by C. J. Box
“The sheriff’s department,” Cassie added.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “There hasn’t been a sheriff in that county that wasn’t handpicked by the family in years. Same goes with the county attorney, Horston’s mayor, the bankers, and most of the business owners. People who don’t like it move out or they disappear. It’s just the way it goes around here. Jakob and Horst would rather control everything than let the free market work. That’s why this whole valley is booming except for Lochsa. You can see it as you drive from south to north.”
Cassie nodded for him to go on.
“When I got married to Cindy Lou we moved out on the ranch to a damned fine house,” he said. “Horst made sure I was happy and we had a hell of a deal. I had a free house, free beef, free transportation, and enough cash to live pretty good. I kind of felt privileged. I’ll admit that I liked it when I was younger. Everybody in Horston knew I was the man from the Iron Cross, and they treated me with the same kind of respect they treated Horst or Margaret or the kids. I kind of let it go to my head, which is something I feel like shit about now.”
“Why you?” Cassie asked.
Haak nodded. “I sometimes wondered the same thing myself. Cindy Lou, too. I mean, I was a good ranch manager. I was a tough negotiator when the cattle buyers showed up, and I maximized profits on every sale. I learned to hire folks who wouldn’t stir up the family, and I cut them loose fast if they screwed up. I protected the interests of the Kleinsassers in every way, and I was rewarded for it.”
As he spoke, Cassie could see that his thoughts were wandering off a little. She wondered if there was something he was trying to say but steering clear of it.
“I’d do stuff for ’em I really regret,” Haak said, shaking his head. “It’s too late now, but I wish I could take many of the things I did back.”
“Like what?” Cassie asked.
He broke eye contact with her and stared over the top of her head. He said, “I’m going to miss that view of the mountain. Now all I can see is a bunch of burned trees.”
She waited.
Finally, he said, “I’m not going to tell you everything but I’ll give you one example.”
“Okay.”
“Cheyenne was a beauty growing up. If you met her you’d see what I mean. The boys buzzed around her like she was honey. And she didn’t exactly discourage them.”
Cassie saw no need to interject that she’d met Cheyenne and her effect on men was still the same.
Haak said, “There was a local kid named Steve Bishop. He was a big handsome kid, quarterback on the high school team. Anyone would tell you he was destined for great things. Montana State was looking at him for a football scholarship. His dad was a Lutheran pastor and they moved here from Oregon. The Bishops hadn’t been here long enough to learn about the Kleinsassers and the hold they have on everything. Either that or Steve just didn’t care. He liked Cheyenne and she liked him. Too much.
“Horst didn’t like the way things were going. He didn’t want anyone encroaching on his family, especially some dumb preacher’s kid who’d likely want to get married. Horst didn’t like Lutherans, either, which was some old German Hutterite thing. He didn’t want them polluting his line, you know?
“Well,” Haak said, still refusing to look at Cassie, “it turns out that Steve picks up a little extra money babysitting in town. I know it sounds crazy that a high school athlete babysits, but it was a different time and that’s what was going on. And I find out he’s baby-sitting the kids of one of the guys I’d hired temporarily out on the ranch. This guy was deep in debt and hurting for money. So I had a little talk with him.”
Haak shifted uncomfortably and turned his head. He spoke softly and Cassie watched his lips carefully so she could pick up every word.
“So this nine-year-old girl says Steve Bishop exposed himself to her and asked her to put it in her mouth. Then the sheriff finds her panties in Steve’s old car. It was a hell of a scandal. The pastor and his family picked up and moved.”
He turned to Cassie. His face was haunted. “Situation resolved.”
“Horst paid off the father of the girl?”
Haak nodded.
“They’ve been at this kind of thing a long time,” she said.
“That they have. It’s the main reason Cindy Lou left me. She didn’t like the man I’d become. I don’t blame her for it.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Cassie asked.
“Because I see in you an instrument to bring them down even quicker,” he said.
“Which brings us to Blake.”
“I figured that’s where this was headed,” Haak said.
*
Although Blake was bright and accomplished, Haak told Cassie that he was a major disappointment to his father because his oldest son had little interest in the family’s history, legacy, or staying on the ranch.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Haak said. “Most parents I know would be proud as hell that their boy got all kinds of honors and awards. But not Horst. It just made him angry that Blake was able to accomplish all these things on his own. Horst thought Blake made him and the rest of the family look like second-class citizens, and I heard him say it more than once. Of course, Blake heard it, too, and it drove him even further away from the Kleinsasser clan.
“I remember Cindy Lou telling me she thought the Kleinsassers reminded her more of a cult than a family. She was right about that, and Blake wanted out.”
Haak sighed. “I really did like that kid and he stayed over at our bunk shack with my guys quite a bit when he was growing up. I think he preferred the company of stinky hired cowboys to being with his own family. Horst knew it, too, and he was always asking me to tell him what Blake said about him and his mom. He wanted dirt on his own son.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I probably would have because I wasn’t a good man back then,” Haak said. “But the fact is Blake kept that kind of thing to himself. Even then, he kept his own counsel. He knew he was headed out of here the first chance he got, so he didn’t try to stir things up to make that more difficult than it had to be, you know?”
