Cassie Dewell 01 - Badlands

by C. J. Box

  “Which is?”

  Davis looked to Cassie and then to the sheriff. “The word is new meth will hit the street by tomorrow. You can’t believe how antsy some of the tweakers are getting. But the rumor is, one more day.”

  Kirkbride looked pained. “Is there any way we can stop it?”

  Davis shrugged. “I’m not sure, but maybe.”

  “So how do we do it?”

  Davis took a deep breath and sighed. He looked at his hands as if he hadn’t noticed them before. Then he said, “What I told you about new blue hitting the street is solid information. I heard it from too many guys not to think it’s true—or at least they think it’s true. But anything else—it’s speculation. I just want to go on the record with that, boss.”

  Kirkbride nodded gently. He had a way, Cassie thought, of putting his guys at ease. “Okay, it’s speculation. I won’t hold you to anything if it doesn’t pan out.”

  “Good,” Davis said, “and one more thing.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I think I need to get off the street. I know it’s a couple of months early and all, but I think my days are numbered.”

  Kirkbride sat back, genuinely concerned. “Why—what happened?”

  “It’s cumulative, not just one thing. But I can feel it coming. You know what I do out there: I hang out at the strip clubs and bars and talk to people and hear things. It’s one thing to ask a guy when the crank will be available—that’s self-serving and all those guys can get down with that. But I’ve been pressing lately, and asking about details. ‘Where is the meth coming from? What’s going on that it’s dried up?’ That kind of stuff.

  “Anyway, a guy I know who is well-connected pulled me aside last night and said, ‘Willie Dietrich thinks you’re asking too many questions.’”

  Davis shot a glance at Cassie. He looked embarrassed.

  “He didn’t threaten me,” Davis said, “but the message was clear. They’re starting to wonder about me. And if they think they can’t trust me, well, based on what’s been going on around here lately…”

  “No need to explain,” Kirkbride said quickly. “You’re back on patrol. I don’t want you out there anymore. You’re making the right call at the right time.”

  Davis was obviously relieved. “Thank you, sir. I’ll report to patrol tomorrow morning.”

  “No, you won’t,” Kirkbride said. “You’ll ride with Cassie today and show her the ropes. Then you’ll take two weeks of vacation and a week of unpaid leave. Go someplace warm, or go home to Wisconsin—whatever. Clear your head, get a haircut, and shave. Then come back and go to work.”

  Davis closed his eyes and smiled. It was as if he’d won the jackpot, Cassie thought. Davis was a good cop and he needed the firm push from Kirkbride.

  “Now that we’ve got that cleared up, I want to hear your off-the-record speculation.”

  “That’s all it is,” Davis said. “But it’s based on snippets of conversation, and who is hanging out with who, that sort of thing.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Okay,” Davis said, opening his spiral notebook and glancing at his cryptic handwriting, “this is what I think is happening. For the last year and a half, Rufus Whitely got control of his bunch of rogue bikers and negotiated a charter with the Sons of Freedom in Denver. Once he had that bunch behind him, Rufus consolidated territory from here all the way to Tioga, Dickenson, Watford City, and even some of Minot. They took over distribution from little independent guys and muscled their way to controlling all of the Badlands. But with all of the new people flooding into the Bakken and all the money around here, the market keeps getting bigger and that fact got around. So we’ve got organized competition moving into the market.”

  “Go on,” the sheriff said.

  “I’d not done much research on MS-13 until about a month ago,” Davis said. “I told you about it then, but I didn’t have anything to go on besides a rumor. According to the FBI info I read on them, they really didn’t exist until about 1980. Salvadorans were involved in a violent civil war and a bunch of ’em moved north to L.A. In order to protect themselves against the more well-established Mexican gangs, they formed Mara Salvatrucha. Because they were outnumbered and outgunned, they figured out pretty quick that the way to hold their territory and gain more was to be over-the-top vicious.

