Cassie Dewell 01 - Badlands

by C. J. Box

  “They all ask the same things,” Kirkbride said wearily. “They want to know about the growing crime rate, the potential environmental dangers of fracking, and what they call the ‘loss of innocence’ of Bakken County. These reporters all seem to have their stories written before they even set foot in North Dakota. They want me to give ’em a quote that will confirm their bias. They want me to condemn fracking for oil and the sudden influx of people. If I don’t go along with their script they get pissy. And they always find someone who will give them the quote they want.”

  “I noticed,” she said, recalling how hostile he’d come across in the most recent clips.

  “I don’t even call ’em back anymore. They fly all the way here from the East Coast burning up jet fuel, then rent cars and fill ’em with gasoline to drive all the way to Grimstad just so they can trot me out to say, ‘Oil is bad.’ I won’t play their game anymore. The truth is this town was dying a slow death before they found oil. We were losing all our young people. Farming and ranching is hard damn work, and it doesn’t pay much. It gets colder than hell around here in the winter.”

  She nodded.

  He said, “This is what Grimstad used to look like, minus all the oil field trucks on the street.”

  They were on a narrow residential street two blocks from the law enforcement center. The homes were small, single family, close together. Very Midwestern, she thought. There were towering oaks in many of the small front yards. But because of the many four-wheel-drive vehicles parked on both curbs, Kirkbride’s big SUV could barely navigate down the street.

  There was a flash in the headlights and the sheriff applied the brakes and whispered, “Shit.”

  Cassie’s seat belt restrained her from hitting her head on the dashboard. She looked up in time to see an adolescent boy on a bike dart out from between two of the vehicles and then stop in the headlights and look at them. He obviously hadn’t seen them coming.

  “Nearly hit him,” Kirkbride said.

  “Thank God you didn’t.”

  Before the sheriff could roll down his window to speak to the boy, the rider recovered from his surprise and quickly pedaled the rest of the way across the pavement. He vanished between two oil field service SUVs. Cassie noted the empty canvas Grimstad Tribune panniers on the handlebars of the bike and the face that looked back bathed in headlights. The boy’s face was unsettling.

  “Westergaard boy,” the sheriff said, shaking his head. “I nearly clipped him good.”

  “You know him?”

  “Kind of,” Kirkbride said. “He’s not a bad kid, but he’s going to get himself killed riding his bike like that. Someone should tell that little shit we have traffic now.”

  Kirkbride proceeded down the narrow street, but more slowly. Cassie looked out her window and caught another glimpse of the boy riding his bike across a front lawn and then between two houses. There was an old washing machine back there.

  She said, “There was something odd about him, I thought.”

  Kirkbride nodded. “You noticed that. Small kid for his age, kind of a vacant stare.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fetal alcohol syndrome,” he said. “His mother, Rachel Westergaard, is a piece of work. I hear she’s gotten her act together and I hope so because Kyle seems like a good kid. Hard worker, as you could see. I talked to him at the school antidrug deal. He listens and he tries to keep up but he doesn’t talk.”

  “He can’t talk at all?”

  “Some, I guess. But right now I’m more worried about him getting mashed by some drunk on the street if he doesn’t start paying attention.”

  Cassie grimaced as she reset the shoulder strap of the seat belt. The sudden stop had pressured the most painful part of her injury.

  “You okay?” the sheriff asked.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Anyway,” Kirkbride said, “that’s what it used to be like around here.”

  She looked over, not quite getting what he was saying.

  “We all knew everybody else. I hauled Kyle’s mom in a half-dozen times for public intoxication. I remember seeing her pregnant with Kyle in the cell and I called Social Services to help her out. Who knows who the father was. But it was too late for Kyle, I guess. She was sober when he was born but the damage was already done. He lived with his grandmother for a while after he was born, but I guess she proved to the social workers she’d changed for the better and now he’s back home. If I would have had a vote he’d still be with his grandma.”

