Cassie Dewell 01 - Badlands

by C. J. Box

  He said Kyle’s name with a nasty inflection.

  Kyle said to his mom, “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, honey,” she said, looking up again briefly then back to her reflection in the mug of coffee. “I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “He’s fine,” T-Lock said, raising his voice. “He’s fine. You’re fine. We’re all fucking fine.”

  “Tracy, please,” Kyle’s mother said.

  T-Lock glared at Kyle with strange intensity, Kyle thought. He looked unhinged. Kyle decided he would stay where he was to prevent T-Lock from hurting his mom.

  She said to Kyle, “It’s okay, Kyle. Let us talk for a minute.”

  Kyle didn’t like it that she was on T-Lock’s side. But she didn’t seem frightened. Kyle shrugged and took his half full box of donuts to his bedroom. He’d ask about the money for the GPS later, when T-Lock was in one of his mellow moods.

  After all, Kyle thought, it was really his money—not T-Lock’s.

  And T-Lock had been stupid about saying he should get “dressed for school,” Kyle thought. He was dressed for school already: jeans, Grimstad Vikings hoodie. They were the clothes that he had. It’s what he wore every day.

  He sat down at his desk with the box of donuts and took one out. They’d been in the kitchen for a few days and were dried out, but the powdered sugar coating was good. After he’d devoured the first one he licked his fingers and plucked out another.

  Kyle could overhear the conversation going on in the kitchen but he couldn’t understand it all. He knew, though, that if T-Lock tried to hurt his mom he’d protect her. So he got prepared.

  He dropped to his hands and knees and reached under his bed to retrieve the cardboard box he called his “River Box.” It was filled with things he’d been collecting from Dumpsters, construction sites, and lost-and-found boxes for the last few months that he thought he might need when they pushed off on the Missouri: rope, wire, electrician’s tape, hand tools, fishing line and fishing lures, extra clothes, a cool captain’s hat. It was amazing what people threw away or left behind. Kyle dug into the box and found the crossbow arrow Winkie had shot into their door when his mom got so mad at T-Lock’s friend.

  The twenty-inch arrow was bent from the impact and from pulling it out of the wood and it was of no use to Winkie and his crossbow again. The paint was scraped off the shaft and the fletching was fouled. But the four-blade broadhead was razor sharp, even though it had been fired through the wood door.

  If T-Lock ever hurt his mom, Kyle vowed, he’d stick that arrow into T-Lock’s neck.

  Kyle ate donuts and fingered the tip of the arrow as their voices carried.

  T-Lock said, “I already told you, I’ve thought this all out. You’ve got to trust me on this. Quit worrying about it so much. You’re not doing anything wrong.”

  “But it feels wrong. You’re asking me to wash all the cash.”

  “It’s called laundering, not washing, for Christ sake. And you’re not stealing from anybody or cheating anyone. You’re just replacing cash in the register with cash from that bag. You replace a twenty from the register with one from the bag. A ten for a ten. A five for a fucking five. It’s simple as hell. And when they count up the money everything balances and nobody will even know.”

  “Still, you said the money is marked. What if somebody checks it out and finds it?”

  “For Christ sake, woman, how would they even know where it came from? You don’t replace it all at once like a dumbass. You slip it in one bill at a time through the day. If you give some rube two fives in change, you give him one marked five and one clean one from the drawer. But you’ve got to keep the count in your head and make sure you put a marked five back in the drawer to take the place of the one you handed out. That’s the only tough part of this—remembering not to get the money mixed up. You don’t want the count to come up too short or too long. You want it to balance at the end of the day.”

  “What about the cameras, though? What if someone sees me?”

  “We’ve been over that. The cameras are set up in back of you over your shoulder so they can see anyone at the counter trying to rob the place. They can see the top of your shoulders, the back of your head, the counter, and the rube ordering hamburgers. They can’t see anything you’re doing below waist level. So when you take the cash from your pocket and put it in the drawer they can’t see it.”

  “What if one of my team members sees me swap out my cash for the money in the drawer?”

  “They won’t! They’re all too fucking busy running around doing their own shit. Besides, if on the off chance somebody sees something and accuses you of stealing, you just get your back up like you do to me sometimes and demand they count the money in the drawer if they don’t believe you. Just fucking demand they do it right there. They’ll find it all balances out like it’s supposed to and you’re not only off the hook, you could sue their ass for harassment.”

  “I’d never do that, that’s stupid.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  Silence. Kyle waited.

  T-Lock said, “If you do this right, if you do this like we talked about, you should be able to get through the whole pile in about a week. Then we’re completely clean and you’ll never have to do it again. We’ll be home free, little lady.”

  “But what if somebody discovers the marked bills are floating around town?”

  “What if they do? How in the hell are they going to figure out where they came from? There’s a shitload of places to spend cash and get change. Money circulates—that’s why they call it money.”

  “Really?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Damn right. So just try it today. Take a thousand and work on your technique. You’ll do fine. And I’ll tell you what—I’ll come in around noon and order up some burgers. If you’re still feeling nervous about doing this, just put the rest of the marked cash in my sack and hand it over to me and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Why don’t you just do it in the first place?” she asked. “Why me?”

