Winterkill

McLanahan tried to gauge Joe’s comment. He looked ready to fight—and if not Joe, then Reed. Anybody. But, Joe thought, McLanahan is at his best in a fight when he’s surrounded by armed agents and his opponent is defenseless. Like Nate Romanowski was.

“Has he admitted to the murder?” Joe asked.

“He denies everything,” McLanahan said. “He hasn’t even requested a lawyer. Instead, he called you.”

“Maybe you should have hit him again with your rifle butt,” Joe said.

Reed turned back, expectant. McLanahan tried to grimace, but it clearly hurt his face to do so.

“Why exactly did he call you?” McLanahan asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why the game warden and not a lawyer?” Reed wondered.

Joe shrugged.

“You going to meet with him?” McLanahan asked, looking at Joe with a suspicious eye.

“That’s why I’m here.”

McLanahan and Reed exchanged a glance, each waiting for the other to make a decision of some kind.

“It’s his funeral,” Reed said dismissively, “If Romanowski wants to talk to the game warden, he has every right to do so.”

McLanahan crossed his arms over his chest. “Something about this doesn’t sound right to me.”

“Me either,” Joe said truthfully. “I don’t know the man.”

“You’re sure?”

Joe rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m sure.”

Reed stood up, jangled his ring of cell keys, and threw Joe a “follow me” nod.

“You left your gun and everything with Stovepipe, right?”

“Yup.”

“Watch that son-of-a-bitch,” McLanahan called after them. “If he jumps you, I may not hear it.”

As they entered the hallway, Reed looked over his shoulder at Joe. “I’ll hear it,” he said.

Nate Romanowski lolled on his cot with his hand in his mouth, just as McLanahan had described. His other arm was flung over his eyes. One of his feet was on the concrete floor of the cell and the other hung over the foot of the bed. He wore a sky-blue one-piece county jumpsuit and standard-issue slip-on boat shoes—no belt or shoelaces that he could harm himself with.

The cell was ten feet by ten feet square, with a cot, an open toilet, a desk and chair bolted to the wall and floor, and a stainless-steel sink with a faucet that leaked a thin stream of water into the basin. The single window was thick opaque glass reinforced with wire.

Joe Pickett had never been in the county jail itself. He had been in the anteroom, where, on two occasions, he had brought in game violators because they were either drunk or drugged and he didn’t want to run the risk of leaving them out in the field. Unlike Lamar Gardiner, they had sat quietly in Joe’s pickup while being transported to town.

Although it was uncomfortably warm, the bare walls and metal furnishings made the cell seem cold. Not for the first time that day, Joe asked himself what he was doing here, and questioned whether he should have come. He wondered if he was thinking clearly enough after his encounter with Wade Brockius and the Sovereigns. Maybe, he thought, he should have run this by Terry Crump, his supervisor.

But the door closed behind him, and Nate Romanowski was sitting up, both his feet on the floor now, fixing sharp, cold, lime-green eyes on Joe. Romanowski’s head was bowed forward slightly, and he was looking out at Joe from under a thick shelf of brow bone that made him seem even more menacing. Romanowski was lanky and all angles, his sharp elbows and long arms jutting out from broad shoulders, his nose beaklike above a V-shaped jaw. His blond hair was thinning on top.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. His hand remained in his mouth slurring his voice.

“I’m not sure why I’m here,” Joe said honestly.

Romanowski smiled with his eyes, then ever so slowly withdrew his fingers from his mouth. Joe noticed that Romanowski was working his mouth gently with his tongue, probing his teeth. Then he realized what Romanowski had been doing: holding the teeth that had been knocked free by the rifle butt in the sockets they had come from, so they would reattach.

“Think that’s going to work?” Joe asked, impressed.

“It seems to.” Romanowski shrugged. “They’re loose—but my two front teeth are back in. They should stay there and firm up as long as I don’t use ’em.”

“You mean, like eating?”

Romanowski nodded. “Soup’s okay. Broth is better.”

“There are dentists in Saddlestring,” Joe offered. “One could be sent up here.”

Romanowski shrugged again. “It gives me something to do. Besides, I don’t know if Barnum would be that helpful.”

Romanowski’s voice was low and soft. The cadence of his speaking rhythm was sarcastic, making him sound a little like Jack Nicholson. Joe strained to hear him.

Romanowski seemed oddly comfortable with his surroundings. He was the kind of man, Joe thought, who was