Paradise Valley

by C. J. Box

  “Do you think I’m kidding?”

  “Right here in broad daylight? With all these other cars around?”

  “Do it fast and run. That way, I’ll know you aren’t a cop.”

  Eckstrom hesitated. He looked nervously around and for a moment it appeared he would retreat to the vehicle he’d arrived in. Then he took a deep breath and strode with purpose toward the red Subaru.

  The Lizard King felt the hairs on the back of his arms rise. His eyes widened as Eckstrom got within three feet of the car.

  He was going to do it.

  For a brief moment, the Lizard King thought of calling it off. Not to show mercy but because there was no doubt in his mind Eckstrom would do anything he asked.

  But what if Eckstrom really was law enforcement and was just going through the motions until the last possible second?

  Either way, Eckstrom had apparently dropped the live phone into his pocket and there was no way the Lizard King could call him in if he tried.

  The Lizard King watched as Eckstrom reached out his his free hand and grasped the Subaru door handle and threw it open. Quickly, he lunged inside. A spray of blood flecked the interior of the windshield glass.

  Then Eckstrom backed out and slammed the door shut and walked stiffly away. No one else at the pumps had looked up while it happened. And after it did, no one shouted, honked, or tried to chase him down.

  When Eckstrom bolted around the corner of the building and was out of sight from the gas pumps, he pulled the phone from his jacket and held it to his face.

  “Did you see that?” he said. His voice was exuberant.

  “I tried to stop you.”

  “Never mind that—did you see it? Do you believe me now that I’m serious?”

  “I do,” the Lizard King said. “Right now you need to get out of here.”

  “I thought we had a deal,” Eckstrom hollered into the phone. I thought you were going to teach me.”

  “Here’s your first lesson: Drive away calmly and no more than two miles over the speed limit. Don’t put your head on a swivel. Don’t give the cops a reason to pull you over. Text me your address—I’ll be in touch.”

  He put his truck into gear and pulled away from the line of trucks toward the exit. In his rearview mirrors he could see Eckstrom shouting into a dead phone and running toward his vehicle with a bloody knife in his hand.

  On the public side, the driver of the Subaru pushed his way out through the double doors with soft drinks and snacks in his hand to deliver to his wife.

  * * *

  HE’D HAD NO IDEA the fuel tanks would ignite that quickly or that the burner cell phone he’d embedded in the C-4 under the seat of the driver would work so well. It was a bigger and messier scene than he could have hoped to create. He’d not been sure whether to use five pounds of the stuff or ten pounds, so he’d gone with ten.

  Good call, he thought. Death of a wannabe. Death of a relentless bitch of a cop.

  Eckstrom wasn’t completely without a legacy, though. The man known as the Lizard King was now sitting on his property near Sanish with Eckstrom’s ID, trailer, weapons, and Ford pickup.

  Plus, the Lizard King thought, he had six hundred thousand dollars of hard-earned cash and a couple of women wearing explosive electric dog collars to serve him.

  * * *

  HIS STOMACH GROWLED when he smelled meat broiling. It had been over a day since he’d eaten. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d sat at a kitchen table in an actual home—not a truck stop—and eaten a good meal. Probably, he thought with a frown, it had been in his mother’s home before she burned up in the fire. And it probably hadn’t been very good. Not memorable, anyway.

  As he stood his knees and back crackled from stiffness and age.

  When he heard a shout he froze and looked around. There were no close neighbors with lights on and no sounds of vehicles on the dirt entrance road. He doubted anyone inside the trailer had the temerity to call out even though he reached for the transmitter on the lanyard around his neck.

  Then he heard it again. It came from the river behind him. Sound carried on the water.

  He noticed a light blue object passing in a slow current just beyond the thick brush. It was a small raft packed with parcels.

  A moment after the raft was caught fast in the undergrowth he heard a male voice shout, “There it is. I see it. Can you get us over there?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “You might have to row forward to get out of this current.”

