Cassie Dewell 01 - Badlands Page 6

  At the register, Kyle watched T-Lock peel several bills from a roll and hand them to the salesclerk. Kyle knew where the money had come from. Although he wanted and needed the winter items, he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of T-Lock spending money on him when they agreed they’d spend the money on his mother. When he looked at his mom to see if she was suspicious, she simply smiled at him. She seemed genuinely touched T-Lock was buying warm boots and gloves for her son.

  “What do you say to Tracy, Kyle?” his mom prompted. She never called him T-Lock.

  “Thank you,” Kyle said.

  T-Lock winked back.

  * * *

  KYLE COULDN’T remember having eaten as well as he had the night before at the Wagon Wheel, except at his grandmother’s house. As he perched on the bluff and looked out over the hundreds of orange flares in the distance—the Indian village—he could still taste the deep-fried cheese, the breaded shrimp, even the bite of cheesecake his mother had offered him from her dessert. The restaurant had been packed with men from the oil fields.

  Nearly all the men wore hoodies, jeans, boots, and ball caps. The few women in the place dressed the same way minus the ball caps. There were loud conversations about the prices on the menu, but he didn’t see anyone get up and leave.

  He was still full when he got up that morning, hoping his mom would remember she promised to drive him on his route because of the weather. But even though he knocked on her bedroom door and stood outside it for five minutes, she didn’t get up.

  He left the house after T-Lock yelled for him to “Go the fuck away.”

  * * *

  AS THE morning cold started to seep into his clothing, Kyle got ready to finish his route. Then he saw a familiar car slow down on the highway and edge to the side of the road where the crash had occurred. He recognized it by its low-slung, bright-white halogen headlights.

  There was no way, he thought, he’d go back down there to see who it was.

  The car stopped and the doors opened and the same two men—at least Kyle assumed they were the same men—got out and descended into the prairie. The crashed car had been towed away, but the men walked to where the car had rolled to a stop. Then two flashlights came on and scoured the snow-covered ground.

  Kyle watched as the men circled around the spot where the wreck had occurred, walking in ever-widening circles. It must be tough, Kyle, thought, to see anything under the snow. He guessed they were looking for a lump.

  Then, just as had happened the morning before but much slower and without sirens or lights, the cop SUV drove out from the edge of Grimstad and made its way to the parked car. Only this time the two men in the prairie didn’t run back to their vehicle and drive away. This time, the men continued to look.

  And as Kyle watched and puffed on his big cigar and got ready to go, he saw the deputy join the two men so the three of them could search the ground together.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CASSIE SAW her first man camp fifteen miles west of Grimstad. It was out there in the snow and mud: a kind of high-tech ant colony made up of portable housing units tightly joined together and sprawling off in different directions across the prairie like word tiles on a Scrabble board. The high chain-link fence surrounding the camp recalled a low-security prison except for the massive lot where hundreds of muddy company trucks were parked in neat rows. There wasn’t a single man outside walking around.

  Because it was dusk about a third of the outside windows of the camp glowed from interior lights. She caught a glimpse inside of what must have been the dining hall. Dozens of men sat at tables inside, heads bent down, shoveling food.

  The very name made her smile grimly.

  Man camp.

  * * *

  IT HAD been a long, flat, desolate drive of eight hours for more than 506 miles. All of it was in Montana. The route paralleled both the Lewis and Clark Trail and the railroad from Helena, Montana, to Grimstad. Cassie hoped her 2006 Honda Civic would hold together along the route known as the Montana Hi-Line through Great Falls, Havre, Malta, Glasgow, and Wolf Point long enough to get there. Grimstad was located twenty miles across the North Dakota border.

  The terrain flattened the farther she drove east, morphing from mountains in the rearview mirror to hundreds of miles of rolling grass prairie and farmland through the front windshield. The sky was huge and gray and endless and the horizon was perfectly horizontal. She knew she was nearing her new job when the grasslands gave way suddenly to pipeline fields, heavy equipment yards, tool companies, and muddy pickups merging onto U.S. Route 2.

  Her sense of both excitement and dread had increased by the hour. She was a third-generation Montanan, and had always thought the state was big enough there was no reason to ever move anywhere else. Her father Bill claimed he had driven his semitruck on every single road in Montana and it took him most of his life to do so.

  And here she was, soon to uproot her son (and mother) to move east to a state that had always served as the punch line of jokes in Montana. To a place people used to be from, but were never headed to. To one of the few states that until recently had lost population in every census. To a place where there were Scandihoovian farmers rather than raw-boned ranchers, and where polka music was a staple on the radio and Sven and Ole jokes were relevant.

  But that was back before they made the largest discovery of domestic oil in North America and one of the largest found anywhere in the world and figured out how to get at it: by hydraulic fracturing or fracking. That was before, according to the tagline from the single local AM radio station she could get, Grimstad became the “Oil Capital of North Dakota,” where nearly a million barrels of oil a day were being shipped out. And that was before the sheriff’s department could offer to pay their new lead investigator $80,000 per year in salary plus family health insurance and benefits—including a subsidy for housing.

