by C. J. Box
“I like it with ice and a little Seven-Up. I’m a lightweight.”
Cassie nodded. “I can get you both. There are a couple of machines near the lobby.”
“Don’t tell Glen I’m here.”
“The manager?”
“Yes. He’s one of them.”
“You mean friends of the Kleinsassers?”
Her eyes said yes.
“Okay,” Cassie said. “Sit down and get comfortable. I’ll go get a Seven-Up and some ice.”
Murdock sat down on one of the two plastic chairs at the small table near the window. She kept her coat on and hugged herself.
“I understand you’re looking for Lindy Glode.”
“I am.”
Murdock nodded, then looked away. “I know where she might be. You see, she’s my stepdaughter.”
*
Cassie trudged to the alcove near the manager’s office with an empty ice bucket and a handful of change for the soft drink dispenser. The lights were off in the manager’s office but she saw the form of Glen Steele lurking behind the counter of the front desk. He retreated back to his quarters as she got close.
Had he seen Murdoch enter her room?
She filled the bucket and fed coins into the vending machine. There wasn’t any 7-Up so she chose Mountain Dew. Cassie figured that if Murdock liked sweet drinks it was as good as any.
As she turned to walk back to her room she noticed that the always-present hum of traffic from the main highway seemed to be louder than usual. And it quickly increased in volume.
Something blacked out the illuminated Whispering Pines sign at the curbside and she felt the roar of a big engine as well as a heavy vibration through the soles of her boots.
It was a massive eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer barreling through the parking lot with its headlights and running lights quenched. And it picked up speed.
She screamed and dropped the ice and soft drink as the big truck drove head-on into the front of her corner unit. The crash of broken two-by-fours and imploded wood paneling was tremendous.
The truck never stopped. It rolled into and through the motel room and continued out the other side, leaving a wake of twisted material and furniture and sparking electric wires.
Linda Murdock never had a chance.
Cassie wouldn’t have, either.
Part IV
Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
—Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
—Hermann Hesse, Demian
twenty-one
“It shouldn’t be all that hard to find,” Cassie said to Sheriff Wagy, “just look for an eighteen-wheeler with a smashed-up front end.”
He said, “I don’t really appreciate your sarcasm at the moment. I lost a very valuable member of my team in your room. She’s the first fatality the sheriff’s office has ever had.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re worried about your record,” Cassie said bitterly.
“You didn’t even provide a description of the truck,” he said. “Do you know how many eighteen-wheelers are out there on the road?”
They stood in the parking lot of the Whispering Pines. It was still hours before the dawn sun would slide over the top ridges of the eastern mountains. Every sheriff’s department vehicle was either parked on the lot to block the entrances or out on the street to turn away gawkers. Word of the incident had apparently spread quickly among the residents of Horston. A photographer from the Horston Express had already been shooed away.
Missing was Deputy Grzegorczyk, whom Cassie had seen drive by. When he recognized her in the parking lot he kept going.
The wreckage of unit number eleven was cordoned off with yellow plastic crime scene tape and lit up by a battery of portable spotlights borrowed from a construction company by the sheriff’s department. Smoke from the fires in the mountains hung in the beams of light.
The ambulance containing Linda Murdock’s mangled body had left the scene two hours before. Cassie had watched in dulled horror as the EMTs lifted beams and debris off her torso and rolled it into a black body bag before lifting it on a gurney. Her body seemed smaller and lighter than when she was alive, and the harsh lighting was cruel to her memory, Cassie thought.
She also watched as several deputies picked through the demolished room. They wore gloves and paper masks and they carried flashlights. Cassie had no idea what they expected to find that could be of any help at all. It’s what the sheriff had ordered them to do. One of them found the red wine bottle and lifted it up and shined his beam on it so Wagy could see it.
“So, you two were having a little party?” he asked her.
“Not at all,” Cassie said. “I told you exactly what happened.”
“Hmm.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged, but the implication was clear.
“The only time I met her was in your office,” Cassie said.
“But she was comfortable enough with you to visit you in your hotel room?”
Cassie closed her eyes and tried to keep her anger in check. Her world seemed to be spinning out of control.
She’d told him the sequence of events leading up to the truck taking out the room. He’d listened, but the skeptical look on his face annoyed her.
She told him everything except for something she held back. She hadn’t told Wagy or any of the deputies that Murdock was there to tell Cassie about Lindy Glode, her stepdaughter. Cassie didn’t trust them any more than she trusted Glen Steele, who was on the telephone in his office with his insurance agent.
“We’ll find this guy,” Wagy said to Cassie. “When we do I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he fell asleep at the wheel or was under the influence of drugs and alcohol to cause this accident. He might have taken a wrong turn off the highway and just panicked. Hit the accelerator instead of the brakes—something like that. Once he woke up and realized what he’d done he just kept going.”
