Paradise Valley

by C. J. Box

  He laughed.

  “Well, I’m not an official private investigator. I don’t have a license. I’m just trying to help out Lottie Westergaard and Clyde Johnson.”

  “What can I help you with, Cassie?”

  “Do you know the sheriff in Ekalaka, Montana? His name is—”

  “Bebe Verplank,” Kirkbride said. “Yeah, I know Bebe. Good guy. But why are you interested in him? Have you ever been to Ekalaka?”

  * * *

  THE OLD STAND BAR and Grill had a covered porch outside supported by four-by-fours. Inside was a bar with two big-hatted cowboys separated by a single stool. It was an ancient place. A cavernous room to the right was scattered with steel and formica tables, most not occupied. The ceiling sagged in the room and looked like it might give out any moment.

  Sheriff Verplank waved her over from a table. As she approached he stood and removed his tan cowboy hat with his left hand and extended his right.

  “Bebe Verplank.”

  “I’m Cassie Dewell,” she said. “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

  “Jon said you’d be coming. He said you’re one of the good ones.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  He nodded, waited for her to sit down, and did the same.

  Verplank was in his mid-sixties, with light gray eyes and a white bristly mustache that hung over his top lip like the head of a toothbrush. He had faint smile lines on both sides of his mouth.

  “Jon told me what happened up in North Dakota,” he said to Cassie. “Let me say that I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  She nodded. “Ian was a good man. I miss him.”

  “Jon said the same. He also said you two both got railroaded.”

  “You can put it that way.”

  “And that you’re now trying to help an old woman out by doing a private investigation of some kind?”

  She nodded. “I’m not a licensed private investigator. I’m a civilian with a law enforcement background. When it comes to arresting someone I’ll call the cops, hand over what I’ve found, and let them take over. I just want to make sure we’re clear on that.”

  “Crystal clear,” he said. “You get to do investigative work without all the bureaucracy and politics of a sheriff’s department. I envy you there.”

  She smiled.

  “We’re in luck,” he said, gesturing around the room of The Old Stand. “No one ever knows when this place is going to be open or closed. The owner just kind of does what he wants to. I don’t know why he even posts hours on the door because he doesn’t pay any attention to them.”

  “It’s interesting,” Cassie said.

  He looked up and grinned while he took her in. He had a friendly, half-amused-at-everything demeanor, but behind it were the cool eyes of a lawman.

  “It was either here or the Church of Hank Williams,” he said.

  “The Church of Hank Williams?”

  “That’s what they call it,” he said. “It’s really an old garage down the street where locals bring their own beer and sit around and listen to old country music and shoot the shit when The Old Stand is closed. I’ve wound up there a few times myself.

  “Wife’s gone to Miles City,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind if I order some dinner here while we talk. I missed lunch today because I was chasing a cow that jumped the fence and got on the highway. So I’m damned hungry.”

  “Did you catch the cow?” she asked.

  “Sadly, yes,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “But it was a rodeo for a couple of hours. As you can guess, my life as a sheriff is filled with nonstop action.”

  That made her smile.

  “It’s not like the big city,” he said. “We don’t spend much time trying to stop a gang war—or chasing the Lizard King.”

  “So you know about those things,” she said.

  “I did my homework on you and Jon filled in the gaps. Damned impressive work you did.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She knew she was blushing.

  “Jon said you were the best chief investigator he ever had.”

  She wanted to get to the point but not offend him. And Cassie couldn’t deny that the compliments made her feel good. She also knew that innocent small talk from a sheriff wasn’t always innocent. It was a technique to disarm while verifying the subject at the same time.

  “I’m sorry to call you on your personal cell phone to request a meeting,” she said.

  “Everybody here calls me on my cell phone,” he said. “I used to joke that nobody in Carter County knew how to dial the numbers nine-one-one.”

  She smiled.

  “So, first time in Ekalaka?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t get lost, that’s for sure.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Do you know the story of this place?” he asked.

  “The town or this bar?”

  “Both,” he said with a grin. “A man named Claude Carter—hence the county name—was pulling logs and whiskey across the state in the 1880s to build a bar down by Miles City. He got his wagon stuck in the creek out there and he said, ‘Hell, anyplace in Montana is a good place for a saloon,’ and he built this place right here where it still stands.

  “You think I made that up, don’t you?”

  Before she could answer, a waitress in a dark red smock approached the table with a pad and pen. “Do you know what you want?”

  “What do you think?” Verplank said.

  “Baseball steak medium-rare, burnt fries, salad with Thousand Island.”

  He nodded and said to Cassie, “Try the baseball steak. They cut all their own meat here in the back.”

  “Baseball steak?”

  “Exactly like it sounds,” he said. “The size and shape of a baseball. A damned nice piece of meat.”

  Cassie looked up at the waitress and said, “I’ll have what he’s having. Only blue cheese instead of Thousand Island.”

  “We don’t have blue cheese,” the waitress said.

  “Then Thousand Island.”

  “Good choice,” she said and departed the table with a knowing wink to the sheriff.

