He slung it over his shoulder and looked at the Christmas tree. He’d kept the lights on, but now it was time to turn them off. He hated that. It would be the last time he would turn off this year’s Christmas tree. It was beautiful. He’d taken a picture with his new iPhone and put it in his computer scrapbook. He had twenty trees in his scrapbook, with comments, things he wanted to add, new lighting schemes.

He stood for a moment and took it in, found his favorite ornaments. A Santa Claus his mother had made, a gold ball with glitter he’d made in the fourth grade that said 57 on it. There was a crystal reindeer he’d ordered from Germany. Ornaments his sister—who’d married well— had sent him from a fancy store in San Francisco. The glass reindeer caught the electric light and projected a beautiful rainbow.

Christmas this year had been good. He’d spent hours and hours reloading, adding to his ammo stash sitting across from the tree. He had more than ten thousand rounds of ammo for the FAL NATO-issue machine gun alone.

He crossed the room and remembered Thanksgiving morning, going out to the field with the snowmobile and racing along. He’d spotted the tree he’d cut months before. He went that morning before going to the Colliers’ for dinner and chopped it down and brought it back to the cabin. He’d even worn the Santa cap he’d bought at the CVS pharmacy in Nevada City.

Phelps reached down and pulled the plug. The Christmas tree’s lights went dark. It was always painful, he thought, but he reminded himself that it was February. Time to move on.

Outside, riding his snowmobile, rushing into the wilderness, his .30-30 strapped to his back, Chuck thought how sad it was that people didn’t love winter. He thought they should. We should love all the seasons because the seasons are God. Not their god, the bible thumper’s God. But the God I know is out here. Maybe God would forgive me for what I did over there. I was good at killing people. Maybe too good. Some things you get real good at, he thought. Things you shouldn’t get good at.

It started to snow hard as he entered the Emigrant Gap wilderness area.

CHAPTER 4

Quentin realized that it had stopped snowing. He reached for the switch and turned off his windshield wipers. The white snow-covered world outside his patrol car seemed distant. He’d ridden back from breakfast in a kind of daydream, and it was Patty Tyson’s fault. Seeing her had set something loose in him. Their breakfast date had upset his emotional gyroscope; he’d left the Denny’s excited, but wobbly. It had upset his routine, his balance. Stopped snowing and he hadn’t even noticed … Would they have an affair? He wondered how he’d be at affairs now.

Not a kid anymore. Still, I’m not dead. She is attractive.

He felt the smooth-warm steering wheel, and without meaning to, felt the warm plastic bumps. He let his fingertips travel over several of them and wondered what it would be like to make love to Patty Tyson. Pretty damn good, probably.

The dirty snow-splattered green and white patrol car pulled off the two-lane county road, rocking a little as it left the asphalt and pulled onto the rough gravel road that led, a half-mile down, to his family’s ranch.

The patrol car passed along the pine trees his great-great-grandfather had planted at the turn of the century. They were massive now, sixty feet, their trunks part of the fence that ran up to the two-story Victorian ranch house, and a barn, both painted white. The five hundred-acre ranch had been in Quentin’s family since the 1890s. Snow flocked the trees and made the empty snow-carpeted paddocks on either side of the lane look like a picture postcard of a high-Sierra ranch.

“Hey Sheriff, I’m twenty-four fifty here at Blue Canyon.”

Quentin slowed his patrol car to a crawl and took the radio call. “Calvin. What’s up, over?”

“It’s about Chuck Phelps, Sheriff, over.”

“Let’s leave Chuck the hell alone. This thing with the B and B will blow over, over,” Quentin said. He was tired of hearing about Chuck Phelps and his quarrelsome neighbor.

“No, Sheriff, this isn’t about the bed and breakfast hassle, over.”

“Well, then? Over.”

“Mordecai stopped me this morning at the Copper Penny and said that Chuck’s mail box is full. He thinks maybe something’s happened to him. I’m on my way over the hill to Reno to testify in the Paulson trial. Can you go by and check it out? I know it’s just down the road from your place, over,” the deputy said.

“Sure, I’ll go by,” Quentin said. “Over.”

“Thanks, Quentin. Did you see that light the other night?”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“My brother over in Indian Valley said he heard an explosion too,” the deputy said.

“Yeah, I think everyone in the county saw it,” Quentin said. “I think it was another meth lab. Someone will find what’s left of the building before too long.”

“Well, they wanted to get high, and I guess they did. Ten-four.”

Quentin sped up, deciding to check in on his daughter before he drove over to the Phelps place. No doubt it was nothing; Chuck had probably just gone to San Francisco to visit his sister. Still, he could be hurt . . .  better check. That light was strange. Strange, too, that they hadn’t had any report of a blown house or outbuilding yet.

Halfway up the road, he realized the pain had gone. The deep one, the one that had been screwed into his chest the day he walked back from the hospital cafeteria and saw his daughters running toward him. Marie had been on the phone the day before with her parents and seemed to be stronger, not weaker; and, then, when he’d gone to have breakfast, she’d died. Gone.

He stopped the car. He’d had the incredible pain for two years, gotten used to moving through his life with it. The pine trees overhead had grown together reaching over the road, forming a canopy.  Motes of snow drifted down through the canopy of pines.

It’s gone.

Quentin looked out on the west paddock that ran all the way down to the county road. It was empty, forlorn-looking in winter. He saw a small snow dust devil kick up and dance across the paddock.

Marie, no matter what happens with this girl, it won’t be the same. I swear it.

“Daddy. What’s wrong?”

Quentin had walked up to the barn after checking the house for his younger daughter, but she’d already left for school. Lacy, his older daughter, was leading her black Arabian stallion out from the barn. Red-faced from mucking out cold stalls, the twenty-three year old looked radiant. Her long blond hair was done up with a big tortoise shell clip in the back. She looked exactly like her mother had when Quentin first met her while away at college. He couldn’t speak. It was as if his dead wife were standing there looking at him, back from the dead.

“What’s wrong, Daddy? You okay?”

He pushed his cowboy hat back on his head. She’d never seen him look like that before, like a lost little boy.

“Hi, sweetheart.” He was going to say something about her looking so much like her mother, but he stopped himself.

“Daddy, I think Salvation has picked up something.”  The stallion was puffing, steam coming from his muzzle because of the cold. Lacy turned the horse around and walked him back toward the barn so that her father could watch the horse’s gate.

Marie, God … look at what we made together. He walked out to where his daughter had stopped in front of the barn. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him.