  “I’m doin’ that.”

  The Lizard King neared the river and reached into his jacket pocket to grip his .380. There was a boat on the water beyond the brush and it was getting closer.

  At first he thought it was a man and a boy, the boy on the oars. The boy talked in a garbled, high-pitched way. He could make out the gist of what he was saying if not the individual words.

  Then he realized it was two boys, a black one and a white one. The black one was sprawled over baggage in the front of the boat. He was reaching out to try and grab a loose rope that was attached to the raft.

  “Got it,” the black one said with triumph. “Now pull over to the bank and we’ll tie it back on the boat.”

  “I’m tying the knot this time, Raheem.”

  “Fucking right you are,” the bigger boy said, laughing. “I guess I can’t tie knots worth shit.”

  The boy on the oars was scrawny, undersized, and there was something obviously off about the way he moved and talked. He was damaged in a unique way and the Lizard King felt something stir inside him.

  When he looked at the damaged boy he saw himself at that age. When he was young he was on his own in the world and he had a speech impediment as well that was cruelly mocked by those around him.

  There had been no one to look up to, no one to take his interests to heart.

  He kept his hand in his jacket pocket when he stepped through a thick willow and said, “You boys look like you could use some help. I’ll give you a hand.”

  No one had ever offered him a hand up. Or nurtured him within a family.

  “I’ll help you boys,” he said.

  PART TWO

  BISMARCK, NORTH DAKOTA

  ONE MONTH LATER

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  CASSIE DEWELL AND SHERIFF Jon Kirkbride sat on opposite sides of a coffin-shaped conference table in a too-hot room in the state capitol building in Bismarck. Outside, the sky was the light gray color of weathered barnwood. She could see the yellow crowns of autumn trees in the distance.

  Down the hall was the office of the state attorney general as well as the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. The door was closed but Cassie could hear snippets of urgent conversation out in the hallway and she could see shadows of passersby through the frosted glass.

  She looked down at the lukewarm Styrofoam cup of coffee between her hands and saw that the surface of the liquid was trembling.

  She let go of the cup and placed her hands on her lap beneath the table so Kirkbride couldn’t see what condition she was in.

  But he knew. Which was why, she surmised, that he talked about everything except for why they were there.

  “Lotta people drive right by this building and don’t realize it’s the state capitol building,” he said, referring to the twenty-one-story tower in the heart of Bismarck. “The house majority leader of Minnesota said it looked like a State Farm insurance building. You can guess how that went over around here.”

  Cassie tried to smile. The fact was, it didn’t look like any capitol building she’d ever seen. Certainly not like the neoclassical building she’d seen in Helena with its copper-clad dome, or in Cheyenne or Denver with their glistening golden domes.

  “It’s art deco style, I guess,” Kirkbride continued. “Not that I know anything about architecture. All I know is it’s the tallest building in the state and the historian types like to call it the ‘Skyscraper on the Prairie,’ for what that’s worth. The oth
er thing I know is I’ve spent most of my career doing everything I could to not come to Bismarck, especially during the legislative session. All these politicos and lobbyists make me damned nervous. I’ve learned that whenever politicians get together in one place bad things happen.” Then: “First time here?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t drive up with you,” he said.

  She nodded. She was sorry, too. She’d driven the three and a half hours in her personal Ford Escape. She knew the sheriff had traveled to Bismarck the previous day to testify at a committee hearing for the legislature. He was there to talk about rampant drug use in the western part of the state where oil was pumping.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Do you mean with the suspension?”

  “Ian.”

  Hearing his name jolted her. “He didn’t deserve what happened to him. If I would have not had him driving that forklift…”

  “Stop,” Kirkbride said. “It could have been any of us. It could have been us—you or me. You can’t think like that.”

  But she did. And late at night when she was not sleeping she fought back thoughts that Ian’s blind love for her should have been reciprocated to a higher degree. The guilt that thought produced gutted her.

