Paradise Valley

by C. J. Box

  “So why doesn’t he just call me directly?”

  “That’s not how he operates.”

  “But why does he even care what I’m doing?”

  “Again, Cassie: Think about it. Tibbs has taken over my department and has the resources of the entire sheriff’s office and prosecutor’s office under his control. Rhodine is the tip of the spear of a federal agency with hundreds of agents and an 8.3 billion dollar budget. How would it look if a private individual operating on her own located a couple of missing runaways and tracked down Ronald Pergram? Answer: It wouldn’t look good for them.”

  “My God,” Cassie whispered.

  “So keep alert,” Kirkbride said. “And don’t be surprised if they somehow try to take you down.”

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER Cassie paced the floor of her cabin. It was so quiet inside that her footfalls echoed off the walls. Outside, except for two saloons, Ekalaka was asleep.

  She checked her watch and saw it was only nine-thirty although it felt much later. Plus, she’d gained an hour entering the Mountain Time Zone.

  Nevertheless, Cassie sat down at her laptop and inserted the thumb drive she’d loaded at the sheriff’s department. After copying the clip of the Ford at Bodeen’s to her hard drive she attached it to an e-mail with the subject header PLS LOOK AT THIS.

  She sent it to an address in the Eastern Time Zone—two hours later.

  It would be a long night, she thought. She wished she could somehow zip back to Grimstad, see Ben and sleep in her own bed, and reappear in the morning. By then the e-mail should have been opened where she sent it and she’d hear from Sheriff Verplank about what the Montana crime lab techs had found.

  She grinned when her cell phone came to life in her hand and she saw the familiar 252 area code prefix. North Carolina.

  “Hey,” Leslie Behaunek said. “My phone chimed. Did you send me something important?”

  “I did.”

  “Cassie, you sound keyed up.”

  “I am.”

  “And maybe you’ve had a glass or two of wine.”

  “Not a glass but a plastic cup. And yes, I’ve had several. And probably more to come.”

  Leslie laughed. Her voice was husky from being tired or perhaps a little drunk herself. She, like Cassie, liked to drink wine at night.

  “Where are you?” Leslie asked.

  “A place called Ekalaka, Montana. I’ll guarantee you’ve never heard of it.”

  “And you’d be right. What brings you there?”

  Cassie hesitated a moment, then asked, “I don’t want to tell you quite yet. I want you to have a totally open mind when you open the video clip I sent you and watch it.”

  “Right now?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Okay,” Leslie said. “I’ve got to get my housecoat on and get my computer in the other room. I was just turning in when I saw you sent me something.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so late there.”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine…”

  Cassie paced and kept the phone pressed to her ear, stopping only long enough by the desk to pour more wine into her cup.

  After five minutes Leslie said, “Oh my God—it can’t be.”

  This time, she sounded fully awake.

  “What do you see?” Cassie asked.

  “I see someone who looks a lot like Ron Pergram putting gas into a truck.”

  Cassie closed her eyes. She felt both elated and terrified in equal measures

  Leslie asked, “Where did you get this?”

  “Here, in Ekalaka.”

  “When was it taken?”

  “September sixteenth of this year.”

  There was a pause. Leslie said, “But he blew himself up on the fifteenth. Can there be a mistake on the time stamp?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “My God, my God. What can this mean?”

  Cassie said, “I have a theory but it’s pretty off the wall. But first I want to catch you up.”

  “I couldn’t go back to sleep now if I wanted to,” Leslie said, letting her drawl creep in. “But first I need a glass of wine.”

  * * *

  AFTER SHE’D COVERED the investigation thus far, Cassie said, “I’m waiting until morning to find out if the body has the identifying scar on the ankle. If so, I’ll ask the sheriff to proceed with a DNA request from Mr. Johnson so we can get a positive ID.”

  “And if so, what?” Leslie asked. “Even if it turns out to be Raheem Johnson I don’t see how you can connect him to the Lizard King. Or if that even is the Lizard King.”

