by C. J. Box
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “I’m not sure I can get through the gate. It just happened to be open the last time.”
Haak scratched out a series of numbers on a scrap of paper he’d torn from the documents. “Here,” he said, handing her the scrap. “It’s the key code for the front gate. They never changed it after I left.”
“Remind me to never fire someone after twenty-six years of dedicated service,” she said to Haak.
He laughed and slapped his knee.
*
As she stepped over the firebreak on the way to her car, the skid steer zoomed up behind her. Cassie paused and turned around.
Alf Grzegorczyk leaned out of the metal cage. “Sorry about what happened to your car,” he said. “That wasn’t me.”
She acknowledged him with a curt nod.
“I don’t know who did it for sure,” he said. “But I think we both have our suspicions.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to thank him, she thought. But thanking a man for arresting her for no reason and not driving her into the timber and putting a bullet into her head didn’t sit well with her.
She turned and strode to her car.
*
Two miles down the road, her phone chimed with a series of texts and messages once she was back in cell phone range. They were all from Rachel.
When she had a strong signal Cassie speed-dialed Rachel’s cell phone.
“You’re alive!” Rachel answered. “I was starting to get really worried again.”
“I’m more than alive,” Cassie said. “I think the case has broken wide open.”
“It absolutely has,” Rachel said breathlessly. “How did you know?”
Cassie frowned. “How did I know what?”
“Franny recanted. I wasn’t in the room with her two minutes before she said it was all a lie about the assault. She said her uncles put her up to it and she couldn’t wait to tell someone.”
“You’re kidding,” Cassie said.
“No. She agreed to give a new affidavit spelling it all out. She’s coming into the office with her guardian ad litem tomorrow after school to do it.”
Rachel went on to detail how the meeting had gone, how Franny had broken into hysterical tears and said how sorry she was for getting her uncle Blake into trouble.
“Why did she do it, then?” Cassie asked, suddenly filled with anger.
“She said John Wayne threatened to throw her and her mother out on the street if she didn’t cooperate,” Rachel said. “Franny said she did it to help out her mom.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Rachel said. “Franny does come across as quite the drama queen. But it’s not my job to believe her or not. Let a judge or jury make that decision.”
That grated on Cassie. “I thought you said we were doing this to discover the truth.”
“We are,” Rachel said, “but sometimes the truth is really complicated. We can only go on what we’ve got, and as of tomorrow we’ll have a recantation of the assault taking place. Since you’ve got information to knock down the rest of their evidence, I think we’re looking at an acquittal.”
Cassie thought for a moment, then asked, “Who besides you knows about Franny’s new statement?”
“Well, Jessica. Jessica was there with me. Oh, and Franny’s guardian here in Bozeman.”
“What do you know about the guardian?”
Rachel hesitated. “I don’t know anything about her, really. Her name is Deb Rangold.”
“Do a deep dive on her,” Cassie said. “I can’t do it myself at the moment. Find out everything you can about Deb Rangold and call me back.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
“Nothing in this investigation has turned out to be what it seems,” Cassie said. “This whole social services thing seems fishy to me.”
“I’ll find out what I can,” Rachel said. “Are you headed back now?”
“Not yet.”
“Cassie …”
“I need to pay a visit to Cheyenne first.”
twenty-seven
Cassie was within a half mile of the headquarters to the Iron Cross Ranch when she realized she didn’t know where Cheyenne’s house was located. She’d never been there before, and no one had pointed it out. The smoke was hanging so thick on the valley floor she couldn’t clearly see the layout of the grounds. She wondered if the flames moving down from the mountains would destroy the ranch before she could find Cheyenne.
As Haak had indicated, the key code he’d written out opened up the entrance gates and she drove right through.
She parked out front and knocked on the heavy front door. When there was no response, she tried the latch. It was unlocked. She opened it a few inches and called inside. Silence.
This time, she didn’t take off her boots. As she passed by an ancient mirror she was shocked at her appearance: sunken, red-rimmed eyes, dirt and soot-covered clothes, a tangle of hair, muddy boots from traipsing around Jody Haak’s property.
“Margaret?”
Cassie thought she heard a chair leg scrape linoleum down the hallway in the direction of the dining room. She called out again.
“What do you want?” Margaret responded. Her voice was soft.
Cassie went down the hallway to find Margaret sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in front of her. To her right, two spots away, Horst slumped to the side in his wheelchair with his mouth gaped and a string of saliva that strung from his bottom lip to his left forearm. His eyes were open but opaque. He was gasping for air.
“Oh, dear. Do you want me to call 9-1-1?” Cassie asked.
“No need,” Margaret said. “There’s nothing they can do.”
Cassie studied Margaret. She seemed oddly passive, even relieved. She seemed to be enjoying her coffee and the serenity of the silent room. She seemed younger than before, and lighter than air. Was she in shock?
“I think we forgot his medication this morning,” Margaret said. Horst seemed to hear it and he emitted a low moan.
“It’s his time,” Margaret said. “We’ll bury him up on the hill next to his father and his grandfather. They all like to be together. Other family members are buried farther down the hill.”
