Paradise Valley

by C. J. Box

  * * *

  “AN HOUR AND A HALF,” Tibbs fumed. “Call the guy or we’ll abort this whole charade.”

  Cassie’s chest hurt and there was a slow rolling boil in her stomach. Her cell phone vibrated across the dashboard of the Yukon—another call from Rhodine, who was incensed that no one had been at the airport to meet him.

  As she reached for the phone Kirkbride quietly said, “Ignore it. Here he comes.”

  She looked up to catch a one-second snapshot of the yellow Peterbilt 389 as it sliced between the space of two buildings a block away. The truck was driving from right to left and was now blocked by the structure they were hiding next to.

  “That looks like him,” she whispered.

  She wanted to grab the radio mike and alert everyone, but she couldn’t risk it. Instead, she hoped her team hadn’t lost focus because of the delay and would get ready the second they saw the big rig.

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” Kirkbride said to her while they waited.

  For once, Tibbs was quiet in the backseat.

  * * *

  CASSIE REFUSED THE CALL from Rhodine so she could clear her line and speed-dialed Walker who was inside the warehouse. She activated the speaker on her phone so Kirkbride could hear the entire conversation. She appreciated how much the sheriff trusted her to lead the operation without stepping in.

  “Do you see him?” Cassie asked Walker.

  “I’ve got eyes on him,” Walker said. “He’s coming down Maple right in front of us on the other side of the fence. He’s about a hundred feet from the gate.”

  “Can you see the driver?”

  “No. The windows are dark.”

  “Do the guys know it’s on?” she asked.

  “Affirmative. They’re locked, loaded, and ready to rumble.”

  On cue, she saw Ian wheel out of the darkness of the warehouse with the tenth pallet on the forks of his machine. He didn’t look tense or jumpy, and she wondered how he was capable of that. He hadn’t even glanced toward the yellow Peterbilt.

  “He’s slowing down in the yard,” Walker said.

  “Why is he slowing down?” Tibbs demanded from the backseat. There was panic in his voice.

  “Doing a three-point turn,” Walker said. “So he can back up to the dock like he’s supposed to.”

  Cassie could hear the grinding of the gears of the Peterbilt although she couldn’t yet see the truck.

  “Back her on in here, big boy,” Walker said to no one in particular.

  The big silver trailer behind the yellow tractor aimed at the open dock door and moved into view just as Ian Davis lowered his pallet near the rest of the load. Hydraulic brakes wheezed as the rear of the trailer pulled within inches of the dock.

  Cassie could hear the rumble of the huge diesel engine as it idled. From the angle they were sitting at she could see just the back half of the sleeper cab but not the front of the cab where the Lizard King sat.

  Kirkbride, on her left, had a better view.

  “Is it him?” she asked.

  “Can’t tell,” he said. “I can see there’s a profile but I can’t see his face.”

  Then Walker said, “Okay, I’m going to go get the man himself to sign my paperwork.”

  Walker punched off.

  “Damn it,” she cursed. “He turned his phone off. I wanted him to keep it on so we can hear his conversation with the driver.”

  “Call him,” Tibbs said.

  “Not now,” she said. “Not with him this close to the cab.”

  Walker emerged from the warehouse and walked across the dock to the stairs on the side. He carried his clipboard and looked natural, she thought. His Dakota Remanufacturing coveralls were a little baggy and open in front. She guessed he’d done that so he could reach inside easily for his weapon if need be.

  She couldn’t see the deputies on either side of the opening. That was good.

  Cassie leaned into Kirkbride so she could see better and the sheriff squished himself into his door so she could.

  Walker strode the length of the big truck and knocked on the driver’s side door and stepped back.

  “Be careful,” she whispered.

  The massive flash was followed a quarter-second later by the boom as the cab of the truck blew out and up. The ground shook with the explosion and rocked the Yukon back on its springs.

  Then shards of metal and grass rained down. A football-sized piece of steel bounced off the windshield and shattered it.