  When she left, he said, “Everybody knows Mrs. Verplank is gone and here I am sitting at dinner with a nice looking lady. It’ll be the news at the Church of Hank Williams within the hour.”

  “So,” she said, “about that body you found…”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  “IT’S NOT LIKE WE NEVER see any dead bodies around here,” Sheriff Verplank said to Cassie as he cut into his steak. Juice from the meat pooled across his plate.

  “We see our share,” he said, taking a bite. He chewed slowly and closed his eyes because he obviously enjoyed it so much.

  After he swallowed, he said, “Car accidents, mainly, and once in a while a suicide. But ninety-five percent of the bodies I’ve been called out on died by natural causes. We thought we had a double homicide a while back but it turned out it wasn’t. The story is a weird one even for here.

  “A local rancher called to say there was a car with South Dakota plates parked off to the side of a service road on his place. The rancher looked inside and didn’t see anybody so he called me.

  “We checked it out and found a dead female in the trunk. That looked highly suspicious,” he said. “Then we found her husband dead a quarter mile away. He’d been shot in the chest with a deer rifle that was laying there next to him in the mud.”

  He jabbed his fork at her.

  “Hey, you had better eat up before yours gets cold.”

  Cassie cut into the baseball steak. It was delicious.

  “Turned out it was a drug thing,” he said. “The woman OD’d and the husband apparently stuffed her in the trunk because he was high on meth and didn’t know what else to do with her. Then he offed himself in a hayfield.”

  Cassie must have looked skeptical because Verplank said, “I know what you’re thinking. But we had agents from the South Dakota and Montana divis
ions of criminal investigation here and they both came to the same conclusion.

  “Before that,” Verplank said, “The last outright murder was in 1992. Guy shot right out there on Main Street. But that’s about it. We don’t have many violent deaths but what we do have I’d call end-of-the-trail deaths.”

  “Meaning what?” she asked. She knew she shouldn’t be enjoying the steak as much as she was given the subject matter being discussed. But she did.

  “If you look at Ekalaka on the map it’s about as isolated as you can get,” he said. “We didn’t even have a paved highway to here from Baker until recently. This place is absolutely not on the way to anywhere—you don’t pass through. If you find yourself in Ekalaka you are coming here for a reason, as you no doubt learned today.”

  She nodded.

  “So we’re literally the end of the road. An enterprising bad guy or a meth head like the South Dakotan might figure it’s a good place to hide out or dump a body. Two years ago a rancher found a couple of mutilated bodies in his irrigation ditch. The FBI showed up and concluded they were gangbangers from either Fargo or Minneapolis. Somebody killed them and drove their bodies here thinking no one would ever find them and connect them to anywhere. That’s what I mean.”

  “Gotcha. So do you think this boy’s body was dumped here?”

  Verplank concentrated on eating the last few ounces of his meat, then swabbed French fries through the juice on his plate and popped them into his mouth.

  “Between you and me,” he said. “I do not.”

  When she arched her eyebrows he said, “I’m waiting to find out what the DCI concludes from their autopsy and investigation. They’ve got the body at the state lab in Missoula and they haven’t sent me any results yet. So I’m keeping my theory to myself for now and only sharing it with you. I don’t want to assume a homicide like I did with those South Dakota tweakers and turn out to be wrong again.

  “I’ve got an election coming up,” he said as explanation.

  “Okay, it’s just between us,” Cassie said. “And we’ll start from the premise that what you think is simply a theory at this point.”

  The sheriff leaned back so the waitress could clear his plate. Cassie did the same.

  When she was gone, Verplank said, “It was easily the creepiest thing I’ve seen since I’ve been the sheriff here. I still think about it.”

  Cassie reached inside her purse for her notebook. “Can you describe what you found?”

  “Not here,” he said after he looked over both shoulders to see if any locals were eavesdropping. “Let’s go to my office.”

  “I’ll get the check,” she said.

  “Not in a million years. My county, my treat.”

  * * *

  AT THE CARTER COUNTY Justice Center, Cassie followed the sheriff through the back door into his small office. An inside window looked out over three small cubicles and a lone deputy seated at a desk. The deputy looked up and saw them and waved hello.

  Verplank signaled back to the deputy and gestured to Cassie to take the hardback chair positioned in front of his desk. He sat down heavily and opened a file drawer behind him and placed a folder on the desk.

  Before he opened it he said, “Some of these photos are pretty graphic. Are you okay looking at them?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. But she wasn’t sure. She’d met Raheem several times when he was with Kyle. He was brash but polite to her and she always thought he was overplaying the role of a fish out of water; a cool street kid stuck in rural North Dakota even though he had been in Grimstad most of his life.

  It was one thing to look at deceased bodies of strangers. It was quite another to possibly see the dead body of someone she knew and liked.

  The sheriff opened the file and slid a full-color eight-by-ten to her.

  She glanced at it and gulped.

  The shot was taken from about ten feet away so she could see the entire body. He was naked except for partially pulled-down boxers. The body was chest-down and sprawled crosswise across three rows of a freshly plowed field. The victim’s skin was the same color as the clumpy dirt it lay in. The soles of his feet were pinkish.

