Cold Wind - C. J. Box [44]
“Joe, she’s my mother.”
“Boy, do I know that.”
She sat up in bed, excited. “We’ll work on separate tracks. I’ll use library resources to find out what I can about Earl that we obviously don’t know. Maybe I can get a lead on someone who wanted him dead in that particular way. It’s strange when I think about it: I met the man fifty times, but I know very little about him before he got here. He’s made a lot of money over the years. I bet he’s made enemies, too.”
“No doubt.”
“And you’ll do what you do,” she said.
“Blunder around until something hits me in the head,” Joe said sourly.
“A little more enthusiasm would be nice,” she said.
He tried to smile. “How about if we figure out who did it, but we keep quiet and she goes to prison? That way, you’ll know in your heart she’s innocent and you’ll be able to sleep at night—but she isn’t around here anymore to cause trouble. That way, everybody wins.”
“That’s not a good solution. At all.”
“Had to try,” Joe said, kissing her good night as the eastern sky began to blush with dawn.
AUGUST 23
If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
—LATIN PROVERB
14
The initial appearance for Missy Alden took place in front of Justice of the Peace Tilden Mouton in his closet-like room in an older section of the City/County Building where the air-conditioning didn’t reach.
Joe arrived just as Deputy Sollis escorted Missy into the room. Marcus Hand was two steps behind and towered over both of them. If anything, Joe thought, Missy looked worse than she had the day before. Her skin was white and her hair was stringy. Her eyes looked out from the sockets, and her mouth was thin and wrinkled vertically, which reminded Joe of the stitched mouth of an Amazonian shrunken skull. He thought how humiliated she must feel to be in the county jail without her massive bathroom mirrors and makeup.
There were only a dozen chairs in the chambers, and Joe took one nearest the exit. Sissy Skanlon of the Roundup took another. They were the only spectators, which surprised Joe. He’d never been present for an initial appearance before, and was taken aback by the informality of the proceedings.
Twelve Sleep County, like several other small Wyoming counties, had retained the JP position. Joe surmised the main reason the county hadn’t modernized to a circuit court procedure was because no one wanted to tell Tilden Mouton he no longer had a job. Mouton ran the largest feed store in Saddlestring from a massive complex built by his father, which had been carried forward and expanded upon to sell hardware, sporting goods, and work wear. The building was on the National Historic Register and the single table and chairs across from the counter was the morning gathering place for ranchers and oldtimers. Joe loved Mouton Feed and had told Marybeth more than once that everything he ever wanted or needed could be found there. He delighted in the quantity and variety of tools, flies for fishing, and impressive duct tape selection.
Because of Mouton’s good-hearted civic activities—sponsoring practically every team, school trip, celebration, and economic development scheme, buying the prize beef and lambs at the county fair, putting full-page ads in the Roundup, which practically kept it afloat—the consensus in town was that removing the man from a part-time job he treasured just wasn’t worth it to anyone. Tilden was so good-natured and proud of his side job as JP there was no reason to disappoint him by taking away his title. Everyone assumed the position would go away when Tilden Mouton did.
Mouton was short and bald and pear-shaped and looked like a cartoon character. As his belly grew each year, his beltline rose, so his buckle was just a few inches below his chest. He parked his glasses on the top of his head and Joe couldn’t ever remember seeing the man actually use them. His eyes were kind and he had a dry humor suffused with awful puns, like stocking duck decoys in the duct tape section. Mouton still personally waited on customers, and would spend as much time as necessary with them