Cold Wind (5 page)

“Nope.”

“Well,” the worker said, digging into his jacket for his keys. “Let’s go see.”

 

 

While the worker
unloaded hard hats and other equipment from his vehicle, Joe grabbed the handheld radio from the cab of his truck. He turned it on and it was instantly alive with voices, and one of them was addressing him directly.

“Joe Pickett, this is Sheriff McLanahan. Do you read me?”

Joe considered ignoring him, but thought better of it. Although the two had clashed repeatedly over the years, it
was
the sheriff’s jurisdiction.

“I read you,” Joe said.

“Are you on the scene?”

“Affirmative. I called it in.”

“Okay, well, hold tight. We’re on the way. Under no circumstances are you to climb that tower and compromise the crime scene.”

Joe bristled at the command. “How do you know it’s a crime scene?”

Silence. Then, from miles away, someone—probably a highway trooper monitoring the exchange—said, “Good point.”

“Did you hear my initial command?” McLanahan asked, with the put-on Western drawl he’d adopted since moving west from Virginia ten years before. “Under no circumstances . . .”

Joe clicked the radio off and slipped it into the holder on his belt. McLanahan seemed to know something Joe didn’t, and he didn’t want to share what it was, which was typical of the sheriff. Joe looked up and said to the worker, “I’m ready if you are.”

“Then let’s go. Here, let me show you how this works.”

“Have you done this a lot?” Joe asked, gesturing toward the tower.

“I’ve been a turbine monkey half my adult life,” the man said.

The worker handed Joe a nylon harness. Joe fed his arms through it and pulled twin buckles up from between his legs and snapped them tight to receivers secured on his chest. The worker clipped a carabiner through a metal loop on Joe’s harness that supported a metal fall-arrest mechanism that hung by a steel cable. The man showed Joe how to fit the mechanism around the taut cable inside the tower that ran parallel to the ladder from the top of the tower all the way to the floor. The mechanism was supposed to seize tight and prevent him from falling if he lost his balance or slipped off the rungs.

“It’s two hundred fifty feet to the top,” the man said. “That’s a lot of climbing. Plus, the handholds are kind of slippery in there. You’ll see.”

Joe nodded and followed the worker through the open hatch door at the base of the tower. It was instantly dark inside except for a bank of glowing green and amber lights from a control panel mounted on the wall. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. He looked up and could see the narrow ladder and safety cable disappear up into the darkness.

“I’m guessing you have an idea what we’re gonna find up there,” the man said. He’d softened his voice because the sound carried with resonance inside.

“I have a theory,” Joe said. “But I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

“I didn’t see any parked trucks out there anywhere besides ours,” the man said. “I don’t know how this joker even got through the gates. When I checked in this morning, all our guys were accounted for, so it isn’t one of us.”

“I saw a horse a while back,” Joe said.

Even in the dark, Joe could tell the man was staring. “A
horse
?”

“Yup.”

“I’m Bob Newman,” the worker said.

“Joe Pickett.”

“I’ve heard of you,” Newman said, and left it at that. “I didn’t ask—are you okay with heights?”

Joe said, “Kind of.” Since he’d stepped inside the tower, he could feel basic terror rise inside him, because he
wasn’t okay with heights at all
. Some of the worst moments of his life had taken place as he clenched his eyes shut and gripped the hand rests of his seat in a small plane.

“Don’t look down and don’t look up,” Newman said. “Keep staring straight ahead and climb one rung at a time. Even if you aren’t scared of heights, you won’t like what you see if you look down, believe me.”

Joe nodded.

“If you clutch up and freeze halfway up, well, there isn’t any pretty way to get you down.”

“Right.”

“I wonder how it got up there,” Newman mumbled as he snapped his fall-arrest mechanism to the safety cable, locked it around the cable, mounted the ladder, and started climbing.