  There was a beat before the fire in the cab ignited the dual 125-gallon fuel tanks on each side of the rig.

  It was later reported that the resulting fireball could be seen as far as Watson City, twenty miles away.

  * * *

  CASSIE FELT HEAT on her face from the fire as she jogged toward the burning truck. Curls of black smoke roiled into the sky and small flakes of gray ash fell around her like snow.

  Walker’s body was splayed out on its back twenty feet from where he’d stood to receive the driver. His arms and legs were bent in grotesque angles, and his coveralls were on fire.

  She stopped and raised her arm to her face to protect it from the blistering heat.

  The trailer behind the cab was now on fire as well, and she thought about the prostitute from Wisconsin who was likely in the tiny kill room directly behind the cab.

  Behind her, Tibbs shouted, “Oh my God, oh my God, what just happened?”

  She turned around to see if the county attorney was right behind her, but he wasn’t. He was still in the Yukon.

  Sheriff Kirkbride was out, though. But instead of standing behind her he was down on his knees, his hat knocked off, holding his face in his hands. Blood poured through his fingers.

  Then she thought of Ian.

  The forklift on the dock had been blown over on its side. There was no sign of him in the cage of the equipment or on the dock itself.

  There was panicked shouting and cursing from inside the warehouse.

  Someone yelled, Officer down, officer down …

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  “WHAT WAS that?” Raheem Johnson asked Kyle Westergaard after the ground shook with two explosions. “It was like bang and then BOOM. Something really blew up, bro.”

  Kyle nodded and looked over his shoulder in the direction the sounds had come from. The concussions had quieted the ducks preening themselves on the river and squelched the squirrels in the trees, and for the moment, the silence was awesome. Dried leaves floated down from river cottonwoods as if shaken loose. He’d felt the impact through the soles of his worn Nikes.

  Kyle said he didn’t know what had blown up but that it sounded like it’d come from Grimstad.

  “No shit,” Raheem said. Then: “This might be good. It might work for us.”

  Kyle was thinking the same thing. “Let’s get the boat packed and get it in the water.”

  * * *

  THE TWO FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS HAD BRIBED a neighbor of Raheem’s named Burt with a twelve-pack of Busch Light beer to load the fourteen-foot wooden flat-bottomed john-boat into the back of his pickup and take it down to the timbered bank of the Missouri River two days before. Burt was fat and unshaven and he apparently lived on disability paychecks from the oil company he’d been employed by at one time. He lived next door to Raheem and he was always at home with his television set on. Burt liked game shows and baseball games at high volume. And he liked the Busch Light that Raheem had stolen from his father’s stash in the garage.

  The boat was much heavier than Kyle had suspected and it took the three of them to lift it into the bed where they secured it with rope and bungee cords. The two boys rode in the open boat in the back of the truck and directed Burt down to the river.

  After unloading the craft, Burt left with his beer and the boys piled branches and debris on it so it wouldn’t be spotted easily from the two-track that paralleled the river. For the next two days they’d used their bikes and a four-wheel ATV to ferry gear they’d need from
town to where the boat was cached. It took fourteen trips back and forth before they had everything down there that matched Kyle’s checklist.

  The river bottom itself fascinated Kyle. It was a different, wilder world than he was used to. While the prairie in all directions was flat and treeless and marked only by old farmhouses and silos and new directional oil rigs, the river bottom was an impenetrable jungle of thick cottonwoods, dense brush, and the hushed flow of the river. White-tailed deer ghosted through the trunks of the trees at dawn and dusk, then vanished within the undergrowth.

  Both Kyle and Raheem lived in fear they’d be discovered before they could push off. So many things could go wrong. Someone could see them taking duffel bags and equipment down to the river and call them out. Someone could be driving down there along the bank and find the boat and steal it or vandalize it. Raheem’s dad could discover his missing twelve-pack, the $600 gone from the shoebox on the top shelf of the closet, or realize the johnboat that had been on the side of his house when he bought it three years before was now gone. Or Ben Dewell, Kyle’s twelve-year-old friend, could squeal on the two of them to his own mother or Kyle’s Grandma Lottie.

