by C. J. Box
“Ain’t it time you and me took care of her for a change? She deserves better, don’t you think? Don’t you think your mom is entitled to the life everybody else around here seems to have? Why should she do all the struggling, anyway?” T-Lock asked, raising the bricks of cash as if making an offering to the overhead light.
Kyle was confused. He understood about the money, that was obvious. But what about the other?
T-Lock said, “I know some guys. Other roofers and guys I see around. You think of me as a construction guy, but I got connections.”
Kyle never thought of T-Lock as a construction guy, but he kept his mouth shut.
He continued, “There are what—thirty, forty thousand single men out there in the county now? They’re looking for stuff. I’ll figure this out. We’ll take care of your mom.
“The one thing,” T-Lock said, “is if you truly love your mom like you say you do and want to make her happy, the one thing is you gotta keep your mouth shut. You can’t tell anybody about this bag. We want to surprise her, you know? Christmas is just around the corner, so you just let me handle it.”
Then T-Lock smiled that wide stoner smile and shook his head and chuckled.
“I don’t know why I’m asking you of all people not to fuckin’ talk.”
Kyle said, “Can I take my coat off now?”
T-Lock threw back his head and laughed. Kyle had rarely seen the man so happy, so giddy.
He looked at the duffel bag on the table and the scene that morning came rushing back: that bloody man trying to claw his way out of his wrecked car, the two men who had forced him off the road, the cops.
At least it made T-Lock happy, he thought.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER FIVE
Wilson
THE PREVIOUS night at the Wilson Medical Center, the doctor who looked too much like Ed Begley, Jr., had said to Cassie: “It only takes eleven pounds of pressure placed on both carotid arteries for ten seconds to cause loss of consciousness. To completely close off the trachea, you need thirty-three pounds of pressure. If strangulation persists, brain death will occur in four to five minutes. This man has very powerful hands. It’s very fortunate they were able to pry him off of you when they did.”
She would have nodded if she could.
* * *
ON THE way to the Raleigh-Durham Airport and her flight back, Cassie propped her head uncomfortably against the headrest of the backseat. She wore a stiff plastic brace. In the mirror that morning, she’d seen the bruises under her jawbone that spread down to her breasts like a blue-black lace collar. They looked hideous.
The sheriff’s deputy who’d been the first into the interrogation room to save her drove the cruiser. Behaunek sat next to Cassie in the backseat in a much-appreciated show of sisterhood.
The night before both Behaunek and Sheriff Puente had come to see her at the hospital to check on her condition. Agent Rhodine was apparently too busy.
“What you did was brave,” Behaunek had said softly, shaking her head in what appeared to be wonder. “You gave it up for the team. You probably don’t know that when he attacked you I was in the process of getting up from my chair to come into the room and put a halt to that particular line of questioning.”
Cassie had nodded. “I was wondering about that,” she said. She could speak either in a reedy whisper or a honking croak and it hurt to do either. Simply swallowing water brought tears to her eyes.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Behaunek said. “Did you know he would react that way?”
Cassie shook her head. She had to edit her words in advance because each one was painful. “Just guessing.”
“Well, you guessed right. You found the one thing that would cause him to flip out. I’ve never seen a man his size move so fast.”
Cassie grunted in agreement.
“There’s no way I can spin what happened into an admission of guilt on his part, but the assault charge will keep him locked up for a while. You bought us time, Cassie.”
Cassie had tried to smile.
“And it looks like we’ll be seeing you again when you come back to testify against him in court.”
“How long?” Cassie croaked.
“Three or four weeks, I’d guess,” Behaunek said. “We filed the assault charge this morning and the preliminary hearing will be tomorrow. I can’t see the judge allowing him to be released prior to the trial. Especially if we show him that videotape.”
“Does he have a lawyer?”
“Yes—court appointed,” Behaunek said. “I’m curious to see if he hires one on his own. In my experience, monsters like that often think they can represent themselves because they think they’re so much smarter than anyone else in the courtroom. I hope he does that because I want to be the one who nails him.”