  * * *

  AFTER RETURNING from North Carolina, Cassie had found Sheriff Tubman in his office looking over artwork for new billboards urging Lewis and Clark County residents to vote for him for reelection. As usual, his Stetson was crown up behind him on the credenza. That used to drive her old partner Cody out of his mind because Cody had grown up on a ranch and knew real cowboys always placed their hats crown down to preserve the bend of the brim. For Tubman, the hat was an affectation.

  As soon as Tubman saw her enter, he covered the artwork with his forearms and eyed her warily.

  Their relationship had deteriorated since he’d hired her as an investigator, primarily so he could burnish his diversity credentials within the county, and he made no secret of it. In the first year of her employment, she’d been personally dutiful, even going so far as to serve as his spy on other cops, including Cody. But Tubman had betrayed her by citing her findings and firing Hoyt, and he’d followed it up by his active benign neglect of her pursuit of the Lizard King. She knew Tubman saw her as a threat and also knew the only reason she hadn’t been fired was because of her gender. But that didn’t mean the sheriff wouldn’t undermine her at every turn, and plant rumors about her character and morality and sexual orientation as a way to turn up the heat to convince her to leave on her own.

  When she told Tubman about the offer from North Dakota and asked if he wanted to match it, he’d laughed out loud. She hadn’t been surprised. And when she gave her two weeks’ notice, he countered with two hours.

  They were reprogramming the electronic entry code to the Lewis and Clark Law Enforcement Center even as she left it for the last time carrying a cardboard box of personal items.

  When she’d called Sheriff Kirkbride in Grimstad to say she could be available to start the job sooner than they’d discussed, he told her she was already late.

  * * *

  THE HEAVY truck traffic in town surprised her, although she thought she should have expected it. The big tractor-trailers and oil field pickups slowly clotted the few streets and made her think of a highly mechanized army moving through a country village en route to
the front. It took her twenty minutes to navigate through the old-fashioned downtown to the county law enforcement center. The downtown obviously hadn’t come close to catching up with the impact of the boom—JCPenneys, an ancient movie theater, a couple of packed diners—and near the Amtrak station were three adjacent strip clubs with parking lots jammed with pickups even though it wasn’t yet five o’clock.

  She found an open space in the lot next to the law enforcement center, which was an obviously new building made of brick and glass, and punched the speed dial for Sheriff Kirkbride’s office.

  “I’m here,” she said. “I’m right outside.”

  He chuckled. “What do you think so far?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Stay there,” he said. “I’ll be right down with the keys and show you your apartment. Then we can go on a little tour of Bakken County.”

  She looked at her wristwatch: 5:30 P.M. Sheriff Tubman would be shutting off his lights in his office to go home.

  “Are you sure you have the time?” she asked.

  Kirkbride said, “It used to be that way, before the place went twenty-four-seven. Now, though … well, I’ll show you. Besides, my wife has her book club tonight and I’ve already been home to feed the horses. Maybe we can grab a bite later. I’ll call and get us a reservation or we’ll have to wait for two hours to get a table. I’ll be right down.”

  * * *

  THE CENTRAL lobby of the law enforcement center was lit up like an aquarium at night: lots of glass, a few sofas and tables, and two elevator doors. A stooped man who she assumed was a jail trusty by his orange jumpsuit pushed a mop across the stone floor, and he looked up and greeted the man who appeared as the elevator doors opened.

  Sheriff Jon Kirkbride exchanged pleasantries with the trusty. He wore a khaki uniform with a brown sheriff’s department ball cap. Kirkbride had a bushy gunfighter’s-style mustache. He pulled on his coat as he pushed through the glass doors and walked toward her car. He was a big man with wide shoulders, a slightly stooped posture, and the delicate, bow-legged, and pigeon-toed way of walking she’d observed in many Montana ex-rodeo riders.

  He approached her car and held out a huge hand. “Cassie Dewell, it’s good to see you again for the first time,” he said with a grin.

  Their interviews had taken place via telephone and Skype and, Cassie thought, had a slightly desperate quality to them.

  “Glad to be here,” she said, climbing out of her Honda and shaking his hand.

  “Is it just you or do you have your little one with you?”

  “Just me. My mom and son can’t get here for another couple of weeks. I didn’t want to take him out of school until the Thanksgiving break.”

  Kirkbride nodded and looked her over in the way cops looked over each other, the way cattle buyers looked at a cow. Like always, she thought, she’d likely disappoint him.

  He handed her a set of three plastic keycards held together by a twist tie. “One of ’em is a master and will get you in the building and it’ll open every door inside. Like I told you, we share the building with the other law enforcement folks—the local Grimstad Police, the highway patrol, and the Northwest Drug Enforcement Task Force, but we work together as a team. No territorial or jurisdiction bullshit, even though our department is the big dog around here. The other two keys are for your apartment. Do you need some help carrying your stuff up?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve only got a suitcase at this point and I can handle it.”

  “Of course you can,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “I just never know what to do or say anymore. I was raised to open doors for women and carry their stuff. Now I’m always worried I’m offending them if I offer.”

  “No offense taken,” she said. “If I wasn’t traveling so light, I’d take you up on your offer and thank you for making it.”

