Cassie Dewell 01 - Badlands

by C. J. Box

  But Kyle suddenly turned an abrupt left as a sheriff’s department vehicle appeared from the direction of downtown and blocked the south gate.

  “No need for lights or sirens,” Cassie said over the radio. “But we need units on the east and west sides of the park and we need them now.”

  Kyle powered toward the eastside fence. Cassie thought he looked winded by the way his bike swayed from side to side as he pedaled. He turned when another unit appeared and nosed through the east gate and stopped. She felt for Kyle. There was no adrenaline rush as if she were boring in on a suspect. This was a twelve-year-old kid and they were trapping him like an animal.

  When a fourth unit plugged up the westside gate, Kyle desperately rode away from it toward the playground again in the middle of the park. The bike swayed dangerously from side to side.

  Cassie grabbed a handheld radio and turned it up as she stepped out of her vehicle.

  Davis opened his door to get out and Cassie held up her hand. “Stay inside, Ian. Let me do this. We don’t want to spook him.

  “Everybody stay put and watch him so he doesn’t figure a way out,” she said into the radio, walking past the grille of the Tahoe. “I’m going to approach him on foot when he stops. Remember, he’s just a kid. We don’t know what he’s going to do, but be careful not to hurt him if he tries to get away. We just want to question him.”

  Kyle stopped near an empty jungle gym on the side of a silent swing set. She watched him drop his bike and clamber up a ladder to a kind of crow’s nest. The metal structure of the jungle gym was covered with frost that looked like thick white felt.

  She fitted an earpiece into her ear, keyed the mic open on the handheld, and dropped it into her parka pocket so the other units could hear what would take place. She guessed Kirkbride would listen in as well.

  “Can you hear me?” she said softly.

  “Roger that,” Davis said. The other officers surrounding the park checked in as well.

  “Okay. I’m going to talk to him.”

  “Don’t tell him to calm down,” Davis said.

  “This isn’t the time,” Cassie said, taking a deep breath that instantly froze the hairs inside her nose.

  * * *

  KYLE WAS hunched in a squat hugging his knees as she approached. He watched her closely like a feral cat. She could see his face was red from all the pedaling, and his exhaled breath hung around his head like a thought balloon.

  “Kyle Westergaard?” she said.

  He didn’t move. He looked scared. His eyes were moist and small.

  “Kyle, I’m Cassie. You have nothing to be afraid of. I’m here to help you.”

  Nothing.

  “I don’t think you trust the police,” she said. “I understand. You’ve had some bad experiences with them, or at least with a couple of bad cops you might have seen recently. But, Kyle, they’re not here. One man is dead and the other is in jail. They can’t hurt anyone now.”

  Kyle grunted and hugged himself tighter. Cassie could see that his cheeks were glazed with frozen tears. Involuntarily, her eyes teared up as well.

  She said, “Kyle, I have a son of my own. His name is Ben. When I see you up there I can’t help but think of him in the same situation. I would hope that if he’s ever scared or in trouble someone would try to help him. I think that would happen because most people are good. I’m good, and you are, too. Will you let me help you?”

  Kyle croaked, “They have my mom.”

  Cassie wasn’t sure she understood.

  He said it again, but this time his voice broke on the last word.

  “They have your mom?”

  “And my Grandma Lottie.” It was almost a shout.

  “I stabbed T-Lock in the neck. Are you going to arrest me?”

  Cassie felt terrible asking him to repeat it. When he did she understood the words “stabbed,” “T-Lock,” and “arrest me.”

  She said, “Kyle, it sounds like you were defending yourself. You have a right to protect yourself in a situation like that.”

  “Really?”

  Her heart was breaking. She fought back tears and said, “Kyle, please come down. We can go over to that warm car and you can tell me everything. And then we’ll figure out a way to keep your mom and grandma safe.”

  “How are you going to do that?” he asked.

  She didn’t quite understand what he said, but she got the meaning through his inflection.