* * *
AFTER BEHAUNEK and Puente had left her the night before and before the swelling in her neck had really set in, Cassie had used the landline phone next to her bed to call her mother, Isabel. Although Cassie’s sentences were halting and she was still half in shock, she told her mother what had happened and asked her not to tell Ben. She didn’t want her son worrying about her condition.
And she didn’t tell Isabel who had tried to kill her. She referred to him as “the suspect.”
“I’ll talk to Ben when I get back,” Cassie had said. She didn’t recognize her own voice.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
Cassie enunciated more clearly, grimacing while she did so.
Isabel said, “You don’t want me telling him that his mother was strangled in North Carolina?”
Cassie had rolled her eyes. Isabel was a free spirit and a child of the sixties. She’d insisted on being called Isabel instead of Mom or Mother. She made no secret of the fact that she still thought most cops were pigs. She’d never approved of Cassie’s line of work and had never hesitated to say so.
“Please, Isabel, not now.”
“When will you get back?”
“At least a day later than planned,” Cassie had said. “They need to take photos of my injuries, and the doctor still has to release me. I know I’ll be here at least tonight for observation.”
“Will the injuries cause permanent damage? Will you always talk like that? No offense, but you sound like a really fat person.”
“No offense,” Cassie had repeated. Her mother didn’t possess any kind of internal governor. Whatever she thought came out through her mouth. It seemed to be getting worse.
Isabel said, “You know I have my zumba class tomorrow night. I’d hate to miss that.”
“You might have to.” Cassie envisioned Isabel writhing around at the YMCA in her flowing robes, or worse, in tight workout clothes.
“Maybe I can find someone to watch Ben for the night. Maybe I could ask Ripster…”
Ripster was a formerly homeless man and recovering meth tweaker Isabel had made her new project. Isabel’s life was strewn with failed projects like Ripster who, in Isabel’s mind, qualified as victims of bourgeois oppression.
“Mom, no. Not Ripster. Absolutely not.”
“You don’t have to be so judgmental, Cassie.”
“When it comes to Ben, I do.”
Isabel had sighed heavily.
Cassie said, “I may not be able to talk, so I’ll text you.”
“I hate texting and you know it.”
Cassie could hear Ben in the background.
“He’s right here,” Isabel said, laying on the guilt.
“I’ll talk with him.”
“I thought so,” Isabel said, handing over the phone.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, little man,” Cassie said.
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I’m in North Carolina,” Cassie had said. Somehow, it worked. Ben told her a long story about finding a stray cat in the alley on the way home from school. It was the best cat ever. But it was lonely and needed a home really bad. He wanted to name
it Sergeant, which was a manipulative play aimed straight at his mother’s heart. Ben’s father Jim, who had died during the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan in 2008, had been a sergeant in the army. Ben was born after Jim was killed. Jim had never seen his son, but Ben worshipped his father. Or, more precisely, he worshipped the idea of his father.
But before she could tell Ben he couldn’t have a cat, she heard it yowling through the receiver.
“Grandma Isabel is giving it some milk,” Ben said.
“Of course she is.”
* * *
IN THE car, Behaunek opened her briefcase and handed Cassie a large Ziploc bag of her possessions that they’d taken away when she was admitted into the Wilson Medical Center.
Cassie nodded her thanks and buckled on her watch and twisted her wedding ring on her finger. She caught Behaunek watching.
“I understand,” Behaunek said with a smile. She raised her left hand with a ring on it, and said, “My divorce was three years ago. This helps keep the wolves at bay—or at least most of them.”
* * *
CASSIE POWERED on her cell phone and saw she had a pending voice message from area code 701. North Dakota.
Before she could retrieve it, Behaunek reached over and touched her arm. “Cassie, there’s something we need to talk about.”
“What?”
Behaunek took a deep breath. Cassie braced for bad news.
