by C. J. Box
Cassie asked, “What did the investigating officer tell you when you reported Kyle missing?”
“He told me to come back later.”
“Really?”
Lottie nodded her head. “He was trying to be nice but I could tell he had a lot on his mind that day.”
Then it sunk in.
“Lottie, what day did Kyle go missing?”
“September fifteenth,” she said. “A month to the day.”
Cassie said, “That’s the day the truck blew up at the industrial park. I’m sure you heard of it. We lost three good deputies and had two others very seriously injured. The sheriff got a concussion and he was off duty for three weeks. I’m sure this place was absolute chaos at the time.”
“It was. Nobody really wanted to talk to me.” A thin tear rolled out of her left eye as she said it.
“So you came back the next day?” Cassie prompted.
“Yes. I talked to a another nice officer. Mr. Johnson was also here that day. The officer wrote down what we told him about Kyle, Raheem, and the boat. He said he’d alert all the police downriver from here to look for a boat with two boys in it. He assured me they should be pretty easy to find. Then I talked to the sheriff himself.”
“You did?”
“I know where he lives,” Lottie said with a slight grin.
“What did the he say?”
She looked away. “I’ve known Jon since he rodeoed a hundred years ago,” she said. “He’s a good boy. But on that day when I knocked on his door and talked to him about Kyle he just looked at me like he wasn’t hearing what I was saying. He was … distant.”
“He’d just lost his men,” Cassie said.
“I understand. But that doesn’t bring Kyle back.”
Cassie didn’t know what to say. Kyle was unusual and too easily dismissed and misunderstood, she knew. Beneath the halting speech and inscrutable facial expressions was a very determined young man. That’s why Ben looked up to him. Kyle wasn’t the kind of boy who would simply abandon his only remaining family member for a month without a call or text. His concern for Lottie was reinforced in the letter he’d written to her.
“You stay right here,” Cassie said. “I’m going upstairs and I’ll try and get you some help.”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” Lottie said with a nod of determination. “I’ve decided to make a nuisance of myself until they find him.”
CHAPTER
TEN
JUDY BANISTER, SHERIFF KIRKBRIDE’S administrative assistant, looked up with surprise from her desk when Cassie stepped out of the elevator doors. She appeared frozen in place.
Cassie thought, She knows what happened in Bismarck.
“I’m just here for my things,” Cassie said. “I’ll grab them and get out.”
“Sheriff Kirkbride is on his way back,” Judy said. “I’m sure he’d like to talk with you.”
“Not tonight.”
Judy nodded. She wore her usual dark suit and there were a few strands of silver in her severe black haircut Cassie hadn’t noticed before. Judy was hard to get close to, Cassie thought. The two of them had tiptoed around each other when Cassie first joined the department but they’d later formed a kind of professional relationship based on mutual respect.
Judy looked left and right down the empty hallway and lowered her voice. “I’m very sorry about what happened today. I think you didn’t deserve it and … I’m just sorry it happened that way.”
Cassie paused for a moment. “Thank you, Judy.”
“I know the sheriff feels the same way. So do a lot of other people.”
“That means a lot,” Cassie said. “It really does.”
Judy implored Cassie to come to her desk and Cassie got closer.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” Judy whispered. “Really. I’ll give you my number at home.”
Judy scribbled the number on a pad and tore off the top sheet and handed it to Cassie.
“Thank you,” Cassie whispered back while folding the sheet and slipping it into her jacket pocket. She wasn’t sure why Judy had done that.
“Why are we whispering?” Cassie asked.
“Because there’s someone in your office,” Judy said, gesturing with the tilt of her head down the hallway.
“I thought she was supposed to be here only until the sheriff came back from his injury.”
“We all thought that,” Judy whispered.
* * *
ASSISTANT COUNTY ATTORNEY DEANNA Palmer said “Come in” when Cassie knocked on the slightly open door. Cassie knocked with enough force to fully open it so she could step inside.
When Palmer saw it was Cassie the forced welcoming smile on her face faded.
“It’s me. I’m just here long enough to gather up my personal stuff,” Cassie said.
Palmer wore a camel-colored business suit over a white blouse. She had short red hair and a smattering of freckles over the top of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Cassie had never worked with her, but her reputation was that she was as fiercely loyal to Tibbs as Cassie was to Kirkbride.
“Everything is boxed up along the wall,” Palmer said.
Cassie noticed that the credenza behind the desk no longer had her photos of Ben and Jim and that her diplomas from the University of Montana and the Montana State Law Enforcement Academy were no longer there. Instead, there were framed shots of Palmer on a ski trip, on a rafting trip, with Tibbs shaking hands with the president in Washington, and her two small children. No husband, though. Palmer was divorced.
Palmer had added a banker’s lamp to the desk that illuminated her in a soft yellow glow. Cassie’s computer—maybe it was Palmer’s computer now—was on but turned at an angle so she couldn’t see the screen. The rest of the room was dark.