  Cassie said, “We’re going to do it because we’re the good guys.” And she smiled.

  Kyle nodded and climbed stiffly down the ladder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  FIDEL ESCOBAR disconnected the call he’d placed from his cell phone when it went—once again—straight to voice mail. The cop, Foster, for whatever reason, wasn’t picking up.

  Escobar, along with Diego “Silencio” Argueta, Dietrich, and the woman they had taken from McDonald’s, were all in the home of the old lady. It was warm in there, which Escobar appreciated, and he’d sent Silencio outside twice already for more wood to feed into the stove.

  Outside, the last shafts of sunlight poured through the branches of the old trees on the west side of the road to the old lady’s house. The indoor-outdoor thermometer on the kitchen counter said it was seventy-six degrees inside and minus thirty-four degrees outside. Escobar parted the vinyl miniblinds over the front window with two fingers and peered out. The road to the house—the only road to the house—was white and empty.

  To the old lady, who they had bound with silver duct tape to her straight-back kitchen chair, Escobar said, “That’s a hundred and ten degree swing, old lady.”

  The old woman’s eyes flashed at him. She couldn’t talk because of the tape over her mouth. But she wanted to sass him again, he could tell. She reminded him of Auntie Beatriz. Auntie Beatriz would not be shut up by anybody and she felt it was her right and her duty to speak her mind. She could use some tape, Escobar thought. But he’d never smack Auntie Beatriz the way he did the old lady when she ordered them out of her house. He’d broken her glasses with the blow and her left cheek was bruised and swollen. But she was still feisty.

  Escobar’s toolbox sat by the back door. He’d had no reason to use it except to retrieve the roll of tape. His machete was on the table in full view of the old woman, who looked at it often. He had a 9mm semiauto in the waistband of his pants.

  Silencio was slumped in an old overstuffed chair in the living room with his feet up and his 9mm on his lap. He was watching a station with nothing on it but cartoons. Silencio had been upset there was no Univision in North Dakota. Escobar could tell just by looking at him that Silencio, who had kicked his boots off, welcomed the warmth as well and was getting comfortable in the chair.

  Escobar gently patted the old woman on the top of her silver head—she didn’t like it and tried to jerk her head away—and went into the front room.

  Dietrich was on the couch with the woman, Rachel. At first, she’d been scared and crazy until Dietrich shot her up with a hit of black tar heroin. Silencio had to hold her down on the backseat floor of the pickup while Dietrich found a vein. It wasn’t long after that the woman calmed down and moaned. Escobar had seen enough junkies to know this Rachel liked heroin and was no stranger to it. The drug gave her peace and soon she told them about T-Lock, about her son Kyle, about her mother’s house just outside of town.

  They believed her when she said she didn’t know where T-Lock had hidden the duffel bag of product. There was no reason not to believe her because she told them everything else they wanted to know.

  “I think Kyle knows where the duffel bag is,” she’d said, making her eyes big. “I know T-Lock does.”

  “So call him,” Escobar had said to Dietrich. “Call him from her phone.”

  * * *

  THEY’D PARKED the Toyota Tundra behind the old lady’s house so no one could see it from the access road. Rachel was more than willing to knock on the back door. Escobar, Silencio, and Dietrich flatten
ed themselves against the back of the house so they couldn’t be detected by the occupant inside.

  When the old lady realized that it was her daughter outside, the door opened and the old lady said through the storm door, “What are you doing out in these conditions, Rachel? And where is Kyle? I was hoping you’d have him with you.”

  Then she said, “What’s wrong with your eyes? You aren’t using again, are you?”

  Rachel stepped aside and Silencio bull-rushed the door, sending the old lady sprawling across the kitchen floor.

  And they were in.

  * * *

  ESCOBAR HAD tried to eat a sheet of what Dietrich called lefsa from the refrigerator but he didn’t like it. He thought it tasted pasty and bland. Dietrich liked it, though, after buttering the sheets and sprinkling them with brown sugar. He rolled one up for Silencio, who seemed to like it, too.

