The Bitterroots

by C. J. Box

  “Lyle?”

  “Lyle is my husband. We own and manage Hamilton Mortuary and Chapel.”

  “Thank you.”

  *

  The hallway was dark and her footfalls were cushioned by thick pile carpeting that, she guessed, had not been updated since the building had opened.

  A man approximately the age of the woman at the receptionist desk sat in a high-backed wooden chair outside of a closed door. He wore a suit and his trouser cuffs were hiked up to reveal bands of white ankle. He quickly pocketed the smartphone he was looking at when Cassie appeared.

  “Lyle?” she asked.

  “Yes. May I help you?”

  His voice was low and preternaturally soothing. It was well-practiced and likely beneficial for his line of work, and Cassie fought the urge to ask him questions that would require long answers just to hear his voice.

  “Is the Murdock family inside?” she asked, gesturing toward the door.

  “Yes.”

  “Is Lindy Glode with them?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but Lindy is quite bereaved and she asked me to screen any visitors with a couple of questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Are you with law enforcement?” he asked.

  The question surprised her and it must have showed.

  “No.”

  “Are you here representing the Kleinsasser family?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She stepped forward and handed Lyle one of her cards.

  He read it and asked, “Couldn’t this be done at a later time?”

  “I wish it could,” Cassie said. “If she doesn’t want to talk to me there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll leave quietly. I know this must be a very difficult time for her.

  “But when you give her the card please tell her something for me. I was there last night. Her stepmother came to see me to tell me something important. I was the only eyewitness to what happened and Lindy might have questions about the … incident. Her stepmother seemed like a very nice person who was trying to do the right thing. I might be able to provide some answers to questions she might have.”

  She deliberately refrained from using the word “closure.” She hated that word for a reason. When the military liaison showed up at her door to break the news about the death of Jim overseas, they said they were there to provide “closure.” It was a word they’d been taught to say, she guessed. But Jim’s death brought no closure at all. Instead, for a pregnant woman without a job at the time, it opened up a terrifying new world for her.

  Lyle looked back at the card, then again at Cassie. Then he gathered himself up without a word and slipped into the grieving room and closed the door.

  Cassie had been right about finding Lindy Glode. But she didn’t feel good about doing it.

  She leaned back against the wall and waited. She couldn’t hear the words but Lyle’s soothing tone filtered through the paneling.

  Cassie expected Lyle to emerge from the room, hand her back her card, and tell her that Lindy was too upset to consent to a meeting. Instead, the door opened and Lindy emerged with Lyle.

  Lindy Glode was exactly what Cassie had imagined her to be: blond, thin, and curvy with blue eyes and a hard set to her mouth. She looked like she’d fit right in at the Hayloft. She also seemed frail; either hungover or truly overcome with emotion.

  She said to Lyle, “Give us a minute, will you?”

  *

  “Thank you for seeing me and I’m very sorry about the timing. I’ll try to keep this short.” Cassie said.

  Glode nodded. “I appreciate that. Lyle said you claimed you were there last night.”

  “I was. I saw it.”

  Glode looked up and her eyes flashed. “What the fuck happened? It doesn’t make sense to me that a big truck just drove off the highway and plowed through a motel and kept going.” As she talked Cassie noticed how Glode pounded her right fist into her left palm with pure frustration.

  “No, it doesn’t make sense if you think of it as an accident. I know that’s what the sheriff is claiming, but—”

  “I don’t trust anything that man says,” Glode cut in. “He’s bought and paid for.”

  “So I gather. I’d classify what happened as a homicide. What I can’t determine at this point is if the driver was aiming for me or your stepmother or both.”

  Lindy Glode stopped pounding her fist. The implication of what Cassie just said took her aback.

  “Why would someone want to kill Linda?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would they want to kill you?”

  “I’ve turned over a lot of rocks since I’ve been here. No one seems to like that.”

  “What happened last night?”

  Cassie told Lindy Glode the story as briefly as she could, from meeting her stepmother at the sheriff’s department to the incident the night before.

  Glode listened closely and sadly shook her head while doing so. At the conclusion, she said, “It sounds just like them.”

  “Them?” Cassie asked.

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “The Kleinsassers?”

  Glode nodded her head. Then she smiled slightly. “You know that detail about you going to get soda and ice? That sounds just like her. The sweeter the drink the better as far as she was concerned. I used to tell her to learn to drink like a real woman, and she’d just laugh at me. Who knew it would be the death of her?”

  Or what saved my life, Cassie thought but didn’t say.

  “She wanted to quit that job she had,” Glode said. “I hope that wasn’t the reason they went after her. But it was hard for her to give up the benefits. My dad is disabled.”

  “I understand. I know it’s not much consolation but she died quickly. She didn’t suffer.”

  “That happens when a truck tire rolls over your head,” Glode said bitterly.

  “Do you have any idea what she wanted to tell me?” Cassie asked. “She led off by saying you two were related.”

  “Yeah. I think she heard you were looking for me. I heard the same thing. She was worried about me.”

  “Why was she worried?”