  “How many times do we have to go over this? I’d raise red flags if I showed up around town with a huge wad of cash. People know me here. They know I’m not flush in the winter. But you work in an all-cash business. Thousands, hell, tens of thousands, in cash go in and out of the doors every day. If I worked there, I’d do it. But I don’t. You work there.”

  There was another long pause. Kyle could sense that she was ready to do whatever it was T-Lock was asking her to do.

  “But you’ll take that car back today and get something smaller and older, right?” she said. “You say you can’t go around town flashing cash but somehow you can drive around in that thing out there?”

  “Yeah,” T-Lock said with regret in his voice.

  “You promise, right?”

  “That’s our deal. I’ll stick to my part of the deal if you’ll do yours.”

  “Get something practical that won’t stand out,” his mom said. “Get a nice used minivan.”

  “I hate those fucking mom cars.”

  “Tracy, you promised.”

  T-Lock emitted a long and loud groan. It was a groan of agreement, though.

  “And there’s one more thing,” his mom said. “I don’t want those drugs in my house. No one can know they’re here or even guess they’re here. You’ve got to take them out of my house. What if someone comes for them and Kyle is here? I would never forgive myself.”

  “It’s done,” T-Lock said with triumph.

  “What’s done?”

  “You said you wanted that bag out of your house and it’s out of your house. I heard you last night and I handled it this morning. The bag is not in your house.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I ain’t saying. That’s for your protection, darlin’. If you don’t know, nobody can get you to say. Same with Kyle.”

  “T-Lock, I need a bump.”

  “Maybe one.”

  Kyle put
the arrow back in the box and slid it back under his bed.

  A bump? What did that mean?

  But Kyle recalled the square of glass on their bed and he had the feeling things were going to go bad again with his mom.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CASSIE’S NEW office was two doors down from Sheriff Kirkbride’s. It was simple—new construction like the rest of the law enforcement center—with a cheap desk, an empty bookshelf and credenza, blank walls marred by nail holes left by the last occupant, a window overlooking the patrol parking lot behind the building, and a desktop PC and monitor. The only chair was an ancient hardback that would have looked more at home at a college apartment poker table.

  She slid the chair behind the desk and placed her briefcase on the credenza in back. The phone set was high-tech and complicated, with half a dozen blinking lights and buttons without instructions.

  Inside her briefcase were three framed photos: Ben’s recent school picture, a fading photo of Jim in uniform standing outside a helicopter in Afghanistan, and one of Cassie and Ben on horseback the summer before at her uncle’s ranch outside of Choteau, Montana. She debated placing the frames on the credenza where visitors to her office could see them or on her desk so she could see them. She opted for the desk.

  Uniformed officers streamed past her door in both directions. Some glanced in and waved in mid-conversation.

  The desk drawers were empty except for discarded paper clips, tiny scraps of paper, and a single business card wedged into the back corner of the top desk drawer that had probably been overlooked when the office was cleared out.

  She extracted it. It read:

  CAM TOLLEFSEN

  CHIEF INVESTIGATOR

  BAKKEN COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

  Which explained why he already resented her. She wondered why Kirkbride hadn’t told her she was replacing a man who still worked in the department but had been demoted for some reason to patrol.

  “Are you making yourself at home?” Judy Banister asked as she peered around the door frame to Cassie’s office.

  “I found my desk. I seem to be missing some chairs, though. And I don’t know how to turn on my computer or work the phone.”

  Banister clucked, and said, “The guys around here seem to think an empty office is okay to raid for furniture and supplies. I’ll do what I can to at least get you a comfortable chair.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I’ll print out a sheet with all the access code passwords you’ll need for the computer and our other databases. It also has instructions for the phone. It’s not as complicated as it looks. Just make sure never to lose that password sheet.”

  Cassie nodded.

  Banister said, “It will be nice to have some female company around here. As you can see, the makeup of the department is similar to the makeup of Bakken County—practically all men.” She still looked around the door frame, as if waiting for an invitation inside.

  “I see that. You’re welcome to come in, you know.”

  Banister shook her head. “I’ll go see about finding you a chair.”

  “Judy?” Cassie called out after Banister had ducked away.

  In a moment Banister reappeared again, still loath to enter. “Yes, Miss Dewell?”

  “Call me Cassie.”

  “Yes, Cassie.”

  “Did this office used to belong to Cam Tollefsen?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “I found his old card. Why did he get busted down to patrol?”

  Banister shook her head quickly, as if shedding the question. “You’ll have to talk to the sheriff,” she said, her voice trailing off as she retreated down the hallway.

  * * *

  WHILE CASSIE waited for Banister to return so she could access her computer, she looked out the window and saw Lance Foster and another deputy strolling across the ice-covered parking lot toward a departmental SUV.

  Cassie pushed back, grabbed her coat, and went down the three sets of stairs.

  Although she’d been out earlier when she left her building and walked across the outside lot to the law enforcement center for the briefing, the still bitter cold of the morning braced her. Snow crystals hung as if they had been created in the air and hadn’t come from the sky.