  “I understand,” Cassie said with a sigh. “I know you have to look at everything from a prosecutorial point of view. Right now, all I’ve got is a video clip and an unidentified body. You’re asking me to connect them and I can’t. All I can do is speculate.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.”

  “There are advantages to working as a civilian,” Cassie said. “I don’t have to follow any protocol and I don’t have to deal with politics and red tape. And I don’t have to build a case like I would if I were planning to turn it all over to the DA for prosecution. So I can go farther out on a limb.

  “But the downsides are obvious,” she said. “I’m at a real disadvantage at times like this when I need to access evidence techs and light a fire under different law enforcement personnel. I got lucky that Kirkbride knows Sheriff Verplank and was so nice about everything…”

  “It’s amazing that you live in a place where everybody knows each other hundreds of miles away. That must be smothering at times.”

  “Anyway,” Cassie said in her let’s-get-back-on-track voice, “listen to my theory and then shoot all the holes in it you want to.”

  “Okay.”

  “Start with the date September fifteen. On that day a lot happened in this area. Too many things occurred to dismiss them all as random.”

  “Go on,” Leslie said after taking an audible sip.

  “On September fifteenth a lot of things happened within a few hundred miles of each other. First, the Lizard King drove across the entire state of North Dakota from Wisconsin so he could blow himself up in Grimstad. That event was so terrible for everyone that it overshadowed other events—or crimes—that went on that same exact day.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Kyle Westergaard and Raheem Johnson started floating the Missouri River and vanished. Amanda Lee Hackl was later reported missing by her husband. In Sanish, seventy-three miles away, Floyd T. Eckstrom burns down his own home and disappears as well. From what I was told, Eckstrom’s house is right on the river.

  “Leslie, I see how you could say that all those incidents are unrelated but keep in mind we’re talking about western North Dakota and eastern Montana. There aren’t many people around here at all—it’s probably the least populated area in the lower forty-eight—and most of them look out for each other. There aren’t any trees like you have, so you can see for miles. People can’t hide as easily, is what I’m trying to say, and they can’t just all disappear on the same day.”

  “But they did,” Leslie said.

  “They did. And on September sixteenth, a man who appears to be Ronald Pergram fills up with gas in Ekalaka driving Eckstrom’s truck—”

  “Hold it,” Leslie interrupted. “Did you just say that was Eckstrom’s truck?”

  “Yes, but that isn’t Floyd Eckstrom on the camera. And if you watch that clip as many times as I have you’ll see the form of a woman in the passenger seat. She’s unidentifiable because of the camera angle but she’s there. And when Pergram gets back into his truck to pull away he says something into the back of his cab like there was a person back there. Watch it again and tell me I’m wrong. I’ll wait.”

  While Leslie Behaunek ran the clip again on her screen, Cassie saw that the battery on her phone was running critically low. She fished the power cord out of her briefcase and plugged it into an outlet under the desk. Unfortunately, the cord tethered her to one p
lace so she could no longer pace.

  “Okay,” Leslie said. “I see what you’re talking about. But are you trying to say that the Lizard King scooped all these people up and piled them in Floyd Eckstrom’s truck and drove off—after he killed himself?”

  “No, I’m saying the driver of Pergram’s truck has never been positively identified as Pergram. We all assumed it was him, of course. But what if it was Eckstrom?”

  “Whoa,” Leslie said. “You’re giving me a headache. You’re saying that Pergram somehow coerced Eckstrom to drive his truck to Grimstad and commit suicide?”

  “I don’t know what happened,” Cassie said. “I’m wracking my brain on that one. The only thing that makes any sense is that Eckstrom didn’t know there were explosives wired into the truck. Only the Lizard King knew that.”

  “So Pergram set him up,” Leslie said. “He sent him to his death.”

  “Which sounds a lot like something our man would do, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  “Not to mention that this wouldn’t be the first time he burned down a house to hide his tracks.”