  Kyle was still stinging from telling Ben no. Ben had been upset and asked why.

  “Twelve is too young,” Kyle said.

  “When you were the same age you shot two men,” Ben said.

  Kyle had no good response for that but explained that there truly wasn’t enough room in the fourteen-foot boat for three bodies plus all the gear.

  Ben complained and threatened to blow the whistle on Kyle and Raheem.

  But it hadn’t happened.

  Kyle felt blessed. He felt like the explosions they’d heard in town would distract attention away from them. Especially when sirens filled the air a few minutes later.

  * * *

  “LET’S HURRY,” KYLE SAID.

  Raheem nodded and bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. He did that when he had nervous energy. Raheem had a lot of nervous energy. He let Kyle do the thinking most of the time, though. When it came to the great adventure the two boys planned to take on the Missouri River, Raheem deferred completely to Kyle because it had been Kyle’s obsession in the first place.

  For over three years, ever since he’d seen the old black-and-white photo of Theodore Roosevelt chasing down a pair of boat thieves on the Missouri, Kyle had wanted to set off on the river. He’d started a list of things he would need and kept the list, and the gear he could find, hidden in his bedroom and in a part of Grandma Lottie’s garage she never checked out.

  The list started with:

  Sleeping bags

  Food (jerkie jerky, crackers, things like that)

  Fishing poles and tackel tackle

  Rain coats

  Binokulars Binoculars

  Pistol or rifle (animals, hoboes)

  Journal for writing

  Map

  Knife

  X-tra clothes

  Swimming trunks

  Rope

  Tent

  Plates and utensuls utensils

  Matches

  Oars (get B4 summer)

  Cell phone

  Money

  And went on to include a camp stove, sleeping mats, freeze-dried stew, a pump water purifier, cooler, books (including a paperback of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn he’d struggled with and hoped would make more sense once he was on the river), an iPod for music (which Raheem had been loading with hip-hop and country), and dozens of other items. Kyle had started the list years before and had corrected a few words he’d misspelled earlier but he was still a poor speller.

  The discovery of a beat-up Marlin .22 bolt-action rifle with a seven shot magazine was like discovering a pirate’s buried treasure for Kyle. It had been propped in the corner of a garage of an abandoned house along with a hundred rounds of ammunition.

  The load got so big that Kyle added a new item: supply raft. They’d lash a gear-laden raft to the boat itself and tow it down the river.

  Kyle had located nearly every item on his checklist in garbage cans and Dumpsters that he’d looted in the alleys of Grimstad during the summer and before and after school. He was always astonished at the value and importance of things people threw away. The pickings were the best when the price of oil dropped and people moved away. Often, they simply piled perfectly good stuff on their driveways just before they drove out of town.

  Like the brass sextant Kyle found in one pile. He couldn’t believe it. Although Kyle didn’t know how it worked, he knew a sextant could be valuable for on-the-water navigation.

  Still, though, Kyle felt uprepared. He’d never actually spent time on a boat or gone overnight camping except in Grandma Lottie’s backyard. He knew there would be dams and other obstacles to be negotiated somehow, and he had little knowledge and less experience to deal with them. But he recalled Ben’s mom Cassie saying to him that he’d “been dealt a bad hand since Day One but that never seemed to hold him back.” He liked that.

  And he hoped she was right.

  * * *

  RAHEEM HAD BEEN THRILLED that morning when Kyle peddled his bike to his house on the way to school and said, “Today is the day.”

  Raheem surprised his father by going back inside and hugging him and saying goodbye. Apparently, he hadn’t done that for a while.

  For his part, Kyle had left a short letter on Grandma Lottie’s kitchen table. Monday morning was when she left for her weekly appointment to get her hair done.

  It read:

  Grandma Lottie:

  I won’t be home after school because today I am going on a great adventure. I want to see more of the country than North Dakota but don’t think I don’t like North Dakota because I do. I want to see what’s out there in the world on my own.