  Walker looked up and saw her as he threw a gear bag into the back of the SUV.

  “Deputy Foster?”

  “Yes, ma’am?” Foster said.

  The deputy Foster was with looked from Cassie to Foster, trying to figure out why his partner had been singled out.

  “You can get in and start up the car,” Cassie said to him. “I’m sure you want to get that heater going.”

  The deputy got her meaning and jumped in and shut the door. Foster shut the hatchback on the SUV and waited for her expectantly, if a little anxiously.

  She was used to this kind of slightly false deference, which was a nod to her superior rank. Officers answered her questions with plenty of “yes, ma’ams” and “no, ma’ams,” and then snickered about her when she was out of earshot. That had been the way it was in Helena, and she’d hoped to avoid it in North Dakota but she didn’t know how. She didn’t want to be one of the boys, because she wasn’t. The best way she knew how to proceed was to be straightforward and hardworking and hope they’d eventually respect her for it.

  “Deputy Foster, I won’t keep you long in this cold but I had a couple of questions for you regarding that one-car rollover you worked a few days ago.”

  “Shoot,” he said. She was grateful he didn’t say “yes, ma’am” again.

  “You were the second officer on the scene, correct? That’s what I read in the report.”

  “That’s right. I was patrolling the south side of town and I saw a vehicle peel out to respond to the crash out on the prairie.”

  Cassie withdrew her notebook from her pocket and reviewed it, then said, “That would have been around six eighteen A.M., right?”

  “Right.”

  “And the accident occurred at six fifteen or sixteen?”

  “That was our best guess. It had just happened and it was still dark out.”

  “Deputy Tollefsen was the first on the scene?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was the one who wrote up the accident report?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you read the report?”

  “I did,” Foster said, a suspicious note entering his voice. “Was there something wrong with it?”

  “No, no,” Cassie said quickly. “I just wanted to make sure you agreed with what was in it. I’ve read a lot of accident reports over the years and I’ve been a responder on way too many crashes. It just seemed to me the sequence of events was … compressed.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes, I thought the report was accurate.”

  “Thank you. So the accident likely occurred at six fifteen or six sixteen and Officer Tollefsen responded within two or three minutes?”

  “Yes. He said he saw the headlights rolling across the prairie so he hit the gas and booked it down the highway to the scene.”

  “I don’t remember reading that he hit his lights or siren.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Cassie paused and waited for a further explanation.

  “Cam said he was so surprised by the rollover right out there in front of him that he just responded instantly,” Foster said. “I hit my lights, though.”

  Interesting. “And you didn’t hear anything over the radio? Officer Tollefsen didn’t call it in?”

  “No, not right away. He called it in at the scene, though.”

  “A two-minute response is really fast.”

  Foster shrugged. “It’s still a small town. If there’s no traffic it doesn’t take long to get from one place to another.”

  “And there was no traffic that morning?”

  “Nope. Which is pretty unusual for that highway. It’s usually bumper-to-bumper with trucks, like now.” He gestured south, and Cassie foll
owed his arm.

  From where they stood in the parking lot, she could see the highway out on the prairie between two older buildings on the other side of the block. Like Foster said, the road was clogged with morning oil field traffic.

  Cassie made a note in her notebook.

  “So that’s where it happened,” she said.

  “Yeah. You can almost see it from here. In fact, if you drive out there you can still see where the dirt’s all churned up from the accident. It wasn’t far from town at all.”

  “But there was no one to witness the accident except for Officer Tollefsen that you know of.”

  Foster shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  Cassie thanked him and asked him to let her know if he thought of anything that might not already be in the report.

  As she turned to leave, Foster said, “Investigator? Do you mind if I ask why you’re following up on a one-car traffic accident?”

  Cassie said, “The sheriff asked me to try and follow up on the fatality and try to see if we can come up with a name on the victim before we get the DNA results back from the state lab. Someone somewhere must be missing him.”

  “Ah,” Foster said, obviously not completely convinced Cassie’s answer was all there was.

  “Thanks again,” she said, before he could ask more questions.

  * * *

  INSTEAD OF going back to her new office, Cassie scraped the ice from the windows of her Honda and climbed inside. Something about Tollefsen’s report and Foster’s answers didn’t jibe, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. The motor ground shrill but finally turned over and she sat in it freezing. It would take a while before the heater began to work. She looked forward to being assigned a new departmental SUV.

  She drove to the end of the street and waited for a gap in the southbound energy trucks before merging onto the highway. It took less than five minutes to reach the scene of the accident, and she eased off the road onto the shoulder. The ice crystals no longer hung in the air, but they’d been replaced by lightly falling snow.

  Foster was right—the place where the accident occurred was easy to locate. A delineator post had been knocked down flat by the rolling car, and frozen chunks of upturned black soil littered the surface of the short grass prairie. She could see tire tracks beneath the fresh snow from the tow truck that had retrieved the vehicle. At the rate the snow was coming down, she guessed, it might all be covered up by the end of the day.