by C. J. Box
When she was through, Rachel said, “Do you think Lindy would testify to what she told you?”
“I’m not sure. She seems ready to get out of this county as soon as her stepmother’s funeral is over. I got the impression she wants to wash her hands of all things Kleinsasser.”
“I don’t blame her,” Rachel said. “But we need to get her someplace safe where no one can get to her. Do you think you could convince her to ride with you here? We can put her up in a nice place.”
“I can try.”
“Please do,” Rachel said. “Her testimony could be dynamite.”
“Agreed. Now think about it,” Cassie said to Rachel. “There are four foundational pieces of evidence they have to convict him: the semen on her clothes, the whiskey glass in the line shack with his fingerprints on it, the tire tracks from his rental car, and Franny’s affidavit.
“So far, we’ve found out that Franny’s clothing is missing but that DNA result is still pretty strong evidence on its own. But if the DNA came from a discarded condom found in the motel room, well, that’s a big problem for them. We probably can’t prove it unless somebody confesses, but it’s big.”
“It’s unbelievable, is what it is,” Rachel said. “I could drive a truck through that hole in their case.”
“Then there’s the glass,” Cassie said. “I have no doubt at all that Blake’s fingerprints are all over it. But how many glasses did he use when he went barhopping with Lindy Glode during his blackout drunk period? If he was being followed like Lindy thinks they were, anyone could have collected a glass or two from his table after he left the place.
“Three,” Cassie said, “Blake didn’t deny ever going to that line shack this summer. In fact, he mentioned to us that he drove to it to see if it was still there after all these years. There wasn’t any rain here this summer, which is one of the reasons we have all the fires. His tracks could have been made days or even weeks before the assault accusation.
“What I’m saying,” Cassie continued, “is that the whole case looks different if you consider that Blake might have been set up the whole time. And if the Lochsa County sheriff and his thugs were working with the Kleinsassers, which appears to be what happened, the whole scenario the prosecution has laid out falls apart.
“The enmity the family has for Blake is well-documented. That goes to motivation.”
“I can see it,” Rachel said. “You’re sounding more and more like a defense lawyer all the time. This has reasonable doubt written all over it.”
Cassie responded as if slapped. The last thing she ever wanted to hear was that she was sounding like a defense lawyer.
Then Rachel said, “This is all important, except for one big fat problem.”
“Franny’s statement,” Cassie replied.
“Exactly.”
“Have you set up an interview with her yet?”
“I’ve run into complications with that, but now they seem to make a little more sense,” Rachel said.
Cassie waited for the explanation and she hoped Rachel would get on with it. The county road she was on wound up through the eastern mountains into the teeth of the fire. She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d have a strong cell signal.
“Cheyenne didn’t hide Franny away like we assumed,” Rachel said. “Apparently, according to the school, Franny was taken from her mom by the Montana Child and Family Services Division for her own safety and placed in a foster home. I don’t know the circumstances because it’s under seal, but she was assigned a guardian ad litem in Bozeman.”
“What? Why didn’t we know about this?”
“It was kept confidential because she’s fifteen,” Rachel said. “I had to pry that information out of my friends at the school district, and they probably shouldn’t have even told me. But in order to talk to Franny, I need permission from the guardian ad litem and I don’t have a name yet.”
Cassie was puzzled. “For her own safety?” she repeated. “Who did she fear?”
“I don’t know.”
“My money would be on her uncles or grandfather,” Cassie said. This, she thought, might explain Cheyenne’s odd reaction to Cassie’s request to speak to Franny. But why would Cheyenne want to protect the siblings she despised, especially if they threatened her daughter?
Cassie put her thinking into words to Rachel.
“Again, I don’t know,” Rachel said. “It doesn’t make sense to me, either, except that there is a lot more going on here than we realized. We seem to be witnessing the Olympics of family dysfunction, right here in Montana.”
Rachel went on to say that prior to Cassie’s call, she’d had a conversation with the neurosurgeon in the hospital who was overseeing Blake Kleinsasser’s injuries.
“They’re going to put him into a drug-induced coma until the swelling on his brain goes down,” Rachel said. “It may or may not work. The doctor said he gave it a five percent chance that Blake will ever recover.”
Cassie shook her head, not sure of what to say or think.
“Are we still working for him?” she asked.
“Unclear at this point,” Rachel answered. “I’d say yes, we proceed. Think of it this way: we’re working for truth and justice, whether or not Blake comes out of this.”
“I like that,” Cassie said. “It’s better than saying I sound like a defense lawyer.”
“I thought you would,” Rachel said with a sigh. Cassie could imagine her rolling her eyes as she said it.
“Oh,” Rachel said, “I almost forgot. After we talked this morning I called the DCI and made a formal request for an investigation of law enforcement in Lochsa County. I got the strong impression they might have been waiting for someone like me to get the ball rolling.”
The Division of Criminal Investigation for the State of Montana was the agency that not only certified law enforcement officers, but it was the one entity that had the mandate and authority to look into malfeasance at a local or county level.
“Good call,” Cassie said.
