"Are you okay?" he asked.
"We were just talking about April," Sheridan said, her voice solemn. "We were feeling kind of sad tonight."
Joe looked at Marybeth, trying to read her. She looked drained and wan. She did not look up at him.
"Have you eaten?" he asked.
Sheridan shook her head.
"Please take Lucy downstairs and get yourselves something," Joe said. "We'll be down in a minute."
Marybeth untangled herself from Sheridan, but she wouldn't look at Joe.
When the girls were gone, Joe eased the door shut and sat next to Marybeth on the bed.
"You've been drinking," she said. "I can smell it."
Joe grunted.
"Marybeth, we have to talk about this," he said, pulling her glove from his coat pocket.
He watched her carefully when she looked at it.
"I didn't realize I lost it," she said, turning it over in her hand and squeezing it into a ball.
Joe felt something hot rising inside of him.
"You know where I found it, don't you?"
She nodded. Finally, she raised her eyes to his.
"I saw your truck," she said, her voice flat. "So I went inside the building. Melinda Strickland was sitting at her desk, and her blood was on the wall…"
The relief Joe felt was better than the bourbon ever was. Then he realized something that jarred him.
"You think I did it," Joe said.
The same emotion Joe had felt a moment before was mirrored in Marybeth's face.
"Joe, you didn't do it?"
He shook his head. "I found her like that after you did. And I saw this glove…"
"Oh," she cried, instantly aware of what he must have thought. "Oh, Joe, I knew you went there and I thought…"
They embraced in a furious swirl of redemption. Marybeth cried, and laughed, and cried again. After a few minutes, she pulled away.
"So did she kill herself?" she asked.
Joe shook his head. "Not a chance."
"Then who?"
He paused a beat.
"Nate."
She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the snow.
"He went back after we left, while I was in the bar. He must have watched me go into the Stockman's to make sure I'd have a good alibi before he went back to her office. I thought I had just lost him. I wasn't thinking very clearly at that point. Somehow, he got Melinda Strickland's gun away from her and shot her point-blank in the head."
"My God," Marybeth said, turning it over in her mind.
"He told me once that he didn't believe in the legal system, but he believed in justice," Joe said. "We tried it my way and it didn't work. His way worked."
"What are you going to do?"
Joe sighed, and rubbed his face. He felt Marybeth watching him anxiously, felt her searching his face for an indication of what he was thinking.
He looked up at her and spoke softly.
"I'm going to make Melinda Strickland a hero," he said.
She was clearly puzzled.
"There are some papers on her desk we left there. They'll find them when they investigate the crime scene. But it will take a few days to analyze everything. Tomorrow, I'll call Elle Broxton-Howard and give her that interview she wants. In fact, I'll give her the mother of all interviews-the exclusive inside story of Melinda Strickland's last day on earth. I'll tell her that ever since the shoot-out at Battle Mountain, Melinda Strickland has been tortured by the death of April Keeley, that it was eating away at her. Strickland told me all about it in the meeting we had in her office, when she described the foundation she was creating. Her secretary will corroborate the meeting.
"She just couldn't overcome the guilt," Joe said. "So she took her own life. Before she did, though, she wrote out her resignation and established the April Keeley Foundation as her legacy."
The story was taking shape as he spun it out, and he was becoming convinced it would work. He stopped for breath, and looked to Marybeth for confirmation.
Marybeth looked at him with eyes that shined. "Sometimes you amaze me," she said.
"It'll be a hell of a story," he said, shaking his head.
There was a long pause.
"What are you going to do about Nate?"
Joe thought, and hesitated for a moment. He had crossed a line. He couldn't go back and pretend he hadn't crossed it. He would have to ride it out.
"I'm going to ask him to teach Sheridan about falconry."
He rose and joined her at the window and they looked out at the storm. A burst of wind sent snow tumbling toward them, and Joe felt the lick of icy wind on his hand near the window frame. He would need to put some insulation in the crack later. He had forgotten about it.
He leaned forward and looked down into the front yard. The heavy, wet spring snow was being carried by the wind and was sticking to the sides of the fence and the power poles. There were three small Austrian pine trees in the front yard that Joe had put in the previous spring. The girls had helped him plant them and, at the time, each had claimed a tree. The tallest was Sheridan's, the next was April's, the smallest belonged to Lucy. Joe found himself staring at April's tree, watching the blowing snow pack hard into the branches, changing it into a snow ghost, and felt oddly comforted.