  There were several deep red abrasions near the shoulder blades and another on the small of his back. The victim’s limbs were long and well muscled.

  There was no head.

  “That’s what the scene looked like when I arrived,” the sheriff said. “The photo was taken by me on my cell phone as I walked from the state highway out into the field. Obviously there was nothing obvious there to identify the victim. No wallet, no clothes, no tattoos. No teeth to check dental records.”

  She tapped on the photo. “Any idea why his underwear is pulled down?”

  “First thing I thought, too,” he said. “But I think we can discount sexual abuse. Those shorts got pulled down from falling forward into the dirt. The fabric was caught by the ground itself. It’s hard to see that from the angle you’re looking at.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Who reported it?” she asked. Her voice was husky and unsure.

  “The school bus driver. She said she was on the way into town from picking up rural kids and she saw a bunch of crows perched on something in the field about fifty yards from the road. The ranch is owned by the Wilson family. The driver’s name is Jean Spires and she knew that crows sitting there all together meant something was dead. She called in to say there was a dead Indian or a migrant in the hay meadow.”

  “An Indian?”

  Verplank expelled a long puff of air from his nose. “We don’t see many other dark-skinned citizens around here. The reservation is west of here. She assumed.”

  “Those wounds on his back?”

  “The crows. Meaning birds and not Crow Indians.”

  She nodded.

  He slid a few more photos to her of the field itself. The soil was dry and chalky and made up of small clods of dirt. In one photo bare footprints could be seen clearly. In the other were boot prints just as obvious.

  “Those are mine,” the sheriff said. “The only footprints in that field besides those of the victim.”

  It took her a moment to understand the point he was making.

  Then: “So the victim ran across the field from the road without anyone chasing him?”

  “That’s what it looks like. He wasn’t dumped there. I measured the distance between his footprints and you’ll notice the balls of his feet made deeper impressions than the heels. He ran there.”

  “How is that even possible?” she asked. She deliberately didn’t say, without a head?

  “I’ve got some thoughts on that,” he said. “But I want to see if you come to the same conclusion on your own. The DCI boys didn’t seem to think much of my theory. They were operating under the impression that the victim was killed somewhere else and dumped out there somehow. They thought whoever did it dragged the body out there while the ground was frozen and didn’t leave tracks.”

  She nodded for him to go on.

  “How the victim could leave tracks but the killer didn’t makes no sense to me even if it had gotten below freezing the night before—which it did. But those Missoula boys think they know it all sometimes.

  “This one’s rough,” he said, showing her a close-up photo of the victim’s neck and shoulders. After a split-second glance she deliberately focused on the upper right corner of the photo so she couldn’t see it again. But she couldn’t un-see it.

  “The decapitation is unusual,” Verplank said. “The head isn’t cut off with a knife or hacked off with an ax. It was blown off. See the singeing of the skin? See how the edge of the flesh is discolored?

  “At first I thought, given the distance from the road, that somebody took a shot at this poor guy with a high-powered weapon. But in all my years I’ve never seen a head get blown clean off by a bullet no matter how big the gun was.

  “So what do you think?” he asked.

  He paused while she thought.

&n
bsp; “It doesn’t seem to make sense that he was dragged there but no footprints were found,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he said. Then: “I was in the Army during Operation Desert Shield when we had Saddam’s forces on the run. I saw more bodies along the Road of Death than I ever care to see again. I saw men who’d been burned, decapitated, and mutilated. We found four Iraqi soldiers—deserters, we figured—who’d been buried up to their waists in the sand and killed by close range cannon fire from Saddam’s tanks. I remember one guy in particular who was shot point-blank in the face from a cannon. His head was blown clean off his body. Just like this,” he said, tapping the photo in front of Cassie.

  “So you’re thinking he was killed by a cannon?” she asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

  “No, of course not. But maybe an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the road. Maybe the explosive charge detonated on impact. It would be a tough shot—fifty yards—but not impossible for someone who was trained.”

  Cassie sat back in the chair. The sheriff was merciful and retrieved the photo and put it back into his folder while she did.

  “There would be additional injury to the shoulders and upper body,” she said. “A grenade wouldn’t work that cleanly.”

  “I concede that and I don’t have an explanation for it.”

  “What other evidence was gathered in the field?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty much nothing.”

  “They didn’t sift the dirt around the victim to see what else might be present?”

  “No.”

  “So maybe there is evidence still out there?” she said.

  He brightened. “Like maybe fragments from an RPG?” he said, nodding his head to indicate she was on the right track—or at least his right track.

  “Something like that.”

  Verplank got up and strode toward the interior window and rapped on it to get his deputy’s attention. When the deputy looked up the sheriff motioned for him to come in.

  “I’ll have my deputy get a sifting screen from the hardware store and we can go out to that field before it gets dark,” he said to Cassie.

  “Good. I’d like to see it. But while we wait for him can I see all the photos? Do you have any of the victim’s torso, the lower legs in particular?”