  The old lady sat in her chair watching them eat. If her eyes could kill, they’d all be dead, Escobar thought.

  He wondered why these people lived in such a cold place and preferred food with no taste. It was a mystery to him.

  This whole place was a mystery to him.

  * * *

  WHEN HE entered the front room, Escobar looked at all the family photos on the wall. There were some black-and-white ones of a young woman in a long dress standing next to a stern-faced farmer. Newer photos revealed this Rachel to have been quite a looker in high school, but even then there was a wild glint in her eye. There were several framed photos of a small boy who looked straight into the camera but didn’t smile. He must be Kyle, Escobar thought.

  Escobar said to Dietrich, “My man won’t answer his phone.”

  “Maybe he’s in the middle of something,” Dietrich said. “If he’s with a bunch of other cops, I can understand him not picking up.”

  “I’ve called five times.”

  “Yeah,” Dietrich said, “that’s a lot. But I wouldn’t get excited yet.”

  “I don’t get excited.”

  Dietrich shut up. He wasn’t a man who shut up often, Escobar thought, but he was smart enough to shut up now.

  The woman lay on her back on the couch, her feet curled up against Dietrich’s thigh. Her eyes were closed and she looked peaceful.

  “She is sleeping?” Escobar asked, surprised.

  “I shot her up again,” Dietrich said.

  “Was that a good idea?” Escobar asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “She wanted it.”

  “Of course. Addicts always want it. She loves her son but her real love is inside her veins right now.”

  “I don’t know if she can walk,” Dietrich said. “I can always carry her out over my shoulder if we have to clear out of here. She’s pretty light.”

  “So is la abuela.”

  Dietrich looked up and cocked his head to the side, confused.

  Escobar nodded toward the old lady at the kitchen table, then at Rachel. “They’ve seen us. They die.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Dietrich said. “You guys don’t leave witnesses. Do you have enough barrels at the shop? You wouldn’t want to run out of barrels.”

  “We won’t.”

  Dietrich nodded. “Then what—you load the barrels in your pickup and drive ’em to SoCal?”

  Escobar nodded his head, almost with sadness. “Silencio!”

  The man bolted upright from the chair, his gun in his hand.

  “You were sleeping,” Escobar said calmly. “No sleeping.”

  Silencio started to argue but thought better of it. He had obviously drifted off.

  “Go outside and get more wood,” Escobar said. “That will wake you up.”

  He told both Dietrich and Silencio about the one hundred and ten degree difference between inside and outside.

  “Yeah?” Dietrich asked, puzzled.

  Silencio shrugged dully.

  “Maybe you are both too simple to understand the significance of it,” Escobar said with a sniff. “It’s like we’re astronauts in space. Warm inside, cold outside.”

  * * *

  WHILE SILENCIO pulled on his heavy coat to go get more wood, Escobar said to Dietrich, “I think she’s dead.”

  Rachel’s eyes were partially open and her mouth gaped. A still bubble had formed on one nostril. Her arm was splayed out from the couch in midair.

  Dietrich frowned and touched his fingertips to her neck beneath her jaw. Then he pressed the back of his hand to her nose and mouth.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t have given her that second hit,” Escobar said. “You gave her too much.”

  They both looked over at the old lady. She’d been watching everything. She closed her eyes and her head dropped forward. It took them a moment to realize she was crying.

  “Poor old lady,” Escobar said.

  “Does that mean—” Dietrich started to ask.

  “It doesn’t change anything.”

  * * *

  ESCOBAR CHECKED the clock on the face of his cell phone as Silencio struggled through the storm door with an armful of frozen wood. Then he pried the blinds open again and looked up the road. Nothing. It was getting dark.

  He said to Dietrich, “Ten more minutes, then we go.”

  “He said he’d be here.”

  “You trust a ten-year-old boy.” It was a statement, an indictment, not a question.

  Dietrich said again, “He’s twelve, I think. You want me to call him again?”

  Escobar shook his head.