“Which is one more reason why you need to get out of there as fast as you can,” Rachel said. “My guess is that Sheriff Wagy is not going to like it when DCI agents show up.”
Then Rachel asked, “What turned it for you? What happened that made you start thinking of this whole case a hundred and eighty degrees differently than when you started?”
“I just followed the evidence,” Cassie said. “There’s a big difference working with law enforcement when they want to help you and when they want to obstruct what you’re doing. Then when that truck drove through my room and killed that poor woman, I knew they thought I was getting too close to the truth—whatever it is.
“The thing is,” Cassie said, “they overplayed their hand. If they all would have just cooperated and stepped aside, I think I would have proceeded and concluded that the case was a little sloppy but it was as solid as it looked at first. There were red flags like the missing underwear, but there are always red flags. But they had to keep overdoing it, like destroying my car and putting me in jail for the night. They thought they’d chase me off.”
“They were messing with the wrong woman,” Rachel said.
Cassie blushed and changed the subject. “I still don’t know where the truck driver fits, though. I don’t know if he’s somehow involved or on an entirely separate track.”
“I only heard half of that,” Rachel said through popping static.
Cassie pulled over to the shoulder of the road and checked her phone. She had only one bar of cell reception.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
There was no response, followed by a prompt that said NO SERVICE.
“Shit,” she cursed.
*
Cassie realized she’d been in such intense discussion with Rachel that she hadn’t paid enough attention to her surroundings. The paved two-track road had given way to gravel, and it climbed and wound up into the mountains following the curves of a nearly dry creek. The canyon walls on bo
th sides were nearly vertical. Smoke poured down through the canyon from fires on both sides like a current of water through a chute.
The fire was close although she couldn’t see it clearly because of the smoke. It produced an eerie orange glow ahead, and ash fell on the hood of her car and the windshield.
She checked her GPS to see that the address she’d settled on was less than two miles farther up the road. She assumed Haak’s property would be near it—if it was even his property at all. And if he had remained in his house despite the posted fire evacuation orders.
When her rearview mirror suddenly filled with the headlights of a massive truck coming up the road behind her Cassie’s heart pounded with panic. She felt the power and weight of the vehicle vibrating through her rental and she gripped the steering wheel and held her breath. She braced for a violent rear-end collision.
But instead of the eighteen-wheeler she feared, it was a heavy mountain fire truck. It shot past and she got a glimpse of a firefighter in the passenger seat gesturing for her to turn around.
She gave a “will do,” wave to him and waited for the truck to vanish into the smoke. When it did, she eased back onto the road with her phone on her lap and continued on.
twenty-five
Cassie drove past a turn-in for 2800 that was marked only by a dented rural mailbox. She couldn’t see a home on the end of the road because of the thick trees and hanging smoke. She decided to go another mile in search of an additional road that might lead to 2952.
The conditions were getting worse the farther she drove up into the canyon. Not only ash but live embers floated through the air.
She nearly drove past it—an unmarked path off the right side of the road that led into a thick wall of trees. There was not even a mailbox, but she noted fresh tire tracks in the ruts. Cassie backed up, dropped the transmission into drive, and took the road.
It curved through two walls of pines on either side of the road and when she saw that the crowns of the trees she was driving under were actively inflamed she accelerated. A short burning branch fell across the hood of her rental and landed with a shower of sparks. She pushed through because she sensed a clearing ahead of her where she hoped she could turn around. The acceleration of the car caused the burning branch to roll off the hood and to the side of the road.
Paint blistered on the hood of her car from the heat of the fire and smoke filled the interior. Taking the two-track had been a mistake, she concluded.
A smudge appeared ahead that became a small log home as she neared it. There were a pair of pickup trucks parked near the front and a flatbed trailer was on the side of the home. She recalled that Frank in the Corvallis Tavern had been there because he wanted to borrow a flatbed from Jody Haak.
And there he was in the flesh: Jody Haak standing in the front lawn of the structure wearing a battered straw cowboy hat and bib overalls. He was arcing a stream of water from a hose at the roof of the house to wet it down. His back was to Cassie as she drove up although she’d seen his profile as he glanced to the side.
She parked and got out. She could hear the roar of the fire up in the canyon. It sounded like a jet engine. Embers floated through the air and landed on the moistened shake shingles of Haak’s house, where they extinguished with sharp hissing sounds.
A yellow piece of heavy equipment roared around the side of the house. It was a skid-steer loader and it was plowing up a ditch in the dark loam. She couldn’t see who was driving it.
“Jody Haak?” she called out.
The man froze. The stream of water from his hose wavered for a moment. Then he turned and shook his head.
“You found me,” he said. “How in the hell did you do that?”
She didn’t explain.
“Is there anything I can do to help you save your house?” she asked.
“I appreciate the offer. I could use some help. But for right now, just stay out of the way of that skid steer,” Haak said. “We’re building a firebreak.”
Cassie stepped back and watched as the loader passed between them. The blade churned up dark soil and exposed rocks and lengths of white tree roots that looked like bony fingers. As it went by she got a full look at the driver.
