Cold Wind - C. J. Box [129]
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said directly to her. “I don’t feel bad about Earl. He was a prick. But damn, I never shoulda blamed it on you.”
Schalk stood stock-still, her mouth open. Hewitt was frozen behind the bench, his eyes blinking madly. Sally Longbrake suddenly shrieked a long, mournful wail.
Missy sat back in her chair with her fists clenched at her chin, her eyes streaming tears.
Behind Joe, one of the Stockman’s regulars said, “It’s like fuckin’ Perry Mason!”
Bud Longbrake wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He looked pale and spent. He said to Judge Hewitt, “Judge, I said what I wanted to say. But right now I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden.”
Marcus Hand stood up slowly and said, “Your Honor, I move for an immediate acquittal.”
Dulcie Schalk seethed. She strode the courtroom floor and slammed her pad of questions on her table, her eyes boring holes into Sheriff McLanahan, who looked away.
Joe sat astonished. It was like Perry Mason. All that buildup and a last-minute courtroom surprise? He was happy for Missy—well, happy for Marybeth, anyway—but something loomed just beyond the peripheral vision of his mind’s eye.
Why did he feel like a large rock was about to drop on his head?
SEPTEMBER 15
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
(OCCAM’S RAZOR: “THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION IS USUALLY THE CORRECT ONE.”)
39
The rock fell the next day.
It was the season opener for pronghorn antelope in the rest of the hunting areas throughout Twelve Sleep County, and Joe called to Tube and they were out of the house two hours before dawn.
As he rolled down Bighorn Road in the dark, he called dispatch. “This is GF53 heading out.”
“Morning, Joe,” the dispatcher said.
He ate his sack lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple on the same sagebrush knoll he had used weeks before when he discovered Earl Alden’s body. He tore off small pieces of bread crust and fed them to Tube while he looked over vistas of sun-drenched terrain complicated by sharp draws and hidden arroyos. The mountains filled his rearview mirrors.
He could be seen for miles. His presence on the perch, his green Ford Game and Fish pickup, was enough to remind most of the hunters to keep their noses clean and follow regulations.
All the work that had once been going on at the wind farm had ceased. He saw no Rope the Wind employees or vehicles out. The Tinkertoy assemblage of wind turbine parts sat where they had when he first saw them. And the assembled turbines turned slowly in the wind, generating empty power that went nowhere.
He’d spent the morning checking hunters and inspecting their harvest, but he’d done it by rote and felt disconnected to his task the entire time. Joe’s mind was still in the courthouse, if his body wasn’t.
Cars and pickups were scarce on the two-lane blacktop of the state highway leading up to the mountains. He paid no attention to them unless they slowed and left the pavement and turned into the hunting areas.
For some reason, though, he noticed the yellow van towing a trailer on the highway, and swung his spotting scope toward it. It was the same van he’d seen leaving Earl Alden’s funeral. The back of the van was covered with bumper stickers. The van was moving slowly, as if the driver were looking for something. Joe zoomed in on the plates: Montana. Then he focused on the driver.
Bud Longbrake Jr. was at the wheel. His sister, Sally, sat next to him, slumped over. Joe sighed and sat back, assuming the vehicle would continue on. But then it slowed and turned onto the gravel road and under the elk antler arches to the Thunderhead Ranch. Were the siblings out to take a last look at the place they grew up? And why take a trailer?
The van stopped at the gate, and Bud Jr. got out and worked the keypad. It swung open.
He watched the van roll down the distant gravel road until he could confirm that it took the road that led to the former Longbrake ranch. He watched it through