by C. J. Box
“There might not be one,” Rachel said with a sigh. “But I need to know that before the trial starts and we have to give our plea. That way I’ll know how best to proceed.”
Cassie hesitated. She weighed the likelihood of confirming the prosecutor’s case and sending a scumbag to prison against the very dubious possibility of discovering gaping holes in the case.
“He’s going to spend the rest of his life in Deer Lodge,” Cassie said.
“Probably.”
“That’s where he belongs.”
“Probably.”
“This will all be an expensive waste of my time and your client’s money.”
“So it’s a yes. Good.”
Cassie nodded.
“How does your schedule look for the next couple of weeks?” Rachel asked.
Cassie didn’t need to consult the appointment app on her phone. “I’ve got several jobs in the works right now—two insurance fraud investigations and a whole stack of background checks. Most of that work can be done from my computer in the office, although I do need to do a little surveillance of an insurance claimant up in Missoula.”
“Is anything urgent?”
“Not really. Of course, I can’t anticipate when someone will walk through the door like my skip trace job last night.”
“You might have to turn them away.”
Cassie squinted, trying to discern the reason for the rush.
Rachel said, “Please clear your calendar starting today. We came late to this case and we’re behind the eight ball. I need the intel you can get as soon as I can get it.”
Then it came to her. Cassie said, “If I find something to derail the prosecution’s case you want to be able to use that information at pretrial motions. Before jury selection.”
Rachel sat back. “When did you get your law degree?”
“I didn’t. But I’ve been fighting people like you—overaggressive defense attorneys—for a long time. I know some of your tricks.”
“I’d call it a legitimate legal procedure. Not a trick.”
“Whatever.”
Rachel stood up and handed an inch-thick file to Cassie. The meeting was apparently over.
“If I do this, we’re square,” Cassie said, accepting the file. “No more obligation to you and your dad.”
Rachel hesitated a moment and then nodded in agreement. “You might want to get reading,” she said. “We’re scheduled to meet with my client at ten in county lockup.”
Cassie looked at her watch. She had forty-five minutes.
three
Blake Kleinsasser was led into the interview room adjacent to A Pod of the Gallatin County Detention Center by a uniformed county correctional officer with a buzz cut and a wad of chewing tobacco in his lower lip. Kleinsasser had to shuffle from the door to the chair across from Cassie and Rachel because of the shackles and chains on his ankles. He held his hands out in front of him as if he were making an offering—but that was due to the handcuffs.
As he approached, Cassie had a severe hot flash that made her gasp for breath. Kleinsasser’s entrance had immediately taken her back to a similar room in a similar jail in Wilson, North Carolina, when the Lizard King was in custody and she was sent there to identify and interrogate him. The man responsible for perhaps hundreds of rapes, murders, and mutilations of truck stop prostitutes and other innocent victims had loomed over her as he approached and had assessed her with dead shark eyes. He was operating under a new name and he’d added glasses and a beard to change his features, but there was no doubt it was him.
A few minutes later, after Cassie baited him, the Lizard King tried to crush her windpipe.
The scene in that room came back to her. She took a breath and felt her eyes flutter. She could feel the prick of perspiration under the collar of her blouse and she hoped her face hadn’t flushed red.
Even though she knew the Lizard King was dead on this earth, he was still very much alive in her everyday thoughts and nightmares. He might always be. He was partially to blame for the fact that she could never go back to North Dakota, why she didn’t want to be rehired by a law enforcement agency, and why she shuddered every time an eighteen-wheeler roared by her on the highway.
*
Cassie tried to shake it off and observe Kleinsasser carefully. He was fairly tall and slim, six foot even, with longish sandy hair and hooded blue eyes. He had wide shoulders and he looked at them both with a kind of self-aware, self-satisfied smirk. His orange jumpsuit was several sizes too large so that the short sleeves of his top extended past his elbows and the fabric bunched around his jail-issued slip-on boat shoes. The effect made him look younger than his forty-three years, Cassie thought. He looked like an adolescent forced to wear adult clothing.
Jailers liked to humiliate prisoners in subtle ways, she knew. Especially high-profile inmates who arrived with attitude. They were issued clothing that was laughably too small for them or, in this case, much too large.
“Will you please unlock him for our meeting?” Rachel asked the CO.
“I can unlock his wrists but not his ankles.”
“Then please unlock his wrists.”
Kleinsasser nodded his appreciation as he sat down. The CO leaned over his shoulder with the cuff key and Kleinsasser held up his hands but didn’t look over at the officer. Cassie noted the arrogance of the gesture, like holding up an empty glass at a passing waitress but not making eye contact.
When his wrists were unshackled, he rubbed them with his opposite hands before dropping his arms to his sides.
“I’ll be right outside the door,” the CO said to Rachel.
“I know you will. Please respect our privacy.”
“Sure, ma’am,” the CO said with a roll of his eyes.
Rachel waited for the clunk of the door lock before speaking. She turned in her chair and addressed the closed-circuit camera that was mounted in the top west corner of the room behind them.
“If this camera is live and somebody is watching this feed, now is the time to shut down your system. Observing an interview between the accused and his counsel is illegal and provides a basis to vacate the charges. Not only that, but I’ll go after anyone snooping with everything I’ve got in a court of law.”