  It has nothing to do with you. I love you and you’re great. Please don’t be sad.

  I can’t tell you where I’m going or you’ll try to get me back. I’ll come back but not for a while.

  I borrowed $120 from your drawer. I’m sorry and I’ll pay you back twice that when I can. I’ll send you the money when I can. We needed to get going before it got too cold and icy.

  This was nobody’s idea but mine.

  Love,

  Kyle

  * * *

  AS THEY TIED the supply raft to the stern of the johnboat, Kyle looked up. A dark curl of smoke from town was rising above the tops of the dense cottonwood trees near the river. The sirens howled so relentlessly he had to shout.

  “Did you get my map?”

  Raheem pointed to his ear indicating he couldn’t hear.

  “My river map.”

  His friend understood and gestured to a thick flat Ziploc bag pressed down by a strap to the top of a duffel bag. Kyle nodded his approval.

  The map consisted of pages he’d ripped out of an atlas from the school library. It looked like a pretty good map and Kyle wanted it handy even though he had the route memorized.

  They’d float downriver to Lake Sakakawea and on to Bismarck. Then they’d exit North Dakota into South Dakota: Mobridge, the Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Pierre, the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, Yankton, and Vermillion. Sioux City, Iowa, was the next big town, followed by Omaha. Then St. Louis where the river joined the Mississippi. Then south to Memphis and New Orleans.

  He’d never even been to South Dakota before, where the exotic place names (Pierre!) started. And beyond that it got even more exciting. Kyle couldn’t even imagine what Memphis must be like.

  And Raheem had shown him YouTube videos of women in New Orleans lifting up their shirts to expose their breasts in the street.

  What he didn’t want was for the boat and raft to be caught up in the heavy ice floes. Even though Theodore Roosevelt had somehow done it in March of 1886, Kyle couldn’t imagine floating downriver surrounded by huge sheets of ice.

  September was kind of late already, he knew. The weather could turn any day.

  Even if they made good time it
would take months, Kyle figured. But every mile they’d be further south and it would get warmer.

  That was fine with him.

  * * *

  IT WAS AWKWARD AT FIRST, with Raheem on the oars in the middle of the boat stroking like crazy. They were both wet to above their knees just from shoving the boat and raft out into the water and climbing inside.

  The boat veered left and an overhanging branch nearly swept them into the water. The supply raft swung out in a swift current and was bobbing ahead of them on the river.

  Neither Raheem nor Kyle had rowed a boat before. Raheem was bigger, though, and much stronger, so it made sense he was on the oars. Unlike Kyle who was two grades behind him although the same age, Raheem was an athlete. He had long arms and legs and ropey muscles. He ran track and played football and basketball at their middle school. Recently, he’d decided to let his hair grow out naturally and it looked like a small black bush on his head, Kyle thought. Raheem kept his back to the bow and pulled hard and the boat went this way and that.

  “This ain’t working worth shit,” Raheem said after he’d thumped the front of the boat into a half-submerged stump. “I can’t see anything.”

  Kyle wasn’t sure what to do. He was seated in the back facing Raheem. It was hard to see through his friend or over the bow of the boat to call out hazards. And he couldn’t move to the front because they’d stacked it high with their gear. He was glad there were no rapids in the water like he’d seen on television or they’d already be swimming for their lives, he thought.

  “You gotta help me with directions,” Raheem said to Kyle. He was already breathing hard from rowing so hard.

  Kyle asked to try it.

  Raheem rolled his eyes but the two changed places. The boat rocked from side to side as they did.

  Kyle sat on the wooden bench facing the front. Rather than row, he dipped his right oar into the river until it got stiff to the touch. The bow of the boat swung that direction. When he raised the oar the boat continued to float on a line.

  “We don’t have to fight the river,” Kyle said. “We can let the current pull us along. It’s fast enough that all we need to do is steer and keep us away from the trees on the bank and the rocks in the river.”