Cassie wasn’t sure what to make of that but the horror of the situation started to fill her up. She said, “We should probably call somebody. We can’t just leave him here to suffer like this.”
Margaret shrugged and sipped her coffee. “He’s fairly quiet right now,” she said. “No more of that horrible moaning. Can’t you at least let me savor the moment?”
Cassie could hear a hundred-year-old clock tick in the next room. She asked, “Has it always been bad for you, or just since he had a stroke?”
“The stroke was a godsend,” Margaret said calmly. She glanced over at Horst but he couldn’t turn his head toward her. She was speaking for his benefit, and Cassie shuddered.
Margaret said, “It was like all of the pressure lifted off of my shoulders. I could just move him around the house to where I wanted him. I could feed him what I wanted to eat. I could leave him in the bathroom for hours with the door closed until he stopped bellowing, and he had no choice but to watch the television programs I favor. I could dress him in clothes he didn’t like. For the last few months he’s found out what it’s like to be controlled by someone else.”
Cassie shook her head. She had no words. Margaret’s demeanor was absolutely calm.
Finally, Cassie was able to ask: “Can you please tell me where I can find Cheyenne?”
“Oh,” Margaret said, “She’s not here today. She went into town.”
“Do you know where?”
“I never know where.” She sighed.
“Thank you, Margaret. I’m leaving now. Are you sure you don’t want me to call the sheriff or the ambulance?”
“Not now,” she said. “Not yet.”
Margaret turned to her husband and addressed him. “Horst, just sit the
re and be still. And don’t give me that look, or I’ll turn you toward the wall.”
Horst’s eyes widened and his lungs rattled out his last breath.
“There,” Margaret said. “It’s finally over.”
Margaret closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Cassie backed out of the room. She’d never seen anyone as cold-blooded.
*
The REMR pickup emerged from the bank of smoke as Cassie reached for the door latch of her rental car. It pulled into the ranch yard and parked next to her. She didn’t know the driver, who was obviously an employee of the company, but she nodded at John Wayne in the passenger seat.
The windows of the pickup powered down but neither man got out.
“What are you doing back here?” John Wayne asked her. His face was dark with anger, but he seemed to be trying to keep his emotions in check from the REMR man.
“You need to go inside,” Cassie said. “Your mother needs you right now.”
John Wayne cocked his head, then dismissed Cassie’s suggestion. “I asked you what you were doing here.”
“I’m here to pay my respects to the Kleinsasser family,” Cassie said after a beat. “It’s over, John Wayne. I know everything.”
His face twitched. The color drained out of it.
“What in the hell are you talking about?” he asked.
“I know about your mine,” she said. “I know how you framed Blake. I know enough to put you into Deer Lodge prison for a very long time.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. He forced a laugh for the sake of the REMR man who was now looking back and forth from John Wayne to Cassie as if watching a tennis match.
“You don’t own the mineral rights,” she said.“Somebody else is going to make all the money.”
John Wayne reacted as if he’d been slapped. The REMR man looked over at him accusingly.
“I knew you were crazy,” John Wayne said to Cassie. Then to the REMR man, “She’s crazy. Don’t listen to a word she says.”
Cassie said, “We’ll see. What did you have on Cheyenne and Franny to convince the girl to make up that story?”
“It wasn’t a story,” he said. “It was the truth. My brother did it.”
Cassie shrugged. “I’m sick of talking to Kleinsassers.”
“You don’t know anything,” John Wayne hissed.
“Where’s Rand?” she asked before opening her car door. She gestured toward the house. “He might want to be here for this.”
“He’s on a run,” John Wayne said. Then: “Be here for what?”
“Go inside.”
With that, she swung into her Honda and backed out of the ranch yard. She hoped it was for the last time ever.
*
She drove to Lolo as darkness overtook the valley and the fires in the mountains zigzagged across the slopes.
*
Cheyenne was on the same stool in the Hayloft she’d been on when Cassie first met her. She sat alone within a cloud of cigarette smoke that was lit up pink from the neon beer signs behind the bar. When Cheyenne saw Cassie, she narrowed her eyes and raised her chin and blew out a long stream of smoke.
Cassie sat down next to her and ordered a cup of coffee from the bartender. Cheyenne ordered another bourbon on the rocks. Cassie could tell by the deliberate way Cheyenne spoke that she’d been drinking for hours.
Cheyenne lifted her glass. “To my lovely father,” she said. “May he rest in peace.”
“So you know.”
Cheyenne nodded.
“Who told you?”
“Mother called.”
Cassie was surprised. “When I left I told her I thought she should call someone.”
“Moi,” Cheyenne said.
“You seem okay with the news.”
“I’m more than okay. I’m ecstatic, can’t you tell?”
Cassie looked Cheyenne over. She looked put-together and dangerous at the same time.
“I’m leaving now,” Cassie said.
“It’s about time.”
“But before I do, tell me about Franny,” Cassie said. “And this time try to stay cool.”