Cassie couldn’t swear to it, but she thought she heard a barely audible click from the direction of the camera.
Rachel turned to face Kleinsasser, who seemed amused by what was taking place.
“This is Cassie Dewell of Dewell Investigations,” she said. “She’s my investigator on this case.”
Kleinsasser nodded his head slightly to Cassie, but didn’t give her the focus she was giving him at the same time.
He didn’t look like a rapist, Cassie thought. But that meant nothing. Some criminals, like Antlerhead, looked the part. Others simply didn’t. The Lizard King looked like an overweight mid-western blue-collar worker, but he’d exuded menace despite his outward appearance. Kleinsasser gave off an air of bemused resignation.
After reading the file on the case, Cassie had Googled his name and looked for images. The disparity between what she found was striking. The most recent shots of him were of a gaunt and disheveled man being led across a motel parking lot to a sheriff’s cruiser the morning he was arrested. In those photos, he looked confused and lost. His hair was pasted to the side of his head and he had a three- or four-day growth of silver-flecked whiskers. His eyes were dull.
Prior to that string of images, though, were many from what appeared to be New York City. In those, he wore stylish suits and ties and his hair was groomed. He was pictured with other hedge fund executives and bankers at social events, IPO launches, and financial instrument rollouts. He looked brash and above-it-all, a man almost too comfortable in his own skin. He looked smug and confident—a man used to winning, a fast-talker. There wasn’t even a hint of Montana in his bearing.
He looked smug and confident, kind of like he looked today.
Before he opened his mouth and jud
ging solely on his presence, she put herself into the role of a jurist in his upcoming trial and asked herself, Is this man before me capable of raping his fifteen-year-old niece?
As if reading her mind, his eyes darted toward her and then back to his lawyer in a dismissive way that set her on edge.
And she thought, Yes. He’s capable of that.
*
“I’m fucked, aren’t I?” he said and almost smiled.
“Let me answer your question this way,” Rachel said as she dug into her briefcase for the file Cassie had read and a fresh legal pad to take notes, “you’re charged with a half dozen Class A felonies. If you’re convicted of even a couple of them, say kidnapping and forcible rape—you could be sentenced to two hundred years. But the bright side is you’re going to get the best defense possible.”
“Anywhere?” he asked with a sarcastic grin. “The best defense anywhere? Or the best defense in Podunk, Montana?”
Rachel froze for a moment and then her eyes narrowed into slits. Cassie felt the tension and fought the urge to slide her chair away from Rachel.
Rachel said, “Podunk, Montana, is where you’ve been arrested and charged for kidnapping, conspiracy, and the assault of your own niece. If you want to reach out to one of your high-priced New York criminal law firms and pay for them to fly out here and save your ass, I’ll gladly step aside like your last lawyer and leave this hot steaming piece of shit case to them.”
She set her jaw and said, “If you think a Montana jury would be impressed with the thousand-dollar-an-hour fast-talking New York lawyers, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Kleinsasser didn’t flinch, as Cassie had. It said something about him, she thought. He was used to that kind of hyperbole. She wasn’t.
“Color me impressed with that little speech,” he said to Rachel. “People talk around here. I heard you were a bulldog.”
He had a flat and fast New York accent that he must have picked up in the years since he left the ranch.
Rachel opened the file. “To answer your question: yes, based only on the prosecution’s evidence and the charging documents, I think we’re fucked. But that’s why we’re here today. So, try to keep your attitude in check long enough that maybe I can figure out a way to mitigate your situation.”
Kleinsasser cocked an eyebrow.
“As usual, the prosecution has overcharged in this case,” Rachel said. “As I think you know, you’re looking at conspiracy, kidnapping, sexual assault, and rape. In Montana, section 45-5-503 of the criminal code for rape allows the judge to put you away for a hundred years if the victim is less than sixteen years old.”
Kleinsasser snorted. “That ought to do it. Why all the other charges?”
“They always do that because it makes better headlines and they hope that if the judge or jury doesn’t buy some of the charges, they’ll find guilt with at least one major crime.
“I’ll be blunt,” Rachel told him. “It doesn’t look good. There’s nothing I’ve seen or nothing you’ve told me that even gives a whiff of hope for an acquittal. So, what we need to establish is whether or not we can base our defense not on your innocence, but somehow mitigating the worst of the charges so it’ll result in fewer years in prison.”
Kleinsasser tapped his fingertips on the tabletop. “You mean so I’ll only go away for ninety years instead of a hundred.”
“Ninety would be generous, Mr. Kleinsasser.”
“Like I said, I’m fucked.”
“Have you given any thought to changing your plea?”
Kleinsasser sat back and blinked. “Changing my plea?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To avoid a trial. The county attorney might be willing to drop a couple of the charges and you might face less time in prison if they’ll offer a plea bargain.”
Kleinsasser glared at her. “No thanks to that.”
“I had to ask,” Rachel said, breaking their stare down. “If at any point you change your mind please ask the administration here to get in contact with me.”