Wagy had been talking this way since he arrived at the scene, and Cassie was beside herself with rage born of both experience and adrenaline.
Although she fought it, tears filled her eyes.
“It wasn’t an accident, I told you that,” she said to him. “I watched that truck speed up, not slow down.”
“But you didn’t see it closely enough to give me a vehicle description,” Wagy said.
“He had all of his lights off. I told you that. Look, I was the target. Linda Murdock was just a very unlucky citizen who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“A target, huh?” he said. He raised his eyebrows when he said it.
“There’s history here,” she said. “I once spent several years of my life going after a long-haul trucker who was a serial killer. I know you know the story.”
He nodded skeptically. “I’ve heard,” he said. “So, you think this guy came back to life and drove all the way here to target you?”
“I’m not saying it was him. But this was deliberate. It wasn’t an accident.”
“Then who would do this?” Wagy asked. “Who did you piss off? I mean, besides everyone around here?”
“Why won’t you do your job?” she asked him. “You don’t need every deputy in the department standing around here with nothing to do. Send them out on the road to find that truck. Have you even issued an APB?”
Wagy didn’t respond.
She said, “Go talk to your buddy Glen in there. He was spying on my room last night. I saw him. Go ask him why and who he might have talked to about it.”
“Glen called it in,” Wagy said while he shook his head. “He was very upset. Are you suggesting he knew that somebody would drive into his hotel and wreck it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should ask him.”
“And maybe you should step aside and let us sort this out,” Wagy
said. “Just because you worked in law enforcement once doesn’t mean you have all the answers when it comes to me doing my job.”
He reached into the pocket of his uniform trousers and came out with a Kleenex. He offered it to her.
Cassie slapped it out of his hand.
“Easy there,” Wagy cooed. “Calm down.”
*
One of the deputies in the debris held up Cassie’s gear bag and dis
played it for Sheriff Wagy.
“That’s mine,” she said. “I need that.”
She started striding toward what was left of unit number eleven.
“Hold your horses,” Wagy warned. “You’ve got no business entering a crime scene.”
“I thought you said it was an accident,” she hissed over her shoulder as she lifted the tape and ducked under it.
She stepped through a tangle of wood, broken ceiling tiles, and wires to retrieve her bag. It was covered with drywall dust but it hadn’t been crushed. She looked around for her luggage but she didn’t see it. The cheapness of the construction of the room was now exposed to all, she thought. It was as if a matchstick house had been kicked apart. No wonder the truck could blow through it and keep going.
“I’ll need to ask you to leave,” the deputy said. He wasn’t as strident as Wagy had been.
“I want what’s mine,” she said while moving a piece of interior paneling with her boot toe.
“Sheriff?” the deputy asked. He wanted direction.
Wagy motioned for him to kick her out.
“You need to go now, ma’am,” the deputy said.
“When I’m good and ready,” she said.
“It’s for your own safety,” he said. She felt his hand grasp her arm.
She glared at him and she suspected that she looked a little insane. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
He relaxed his grip. She felt guilty for taking all of her anger and frustration out on him. He was simply following orders from Wagy.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll leave. But if you find my suitcase and my overnight bag please return them. They aren’t evidence of any kind and I’d like them back.”
The deputy nodded.
As she carefully stepped around material to return to the parking lot her right boot was held back by a strand of wire. She bent over to remove it and she gave the wire a tug. A broken light fixture on the other end jumped out of the debris and she reeled it in.
The wire led to a small multidirectional microphone that had been embedded in the overhead light fixture. She studied it and her rage returned.
“See this?” she called to Wagy.
“What is it?”
“It’s a fucking mic,” she said. “Somebody bugged my room.”
Which meant, she realized, that her conversations with Rachel about the case and who she planned to interview in the county had likely been overheard. Every move she’d made was known by someone in advance.
“I wonder how long it’s been there?” she asked aloud. “I wonder if it was there when Blake Kleinsasser stayed here?”
Wagy gave no response. He appeared to be thinking of what to say.
“Now maybe you’ll have your talk with Glen?” she said, nodding toward the manager’s office. “And if you don’t, I will.”
*
Cassie had the microphone in her hand when she pushed through the office door. Sheriff Wagy was a few steps behind her.
Glen Steele was behind the counter and he looked up at her with alarm. He held a handset to his face.
Cassie reached over and pushed down the cradle of the telephone, killing the call.
“Hey,” Steele said, “I was talking with my insurance guy.”
She slapped the mic down on the counter so he could see it.
“You better have a damned good reason why this was in my room,” she said. “Either you’re a pervert or you’ve been keeping tabs on me for other reasons. Which is it?”
Cassie had experienced a similar situation when she was in pursuit of the Lizard King where a gas station owner had installed a secret camera in the women’s restroom. She couldn’t believe it had happened again.
Steele stepped back and slowly shook his head. He stared at the microphone. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. She didn’t believe him.
