The Bitterroots

by C. J. Box

  We went down a kind of rough dirt road up into the trees. It was in a part of the ranch I’ve never seen before. Uncle Blake said it used to belong to some neighbors before my grandfather bought it from them. He seemed to know where he was going but it was farther from the ranch headquarters than I thought it would be.

  We arrived at a two-story old house on the side of a meadow. The house was kind of dumpy, I thought. Some of the windows were broken out and the cattle had been on the porch and collapsed it. There was old cow manure everywhere. It was outside the house and inside the front door. The place smelled like cows. I’m not fond of cows. I’m a vegan, you know.

  I thought we’d look at the place and then go home, but Uncle Blake said he wanted to show the inside of it to me. He said he used to spend so much time there and he was curious what it looked like now.

  I asked him if he used to live in the old house and he said no, that ranch hands used to live there. He said the ranch hands were friendly to him and let him hang around.

  We stopped the car in front of the porch and Uncle Blake got out and asked me to follow him. The door to the house was unlocked and he went in first. It wasn’t dark outside yet because it was summer but it was dark inside the house.

  I know you aren’t supposed to go somewhere with a stranger. But Uncle Blake wasn’t a stranger. He was my uncle.

  Uncle Blake lit a candle thing called a kerosene lamp and put it on the table. He said he wanted me to see all the old rooms but I said I was kind of scared. I was afraid the floor would collapse and there were all kinds of rat turds and stuff all over it. Uncle Blake took my hand and sort of gave me a tour. He knew who used to stay in which room. He showed me a room with bunk beds in it where ranch hands used to stay together.

  When we were done with the tour, he poured two glasses of whiskey from a bottle he must have brought from the car. We were back at the table in the dining room. I’m not a drinking girl like some of my friends at school and church, and I told him I didn’t want any. He said it was a special occasion and I should try it. I took one sip and thought I was going to throw up. He drank his whole glass and poured another one. I recognized the smell from inside the car.

  He did a “toast” to me and we clinked glasses and he made me drink. I didn’t really like it but I did like the way he was treating me, like an adult. Then he started to tell me how my uncles had him all wrong and that he’d come back to try and reconnect with all of us. He said he wanted to talk to me because I hadn’t been around long enough to be poisoned against him.

  I guess at that point I was getting drunk, which is something I never want to do again. My head was really fuzzy.

  Then Uncle Blake came around to my side of the table and lifted me up. He was strong. He sat me on top of the table and started kissing me. He has really fast hands and he was touching me everywhere. He stood there between my legs and held me in place.

  I told him I didn’t want to do anything with him. He said not to think of it that way, but to think of it as a way to get closer to each other. He said he really liked my eyes, which is weird because I don’t think they’re anything special.

  I didn’t scream because I didn’t know what to do and there was no one to hear me. I thought if I fought him with my fists, he might beat me up.

  It happened really fast. He pushed me back and pulled my panties down and put his penis inside me. I’m not a virgin but it really hurt.

  I didn’t know what to do so I just let him finish. When he was done, he said, “That’s what I think of this family,” and he just walked out. He said it really mean.

  I stayed inside and cried because I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. He drove away just as it got dark, and I realized he still had my phone so I couldn’t call anyone for help.

  I walked down the road in the moonlight until I could see lights in the distance.

  That’s when I knocked on my uncle J. W.’s door and I told him what happened and he brought me here.

  “You bastard,” Cassie said aloud. “I hope you rot in Deer Lodge.”

  Before Cassie could reread Franny’s statement and start a fresh page with her observations, her phone lit up on the table with an incoming call.

  The screen read bryan. She snatched it up and punched the icon to refuse the call.

  “Another bastard,” she whispered while she reached for her glass of wine. “This place is full of them.”

  Bryan Pederson was the sheriff of Park County and she’d known him—and known of him—for years. He’d been there for her after the shooting of the trooper and he’d been there for the final act of the Lizard King. She’d noted that some time between the two encounters that he no longer wore his wedding band.

  He was a good man, an honest cop as far as sheriffs went, and she let herself start to feel comfortable around him off the job. And he was certainly attractive in a laconic cowboy kind of way.

  Cassie became suspicious of him after the first night she stayed over at his house. She’d opened a closet door by mistake instead of the bathroom door and saw that it was filled with his ex-wife’s clothing. When she brought it up to Pederson he explained it away by saying his ex-wife had never come to retrieve her clothes and he’d forgotten about them since he never used that closet. He bolstered his case by saying she was such a spendthrift that she’d likely already replaced her old wardrobe. Bryan said by the next time Cassie came to stay for the night the closet would be cleaned out and all of the clothes donated to charity.

  Cassie had let herself believe that, but there was a kernel of doubt in the back of her mind that remained there for months, waiting for another shoe to drop.

  It dropped on that afternoon in June when she opened his office door and saw Bryan and his ex-wife grunting on the carpet behind his desk. He looked over his naked shoulder at the sound of the intrusion and their eyes locked. There was panic in his face but Cassie didn’t say a word. She had stepped back, closed the door, and walked straight out of the building to her car without looking back.

