Force of Nature (24 page)

Nate ripped his ear off and tossed it over his shoulder like an apple core. Trucker Cap howled, and Nate waited for the man to catch his
breath. While he did, he reached across the man’s face and grasped his other ear.

Nate said, “Everything Nemecek told you is wrong, but it doesn’t surprise me, and I don’t have the time or inclination to convince you otherwise. But now I know how he convinced good men to go rogue with him. Now back to the three things….”

Trucker Cap said, “But you only asked two.”

“Oh,” Nate said, “the third. I want you to make a call when we’re done here. If you do
exactly
what I say, you might survive this. If you don’t, I’m going to pull you apart with my bare hands until you’re begging me to kill you. Got that?”

Nate became aware that Haley must have watched, because behind him he could hear her sobbing.

AT THE SAME TIME
, 360 miles to the east, Marybeth Pickett left her counter at the library, walked back behind the new acquisitions display to the business office, and picked up the hand microphone and made an announcement: “The library will close in ten minutes.”

As she cradled the mic, her own voice echoed through the near-empty building and sounded severe and tinny. The acoustics in the old building were awful. To complete the protocol for closing the building, she doused the lights and quickly turned them back on so patrons who were wrapped up in whatever they were doing—or wearing earbuds—would get the word. It was 8:50 p.m.

She didn’t like closing the building at night and wished she hadn’t made a deal with the other senior librarian to switch shifts. Part of the negotiations for coming back to work was her insistence that her shift conclude by three so she could be home when the girls got out of school. But once a month or so, she traded shifts for the sole reason of maintaining a good working relationship with her colleagues.

Both Lucy and April were at home—they’d sent texts asking if
they could heat up some frozen pizza—and Joe was still out in the field and hadn’t communicated his whereabouts or when he’d be getting back to their house on Bighorn Road. She was anxious to hear from him how the multiple investigations were going. Three homicides and three missing-persons cases within the span of a week had unnerved every local she’d talked with. Things like that didn’t happen here, she knew, and never all at once. Although someone driving through the town of Saddlestring would see a sleepy community hugging the banks of the Twelve Sleep River as winter approached, they would have no idea that the people who lived there were filled with anxiety and it felt on the streets and in the shops like the wheels were coming off the place. The weekly Saddlestring
Roundup
had a story in it just that day featuring residents who said they were openly carrying weapons and locking their doors at night for the first time in their lives.

The pressure growing on Sheriff Kyle McLanahan to restore order was immense and more than a little unreasonable, she thought. Locals directed a hefty part of their fear and frustration toward him, and talked about the incompetence of the department. Several of the small business leaders who gathered for morning coffee at the Burg-O-Pardner—Marybeth’s former clients who were struggling in the down economy and barely holding on as it was—discussed circulating a recall petition for McLanahan if he somehow won reelection. Although she’d never liked McLanahan and wanted him to lose, Marybeth thought most of the criticism recently to be over the top and unfair. Though, she thought, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

THE OLD COUNTY LIBRARY
was a wholly different place at night, Marybeth thought. It was an original Carnegie library built in the
1920s, and added on to. Outside, the classical Greek architecture, columns, and scrollwork were impressive in the floodlights that shone back on it. But inside, the high ceilings and corners weren’t lit well, and sounds carried in odd ways, like her announcement had. It was too cool in the winter and too warm in the summer, and the ancient boiler sometimes shuddered with enough force to rattle the windows and scare children in the children’s section. At night, the original hardwood floor produced moans and squeaks she never heard in the daytime. The layout of the building was outmoded and crowded, with high shelving that prevented her from seeing who was at the study tables or reading area in the back of the building from her counter.

Outside, clouds had been drawn over the moon and stars. She could see from the wet windows it was spitting snow. The valley was due for the first serious winter storm of the season, and she hoped it didn’t roll in until later that night, after she was home safely. After Joe was home safely. The closeness outside and the water-streaked windows added to the overall gloom of the building—and her mood.

She listened for the sounds of books being snapped shut or patrons gathering up their possessions on their way out, but it was quiet inside. Marybeth walked over to a side window and looked at the parking lot. There was only one car besides her own—a dark new-model crossover she didn’t recognize. So there was at least one person still in the building, maybe more.

Marybeth usually noted and greeted each patron as they entered, but she’d been busy all night with library work as well as her own project. At the time the patron entered, she guessed, she’d been entranced in reading accounts of the murder in Colorado Springs on the Internet on the website of the Colorado Springs
Gazette
. About the
unidentified victim found in Nate Romanowski’s father’s home. According to the sheriff, there were no suspects yet, but they were hoping the analysis on the forensic evidence obtained might shed light on the identity of the victim or the killer. Neighbors were quoted saying what neighbors always said, that Gordon Romanowski was a friendly man who kept to himself and would never be capable of such an act, as far as they knew.

She was curious about Nate’s father. She wondered what he looked like and how he’d raised such a son. Nate himself had rarely mentioned his family, and had made only one passing reference to his father years ago that she could recall. He’d said, after observing Joe with his daughters, “So that’s how it’s done.”

She was also drawn to a separate story on the newspaper website that appeared unrelated to the body found in the Romanowski home but that set off alarm bells within her: two unidentified male victims had been found as the result of a rollover on Pikes Peak Road. Unrelated but similar in Marybeth’s mind to the “accident” in Montana years before involving a vehicle remarkably similar to Nate’s Jeep.

She checked the clock behind her and went back, once again, into the business office. “The library will close in five minutes,” she said, and again blinked the lights.