Haak shook his head. “Horst is just like his dad. He’s mean and vindictive as hell. And the way he treated his kids—all those years, I looked the other way. I wish now I would have stepped in or called social services or something.”
“He treated the other kids poorly?” Cassie asked.
“He turned them into dependents instead of independent people. Horst was so pissed off at his oldest son for going his own way that he drilled Cheyenne, John Wayne, and Rand on what he called the Kleinsasser way. Those kids grew up thinking they were some kind of entitled royalty in this valley and they would always be like that as long as their dad favored them. He made them hate Blake as much as he did. It’s what bonded them all together: envy, resentment, and hate. No wonder that they all turned out to be monsters.”
“Do you include Blake in that description?”
Haak hesitated. “No,” he said. “Blake got out in time. But he’s still screwed up. I spent some time with him this summer. I’ll admit I told him some things I probably shouldn’t have about his dad and the rest of them. None of it surprised him, though.”
“Like what?”
“Blake didn’t realize what a hold he has on the rest of them,” Haak said. “He thought by going his own way they’d forget about him. But it was just the opposite. The more he did, the more he accomplished on his own, the more they resented him for it. So when he showed up here it was like lighting a fuse on a stick of dynamite. He never really got that.”
“Do you think he was set up?” Cassie asked.
“No doubt in my mind,” Haak said. “It was the same MO as what we did to Steve Bishop. Only this time, I think John Wayne and Rand were behind it all, along with the sheriff. They learned plenty from Horst before he had his stroke.”
Cassie simply nodded.
“I can’t prove any of
that,” Haak said.
“That’s my job,” Cassie said. Then she asked, “Where do Cheyenne and Margaret play in all of this? Do you think they bought into the Kleinsasser way to the same degree John Wayne and Rand did?”
“I could never really tell about Margaret,” Haak said. “She didn’t say much and I don’t think she holds any sway over Horst or her sons. They just ignore her and I don’t think they respect her at all. As for Cheyenne—who knows? She tried to make it on her own when she moved overseas and married that French guy. But she came back with her tail between her legs, so to speak. She’s headstrong, for sure, but I don’t think the rest of them pay any attention to her.”
“Even though she’s the second oldest in the litter?” Cassie asked.
Haak shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to them. After all, she tried to get away. In the mind of the males, that revealed her weakness. She’ll never get back in even though they let her live there.”
“You’ve thought a lot about the Kleinsassers,” Cassie said.
“I have. I spent years watching that slow-motion car wreck.”
“So why did you leave the Iron Cross?”
Haak flinched. “John Wayne fired me after Horst became incapacitated. Twenty-six years and boom—I’m out the door.”
“Did he say why?”
“He didn’t need to. John Wayne never liked the fact that I got along with his brother. As long as I was around I would remind him of Blake. Plus, he wanted to clear the deck and consolidate his power. Cheyenne’s too flaky to be a threat to him and Rand worships the ground he walks on. He really believes that Kleinsasser way shit. Especially now that Blake’s out of the way.
“But there’s another reason he fired me,” Haak said.
Cassie urged him to go on.
“Have you ever heard of rare earth minerals?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I didn’t know much about them until recently, either, but John Wayne is convinced that the Iron Cross is sitting on tons of ’em. He thinks he’s going to get rich real soon.”
“What?”
Haak labored to his feet and chinned toward his house. “Let me show you something inside,” he said.
Part V
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, The Stranger
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v. Bell
twenty-six
“It’s called neodymium,” Jody Haak told Cassie as he spread a sheaf of papers across his rough-hewn table. “It’s a chemical element that’s widely distributed across the globe but really rare to find in concentrated form.”
Cassie looked at photos and graphics of the mineral on several printouts Haak had gathered. Neodymium was silver-white in color and displayed on the sheets in either powder or crystalline form.
“I’m no expert at all,” he said, “But I’ve read a lot about it. Most of it in the world today is mined in China and it’s used in the manufacture of all sorts of high-tech gadgets like lasers, computer hard disks, glass for high-tech lightbulbs—all sorts of things. Its big selling point is that it’s used to make really powerful magnets for hybrid motors for cars—so it’s increasing in price every year. It’s gone as high as five hundred bucks per kilogram recently.”
Cassie made the leap. “Horst and John Wayne think there are supplies of it on the Iron Cross Ranch.”
“John Wayne does,” Haak corrected. “I don’t think Horst has any idea. Maybe Rand knows, but I doubt anyone else has a clue.”
“Hold it,” Cassie said. “I remember seeing a utility pickup coming out of the Iron Cross when I went there. It didn’t quite fit because it was in a line of cattle haulers. But I remember it said ‘REMR, Houston, Texas’ on the door of the truck.”