  He paused. “That’s how it used to be. Now I’ve got a hundred and twenty-five men in my jail and I don’t have room for another. And I don’t know a single one of their names.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KYLE PASSED through the bright headlights of the truck on the road into darkness as he darted between two parked pickups. He thought, That was close.

  He jumped the curb and rode across the front lawn of his next-door neighbor toward his house. He hoped the people in the car that almost hit him wouldn’t follow. It wouldn’t do any good to yell at him or tell him to look both ways before riding his bike across the street. He knew that. But he wasn’t himself and hadn’t been all day at school. All he could think about was the bag he’d found and what T-Lock had said about being able to take care of his mom. He couldn’t wait to see her face when T-Lock told her they were moving. And he couldn’t help but think the bundle he’d found could somehow help him put his river plan in place, and he was excited about that.

  His friend Raheem would need to know about the bundle soon. Raheem was in on the plan, and they’d bumped fists on it.

  * * *

  THE LIGHTS were on inside his house and leaked around the closed blinds. Kyle paused after he leaned his bike against the washing machine. His mom was still at work, but there were two cars parked nose-to-tail in the driveway. That’s where his mom usually parked her van.

  The car in front was one of the biggest, shiniest, and coolest SUVs he’d ever seen up close: a Cadillac Escalade. There was a sticker in the back window indicating it had just come from the car dealership. Behind the Escalade was a beat-up old pickup with huge patches of gray primer all over it. In the bed of the pickup was assorted junk: piles of discarded asphalt and shake shingles, shredded roofing paper, bent lengths of edging tin.

  The pickup belonged to T-Lock’s friend Winkie. They called him that because he wore glasses so thick his eyes were magnified through the lenses and when he blinked it was a visual event. Winkie was short and stout, a fellow roofer in T-Lock’s crew. Long ago, Kyle’s mom had declared that Winkie wasn’t welcome in her house after he’d accidentally fired a razor-tipped bolt through the front door while trying to cock his new 250-pound crossbow.

  Kyle wondered why Winkie was there, and who owned the Escalade.

  * * *

  “HOLY SHIT!” T-Lock said in alarm as Kyle came in the front door, “What time is it?” Like always, he scrambled for his phone and like always he patted himself down and couldn’t find it. T-Lock didn’t wear a wristwatch.

  Winkie looked up from where he sat on the couch.

  Blink.

  “Kyle, my man,” Winkie said. “How you doin’, man? How you fuckin’ doin?”

  He asked as if it was the most important question in the world, liked he really cared.

  Kyle shrugged and took it in. The coffee table in front of the couch had been cleared of his mom’s magazines and picture books. On the edge of the table near Winkie was a small square of dusty-looking glass dusted with white powder. The mustache under Winkie’s nose contained the same substance. Next to the square of glass was a twelve-pack carton of beer. Half the bottles were gone.

  “You don’t talk much, do you, Kyle, my man?” Winkie said, firing the words. “You never did, man. Loose lips sink shits.” When he realized his mispronounciation, Winkie roared with laughter and fell back on the couch, repeating it twice. When he recovered he sat back up and stared at Kyle with glassy eyes. Blink.

&n
bsp; T-Lock fought back laughter himself and tried to play adult to Kyle. He made a serious face and said, “Kyle, I’m wrapping things up here with my friend Winkie. Why don’t you go do homework in your room or whatever. Your mom will be home soon.”

  Kyle squinted and T-Lock misunderstood what he was squinting about.

  “Winkie was just leaving, don’t worry,” T-Lock said.

  “I was?” Winkie said. Blink.

  “Rachel’ll be home. You’ve got to be gone before she shows up.”

  Blink.

  Kyle said, “Who owns that Escalade?”

  “What’d he say?” Winkie asked T-Lock. “I can never understand him.”

  “I can,” T-Lock said. “He wants to know who that Escalade belongs to.”

  T-Lock and Winkie exchanged looks. They looked as if they were both ready to bust out laughing.

  T-Lock said to Kyle, “Man, we’ll talk about that later. But don’t you think your mom deserves a nice ride? She’s been nursing that van of hers along for what, ten years?”

