Cold Wind (38 page)

So Nate once again dropped to his knees and simply crawled through with his head down. He didn’t hear a single shutter snap.

Climbing the cliff face wasn’t difficult. In less than fifteen minutes, he slid through the strands of a barbed wire fence and he was in.

 

 

Joe drove into
the driveway of the Skilling guesthouse, turned off his headlights and the engine, and looked for signs of life. He sat for a moment, studying it. If someone was inside and heard him drive up, Joe expected to see a curtain edged back or a light switched on.

The guesthouse was small but well tended. It was beige, one level with three curtained windows facing out, and a railed porch leading up to an extra-large wooden double door. An attached double garage was on the right side. Tall twin cottonwoods flanked the walkway up to the porch. A second guesthouse to his left was an exact mirror of the one he was facing—including the trees—but Joe barely glanced at it because Bailey had said this was the one. In the center of the large picture window on the left side of the door was a faint vertical stripe, and Joe guessed it came from the living room. There was a light on.

Joe climbed out of the pickup and slid his shotgun out of the scabbard behind his seat. He checked the loads—five rounds of double-ought buckshot—but didn’t pump a round into the chamber. As he made his way up the walkway, he pondered whether to slink around the house and see if he could see anything inside or bang on the front door. He thought about the fact that he had no warrant and no real authority for being there. If Bud was inside and decided to start blasting away at an intruder, he would be justified in doing so.

Joe rapped sharply on the front door with his knuckles and stepped aside. He called, “Bud? It’s Joe Pickett. Open up. I need to talk to you.”

He paused to listen, but heard nothing from inside. He knocked hard again and repeated his words, this time louder. After all, it was two in the morning. Joe didn’t expect Bud to be up and around and wanted to give the man time to throw some clothes on.

Joe reached down and tried the door. Bolted. He banged on it again and shouted. Nothing.

He went down the porch steps and sidled up to the picture window where he’d seen the vertical slash of light. He removed his hat and cautiously leaned across the glass, suppressing a flash vision of Bud inside aiming his .45 at Joe’s face. Joe could feel his pulse race as he leaned and looked.

The space between the curtains was less than half an inch, so he had to move his head back and forth in order to see the whole of the room inside. It was a living room, after all, and there were signs of clutter. A coffee table was covered with empty beer bottles, some on their side. A stout liter bottle of Jim Beam lorded over the beer bottles.

Joe said softly, “It’s Bud, all right,” although this was a Bud he wasn’t sure he knew anymore.

Clothes had been thrown over the backs of chairs, and on the couch were several take-out containers he recognized as coming from the Burg-O-Pardner in town. As Joe moved right to left and elevated onto his toes, he could see the carpeting and a single cowboy boot on its side, sole facing out from the corner of the couch. Just the sole. The shaft of the boot was hidden from view by the furniture. Joe felt his insides contract. Was Bud’s leg connected to the rest of the boot? Was his body back there?

Probable cause for entry. Joe recalled Bailey saying Bud was sure someone was after him.

In normal circumstances, Joe would alert the Eagle Mountain Security office or the sheriff’s department, so they could go in together. And he would call them, eventually. But he wanted to see the inside for himself before they took over the scene. To document the PC for entering, he took three photos of the boot by the couch with his digital camera.

He got his Maglite from his pickup and returned to the front porch and felt around at the obvious places for a spare key—the top of the doorframe, under the mat, beneath several flat river rocks on the side of the walkway. No key. Then he jogged back to the front door, propped the shotgun against the railing, paused while he took a breath, and rushed the door hard, smashing into it with his shoulder. It didn’t give at all, and the blow caused pain to shoot through his entire body. He stepped away from the solid door, rubbing his shoulder, wondering if he’d broken something.

Joe considered smashing through one of the windows with the butt of his shotgun and crawling inside, but decided to try any other doors first. There had to be one in back. He retrieved his shotgun—
man, his shoulder hurt
—and paralleled the front of the house to get to the corner. He glanced again through the slit in the curtains, saw the boot hadn’t moved, and ducked a cottonwood tree branch. His boots sounded loud on the concrete driveway, and as he walked past, he grabbed the handle and jerked, even though he assumed it was powered by an electric garage door opener.

It gave. Joe stopped, surprised. Then he rolled it all the way up.

Bud Longbrake’s F-150 pickup was inside. Joe looked up and saw that the manual catch on the garage door opener had been clicked back, and it made sense. Bailey had given Bud a key to the house, but the remote control for the garage was probably in Kimberly Alice Skilling’s car, wherever that was. In order to hide his vehicle, Bud had had to disengage the opener and slide the door up and down the old-fashioned way. After parking inside, he’d forgotten to slide the bolt home.

Joe swung his Maglite up and held his breath as he reached for the knob of the door to enter the house.

Unlocked as well.

 

 

Nate shouldered through
thick, seven-foot-high mountain juniper bushes until he stood on the manicured grass of the club lawn itself. He stopped for a moment with his back to the brush to see if there were any vehicles on the roads or obvious cameras or sensors ahead of him.

Satisfied, he crouched down and crab-walked from tree to tree toward the homes in front of him. The one he was looking for was right there ahead: a three-story Tudor with a couple of guest cottages.

He approached the main house and went straight for the back of the garage. No one ever put curtains on garage windows, and he peered inside. Five stalls and not a single vehicle inside. The floor looked polished and it reflected a beam of moonlight.

