulbous on the tip. He wore coal-black jeans, roach-killer ostrich skin cowboy boots, a large silver buckle, a black mock turtleneck under the leather jacket, and a tall black flat-brimmed cowboy hat adorned with a band of small silver and jade conchos. He carried a worn leather coffee-colored pouch that looked more like a saddlebag than a briefcase.

Joe had heard-but couldn’t confirm-that on the wall behind Hand’s desk in his law office in Jackson there was a rough barn-wood sign burned with:

RATES (PER HOUR)

INNOCENT WYOMINGITES: $1,500

OUT-OF-STATERS: $2,000

“And you are?” Hand said, taking a few steps into the room.

“Deputy Jake Sollis.” The answer was quick and weak and, to Joe’s ear, surprisingly submissive.

“Deputy Sollis,” Hand said, “I wish to speak to my client immediately. As in right now.”

Sollis swallowed, intimidated and flushed, and said, “I need to ask Sheriff McLanahan. ”

“Ask anyone you wish,” Hand said, “as long as you do it in the next ten seconds. Because if you keep me from consulting with my client any longer than that, it’s the first of many grounds for immediate dismissal of all charges.

“My God,” Hand said, raising his arms and modulating his voice even deeper so it sounded more stentorian and God-like to Joe. “You ridiculous people have actually taken into custody-into custody! — the grieving widow of a brutally murdered man-the love of her life-and put her on display in the press as if she possibly had something to do with the crime. I’m personally and morally outraged. OUTRAGED. This will not stand, Mr. Sollis.” The last words were shouted.

The deputy snatched his phone from its stand and fumbled with the buttons. Joe looked from Sollis to Hand.

“And who are you?” Hand asked, still accusatory but slightly less so.

“Name’s Joe Pickett. I’m a Wyoming game warden. I found the body.”

Hand quieted for a moment, his eyes taking Joe in the way a wolf assesses a calf elk. “I’ve heard your name before,” Hand said in almost a whisper. Then he snapped his fingers with recollection. “You’re the one who arrested Governor Budd for fishing without a license! I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard as when I read the story in the newspaper. I determined then you were either naive or a zealot.”

“Neither,” Joe said. “Just doing my job.”

“Ah,” Hand said, “one of those. But if I recall, you now work for Governor Spencer Rulon. You’re his secret agent, of sorts. An unofficial range rider dispatched to do the governor’s bidding.”

“Not anymore,” Joe said.

He had not spoken with Rulon in a year. The governor had taken a liking to Joe several years before and used the machinations of state government to work outside the lines and assign him to locations and give him directives that would have normally been far beyond his scope of work. He’d been the enigmatic governor’s point man, a range rider of sorts. Rulon had been in his corner although he’d always maintained an arm’s-length distance from Joe, so if Joe screwed up, Rulon could claim ignorance.

But the nasty business that had taken place in the Sierra Madre with the twin brothers the year before had resulted in total and complete silence from the governor’s office. Joe had done what he was assigned to do-sort of-but the end result no doubt angered Rulon. Since then, the governor had neither reached out to help nor to manipulate circumstances so Joe would be hurt. And Joe had moved somewhat comfortably back into his role as game warden for the Twelve Sleep district. But when the phone rang at home or his cell phone danced, he still felt the tingle of anticipation and dread, wondering if would be the governor on the other end.

“We’ve tangled a time or two,” Hand said. “I can’t claim we’re the best of friends. But this is Wyoming and there aren’t enough people around to avoid anyone, so we put up with each other.”

“You’ve defended some guilty folks I wanted to put in prison,” Joe said more calmly than he thought capable. “Remember the name Stella Ennis?”

“Remember her?” Hand said, his mouth forming a slight smile. “Those lips! Those legs! I have dreams about her. But her husband was found innocent in a court of law.”

“He was guilty.”

“That’s not what the jury concluded, Joe Pickett.”

“Nope,” Joe said. “You got him off, even though he did it.”

“Water under the bridge,” Hand said, dismissing the topic with a wave of his hand. “I have no control over inept law enforcement personnel and prosecutors who can’t put forth a solid case despite the enormous coercive power and resources of the state. Not that I’m suggesting you’re inept, of course. Just not persuasive enough.” Then: “So you found the body? Aren’t you related to my client in some way?”

Joe nodded. “She’s my mother-in-law.”

Hand thought that over, and his smile grew larger. Sollis lowered the phone to the cradle and looked up at the lawyer with a whipped expression on his face. “Sheriff McLanahan will be here as soon as he’s done with an interview with CNN.”

Marcus Hand made an elaborate show of taking that in. He mouthed, “CNN? National news? Whatever could your sheriff be telling them?”

“Don’t know,” Sollis said, looking away.

“Call him back,” Hand said, his voice pure cold steel. “Tell your boss if he spends one more second poisoning the jury pool, I’ll be up his ass so far I’ll be winking at shapely ladies from behind his molars. Got that, deputy?”

Sollis stammered, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish in a tank.

“Call him back,” Hand said. “Tell him what I said. Meanwhile, I’m walking across this room into the jail to see my client.”

Hand walked in front of the flustered Sollis as the deputy grabbed the phone. The lawyer put a large hand on Joe’s shoulder and squeezed. “Where is the best place to stay in this town? I may be here a few days and nights.”

Joe shrugged. “Saddlestring doesn’t have the kind of accommodations you might be used to. There’s the Holiday Inn.”

Hand snorted. “What about the ranch house?”

“The Thunderhead Ranch?”

“Of course. I remember going there for some charitable fund-raiser a year ago where I met Earl and Missy Alden. Lovely people. And the view from the front portico was heavenly and reminded me of my own ranch in Teton County. You see, I’m used to waking up to a mountain view. Horses in the pasture and the plaintive mewling of bovines. In my next life, I want to be in charge of scenic cow placement in any meadow I overlook. I find these corny Western settings quite restful. Much more so than a white-bread hotel room with thin plastic cups wrapped in cellophane.”

“I guess you’ll have to ask your client about staying at her place,” Joe said. “And about arranging her cows.”

“I surely will,” Hand said, patting Joe’s shoulder. “So despite our past differences, Mr. Pickett, in this circumstance we’re on the same side.”

Joe said, “Don’t be so sure of that.”

After a beat, Marcus Hand threw his head back and laughed.