“You got paid, though, right?” Joe asked. “They have to pay you fair market value.”
Bob sneered. “Which is next to nothing. Dry land pasture doesn’t have much value, they said. Breaking up the ranch that has been in my family for four generations don’t mean nothing when it comes to the state and the Feds on a goddamned crusade for wind power.”
“Fucking windmills,” Wes said, practically spitting the words out. Joe glanced at Wes and was surprised by his vehemence. Definitely a mean streak, Joe thought. A big guy like that could easily hoist a body up the inside of a wind tower.
Bob said, “This county sits right on top of natural gas, oil, coal, and uranium. I have the mineral rights, but no one’s interested because they all think that’s dirty and bad these days. But for some damned reason, they think wind power is good. So they got all this federal money and tax credits and bullshit. Anything that has to do with wind power just gets steamrolled through. Let me ask you something, Mr. Game Warden.”
“Ask away,” Joe said, hoping to end the diatribe and get back to his questions.
“When you look at a wind turbine, do you see a thing of beauty? Is it more beautiful than an oil well or a gas rig?”
Joe said, “I see a wind turbine. Nothing more or less.”
“Ha!” Bob said, tilting his head. “Then you need to get with the damned program, son. You’re supposed to behold the prettiest goddamned thing you ever saw. It’s supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The sight of it is supposed to give you a boner.”
Wes barked a laugh and slapped his knees. Dode said, “Bob Lee!”
Joe shrugged.
“Earl Alden claimed he loved those windmills. He’d always talk up his wind farm while he was getting his government checks and getting the locals to condemn my land for the transmission towers. But you notice where he put ’em, don’t you? Right outside my window on that big ol’ ridge. He put ’em where he wouldn’t have to look at them or hear them all goddamned day, on a ridge where the wind never stops blowing. Right up against my property. They mess up my sky, son, and they mess up the quiet. I can’t take it. A man shouldn’t have to take it just so a gaggle of politicians back east can feel good about themselves.”
“I understand,” Joe said. “But that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.”
Bob leaned forward and removed the oxygen tube from his nose with one hand while raising the cigarette with the other in a well-practiced way. He inhaled deeply, sat back, and plugged the oxygen apparatus back in. Joe watched the exchange while holding his own breath, anticipating an explosion and fireball that did not come. Bob said, “So if you want to ask us if we feel bad Earl Alden got killed and hung up from one of his towers like a piece of meat, the answer is hell no.”
“Hell no!” Dode chirped from the kitchen while closing and latching the window.
“But you didn’t see anything unusual Sunday?” Joe asked again, trying to bring it back. “Anything you told the sheriff, or didn’t think of until now?”
“The sheriff?” Bob said. “He ain’t been out here. You’re the first. And not that it matters, ’cause I don’t even look out anymore. I hear them equipment trucks and Rope the Wind vehicles, but I don’t even look out at them anymore because it makes me so damned mad.”
“What about you, Dode?” Joe asked. “Or Wes? Did you see or hear anything?”
Dode shook her head. “We keep the curtains shut most of the time anymore,” she said. “We never used to do that, but we do now. And we keep the windows shut on account of the dust those trucks kick up.”
“Wes?”
The son had an odd smile on his face, Joe thought. Almost a smirk. “I guess I was just working on my engine all day,” he said, unconvincingly. “I’m trying to get that ’69 Pontiac GTO Judge out there to run again. You probably saw it when you drove up. That’s from when they made real cars and Americans weren’t scared to drive them.”
Joe was silent. He stood and let the silence become oppressive, hoping one of them would rush to fill it with something that might prove useful. But Dode stood kneading her hands, Wes stared at a spot on the wall, and Bob did his quick oxygen-for-cigarette move again.
He stood up and said, “Do you have any idea who might have had it in for Earl Alden? Enough to kill him?”
Bob snorted, as if to say, Who doesn’t?
“Well,” Joe said, digging a card out of his uniform shirt, “I thank you for your time. If anyone thinks of anything, feel free to give me a call.” He crossed the room and offered the card to Bob, who wouldn’t reach out and take it. Humiliated, Joe placed it on a cluttered end table next to the lounge chair.
“I heard Missy Alden did it,” Dode said, her eyes lighting up. “I wouldn’t put it past that stuck-up . . . well, I can’t say the word but it rhymes with ‘ditch.’”
Joe stifled a smile, despite himself. He clamped his hat on and headed for the door. As he opened it, he turned back. The three of them hadn’t moved. There was something they weren’t telling him, he was sure of it.
“I was wondering,” Joe said, “why you couldn’t take advantage of the wind opportunities you describe. You’ve got the land and you sure do have the wind, and it sounds like there’s big money in it.”
Bob said, “You really want to know what’s going on?”
“I’m curious.”
“Then come back in here and sit yourself down, son. Wes, clear a place on that damned engine block for the game warden.”
21
Nate Romanowski stood deep in a grove of aspen on a mountainside in the Salt River Range. It was a cool fall day with a slight breeze that rattled the dry heart-shaped aspen leaves with a sound like a musical shaker. To the north was the town of Alpine and, beyond that, Jackson Hole. To his south was Afton. From where he stood in the shadows, he could see a distant silvery bend of the Grays River, and when he faced west he could see Freedom, Wyoming, just inside the Idaho border. He’d hidden his Jeep in an alcove in the dark timber above and hiked down the weathered two-track to the rendezvous spot.
He was waiting for a man to deliver a gun.
Nate checked his pocket watch. Large Merle was an hour late. Plenty of things could have happened to delay him, Nate knew, but he took a few steps farther back into the aspens and hunkered down just in case Merle had been intercepted by someone who was out there looking for him. Lord knew, he thought, there were enough people after him these days.
The sound of the motor came with a gust of wind. A flock of gold leaves dislodged and fluttered to the ground like wing-shot birds. Within a few minutes, the sound became pronounced. It was punctuated by the grinding of the transmission as the driver missed a gear on the climb. Merle drove like that—badly—and Nate rose.
The toothsome grille of Large Merle’s 1978 Dodge Power Wagon thrust through the brush below, and Nate didn’t move or blink until he could see there was only one occupant in the cab. One very big occupant.
Nate raised a hand and stepped out from the trees. The dry leaves crunched underfoot like cornflakes. Through the windshield, Merle nodded in recognition and goosed the Dodge up the road. When he reached Nate, Merle killed the engine, jammed on the parking brake, and swung out. Nate watched Merle carefully, looking for the sign of a tell.
Large Merle was seven feet tall and weighed about four hundred and fifty pounds, Nate guessed. Although he could afford a newer vehicle, the Dodge had been adapted to a man of Merle’s size by retrofitting the seat flush against the back cab wall and cutting lengths out of the brake and clutch arms. Large Merle left the keys in his Dodge all the time because, he’d once told Nate, no car thief was big enough to steal it.