The Highway Read online

  Gracie jumped when cold wet wind howled through the inside of the little car.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled at her sister.

  In Gracie’s peripheral vision she could see Danielle leaning out her window with her left arm extended. The door of the truck just hung there, not receding, not pulling ahead.

  “Loser!” Danielle screamed through the open window, raising her middle finger outside, “Fucking loser asshole!”

  “Stop it!” Gracie yelled. “Get back in the car and go!”

  “Loser! Asshole!”

  “Danielle!”

  With a satisfied smirk, her sister brought her arm back into the car and floored it. The massive headlights receded in the rearview mirror as they approached the summit of the long climb. Danielle reached over and hit the button and the driver’s window whirred back up.

  “Ha!” Danielle said. “I told him.”

  “Could he see you?”

  “I think so,” she said. “I saw him lean over and look at me. I could just see the top of his forehead. He had the forehead of a loser.”

  “You’re crazy,” Gracie said, meaning it. “Why did you have to yell at him? Why didn’t you just pass him and leave things alone?”

  “And let him get away with it?” Danielle said. “No fucking way. He’s lucky we didn’t call 911 on his ass.”

  Gracie sat still until she could breathe again. “Please stop talking like a truck driver,” she said.

  10.

  6:12 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

  THE LIZARD KING HAD BEEN preoccupied by the body in the back. When he’d swerved earlier that damned body had been thrown out of the bunk in his sleeper. It had landed with a thump behind him, and he was looking at it on the floor—he could make out its blank dark eyes through several layers of plastic—when the Ford made its move. By the time he looked up, the car was parallel to the cab. And when he stretched and looked over …

  They were right there, the two young snotty girls in the little red Ford. Right below his passenger window. They were too far along now to easily force them off the road because he could no longer use the trailer as a bludgeon. When the car didn’t advance, he was curious and strained up in his seat to get a look at them.

  That’s when he saw the contorted face of the looker thrust out of her open window. She was screaming at him but he could make out the words: Fucking loser asshole.

  Loser.

  It was like a hard slap in the face.

  And because of the steep grade and his load holding him back, the Ford pulled away. He couldn’t push his rig any harder to catch up on the hill.

  He bellowed in rage as the car passed him and gained distance before it summited the long haul and vanished down the other side.

  * * *

  As he topped the hill, he looked out ahead of him. He could see for miles. In the distance, maybe a mile away, were the two tiny red taillights of the Ford. There were no other cars on the interstate in either direction for as far as he could see.

  Less than ten miles ahead was the roadblock set up by the Montana Highway Patrol. He’d no doubt catch up with them there. He envisioned a scenario where he pulled them out of their car and tore them apart with his hands.

  Then a cold and razor-edged calm took him over. He’d felt it before, many times. It was the feeling he got when he was stalking prey.

  The Lizard King reached into his jumpsuit and pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed his partner.

  “I’ll be there tonight,” he said.

  “You got a load?”

  “Negatory.”

  Silence. Pained, angry silence.

  Then he said, “Remember that situation you said you wanted a while back? You know what I’m talking about.”

  After a beat, his partner said, “No shit? Is this gonna happen?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “But it could is what you’re saying.”

  “There might be an opportunity,” he said. “I won’t know until it happens.” Thinking, they could pull over to switch drivers. They could take an exit for a rest area. They might even stop to stretch, or walk around to keep awake, or to look at something. He’d have a chance as long as it wasn’t public, like a service station or a convenience store …

  “What kind of opportunity?” his partner asked. His tone was anticipatory.

  “Maybe a double load.”

  Then, his partner’s tone rose. “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope. Get receiving ready.”

  “I’m tied up right now, damn it.”

  “It’s a fresh load if it happens,” the Lizard King said. “Real fresh. A double load. We don’t want it to spoil.”

  His partner moaned. It was a sound that slightly unnerved even the Lizard King. Then, “It may be a couple of hours.”

  “That ought to work.”

  “I wish you woulda told me earlier. I’ve got a situation.”

  “Three hours, possible double load,” the Lizard King said. “Freshest meat you’ve ever seen.”

  “Holy hell.”

  “You said it.”

  “Don’t screw it up. Please don’t screw it up.”

  “Fuck you,” the Lizard King said and snapped his phone shut, thinking maybe he shouldn’t have told him until he had the double load secure.

  Because if it didn’t pan out, he’d never hear the end of it.

  11.

  6:31 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

  CASSIE HAD BEEN HOME just long enough to feed her dog, look in on her mother and Ben, her four-year-old son, and change out of her uniform. While she pulled on jeans and took an inordinate amount of time in her closet before deciding on a long-sleeved Henley and a suede leather vest, she tried Cody’s cell phone. No answer. She debated whether to call his house and decided against it. Jenny, his ex-wife, had recently moved back in with him. If she picked up the phone and hadn’t yet heard what happened that day, Cassie didn’t want to be the one to deliver the news. And if Jenny had heard, Cassie didn’t want to hear what Jenny thought about it. She’d met Jenny once and recalled an intelligent, attractive, very strong-willed woman. She’d thought better of Cody after meeting Jenny.