Haak nodded. “Real Earth Mineral Recovery. I looked them up. John Wayne hired them to do survey work after Horst had his stroke, and I’d seen them sniffing around well before that. John Wayne has spent every nickel the ranch has on retaining REMR. They’ve already started filing environmental impact statements, from what I understand. And he’s gotten a bunch of loans from his friendly bankers in town to do the preliminary work. He’s deep into debt to them. I don’t think the old man is even aware of what’s going on.”
Cassie sat back. If what Jody Haak told her was true, things were starting to fall into place.
“The Iron Cross Ranch has always just kind of limped along financially,” Haak said. “I know that for a fact. It’s damned hard to make money off of cows, and there is too much timber for growing much of anything. There were years when it all looked so bleak I thought Horst might have to sell pieces of it off or even get rid of the whole operation. The Kleinsassers have always gotten by by the skin of their teeth. But John Wayne thinks he’s figured out a way to make himself a multimillionaire. He’s banking everything on a neodymium mine located in the foothills of the mountains.”
“What do you think?” Cassie asked. “Is he right?”
Haak nodded his head yes. “The mineral is there. It may not be in the quantities John Wayne is hoping for, but there’s enough of it to create the biggest mine in North America. I know it to be true because I talked to an REMR employee about it one night in the Corvallis Tavern. He confirmed everything I’ve told you. Those guys are supposed to keep everything confidential, but it’s surprising what a man will tell you if you’re buying.”
Cassie felt electrified. “Talk about motivation for getting Blake out of the picture,” she said. “Did you tell Blake about it?”
“I didn’t.” Haak said. “I probably should have. That would have really made things interesting, wouldn’t it? But you can see now why John Wayne and Rand didn’t want to talk about selling or diversifying the ranch and all the other ideas Blake had. They just wanted him to go away.”
“I know about the Kleinsasser Trust,” Cassie said. “They wanted him not only to go away but to be ineligible to make decisions or share in the windfall. So, they settled on a plan that would trigger the moral turpitude clause.”
“They were successful,” Haak said. “But what John Wayne doesn’t know is that he’s basing everything on air.”
Cassie cocked her head, not sure what Haak meant.
“That’s why I came back,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been hanging around in the background. I want to be here when the Kleinsassers go down once and for all. I want to see it happen. That’ll be the sweetest thing I’ve ever witnessed when it happens, and one of the best things that ever happened to Lochsa County.”
“What are you talking about?” Cassie asked.
Haak sat down. His eyes were animated, as were his gestures. “I was with Horst twenty years ago in his office when he signed away his mineral rights.”
“What?”
“It was a really bad year,” Haak said. “Beef prices were in the toilet, and Horst had overextended himself paying bribes and payoffs to keep afloat. He couldn’t see any way out of it so he took a meeting with some land men representing an energy company. Horst knew there was no coal or oil on the Iron Cross because he’s had several surveys done. But the land men didn’t know that and Horst didn’t disclose the information. He signed away his surface and subsurface mineral rights for cash. I saw him sign the contract.”
“John Wayne doesn’t know,” Cassie whispered.
“No one does except me,” Haak said. “Horst made me promise to keep my mouth shut. But he really gloated about that deal— how he’d duped the land men into paying him for nothing. He always thought it was one of the best deals he ever did.”
“Who has the mineral rights?” Cassie asked.
“Some conglomerate,” Haak said. “That energy company sold out to a bigger outfit, and that one sold to an international conglomerate. It’s hard to keep track. But I do know that they’ll show up to claim their rights as soon as the word gets out about the neodymium deposits. And there’s nothing
John Wayne can do about it. With the debt he’s racked up on his bet, they’ll probably take the ranch away from him as well.”
“My God,” Cassie said.
“I’ve got a ringside seat to watch the fall of the Kleinsasser way,” Haak said. “Would you like to pull up a chair and watch it with me?”
*
“This is a lot to take in,” Cassie said to Haak, pushing away from the table. “But it works in a sick way. John Wayne had his scheme going when Blake just showed up out of the blue. John Wayne had to take Blake off the table in a way that would remove him from the trust.”
Haak agreed.
“But what I don’t yet understand is why Cheyenne cooperated with the fake assault and why she brought her daughter along with her? Why would Cheyenne suddenly decide to help out John Wayne and Rand when she obviously despises them?”
Haak said, “I don’t have a theory on that. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe the brothers had something on the two of them?”
Cassie shook her head. “Cheyenne doesn’t seem like the type to meekly go along. I don’t know her daughter, but this just doesn’t make sense to me.”
“ Here,” Haak said, sliding the information on neodymium across the table to her. “Take this with you. I’ve got copies. Maybe you can speed things along when you show this to the lawyer you work for.”
Cassie gathered up the paperwork. Her head was pounding. Her mouth was dry.
“Thank you for all of this,” she said.
“My pleasure,” he grinned. He gave Cassie the number to a cell phone he rarely used. “Call me when it all goes down,” he said. “I want to be there for it. I want to see the look on John Wayne’s face.”
“This family …” she said. She couldn’t finish her thought.
“They need to go away for good,” Haak said. “Are you going back to the ranch at some point?”
