Joe heard a muffled rustling of bird’s wings in the dark and stopped with one hand on the gate. He turned. Next to Joe’s pickup in the driveway, Nate Romanowski sat on the hood of an ancient Buick Riviera with Idaho license plates. His peregrine was perched on his fist.
“Have you ever considered just knocking on the door?” Joe asked.
“Thanks for keeping me out of it,” Nate said, ignoring Joe’s question.
“You were helping me,” Joe said, closing the gate behind him and approaching Nate and the Buick. “It was the least I could do.”
“I heard about the results of the investigation,” Nate said, shaking his head. “Their first rule of survival is that they protect their own.”
“How in the hell did you know about it? I just heard.”
“My contacts in Idaho,” Nate said. “The decision was a foregone conclusion six weeks ago. All the Feds knew about it. Office gossip. It just took them a while to write it up with the proper spin.”
Joe sat next to Nate on the hood of the Riviera. He sighed deeply, and fought an urge to hurl himself into something hard. He realized how much he had hoped for a miracle after the investigation, and how naive that hope had been.
“It would be a good thing,” Nate said, “if Melinda Strickland went away.”
Joe turned and looked hard at Nate. This time, he didn’t argue. Joe thought about his family inside the house, and how rough the past two months had been for them all. This wouldn’t set things right, or take them back to where they were. But he thought about what he’d told Sheridan about accountability.
“I can take care of it,” Nate said.
“No,” Joe said hesitantly.
“You don’t know what you want, do you?”
“I want her out of this state,” Joe said. “I want her out of the Forest Service. I want her to pay something. And I don’t mean money. I mean her job at the very least.”
“She’s evil.” Nate frowned. “Leaving her on the street will result in somebody else getting hurt wherever she lands.”
Joe thought about it. “That’s as far as I’m willing to go, Nate.”
“You’re sure?” Nate asked.
Joe nodded. He was well aware of the fact that he was crossing a line. But, he thought, it was a line that needed to be crossed in these circumstances. If he was wrong, there would be a world of trouble for him. If he was right, there could still be trouble. The easy and safe thing would be to simply let things run their course. But that was something he couldn’t do.
“Maybe a little more,” Joe said, feeling both elated and guilty at the same time.
“There’s my boy.” Nate smiled and nodded and clapped Joe on the back of his coat. “Then we need to persuade her to retire and leave,” Nate said. “So we need leverage. How well do you know her?”
“Not well enough,” Joe said. “I’m not sure anyone really knows her.”
“But you know her well enough to have a good idea about what she likes, what’s important to her, right?”
Joe thought about it. He thought of two things. They went inside to Joe’s office and Joe asked Nate to wait a moment. He went upstairs to check on Marybeth. She had been crying. Joe tried to comfort her, but she didn’t want comforting. Seeing her like that steeled Joe’s determination to
For the next two hours, they discussed it. Eventually, they agreed on a plan.
It began to snow.
Thirty-five
At 4:52 the next afternoon, Joe Pickett entered the U.S. Forest Service office in Saddlestring and sat down on a vinyl couch that looked as if it had been purchased during the Ford Administration. While he brushed snowflakes off the manila folder he had brought with him, he smiled at the receptionist.
“I’m here to see Melinda Strickland.”
The receptionist glanced at the clock on the wall. The office would close in eight minutes. She had already put her purse on her desk and gathered up her coat. Joe knew from experience that no one in the office worked a minute past five. It was the same situation at most state and federal offices.
“Is she expecting you?”
“She should be,” Joe said, “but I doubt it.”
“Your name?”
“Joe Pickett. And please tell her it’s important.”
The receptionist was a new employee, someone recently hired by Melinda Strickland to replace the last receptionist, who was one of the two women who had filed the grievance. Joe recognized her from a previous job she had held in a local credit union. She was unsmiling, and squat, brusque. He watched her as she rapped on Melinda Strickland’s closed door. Then she went inside and shut the door behind her.
Joe heard the murmur of voices, one of them raising in pitch. In a moment, the door reopened and the receptionist returned to her desk for her purse and coat.
“She asked that you make an appointment for later in the week.”
