Winterkill - C. J. Box [6]
“Everything in my life is completely and totally destroyed,” he cried. “So I might as well let a stinking wet dog sit on me.”
Joe bit his tongue. Looking at Gardiner, with his tear-streaked face, bloodshot eyes, and chinless profile, he couldn’t remember anyone quite so pathetic.
When Gardiner turned to open his door to let Maxine in, his knee accidentally hit the button for the glove box and the latch opened, spilling the contents—binoculars, gloves, old spare handcuffs, maps, mail—all over the floor. Maxine chose that moment to bound into the truck, tangling with Gardiner as he bent to pick up the debris.
Gardiner cried out and pushed the dog roughly into the center of the bench seat.
“Calm down,” Joe said, as much to Maxine as to Gardiner. Shivering, Maxine was ecstatic to be let in. Her wet-dog smell filled the cab.
“I’m soaked, my God!” Gardiner said, holding his hands out in front of him, his voice arcing into hysteria: “Goddamn it, Goddamn YOU! This is the worst day of my entire life!” His hands swooped like just-released birds and he screeched: “I’m cracking up!”
“CALM DOWN,” Joe commanded.
The human desperation that filled the cab of the pickup, Joe thought, contrasted bizarrely with the utter and complete silence of the mountains in the midst of a heavy snowfall.
For a moment, Joe felt sorry for Lamar Gardiner. That moment passed when Gardiner leaned across Maxine and snapped one of the handcuffs on Joe’s wrist and the other on the steering wheel in a movement as quick as it was unexpected. Then Gardiner threw open the passenger door, leaped out, and was still running with his arms flapping wildly about him when he vanished into the trees.
The handcuffs had been an old set that required a smaller type of key than the set he now used. Joe tore through the glove box, his floor console, and a half-dozen other places where he might have put the keys, but he couldn’t find them. Like every game warden he knew, Joe practically lived in his vehicle, and it was packed with equipment, clothing, tools, documents . . . stuff. But not the right key for the old handcuffs.
It took twenty minutes and his Leatherman tool to pry the cap off the steering wheel and loosen the bolts that held it to the shaft. Maxine laid her wet head on his lap while he worked, looking sympathetic. Thick falling snow from the still-open passenger door settled on the edge of the bench seat and the floorboard. A hacksaw would have cut through the wheel, or through the chain of the cuffs and freed him, but he didn’t have one.
Seething, Joe strode through the timber in the storm. He carried his shotgun in his left hand while the steering wheel, still attached by the handcuffs, swung from his right.
“Lamar, damn you, you’re going to die in this storm if you don’t come back!” Joe hollered. The storm and the trees hushed his voice, and it sounded tinny and hollow even to him.
Joe stopped and listened. He thought he had heard the distant rumble of a motor a few minutes before, and possibly a truck door slamming. He guessed that whoever drove the vehicle was doing what he himself should be doing—retreating to a lower elevation. The sound may have come from beyond the stand of trees, but the noises were muffled, and Joe wasn’t sure.
Tracking down Lamar Gardiner should go quickly, he thought. He listened for branches snapping, or Gardiner moaning or sobbing. There was no sound but the storm.
He sized up the situation he was in, and cursed to himself. Lamar Gardiner wasn’t the only one having a miserable day. Joe’s prisoner had escaped, he was out of radio contact, it had already snowed six inches, there was only an hour until dark, and he had a steering wheel chained to his wrist.
He thought bitterly that when he found Gardiner he would have the choice of hauling him back to the truck or shooting him dead with the shotgun. For a moment, he leaned toward the latter.
“Lamar, YOU’RE GOING TO DIE OUT HERE IF YOU DON’T COME BACK!”
Nothing.
Gardiner’s tracks weren’t hard to follow, although they were filling with snow by the minute. Gardiner had