“Absolutely,” Romanowski said, nodding. “Absolutely.”
“So explain.”
Romanowski sighed, and looked away. “Let’s just say I got into a little trouble a year and a half ago in Montana. I know there’s a warrant, but I wasn’t sure when they’d find me. So when the vehicles pulled up out there, I figured my time had come to go back to the Treasure State.”
“What did you do up there?” Joe asked.
Romanowski winced. “I don’t know how it can help me to tell you.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Joe said. “But you’re asking me to trust you. How can I trust you if you won’t tell me the truth?”
A slow smile tugged at Romanowski’s mouth. Joe waited.
Romanowski turned back. “I was in the Special Forces in a unit that doesn’t officially even exist. If you try to check up on me, you won’t find anything about it. I was involved in some things in other countries. Some of the countries are friendly, but most of them aren’t. It was covert, and it was nasty.
“But I had a conflict with a supervisor,” Romanowski said, weighing and measuring each word in an attempt, Joe thought, to tell his story without getting too specific. “I guess I don’t deal with authority all that well, especially when there’s a philosophical difference with regard to policy. Like when I get sent out to do things to people simply to further the career of a supervisor, and not to serve my country. In my opinion, at least.”
Joe nodded for him to go on.
“So I quit, which isn’t an easy thing to do in the first place. But I sent some letters about my supervisor before I left, and I named names and literally told them where some bodies were buried. That didn’t make me very popular with my superiors, and they tracked me down. I knew they would, eventually.”
Romanowski gazed at the ceiling, pausing. Then he lowered his sharp eyes until they locked with Joe’s.
“The people they sent after me met with some trouble in Montana. Up by Great Falls. A car crash or something. Somebody told the local authorities that I might have been involved, might have seen something. But they couldn’t find me, because I had left the state.”
Joe sat silently as Romanowski finished, trying to judge what he had just heard. Romanowski was a convincing speaker, although his admission that he “didn’t deal with authority all that well” didn’t help his case. Lamar Gardiner had certainly been “an authority.”
Romanowski seemed to be reading his thoughts, because he lowered his voice, leaned forward so that Joe was less than two feet from him, and said: “Forget Lamar Gardiner. He was an insect, and not worth swatting. Melinda Strickland is who you need to watch out for.”
Joe was genuinely surprised at this, and he cocked his head.
“Why?”
“She’s a psycho. She’s real trouble.”
“Do you know her?” Joe asked.
Nate shook his head. “I could feel it when she approached. It
Joe sighed. For a moment there, he’d been taken in.
Romanowski held up his hand. “No, I don’t mean she is my former supervisor. She just reminds me of her. You just have to look into her eyes to realize she’s trouble.
“I know these things,” Romanowski said, looking hard at Joe. There was no hint of a smirk now. “That’s why I ended up here in Wyoming. As far away from government bullshit as I thought I could get. How was I to know I’d find another one like her?”
“What are you talking about?” Joe asked, leaning back away from Romanowski.
Romanowski’s eyes got hard. “Make no mistake, Joe—Melinda Strickland is a cruel woman, who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. I knew I was in the presence of someone evil. Even though that idiot deputy knocked my teeth in, I recognized him for the dumb, redneck cracker he is. There’s a hint of evil with that sheriff, but nothing like what I felt from Melinda Strickland. It’s like my gut seized up when she looked at me.”
“Do you know who killed Lamar Gardiner?” Joe asked abruptly, breaking into Romanowski’s monologue. Joe suddenly realized that he had crossed over; that he believed Nate Romanowski was telling the truth. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to believe that, but he did.
“I don’t have a clue. But from the details I’ve heard, I think it was a local thing, maybe a business or a family thing, even,” Romanowski said.
Joe tried not to react: to say that Romanowski had just echoed his own thoughts from before.
“The bastard who did it is still out there,” Romanowski said. “You might even know him.”
Joe felt his own stomach knot. This was exactly what he had been thinking.
“Can Melinda Strickland really be as bad as you say?” Joe asked.
Nate held Joe’s gaze for a long count. “Maybe worse. She’ll climb over the dead body of her mother to get what she wants.”
Joe sat and thought in silence, staring at Nate Romanowski, not sure what to think of this dangerous, fascinating man.
“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.”
“Okay, then,” Joe said, slapping his knees and standing up. “I think we’re through here.” He admitted to himself