  “That’s my money,” Kyle said. “I found it. It’s for me and Mom. You said so.”

  “Uh-oh,” Winkie said, looking away with a smirk on his mouth. “I don’t have a fuckin’ clue what he said but he looks pissed.”

  Kyle hated it when people talked about him like he wasn’t in the room, as if he couldn’t hear them talking about him.

  “Look,” T-Lock said, bending toward Kyle with his hands out, looking like he was pleading his case, “It is for your mom. Everything is for your mom. But I don’t want to talk about it right now. We can talk about it later,” he said, drawing out the last word and chinning toward Winkie. “We’ll talk about it later man-to-man, okay?”

  Kyle frowned. He hated T-Lock sometimes because T-Lock thought he was stupid.

  “Go do your homework,” T-Lock said again, “I’ll clean up before your mom comes home.”

  Kyle glared at Winkie as he marched to his room and Winkie looked back.

  Blink.

  Winkie reached inside the beer carton and said, “Here, kid, have a beer. Relax. You’re twelve or something, right? I was ten when I had my first sixer.”

  Winkie looked up at T-Lock for approval, and T-Lock shrugged. He said, “It might take the edge off, Kyle. Just don’t tell your mother. I won’t.”

  * * *

  KYLE SLAMMED his door closed. His room was small and cluttered, although he knew where everything was. The door was cheap and old and he could overhear T-Lock and Winkie whispering and laughing in the living room.

  He sat at his too-small desk and snapped on his lamp. There was math homework in his backpack but he didn’t worry about it. Kyle struggled with most subjects but he was good at math and he could usually get it done in just a few minutes. Now, though, he felt an urgent, almost furious need to go over his plan, to look at the list he’d been making for several months. Raheem had been involved with the list when they first talked about it the summer before, but Kyle had taken it over. Raheem wasn’t very practical when it came to survival lists. Plus, since it was Raheem’s boat in the first place, they both agreed he didn’t need to do half the planning as well.

  But it was hard for Kyle to really concentrate on the list because he kept overhearing snatches of rat-a-tat-tat conversation in the other room.

  Kyle stared at the sweating bottle of beer he’d placed on his desk. He’d always wanted to try to drink beer, but he knew he wasn’t old enough. But Winkie had just handed it to him and T-Lock didn’t stop him. Maybe he was old enough.

  He pulled a loose sock from the floor over his hand and used it to twist the cap off the bottle. The pssst sound was nice when it opened, and he took a drink.

  Buzzy, he thought. Kind of bitter. But cold and nice. Kyle had never liked sweet drinks and beer wasn’t sweet. It felt good going down, so he took another sip.

  Winkie: “That’s some fuckin’ awesome shit, you know that don’t you?”

  T-Lock: “Of course, man. Of course! That first hit just about blew the back of my head off. I don’t think this meth has been cut at all, man. Or if it has it hasn’t been cut very much. No, they were getting ready to sell this shit. That’s why it’s packaged the way it is in one-gram hits. This shit was ready to hit the streets, man.”

  Winkie: “How much did you say you had?”

  T-Lock: “Well, I could only use Rachel’s bathroom scale, so it may not be perfectly accurate, but I got fourteen and a half pounds. I weighed it twice, man. Fourteen point five fucking pounds of this shit.”

  Winkie: “Jesus! How much is it worth on the street?”

  T-Lock: “I don’t know for sure, but—”

  Winkie: “Fuck, it’s millions. I know hits are going for two hundred a gram and that’s shit that’s been cut way down. There are a shitload of high-quality meth grams in that bag.”

  T-Lock: “I got on the Internet today before I got too fucked up. The local yokels did that big bust last year, remember? They got three pounds of meth off one guy, and the article said the street value was two hundred and seventy thousand, remember that?”

  Winkie: “Sort of. I know prices went up right after that and a couple of the guys were bitching about it.”