  But Cassie couldn’t discern what Jenny had thought about her—a younger single mother who was Cody’s new partner. And now the one, Cassie thought, who set up her husband to be fired.

  So she pulled on her parka, told her mother and son she’d be back soon, and went out to find Cody. She needed to explain herself, justify her actions, and make him understand what she’d done wasn’t personal. Cassie was scared, though. Cody could be intimidating and he had an explosive temper. He might rip into her, even though she thought she might deserve it.

  She drove her Honda past Cody’s house. His old pickup wasn’t there.

  * * *

  Cassie located Cody’s pickup where she hoped it wouldn’t be: the Jester’s Bar downtown on North Rodney. She parked her Honda Civic a block away, got out, and took a deep breath of cold thin air. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her parka, pulled them out again, and nervously smoothed down the front of her coat. A streetlight hummed above her through the leafless trees and threw cold blue light on the broken sidewalk.

  Jester’s was a serious old-school bar located in the corner of a shambling historic stone building across the street from the brick building housing the Lewis and Clark County coroner’s office. She’d never been inside the bar—she wasn’t much of a drinker and her son prevented nights out on the town—but she’d heard the stories. Local cops were sent there frequently at closing time. The bar offered no food or big-screen TVs and catered to hard customers. From the outside it looked as inviting as a prison cell except with neon beer signs—Ranier, Pabst—filling the square windows. Three Harleys sat out front pointed out toward the street, front wheels cocked to the side.

  Cassie paused at the door. She could smell cigarette smoke and hear the click of pool balls. She almost turned around and walked back to her
Honda. Instead, she steeled herself and pulled the door open, to be greeted by a sensory rush of smoke, stale beer, and Lynyrd Skynyrd from the jukebox.

  It was dark inside and unevenly lighted. The mood was as intimate as a small beat-up warehouse. There were photos tacked to the walls and names carved into the pine paneling. The floor was gritty with dirt.

  Every head in the place swung toward her; the three bikers at the table near the bar, two tattooed pool players leaning across green felt, an emaciated cowboy emerging from the men’s zipping up his Wranglers, the pockmarked and pony-tailed bartender stubbing out a smoke, and the skanky old crow with dyed red hair and a tight black T-shirt seated on her stool.

  And, in the corner in the back, illuminated harshly in yellow from a hanging lamp over a pool table, was Cody Hoyt. He was on a stool with his back against the wall at a high round table. Both his hands were on the table, framing a smoldering ashtray. A single tall glass half full with clear liquid sat near his elbow. His hooded eyes bored holes into her.

  She nodded at him and took three steps in his direction and hesitated. He gave no indication he wanted her to join him. She flushed and looked around, embarrassed by the situation. One of the bikers winked at her. The old crow at the bar made a cackle that ended with a sharp punctuation of phlegm.

  Then she turned back around and approached her former partner but didn’t take a seat. In her peripheral vision, the pool players quickly racked their cues and headed for the back door, their game unfinished.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked. She hoped her intonation wasn’t as limp as it sounded to her.

  Cody didn’t say yes, didn’t say no. He simply glared at her.

  “I’d like to talk with you, if you don’t mind,” she said softly. “About what happened.”

  He blew out a sharp puff of smoke from his nostrils but he didn’t reply.

  “Cody,” she said, trying to hold his eyes and not look away, which was difficult, “I didn’t mean to set you up. That was never my intention. I feel terrible about what happened. Sheriff Tubman…”

  A terrifying grin cracked Cody’s face at the mention of the sheriff’s name and it froze her for a moment. She’d forgotten how mean he could look.

  “’Can I get you?” she heard just over her shoulder.

  Relieved, she turned. The pony-tailed bartender stood a few feet behind her. He was short and wiry and wore a long, sheathed bowie knife the length of his thigh.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I said, ‘What can I get you?’” he said.

  She hesitated. “Maybe a glass of wine?” she said.

  The bartender smiled coldly. “Red or kind of red?”

  She didn’t ask. She said, “Red.”

  He nodded, and turned his attention to Cody. “You gonna drink it this time?”

  At first she didn’t understand. Then she had a vision of Cody ordering alcohol, staring at it, and sending it back untouched. She wondered how many times it had happened before she arrived. The thought stabbed her in the heart.

  Cody nodded slightly. But the bartender didn’t move. Finally, the man said, “Do you two plan to be here very long?”

  Cassie squinted at him, not understanding.

  The bartender chinned to where the pool players had been before they left so quickly. “Look,” he said, lowering his voice so only they could hear. “We’ve got regular customers coming in until we close. They like to be able to relax, you know? Kick back? It ain’t usual for a couple of county cops to be sitting in here, you know?”

  “We’re off duty,” she said.

  “Still, you stink of it,” the bartender said. “No offense.”