“Can I ask how you got in here?” Palmer asked while Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. She could see two small open-top boxes on the carpeting near the wall. She recognized her photos and diplomas stacked neatly inside as well as spare makeup and medication she’d stored in her desk.
“I used the keypad outside and in the elevator.”
“We’ll need to get that changed.”
Cassie said, “Not for me you won’t. I won’t be coming back.”
“So I heard,” Palmer said. “Do you want me to get you some help with your belongings?”
Not, Cassie noted, Can I help you?
“I’m fine,” she said, putting the smaller box inside the larger one and lifting it up. Together, they weighed practically nothing.
“If I find anything else I’ll leave it at the front desk and give you a call,” Palmer said. “But I think that’s everything.”
“Seems like it,” Cassie said.
Palmer nodded and turned back to her computer screen. When Cassie didn’t immediately step out of the doorway, she looked over with her eyebrows arched.
“Is there something else?”
“Lottie Westergaard is down in the lobby. She’s hoping someone up here will take a personal interest in a missing person’s case. Her grandson Kyle has been missing a month and she isn’t feeling any love from the sheriff’s department about the progress of the investigation.”
Palmer took a deep breath and waited a moment before answering as if she were putting aside what she really wanted to say.
“As you can imagine, we’ve had a lot on our plate this past month.”
“Oh, I can imagine it. But maybe if you took a few minutes and reviewed the file and just talked to her—”
“That’s not what I do here.” Crisp. Abrupt.
“I guess I’m not sure what it is you do,” Cassie said. “If nothing else, you could ask one of the deputies to speak with her. I think if she was assured that someone up here was taking Kyle seriously that might really provide some comfort to her.”
“Shouldn’t you be talking to the sheriff?” Palmer asked.
“He’s not here, but I will.”
“Then I th
ink we’re done.”
“There’s another boy missing with Kyle named Raheem Johnson.”
Palmer practically threw herself back in her chair in exasperation. She said, “It’s not that I’m uncaring or unsympathetic so don’t you dare put that on me. You have no idea how many things are going on around here right now. We’re grossly understaffed and the sheriff hasn’t been back long enough to get a handle on all of the problems that occurred during his long sick leave.”
“He had a concussion,” Cassie said.
“And we know why, don’t we?” Palmer snapped. Then: “We get calls every day about missing people because folks around here are transient. Some guy wants to collect the money he’s owed from another guy but he can’t find him. A landlord is looking for the tenant that skipped rent. So many of these ‘missing’ people didn’t really put down roots here. They just go without telling anyone else at the time and leaving mortgages, leases, and car payments. They came to work for big money in the oil field and when they find the jobs have dried up they just pack up in the middle of the night. Every day, folks drop off the keys to their houses at the bank on their way out of town and a lot of them don’t even bother to do that.”
“They’re both fourteen,” Cassie said.
Palmer threw up her hands. “There was a man in here a few weeks ago saying his wife had gone missing. According to him, he came home for dinner and she just wasn’t there. So add her to the list of unsolved cases, I guess.
“Talk to the sheriff you love so much,” Palmer said with finality. “Tell him to get his act together before the whole county spins out of control. But don’t bring your problems to me.”
“Go tell that to Lottie Westergaard down in the lobby,” Cassie said.
Deanna Palmer huffed and turned back to her computer.
Cassie resisted the urge to hurl the boxes at the woman’s head. At that moment she was grateful they’d taken her gun away.
* * *
SHE CONSIDERED BYPASSING THE LOBBY on her way down to avoid Lottie but the thought overwhelmed her with guilt.
Lottie stood up expectantly when the elevator doors opened, and Cassie said, “Let’s talk tomorrow morning and review the facts on Kyle. Will you be home?”
“I’ll either be home or right here in this lobby.”
“I’ll come by after breakfast, but keep in mind I’m no longer with the department. So it isn’t like an official interview.”
Lottie clasped her hands together and said, “Bless your heart.”
“Lottie, I’m not sure you understand what I’m saying here. I’m no longer a cop anymore. I’m a civilian just like you. The best I can do is listen, take notes, and maybe offer a recommendation to the sheriff.”
“At least you’re doing something,” Lottie said with a mist of tears in her eyes.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
CASSIE PADDED INTO HER HOME office at three in the morning and closed the door because she couldn’t sleep. Her “office” consisted of a chair, a battered card table, and a space heater in the only spare bedroom. While her laptop booted up she rubbed her eyes and wished she could go back in time and relive the previous day but with a different outcome.
Dinner had been awkward. Cassie had brought home pizza—Ben’s favorite food—and they’d all eaten at the breakfast bar with the television providing background noise in the living room. When the evening news on KXN came on and led with Tibbs’ press conference in Bismarck, her mother Isabel rushed away from the counter. With her robes flowing behind her, she searched for the remote control in the living room, found it, and turned the television off.
“What was that about?” Ben asked when his grandmother returned.
Rather than answering, Isabel implored Cassie with her eyes to explain.
Cassie had sighed. “I was going to tell him in my own way.”
“Tell me what?” Ben asked, looking from his mother to his grandmother.