She hoped the driver of the crossover would appear and go out into the lot for his car. Marybeth didn’t enjoy going back into the library to roust patrons, because she never knew what she’d find. Once, it was a couple of teenagers she knew making out under a study table, partially undressed. Sometimes it was a homeless old man sleeping in one of the lounge chairs in the reading area and she’d had to wake him up. Once, she’d found an ancient sleeping ranch hand with his sweat-stained cowboy hat lowered over his face.
When she awakened him, he jumped up wild-eyed and hollered: “Close the damned gate, Charlie! The fucking horses are getting out!”

THERE WAS
a
creak
from the shadows beyond the stacks, and she looked up but could see no one.

“Hello?” she asked.

There was no response.

“Oh, please,” she whispered, “it’s time to go.”

There were myths that the old library building was haunted, but she didn’t believe in ghosts. Lucy told her the library was now a stop on the Halloween night “Ghosts of Saddlestring” tour the chamber of commerce sponsored. According to Lucy, the story recounted on the tour by Stovepipe—the county court bailiff who volunteered to lead the ghost tours—was about a workman who’d died from an accident while the building was under construction. Because the man who died was an ornery Swede and the foreman a resentful Norwegian, the body was left where it lay and the walls were built up around it. Now, according to Lucy via Stovepipe, passersby sometimes heard Swedish wailing from inside the library late at night. Marybeth had laughed off the story at the time and said, “
Swedish
wailing? How would they know?”

But now she thought about it. And felt foolish for doing so.

Then she heard another creak from the stacks of books.

She took a deep breath and walked out from behind the counter. She’d need to find whoever was still inside the building.

Several times over the last year, Joe had driven into town and waited for her to come outside after the late shift. She’d told him it wasn’t necessary. Tonight, though, she wished he was out there.

Before leaving the desk, she retrieved her purse from under the
counter. Clutching her cell phone in one hand and a small container of pepper spray Joe had pressed on her years before in the other, she went to find the last remaining patron. Joe had once tried to talk her into carrying a gun in her purse and she’d disagreed with him, saying it was dangerous and unnecessary. Now, though …

SHE ASSUMED
the last remaining patron would be at the tables. But there was no one in the study area or reading lounge. On the way to the back she’d glanced down the aisles between shelves of books and hadn’t seen anyone loitering. She pushed open the door to the women’s restroom and called, “Hello?” No response. She leaned in, glanced for shoes beneath the stalls, shut the lights out, and did the same with the men’s. Both were empty.

Marybeth took a deep breath and walked from one side of the building to the other, methodically checking each aisle of shelves for the owner of the vehicle outside. She speculated that perhaps the driver wasn’t even in the library—that he or she had simply parked his or her car in a public lot and walked elsewhere or was picked up. It seemed unlikely, though, since there were no retail stores open in the neighborhood and the Stockman’s Bar was four blocks away, with plenty of parking available on the street.

There was no one in the aisles.

As she walked back up to the front counter, she defied her inner librarian and called out, “Is anybody still in the library? I’m ready to turn out the lights and lock up.” Her voice sounded weak to her. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

From the front of the building, she heard a man clear his throat.

She froze for a moment, squeezing hard on both the phone and the pepper spray. At least she
thought
she’d heard a man. But it might be that damned boiler….

_______

HE STOOD
at the checkout counter with his back to her as she approached. The man was tall, with light hair, wide shoulders, and long legs. He wore a heavy brown suede leather jacket that looked expensive.

“May I help you?” she asked. “We need to close up the building.”

The man swiveled his head toward her, and she instantly felt a chill. He was pale, with sharp, close-set blue eyes and high cheekbones that looked sculpted. What was striking about him were his full red lips. His mouth was set in a slight, bemused smile.

“I think you can,” he said softly. There was a twinge of a Southern accent. He held up a stack of three or four books.

She bustled around the end of the counter, putting it between them. She felt his eyes on her as she casually moved the hand with the pepper spray behind her back. As she bent over to sit in her chair and slid close to the counter, she placed the phone on her desk and the spray can on her lap where he wouldn’t be able to see it. She tried not to appear rattled.

“I’d like to check these out,” he said. “But I can’t seem to find my library card.”

“I can’t issue you a new one right now,” she said, “but we can have it done tomorrow for a five-dollar replacement fee.”

“Five dollars?” he asked, amused. “That’s just highway robbery.”

She looked up at him. He seemed to be playing with her, and she tried to make him know she wasn’t entertained. “You can check out the books with a temporary voucher, provided you’re a county resident. But you’ll need to find your card or get a new one as soon as possible.”

“Or what happens to me?” he asked, smiling with his mouth.

“What happens to you?” she repeated.

“Yeah. Do I get thrown in jail? Does the sheriff come to my house and lock me up?”

She felt the hairs prick up on the back of her neck and her forearms as she said, “No. You can’t check out any more books.”

“What if these are the only books I’ll ever need? Then what?”

She looked back at him, exasperated. “I really don’t have time for this,” she said. “We need to close the library.”

She reached out for the three books, and he handed them to her. As she took them, he kept a grip on them for a second, then released. His smile never wavered.

“Please,” she said.

She quickly scanned them.
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu,
The Looming Tower
by Lawrence Wright, and
Falconry and Hawking
by Phillip Glasier. She paused before she scanned the last book.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“No.”

She’d seen a copy of the book before. Nate had given it to her daughter Sheridan when she first showed interest in becoming an apprentice.

“It’s kind of dated,” he said, “but the basic foundation hasn’t changed for thousands of years. So how dated can it really be?”

“I have no idea,” she said, scanning the book. She had trouble meeting his eyes again. How could that book be a coincidence? She turned to the side to face her computer monitor.

“What’s your name, please?” she asked, calling up the database of county residents who had library cards.

“Bob White,” he said, chuckling. “Just like the bird.”

She entered the name. “There’s a Randall White and an Irene White but no Bob. Do you go by Randall?”