  “But where do the others come in? This Amanda, or Kyle and Raheem? How do they fit?”

  “Again, I don’t know,” Cassie said. “But Sanish is downriver from Grimstad. I worked it out and it’s about an eight-hour float. Think about that.”

  Leslie did and Cassie waited.

  “Pergram was there at the Eckstrom house,” Leslie said. “He somehow encountered Kyle and Raheem that night.”

  “It works in my timeline,” Cassie said.

  “Why wouldn’t Pergram just let them float on by? He’s never targeted teenage boys before that we know about.”

  “I agree it doesn’t fit his profile. But it could be something else. Maybe they got a good look at him and he couldn’t risk letting them go. Maybe they caught him in the act of something. Or maybe he wanted hostages just in case law enforcement moved in. It’s one of the parts of my theory that doesn’t have a good explanation … yet.”

  Leslie asked, “But what about Amanda Hackl? From what you told me she doesn’t fit his profile either. Didn’t you say she vanished from Grimstad?”

  “That’s what her husband reported.”

  “Do you know when?”

  “What hour?—no. Sometime between when he went to work in the morning and when he came back that night. She disappeared in the daylight hours.”

  Cassie could envision Leslie nodding, putting things together. “Which means she could have gone missing long before Pergram encountered the boys. So how does she fit in?”

  Cassie said, “Maybe it was just as simple as she saw something or somebody she wasn’t supposed to see. Her home address is right on the bluff overlooking town. No doubt she saw the explosion down at the industrial park.”

  Leslie gasped and Cassie understood why. It hit her like a thunderbolt.

  “So maybe Amanda saw the man who triggered the explosion from a distance,” Cassie said, sweeping her hand and accidentally hitting her cup of wine. Red wine covered the states of North Dakota and Montana like spilled blood.

  * * *

  THEY TALKED FOR ANOTHER HOUR. Leslie tried to punch holes in Cassie’s theory and Cassie tried to thwart them.

  “The biggest problem with your narrative,” Leslie said, “is something I unfortunately see all too often with our own officers.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You want so badly to have your conclusion justified that you blindly use everything you find out to build a road map that will get you there. You want to think Kyle and Raheem are still out there and you blame it on the man you’ve come to hate the most in the world. In your theory the Lizard King is still on the road. Therefore, you plug in every crime and incident that occurred that day to make it all fit together.”

  Cassie was taken aback.

  Before she could argue back, Leslie said, “If you brought me this theory I’d give it right back to you and tell you to find hard evidence to support it. And you know that.”

  Cassie’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right.”

  “I am,” Leslie said while she sipped. “But you’ve also got my brain revved up. I think you really might be on to something. I don’t want to discourage you from following it through.”

  Cassie poured the last of her wine into the cup. She’d need a new atlas.

  “In fact,” Leslie said, “my office is underbudget this fiscal year. I think you should send everything you have—the forensics on the body, the video clip, the missing person’s reports and arson investigation in Sanish—to my office right away. I’ll tell everyone this is high priority and I’ll get my techs working on it. I’ll oversee the investigation and keep in touch with you. Since you don’t have resources of your own you can use ours.

  “After all,” she said, “we’re the ones who let that bastard get away.”

  “Thank you, Leslie.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  Cassie slumped back in her chair. She was relieved. She stared at a Frederic Remington print of a lone Indian scout leaning tentatively forward on his horse on a snowy bluff to assess a far-off winter camp. It was called The Scout: Friends or Foes?

  Cassie said, “If my theory pans out it means Raheem was murdered here in Ekalaka in the most horrible way. It might also mean we’ll find Kyle’s body somewhere else.”

  Leslie got quiet.

  “Or maybe worse,” Cassie said, “Kyle is still being held by Pergram somewhere. That kid has already gone through hell. I just can’t think about Kyle being around that man. It would be better if he was dead.”

  “Don’t say that,” Leslie said. “Kids can be tough, especially Kyle. You told me that yourself.”