  “I think she heard something at her job to make her worried. Maybe she wanted you to find me before the sheriff did. You know, because of that thing I had with Blake.”

  “They might have found out that I wanted to talk with you because the room was bugged,” Cassie said. “I found the device.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all. It sounds like something they’d do.”

  “Did your mom know where you were living?”

  “No,” Glode said. “I move around a lot. I stay with friends. She didn’t know exactly where I was but she knew who to ask. We kept in contact through text messages.”

  “I do that with my own son,” Cassie said. She wasn’t sure why she said it.

  “Yeah, well. It looks like they got to her before they got to me.”

  “And all of this was because of Blake?”

  “No doubt in my mind.”

  Cassie studied Glode’s face and tried to put things together. She was having trouble understanding what Lindy was telling her.

  “What is it they wanted?” Cassie asked. “Do you have information that would benefit Blake’s case? Is that why you were hiding?”

  Glode shrugged. “They seem to think so. Or at least, that’s what I was told by someone who was in the position to know.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Cheyenne Porché,” Glode said. “She was a customer at the bar. She told me her brothers were worried about me and she said I should disappear for a while.”

  This was information Cheyenne hadn’t shared.

  “That makes no sense,” Cassie said. “Cheyenne should want Blake prosecuted more than anyone else. Do you know why she told you that?”

  “No. But I believed her. Especially when Rand and Sheriff Wagy came by the Hayloft the next night and asked about me. Lucky
for me, I’d taken the night off. And I haven’t been back since.”

  “And you don’t know why they were trying to find you?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. I told the prosecutor and Blake’s old lawyer everything I remembered. I wasn’t with Blake the night it happened. Half of the time we were together I really can’t even remember, to be honest. I don’t think Blake does, either.”

  “He doesn’t,” Cassie said. “He said he was mostly blacked out the time you two were together.”

  Glode snorted. “That’s not exactly what a girl wants to hear— that the man she was with for forty-eight hours straight can’t remember a damned thing about it. But Blake is Blake, I guess. I know he’s an asshole, but I got along with him. I guess I like ass-holes. My track record is filled with them.”

  “I’ve got a few in my past,” Cassie conceded. “So you don’t recall anything Blake said or did that would be relevant to the charges?”

  “Not that I can remember,” Glode said. “Like I said, it’s all kind of hazy. We drank, we fucked, then we drank some more.”

  Cassie tried not to react to the bluntness of her statement.

  She asked, “Did he ever come across to you as someone capable of raping his niece?”

  Glode shrugged again. “He didn’t seem like that kind of guy, but who knows? I know sometimes I have blind spots. Like, why was I hanging out with the guy in the first place? We both knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. As for Franny, I don’t remember him talking about her very much except to say that he liked her more than the others.”

  “In what way?” Cassie asked while narrowing her eyes.

  “Not in that way,” Glode said with a shake of her head. “Blake said he liked Franny because she didn’t seem to have what he called the Kleinsasser gene.”

  “What does that mean? The Kleinsasser gene?”

  “I think he meant she wasn’t toxic.”

  “Ah.”

  Glode said, “I do remember getting kind of paranoid when I was with Blake. I’d see a sheriff car parked down the street from the bar, or I’d see John Wayne or Rand out of the corner of my eye. Blake just laughed about it because he said his family suspected he was back to do them some kind of harm, which he said he wasn’t. He all but convinced me I was paranoid and losing it.”

  Cassie urged her to continue.

  “I know all about the bad blood between Blake and his family. Everybody does around here. Maybe I was just sort of imagining things. But at the time I had the feeling they were shadowing us as we went from bar to bar and back to the motel.”

  “Did you tell the prosecutor or lawyer about that feeling?”

  “No,” she said. “I knew how nuts it sounded. Plus, they weren’t asking me about my feelings. They just wanted me to confirm I was with Blake for two full days leading up to the arrest, which I was.”

  “Obviously,” Cassie said, “those feelings you had were strong enough that you listened to Cheyenne when she told you to run and hide.”

  “Obviously,” Glode repeated. “I mean, they must have figured Blake told me something they didn’t want me to repeat. I’ve beaten my head against the wall trying to figure out what that might be but for the life of me I can’t come up with anything. We just talked about life and drinking and fucking, like I said.”

  “Got it,” Cassie said. “When you say you knew they were probably following Blake around, what exactly do you mean?”

  “I know they were,” she said. “I caught them.”

  Cassie didn’t understand.

  “After the second night we were together,” she said, “I left his room that morning and realized I’d left my cell phone there. I was really hungover. I went back to the Whispering Pines in my car because obviously I couldn’t call Blake to ask him if he’d found it. But when I got there he’d already left for the day and they were searching his room.”

  Cassie felt hair prick up on the back of her neck. “Who was searching his room?”

  “There was a deputy there inside the room. The manager was standing outside. He must have let the cop in, is what I thought at the time.”

  “Can you identify the deputy?”

  “He has an unpronounceable name,” she said. “Gregorsomething. I’ve seen him around. He still works for the sheriff, which means he works for the Kleinsassers.”

  “The manager was Glen Steele?”