  T-Lock: “Yeah, they said it went up to two hundred and fifty a gram for a while. Anyway, let’s say the price is back to two hundred dollars a gram again now. So I did the math. We’re talking ninety thousand a pound minimum. So fourteen and a half pounds is worth one point three million on the street, easy. Maybe one and a half million. Plus that fifty-four thousand in cash. Yeah, I know the bills are marked, but they worked today when I leased that Escalade, didn’t they?”

  Winkie: “You’re a fucking millionaire! Jesus, I know a millionaire. You ain’t gonna forget your friends, are you?”

  Kyle thought, That’s for me and my mom.

  * * *

  THE OLD wooden boat on the side of Raheem’s house had been there when Raheem’s family moved here from Detroit. The boat had a deep V hull and had been stored upside-down on the side of the house for years. The finish on the hull had long ago deteriorated and the sun had faded the boat gray. When Kyle and Raheem turned it upright the inside was filled with cobwebs, old leaves, and a nest made by field mice. The oarlocks were rusted and the lines of the gunwales were warped but the floor of the boat was solid and it looked sound. They tested it by filling it with water from a garden hose. It didn’t leak. There was a wooden box affixed to the bow with a hasp that could be locked up. There were also two-foot-long storage boxes on the inside gunwales. No oars, though.

  Kyle and Raheem spent days cleaning it out, lubricating the oarlocks with WD-40 they found in Raheem’s dad’s garage, and coating the interior and exterior with a polyurethane topcoat from gallon cans they’d found at a construction site. By the end of the summer they sometimes just sat in it, a white kid from North Dakota and a black kid from Detroit, pretending they were floating down the Missouri River on the world’s greatest adventure. Raheem did lots of fake casts and caught dozens of imaginary fish. Kyle sat at the center bench seat and feigned rowing. He waved at passing farmers and ranchers on the shores who waved back. Eagles perched on tree branches that stretched out over the water. Puffy white clouds scudded across a wide blue sky.

  That’s when the plan was hatched. The idea had come to him after a trip to the Badlands.

  Kyle studied his list. He’d crossed out items many times and added new ones. Half the beer was gone, and the words seemed to swim across the page.

  Sleeping bags

  Food (jerkie, crackers, things like that)

  Fishing poles and tackel

  Raincoats

  Binokulars

  Pistol or rifle (animals, hoboes)

  Journal for writing

  Map

  Knife

  X-tra clothes

  Swimming trunks

  Rope

  Tent

  Plates and utensuls

  Matches

  Oars (
get B4 summer)

  Cell phone

  Money

  At least, he thought, that last item was possible now. It was why he’d taken the paper route in the first place. But money shouldn’t be a problem anymore. Unless T-Lock blew all of it.

  * * *

  WINKIE: “BUT you know somebody out there is looking for this shit, right? They’ll want it back.”

  T-Lock: “What if it was just one guy? Have you thought of that? If it was just one guy maybe there isn’t anyone even looking for him.”

  Winkie: “No way it was just one guy. That many pounds and all that cash? No fuckin’ way. There are people out there wondering where it went.”

  T-Lock: “You think I haven’t thought of that? Of course they’ll want it back. But they don’t know who took it, do they? All they know is their guy rolled his car and got dead. They don’t know what happened to the stuff inside. Think about it, man. As far as they know it’s still out there in the prairie, or hidden inside the car wreck. Or maybe the dead guy sold it all and hid the cash before he took his dirt nap? How are they going to know? They might think even the cops recovered it and are keeping it quiet. Or maybe some corrupt cop grabbed it and took it home. There’s nothing that points to me, man.”

  Winkie (laughing): “Except that Cadillac Escalade out there.”

  T-Lock: “That’s why we drove up there and bought it in Minot, man! Those car dealers up there are used to Bakken workers strolling in with rolls of cash. That’s nothing new to them anymore. And I leased it, remember? I didn’t buy it outright. That would have raised too many red flags. You’ve got to give me more credit, man. You’re starting to piss me off, Winkie.”