  And she still hadn’t.

  There was nothing that needed to be said after that, and Bryan hadn’t even attempted to make contact with her.

  Until tonight.

  Cassie muted her phone and placed it screen down on the table in case he called back. She didn’t even want to see his name again.

  He was out of her life, whatever the reason for the call. It was likely, she speculated, that his ex had thrown him out again so he was reaching out to her to try and mend fences. Men thought that way. Cassie didn’t. Betrayal was betrayal.

  She was grateful she’d not brought him to her house to meet Ben last summer. Ben would have likely been in awe of Bryan, and that would have made the split even more bitter and complicated.

  Her instincts had been right on that count, even if they’d been a little skewed when it came to going out with Bryan in the first place. But she’d been lonely, and she still was. It had almost been worth it—at least for a few months.

  She refilled her wineglass and tried to shove Bryan and his call out of her mind while she turned back to the affidavit and her observations about it.

  *

  On the evening of July 2 wasn’t something a fifteen-year-old would lead with, Cassie observed. It was legal language, and likely prompted by the prosecutor in the room. Neither was Franny’s description of the “blue four-door sedan.” What teenager used a phrase like that? It was cop language, not teenager talk.

  Those phrases weren’t disqualifying at all, but they indicated to Cassie that at least some of the language in the document wasn’t as free and natural as it could have been. The heavy hand of the prosecutor was present in the affidavit. Cassie was sure Rachel had picked up on that as well and she’d likely use it in court to taint the evidence.

  Cassie knew from her years in law enforcement that of course prosecutors “improved” witness statements. A literal transcript of witness recollections was filled with unclear sentences, incomplete thoughts, and doz
ens of “ums” and “you knows.” A literal transcript was often a mess. Editing was necessary for clarity.

  At the same time, editing allowed for a prosecutor to create a document more damning to the accused than what was actually said. It wasn’t supposed to be done, but Cassie knew it happened all the time.

  Cody Hoyt had once told her, You’ll find, Cassie, that it’s us against the world. We do our damnedest to put away degenerates and douchebags so innocent people won’t be hurt by them, but all the forces out there are set up to make us fail. We’ve got county attorneys that won’t take on a case unless it’s airtight, judges who want to invent the law instead of enforce what’s there, defense attorneys who want to show publicly how fucking incompetent we are, and juries who want to stick it to the man. So, when we’ve figured out that someone is guilty as sin, sometimes we need to stack the deck a little. You know what I’m saying?

  She did.

  *

  Cassie read further and scrawled more notes.

  Cheyenne gave permission to her brother Blake to pick up Franny at church? Why would she do that if Blake was a nonperson within the family? There was more to that story.

  I’m not one to judge also struck Cassie as a phrase unlikely to be used by a fifteen-year-old. It sounded paraphrased or coerced, unless Franny was exceptionally mature. But the rest of the document didn’t indicate that. There was a flippant undercurrent in the statement Cassie thought odd and misplaced for a traumatized girl, including the lines about not liking cows and being a vegan. But Cassie also knew that victims sometimes focused on strange recollections.

  Where was Franny’s phone now? Back with her or missing? The phone wasn’t listed on the impound sheet, which could be a clerical error or possible proof that the prosecution was withholding evidence. Cassie knew that everything was on a teenager’s phone: photos, texts, contacts, and call records. Having the phone in custody was like having Franny’s brain in custody. Would the prosecution withhold an item so vital and important, and if so, why?

  That’s what I think of this family also didn’t ring true to Cassie as something Blake Kleinsasser would say. It came across to her as too melodramatic for the man she’d met that day. It seemed more like something Franny thought he might have said due to his heinous crime and demeanor. Maybe she’d misheard him, or it was a line fed to her by her mother, her uncle, or the prosecutor taking the affidavit.

  Finally, Cassie found it interesting that Franny went first to her uncle John Wayne’s house and not her own. Of course, there could be a simple explanation. Maybe John Wayne’s house was closer. Or was there another reason?

  *

  For the second time that day, Cassie felt dirty. She didn’t like finding questions and inconsistencies in the statement of a girl who was likely traumatized and emotional at the time she gave it. Cassie knew that’s what defense lawyers had to do, but it bothered her once again that she was on the wrong side of the crime.

  She reviewed the arrest report (“subject appeared inebriated and disoriented”), the witness list made up primarily of youth group participants as well as the youth pastor of the Congregational church who would all vouch that Blake picked her up that night.

  There were printouts of digital photos: the interior and exterior photos of the old ranch house that looked as described by Franny, and shots of Blake’s tire tracks on the dirt road that led to the abandoned home next to comparison photos of the tire tread marks on his rental car.

  The statement from the medical examiner from Ravalli County confirming a match of the semen found on Franny’s underwear with Blake Kleinsasser’s DNA was the killer, though, as far as Cassie was concerned. Ravalli County bordered Lochsa County, and Cassie assumed that law enforcement in the region shared resources, including the medical examiner himself. Even without the affidavit and all of the other available evidence, the DNA match was enough to put Blake away.