  He turned to the old lady, who raised her head. Her eyes were red and puffy. He said, “We’ll be gone soon, Abuela.”

  * * *

  SEVEN MINUTES later, Willie Dietrich untangled himself from Rachel’s stiffening legs and approached the front window. Escobar watched him from the kitchen. Silencio watched him from the reclining chair. Unlike before, Silencio hadn’t taken off his boots and coat. He knew they would likely be leaving soon.

  Dietrich made a snorting sound. Escobar squinted his eyes at the sound.

  “Son of a bitch,” Dietrich said with relief. “That little shit is coming up the road on his bike.”

  “Does he have our property?”

  “There are a couple of bags hanging from the handlebars. So yeah, it looks like he does.”

  Escobar nodded. Then he retrieved the Condor El Salvador machete from the table and handed it to Silencio. Silencio understood.

  The old woman pleaded with him with her eyes. He refused to look at her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  BY THE order of Sheriff Kirkbride, Cassie, Davis, and the other deputies hung their optics outside their vehicles by the straps as they converged on Lottie Westergaard’s home outside of town. The reason for hanging the binoculars and spotting scopes outside was so the lenses wouldn’t fog up when used in the extreme cold.

  With lights off, Davis had nosed their SUV into the trees on the left side of the entrance road. He pulled a few feet ahead so Cassie could get an unobstructed view through the trees of the front door and portico of the little house. It was dark enough that the three distant squares of light from the blinded front-facing windows could be clearly seen.

  Kirkbride and another unit, also with their lights off, were across the road in the trees as well. If it weren’t for a reflection of the moon on Kirkbride’s windshield, Cassie would not have known they were there at all.

  “I hate this,” she said to Davis.

  “I know you do,” Davis said softly.

  The radio was squelched down but she could clearly hear Kirkbride checking in with his force. Three units with two deputies each had been sent along an old two-track road that paralleled the river so they could get behind the property. Six heavily armed men—the Bakken County SWAT Team—were now on foot making their way through the trees toward the rear of the house. Four other deputies were approaching the home from each side, two from each direction.

  “Let me know when you’re in position,” Kirkbride asked over the radio.


  There were three vehicles—Kirkbride’s, Klug’s, and Cassie’s—on the side of the road leading to Lottie Westergaard’s house. Two other units were on standby. So were two EMT vans.

  “We have a visual of the house,” one of the SWAT deputies whispered. “There’s a late-model pickup parked in back.”

  “California plates,” another deputy said.

  “Roger that,” Kirkbride said. “That’ll be our friends from MS-13. Get into position and get ready. When you get the signal from me and no one else, you know what to do.”

  There was a round of “Roger that” from all the deputies in place.

  “Be safe,” Kirkbride said. “Don’t fire unless you double-check your target—if you have to fire at all. Remember, we’ve got deputies all over these woods. I don’t want anybody getting hurt because of friendly fire, boys.”

  Cassie’s mouth was dry when she turned in her seat and said to Kyle, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  Kyle nodded that he was.

  “You don’t have to do it,” she said. “Remember, we talked about it earlier. You absolutely don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you sure you want to go?”

  “Yes. My mom and grandma are in there.”

  “Remember,” Cassie said, speaking slowly and clearly and reaching back for his hand, “you’ll ride up to the front of the house and drop the duffel bag in the snow so they can see it. Nothing more. Then you’ll turn your bike around and ride back here like hell. If anything happens, you ride into the trees on the side of the road. Got it?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “Tell me, Kyle. Assure me you’ve got it.”

  “Got it,” Kyle said.

  She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, but he didn’t seem scared enough.

  “You’re brave,” she said.

  He nodded that he was.

  “I’ll get the bike out,” Davis said, careful to toggle the kill switch so the interior light wouldn’t go on when he opened the door.

  * * *

  THE STRATEGY was simple and aggressive as outlined by Kirkbride. Everyone knew their roles. Cassie could see how gung ho his deputies were when Kirkbride outlined the plan.