“Give me a few minutes and some distance before you follow,” he said over his shoulder. “The ladder vibrates worse if two men are close together on it.” He called down further instructions as he rose, telling Joe how to slide the mechanism up the cable, pointing out the metal grate step-outs every fifty feet up the ladder if he needed to catch his breath. Newman’s voice receded as he climbed until Joe could barely hear him. Joe had his hand around the first rung, and he could feel Newman’s progress due to the vibration. Joe took a deep breath and clipped onto the cable and stepped up on the first rung. Then another. The fall arrest mechanism squeaked as it was pulled up the lifeline. Joe reached out and gave it a rough yank to make sure it would hold tight if he slipped. It worked. He considered keeping his eyes shut as he climbed, wondering if that would help. It didn’t.

 

 

He got warmer
the higher he climbed. He wasn’t sure if the temperature inside actually increased or it was from the exertion of the climb itself. His forearms ached from pulling himself up rung by rung and he tried to control the quivering in his thighs that he attributed to a combination of fatigue and terror. There was a thin film of grease on every surface from the working machinery far above and it made the rungs slippery. The sharp odor of machine oil hung in the tower. He tried to think of other subjects to take his mind off falling and how far he had climbed from solid ground.

He was puzzled by McLanahan’s reference to the “crime scene,” as well as the sheriff’s admonishment not to investigate. Since there had been no chatter over the radio about the situation prior to him calling it in, Joe wondered if McLanahan had inside knowledge—or a tip—of what was going on. Or was what Joe had found linked to an ongoing sheriff’s department case?

Halfway up, he stole a look down between his knees and the sensation of seeing the very distant sunlight from the open portal on the tower floor—it looked like a pinprick—made him swoon. He gripped the ladder hard and hugged it. His boot soles rattled on the rungs and he breathed hard, in and out, in and out, until his fear eased. There was a step-out within sight, and he climbed the next three feet to get to it, which was the hardest thing he’d done yet. For a moment he couldn’t feel his legs, as he swung them one after the other to the grated metal plate. When he was assured the grate was solid and he could stand on it and lean against the inside tower wall for a few moments, he exhaled and tried to calm himself.

“You okay?” Newman called down. He was a long way up.

“Fine.”

“Good. I’m almost to the nacelle. Just remember, when you get up here it’s all about safety first. The winds up there could blow you right off the top. So make sure you clip your harness hook to one of the eyebolts. Don’t even take a step without making sure you’re secured, okay?”

“Okay.” Then: “Bob?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t touch anything up there. Wait until I’m with you. It’s likely going to be a crime scene.”

Newman laughed harshly. “Yeah,” he said. “I know the drill. I watch them shows.”

 

 

When Joe’s muscles
stopped quivering and his breath returned to normal, he stepped back on the ladder and resumed climbing. Fifty feet higher, Joe noticed a round two-inch hole punched through the steel wall of the tower. A shaft of light lit up a larger orb on the opposite wall. When he reached it, he paused. In a strange optical trick, the hole projected a sharp view of the landscape outside on the opposite shaft wall, as if it were a movie lens. He could see the long row of turbines, the roads that connected them, a bird flying by. Joe didn’t know enough about physics to explain the phenomenon, but he found it fascinating and bizarre. He could even clearly see a small four-vehicle convoy in the distance bearing down on the wind farm. Three of the units were sheriff’s department SUVs and the fourth a white company pickup that could be a twin of Newman’s. Although he’d kept his hand-held turned off, he could imagine a red-faced McLanahan hollering into this microphone, trying to raise him. As Joe climbed through the projected scene, he could see sharp images of the convoy slide down his red and now greasy uniform shirt.

He could hear a steel plate hatch being thrown open far above him and the sound echoed down the length of the tower. He glanced up and saw a distant blue square—the sky—that was then filled by Newman as he scrambled from the ladder to the floor of nacelle itself.

Twenty seconds later, Newman called down. His voice was tight. “It’s worse than I thought,” he called down, words bouncing back and forth down the tube. “I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden. I hope it’s been a while since you ate.”

Joe was breathing hard
when he reached the open hatch. The wind was ferocious. Despite it, he could hear the epic slicing of the blades turning and feel the vibration of the turbine motor through the metal of the ladder. Joe looked up as Newman’s helmeted head filled the open square.

“You are
not
going to believe this,” he shouted. “And don’t worry. I haven’t touched anything I didn’t have to. Besides, I’m wearing gloves.”