“Unless the FBI finds ironclad evidence in that truck that proves Spradley is the Lizard King he may not serve much time in jail. He has no priors—he looks clean.”
Cassie shook her head as if dismissing the prospect in general.
Behaunek said, “If I step back from what we know and look at this entire case the way a criminal defense lawyer will see it, I start to get really nervous. Think about it.”
The prosecutor said, “One, the initial arrest is shaky. Spradley was pulled over because of a theory backed by a local politician, not because of true reasonable suspicion of a crime or traffic offense. Then the truck was unloaded and searched. I’ll have a tough time making the argument that Lightning Bates’s observation comes across as solid probable cause that would allow the police to search that truck. A good lawyer can look at those two things and argue that everything that resulted from the initial stop is ‘fruit of a poisonous tree,’ meaning it should not be admissible in court.”
Cassie didn’t want to hear what she was hearing. But she could tell Behaunek was being straight with her. Behaunek was worried, which made Cassie worried.
“So we held Spradley in county lockup for a day and a half without counsel and without charging him,” Behaunek said. “It was a chance I was willing to take in the hope you could get him to incriminate himself. But the defense may look at that and say it was illegal coercion—that you were brought down here for the purpose of shocking him and deliberately provoking him. They might say in court that you baited him, hoping he’d lose control.”
Cassie tried to nod. Couldn’t. She said, “That’s what I did.”
“And that’s between us and will never be spoken of again,” Behaunek said. “North Carolina statute number fourteen, thirty-four, seven classifies assault on a law enforcement officer as only a Class F felony, unless we can somehow convince the judge that Spradley’s hands are lethal weapons. With no priors, the best we could hope for if he’s convicted is five to ten years, and possibly even less. You know how the law works.”
Cassie pursed her mouth. She knew how the law worked, all right.
Behaunek said, “Based on what I saw in that interrogation room, he might come after you if he gets out.”
“Then don’t let him out,” Cassie croaked. “There has to be evidence. Trophies.”
She wanted to explain how Pergram had previously kept a collection of DVDs and videotapes of his victims being assaulted. How Pergram had arranged to get two of the DVDs into Cassie’s hands two years before in a successful effort to steer her toward his accomplice instead of him.
“We know about these types of killers, how they like to keep trophies,” Behaunek said. “But we just can’t find where he keeps them. I hope the FBI tears that truck and trailer apart bolt by bolt.”
“Maybe the sheriff’s idea is a good one.”
Behaunek withdrew her hand and said, “You surprise me.”
“I learned from the best,” Cassie said. “His name was Cody Hoyt and he was my partner. Pergram’s accomplice shot him in the face.”
At the curbside check-in, Behaunek got out of the car with Cassie and helped get her overnight bag out of the back.
She gave Cassie a hug goodbye, then held both of Cassie’s hands for a moment. “You were great.”
Cassie said, “Don’t let him out.”
“I’ll do my best to keep him in a cage,” she said. Cassie was grateful. She had confidence in Leslie Behaunek. She came across as a bulldog prosecutor.
“And I’ll keep in touch with you on everything.”
Cassie paused before turning and entering the airport. “Call me on my cell,” she said. “Don’t call my office or send e-mail to my sheriff’s department e-mail address.”
When Behaunek raised her eyebrows, Cassie said, “I may not be there very long.”
* * *
INSIDE THE terminal, Cassie withdrew her phone. The message on her cell phone was from Bakken County Sheriff Jon Kirkbride. He spoke in a slow Western drawl and said, “Greetings from the new energy capital of the world. We’d like to offer you that job we talked about and the sooner you can get here, the better. But there’s something you need to remember: this place is the Wild West. I can guar-and-damn-tee you ain’t ever seen anything like it. And I ain’t kidding about that.”
She lowered the phone and closed her eyes for a moment.
Cassie couldn’t wait to tell Sheriff Tubman in Helena that she was moving on. She didn’t know who would be happier.