“Was there a camera in there, too?”
He continued to shake his head.
“Now I know why you put me in that room,” she said.
“It’s our best room,” he said. Then he added, “It was our best room, I mean.”
The bell above the door jangled as the sheriff came in behind her.
“Arrest this son of a bitch,” Cassie said, pointing at Steele.
“She’s a little worked up,” Wagy said to Steele.
“I’d say,” Steele replied.
“I was almost killed,” Cassie said. She jabbed her finger toward the manager. “And this son of a bitch was listening in on my conversations.”
“That’s crazy,” he said.
“Glen,” Wagy asked, “Do you know anything about this device she found?” He asked the question in a very reasonable tone.
Steele quickly denied knowing anything about the mic. While he did Cassie noticed that he was looking over her shoulder to Wagy as if she weren’t there. She had the suspicion that some kind of silent compact had passed between them, but when she looked over her shoulder at the sheriff he looked away.
“Hold it,” Steele said, smacking his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I just remembered something. I know why it was there.”
Cassie narrowed her eyes while waiting for the explanation.
Wagy said, “Sheriff, you’ll remember a couple years back? The county attorney suspected that a guest in unit eleven was using it to sell meth?”
“I remember,” Wagy said.
“They got a warrant to put a bug in there. They told me all about it and even though I pride myself on maintaining the privacy of my customers, I didn’t see where I had much choice in the matter. The attorney’s office sent a couple of men out here to install it when the guest was out of his room.”
“They never got anything they could use in court,” Wagy said helpfully to Steele. “I do know that.”
“They must have forgotten it was still out there,” Steele said. “It’s been there the whole time. I’d completely forgotten about it or I would have asked them to come back and remove it.”
“That’s a lie,” Cassie said. “You’re lying.”
“The sheriff here will confirm my story,” Steele said.
Cassie wheeled on him.
Wagy shrugged and said, “He’s telling the truth. We were trying to build a case against a drug guy and it didn’t pan out. I plumb forgot about that bug in there.”
Cassie’s chest went cold with sudden realization. She looked at Wagy and back to Steele. They’d obviously settled on their story, and they were supporting each other while telling it.
“So it was you listening in,” she said to Wagy. “It wasn’t Steele. You keep the mic there and Glen makes sure which guests get that
room. First Blake Kleinsasser, and then me.”
Wagy made a face suggesting she was out of her mind.
“Who else knew I was using that room?” she asked. “Somebody told the truck driver which one to aim for.”
“That’s a really dangerous accusation, Miss Dewell,” Wagy said. “I think maybe you ought to just calm down and get some rest. You might want to see somebody at the clinic to help you deal with your trauma. I’m happy to make a call over there and let them know you’re coming.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cassie replied. Then she asked, “Which one of the Kleinsassers is your boss? John Wayne? Horst himself? Do you answer to Cheyenne as well?”
“Actually,” Wagy said, gripping her arm, “you are going somewhere. And if you stay here even a minute longer and continue to make accusations and impede the progress of this accid
ent investigation, I’ll arrest you and you can spend another night or two in our fine jail.”
“Don’t touch me,” Cassie warned.
But Wagy was fast and he was strong. He spun her toward the counter and he pinned her arms back. She felt the cold metal of handcuffs tightened on her wrists. Wagy leaned into her until his weight held her in place. Then he bent her over until her face was mashed into the top of the counter.
His whisper in her ear was low and menacing. “You’ll regret what you just said, you fucking nutjob. If you ever say anything like that again I’ll find you and I’ll take you out.”
She didn’t struggle or scream.
He said, “I’m going to take these cuffs off of you now and you’re going to walk out there and get in your car and drive away. Go back to Bozeman and don’t show your face ever again in my county. Do you understand?”
She nodded that she did.
The pressure of his full weight eased off. She heard the jangle of keys and the handcuffs were removed.
When she turned to face him, his face was once again a stoic mask. Glen Steele, meanwhile, was frozen to his spot behind the counter.
“I worked for years with good honest men in law enforcement,” she said to Wagy as she shouldered around him toward the door and stepped outside. She leaned back in to say, “There’s nothing worse than a corrupt cop.”
She could feel his eyes burning holes in her back as she walked across the parking lot toward her Ford.
*
Cassie called Rachel on her home number and woke her up.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” she said.
She told her the whole story.
“You need to get out of there now,” Rachel said.
twenty-two
Cassie awoke when her cell phone burred. She thrashed around in bed and for a moment she didn’t know where she was. Morning light streamed through the curtains and pooled on the floor and she remembered checking into the Holiday Inn Express in Lolo and paying with cash the night before. She recalled the puzzled expression on the face of the night manager when she said the room needed to be on the top floor or she wouldn’t take it.
She finally found her phone buried in the folds of the covers after it had stopped ringing. Ben had called and of course he hadn’t left a message.