  “Either way I need to find out what happened. Lottie needs to know. Raheem’s poor dad needs to know. I need to know.”

  “Look, I’ll do what I can on my end,” Leslie said. “Tomorrow I’ll call your Sheriff Verplank and get in contact with the Montana DCI and the North Dakota BCI to see if they’ll cooperate on a joint task force investigation. I might even get the FBI involved. But, as you know, these things take time.”

  “Too much time,” Cassie said. “And who knows if the BCI will play along. That’s the agency that shut me down.”

  “Cassie, please…”

  “If Kyle is still alive and the Lizard King is out there I have to keep pushing,” Cassie said. “I can’t wait for a joint task force to get up to speed.”

  “Don’t be careless, Cassie,” Leslie cautioned. “I can hear it in your voice. I’m not saying this so I can build a perfect case right now. I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Leslie calmed herself down and said, “What you need to do is sit tight and continue to think all this through. You need to find evidence that supports your theory. What you don’t need to do is go lone wolf on me. Don’t think you’re suddenly Cody Hoyt. You know what happened to him.”

  Cassie didn’t respond.

  “One other thing,” Leslie said. “Nobody knows Ronald Pergram slash Dale Spradley slash the Lizard King better than you do, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So knowing that, where would he go now that he doesn’t have his truck?”

  Cassie sat up. She was pressing her phone to her ear so hard it hurt. “He’s spent his entire life on the road. He’s never really had a home of his own but he’s probably driven a million highway miles across the U.S. He knows every inch of this country and where he could hide out.”

  “So where would he go?” Leslie asked.

  Where I’m going tomorrow, Cassie thought but didn’t say out loud.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Location Unknown

  EARLY IN THE MORNING, before anyone got up, and sometimes in the middle of the night, Kyle found himself reliving what had happened since he’d encountered Ron. Some things were so vivid in his memory they seemed like they were happening again r
ight in front of him.

  Especially that day when they were still hooded and trussed and on the open road.

  Especially what happened to Raheem.

  * * *

  LATE IN THE EVENING on the day they left the trailer by the river and after two stops—one where Ron bought two dog collars and the second when they stopped so he could fill up the truck with gas—Raheem suddenly said, “Just fuckin’ let us go, man.”

  His voice surprised Kyle. Apparently, Raheem had managed to pull the duct tape off his mouth somehow. His friend was still on the floor of the backseat wedged in next to Tiffany.

  Ron continued driving and didn’t respond. Kyle was frightened for Raheem but he was proud of him for speaking up.

  “I said, pull over and let us go. At least me and Kyle. We didn’t do nothing to you and we won’t tell anybody what happened.”

  Ron sighed loudly but didn’t slow down.

  “Look, sir,” Raheem said. “Me ’n Kyle were just going on an adventure. No one knows where we are and no one is looking for us yet. You can let us go now before the cops are pulling everybody over to look for us. We’ll grab a ride home and everything will be all cool.”

  Kyle admired Raheem’s logic. He heard Tiffany mewl as if to say What about me? But the tape on her mouth was secure.

  After a few more miles of driving, Raheem said, “Can you hear me up there, man?”

  “I hear you,” Ron said. Kyle coudn’t detect any anger in his voice.

  “If you’re thinking someone will pay money to get us back that won’t happen. My dad don’t have any since he got laid off, and Kyle lives with his old granny. Between them they got nothing.”

  Silence.

  “Please pull over and let us go. We swear to God we won’t say nothin’. Hell, we don’t even know your name and I guess we were trespassing on your land. But let us out now wherever the hell we are and you can forget about us. We won’t do no talking. You don’t have to worry about me ’n Kyle. We planned that boat trip for years and we kept our mouths shut about it the the whole time. We can keep our mouths shut about this, man.”

  Then, as an aside, Raheem said, as if to bolster his argument, “Shit, nobody can understand anything Kyle says anyway.”