DAY THREE
CHAPTER SIX
Grimstad
THE NEXT morning, Kyle Westergaard rode up to the bluff to look over the dark prairie where it had all happened two days before.
Big trucks filled the highway to Watson City like normal. They were moving slowly, though, because of the weather. Kyle could see dust devils of snow kicked up by dual rear wheels caught in the lights of oncoming trucks.
He made a V with his fingers and raised his hand to his mouth. This morning, he thought, he was smoking a big cigar.
He was much warmer than he’d been the morning before although the snow had continued through the night. Steam rose from the collar of his coat when he paused on the bluff because he was sweating. It was hard work pedaling through three inches of untracked snow, and he had to keep stopping and cleaning packed snow from his tires. His new Thinsulate gloves in camo made it a challenge to fish individual copies of the Tribune out of his canvas panniers—but he didn’t mind.
While pausing to catch his breath, Kyle lowered his new Sorel Pac boots to the ground and balanced his bike. He couldn’t stop for too long, he knew, or the chill would set in.
That old gnome Alf Pedersen had told him someone had complained the day before about Kyle tossing the last of his newspapers on their driveway at 6:45—fifteen minutes late.
“You were here early enough,” Alf said. “Why were you so late with the delivery?”
Kyle didn’t want to say he’d seen the rollover. He hoped Alf wouldn’t ask about it.
But he did.
“Were you rubbernecking around that crash? I heard about that. Some Mexican high on drugs went off the road. Things are crazy around here. That kind of thing never used to happen.”
Kyle said he’d seen the car crash from a distance.
“Ah,” Alf had said. “I wish I could understand what the hell it is you’re saying to me. Anyway, next time deliver the newspapers and then go rubbernecking.”
Kyle had no idea what rubbernecking meant, but he didn’t think he’d told a lie. He just hadn’t told Alf everything.
* * *
THE NIGHT before when his mom got home clutching a bag of hamburgers, T-Lock had bounded through the small house and had met her at the back door, saying, “Fuck those burgers. We’re going out!”
His mom, who had already taken off her thick winter coat to reveal the maroon McDonald’s smock, began to protest immediately. She brought dinner home, she said. They couldn’t afford to go out. They never went out, she reminded T-Lock, except to fast-food places. She’d spent the entire day on her feet at McDonalds’. And the other fast-food places were packed with men as well and it took forever to get your order …
T-Lock wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was giddy and his grin was in full beam. He took the bag from her and tossed the burgers on the counter and yelled for Kyle to grab his coat.
Kyle’s mom was as thin as T-Lock, with short dirty-blond hair, brown eyes, wide cheekbones, and a slash of a mouth. She was small and wiry and often had a pinched, don’t-mess-with-me-or-my-kid expression on her face like she was looking for a fight. Kyle didn’t mind.
T-Lock insisted they were going out, and held out her coat for her like she was a queen and he was somebody who dressed the queen.
It had been so long since Kyle had seen her smile like that he didn’t mind T-Lock’s lie to her about winning $300 in the North Dakota Lottery that day. He said he’d won the Hot Lotto with a Triple Sizzler, to be exact.
Kyle thought that was a pretty specific lie.
* * *
T-LOCK DROVE his mother’s van. Before going to the Wagon Wheel, he merged dangerously between two huge muddy trucks in a convoy of them on Main Street. The traffic was unbelievable, practically gridlock in both directions. Exhaust rose from beneath the big trucks and swirled with the snow in the streetlights. It was loud inside the van because of the throbbing diesel engines all around them from idly moving or barely moving trucks.
They drove three blocks before T-Lock exited Main into the packed parking lot of Work Wearhouse.
Inside, they waited for twenty minutes in line behind rough men in muddy and oil-covered coveralls cradling small mountains of thermal underwear, fireproof clothing, Carhartt parkas. It smelled earthy in line, Kyle thought, like what it might smell like after a meteorite blew a hole open in the ground.