Joe cleared the hatch and stood shakily on the corrugated metal floor of the nacelle. Newman had unbolted the cover wings and pushed them open to expose the nacelle to the sun and wind. The nacelle itself was deep and long, shaped like a coffin, and filled with the long prone steel body of the turbine. The lines on the outside were clean and purposeful, and inside it was like straddling an engine that was all business. The ledge between the turbine and the inside wall was barely enough for them both to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Newman gestured to an eyebolt mounted in the side of the nacelle, and Joe unclipped the fall-arrest mechanism and was keenly aware of the few completely untethered seconds it took him to turn and clip the harness hook to the eyebolt so he wouldn’t blow away.

When he looked up again, he followed Newman’s outstretched arm. Cold wind pummeled his bare face.

The speed of the blades was remarkable up close, almost a blur. But like frames of film being fed through a movie projector, the image appeared in an eerie stop-motion effect. It was a body, all right. One end of a chain had been looped under the arms in a double wrap and around the shaft of the blade on the other. There was about four feet of chain between the blade and the body. The victim flew through the air. It was a man. Joe could make out the face, although there was something off about it. But no doubt it was The Earl.

Earl Alden’s eyes were closed and his face looked strangely thin, gaunt, and jowly, as if he’d lost a lot of weight since Joe had seen him last. But as he spun, Joe realized why. The Earl’s legs looked huge and fat, like sausage stuffed into the casing of his jeans, which were splitting over the tall black shafts of his cowboy boots. His boots, too, seemed several sizes too large and were misshapen into squared-off blocks. At first glance, Joe thought The Earl was wearing heavy dark gloves until he realized with horror that the swelled blue-black objects protruding from his cuffs were Alden’s grossly misshapen hands. The Earl’s shirt and jacket were in tatters but hadn’t yet been completely removed by the force of the wind. The cloth was soaked with dark blood and lighter-colored liquids. Joe thought he could catch a glimpse of the bruised hole of a gunshot on Alden’s left breast.

“Oh, man,” Joe moaned.

“Look what the centrifugal force is doing to him,” Newman said, and Joe could hear the amazement in his voice. “It’s squeezing all his fluids out toward the bottom. Like if you hung a toothpaste tube on a spinning propeller or something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Me, neither,” Joe said, feeling his stomach churn. He turned away and covered his mouth. A spout of acid burned in his throat and chest.

“Is it who I think it is?” Newman asked.

“Yup,” Joe said, fighting nausea.

Newman said, “I met him a couple times. At the Christmas party and such. He seemed all right to me. I’ve heard the stories, but he treated me and the guys all right. I guess we know how he had a key to the hatch down there.” He paused.

“He’s no spring chicken,” Newman said. “Why in the hell did he climb up here?”

Joe shook his head. He didn’t think The Earl had done any climbing, but he wasn’t ready to say.

“He must have come up here for some reason,” Newman speculated. “Maybe he brought that chain with him. Maybe he was going to try to loop it around the blade and stop it from spinning or something, and it took off on him and pulled him over the side. Man, what a way to go. What a horrible fucking way to go.”

Joe looked around on the nacelle. On the inside of the structure near the front he could see a brown smear on the wall. He tapped Newman’s shoulder and pointed at it.

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

Newman shrugged. Then a look of recognition passed over his face. “Looks like blood,” he said.

Joe said, “Is there any way to get a body up here if he can’t climb the ladder on his own?”

Newman nodded. “There’s a hoist over there. We use it to bring up tools and parts when we need to work on the turbine. I heard of a guy down in Texas having a heart attack up top and they had to lower him down by the hoist. So I guess you could winch somebody up here. It’ll hold two hundred fifty pounds of equipment.”

Joe guessed The Earl was about that.

“Who in the hell would do this?” Newman asked. “It’s a lot of damned trouble to bring a body up here.”

“Unless somebody was making a statement,” Joe said. He looked back over his shoulder at The Earl spinning by. He thought,
No one deserves a comical death.
He had once been on a case where two humans had been blown up by a cow. It had been tragic, and horrendous. And people still laughed about it.