  Seeing the additional documentation tamped down the doubts Cassie had from the affidavit. No case was ever perfect. There were always nits to pick, which is what defense lawyers did as a matter of course.

  Overall, though, she thought it was a pretty clean and straightforward case. All of the history she’d read earlier about Hutterites in Montana and the Kleinsasser family tree was irrelevant when it came to the cold hard facts of the arrest. She’d taken much weaker cases to county attorneys that had resulted in guilty verdicts.

  Blake Kleinsasser was going to prison and he deserved it. His trip home to Montana had turned out much different than he’d thought.

  *

  She was so focused on her thoughts that it took a moment to realize that her house was shaking. Her first thought was, It’s a mild earthquake.

  The wine in her glass rippled and she could feel a low rumbling through the soles of her slippers from the floor. She pushed back from the table and looked around. She could hear the tinkling of glasses from inside her kitchen cupboards.

  Cassie pushed back from the table. The source of the disturbance, she realized, wasn’t from beneath her. It was coming from outside on the street.

  She retrieved her Glock from where she stashed it every evening on the top of the refrigerator and she gripped it muzzle-down as she padded through the living room toward the front door. The vibration and rumbling increased in volume the closer she got to the front of the house.

  The gun was out of view along her right leg when she opened the door and stepped out onto her porch.

  What she saw chilled her to the bone.

  A massive eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer idled right in front of her taking up the entire suburban street. It was a black Peterbilt tractor: the boxy shape of the cab and long nose were unmistakable. There was no reflection from chrome that had apparently been removed or from the exhaust stacks, which were blacked out. The cab was high and she couldn’t see who was behind the wheel due to her angle and the dark tinted windows. Dim amber lights ran down the length of the trailer and their glow reflected on the windshields of parked cars as far as three houses away.

  The semi was so huge, so dark, and so out of place in her neighborhood. It was a replica of the Lizard King’s unit or the truck itself.

  She was frozen in place. Her heart raced. She couldn’t walk toward the truck or back up into her house. She could feel the rumbling of the diesel engine not only through the concrete but from within her chest.

  When the driver released the air brake and there was a sharp hydraulic squeal she gasped for a moment and couldn’t get air.

  Then it slowly rumbled forward. She stood on the porch trembling, unable to move or act until it was gone. She’d tried to get a license plate number from the rear of the trailer but the light back there was broken—or disabled. She couldn’t even see the state of origin.

  Cassie peered at the houses on the block on both sides of the street, expecting to see her neighbors with their faces pressed to their windows to determine the cause of the disturbance.

  There were a few lights on, but most of the curtains and blinds remained closed. It was as if they’d heard nothing at all.

  *

  Finally back inside, Cassie closed and locked her front door. She couldn’t stop trembling.

  She knew it couldn’t have been the Lizard King. She knew he was dead.

  Was it a sick copycat driver who knew where she lived?

  Or was there a more innocent explanation, like a confused freight driver lost within the circuitous labyrinth of Bozeman’s suburban streets?

  Isabel opened her bedroom door and stumbled out toward the bathroom with her sleep mask pushed up on her forehead. When she saw Cassie, she stopped.

  “What are you doing standing there with your gun?” her mother asked.

  “Didn’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The truck outside our house?”

  Isabel gestured to the earplugs she wore, shook her head, and went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  *

  C
assie quietly opened the door to Ben’s room. He was asleep with his phone next to his head on the pillow.

  He’d obviously slept through it as well.

  *

  She placed her Glock in the nightstand next to her bed and climbed under the covers. Her mind was swirling: an unholy mix of Kleinsassers, Franny’s statement, what she’d need to pack for her trip to Lochsa County in the morning, and that eighteen-wheeler parked outside her home in the middle of the night with its engine running.

  And there had been a truck out there.

  Right?

  six

  A few blocks away, the driver parked his truck on a side street near the high school and turned his engine off.

  He sat and waited, rotating his head from the windshield and side windows to the mirrors outside his doors. There was no one out on the sidewalks and no headlights in front or behind him. Nevertheless, he gave it fifteen minutes. For cover, he opened a map across his lap. If a patrolman knocked on his door he would say that he had gotten lost and was trying to find his way back to the highway. He’d have the map handy to bolster his argument.

  Plus, there was no law against parking on a public street, even in the People’s Republic of Bozeman.

  *

  The driver leaned back in his seat. With the heat off he could feel a few small tendrils of fall cold enter the cab, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Winter was still a couple of months away, even though there could be a cold front or even snow at any time in Montana.

  There was very little wind in the air, and smoke from the distant forest fires seemed to catch and hold on the streetlights. Each one looked as if it had its own halo. The back of his throat was scratchy from breathing smoke all that day and when his eyes raised above the profile of the school building he could see the jagged line of the flames from distant mountains. And there were no stars. The smoke blocked them out.