Winterkill (Joe Pickett, #3)

by C.J. Box

But for one man to open up indiscriminately on an entire herd . . . this was remarkable and disturbing. The carnage was sickening. The damage a high-powered rifle bullet could do when badly placed was awful.

Joe was acutely aware of his situation, and of how unique it was in law enforcement. Unlike the police or sheriff’s department, who had squad cars or SUVs with back doors that wouldn’t open from the inside and cage-wire separating prisoners in the backseat from the driver, Joe was forced to transport violators in his pickup, sitting right next to him in the passenger seat.

Unlike other crimes and criminals, there was no patience—and virtually no compassion—for game violators. The elk herds in the Bighorns were considered a community resource, and their health was a matter of much concern and debate.

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.

“McLanahan found some yellow snow near the other road,” Brazille reported. “He bagged it. So we’ve got a little something to go on.” The thought of McLanahan grumbling and digging through the powder made Joe smile to himself.

Missy spent most of the afternoon on the telephone in Joe’s office with the door closed, talking with her husband, and came out wiping away tears. She might be staying awhile, she announced. Mr. Vankueren was being indicted, his assets had been frozen, and she was quite angry with him. Marybeth offered support, and the couch bed. Joe greeted the news with the false courage he hoped he would display one day when the doctor told him he had one month to live.

Joe had met Stovepipe during the previous summer when Joe had driven up on him to check out his fishing license. Stovepipe had fallen asleep on the bank of the river, where he had been bait fishing, and was angered to discover when he awoke that a trout had not only taken his bait, but had dragged his rod into the river.

“And Romanowski decked him,” Reed said, pointing toward McLanahan. “Romanowski cleaned McLanahan’s clock, then kicked him outside his cell, and shut his own door. He doesn’t like Deputy McLanahan very much.”

Sweet, sweet karma

Any asshole that shoots seven elk deserves a couple of arrows in his heart.

“I believe in right and wrong, and I believe in justice,” Romanowski said. “I believe in my country. It’s the bureaucrats, the lawyers, and the legal process I have a problem with.”

“You’ve heard from Pastor Robbins about the life of Lamar, and I’m here to let you know that he didn’t die in vain. No Sirree Bob.”

Joe sank back in the leather seat, realizing how exhausted he was. He liked the doctor because the man felt no compulsion to start up a conversation.

He had heard that the Inuit people had scores of words to describe snow, and that had always impressed him until he thought of how many he knew. Most described the condition of snow. There was powder, packed powder, slush, wind-groomed, wind-loaded, fluff, glazed, crud, rain crust, cold smoke, and corduroy. Also carvy, sugary, tracked out, white smoke, dust on crust, ice cube, gropple, granular, and wind butter. He knew lots of snow words.

At least elk are usually pretty easy to clean up after, Joe thought. Moose were far worse. Moose were known to walk through a multi-strand barbed-wire fence as if it were dental floss and drag the fence along with them, popping the strands free from the staples in the posts like buttons from a ripped shirt.

Snow in Wyoming never stays in one place, Sheridan thought. It just keeps moving and rearranging itself, as if it’s constantly looking for a better place to live.

“What we are witnessing is an amazing display of the most sanctimonious, dysfunctional, cover-your-ass, bureaucratic horseshit I have ever heard. And if you quote me on that I’ll deny it.”

Melinda Strickland was falling into a trap that was being baited by Herman Klein. It was the “I’m just a poor dumb country boy” ruse that locals loved to spring on outsiders and especially government officials. Joe recognized the trap from experience.

Munker didn’t seem like the kind of person who could defuse a situation, as he claimed, but the kind who would ignite one. The kind of guy who would spray a campfire with gasoline.

Munker, Joe thought, was the kind of guy who would kill somebody and later claim it was for the victim’s own good.

Joe felt like his head was caught in a vise. And every day, someone applied another half-turn.

The sound of running water through the outside drainpipes sounded like music to Joe. He loved water like a true Westerner. There was never enough of it. It pained him when the wind kicked up and blew the snow away. It seemed unfair.

A scared falcon flapping his wings can almost pull you off your feet.”

Can confirm from my own experience lol

Red-tailed hawks, like the one on the chair, were best on rabbits and squirrels. Falcons were best on sage grouse, ducks, and pheasants—upland game birds. The mere silhouette of a falcon in the sky, he said, would make ducks on the water freeze or seek cover, because a duck in flight would be instantly intercepted and destroyed. Ducks knew the imprint of a falcon from birth, and knew to fear it.

To Joe’s chagrin, Marybeth served meat loaf. It wasn’t her fault that she had played to type this way and further entertained Nate’s ideal fantasy of the Picketts—happily married, picket fence, loving family, Labrador, and now meat loaf for dinner—but that’s how it looked.

It’s a Freedom Arms Model 83 with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. A hand cannon. I did my research and went to the factory in Freedom, Wyoming and paid twenty-five hundred for it. It shoots a 300-grain bullet and it can literally shoot through a car.” Joe whistled. “Or I could fire into the trunk and hit the driver. If three bad guys were lined up, I could put a single slug through all of them. And I could do it from three hundred yards away.”

It’s not about children as property, he shouted to himself, or who belongs to whom. It’s not about that. It’s about bringing up kids who become good human beings, so they won’t turn out like the people standing in front of me.

And although he didn’t know either man well, he couldn’t say that the roofers showed any outward signs of deep religiosity. One never knew for sure about such things, he thought, but neither seemed to approach business or life in a very God-fearing way. Unprovoked murder and assault for unpaid bills weren’t exactly Christian acts.

“They take a woman who hates people and put her in charge of a task force to go after rednecks who hate the government,” Nate said. “This is what I love about the Feds.”

“I’ve always liked you, B.J.,” Joe said, pressing the muzzle even harder. “I’m not sure why. But if you don’t start telling me the truth, and I mean every bit of it, things are going to get real Western real fast.”