  “Whew,” he said.

  * * *

  SHE FOLLOWED him across the parking lot pulling her rolling carry-on bag to a modern three-story building adjacent to the law enforcement center. He said over his shoulder, “If somebody would have told me twelve years ago when I got this job that I’d be a landlord as well as a sheriff, I woulda looked at them funny.”

  She laughed politely. She knew how unique the situation was in Grimstad. Cassie had checked rent costs online. Without housing as part of the package, she knew she couldn’t have afforded to make the move. Grimstad now had the highest rents in the nation, surpassing even New York City.

  “Is it all sheriff’s department people inside?” she asked.

  “Yeah. A couple of married couples, but mainly single men. It’s like a sports-only dormitory—one big happy family.”

  “Any kids?” she asked.

  “One in the oven,” he said. “You know about the situation here with men and women in general, right?”

  “You told me,” Cassie said. “Ten-to-one men to women.”

  “I’ve revised that,” he said as he opened the door to the apartment building by swiping a card through the reader. “Now I think it’s more twenty-to-one.”

  * * *

  HER APARTMENT was located on the third and top floor. She thought, Ben will love the elevator.

  Sheriff Kirkbride hovered just outside the door, holding his hat in his hands as she went in and turned on the lights. “It’s my only three-bedroom unit. You’re the first to live in it.”

  “It’s great,” she said, parking her rolling luggage near a new couch and looking around. The apartment smelled of fresh paint and new carpet.

  When he didn’t respond she looked over to see him staring closely at her. Instinctively, she reached up and touched the bruises on her lower jaw with the tips of her fingers. She’d forgotten about them.

  “This is what the Lizard King did to me,” she said. “You know about him, right?”

  “Everybody does,” Kirkbride said. “And I know your history with him. But how in the hell did he get his hands around your neck and how in the hell did you live to tell the tale?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said, forcing a smile so he’d know she wasn’t trying to be obscure. “I can tell you all about it later.”

  “Okay, because I want to hear it. Folks in the eastern part of the state are pretty cheesed off that he passed himself off as a North Dakotan.”

  She briefly looked around. The apartment was clean, new, modern, and airy, she thought. Two bathrooms. A big-screen HD TV in the living room. It was bigger and cheerier than the place she’d left in Helena. She knew from the Web site there was a fenced-in playground outside. Ben would like that—unless he turned out to be the only child in the complex.

  “Let’s go on that tour,” she said.

  “You sure you don’t want to make yourself at home?” he asked.

  “I’ll have plenty of time for that,” she said. She’d decided to wait to sort out who would sleep in which bedrooms, how she’d rearrange the furniture, and what she’d put on the stark white walls.

  Besides, she thought, if the sheriff was using his personal time to show her around, she felt obligated to participate. Plus, it would be important for her to see the county through his eyes. She’d learned painfully from her time in Helena that the culture of a sheriff’s department was set at the top—for good or ill.

  After they closed the door and waited for the elevator, Kirkbride said, “I tell all my new guys they’ll get ten years of experience in law enforcement in their first six months here. You’ll soon see why.”

  “Are your deputies local hires?” she asked.

  “Not hardly,” he said. “Locals who might be so inclined go straight to work out in the oil fields pulling in a hundred thousand a year. No, I have my best luck recruiting out-of-staters fresh out of the academy in Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota—places where the economy sucks and they can’t find a job. I’ve even got one from sunny California—they call him ‘Surfer Dude.’ It’s hard to get experienced cops to move out here. But these guys—you’ll
meet ’em—are all fresh-faced and gung ho. They like to get right out there and mix it up with the bad guys because they’re young and full of beans. I’m glad you’re not either.”

  Then he blushed when he realized how it had sounded.

  “Damn, that was a stupid thing for me to say,” he said as the elevator opened. Instead of going in, he stood there for a moment looking at the tops of his boots. “My wife would kill me if she heard me say that to you.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, holding the door. “I know what you meant.”

  “I hope so,” he said, looking at everything inside the elevator car but her. She liked him instantly.

  * * *

  “WE BEGIN our tour,” Sheriff Kirkbride said in a put-on television announcer’s voice-over tone, “with what Grimstad was five years ago before they figured out how to get all this oil out of the shale underground. When this little desolate hamlet on the North Dakota prairie was home to less than twelve thousand people…”

  He was at the wheel of his unmarked silver GMC Tahoe. Inside, though, it was a fully equipped law enforcement vehicle. There was a wire screen between the front and back row, both a shotgun and a semiautomatic rifle mounted to the dashboard, and a portable flasher on the seat that could be quickly attached to the roof by its magnetic base. He’d lowered the radio so they could talk.

  Cassie smiled and said, “That’s how they started the video piece I saw on YouTube. I think it was by The New York Times.”

  “You saw that, huh?”

  Cassie nodded. “When I found the job posted, I Googled Grimstad, North Dakota, Bakken County Sheriff’s Department, crime in Bakken County, population of Bakken County, whatever. I found clips from CNN and The New York Times and another from a Danish news crew about the boom and how it had impacted the area. I thought you handled the questions pretty well.”