  “Now they’re in a growth mode. When MS-13 moves into a new territory they don’t take prisoners. They’re not like other kinds of organized crime gangs who want to stay below the radar and not risk calling attention to themselves. These guys don’t negotiate for market share or cut deals. They just show up and say, ‘Get the hell out of the business or we’ll cut your head off.’

  “I think they moved in here fast like they do and told the bikers to get the hell out. These guys are ruthless. The bikers are thugs but they’re nothing compared to MS-13.

  “MS-13 supposedly has better product from Mexico and they charge more for it, but if you’ve got a monopoly you can do whatever you want.”

  “So far,” Kirkride said, “I’m buying it. It goes along with something Cassie and I talked about.”

  Davis said, “So like I said, the word on a street a few days ago was that really high-quality meth would be hitting. There was a shipment on the way. The slimeball losers I talk with didn’t know where it was coming from or who was behind it—they just seemed to know that good shit was coming. That’s when I started asking too many questions, probably. I could feel a shift in the market but I didn’t know who, or why, or when.

  “Then something happened,” Davis said. “The shipment somehow didn’t show up or got intercepted along the way.”

  Kirkbride and Cassie exchanged glances. The timing conformed with the date of the rollover.

  “I think the bikers learned about the blue meth coming and derailed it. I don’t know how they found out or who did it. But they took it out of the pipeline.”

  Cassie wanted Davis to jump ahead to what she thought she knew was coming, but she refrained. Davis wanted to weave it out.

  “So MS-13 retaliated the way they do—violently and over the top. They went straight to the head of the Sons of Freedom, Rufus, and cut him to pieces and scattered him all over town. They figured that would send a message to the rest of the bikers that in a war they were capable of anything. And if you read up on MS-13, you know they are. They’ve put contract hits out on federal agents. In Honduras, they machine-gunned twenty-eight people—mostly women and children—on a bus. They decapitate entire families just to warn off informants. And to think these guys are actually here in Grimstad—it blows my mind.”

  Kirkbride nodded. “So you think the motive behind Rufus’s murder was retaliation?”

  “Partly. But they also wanted to kill the king in the splashiest way possible so his guys would scatter.”

  “Did it work?”

  Davis chuckled drily. “From what I can see, it did. The word is that Rufus’s guys trailered their bikes and headed to Colorado and the mothership. I haven’t seen any of them since yesterday. I drove by their clubhouse last night and the place is deserted.”

  “Interesting,” Cassie said. “So MS-13 has a foothold here.”

  “More than that, I’d guess,” Davis said. “I think they’ve taken over in one fell swoop.”

  “This Phillip Klein guy,” Kirkbride said, “do you think he fits into any of this?”

  Davis shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense that he does, other than he disappeared at the same time all this was going down. It’s possible, I guess, but I haven’t heard a thing about him.”

  Cassie said, “Except Klein worked the man camp on the same night Rufus was murdered. Think about it. Grimstad isn’t a normal town. There is absolutely no place to stay unless you’ve made arrangements well in advance, and there was no way the MS-13 guys could have known their meth would be intercepted ahead of time. So when that happened, maybe they’d already sent a couple of assassins up here to go after Rufus. But the practical question
is, where would they stay?”

  Kirkbride said, “If they didn’t know the area—which I’m sure they don’t—they might wind up at a man camp.”

  “And maybe they didn’t like the rules there,” Cassie said, “or the guy behind the desk.”

  Then she sat up with a start. “Or maybe, they didn’t like the cameras. Didn’t someone steal the server?”

  Davis and Kirkbride exchanged looks.

  Kirkbride nodded. “Which means they might still be here.”

  Then he turned to Davis. “What about Willie Dietrich? What do you think his role is in all of this?”