  She could feel her face flushing again. Cody cleared his throat and readjusted himself on his stool so his jacket opened and his .40 Sig Sauer could be clearly seen in its holster. He said to the bartender, “Get us our drinks, you mouth-breathing little ferret. And keep them coming if we want them. Because only one of us is off duty. The other is just an angry man with a gun who could blow chunks of your heart out your back before you cleared that knife. And believe me, I’m in the fucking mood to pop somebody. Do we have an understanding?”

  The bartender’s eyes got huge and his mouth just hung there. After a few beats, he nodded and turned meekly toward the bar.

  “I could never do that,” Cassie said, climbing on a stool and leaning across the tabletop toward Cody. She said sadly, “Please tell me you’re not drinking?”

  “Not yet. Maybe I’m building up to it, though. This is club soda,” he said, pinging a fingernail on the rim of the glass. “It tastes like … the end of the world as I know it.”

  Then he growled, “This is where it helps you to be a chick. Because if you weren’t, I would have kicked your ass the second you walked in that door.”

  * * *

  She’d heard stories about the infamous Cody Hoyt even before she graduated from the academy. He was a polarizing presence within law enforcement and throughout the state. Some LEOs (law enforcement officers) hated his guts, others winked when his name was mentioned. No one, it seemed, was neutral.

  Cody had grown up in East Helena, from a long line of Hoyts, who were known as white-trash outlaws. The Hoyts were poachers, cattle rustlers, small-time crooks, and grifters. Somehow, Cody had chosen law enforcement and had worked himself up through police and sheriff’s departments in Montana, Wyoming, and eventually became the lead homicide investigator for the Denver Metropolitan Police Department. His record of convictions was remarkable, but as his reputation grew so did the whispers. He not only cut corners, department gossips (and defense attorneys) alleged, he invented new corners to cut. Although his work resulted in a firefight that brought a serial pedophile down, his methods—including the appearance of his uncle Jeter brandishing a ten-gauge shotgun—got him thrown off the force.

  Given his reputation, most Montana LEOs were surprised when he landed a job as investigator at the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Department. Stories of his carousing rivaled stories of witness intimidation, brutality, and tampering with crime scenes. But again, his results were inspiring. Two years before—after being suspended for shooting the county coroner in what was later deemed an accident—Cody came to the conclusion that a serial murderer responsible for the death of his AA sponsor was on a multiday wilderness horseback trip in Yellowstone Park. So was his estranged son, Justin.

  Without authorization or backup, Cody had recruited an old-time wilderness guide and ridden into Yellowstone in a fury. When it was all over, bodies littered the trees and two large-scale conspiracies were brought to light, including one that involved the department. Cody had reconciled with his son and convinced his ex-wife to move back to Montana. Rather than prosecute his subordinate, Tubman—under pressure—had supported Cody. But he’d bided his time until he could pull the trigger.

  Cassie realized now she’d ended up as the one holding the gun.

  * * *

  After the bartender delivered the drinks—a plastic cup of cheap Merlot for Cassie and an amber shot and a pint of beer for Cody—Cassie handed the man her credit card.

  “Cash only,” he said, but without the attitude from before. She dug into her purse and handed over her only twenty and he went to make change.

  “Run a tab,” Cody called after him. The bartender nodded.

  “Can we talk about this,” she asked Cody insistently, “or should I just go home? This isn’t much fun for me, you know. I know about you,” she said, gesturing toward the drinks on the table. “I know you’ve been clean and sober for three years. I know that’s why your wife and son moved back. Everybody in the department warned me about you when I got hired. How you’d show up drunk in the morning, how you’d insult anybody who crossed your path. How you bent the rules when you wanted to. But I also heard you were the best investigator around and you’d cleaned up your act. I wanted to learn from you. I wanted to work with the best.”

  “If you wanted to work with the best,�
�� he said, “why’d you sneak around behind my back and fuck up my career? Hmmm?”

  She wasn’t sure how to answer, except to say Tubman had ordered her to follow him. It wasn’t like she could refuse …

  “Bullshit,” Cody said, cutting her off. “You could have handled it a dozen ways if you had any … balls. I understand you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and you’re eager to please. But you haven’t been around much. You don’t know how things work.”

  She sipped her wine. It was awful. She took a gulp. “What could I have done?” she said. “He gave me an order.”

  Cody rolled his eyes with disgust.

  “What?”

  He fixed his horrible smirk on her and held out a hand and started counting the fingers on it with the other. “One, you could have said you lost me when I drove out of town. Two, you could have accidentally deleted the shots after you took them. Three,” he said, making sure she noted he was extending his middle finger toward her, “you could have told Tubman to fuck himself and send somebody else, because partners don’t rat on partners. Four, you could have begged off at the last minute. Said your son was sick or your mom fell down and broke her hip. Some kind of bullshit that would stick. And five, we could have worked it together so we still got the bad guy which, last I looked, was what I thought we were supposed to do out here.”

  She held her tongue because she could tell he wasn’t done.

  “How many murder cases have you worked?” he asked.

  “You know,” she said.

  “That’s right: none. How many major felony cases? Oh, same number: none. But you went to the academy and you got hired right away and promoted right over the heads of people who’ve been in that department for years. So I guess you know it all.”