  “I guess. I really didn’t meet him. Oh, and I saw John Wayne and Rand there, too. They were sitting together in a pickup. They left when I showed up.”

  “What happened next?” Cassie asked.

  “I told the manager I’d left my phone in the room and he told the cop I was coming in.”

  “Did they say why they were searching the room?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. Like I said, I was so hungover. And after spending all that time with Blake, I’d had my fill of Kleinsasser drama. I just wanted to go home and sleep it off.”

  “Lindy, did you see anything unusual in the room? What was Deputy Grzegorczyk doing?”

  “He was on his hands and knees looking under the bed. In fact, he was the one who found my phone. It was on the floor. He handed it to me and I went on my way.”

  “And this was the morning of the assault, correct?”

  “Yeah, but of course I didn’t know it at the time,” she said.

  Cassie observed that Glode was tired and running out of steam. She understood. The girl had been through a lot.

  “This is all really interesting,” Cassie said. “Thank you. Is there anything else you can recall?”

  “Not really. I’m exhausted.”

  “You have my card,” Cassie said. “If you think of anything please give me a call.”

  Glode sighed. She said, “Honestly, I probably won’t. I think I’m hitting the bricks as soon as the funeral is over. I really don’t want to stay here anymore. I need a fresh start somewhere—maybe Seattle. I hear it’s cool. Don’t tell the Kleinsassers.”

  Cassie grinned and hugged her. “I won’t,” she said.

  *

  Cassie was nearly to the lobby when she stopped. She turned back around slowly. Lindy Glode had returned to the grieving room and Lyle was making his way back to his chair.

  Cassie suddenly recalled the condition of unit eleven immediately after she’d checked in. Before Glen did a thorough cleaning.

  She returned to the alcove in front of the grieving room.

  “I need to ask Lindy one more thing,” she said to Lyle.

  Lyle sighed. “Haven’t you taken up enough of her time?”

  “Please.”

  Lyle sighed and stuck his head in the room. Without being asked, he trudged away as Lindy Glode came out.

  “I need to ask you a very personal question,” Cassie said.

  Glode screwed up her face as if expecting anything.

  “When you and Blake had sex in the room at the Whispering Pines, did he use a condom?”

  Glode’s shoulders relaxed and she smiled. Cassie could only guess what the girl had been anticipating.

  “Of course he did,” she said. “I always insist on it. None of them like to, of course. But it’s a deal-breaker for me. I don’t want STDs and I sure as hell don’t want a baby. Can you imagine me as a mother?”

  Cassie ignored the question. “Do you have any idea what Blake did with the condom when you were done?”

  “Which time?” she asked with a devilish grin.

  “Anytime.”

  “He got rid of it, I guess.”

  Cassie said, “Did he go to the bathroom and flush it away? Did he toss it in the waste can? Please try to remember. This is important,”

  She shook her head. “I really can’t remember. I was probably mixing up a new cocktail at the time.”

  “Is it possible he dropped one on the floor?” Cassie asked.

  “Anything’s possible, I guess. He was pretty sloppy by that point as well. Why are you asking me these questions?”

 
“Because when I checked into that same room there was an old condom wrapper on the floor. Under the bed. Maybe at one point there was a used condom there as well.”

  Glode winced. “That’s kind of gross.”

  “It is,” Cassie agreed, “But it would be a really efficient way of collecting Blake’s semen.”

  Lindy Glode furrowed her brow. She didn’t understand what Cassie was getting at.

  “Plus,” Cassie said, “They’d know what took place in that room between you and Blake. They’d know what to look for because they’d listened to you when you were in there.”

  “That’s really sick,” Glode said.

  “It’s likely even more than that.”

  twenty-four

  Still reeling from her conversation with Lindy Glode, Cassie drove south from Hamilton on US-93 into a bank of smoke so thick it triggered the automatic headlights on her rental car. She’d plugged Jody Haak’s address—2952 County Road 38—into her phone to find out that it didn’t officially exist. The graphic on the screen suggested the closest address to the one she keyed in for Haak was 2800 CR-38. Nevertheless, she planned to follow the route where it took her and hope she’d somehow find his place. It wasn’t the first time for Cassie that an obscure rural address didn’t produce a satisfactory exact destination from her GPS in Montana.

  Because of the smoke, Cassie drove well under the speed limit. She checked her side and rearview mirrors obsessively, hoping not to see a Lochsa County sheriff’s department vehicle or a Kleinsasser ranch truck. If either were following her she couldn’t see them due to the poor visibility.

  She connected with Rachel as she neared her turnoff for the county road that would take her deep into the mountains and over the top of Skalkhano Pass. Cassie glanced at a notice stapled to a wooden sign ordering residents along the road to evacuate due to the fire ahead.

  When Rachel answered on the first ring, Cassie said, “The case against Blake might be falling apart. That’s not to say he didn’t do it, but the prosecution’s case isn’t the slam dunk we thought it was.”

  She relayed what she’d learned from Lindy Glode. Rachel’s silence on the other end spoke volumes—she was hanging on to Cassie’s every word.