Winterkill - C. J. Box [135]
He had never felt like such a failure. He was a poor father and a poor husband. He hadn’t protected April and she was dead as a result. She had died because of lack of protection, like winterkill. Now, in confronting Melinda Strickland, he had failed April once again.
Would it have been different if it had been Sheridan or Lucy instead of April? Joe wondered. Would he have reacted differently, been more aggressive early on and not depended on the legal system to work, if it had been one of his own flesh-and-blood daughters up there? Would he have “turned cowboy,” as Nate once put it, if it hadn’t been April? The question tortured him.
He stared at his face in the mirror. He wasn’t sure he liked what he saw.
“Waiting for your wife to join you?”
The question startled Joe out of his malaise, and he spilled his drink on the bar. It was Herman Klein, the rancher. Joe hadn’t seen him walk into the Stockman’s, but he’d been so deep in thought that he hadn’t been noticing much. He was now on his fifth drink, and the bar lights were starting to shimmy.
“Nope. Have a seat.” Joe recognized the birth of a slur when he said “seat.”
Klein sat and removed his hat to shake the snow off.
“I’m glad to see this storm,” Klein said, ordering a shot and a beer and another drink for Joe. Joe ignored the skeptical glare of the bartender, who wiped up the spill with a rag. “We need the moisture. That’s a strange thing to say after this January, but it’s true.”
Joe nodded. He felt a burbling in his stomach. He wondered if he would need to throw up.
They drank for a moment.
“Why did you ask about Marybeth?” Joe said.
Klein raised his eyebrows. “Because I never see you in here, and I saw her getting out of her van down the block. I just figured you were meeting her.”
It took a moment for this information to filter through Joe’s lethargic brain. Then he was puzzled. What would Marybeth be doing in town? The kids would have been home from school for the last few hours, and she should have been at home with them. Was she looking for Joe? He hadn’t called her, after all. In fact, he had told her nothing of the plan he and Nate had come up with. It was rare for him not to consult with her, but this had seemed like something she didn’t need right now. Or more rightly, something he didn’t need. In the back of his mind, knowing her feelings, he had been a little afraid of how far she would have wanted to go with Strickland. It wasn’t something he wanted to see in his wife, if he could help it, or something he wanted to give her the opportunity to act upon.
“How long ago was that?” Joe asked Klein.
He shrugged. “Half-hour, I guess.”
Joe had left his truck at the Forest Service office. Maybe, he thought, she saw it there on her way home from her job at the library and stopped. Uh-oh.
Hastily but clumsily, he slid off his stool and threw his last twenty on the bar.
“Gotta go,” he mumbled, sliding his coat up over his shoulders.
“You need a ride somewhere?” Klein asked, assessing Joe’s condition.
“I’m fine.”
Joe pretended not to hear Klein’s protestations as he weaved his way toward the door.
He spilled out into the darkness, his boots sliding on the three inches of fresh powder on the pavement. He clamped down his hat and buttoned his coat as he walked as quickly as he could down the street.
If Marybeth saw his pickup in front of the Forest Service office, she would probably go inside. Would Melinda Strickland still be there? If that was the case, Joe could only guess what could happen. I’ve never hated a woman as much as I hate her, Marybeth had said. But Melinda Strickland would surely have left her office right after he and Nate left, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she?
He wished he were sober.
He rounded the corner and could see through the waves of snow that a sheriff’s department Blazer, lights flashing, and a Saddlestring Police Department cruiser were parked in front of the Forest Service office. Blue and red wig-wag lights painted the street. The door of the Blazer hung open, as if the