  Cassie changed the subject and said, “Do you know if there’s been any progress finding Kyle Westergaard or Raheem Johnson? The two boys who left town in the boat?”

  “I’m aware of them,” Kirkbride said. “I know you’re close to Kyle. I haven’t heard anything and I haven’t been in the office to follow the case.

  “Honestly, Cassie,” the sheriff said with a sigh, “I’m not sure what’s been going on in the office while I was out—if anything. That explosion blew up the department in more ways than one.”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t know what’s keeping them,” he said changing the subject and nodding toward the door. “Do you want me to go find out what’s going on?”

  “Maybe give them a couple more minutes,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Jon,” she said, “thank you for being here. I know you didn’t have to.”

  He waved it off and sat back in his chair without comment. She wasn’t used to seeing him wear a tie with his uniform shirt, a concession he’d apparently made for the legislators. He noticed her staring at his tie and in response he reached up and loosened it with a tug.

  “How are you really holding up?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said.

  “I am worried about you. I’m afraid they might be looking for a scapegoat. Especially Tibbs.”

  She nodded.

  “I think this might be a setup,” he said. “Tibbs and the head of BCI were college roommates. It ain’t right.”

  Before she could reply Kirkbride swiveled his head toward the door at the sound of approaching footsteps.

  “Here they come,” he said.

  * * *

  AT THE FUNERAL SERVICE for Deputy Ian Davis, Ian’s parents had approached Cassie to assure her they didn’t blame her for what happened in the industrial park. It was the first time she’d met them. Ian had been planning for them both to fly to his childhood home in Wisconsin at the end of September so he could introduce his fiancée.

  “Really,” Ian’s mother had said after taking both of Cassie’s hands in her own, “it’s just such a tragedy. Such a useless tragedy. But we know he died doing what he loved.”

  She could see Ian’s eyes and facial expressions in his mother. His father, though, was inscrutable.

  Tragedy.

  Cassie hated the word. And until that moment she hadn’t grasped the notion that there were people in the community and state who were whispering that she was responsible for the deaths of deputies Ian Davis, Fred Walker, and J. T. Eastwood. Not to mention what double amputee Tigg Erger had to endure, or the third-degree burns Tom Melvin had sustained trying to drag Walker’s body out of the fire. Shaun McKnight had survived without a scratch but was so traumatized he’d quit the sheriff’s department a week later.

  Kirkbride had suffered a concussion when a piece of metal from the exploding truck hit him in the forehead, leaving an angry red scar. The injury was severe enough to keep him hospitalized for a week, with two weeks at home under observation. He’d only recently returned to his office in the Law Enforcement Center.

  During the services for Walker and Eastwood the word “tragedy” had not been used. Instead, the eulogies were about sacrifice and duty. The speakers had focused their anger and rage at the man who had self-immolated and taken fifteen percent of the Bakken County Sheriff’s Department with him.

  The explosion had resulted in the largest loss of life of law enforcement personnel in state history. Tibbs made the recommendation that the incident be turned over for review to the BCI and it made sense at the time to Sheriff Kirkbride, who was still in the hospital. Kirkbride said he was too close to his dead and injured deputies to do the job right. Plus, he wanted an outside investigation to clear the air since he wasn’t in good enough condition to oversee it. He told Cassie his experiences with the agency had been straightforward and professional when BCI was brought in to investigate officer-involved shootings.

  Cassie was too devastated at the time to have an opinion. She could barely remember surrendering her badge and gun although she recalled feeling grateful to be rid of both of them.

  The suspension had been hell on her. Although she tried to put on a good face with Ben and her mother, she agonized constantly about what had taken place at the industrial park and how it had happened. She second-guessed herself and had too many sleepless nights. Her hard-charging world had come to an abrupt stop and all she could do was wallow in it and relive that day over and over. She didn’t read the Grimstad Tribune, listen to the radio, or watch regional news. It was as if her life couldn’t resume until the suspension was lifted.