  Davis shook his head in disgust. “Willie, yeah. He’ll never go away. See, Willie is the middleman—the distributor. He doesn’t cook, so he’s no threat to either the bikers or MS-13. I’m guessing that if MS-13 showed up with more muscle and a better product, Willie would flip in a heartbeat. Rufus and Willie were supposedly real tight, but leaving pieces of Rufus all over town probably helped convince Willie to change sides and forget he’d ever even worked with those bikers. Willie’s just switching wholesalers. Plus, it makes business sense to MS-13. Willie’s guys fit in with all the old dopers and all the new dopers. If a bunch of tatted-up Salvadoran gangsters started walking around Walmart they’d be easy for us to spot.”

  “At least that used to be the case,” Kirkbride added with a grim smile. “Have you been there lately?”

  Both Cassie and Davis smiled at that. Davis said he’d read in the FBI reports that some of the more sophisticated MS-13 gang members were easing back on their facial and neck tattoos so they wouldn’t be identified as easily.

  “So tomorrow,” Kirkbride said, bringing it back, “there’s new product on the street.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Davis hesitated, then said, “That’s why I wondered why you shut me down today. Max thought it would be good for the guys to know so they could keep their eyes open. If they don’t know it’s coming, there might be trouble. And if the druggies don’t get what they think they’re getting, they could be trouble.”

  “I understand all that,” Kirkbride said with a hint of irritation. “And the last thing I want to do is withhold intel from our team. But now I’m going to ask you a really tough question, Ian, and I want you to answer it honestly. There will be no hard feelings or repercussions based on your answer, but I trust you to be honest with me.”

  Davis sat back in his chair. Cassie noticed his face had gone white.

  “What do you hear—are any of my guys dirty?”

  The question hung there for thirty seconds.

  Finally, Davis said, “I’m not the kind of cop who rats other cops out.”

  “I know that. But what you tell me doesn’t go beyond this room. I’m not asking you your opinion or what you think. I’m asking you what you hear out there. Even if it’s just a rumor with no foundation in truth.”

  Davis looked to Cassie for some kind of help. She didn’t offer any, but she felt for him. She’d been in a similar situation once and the results had been disastrous.

  “Well,” Davis said, “there’s a rumor that Willie has some protection at a higher level.”

  “Protection?”

  “Someone who watches out for him.”

  “Which implies someone is getting a cut.”

  “It implies that I guess.”

  “Cam?”

  Davis looked away so quickly it was just like saying yes, Cassie thought.

  “People are always saying things,” Davis said. “They all want to act like they’re more inside than they are. I’ve never heard anything definitive at all. Never.”

  Kirkbride watched Davis carefully while he nodded his head. He said, “If Willie Dietrich switched sides so quick, I wonder if someone else did, too.”

  His words hung there.

  Cassie broke the silence. “This is also speculation, but Cam Tollefsen was the first officer on the scene of that rollover—almost as if he were waiting for it. Like he was there to escort the driver into town. And although there’s nothing at all in his report suggesting it, I think another car forced the gangster off the road. Why else would he have gone off it into that field? Maybe Cam saw it happen and decided to play both sides against the middle.”

  Davis looked over at her, his eyes wide.

  “Are you suggesting Cam found the supply?” Kirkbride asked her.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shadowed me out in the field yesterday morning. There was no reason for him to be there except for the off chance I’d stumble over the missing meth and he wanted to be there if that happened. But he knows I didn’t find anything except that tire track.”

  “What track?” Kirkbride asked.

  She told Kirkbride and Davis about the missing cast.

  She said, “There’s nothing in Tollefsen’s report about a witness, especially not someone on a motorbike or a bicycle. Lance Foster didn’t mention it, either, but he wasn’t the first on the scene. But Cam might have panicked when he found out I had Atnip go out there. He probably didn’t know what I was after and I’m not sure I know myself. The track could be completely unrelated to the rollover and it could have been made hours before or after. I was just fishing around for something, but Cam didn’t know that and he might have felt I was on to something and he thought he needed to derail my investigation.”

  “So you think he took the cast?” Davis asked, incredulous.

  “I don’t know who took it,” Cassie said. “But who else would have? Who else knew I was even out there in the field? And you,” she said, turning to Kirkbride, “saw his reaction this morning. He was clearly confused when I showed up.”