He stepped back and assessed the main house. It felt big and empty to him. All the curtains were closed tightly and there wasn’t a single leak of light from inside. He turned toward the guest cottages and moved from tree to tree, bush to bush, until he was behind them. As he’d moved, he’d noted the outline of a pickup truck parked in the driveway of the first structure, and now as he paused, a light clicked on inside at the far-left window, closest to the garage.

Nate slid his .500 out of its holster, hoisted it up near his right ear, and as he leveled it his left thumb cocked the hammer back. The scope gathered all the available light, and Nate rested the crosshairs on the center of the window.

 

 

Joe couldn’t help
but think that Bud should have taken better care of a house in which he was a secret guest. Like in his apartment above the Stockman’s Bar, wrappers, empty bottles, reeking cartons, and bits of debris were everywhere. The door from the garage led into the kitchen, and Joe noted the stack of dirty dishes in the sink and the overflowing garbage can against the wall across from the stove. A scrawny gray cat fed among a pile of chicken bones it had pulled from the garbage can. The cat looked up at Joe with no fear at all.

“Bud, are you here?” Joe called out. “It’s me, Joe.”

As he passed the kitchen window, Joe leaned over and patted the cat on the head.

Nate saw a glimpse
of a head and a hat through the window. He put the crosshairs on it, and as he began to squeeze the trigger, the head was gone, as if the man inside had fallen through a trapdoor. He cursed, kept his weapon up, and waited for the target to reappear.

But it didn’t, and another light clicked on behind the curtains of the middle window. He’d moved on.

Nate wondered how he’d known to duck at that precise moment, but dismissed it as happenstance.

And now Nate would have to go inside. It would be better that way, he thought, as he jogged toward the back door. Face-to-face would be best.

He wanted Bud to see his face, know Nate Romanowski had found him, before Bud’s head exploded.

The back door was locked, but it gave slightly when Nate leaned his shoulder against it. He opened his knife and slid it down through the crack between the door and frame. No bolt. Which meant it was locked at the knob set. He pushed the knife farther in, slid it down until the blade rested against the pawl, and chopped back.

He was in.

 

 

With his shotgun
out in front of him, Joe entered the living room. More clutter. A table lamp was on with a lampshade that had been knocked cockeyed, the orb of light throwing out a yellow pool on the carpeting like a side glance.

A high-backed lounge chair blocked his view of the side of the couch so he moved to his right, weapon ready. Joe girded himself to see a dead body.

It was a single boot lying on its side with no Bud attached.

Joe sighed, and yelled,
“Bud!”

“Joe?”

Although Joe recognized the voice instantly, he still racked the pump and wheeled and raised the stock up to his cheek. The voice came from a darkened mudroom at the back of the house. “Nate? What the
hell
?”

He heard Nate chuckle drily at the use of the curse.

“I’ve got the same question for you,” Nate said, emerging from the mudroom into the light, rotating the cylinder on his big revolver until he could rest the hammer back on the empty chamber, holstering the weapon beneath his arm. Nate had cut and darkened his hair and he looked serious and severe. He asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to find Bud Longbrake,” Joe said, lowering the barrel of his gun.

“Me, too,” Nate said. “I’m here to kill the son-of-a-bitch.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Joe saw the black braid attached to the barrel of Nate’s handgun and he recognized its color.

“Oh, no,” Joe said. “You think Bud was responsible?”

Nate said, “He set me up.”

Joe was puzzled. “Why would he do that?”

“Why did he do anything the last couple of years?” Nate said. “I don’t know whether it was the alcohol, or his paranoia about me coming after him, or what happened to him when he lost the ranch, or whatever. But something made him go crazy. And Alisha died because of it.”

Joe said, “You’ve got me on that one. I was just thinking how he’d become a different person than the one I used to work for. Like his personality changed.”

“It doesn’t matter what caused it,” Nate said. “He still has to answer for his big mouth.”

Joe said, “I wanted to talk with him because he claims he has the goods on Missy murdering her husband. That’s why
I’m
here. I’ve been trying to find him because the trial starts on Monday.”

“You could have shot me,” Nate said, looking at Joe’s Remington Wingmaster.

“Yup,” Joe said. “Sorry about that. You scared me.”

“So where’s Bud?”

“He’s not here, but he hasn’t been gone long. His truck is in the garage, so either he caught a ride or someone got here just ahead of us and took him.”

“Too bad,” Nate said. “Who could have taken him?”

Joe said, “I’ve got so many suspects in this case, my mind is boggled. I’ll fill you in if you want to hear it all. How long have you been here?”

“Two minutes,” Nate said. “I just came in the back door and heard your voice. A minute before, I nearly shot you in the head.”

He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it took Joe a second or two to grasp the import.
“You nearly shot me in the head . . .”
Joe repeated, trailing off.

Nate shrugged. “Wouldn’t it have been something if we’d drawn down on each other by mistake? That would be a hell of a thing.”

Joe stifled a smile. It wasn’t funny what they’d almost done to each other, but the way Nate said it was.

Joe said, “It’s good to see you, Nate.”

“Likewise.”

“I’m sorry about what happened in the canyon. I found the scaffold.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Marybeth and Alice Thunder. Both have kept it to themselves.”

Nate nodded, grateful. He said, “I found the guys who did it, and the woman who put them up to it. I put the guys down, but I let the woman off . . .”

“No details,” Joe said, putting his hand up to stop Nate from saying more.

Silence hung in the air.

Joe said, “Nate, can we get past what happened last year?”

Nate nodded. He said, “I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, as I’m sure you have. It boils down to this: You were wrong, but you had no choice.”