  Ben told her that Kyle and Raheem had “escaped” Grimstad and were somewhere miles away on the Missouri River. Kyle, once again, was considered a legend by the boys in school who wished they were on the river.

  * * *

  IT WAS LATER—AFTER three weeks—that it dawned on her that Avery Tibbs was manipulating the narrative. She couldn’t prove that the whispering campaign against her had originated in the office of the County Attorney but she thought the odds were high that it had.

  That there were people in Grimstad who considered her solely responsible for what had happened took her by surprise and gutted her. She felt it wherever she went—to school to drop off Ben, or at the grocery store. Eyes lingered on her just a little too long. No one had made an accusation to her face, though.

  Instead, like Ian’s father at the funeral, they said absolutely nothing. It was the worst thing people accustomed to treating each other “North Dakota nice” could do.

  She wondered if the BCI report would change their minds. She’d been so eager to read it she’d come to Bismarck at her own expense and in her own car the day it was scheduled to be released.

  Bakken County Attorney Avery Tibbs entered the conference room holding it in his hand.

  * * *

  “WHAT A SURPRISE that it’s you,” Kirkbride said, not bothering to disguise his sarcasm.

  Tibbs sat down at the head of the table nearest the door with the report in front of him. Although he tried to appear solemn, Cassie thought she could see tiny muscles dancing on his temples.

  “Anyone else coming?” Kirkbride asked.

  “No, just me. I volunteered to deliver the news.”

  “Good of you.”

  “I’m here for the press conference,” Tibbs said defensively. “It’s scheduled for one this afternoon.”

  “Press conference?” Kirkbride said.

  “The head of the BCI wants to present the findings in the most transparent way possible,” Tibbs said. “He believes in transparency.”

  “And you just happen to be here to help h
im,” Kirkbride said.

  “It’s my county, too, Sheriff,” Tibbs sniffed. “In fact, I’d like you to be there as well. So it looks like we’re presenting a united front, so to speak.”

  “It depends on what the report says.”

  Cassie noted that Tibbs had yet to meet her eyes since he’d entered the room. That, and the fact that he’d not asked her to be at the press conference as well told her what she needed to know.

  She suddenly felt cold and numb.

  “We can’t bring back those fine officers,” Tibbs said, as if addressing a jury, “but we can make sure nothing like this happens again. We can make sure procedures are in place so that one rogue operator can no longer run a lone-wolf operation that results in the unnecessary deaths of law enforcement personnel and suspects alike.”

  He continued to look at Kirkbride when he said, “What I need you to do publicly is agree that mistakes were made that will never happen again. From now on there will be no major initiatives taken within your department that have not been signed off on by my office. You need to assure the public that you and your department have entered the twenty-first century and that it’s no longer the Wild West in Bakken County run by good ole boy Jon Kirkbride in complete control. If you do that you can ride off into the sunset with your reputation intact.”

  Kirkbride narrowed his eyes but said nothing. His full mustache hid the set of his mouth. Cassie looked from Kirkbride to Tibbs. They were glaring at each other.

  Although she’d been prevented from going into the office during her suspension, she’d heard from Kirkbride’s administrative assistant Judy Banister that Tibbs had practically installed an assistant county attorney named Deanna Palmer into the sheriff’s department to serve as his eyes and ears until Kirkbride came back. In fact, she’d been given Cassie’s vacant desk on a temporary basis.

  “I’m not telling you what to do, Sheriff,” Tibbs said. “God knows you’ve got a mind of your own and a stubborn streak as wide as the Missouri. But you know as well as I do that if my office brings charges against your chief investigator, one that you hired and apparently stand behind”—he briefly glanced at Cassie for the first time—“you’ll be as tainted as she is. I don’t think either one of us wants that. What do you say?”