“Yeah, I’ll sure do that if I change my mind.” He rolled his eyes as he said it. “Don’t ask me that again, Counselor.”
Rachel took a deep breath, obviously trying to stanch her annoyance with him. “Look, Cassie here has reviewed your case and she has some questions for you. Please take your time and answer them in full. That way, when she goes up to Lochsa County she’ll be better informed.”
For the first time, Kleinsasser turned his full attention on Cassie. His eyes did a full assessment of her and Cassie could tell he found her less than impressive.
“You’re going up to the ranch?”
“Probably.”
He slowly shook his head. The grin that formed on his mouth was terrifying.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then may God have mercy on your soul. You have no idea what kind of fucking snake pit you’re going to fall into.”
*
Shaking off the implications of the statement as best she could, Cassie reviewed her notes. It was a way to avoid Kleinsasser’s withering instant negative impression of her appearance and abilities. “Let’s get some background to start. Why did you come home, Mr. Kleinsasser?”
He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “I didn’t come home. I came back. There’s a big fucking difference.”
Cassie said, “Look, we don’t have to make this difficult. I can do without the sarcasm, attitude, and profanity. Just answer the questions so I have some kind of basis on which to operate.”
Kleinsasser briefly closed his eyes as if trying not to snap. Then he opened them and spoke in a lower, more modulated voice.
“I guess I forgot you’re on my side,” he said.
“I’m not on your side. I’m doing investigative work for your attorney. There’s a big fucking difference.”
“Gotcha,” he said with an approving nod. “Using my own words against me.”
“Get used to it,” she said. “It’s likely to happen in a courtroom, too.”
Rachel nodded her agreement.
“So again, why did you come back?”
“My parents are old. They’re on their last legs and even though they’re truly awful people all hell will break out when they’re gone. As you probably know, I have experience in finance and I thought maybe I could broker a deal among everyone because whatever they think of me, I’m still the oldest son. I guess I foolishly thought I could help out with transition within the family. Obviously, I’ve been away too many years and I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I had it all to do over again, I would have stayed in New York.”
Cassie shook her head. “Broker what?”
“The inheritance. I thought I might be able to figure out a way to divide up the assets of the ranch and all of their enterprises in a way that would make everybody happy. I guess I figured I was the only one who could pull it off since it was obvious I had no interest in getting anything myself.”
“Why is it obvious?”
He started to roll his eyes again but caught himself. “It’s obvious because I left as soon as I could get out of that place. That isn’t done in the Kleinsasser family. No one ever leaves. It doesn’t matter if you make your own way in the world and don’t ask them for anything. The problem is you left in the first place. That’s considered the ultimate act of disloyalty. With them, if you leave or strike out on your own it means you look down on them and they resent you for it. Like I said, it’s a snake pit.”
Cassie glanced down at her notes. “I assume you’re referring to your sister Cheyenne and your brothers John Wayne and Rand.”
Cheyenne was the next oldest in the Kleinsasser family at thirty-nine. John Wayne was thirty-five and the youngest brother, Rand, was thirty-two. All still lived in Lochsa County.
“That would be them,” Kleinsasser said through gritted teeth. “They all want the ranch for their own twisted reasons. They
’re so wrapped up in the legacy of the place that they think it’s worth something—which it’s not. I tried to tell them that.”
“But how can that be?” Cassie interrupted. “The Kleinsasser Ranch is nearly eighty thousand acres.”
“Over half of that is mountains,” Kleinsasser said. “No good for anything besides scenery. Cows can’t eat scenery, and the area is too remote to develop. There’s no oil or gas on the property and not even enough wind for a damned wind farm. If you split that place up everybody would go broke separately.
“I tried to reason with them that it made the most sense to prepare to put the whole place on the market and we could split up the proceedings. Sell it to some billionaire land collector and forget about trying to make it work as a cattle ranch. I told them I didn’t want any part of the payout but my share, that I’d sign any document they wanted attesting to the fact that I didn’t want more.
“That just made them even more suspicious of me,” he said. “My brothers, especially. They knew that because I was the oldest, I was entitled to the lion’s share and they couldn’t believe that I was willing to lower my inheritance to twenty-five percent. They figured I must be involved in some kind of big scheme to screw them or freeze them out. They figured I must know something they didn’t—that it was a money grab by me because I don’t love the place the way they do, which I don’t.
“That’s what you need to know about my family,” Kleinsasser said. “It’s all about two things: legacy and resentment. If you know that going in everything will be clear to you. It’ll start to make some kind of sense.”
“Since you claim to be wealthy, why do you even want twenty-five percent?” Cassie asked. “Why not just stay away and let them fight it out?”
“If only it was that easy,” he said. “I wish it could work that way. But as I said—I’m the oldest son. They’d suck me in so they could pick the meat off my bones. I could see being involved in litigation for the rest of my life with people I never want to see again. I wanted to head off the coming war.
“Besides,” he said, “Twenty-five percent isn’t as much as you might think it might be once you go through all of the legal crap, all of the taxes, paying all the creditors—everybody with their hands out. In the end I figured I’d get a couple of hundred grand. That’s chump change in my world, and it sure as hell doesn’t compensate me for the years I spent growing up around those people.”