Cold Wind - C. J. Box [14]
“You are not going to believe this,” he shouted. “And don’t worry. I haven’t touched anything I didn’t have to. Besides, I’m wearing gloves.”
Joe cleared the hatch and stood shakily on the corrugated metal floor of the nacelle. Newman had unbolted the cover wings and pushed them open to expose the nacelle to the sun and wind. The nacelle itself was deep and long, shaped like a coffin, and filled with the long prone steel body of the turbine. The lines on the outside were clean and purposeful, and inside it was like straddling an engine that was all business. The ledge between the turbine and the inside wall was barely enough for them both to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Newman gestured to an eyebolt mounted in the side of the nacelle, and Joe unclipped the fall-arrest mechanism and was keenly aware of the few completely untethered seconds it took him to turn and clip the harness hook to the eyebolt so he wouldn’t blow away.
When he looked up again, he followed Newman’s outstretched arm. Cold wind pummeled his bare face.
The speed of the blades was remarkable up close, almost a blur. But like frames of film being fed through a movie projector, the image appeared in an eerie stop-motion effect. It was a body, all right. One end of a chain had been looped under the arms in a double wrap and around the shaft of the blade on the other. There was about four feet of chain between the blade and the body. The victim flew through the air. It was a man. Joe could make out the face, although there was something off about it. But no doubt it was The Earl.
Earl Alden’s eyes were closed and his face looked strangely thin, gaunt, and jowly, as if he’d lost a lot of weight since Joe had seen him last. But as he spun, Joe realized why. The Earl’s legs looked huge and fat, like sausage stuffed into the casing of his jeans, which were splitting over the tall black shafts of his cowboy boots. His boots, too, seemed several sizes too large and were misshapen into squared-off blocks. At first glance, Joe thought The Earl was wearing heavy dark gloves until he realized with horror that the swelled blue-black objects protruding from his cuffs were Alden’s grossly misshapen hands. The Earl’s shirt and jacket were in tatters but hadn’t yet been completely removed by the force of the wind. The cloth was soaked with dark blood and lighter-colored liquids. Joe thought he could catch a glimpse of the bruised hole of a gunshot on Alden’s left breast.
“Oh, man,” Joe moaned.
“Look what the centrifugal force is doing to him,” Newman said, and Joe could hear the amazement in his voice. “It’s squeezing all his fluids out toward the bottom. Like if you hung a toothpaste tube on a spinning propeller or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Me, neither,” Joe said, feeling his stomach churn. He turned away and covered his mouth. A spout of acid burned in his throat and chest.
“Is it who I think it is?” Newman asked.
“Yup,” Joe said, fighting nausea.
Newman said, “I met him a couple times. At the Christmas party and such. He seemed all right to me. I’ve heard the stories, but he treated me and the guys all right. I guess we know how he had a key to the hatch down there.” He paused.
“He’s no spring chicken,” Newman said. “Why in the hell did he climb up here?”
Joe shook his head. He didn’t think The Earl had done any climbing, but he wasn’t ready to say.
“He must have come up here for some reason,” Newman speculated. “Maybe he brought that chain with him. Maybe he was going to try to loop it around the blade and stop it from spinning or something, and it took off on him and pulled him over the side. Man, what a way to go. What a horrible fucking way to go.”
Joe looked around on the nacelle. On the inside of the structure near the front he could see a brown smear on the wall. He tapped Newman’s shoulder and pointed at it.
“What’s that?” Joe asked.
Newman shrugged. Then a look of recognition passed over his face. “Looks like blood,” he said.
Joe said, “Is there any way to get a body up here if he can’t climb the ladder on his own?