Alf Grzegorczyk, out of uniform and wearing soot-covered jeans and a cowboy shirt, tipped the brim of a ball cap to her as he went by. He had a sly smile on his face and he seemed to enjoy her look of befuddlement.
*
Cassie assisted, as directed, by moving heavy plastic containers of fuel from a shed alongside the house and placing them in a creek that snaked through the property. She noted that the water in the creek was warm and murky with ash, but at least the fuel wouldn’t ignite and take out the shed and the home. Her clothes and hands were filthy with dirt and soot.
The fire seemed to pass right over them from the top, igniting the crowns of the pines but largely not burning to the lower branches or to the floor of the valley. It created its own environment as it moved, heating up channels of rushing hot air and swirling through the timber. One line of flame did drop to the dry pine needles and yellow grass, and it flew along the surface toward the house until it met with the freshly upturned soil of the firebreak, where it stopped and went out.
Next, she found another spigot and hose behind the home and wetted down a four-foot-high stack of split firewood. The light pine turned dark as she soaked it. But it didn’t catch on fire from the floating embers.
In the distance, she could hear the rumble of mountain fire trucks on the road. They were racing down the canyon to try and head off the flames, she guessed.
The worst of it was over for now.
*
Cassie found Jody Haak and Alf Grzegorczyk sitting on opposite sides of a splintered picnic table in Haak’s front yard. They were drinking cans of Coors beer and there was a small plastic cooler on the tabletop between them.
She approached tentatively. “Why didn’t you evacuate?” she asked. “I saw the orders on the way up.”
Haak shrugged. “Where would I go? If you didn’t already figure it out, I prefer to keep a real low profile since I got back. Showing up at the high school gym with a bunch of locals who know me didn’t seem like a very smart move. Word gets around here pretty fast, you know.”
“I’ve learned,” she said. “Who are you hiding from?”
“I think we saved the place,” Haak said, ignoring her question. “Thank you for pitching in like that.”
She nodded. Her eyes were on Grzegorczyk. He didn’t seem hostile.
“Join us and have a beer,” Haak said. “You deserve it.”
“I think I’ll pass on the beer.”
“That’s right,” Haak said. “If you’re a wine gal. I might have a bottle or two in the house.”
He started to get up but Cassie said, “ Really, I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself.” He settled back down.
“I was hoping I could ask you a few questions,” she said.
“I figured as much.”
Haak and Grzegorczyk exchanged a look. Whatever was conveyed resulted in Grzegorczyk rising from the table and turning back toward the skid steer.
“Guess I’ll churn up some more ground,” he said while snatching another beer from the cooler.
She waited for him to go, then took his place at the table.
“We have a little history,” she said.
“I’m aware of it,” Haak said with a slight smile. “But Alf’s a good guy. You may have him all wrong.”
“Maybe not.”
Haak shrugged. Oddly enough, she thought, the man looked more bemused and relaxed—even with the forest fire all around him—than she remembered from seeing him at the bar. It was as if he was resigned to her being there. She thought that she might be able to use his resignation to her benefit.
“He quit, you know,” Haak said as he nodded toward Grzegorczyk’s back.
“The sheriff’s department?”
“Yes.”
“Because o
f what he did to me?” she asked.
Haak looked long and hard at her. “No,” he said, “because of what he didn’t do to you.”
She narrowed his eyes at him, not understanding.
“You spent the night in jail,” Haak said. “You weren’t supposed to ever get there.”
“What does that mean?”
“You were supposed to disappear, never to be heard from again. Alf couldn’t go through with it. He’s the reason you’re here today.”
“What do you mean—disappear?”
Haak took a long drink from his can of beer, then opened another. “Lochsa County has more than its share of missing persons. If you did a deep dive in the records over the years you’d find that out. I’d guess that more people go missing per capita in Lochsa County than anyplace else in Montana, including the reservations. It’s been happening for years.”
“My God,” Cassie said. “It’s the Kleinsassers?”
“They run everything,” Haak said. “It would be hard to prove, but that’s the way things work around here. That’s the way they’ve always worked.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I used to be one of ’em,” Jody Haak said.
“Tell me about it,” Cassie said. “And I just might have a beer.”
He nodded his approval.
*
Jody Haak worked for the Iron Cross Ranch as the foreman for twenty-six years, he said. He was hired by Horst II when he returned to the valley after serving in the U.S. Navy, and for most of those years he was the only permanent employee on the ranch. Horst II preferred that Haak use transients when he needed manpower rather than full-time employees for tax reasons—they were paid in cash—and because transients could be cut loose quickly and without process if they got too familiar with the operation or started asking too many questions. It was the standard operating procedure on the ranch since it had been founded.
“That’s something you might find a little hard to believe,” Haak said, “but the Iron Cross has never been a prosperous ranch. They’re land-rich but cash-poor. The only way they could stay in operation was to shoestring it and do everything they could to have their fingers in everything that happened in the county. Jakob learned early on that if it was a level playing field his whole ranch would go under in a hurry. So, they had to control things: the county government, the school system, the adjuster’s office— everything.”