A whisper of a smile floated across Cheyenne’s mouth. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want a record of what I’m about to tell you.”
Cassie had not activated the recording app on her phone so she passed it over. Cheyenne powered it off and placed it facedown on the counter. She asked, “What do you want to know?”
“Why is she in Bozeman under another name?”
“We thought it best. She might have wilted under the pressure around here. It was best for everyone that she try to live a normal life.”
“ Until she had to testify,” Cassie said.
Cheyenne turned to Cassie and bent close to her. “She was never going to testify. She was always going to recant when the time was right.”
Cassie froze for a moment. “You knew it was a false accusation.”
“Of course I did. Anything John Wayne came up with was bound to be idiotic. He’s really not very smart, you know.”
“Why go along with it, then? I thought you got along with Blake.”
“I do,” Cheyenne said. “Or I should say I did. But getting him out of the trust wasn’t personal. It was a business decision I made for me and my daughter. Blake has all the money in the world as it is.”
That took Cassie a moment to process. Then she said, “You knew Horst didn’t have long to live, so you set them all up: Blake, John Wayne, and Rand. You let it happen so all of them would be kicked out of the trust by a judge. But how can you expect to be the last one standing?”
She shrugged. “I have John Wayne on tape laying out the whole scheme to me. I have him making Franny repeat the story over and over until she had it right. I even have that idiot Wagy telling me not to worry—that he was fully on board and he could make it happen the way John Wayne dreamed it up. I recorded everything on my cell phone and I never said a word the whole time. There’s nothing in those recordings that would implicate me, and it certainly sounds like those dumb-asses are threatening us to do what they want.”
Cassie felt blindsided. She tried to get her bearings. “So, it was for control of the ranch? For the money?”
“Partly,” Cheyenne said. “Not all.”
“Then why?”
Cheyenne drained her drink and lifted a painted finger to signal for another. The bartender scrambled to accommodate her.
“You have no idea what it’s like to be a female in that family,” Cheyenne said. “It’s been going on for over a hundred years and it wasn’t going to change. My grandmother was abused. My mother was abused. I was abused. It was a matter of time before one of her uncles cornered Franny. It was a family tradition.”
Cassie recoiled.
“We figured it was time to blast the men out.”
“We?”
“Mom, me, and Franny.”
“Your mother was in on it?”
“Not that it could ever be proven. But when Franny agreed, I knew we were set.”
Cassie leaned back. She didn’t want to be any closer to Cheyenne than she had to be.
“You’re more depraved than I thought possible,” she said.
Cheyenne smiled. “I came from toxic stock. It’s in my blood.”
Before Cassie could reply, Cheyenne said, “I didn’t know they’d hurt Blake so badly in prison. They were just supposed to rough him up a little and help convince him to go back to New York when he could. I thought I could cut a deal with Blake when he was acquitted. He could go back east and I’d stay just long enough to sell the ranch to the mineral people or whoever wanted it. That would be enough for Mom, Franny, and me. The men would be blasted out for good.”
“My God,” Cassie said.
“Not everything worked to perfection,” Cheyenne said. “John Wayne is stupid but he’s conniving. He didn’t fully trust Franny
so he had a friend of his in Bozeman serve as her guardian. They went to high school together. When I found out I warned Franny to just keep playing her role so the guardian wouldn’t get wise to it. From what Franny told me today it worked perfectly. Deb Rangold didn’t know that Franny was going to recant until it happened.”
Cassie said, “Is Franny in danger? Are you worried that Deb Rangold might harm her?”
“No, not at all. Deb is a snitch but she isn’t a criminal. She’s probably snitched to John Wayne already, and I can only imagine what kind of state he must be in right now. But he wouldn’t harm Franny directly. John Wayne is at his core a coward. He manipulates others to do his dirty work. He’d never do it himself.”
“You’ve got it all figured out,” Cassie said with sarcasm.
“Yes, I do. But I didn’t know everything. I didn’t know what role you would play in all of this,” she said, clinking her bourbon glass against Cassie’s coffee cup. “You really moved things along. I could just sit here and watch it all unravel all around me. It happened much faster than I thought it would.”
Cheyenne took a long pull from her fresh drink. “I wish I could see John Wayne right now. His entire twisted world is falling apart, and he can’t even get advice from his daddy.”
“Do you know about the mineral rights?” Cassie asked.
Cheyenne nodded. “I met a man from REMR who sat where you’re sitting now. It might not surprise you to find out that he told me all kinds of things that night.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Cheyenne made a “what are you going to do” gesture with her hands.
She said, “REMR isn’t loyal to John Wayne. They’re loyal to rare earth mineral deposits. They don’t care who owns them.”
“You and Franny may not walk,” Cassie said. “I may not have a recording of your confession, but I’m duty bound to report it.”
“We’ll walk,” Cheyenne said. “There’s not enough there. No one is going to prosecute a fifteen-year-old girl who was pressured and threatened by her uncle.”
Cassie knew she was probably right. “I need my phone back.”
Cheyenne handed it to her.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Cassie Dewell.”