“I quit the sheriff’s department today,” Cassie said to him.
After a moment, Ben asked, “You’re not going to be a cop anymore?”
“Not for a while, I don’t think.”
Isabel said, “I knew it would come to this. It’s a corrupt system and you have been wasting your time being a part of it.”
“Please mom,” Cassie begged, “Not now…”
Ben was crushed. “But I like it that you’re a cop.”
She knew that was true because he’d told her the older kids at school who bullied or teased others left him alone. He attributed it to their fear that he would report them to his mother.
“Does this mean we’re moving again?”
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “I’m trying to figure everything out.”
“Did you get fired?”
“Technically, no.”
“What does that mean?”
Isabel said, “It means your mom was thrown to the wolves by a male-dominated institution. That’s what those people do.”
“Please, Isabel.”
Isabel sat back in a huff and looked away. Ben’s eyes bored into Cassie and she could see that he wasn’t far away from tears.
“We’ll figure things out,” she said to him.
He threw the uneaten slice of pizza on his plate and said, “First my dad dies, then we move from Montana. Then Ian dies and Kyle leaves. And now this.”
She didn’t know he could be so dramatic. Despite how upset he was, it almost made her smile.
When Ben stormed into his room and slammed his door shut, Cassie turned to Isabel and said, “Thanks for getting that started. I would have rather handled it on my own.”
“I was trying to help by shutting off the news.”
“You didn’t. Instead you called attention to it. Do you think Ben pays attention to the local news?”
In what Cassie would deem a righteous snit, Isabel said, “He would have found out on his own at school tomorrow. Everybody at my pottery class was talking about it before you even got home.”
* * *
“… and Kyle leaves.”
The words hung in the air as Cassie tapped on the keys of her computer.
The Grimstad Tribune’s Web site was a poor one—the publisher obviously wanted people to subscribe to the print version, not read it online—but she did find a small item about the search for Kyle and Raheem next to their school photos. She ignored the extensive coverage of the industrial park explosion and the photos of the dead and injured deputies, as well as her own photo.
Kyle looked small and feral, and Raheem wore a big confident smile. Kyle was described as five-foot-four and 110 pounds, Raheem five-ten and 175.
If anyone fitting those descriptions saw them, the article said, they should immediately contact the Bakken County Sheriff’s Department.
The few comments under the piece were unhelpful as anonymous comments often were, but she read them anyway. She knew of multiple instances in both Montana and North Dakota where newspaper commenters—often inadvertently—provided intel and even leads to investigators working particular cases. In a couple of instances commenters fingered suspects who turned out to be guilty but until that moment had not been suspects. Often, though, locals used their false identities to post disparaging things about law enforcement, or they used the article to further ride their personal hobby horses. Back in Helena, she recalled cops laughing at one particular citizen who cited global warming as the root cause of every arrest or traffic accident.
The first post commended the boys for “being smart enough to get the hell out of Grimstad while they still could.” The second lamented the fact that if Raheem didn’t come back, the quarterback of the Vikings wouldn’t have anybody good to throw to. The third blamed racism for why Raheem must have left. The rest of the comments argued with the commenter who played the race card.
Two days later, on September 18, another missing persons item appeared. According to the story, forty-seven-year-old Amanda Lee Hackl was reported missing
by her husband, Harold.
Harold was extensively quoted.
“She just wouldn’t do something like this,” Hackl told the Tribune.
“Amanda is a homebody. She wouldn’t just wander off so somebody must have come in the house and taken her. There were dishes in the sink and hamburger thawing on the counter when I got home from work.”
Hackl said Amanda didn’t have use of a car that day and her clothes and suitcase weren’t missing.
“Some sicko got her,” he said.
Amanda Lee Hackl is described as being 5-foot-3 and 190 pounds. She has dark hair, brown eyes, and wears bifocal glasses. According to her husband she was likely dressed in a Christmas sweatshirt.
“Come home, honey,” Harold Hackl said in a direct plea to Amanda. “If I done something wrong I’m sorry and I’ll fix it. And if whoever might have taken her hears this you can bring her back now and I won’t press no charges.”
The comments beneath the item were just as useless as the Kyle and Raheem comments, and most of them went with the theory that she had run off with a delivery truck driver, specifically the Schwan’s frozen foods man. Schwan’s’ yellow freezer trucks were ubiquitous throughout the Midwest.
The first comment read: “I knowed Amanda little bit before she moved up on the hill. She used to have the Schwan’s man deliver ice cream every week because she thought he was hot. She told me that herself!”
“If you ever met Harold Hackl,” another comment read, “you’d run off with the Schwan’s man, too.”
* * *
DESPITE WHAT DEANNA PALMER had told her, Cassie couldn’t find other stories about additional missing people in the area in the past month. At least none who made the paper.
Kyle and Raheem vanished on September 15, the day of the explosion. From what Cassie could discern from the story about Amanda Lee Hackl, she disappeared the same day although it took three days for the item to appear in the Tribune.
Three missing in the same day? On the day of the explosion?