  “Yeah,” Kirkbride said wearily, “but proof of nothing.”

  Cassie nodded.

  Kirkbride swiveled in his chair toward Davis again. “We’ve been all over that rollover. I had the guys cut the car apart with welding torches, just in case. We even opened up the tires and sawed the frame apart. No drugs. So if your theory is correct, where did they go?”

  Davis shrugged. He said, “All I know is that they aren’t on the market but they should be by tomorrow.”

  “So either MS-13 has them back and for some reason they’re delaying distribution, or they’re confident they’ll have them by tomorrow.”

  “That makes sense,” Davis said.

  “So who in the hell has the shipment?” Kirkbride asked rhetorically. “If Cam had them or Willie had them the deal would be done, I’d think. We’d have meth-head central going on around here. So if you were to guess, each of you, what would you say? Where is the supply?”

  Davis shook his head. He said, “Maybe no one knows for sure where it is yet. Or maybe a whole new shipment arrives tomorrow. Either way, MS-13 will want their first shipment back because it’s probably worth millions.”

  Kirkbride shook his head, puzzled. “It makes no sense that someone would hold on to what they’ve got knowing they could be cut into little pieces and scattered around town. No one with any sense would mess with MS-13—or Willie—like that.”

  Kirkbride nodded but was noncommittal. “Cassie?”

  She said, “I don’t think we’re the only ones wondering where the shipment wound up. I think Willie and his contacts with MS-13 think they’re close to getting it back so they put the word out it will be on the street tomorrow. But I don’t think they have it yet.”

  Kirkbride leaned back in his chair and rested his elbows on his belly and steepled his fingers. He thought about it for a minute.

  Then he said to Cassie and Davis, “Partner up. Start with Willie. I’ll get some guys I trust to start making inquiries at all the man camps. If we’ve got a couple of Salvadorans staying here we should be able to identify them pretty quick. I’ll reach out to Cam. I’ve known him for a hell of a long time and we’ve got a lot of history. If nothing else, I can talk with him and keep him off the street for a while. And who knows—maybe he’ll fess up.

&nb
sp; “But we’ve got to move quick,” Kirkbride said. “I don’t want that meth to hit the streets tomorrow and I don’t want any more citizens butchered. I especially don’t want a bunch of fucking gangsters in my county.”

  Davis nodded to Cassie and said, “You realize my cover will be blown if we work together in the open.”

  “It’s already blown, right?” Kirkbride asked.

  Davis put his head down. “Yeah.”

  “Go,” Kirkbride said, shooing them out of the room.

  Davis stood expectantly outside Cassie’s office while she retrieved her parka. Lining the hallway was the delegation from China Kirkbride had mentioned earlier. They nodded at her respectfully as she passed and they looked just as Kirkbride had guessed: business suits, loafers, smart overcoats.

  To Davis, she said, “Just a second,” and stepped back inside Kirkbride’s office.

  The sheriff looked up. His eyes were red, and Cassie was taken aback.

  “Yes?” he said.

  Cassie said, “I still wonder about that tire cast.”

  “We’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m trying to get used to the fact that I might have a dirty cop right under my nose. I sure as hell don’t like the feeling.”

  “The Chinese delegation is waiting outside.”

  Kirkbride’s face fell. He said, “Don’t invite them in.”

  Cassie nodded.

  “Look,” Kirkbride said, pushing back angrily from his desk, “the governor’s office called and asked me to treat these Red Chinese like some kind of official delegation. I say, ‘Fuck ’em.’ This state produced Roger Marris, Phil Jackson, and Louis L’Amour. We’re all-Americans here. Why should I divert resources to a dozen fucking Chicoms?”

  She doubted his sudden anger had much to do with the Chinese.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CAM TOLLEFSEN was parked on the north edge of Grimstad with his engine idling and the heat on against the cold. The sky was gray and dark snow clouds scudded high from the flat northern horizon to the southern horizon. He was perched on a small rise but it seemed as if he could see the curvature of the earth.